1st Day of 4K

1st Day of 1st Grade

Beautiful

Just a couple pics of some of the beautiful flowers that were sent to us

PINK!

This outfit has an adorable little hat that goes with it, but she did NOT want to wear it.

Visitors

We all enjoyed lots of visitors this weekend. Our good friend, Micah, came to stay with Mark for the weekend and a good friend from Gettysburg came and visited at church on Sunday. Here in Lexington we had 2 friends from college come to visit and a friend of mine from Bible study and MOPS and her daughter, who is in Eliya's class at school stopped by on their way through. They even offered to take Elie home with them so she wouldn't miss the first day of school, but Mark is flying out here on Tuesday (tomorrow!) so we decided to keep her here. If all continues to go well this week we will ALL go home to WI on Friday/Saturday. We'll break the trip up since it is long and I can't sit in any one position too long. We will have to depend on others for help for awhile, but are really looking forward to being a family again.

Mark continues to do well, he has a very low headache sometimes, but the doctors figured he would need a couple of these special patches to seal everything up. The great thing is he can do all the normal activities he used to do w/out the headache getting worse or anything. He said at most on the pain scale it's a 2 - so we rejoice that he has some relief. His next apt at Mayo is September 22. He will see both the neurologist and neurosurgeon then, he will also have an mri and another blood/glue/fiber patch then to hopefully seal up any holes that are still leaking.

I am getting stronger each day. I now have crutches which allows me to do steps. I am slow, but steady. For any longer distances I still need the wheelchair as it is too much strain on my body/bones to try to walk that far until the bones have more of a chance to heal. But now that I can manuever steps I can go home which is great. They have a wonderful therapy pool here so I will do all week in that to get as much strength built up as possible before heading home. I am completely off pain meds which is good and bad - nice to be free of all those side effects, but more painful in the process.

The girls are all doing well. Micaiah has been such a mamma's girl, but decided to let that go yesterday and let everyone else hold her for long periods - so nice! Eliya and Gabie are really looking forward to going home so they can start school. Rachel just misses her daddy. She has done some reverting in her being potty trained these past couple days, but I think a lot of it is just her reaction to stress, she did this at the move as well. Right now they are singing and dancing and doing puzzles. I am so thankful for them as they keep me going and give me strength and joy.

Thanks for all the prayers, we are coming around slowly but surely. We couldn't do it without all the prayers and support we have through all of you. Thank you for you caring support for our family. To God be the Glory!

Old Fashion Service at the Park

Today's church service was held at the park. They used the gazebo to lead it and for music. Then we had lunch in the picnic shelter. There were other activities afterwards but we (mostly I) were wiped out so we headed home.

Micaiah got to ride in the little red wagon

Sloppy Joe Face!

NE Visitors!

A friend of mine from college and her son stopped by to visit us this afternoon. Micaiah enjoyed some snuggles!
Eliya, Gabriel, Cael and Rachel ~ Cael and Gabie are only a couple months apart in age. The girls had fun with someone new to play with this afternoon!

Katie's here!

My college roommate came to visit us this weekend. We had a great time with her, and she was so much help! The girls loved her. Thanks for coming!!!!

Rachel Reminder

This is how Rachie always sucked her fingers as a baby, maybe Micaiah will follow the same???

tummy-time

Eliya's been Micaiah's tummy-time buddy, she's rolling from tummy to back easily now and getting stronger at holding her head up everyday.

Sisters!

3 Months with the Bear

Mark mailed Micaiah's bear so we could keep with the tradition.

Great News & Fun on the Farm

The family who gave us Belle and Tinker invited the girls to play out at their farm this afternoon. What a great way for the girls to run off some energy and have fun. They had a giant sand pile, lots of kitties and all kinds of other animals. Since so many of the kitties resembled Belle and Tinker, it made the girls a little less homesick for their kitties.

Eliya, Rachel and Julie

Julie let the girls bury her in the sand, she was so wonderful and patient with them.

Micaiah and Mommy

The girls got to have a whole new experience on the farm today - gathering eggs. Julie took these pictures for me of their experience. The only down-side to this was that Gabie was VERY attached to her egg - she was holding it and cuddling it like the kitties, and was just devastated when it was taken away. You would've thought that we told her someone had died she was so sad! Barb said that she would bring the eggs in and we could eat them later this week, and that just made her even more sad "I don't want to eat my egg!" So we are thinking about trying to blow her egg out so she can keep the shell.

Micaiah lounging with nana

~AND~

We have GREAT news today - it seems that the new type (blood, fiber and glue) and placement (higher up on the spine) of the bloodpatch has worked! - Praise the Lord! We are so happy that Mark finally has some relief. This may still be a process to get things completely solved and healed, but we seem to have found the solution. Thanks to all of you out there for your prayers!

Wipe Out!

Gabie wiped out on the sidewalk on our evening walk - she scraped her knee and got a fat lip (which she is quite proud of!)

Get the Sillies Out!

Travis came today to pick Stephanie up. The girls were so excited to have someone new to play with! We enjoyed just visiting and relaxing.

tummy-time for Micaiah

getting ready to roll over

getting mad that they rolled me back over to do it again

The girls were really wound up so we decided we needed to get the sillies out before bed. We had them do various jumping, hopping, exercises, bear crawl, crab crawl....

Micaiah, relaxing while her sister's work out

Then we started singing songs, like Father Abraham and other camp songs

everyone joined in - so much fun!