Feb. 6, 2007 - waaah

My parents emailed us some pictures from Hawaii where they've been vacationing for the past week and a half.  The helicopter tour of the volcano crater looked really neat.  But the palm trees, beaches, luaus and my mom's amazing tan are inspiring some twinges of envy.  Why am I living in this frozen land again?  Oh right...family, friends, a great church...I'll just keep reminding myself of that while I drool over the pictures.

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Feb. 5, 2007 - Wobbly

After all the difficulties of Friday, it was so nice to have some fun this weekend.  We finished the first season of 24.  Great show, but I can't believe the "ending" and now I'm just dying to see season 2.  Those writers sure now how to hook you!

Sunday we had church.  Pastor Leon preached on awesome message on learning to hear God's voice that was very pertinent to me right now.   I think God prepares the hearts of his people to hear the Word and that was really evident to me yesterday.  I love it when that happens.

After church we went skating with my sil mrsdiamond and co.  We had a lot of fun.  Jeremy and I switched off with baby care, so I was actually able to skate!  I've been on skates three times this year, and prior to that it had been about six years.  My sweet husband assured me that I looked much more at ease than I felt.  That's good, because I felt like a wobbly klutz.  LOL

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Feb. 3, 2007 - update

So we had the appointment yesterday.  It was extremely difficult, but Levi did very well, and I'm glad.  It took me and two other nurses to hold him on the table, while the doctor poked him 22 times with various allergens, looking for reactions.  He didn't cry, but he looked absolutely terrified and fought the entire time.  I can't believe how strong he is.  They wrapped his arm in gauze and he had to leave it for 30 minutes before they could gauge his reactions.  When the doctor came back to remove the gauze, he absolutely refused to give her his arm back.  Not that I can blame him.  He just stood by my side and wouldn't look at her.  Finally, after much coaxing, he looked up at her and said, "I'm scared."  He just broke my heart.  I finally had to take the gauze off and that's when he cried, though it didn't hurt. It was fear, I guess.

All that to find nothing.  He has no allergies that they could find.  I am a strange mixture of relief and frustration.  I would hate for him to have to struggle with a whole bunch of allergies for the rest of his life, especially since they thought it was something like trees or grass, or something else really common.  How do you avoid trees?  So I'm glad that it's not that.  But I'm frustrated because this leaves us back at square one.  We don't know the root cause of his eczema and can only slap more prescriptions on it when it flares up and give him different antihistamines for the itching.  My nephew just broke out in eczema for the first time.  They are seeking out alternative therapies using natural health remedies and have been told that eczema is often related to digestion problems.  Interestingly enough, their little guy has very similar eating patterns and problems to Levi, and it all started at the same age.  So...we are planning to take Levi to a naturopath.  I'm sick of getting no answers, just more prescriptions for drugs that can have terrible side effects.  I'm tired of reading about the side effects of long term use and worrying about how often he needs the meds.  I don't fault the doctors for not knowing the answers to his problem.  But we've exhausted their resources and I'm not ready to give up yet.  Summer is agonizingly painful and exhausting for Levi.  I don't want him to have to go through that again that again.

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Feb. 2, 2007 - prayer request

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Feb. 1, 2007 - frozen

There's a weather watch out, again, and it is so cold outside that it hurts to breathe when you're outside.  The kind of cold that you can feel trying to invade even when your inside a warm house and wearing jeans, a sweater and slippers.  And it's supposed to get colder tomorrow.

My children are going stir crazy from this cold snap.  Skating lessons are a welcome relief.  They are used to playing outside and January has been an absolutely frigid month, with many days where it's dangerous to let them play outside.  Jeremy was trying to explain frostbite to them, and for some reason "frostbite" became something alive to Josiah.  When we had to go grocery shopping yesterday, he was really worried about having to walk from the house to the van.  He finally went outside, running and yelling, "I don't want the frostbites to get me!!!!!" 

We've been studying Hawaii in school.  My parents are there on vacation right now, so I thought it would be interesting for the kids to learn about what nana and papa might be seeing and doing right now.  For those of you who haven't tried it yet, Google Earth is an amazing tool for learning geography.  We have been having so much fun looking at Hawaii.  You can start by looking at the earth from space and zoom in on the place where you want to explore.  It's done by satellite imaging.  Depending on where you live, you can even find your house!  I zoomed onto my mom and dad's house and it was so detailed I could see the shed and outlines of my mom's gardens.  We 've been checking out beaches and volcanoes in Hawaii. 

So I'm off to find some coffee and get the troops rallied for the day.  Have a good one! 

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Jan. 31, 2007 - simple faith

Talking to Emily yesterday, she concluded:

"So....He's God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  Just like me!  I'm Emily the daughter, Emily the sister and Emily the princess...but it's all Emily."

I need some of that simplicity in faith.

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Jan. 29, 2007 - Pride, a birthday party and visiting

Some friends that we haven't seen for nearly a year came to visit Friday night.  There's no real reason that we haven't seen them in so long.  We had a baby, they had a baby, life got away on us and before we knew it a year had passed.  When we first met this couple, they would have definitely been on my "top 10 favorite people to visit with" list....if I had a list, which I don't, but you know what I mean. They were very fun-loving, great sense of humor with an incredible passion to be world changers for Jesus.  I'm not sure what happened, but something has changed.  Most of the evening was awkward.  I felt like I had to tiptoe around them, particularly around him.  He came off as a bit of a know-it-all, kind of full of himself, religious thinker who was valiantly trying to get the rest of us to catch up.  Not fun.  He began the evening by making a snide remark about where we attend church.  We brushed it off and moved on.  His wife was asking me about homeschooling, and he proceeded to explain to me how I could structure my day so that I could school my children and keep up on everything in the house with no problem.  This from a man who has one 6 month old child.  I think the crowning touch though was when I mentioned the book "What Would Jesus Do?".  He explained that he didn't believe this was a question that we should ask ourselves because we are not deity.  I understand what he meant if you want to speak from a purely doctrinal point of view...but really...he kind of missed the whole point.  So overall I'm kind of sad about our friendship.  I really hope it's just a phase of life that he needs to work through.

Saturday we had a great time with the kids.  We played, did some puzzles and just hung out together.  In the evening we attended a surprise birthday party for my aunt who turned 50.  We saw some old friends and met some new ones. 

Because we drove to the city on Saturday and road conditions were pretty bad, we didn't want to drive in again on Sunday for church.  Staying at my parents (as usual) was out because they were getting ready to leave for Hawaii.  So we decided to visit a church in a neighboring town.  We've been hearing a lot of good stuff about this church.  I'm so glad we went there, rather than just staying home!  The service was great, really good Word, and it was so good to see what God is doing there.  They seem to have the same kind of vision and goals for their church that ours does, and they even use a lot of the same resources, so we felt very much at home.  It was a lot smaller than we're used to, but it's been growing very quickly.   They started with 13 people 5 years ago and now have about 600 every week. 

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