34 - Happy birthday!!

I always remind Jen that she will always be older than me...and, I like to remind her of that often.

This past year has been a bumpy ride for our family, and it is true to say that this year has hit Jen harder than anyone else in our family. Jen is the one who is at home all day with Sarah, working with OTs, PTs, and all kinds of other therapists. Jen is the one who has to patiently deal with Sarah all day, through all of her irrational behavior. Jen is the one who primarily takes Sarah to Hopkins for her all day infusions. Jen is also the one who takes care of the 3 other kids we have all day, while I'm at work. Considering what Jen does all day long, I look at work like its a vacation. She works much harder than I do!

The kids are SO excited about blessing mom on her birthday. They are literally counting down the days til her birthday. This is just a picture into how much they love their mom!

In asking what we should get mom for her birthday, they each had their own suggestion...which ironically, really identifies something of their personality as well. Caleb was easy...he wanted to get mom candy. I'm sure there is a secret ploy for him to be able to eat the candy himself, but nonetheless, we still got mom her favorite candy (chewy, fruity anything...in this case, swedish fish and chewy jolly ranchers). Mikaela picked an outfit. She walked all over Target and was sizing everything up. She ended up with something nice. Alethea, very thoughtfully, remembered that Jen looked for a book last time they were at the library, but it was checked out. She had the idea of going to Borders to get the book. So we went and bought "My sister's keeper" for Jen to read. I ended up getting her tickets to the American Idol tour at the Verizon Center. Jen's hooked on that show big time.

The kids also wanted to make Jen a cake. I think this was partially motivated by one of our favorite shows called "Ace of Cakes". They were inspired and off we went. All three agreed that mom's favorite colors were green and orange. Then Alethea drew up the master plans for the cake.


So, this was our goal. We scaled it back a bit to 3 tiers, and went for it...






Caleb was pretty much good for nothing but licking the bowl of icing. That kid is a total goof ball.

...in the end, we achieved our goal close enough.




On the morning of her birthday, she'll wake up to this cake, her presents, and her favorite breakfast.

Happy birthday babe! I love you, the kids love you, and we are grateful for everything you do for our family!

Dave

Happy Father's Day!

    I don't even know where to begin. Dave is such an amazing father! The way he balances loving, caring, training, and correcting is provoking. I want to be more like him. He totally has our kids hearts. They run to him the minute he walks in the door. They just love to be with him. And who wouldn't? He is so much fun!! The guy can make any regular activity seem like it's the best thing ever. Most importantly though, he instills in them a love for God and the church. For that, I am grateful. 

    I never would have guessed what the last year and a half would hold for us. I can say this though. I am so grateful that I get to walk through this trial with Dave by my side. He listens to me, cries with me, challenges me, and loves me. And oh boy, does he love Sarah. The way he cares for her is so sweet to watch. She and all the kids are so blessed to have a Dad like him. Here's just a glimpse of all the fun things Daddy does...

Living your childhood through your kids

Its pretty funny how that works, how your kids end up liking and doing the same things that you did when you were little. Its probably because we buy them things (and do things) that we loved so much when we were kids. I think I like some of these things more than my own kids do!

Here's a couple examples:

Caleb's love for baseball and for the O's! I must admit, I've trained him hard in this. Notice the jacket in this picture? It was mine when I was his age. My mom kept it all these years, and now I've passed it on to him.



Big wheels! Man, our neighborhood big wheel crew terrorized our street with big wheels. My mom got one for Caleb, and he loves it. Brings back tons of memories for me.








The girls just finished up another year of soccer. They did really great and loved it. Their team color was orange, which reminded me of when I played, because my team color for "Kings Contrivance" was always purple. Its funny the things I remember, like my team color, and all the practices with Mr. Holmes and Mr. Pollock at Atholton ES.
There are lots of other childhood things we've passed on to our kids...matchbox cars and tracks, peanut butter play dough...

Sarah update:
Sarah recently finished up a new protocol for a drug called Rituximab (as Jen mentioned in an earlier post) and is now back to receiving IVIG. This is the drug that helps her movement the best. She still shakes a lot, but is a fighter in every sense of the word. She hasn't ever let her muscle tremors stop her from doing anything she wants!

She is starting to talk a little bit more too. The muscle disorder effects her speech a bit. She is putting 3-4-5 word sentences together, which is really cool to watch develop!

Jen continues to be an amazing mom to Sarah and the other kids. Sarah needs oversight and watching pretty much 24/7...which makes it pretty hard to do stuff during the day. But, somehow, she makes it all work and manages to go on walks, go to the pool, go strawberry picking, etc...
No wonder Jen wants to go to bed at 8pm every night!

A Wedding

A few weekends ago, we had the wonderful opportunity to see some of our dear friends get married.  We have known Garrett and Elise since they were in high school. We have become good friends with both of them and their families. They also serve on Dave's admin team, Elise is Dave's secretary, and Elise has been one of our babysitters for years now. Elise also has a special place in her heart for Sarah. When she came to me when they got engaged and asked if Sarah could be a flower girl in her wedding, it brought tears to my eyes just thinking that she was willing to sacrifice a "perfect" wedding to have Sarah be a part, and literally stumble down the aisle. As months went on, I was very nervous about letting Sarah do this, but Elise was always quick to tell me that she didn't care what happened she just wanted to honor Sarah. Well, all that to say, I'm grateful she had that attitude because as you can see in this series of pictures, she didn't make it down the aisle. Poor girlie tried so hard. Wasn't she cute though!

Elise also asked the older girls if they would help hand out programs. They were so excited and were able to get special dresses for the occasion. Dave also had the privilege of being a groomsman as well. It was such a wonderful day! Here is a family shot. Five out of six isn't bad as far as looking at the camera. We'll take what we can get!

They had a candy reception at church before their dinner reception. The kids kept making sure they were invited to this reception. They didn't want to be left out of the fun! 

Caleb and Daddy, with some chocolate covered pretzels.

Alethea and Daddy, with a huge lollipop.

Mikaela and Daddy

These next few pictures are taken by our dear friend Kristen. Glad I have some professional pictures to remember the day as well.

What's Up?

Things have been very busy around here. With the end of school, and all Sarah's additional treatments, the poor blog has been neglected. Dave asked me this morning if I could please do an update. I'll try and give a quick update, and then try to do some more posts with some bigger events that have taken place. Here are some pictures that capture what's been going on...

the three older kids played soccer this Spring

the girls had their first piano recital

The girls and Dave did a 5K run at Covenant Life School

Sarah continues to do well. She just finished a 5 week round of treatment where we were at Hopkins once a week. Although we didn't see the kind of results we hoped for, we learned some good information about what drug really does help her the most. We that information, we will continue on with her getting IVIG once a month, with the hope that at some point we can space it out a little more. 

Up next... a wedding, a baby, and the last day of school!