Family – Page 7 – xangelle.com

Through The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Amplified Bible (AMP)
Psalm 23
A Psalm of David.
1THE LORD is my Shepherd [to feed, guide, and shield me], I shall not lack.

2 He makes me lie down in [fresh, tender] green pastures; He leads me beside the still and restful waters.

3 He refreshes and restores my life (my self); He leads me in the paths of righteousness [uprightness and right standing with Him–not for my earning it, but] for His name’s sake.

4 Yes, though I walk through the [deep, sunless] valley of the shadow of death, I will fear or dread no evil, for You are with me; Your rod [to protect] and Your staff [to guide], they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my [brimming] cup runs over.

6 Surely or only goodness, mercy, and unfailing love shall follow me all the days of my life, and through the length of my days the house of the Lord [and His presence] shall be my dwelling place.

This passage keeps running over and over inside of me. Different aspects of it hit me at different times of the day and the night.

The Lord is my Shepherd. He will feed, lead and guide all of my and our steps. I will lack for nothing. He provides a place for me to lay down and be at peace and rest. I can feel safe and secure, knowing that He has made a quiet, peaceful place for me to relax when I feel tired or overwhelmed. I can be still knowing that He is in control and caring for me. He refreshes me and restores me when I feel worn down and so tired and so very, very broken. He does lead me into places of uprightness and right standing with Him, because He loves me and Geli and us. Even though we may be walking through a very deep, dark valley and may feel like the shadow of death has touched us with it’s evil and destruction – I WILL FEAR NO EVIL. I will not fear anything because HE IS WITH ME, WITH HER, WITH US….every step of this journey. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He protects us and guides us and in spite of all of our pain, or hurt or confusion or anger – HE COMFORTS US! He provides for us in the middle of all of this garbage. In spite of all we have gone through, in spite of all we are are going through….my life is full of love and joy. Goodness, Mercy and His Incredible Love is with me every moment of every day and I choose to live within His LOVE and PRESENCE all of my life. Nothing shall sway me from this, not life nor death.

Angelica is on the list to get new knees. In all actuality, her shoulder is WAY worse than her knees, but she doesn’t walk on her shoulder. And so, from her standpoint, dealing with the pain in her knees is a higher priority.

I’m very aware of exactly where we are at, and we are taking the steps that are medically necessary to replace her knees, and her shoulder will be shortly behind that. We believe that there is SO MUCH GOOD that the medical profession can offer to help us out.

And in spite of all of that, I am praying for Angelica’s healing.

I would love if if you would stand with me and support her and us with your prayers.

I believe that….. “Where two or more agree concerning anything, it shall be done!” and so I’m asking for two or three….or many, MANY MORE…..to stand with us to declare healing for Angelica.

Looking at the reality……we need a miracle. Aside from the replacements…..that’s the only other possibility. I’ve seen the pictures of her shoulder bones and the left one has collapsed. There is no natural possibility for healing or regrowth outside of a miracle.

And so, I’m asking, praying and believing for a miracle.

I would like to invite you to join with Jon and I and more importantly Angelica as we pray and believe for healing and new bones for Angelica.

I realize that to some of you who don’t believe, this may sound crazy. And maybe, I’ve gone crazy….there has been a whole lot of stress over the past 2 years. But………in my mind, as much as it might be good to have knee replacements instead of pain and eventual immobility for the rest of her life……the best thing would be to have new, healed and restored bones. Until the moment that they cut her open to put new knees and other joints in….I will pray and ask and believe for God to work a miracle in her life and in her body. At this point, we have nothing to lose….

Angelica doesn’t finish treatment for Leukemia for another 6 months. The list for new knees has a 6-9 month waiting list….and so the timing works out well for her to be on the list starting now.

She starts physio and OT on Monday at GF Strong.

For those of you joining us in prayer, here is a list of things to pray about:

1. New, Healed Bones for Angelica. Currently they have said that her knees, shoulders, hips and elbows are showing signs of bone death….but we want everything in her body and mind to be healthy!
2. We are all feeling quite emotionally tired, fragile and broken. So prayer for strength and comfort, peace and joy.
3. Geli is so tired of feeling physically exhausted all the time. She’d like to have energy to be able to enjoy life.
4. Geli is starting physio and we want her to be able to build as much strength in her body as possible.
5. Prayer for sleep….restful, peaceful sleep for everyone in our family.
6. Strength for us all to be able to keep going on in spite of how tired and worn down we are feeling
7. Protection for our family that each and everyone of us would be safe and healthy
8. We have had so many things break on us recently…our microwave, my laptop, our toaster over, our scale, my breast pump, and I know there are more that I’m not remembering, but we’ve had enough…..this all needs to stop. It’s a drain emotionally as well as financially!
9. PEACE!!!!!! in every area of our lives and minds and bodies……for all of us.
10. Employment – Jon’s job is very uncertain right now. He is a contractor and currently working for a GREAT COMPANY, working amazing flexible hours and making enough to support our family. His contact is up as of March 31st and his boss has applied for his contract to be extended but the boss’s boss has not not yet signed off on rolling over the contract. Jon would love to actually get hired on full time at this company, with benefits and a regular salary, but even just a contract renewal would be amazing.
11. Mini-Vacation – Personally, I’d really love to be able to get away as a family. Somewhere not too far away, but where we can relax and just escape! I’m just gonna be specific and say that I’d love to be on a beach somewhere to hear the waves crashing and smell the salt water and feel the wind on my face, but honestly….any where would be nice.

Thank you for all your support. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your prayers. We need them now, more than ever.

seasons change……….

It’s been a while since I last posted.

We’ve been trucking along and then……. I don’t know what happened. This last week was horrible and by Saturday I fell apart.

We slept in until 8:30am (That’s a sleep in ’round these parts) and then I got up and went to my exercise class where I managed to finished the first third of the class and then I started crying. And crying and crying and crying. So much so that the girl in front of me stopped her practice and gave me a box of Kleenex. I managed to sort of pull myself together (or not) and hung out through the rest of the class and then went home. And then spent the rest of the day crying and crying and crying and crying.

It’s all just too much.

I don’t know how else to put it. There is too much. Too much for one person to handle. Too Much Stress. Too much pressure. It’s just too much.

Xani got sick about 2 weeks ago with some killer nasty cold. She made it through the first week hacking and coughing and sneezing and then the two littlest boys picked it up. Saturday night Josiah woke up unable to breathe. That’s scarey, eh? His panicking didn’t help the situation, either. But, what would you expect if you woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe? He had a fever from Saturday until Wednesday when it finally broke. I figured that we were just dealing with some nasty virus. The Baby started in on the coughing on Sunday and rocked out a fever then too. By Thursday night when his fever was still in the 39-40 degree range, I was starting to get worried. He was so cranky. So whiny. So tired. So upset. Not eating, not drinking and starting to not wet his diapers. I took him to the clinic where the dr diagnosed him with a lower left lung infection and put him on antibiotics.

There was a massive issue at the pharmacy because they didn’t have the antibiotics that the dr had ordered and there was a HUGE run around trying to get a new prescription. It was unreal. The pharmacist dude was unreal and we know them by name – We spend a lot of money at this pharmacy. I’m not sure what the problem was today…maybe he had a fight with his girlfriend before he came to work or something….it was awful……we finally got it sorted out and started Judah on the antibiotics late on Thursday night. He was still feverish on Friday morning, but by late afternoon the fever was starting to come down.

Friday morning I got a call from Geli’s nurse, saying that her counts were really low and that we had to stop chemo and that they’d like her to be taken into our Dr or a clinic or something just to get her chest listened to. She started feeling crappy on Monday and didn’t go to school the whole week either. She had a low grade fever for most of the week. Just before we were taking her to the clinic, we took her temp and she was at a 38.1 – when she is neutropenic (has really low infection fighting counts) we have to take her into the hospital anytime she scores a temperature of 38 degrees or higher. If she has normal counts then we have to take her in, if she has a fever over 38.5. We chocked it up to the smoking hot bath that I had just pulled her out of and carried on down to the clinic. Her lungs sounded clear, but the clinic dr clocked her temperature in at 38.7…….so Jon called the hospital to let them know they were coming in and they came home to pack up.

We were not sure what to expect. Worse case – she’d be admitted for 3 days. Best case, they’d come home that evening but needing to go back for a 24 dose of antibiotics.

They did get to come home. It was viral, but it rocked us. We have been been so battered and beaten over this past year and half that we have no reserves to stay strong about this. I felt like I was in shock that night. Jeremy was crying off and on because they had to go. The babies were sick. Jon and Geli were gone for who knows how long. I just emotionally and mentally shut down. My mom came over and she helped with the boys and took Xani to youth and picked her up while I tried to clean the house so that we could “carry on” on Saturday. But inside I just felt dead about it all. I have to do this. I can’t just not. I have no time to just be. I have no opportunity to get away from this all. For the past 19 months, we have fought and fought and fought and fought and I don’t know how much fight I have left in me.

A friend stopped by to drop off a few groceries that I needed and we were talking for a moment and I shared with her how I feel like I’m in a bad dream or a horror movie. There is just one bad thing after another after another and I can’t see the end to it all. I know this sounds bad. I know this sounds down. I know this doesn’t sound encouraging and that’s how I feel.

I’m so tired. I’m so worn out. I’m exhausted. I don’t know how I will be able to make it through the next 9 months.

I feel like I’m barely existing. It’s a horrible place to be. There are so many things that are hard right now. I am trying to hold onto faith and hope and yet……..honestly……it’s really tough.

And that’s how I came to yesterday…..I spent most of the day crying. I crawled into bed at 6pm finally fell asleep at 8pm. I woke up at 2am, at 3am, at 4am, at 5am, at 6am and then slept until 8:30am…..sleep evades me this past year and a half…..even if the baby sleeps, I wake. There is so much going on. So many things that have gone wrong. So many things that I’m trying to organize and manage and sty on top of……so many other things that I can’t do anything about……

This is a very tough season…..I can’t wait for this season to pass…….it must!

Christmas Day

I want to get these days recorded here before I forget details and moments.

I’m so thankful to have the pictures to look at and remember.

It’s long been a rule that no one is allowed to get their stockings until after 7am. You must stay in your bed until 7am and “woe be to you” if you wake any other person in the house up…..especially before then. The last few years….no one’s woken up before 7am….unless you count Xandra waking up in the middle of the night and going down to sleep on the couch until morning.

This year, the kids got up and even took Judah up to open his stocking. Sometimes, having the older ones who are able to take care of the little ones really turns out in your favor.

This is the first year EVER that I didn’t get up to see them open their stockings. I was TOO tired. In fact, I stayed in bed until after 8am…..until finally the kids could wait on longer and came down to wake me up.

This was my view as I walked up the stairs from the basement……the wreckage and aftermath of the stockings.

We also make the kids eat breakfast first, before we open any presents….just drawing out the agony a little bit longer…..

Normally, breakfast is a whole lot fancier than this, but this year……we rocked the cereal and I even let the older 4 kids have “normal” cereal.

After Breakfast, we moved over to the couches to open presents. I manned the camera and enjoyed my Christmas treat of coffee…..

There were a few cuddles while we waited for everyone to get there.

Jon passed out the presents and the unwrapping commenced….

There was a lot of happy squeals and shouts as the presents were opened.

After Christmas Eve, Judah had finally figured out what the whole deal with presents was.

He was very excited to unwrap….

….and unwrap….

and to keep unwrapping…..he must have worked on that gift for about 10 minutes. It was pretty cute.

It was a great Christmas morning. It was a bit more subdued that usual, but even that was okay…

After the presents were opened, there was a bit of a lull as the kids enjoyed their gifts…

It was so good to just have a “normal, boring” Christmas. No Hospital visits or illness to bring stress to the day….just our family…..together. Perfect!

< The kids played nicely together while we got the dinner ready.

Everyone got changed out of their jammies before we ate dinner. The girls were pretty excited to get new clothes and jewlery….how fun! It’s so nice to see Geli looking so healthy….last years photos are not as cheery!

Daddy and his boys…

After dinner, the excitement of the day was started to show and the little ones were wearing down…

We played a few games….

…..where did you go?….

PEEK-A-BOO!

And the big kids played games too….

Finally, it was bedtime and we shooshed them all off to bed because we had one more day of fun still to go……

If you’d like to see the whole set of our Christmas Day Pictures, click here……

Christmas Eve

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is over, but is it….

The weeks leading up to Christmas were a bit insane with trying to get all the presents made, but we did it. In fact, this year, I was actually ready for Christmas by the morning of the 24th. That’s the earliest that I’ve ever been ready. Now, to be honest, we did have to run out to the store to pick up one thing and trade out some pajamas that we bought for Judah. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I bought his original pajamas 2 sizes too small…..anyway….other than that, Christmas Eve was a nice relaxing day.

We started having a Christmas Eve Fondue with Jon’s parents a few years ago and it’s become a Tradition. As soon as we start to think about Christmas, decorate for Christmas, or start to think about making presents….the kids start to ask about Christmas Eve fondue.

I love that we have these fun traditions with our family. It just seems to make things more exciting and special.

Judah is especially excited because the entire fondue was Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free. So it was safe for all of us. YAH! What’s even better….it was FREAKING DELICIOUS!

After we finished our meal, we decided to open presents first and then to come back to eat dessert – Chocolate Fondue – after we were finished opening presents.

Siah was SO Excited! He could hardly wait to open his presents. Jeremy was also so VERY excited, but he just wanted to be able to give the presents that he had bought with his own money! It was very sweet.

This is the first time that Judah has really “gotten” into opening presents and he had so much fun. He absolutely LOVED this present that his Nana & Papa bought for him.

He has played with his car non-stop.

After we opened our presents, we headed back for some Chocolate Fondue!

Angelica was loving her some Chocolate Strawberries…

And then her and Nana started to goof around a little….

It was pretty funny!

After the Chocolate Fondue, we sent the kids off to change into their Christmas Pajamas. Isn’t he cute?

Nana and Geli….

Xani….all three, so pretty!

We started a game of Apples to Apples….

I played about 2 rounds and then Judah couldn’t handle it any longer…..

….and so I put him out out his misery.

After the game, we sat down for our traditional Christmas Story. This year we choose to read, Humphrey the Christmas Camel.

After all the kids were put to bed, and the stocking’s were stuffed and the house was closed down for the night……we headed off to bed….this is probably the earliest that we’ve been to bed on a Christmas Eve…only 1:45am. Not bad, eh?

To see all of the pics from Christmas Eve click here….

Thanksgiving

So, we are almost at the American Thanksgiving and so I figure that I’m still good to share our family’s Thanksgiving day Celebration.

We arrived home from Angelica’s Wish Trip on Saturday October the 8th. Before we left on the trip, we were throwing around the idea of having my family come over to celebrate Thanksgiving on Monday October the 10th and just a few days before we left, I told my sisters that it wasn’t going to happen.

I had a feeling that we’d be a bit wasted from our trip AND I figured that the “clean up” from the trip would take more than a day. We agreed to celebrate Thanksgiving a week or so later.

I AM SO THANKFUL that I put that off by a week. There is NO WAY that we could have been ready.

Well, I suppose that I could have stayed awake for the next two days and gotten everything done, but I am so Thankful that I didn’t have to. I would have been such a basket case with that extra pressure and stress and UNNECESSARY STRESS is something that I’m trying very hard to avoid in my life right now.

This means that I’m saying no a lot more than usual as I try to balance our lives. I’m thinking twice or three times before I say yes, and trying to live within my abilities and not overstretch myself.

Anyway, I was trying to share our Thanksgiving pictures.

It was such a great day, even if my Mom and Dad couldn’t be there. My Momma was in Romania on a missions trip and my Dad was out in the bush hunting. And so it was the first time “holiday” where it was just us kids and our families.

Even without my parents, it was still such a fun day.

Everybody brought food for the feast and it was all so delicious. I was so busy trying to organize and arrange things that I totally forgot about taking a picture of all of us at the table….oh well!

Everyone pitched into help clean up after dinner and then we relaxed a bit…

Denver looks so thrilled to have his picture taken, no?

There were cuddles with our special Aunty Brynn…she is just so beautiful, isn’t she?

My Love…..

Here Judah thinks he can use two iPhones at once….maybe he wanted to talk to both Nana and Pappa?

The littlest member of our family is getting bigger and he’s just so STINKIN’ CUTE!

Here the boys are just having a friendly competition on Baby Piano! It was AWESOME!

Okay, so that’s probably not what they were doing, but it sounds good, no?

It’s so much fun to have cousins that are your age…it’s like ready made best friends!

It was such a fun day and I can’t wait until we can get together and do it again. I’m so thankful for my family. They are a pretty awesome bunch!

If you’re interested in seeing all the photos from Thanksgiving, click here!

Wrap Up – FINALLY!

I’m finally getting to the last day of our Wish Trip and while I think that no one really cares about our flight home, there were enough things that I want to make note of and remember that even though it was over a month ago, I’m going to go ahead and wrap it all up.

We had to have our luggage out in the hallway on the Friday night by 10pm or else we had to carry it with us and let me tell you, luggage for 7 people….you don’t really want to be carrying that around especially when you have two adults, one weak teenager, one mostly helpful teenager, a curious child with ADHD, a useless but fun loving 4 year old and a 30lb baby! It’s enough work just to get ourselves from point A to point B without thinking about and wrestling luggage as well.

The weather was bad the whole night and the boat shifted and pitched and rocked. While it was the coolest feeling, I was also awake to feel it and the awake part of that equation…not so cool!

On Saturday morning, we had to be down in the restaurant for breakfast by 6:45am. We made it there by 6:50am and so that’s a win in my books!

We were TIRED! See the CRANKY baby! Cranky babies are fun to travel with, NOT!

Jeremy was pretty sad that the cruise was over and he whined and moped his way through breakfast.

After breakfast, we were scheduled to disembark at 8am and so we lined up and eventually got off the boat. We went through the cruise security, picked up our luggage and got onto the bus to head back to the airport. We got to the Airport around 10:30ish, needed to re-pack a few things and then attempted to check in for our flight.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to check in until 4 hours prior to our flight and so we needed to waste some time. Yup, our flight wasn’t leaving until later that afternoon and WHEE!!!!!! we were hanging out in the Orlando Airport OH THE JOY!

It had been such a good trip and at the same time we were so ready to go home.

We walked around a bit, we hunted down some gluten free food, we looked through the stores, we walked some more….and finally the time was close enough that we could head down to our gate.

I had really been hoping that Judah would stay awake until we got on the plane and then sleep the whole first plane trip but it didn’t work out that way.

Siah was done by about this point and fortunately, the people that were all around us had also been on the cruise, with children, and completely understood Siah’s limp frog routine on the floor….fortunately it was a fairly quiet performance and so we just left him to have at it.

We waited until everyone else had boarded before we got on…I figured it would help (everyone) if we weren’t on the plane for an extra half an hour.

Judah woke up about half an hour after the plane took off but Siah had HAD it and he slept HARD for most of the flight from Orlando to Denver.

We had a two hour layover in Denver and seeing as Jon used to work in the Denver Airport, we went to a little taco stand that he knew of….the food was very yummy and between eating and looking for souvenirs, the time flew by fairly quickly. Pretty soon we were waiting at our gate for the flight to Vancouver…

The flight was just a short flight and there was no movie planned but when the flight attendants heard that Angelica had been on a Wish Trip, they wanted to make this flight home special for her. They showed her the movie listing and got her to choose a movie as the in-flight movie. That was pretty fun. Towards the end of the flight one of the attendants came up and asked if Geli and the kids would like to see the cockpit after the flight landed. Jeremy and Geli were really excited about that and so when we landed and everyone else had left the plane, the pilot brought Jeremy and Angelica into the cockpit…

It was a pretty neat experience…

And a great way to end the trip.

Jon’s parents met us at the airport and drove us and all our luggage home.

We got home, dumped everything inside the front door, threw pajamas on everyone and jumped into bed, so thankful to be sleeping in our own beds.

It was an amazing trip and we were so thankful to have been blessed by the Children’s Wish Foundation. This is and was truly the experience of a life time.

A New Day

Jon started his new job today. He left the house at 7:30 this morning because he has no idea how long it’s going to take him to get there in rush hour traffic and he has to be there at 9am.

This is a HUGE change for us and while a part of me thinks that I’m a lot more ready for something like this to happen in our family (as opposed to a year or even 6 months ago), there another part of me that has no idea how this is going to work.

Obviously we will do what we have to do in order to make it through, but this is the first time in a very long time (approximately 8 years) that Jon will be rocking the “daily grind”,3 outside of the house, on a Monday to Friday, 9-5 kinda deal with an hour of commuting on either side of the day.

This past year has really taken a toll of me and while I used to believe that I could do anything and everything….I now feel like I have no choice in the matter and somehow I just have to survive. I often hope that in the very act of “surviving” that I will be able to heal enough to the point where I feel strong again. At the same time, I wonder if that’s even a possibility. You know how if you break your leg and get it set properly, put a cast on it, rest and let it heal; it will heal better and faster (and almost as good as before) than if you just carry on limping and walking on your broken leg, doing what you’ve got to do. Sure it might heal eventually, but it may heal crookedly or you may not get full strength and/or mobility out of it, but the intensity of the pain might not be as severe as it was as first….

I kinda feel like that second scenario is playing out in my life. I feel a bit broken and tired and like there is no option to re-set, rest and heal and I’m just hoping and praying it will all be okay eventually. I DO feel stronger than before, but I’m so acutely aware of my fragility, compared to the strength that I feel I used to have and that’s……well, that’s tough!

I’m sure that the kids and I will fall into a routine of sorts, and I know that families do this all the time, but right now it feels a bit daunting.

I’m so THANKFUL that Jon was able to get work. In faith, I’m confident that it will work out and that we will be okay. According to feelings, I’m not so sure.

Magnets And Gas

So there I was…..doing pretty good. I posted every day for a while and then…BAM! Life kinda took over!

But, It’s all okay NOW!

Last Sunday we had some people over for lunch and one person brought their super cool magnetic necklace, block, toy thingy. This thing is so cool.

It was getting passed around and looked at and played with and somehow 5 of the little tiny magnetic balls got lost. I managed to find 1 of them which left 4……I’m pretty good at Math, aren’t I?

I wasn’t too worried because I had swept every square inch of my floor and I didn’t figure that Judah had been around when it was getting passed around and so there was no way that he had gotten into or near any of these tiny – BUT STRONG – magnets.

Everyone left and I said that I’d keep a look out for the other 4 magnetic balls and carried on my way.

Monday was just a normal day and Tuesday looked like it was shaping up to be more of the same…..until the afternoon. I went to change Judah’s diaper and when I did……something looked oddly shiny and most definitely out of place. Yup, It was one of those magnetic balls.

I was a bit shocked and super upset because if there was one…what’s to say there wasn’t more than one and how would I know that two magnets hadn’t stuck together inside of his intestines and were going to cause some major problems….if you know me at all, I went straight to the “worse case scenario”. It was pretty sad. I couldn’t fathom a million hour ER visit and so we called our family Dr to see if they could possibly fit us in. They couldn’t so then we called the walk in clinic and seeing as he was happy and had no fever and didn’t seem to be in any discomfort, they said to bring him in first thing in the morning and they’d check him out and send us for an X-ray. Of course they gave us the whole “fever, blood, blah, blah, blah speech – do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to the ER” spiel.

Long story short, on Wednesday morning, we hit the clinic at 8am….hit the X-ray facility at 9:am and were back at home at 10:30am waiting to either hear or not to hear…in this case, no news was good news.

As soon as I got home, Siah met me in the garage complaining about a sick tummy. This was weird because he was fine when I left. Over the next hour, he got progressively worse to the point where he was sitting on the floor crying in pain. When asked where it hurt, he kept pointing at the lower right side of his abdomen…..heck, between cancer, ADHD, ODD, No Gluten, No Dairy, No Soy and now possibly a Magnetic Gut…..heck, lets just throw some appendicitis in there as well.

Jon took him up to the clinic and fortunately the wait time was only about half an hour. After about 15 minutes, Siah burped about 4 times, and then “miraculously” his tummy ache went away.

And just to be safe, Jon did stay to see the Dr. The appointment went a little something like this…

Dr: Nice to see you guys again. This little guy didn’t swallow any magnets, did he?

Jon: No, and he burped about 15 minutes ago and then everything stopped hurting…..so sorry for wasting your time. My son has gas.

Dr: Well, it’s always good to get it checked out anyway.

but you all know he was thinking…..”stupid parents, bringing their kids in because of a little gas.”

And then basically, my week just kind of blew up after that.

In all seriousness, I feel a bit traumatized about the whole hospital thing. When we found the magnet in Judah’s diaper, all I could think of was which hospital should we go to? And what about Jon’s new job and how would I handle caring for the kids by myself and would it be better to go to Children’s or to be closer to home….and what might they have to do to Judah if there were magnets stuck inside of him…..and how would we deal with the whole Gluten Free thing and well, it was not fun….

The whole hospital thing with Geli has not played nice with my emotions and I hate being confronted with how “unstable” I feel over the possibility of a hospital visit. Not Cool, cancer. NOT COOL!

The rest of the week didn’t have any medical craziness in it, but we did pull apart Jeremy’s room, the girls closet, the garage, the boys room, the TV room, ALL (as in every single toy that we own) the toys, and our storage closet. It was quite the undertaking and yet…..we did it!

This is the boy’s room that is right beside ours, down stairs in the basement. We currently have all three of the boys sleeping in this room. Fun times, there! (oh, the wall border and color….original to the house. not my choice, just haven’t changed it yet, but I did want to mention that I do NOT like the decor…carry on, please)

We made two dump runs and put away 15 separate bins of toys. No, they are not all HUGE boxes of toys, but all the toys we own are separated out into their own groupings…..Hot Wheels, Mr Potato Head, Playmobile, Little People, Infant Toys, Wooden Blocks, Tinker Toys….you get my drift.

We’ve put the majority of them away and I think that will cut down on the mess in the rooms. That’s the idea any way. We’ll see how well it plays out over the next couple of months.

Here is Jeremy’s upstairs room…

(I have NO Idea why it’s so stinking small. I thought I used the same camera on my phone, but obviously not…sorry about the mini view…just squint and then it should be all good! and again with the house’s previous occupants decor….lovely, ain’t it?)

The carpet is a bit thrashed but it’s the original carpeting from 15+ years ago and it just needs to get replaced, so other than a quick vacuum….I’m not even trying to clean that sucker.

Probably an even bigger miracle than just cleaning things out…was that we also managed to finish off each day of cleaning with a totally clean house.

Do you ever start to clean something and then find that the job is too big and you end up with a mess at the end of things that you pulled out, but have no current home and so you end up with a big a mess just in a different location in your house. Yah, it was my goal to not have that happen. YAY US!

Part of my push to get this done was because Jon starts his new job tomorrow morning and it was my hope that if we cleared things out and got rid of a bunch of junk that it would make it easier to keep things clean. Again, I’m really hoping that’s the case. Only time will tell, right?!?

What are your tricks for keeping a clean house? Do you have any tips to share?

Day 6 – Day At Sea

By Thursday we were ready for a slower day…..we only had two full days of our holiday left. This was a 7 day Eastern Caribbean Cruise that we were on.

I woke up before the girls & Judah did; and headed out to my balcony to sit in the quiet for a few moments.

We had been given two rooms on the ship that were side by side….for whatever reason, we had believed that we would have adjoining rooms and it was a bit of a surprise to find that we didn’t, but we adjusted fairly quickly.

It did mean that we had to split up and so Jon took the two boys into one room with him; and the girls & Judah and myself were in the other. It did require some juggling when putting the littlest boys to bed and….well, it wasn’t ideal but we did work it out. I think that if we’d been prepared for to have two separate rooms that it wouldn’t have been such a surprise, but we decided that it didn’t matter if we had to be in two different rooms, because we were just so blessed to be able to even be on this vacation and we were determined to enjoy every single minute of it and to not waste time over silly things like sleeping arrangements.

Judah woke up and I quickly got him so that he wouldn’t wake the girls and we hung out on the balcony for a while. It was AMAZING to have the balcony. I LOVED sitting out there early in the morning or relaxing with Jon out there after we put the two little boys to bed. It was such a treat to have.

(I only have iPhone photos from this day. So while the quality is not perfect; it’s good enough for memories.)

Finally Jon woke up and went and got me a coffee…..YUM! I stopped drinking coffee back in March, but I had coffee while I was on holiday’s and it was a nice treat….sucked when I had to quit again once I got home…but a nice treat nonetheless…

Once all the kids woke up, Jon took a few of them up to the buffet and picked up some breakfast for us all and we ate back in our room and out on the balcony. It was so nice to not be in a hurry rushing off to anywhere.

It was looking like it was going to be an AMAZING day on the ship and we had a few special treats planned.

Jon had booked a spa special for both Geli and I to have together. We got to choose 5 spa services and get pamperd for an hour and a half. We both chose to have a neck and shoulder massage, a scalp massage, a facial, a hand massage and a foot massage. We walked away from our time at the spa feeling very relaxed and very special.

We had signed up for a babysitting slot in the Flounder’s Nursery and were told on Wednesday night that a spot had opened up between 1-4pm on Thursday for Judah and so we took it. We grabbed a quick bite to eat for lunch and then placed ALL the kids into their respective “clubs” and Jon and I had some actual “down time” just for us.

It felt so amazing and yet really weird at the same time. I was quite worried about Judah because he had started screaming as soon as we left him in the nursery and he alternated between screaming and falling asleep in one of the workers arms, but he wouldn’t let them put him down or he’d wake up and start screaming again. Needless to say, he didn’t enjoy his time in the nursery, but Jon and I really did enjoy our time off.

The rest of the cruise we not really a vacation for Jon and I. Taking a trip with 5 kids is not a “holiday” but it is definitely a vacation from the daily grind. But we were just so thankful and grateful for the opportunity and what a wonderful and amazing opportunity it was. I’m not complaining, it’s just the reality with a big family….it’s like we work hard to make it an amazing memory for the kids. And it truly is a MOST AMAZING MEMORY!

I don’t remember too much about that evening, but I’m sure that we headed back to our rooms fairly early because we were going to spend the whole day at Castaway Cay the next day and we were really REALLY looking forward to it.

To see the whole set of photos from this day, click here…

Day 5 – Cozumel

We woke up earlier than usual on Thursday morning because we had to eat breakfast and then get off the boat so we could go to our Port Adventure in Cozumel. We were headed to the Playa Mia resort for the day.

The Disney magic docked at Cozumel while we were eating breakfast and after breakfast was finished, we went back up to our rooms, picked up what we would need for the day and headed down to the bottom of the boat to where we could disembark from the ship.

We met up with the rest of the group headed out to the Playa Mia resort and when everyone was there we walked out of the port area, down the street and over to the parking lot where the buses were parked. It was HOT! I thought it was amazing, but the kids were not quite so sure that they were enjoying the heat. We passed a ton of little Mexican shops and wished that we had some time to check them out. But, we figured that we could always come back before we had to get back on the cruise ship.

Once the buses were loaded we headed off. It was about 15-20 minutes from the port to get to the resort and the countryside was so beautiful. We pulled up to the resort and got off the buses and headed down through the resort buildings to the beach. Once we got there, we hurried to claim ourselves a bunch of beach chairs and umbrellas, and we managed to get some right in the front row, right on the water. It was perfect.

The weather was amazing, too. It was sunny and hot and I was sure that we were all going to be fried to a crisp if we weren’t careful. I made everyone reapply sunscreen just to be careful.

The resort staff came around with an iguana and some parrots. They wouldn’t let us take pictures of the kids, but for a fee – they would sell us a photo of the kids holding the animals…this is a cell phone picture of a photograph….hence the crappy quality!

The kids played and swam and after about half an hour, the wind started to blow and the clouds started to roll in.

And then it started to rain.

We scrambled to get all of our stuff under the umbrellas so it wouldn’t get wet. It looked like it might possibly blow over and so once we got everything covered, we headed back out to swim. After all, we were there to get wet, so what was the difference, right?

It stopped raining for a bit and then it started to POUR. At that point, most of the people left the beach and headed over to the undercover area. Which meant that we had most of the beach to ourselves. There were only 3-4 other families that stayed on the beach with us.

You can see the rain drops on my legs in the picture above….I had been sitting on a beach chair for about half an hour nursing Judah to sleep….

After that, it was raining pretty hard and I didn’t want to get the camera wet and so we don’t have any more pictures from the resort. We did have lunch and swam for the rest of the afternoon until 3pm and then the buses came back to get us.

They dropped us off at the mall across from the port and we wandered around a bit looking for a few souvenirs. At the mall….trying to buy those souvenirs was really expensive….one guy wanted to sell us a deck of cards for $28.00. We were shocked at the price, tried to barter it down and then left to find some other cheaper cards. Angelica collects playing cards and so far we hadn’t payed more than $5.00 for a deck of cards so $28 was not even “in the cards” ha ha ha!

The kids were tired after almost a week of cruising and 2 straight days of swimming in the ocean and there were a lot of tears and a few melt downs. So, we found a bench to sit on for a minute while Jon and Geli carried on looking for playing cards.

She finally found some and we made our way back to the security check in at the cruise ship. It took us a lot longer than it could have because Angelica was really struggling with walking and there was quite a bit of walking from the security check in all the way down the pier to where the Disney Cruise Ship was docked. We made it eventually and then headed back to our rooms to clean up and to de-sand….it’s amazing how much sand we brought back on our persons and in our stuff.

I took a few photos from our balcony. Doesn’t the water look amazing? And the picture doesn’t even do it justice…

By that point, it was time to start getting ready for dinner. There was a dress up party for that evening’s dinner and it was, “Pirates IN the Caribbean!”

Even though we had been told in advance about the dress up night, we didn’t bring any costumes. We had meant to, but we forgot. So, we scrounged around in our clothes to see what we could come up with….who knew that we had so much pirate clothing in our wardrobes..

We bought this photo from the cruise because it was a great picture of all of us and the ONLY picture that we had of all of us from “on” the ship. Again, it’s a Cell Phone picture of a photo….so the quality is not so awesome, but you get the idea.

There was a HUGE pirate party with fireworks and music that started at 9:30-9:45pm, but the two little boys were so overtired that they were losing it and so I stayed with them in the room. Jon took the rest of the kids up to the top of the ship to be apart of the party.

We were really looking forward to a “down” day. The next day we were going to be at sea the whole day as we traveled to Castaway Cay, Disney’s Private Island.

If you’d like to see more of the photos from Day 6, just click here.

And if you have any questions or would like to hear about something specific about our cruise, I’ll be answering them in tomorrow’s post, so leave them in the comments or e-mail me.

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