New Pics

So, I'm going to give this picture thing a shot.  I'll not be surprised if this doesn't work.  My computer and I...we don't get along so well. :-)

 

This is Ephram and me at his big sister's "stone." We always tell the kids we're going to the place where we remember Ava and see her stone.  This is Ephram's first experience with this. Last year he was too little to even get out of the car. This year he even got to sit in the grass!

Here is a pic of Ava's stone.  Notice the sticks in front of the stone.

 Here are all the goofy kids.  The picture quality is terrible. Not sure why.  Zoe looks like she has "buck" teeth.  Get it?Hahaha. One funny thing to note.  All the kids were gathered around the gravemarker and Ezekiel (4 years old with the tie-dye shirt) was crawling over the front of the stone.  You could see Jason get really uncomfortable with what Zeke was doing and start to get after him.  I laughed and said not to worry. If she were still here with us, he would be crawling all over her, beating her up, and we would just let it go.  I like that they crawl all over her stone.

This is the last pic.  Hopefully this blog doesn't take forever to load. This is right before we went out to eat with my parents for their 35th wedding anniversary. We had a great time and waaaay too much to eat. Isn't my husband a hottie?

Happy Birthday, Ava Nicole!

Happy Birthday Ava! Ava would be three years old today. Wow. Where does the time go?  We spent the day very busy, doing many various activities. Josh got a tatoo on his bicep with three Roman numeral letter V's. Each representing 5-5-05, Ava's birthday. I'll have to post a pic once it looks nice and not all red and sore. He actually felt a little bit of pain while the tattoo was being done which is nice (in an odd way). He has enough feeling in this area to feel pain. Yaaay!  I went out with a girlfriend this morning and all three of our boys behaved. This always makes for a more enjoyable time. We did a little shopping for our mothers for Mother's Day. When Noah and Zoe arrived home from school, we all packed up and headed over to G & G's house for cake and ice cream and a loud rendition of "Happy Birthday." We then went to the cemetary and let off lots of pink ballons with the kids yelling "hi Ava!" as they floated away. My nephew Ezekiel wanted to know if Ava was going to be coming to eat cake with the rest of us. Oh how I wish...  We then headed off to Chuck E. Cheese.  I sometimes wonder why we started the Chuck E Cheese tradition b/c that place is a madhouse! Trying to keep track of all your kids and making sure nobody steals your purse is not my idea of a good time. The kids sure did enjoy themselves. My brother-in-law Jason was saying that Chuck E., along with Satan, is going to be at the gates of hell with welcoming the unsaved. We were all getting a kick out of this sick sarcasm.  It got continually worse as the night progressed. As we were getting ready to leave and all of us getting our hand numbers checked, Josh and Jason were singing hymns and adding Chuck E to them. We were all nearly crying the the employees were looking at us like we were nuts. Oh well, we had a good time.

We'll have pictures to post soon of the events.

We miss you Ava Nicole. We hope you're loving heaven and can't wait to be with you again soon! 

Little hope for a thursday

If you look back to my last post, it was named "Hope for a Monday." I love good days.  Today though, not so good. Kinda comical actually.  :-) You know when you have days where your life seems like a cosmic joke? That's been mine over the last 2 days.

I say all this with a slight grin on my face because I am so grateful that these are the problems right now.  We are not dealing with Josh living at Mary Free Bed or Josh just beginning the road of paralysis.  The things going on right now are very minor in comparison, and for that I am thankful.

Ephram continues to not feel well. Poor little buddy. He started out with a really high fever and no other symptoms. Then the fever went down and he got little red dots all over his diaper area and legs.  Didn't think too much about it.  Then I got a rash on my back that was totally grossing me out, thinking I had ringworm (or something else equally disgusting) from a mat at the Y.  I happened to have an appointment with my nurse practitioner yesterday so I decided to suck up my pride and have her take a look. :-) No ringworm, thankfully,  shingles. Yes, shingles. Yuck! My back is now killing me, I feel like I have the flu, Ephram may have gotten the chicken pox from his mommy (shingles and chicken pox are the same virus) and I'm a bit high on Vicodin. Praise the Lord for pain meds!

All in all, not the end of the world. It will not hold up surgery on the 12th and for that I am thankful.  My N.P. said we were cutting it close but it would be okay. We are working on childcare for the time after my surgery and we got some great news. Zach and Rachel are going to come and stay for the first 4 days while I'm in the hospital and at my parents. It eases my mind a ton knowing that they will be here and I have nothing to worry about. Yay!!! The kids will have a blast and they both already know how to help Josh. This means that everyone will be well taken care of and I don't have to be concerned at all! God definitely worked that one out for us. What a blessing!

Josh and my Uncle Randy met today in regards to the charity golf outing this summer. It's so nice to see Josh excited about working on something. He's making calls about and designing shirts, talking business with printers and generally just staying busy. The outing is being held at Pilgrim's Run, and gorgeous course north of Grand Rapids. Some close friends of Holly and Jason's got us the "hook-up" and Josh is really psyched. This is the main place he has played golf over the past few years before his accident. It will be nice for him to go back. He loved to drive the golf cart like a crazy man down the paths and now he can just drive his chair like a crazy man. Some things never change.

We got everything worked out with the Department of Human Services today. I am thankful that the mountains of paperwork and running around to get all the forms signed is officially over for this year. All of our services will resume in about three week. The meeting went surprisingly smoothly.  To get everything back in order, we officially put our old house on the market. You probably wonder why we kept it in the first place. Neither Josh nor I were convinced that he would never walk again. If he could walk, we could move back home. Josh put his heart and soul into making that house our home. He put up fences, built decks (three to be exact), finished a play room in the basement, and was ready to renovate upstairs to make room for Ephram when everything came to a halt. The hardest thing for me is that selling the house means giving up a little more of Ava. We made memories in that house and lost her in that house. After she died, I never imagined we would stay, but when we did go back, the feeling of peacefulness was nearly overwhelming. We knew where our little girl was, even though her life on Earth ended in that little house on Auburn. Our little Ava with the nearly auburn hair lost her life in a little house on Auburn Avenue.

Hope for a monday

Today was a great day.  Everyone is feeling good again (no more pukies!) and it was nice to get back to a normal schedule. Both of the two older kids went to school and Ephram and I went to the YMCA.  By the way, I love that place and how much they love my little boy.  It is my own little oasis- me time where I put on my headphones and see very little of what is going on around me. I love it!

Josh's mom and dad were here for the weekend and didn't leave until this morning. Josh's mom helped Josh get in bed both Saturday and Sunday so I got some uninterrupted sleep which is glorious! Tonight, Josh is out with a friend who offered to help him in bed when they arrived home. Oh how I love to be spoiled...

Ephram was dedicated in church last night.  It was a very special evening where 11 babies from church were dedicated. So, what is dedication you ask? No, it's not infant baptism.  It's more something for the parents and people of the church where you promise to try and raise your child as Christ would have you, and the people of the church promise to pray for you and your child.  Both my parents and Josh's parents were able to be at the service.  Ephram was a little sweetheart, blabbering and drooling away and (in my biased opinion) being the cutest one up there. I may have a few friends who may disagree. :-)

The house is coming along nicely. Jason's dad came this past week and did a gorgeous job on all the trim (thanks Keever!). I'm not exactly sure what's next but I do know that move in is still scheduled for around the end of June.  I believe we have to pick out light fixtures sometime this week. Most of the decisions have been made so the craziness on our end has let up. I know for our builder, Todd, it only continues to get crazier.

Ava's birthday is drawing near.  She would have been three on May 5th.  Her birthdate was 05-05-05.  I love to see that written out.  She would probably be done with diapers, driving her sister crazy, getting ready to start preschool in the fall, and starting to lose the baby chub.  My, how life does not go as you expect.  I am reading a book by N.T. Wright called "Surprised By Hope."  It talks about heaven, the afterlife and what Christians believe. I am not far enough to know what I think of the book but I am excited to read what the Bible says about it.  It may give me a glimpse as to what my baby girl is up to.  In the book, there is a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye which says it perfectly:

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

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Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I do not die.