Ice Cream & Tutu's

We celebrated Faith's 2nd birthday last week with our family, can't believe she is 2 already!! Sometimes I wish we could push the pause button in life or at least the slow motion sometimes ( well and there are days when the fast forward isn't fast enough, right?!?!) We went with the ice cream theme and I found some great cake pops on etsy.com that looked like little ice cream cones!! The were so cute and just as yummy!! For little favors for the cousins, we gave a bottle of ice cream bubbles and a $2 gift certificate to Baskin Robbins

as a thank you for coming to the party!!

Yep, you see it right...it is a #4 candle she is blowing out...This is my major fail moment of the night. Last month for Grant's birthday I bought a big box of candles and thought I will save them for Faith's b-day as well. I put them in such a great spot after Grant's birthday, that I couldn't find them to use right before we were going to sing!! All I could find find was a #4 candle,
well it would have to do!!!

All the girl cousins came in their tutu's because Faith was turning two!!!

Posing for a quick picture before they go for a twirl around the park!

It's soooo great to have the park as our front yard!!!

The Birthday girl in all her glory!!! Faith is doing soooo GREAT, she is not on one single medicine and really no side effects from her birth defect. She has been passing her hearing and development test with flying colors. We go to UCSF next week for her 2 year check up, they will do an x-ray and review her case. An hopefully we won't have to go back for another year :) It really does amaze us to look at her and think of all the things that could be wrong, or think of the conversation we had with the Dr's when we first found out about her birth defect....The Dr's said " well she has a 75% chance to survive and if she does the list of problems she could have might be very long, and some people choose to abort these babies!"......It blows my mind, here is a perfect beautiful 2 year old girl, who some would have chose to be done with before they ever gave them a chance.....So blessed to be where we are today with Faith, but I would still be sooo blessed had it turned out another way, why you ask because we and our little FAITH have JESUS!!!

Deene Souza Photography!

One of our friends took some beautiful pictures of Faith and our family!
Check them out at http://deenesouzaphotography.com/

What the kids are up to!

This is Faith on her 2 month birthday! So with my last child I'm really going to try to take a picture on her monthly birthday to see how she changes. This was my plan with all of them but it didn't happen! lol...She's hit the 12lb mark and is starting to coo and smile:)

How cute is this?! Grant is a great big brother!


Miss Hollywood! Elizabeth loves to play dress up and loves her flip flops....don't even try to put a different kind of shoe on her! She had to wear these shoes everyday to pick up Grant and Olivia from VBS! It took us about 5 extra minutes to get to and from
the parking lot but she was sooooo happy:)

This is the newest addition to our family...Tiki the kitty!

Olivia is in love with her new kitty and learning some responsibility.

It's her job to feed and clean up after the cat!

Here's Aaron, Grant & Sam! Grant told us he thought he needed a job on the dairy this summer. So his dad and grandpa came up with raising some calf's. Sam was his first one, he has since add Ethan and John! He's getting up with Aaron in the morning to go to the dairy and feeds his calf's and stays most of the day "working" at the dairy. (or maybe hanging out in Grandpa and Beppe's house..lol)

We are having a great summer so far just hanging out!

WOW, how time flys!

Wow, I can’t believe how much faster a month at home goes then a month in the hospital! Faith is doing fantastic! We had a check up at UCSF last week and they are so pleased with how she is doing! She gained two pounds since leaving the hospital, was in the 90th percentile for her height (surprise, surprise)! They also lowered some of her meds. She had a follow up echogram, it showed that her heart was back to normal and showed no signs of hypertension! Praise the Lord! Can I just say that again….PRAISE THE LORD!!! We stand in awe of what God has done in Faith’s little life already! We wanted to thank all of you for your many prayers on her behalf! I think if God had a cell phone he would be WAY over on his minutes from all the “calls” you made! But then again I’m sure most of you are in his “network”!

We don’t have to go back to UCSF till she is 6 months!! WOOHOO!! We have been asked a lot “well what now or is she back to normal?” There is always a chance that she can reherniate, never to the extent of what she had but with her size of defect there is a 50% chance the patch will tear away from the muscle. We also have to watch for signs of a bowell obstruction. Some other things the CDH clinic will keep on eye on…..lung function, development issues, and for some reason some CDH babies may experience some hearing loss. Faith passed her first hearing test with flying colors! So, yes she has over come some huge issues with the Lord’s help. But more prayer for her continued health is always welcome!

Once more thank you, thank you, thank you for all your prayers! God has heard our prayers! What a mighty God we serve! We give God all the glory for what He has done
And will continue to do!

We have to come to realize that life will always have storms that come and go but what really matters is what foundation your house is built on? If built on the beautiful but shifting sand the storms will surely take its toll. Build your house on the SOLID ROCK and after the storm your house may need a little refurbishing but you will still be standing in HIS amazing grace!

We made it HOME!

We got to take Faith home on Wednesday. She is doing great! Thanks so much for all of your prayers. PTL!

And the Million Dollar Question Is....

When do we get to go home? Faith is doing great. The nurses took out her nasal feeding tube on Saturday and she has been nursing ever since. The Dr's want to be sure she consistently gains weight while nursing before they send us home. Saturday night she gained 5 grams, tonight she gained another 10 grams (30 grams to an ounce), sounds pretty consistent to us, but I think the doctors want to see a gain of more than 10 grams. God has been good. Lots of prayers have been answered, and we have been blesses with some awesome nurses. They tell us she is on the fast track to go home and can't believe she only been here a month. ONLY a Month!! Do they know how long a month away from home is?!!

Welcome to Holland!

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by Emily Pearl Kingsley

"I am often asked to describe an experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it,

to imagine how it would feel. It's like this:

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo "David", the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland".
"Holland? you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
"But there has been a change in the flight plan.

They've landed in Holland, and there you must stay."

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, filthy place, full of famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must buy new guidebooks.

And you must learn a whole new language.

And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there a little while, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
The pain of that will never, ever go away,

because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

I wanted to share this wonderful poem with you..... My great friend Jamie Mouw shared this with me after Elizabeth was diagnosed with CF. When ever I'm having a down or hard day, I read this to remind me of the great joy I have found in "Holland"!

God has placed a few special families in our life's who have been to "Holland" and back again. To see how God places people in our life's way before the storm comes is sooo awesome! So thank you Lord for that wonderful gift! And thanks to our dear friends Phil and Judy and Lance and Jamie for your friendship, support and love!