Merry Christmas!

We've been having such a fun Christmas season with the kids.  We've been trying to be very purposeful in the activities we choose to do and our first priority is spending time with family.  We've done a lot of spending time with family and that has been great.  The kids are eating up this precious time with Uncle Tim, Aunt Rachel and cousin Joy.  Each day they want to know when is the next time they will get to play together.  My brothers are in town also and so it's been so nice to see Uncle Jarrett, Aunt Dorothy, cousins Sam and Seth, Uncle Jon, Aunt Carmen and cousins Bradley, Andrew, Jordan and Jon-Luke.  Mia has attached herself to Bradley and wants to be just like him, sit by him at the dinner table and do as much as she can with him.  Thankfully he loves kids and does a super job interacting with Mia.  Calvin and Jon-Luke are two peas in a pod and love doing everything together.  Asher fits in well too and everyone is just having so much fun together.  It's a very sweet time and we are just savoring every minute.

We added in a third medicine to Mia's meds a few weeks ago and it appears to be what she needed to stop her seizures.  She's been seizure free for a week and we are so thankful.  It's been almost a year since her seizures started and she has rarely gone more than a day without a seizure, so to be without for a week...the feeling of immense gratitude is indescribable.  I tear up just writing about it because it's been such a long year for her and for us.  God couldn't have picked a better Christmas present for us than this.  Praise God!!!  And yet, what we've gone through has been a difficult year, nothing can compare to the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for us.  And while we've been blessed with a seizure free Christmas, the ultimate gift is Jesus himself.  For that, we are eternally grateful and it gives us the hope and ability to keep running the race for Him.

So as always, thank you for praying for Mia.  We are so grateful and we wish you and your family, a very Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

And Now It's December!

Time flies when...well, it just flies these days.  I blink and it feels like it's a month later.  We continue to plug along.  We've been spending quite a bit of time with family and doing fun, festive things this Christmas season.  We haven't been swept away with too much activity, it seems to be just the right pace for our family. 

We decorated our Christmas tree and that was so much fun for the kids.  This is the first year I haven't had to barricade the tree off in some sort of way to keep little hands from the ornaments.  Asher has done a really good job of not touching too many things.  He has broken a few ornaments already, but I figure that is par for the course for an almost, but not quite 3 year old. 

We have been doing some different advent calendars, one of which is the Lego advent calendar.  It's been fun and exciting to find what's hiding behind each door.  Calvin did peek behind door #24 and it is the Santa Clause.  I told him, that's no fun to peek, you have to wait for the day to come to look and see.  He then proceeded to tell me it is fun to peek and he's still excited knowing that Santa is behind door #24.  I think he gets that from me.  I like knowing the end of things (books and movies) before reading/seeing it, knowing how it ends removes the anxiety and it is still exciting for me to read the book or watch the movie. 

We also have been doing a daily Jesse Tree advent thingy madingy.  I saw someone else do it and decided to copy theirs.  Each day they hang up an ornament that corresponds to a bible devotional.  It tracks the lineage of Jesus, hence the name Jesse Tree (out of the root of Jesse...).  The kids have been enjoying that too. 

Mia is still having seizures.  Please continue to pray for her and us as we navigate our next decisions.  We added in a third medicine today for her and should know in a few weeks if that is working or not.  We pray it will!  Thank you for always praying for her!