Updates...

Praise the Lord...everyone is healthy! After two weeks in quarantine (with one of those weeks being at my parents for floor-to-ceiling disinfecting at our house!), everyone is well and medicine-free. Hooray!! Jack is doing wonderfully from his surgery on Monday. We think he's finally feeling (and hearing!) better. Here are some of the recent pictures of what the kids have been up to. Make sure you pay attention to Isabel's "hair-raising" shot about halfway through the montage. Oh, and Abigail wants everyone to know that she picked out this song. :-)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Wyatt and Emery

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This past weekend I had a great time doing pictures for the Birch family. I've done pictures of several babies and new crawlers/walkers, so I had to laugh at how different it is shooting pictures of fast-moving targets! In case you don't know him, Wyatt is definitely a little guy on the move, and he gave me great practice with shooting at faster shutter speeds. :-)

Jack's Big Ear Tube Day

It started at 5:20 this morning. Well, it was actually closer to 4:00 for me, but 5:20 is what time we headed out the door for Jack's surgery. We were scheduled to arrive at Children's Hospital downtown at 6:00. We rolled in at 5:50 and felt like everything was going just as planned until the nurse came in to Jack's hospital room and said these words: "Mr. and Mrs. Lewis...I'm afraid we have some bad news." Already? At 6:30 in the morning? She went on: "The doctor got stuck in New York, so we are having to cancel all of his surgeries today." Here it comes...I feel it...the big lump rising in my throat...the tears filling my eyes. She continued to tell us how sorry she was and that we should go back home and wait for the office to call us with a rescheduled surgery date. My mind is racing now. Do I quietly say "Yes ma'am" and go back home with a little guy who is desperate for this procedure or do I beg for mercy? I chose to beg. I'll spare you the details of my groveling, but in the end, we were sent to Children's South (which is right down the road from our house) to be worked in with another doctor. Once Jack was finally taken back to the OR, he was only away from us for about 25 minutes. The doctor came out and told us everything had gone perfectly and that Jack had already been working his way into another infection (just a few days after coming off of antibiotics for the last one!). By the time we got home, he had a voracious appetite (it was unlike anything I've ever seen!) and was ready for a snoozer. I expected him to sleep most of the afternoon, but as you can see, after a couple of hours he was up and ready to go. And by "ready to go", I mean that he is wild! Only six hours after surgery, he is acting like he feels so much better than he has in a while. As I'm looking back on the day now, I can see that God handled every concern we had as well as some we didn't even know to pray about (i.e. Children's South was our original choice of facilities for his surgery, but they were booked at the time and couldn't get us in for several more weeks). We're so glad today is over with, and we thank you for your prayers for our little guy!

The Toy That's Always With Me...

Hi everyone--this is Isabel. I wanted to share with you about the new toy I found recently. I was sitting in my stroller while my family and I were out on a walk, and lo and behold, this new toy popped up right in front of my face. I reached out for it, finally grabbed it, and I've been playing with it ever since! Rumor has it that there's another one of these toys running around here somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. For now I'm content with just the one. :-)

Brayden and Emma

My sister, Bethany, and I have had the neat experience of having our most recent two children very close together. Jack and Brayden are six weeks apart in age, and Isabel and Emma are eleven weeks apart. It's been neat to watch their special little relationships develop during their short lives. Bethany and Bailey live about 30 minutes away from us, and she stopped by here recently for a visit. Here are some of the pictures of her little cuties. :-)

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The Three (Sick) Bears

One by one they have succumbed. That's right...Abby, Jack and Izzy all have the tummy bug. Now lest you see these pictures and think that I'm a terrible mom for documenting their distress, let me share a little something with you. I don't typically get very deep in my little blog entries, but I have had one of those big learning moments recently that I wanted to share. The night before the first "race to the bathroom" occurred, I read something in a great book ("Passionate Housewives Desperate for God") that, at the time, I thought was a nice little commentary that I could store away for future use. Little did I know the "future" was only hours away! In the chapter entitled "Sweet Sleep and Sacred Rest", this author discusses a rough night at her home that was filled with a crying baby and a daughter who was ill with the stomach bug (I should have known then!). She says "I had a choice: I could be bitter toward the family God had called me to serve, or I could ask God to give me the strength I needed to die to self and glorify Him. At the end of that day, though I was physically tired, I marveled how I had made it through and was able to see ways God had eased my burden and refreshed my soul." Now the choice was mine...I have rarely found myself "bitter" in regards to our children, but I have definitely chosen the path of self-pity and carried a feeling of drudgery at times. I think it is easy for us (especially stay-at-home moms) to feel as if we're simply "existing" or painstakingly moving through the daily grind, but this passage reminded me that every little thing I do for Josh or our children can bring glory to God. The author talks about this as well: "We must view serving our families as acts of service to God." This may all seem incredibly obvious to many of you, but it hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. None of this is about me...it's about the family God entrusted to my care and the glory that my service to them can bring Him. Now what does all of this have to do with these pictures? These pictures just serve as a little reminder to me of what God has called me to do, and I know that one day, as I look at our grown children, I will wish I had these young days back (tummy bug and all!)
On a side note, it absolutely warms my heart to see Abigail already showing such tender care for her little siblings. In the picture of her with Jack, she had just gotten sick again shortly before I took this picture, but still, she heard him crying and went to him to try to comfort him. How precious!

It's too rainy to play outside today

For those of you who don't know this about Jack, he is all boy and would spend every waking minute outside if he could. Well today is a rainy, dreary day, and I snapped this picture of him looking out the front door (wishing he could be outside playing of course!) Poor little guy!