Jastef

Our Pastor's 5 year old son, Liam has been in the hospital since July 4th and is in need of your prayers! I attached a link here to Jen's site with all the information you'll need. Please take just a few minutes to read and then pray for him. Sounds like he's already doing better since they've been giving him his heavy doses of Antibiotics, but it would be good to pray for him, until he is well and goes home.

Also, his one of 4 kids and so his other siblings are in between home and staying with relatives in Napa. Jen is also a couple months pregnant, so please keep her (and baby) in your prayers as well. The Lord knows every detail, so don't worry if you've never met them. :)

This picture is to let you all know that Ethan continues to heal well! We are so thankful to God for how smooth He's made this whole process. He's pretty much completely back to normal, maybe with just a slightly more paranoid Mommy.

I uploaded a bunch of pictures from the weekend, starting from when we got home from the surgery all the way until today. Our weekend was awesome! Some of it was quite busy with various family members and then today we went to church and then spent the rest of the day totally relaxing as a family... good times.

(the picture was taken about 20 minutes before the surgery)  

We praise God in telling you all that Ethan's surgery went very well! 

We arrived at 6:15 and he was quite a champ. He played on the Nintendo DS while the nurses poked and prodded and then around 7:50 they gave him some meds a.k.a "happy juice" which just relaxed him and made him a bit loopy, so that separation from Jason and me wouldn't be too painful. He still did cry when they took him from us, which was the hard part for Mommy as well. I didn't like hearing him cry the whole way down the hall as we left.

The Anesthesiologist said he did remarkably well. The surgery took about 50 minutes and then they brought me back into the recovery room, where I found him awake, confused and upset. He was pretty cute when he saw me - laid against my chest, put his finger in his mouth and fell back to sleep. I stayed on the bed with him until he woke up again and we gave him some juice (just to make sure he kept it down). He began speaking fine, answering questions correctly and sitting up on his own, so they let us go home 2 hours ahead of schedule! Every time they'd ask him a question, "how are you feeling, Ethan? Would you like something to drink? Are you dizzy?" he would reply with "No thanks, I'd like to go home now." :) We got home around 10:45 and he's watching a new movie that Nana bought him. He seems to be doing better than I thought he would. I had my adenoids and tonsils removed, so I think my recovery was a little more painful... and much longer.

His ears actually appeared to have NO fluid in them, so the surgeon went ahead and put temporary tubes in each ear. They will be taken out within 6 months to a year at a regular office appointment. His adenoids, however (the part we knew was probably the biggest problem) were very large for his age, infected and just plain nasty looking. She said they had a lot of bacteria and just basic infection on them, which was probably causing a large part of his problem. He is having some basic speech problems right now. She told me that he will probably form some of his words better within a week or so, but at first it will be hard and weird for him to talk. She said they were interfering a bit with his previous speech and also with the way he formed his tongue and breathed when he talked... since that is all changing, his speech will take a little while to catch up. That's probably the biggest frustration he's had since being home. He started crying a bit ago and told me "Mommy, I don't know how to talk right!"

Anyway, we're all 3 very thankful to be home and so thankful to God for answering our prayers and making this a smooth process. Thank you to ALL of you who were praying for us - we love you all and are so thankful for you.

-Stef

Tomorrow morning we have Ethan's surgery. Please keep him in your prayers. He told us tonight that he's "a little bit scared" but he also seems like he's ready and understands this will help his over all health. He told me today he's glad he's having the surgery "because I do NOT like getting sick all the time."

He had a fun night all by himself with us. Rachel went to Jason's parent's house and so it was just the three of us. 5AM is going to come very quickly, but Jason and I are both having trouble going to sleep. We'll most likely skip out on sleep tonight and nap with Ethan tomorrow when we get home.

Thank you ALL for your kind emails and phone calls, reminding us that you're praying. We greatly appreciate it. I'll be sure to post about the surgery as soon as we're home and settled back in.

... you hear they're closing down 600 Starbucks in the Bay Area, due to the bad economy.

Wow. How sad is that? Maybe its just me, but I'm not sure even seeing all the houses that have been foreclosed on, or seeing other businesses go under has really had a strong impression on me. I kept thinking "it can't be that bad, the lines at Starbucks are still out the door!" But this morning I hear that they are closing down 600 Starbucks in the Bay Area and I'm like "wow, things must really be bad."

We spent the weekend in Citrus Heights (Sacramento) at my Uncle and Aunt's house for a family get together. It was great to see my Uncle, Aunt and cousins again and to just hang out with everyone, relaxing and enjoying each other. They have a pool, which is where the kids lived for the weekend :) We enjoyed a BBQ dinner, yummy pancake breakfast on Sunday morning and just really good, family fun. Today the kids have been recovering from the weekend, but in a good way. They had too much fun. :)

Rachel had some issues with my Uncle. I have no idea why, because he's the nicest guy, but she was literally terrified of him. On Saturday night she woke up every 1/2 hour crying "I don't want to see Uncle Jon! I wanna go to Rachel's house!" so she and I didn't get good sleep Saturday night... but she made up for it with her 3 1/2 hour nap on Sunday. :)

We visited our friends, Abe and Jess Green's church on Sunday night, before heading home and had a great time seeing them! Their little boy is only 4 months younger than Rachel and its cute to see that they older they get, the more they have in common. After church we had dinner with them and then headed home.

This is (another) terribly busy week for us. Today I did some house cleaning and then made and froze a few dinners for later on in the week, since I won't have time to cook. Tomorrow starts our meeting with Doctors, Anesthesiologist, etc... to go over surgery details and for them to get a good history on Ethan. Wednesday he has his final pre-op appointment to get his last clean bill of health before they operate and then in the midst of all of this, Jason and I started our first birthing classes!! Kind of weird since its our 3rd child, but we're aiming for an all natural birth this time and so we're preparing with some Bradley Method classes. I think its going to be so helpful and I can't wait to see the difference it makes.

We're looking forward to the weekend, because we have NO plans, except a low stress, quiet, family weekend. I will do my best to blog a quick update after Ethan's surgery, but please be in prayer for him Thursday morning! I took pictures from our weekend in Sacramento, so enjoy.