~Happy Birthday Adam, January 3~

This is Adam, my 11 pounder~!



I absoultely love this picture, looking at it never gets old.



How cute was this? His school took these pictures and provided an advacement certificate when he went from 6th grade to Jr. High.



This is Adam last school year, his pictures aren't in for this year yet and believe me he has grown a lot in the past year. He sports a mustache!

Adam is a sweet guy with a big heart. He loves to help. He loves to be included. He looks up to his brothers. (Josh worked at Subway, Adam wants to work at Subway. Josh wants to be a pilot, Adam wants to be a pilot. Jeremy is on swim team, Adam wants to be on swim team...) Adam has always had a booming, deep voice. Now that he's 14 it's even deeper, believe it or not.

Happy birthday Adam!

~Happy Birthday Josh~

19 years ago today a very special person came into our lives. He was an awesome baby (spoiled me for more). He crawled before he could sit up, he walked at about 9 1/2 months, he started talking early, one of his favorite words was "no"...and he could throw a mean spiral at the ripe old age of 6 months with incredible accuracy. (We found that out when he hit us from across the room with a mini-football and then giggled about it.)

Josh LOVES LOVES LOVES his electric guitar-not much tears him away from it. He loves airplanes. He loves outdoor sports. He loves junk food. I think he loves being a big brother (most of the time). He loves puzzles and drawing and is a really, really gifted artist.

Being our first, he's been our parental guinea pig. We're so sorry. But I think after all the trial and error learning that he's come out pretty dang good. He emerges as a leader in many places. Teachers, coaches, and leaders continue to be impressed with him. He is preparing to go on a 2-year mission for our church and we we will miss him so much, but are proud of him and happy for him.

Happy Birthday, numero uno!

Photoshop fun

Ex-girlfriends (whoever they may have been) CAN be removed from photographs. It's not perfect, but it's such a good picture of my dad and I wanted what's-her-name outta there!



Or better yet...(this IS my mom)



Long live photoshop...

20 years...

January 11, 2009 marked my 20th wedding anniversary. I can't believe it's already been that long. Because I was away Ken and I weren't able to celebrate together, but we're looking forward to celebrating in the next few days.

20 things I love about Ken:
1. He is really kind
2. He is very thoughtful
3. He is very talented
4. He is generous
5. He is forgiving
6. He works really, really, really, really hard
7. He loves to surprise me
8. He is a great dad to our sons
9. He is supportive of anything I want to do
10. He agreed to get Zoe (our dog) even though he hates living with animals(he's VERY glad we got her because he loves her as much as everyone else)
11. He understands me
12. He has the patience of Job
13. He is cute
14. He is easy to get along with
15. He constantly tells me he loves me
16. He teaches me new things and is SO patient about it
17. He always puts the toilet seat down
18. He makes beds, does dishes, does laundry, cleans windows...he relaxes by cleaning
19. He lets me control the tv
20. He is a great friend

Here's to another 20 years (and then some)

Home again

It's so good to be home. I was in PA from January 1 to January 25...that's a long visit! And it was a tough one, too, but I'm glad I was there.

While I was gone, Ken finished off my piano studio!! The problem was that our house is so open that there was no way to block out the rest of the house's activities for piano lessons. So a few years ago we (I helped!) started the project of turning our never-used-as-a-dining-room area into a studio. Now it's all done and I'm so excited and so glad to have a husband that would do something like that while I was away. Every time I go somewhere he does something. One time he bought a caravan (we'd only had a car and it was too small for our growing family.) Another time he bought a new washer and dryer. Another time he replaced our broken dishwasher. It almost makes me want to go away again to see what he'll do next!

It was so cold back east...seriously. Several days were down in the single digits with wind chills below zero. I, of course, don't even own a winter coat or even a jacket. The whole time I was gone, Phoenix (home) was at least 50 degrees, the week it was single digits in PA it was in the 80s in Phoenix. I know how to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My Dad...

I went to PA to see my dad on January 1st. By the time I got to the hospital he had a breathing tube. He was in a coma, too. After a day or two, he started coming up out of the coma a bit and was "talking" to us with his feet, tapping his feet for "yes" and waving his feet for "no". If he was happy he'd clap his feet together and we called that his "happy feet". He was in ICU for 2 weeks after his stroke and they don't like a lot of visitors in there...sorry...but my dad had a steady stream of visitors, at times the room was "standing room only". We were loud at times, too. My gosh, I've never really watched nurses at work because I avoid hospitals at almost all costs...but those nurses were absolutely incredible. I'm sure one of the harder parts of their job is dealing with families...especially large, loud ones!

At first, he couldn't talk or use his right arm and he had a blank look in his eyes, which he really couldn't open anyway. By 2 weeks out, we were told the stroke had matured and there was a significant amount of new damage. He could no longer understand what was being said to him, so he was "trapped". He had also developed pneumonia and was in congestive heart failure, had an irregular heart beat, and many other problems. My mom made the decision to pull life support because that's what he had said he would want. We spent almost another week watching him "sleep" because he never really woke up again. Saturday, January 17 he died around 6 am.

Those are details of the end of his life, many ups and downs, shock, then hope, then sadness and finally loss. We'll have his funeral on Saturday, January 24 at 1:00 at the York Chapel for our church, 2100 Hollywood Drive, York, PA. There will be a viewing at 12:00, an hour prior to the funeral.

Enough sad talk now, it's been 3 weeks of this and I can't take much more. Many family members and friends are flying in and it will be a rough week and weekend. I miss my husband and kids, friends, dog, home, things, normal life, and my bedroom...but it has also been good to see old friends from when we lived back here. I'm sure Saturday we'll see a lot more and that will be so great.

Losing loved ones...or not....

Ok, so my dad's had a rough, rough week, but he's showing real improvements and we've got some hope now. Time will tell...the hardest hit is his ability to speak. Swallow comes next but he's already showing signs of being able to swallow better. His legs are ok but his right arm is really weak and he can't control much movement there. But his personality we all love him for still comes through; he can hear us and when we say something funny he claps his feet. For now he communicates with us through his feet, "yes" or "no" by tapping or waving his feet. He seems to understand everything we say and he has even heard some things we whispered from across the room. He is having a hard time opening his eyes and may not be able to see very well, but he can see us, we know that. So we'll see!