At Home in the Mountains

My dad got the prettiest bowling shoes I've ever seen. Aaron flying off a jump at Monarch. Dad and Ethan passive aggressively protesting having their picture taken. Brad and Cindy at R,H,&B. Cindy and Tammy at Red, Hot, & Blue. This is a BBQ restaurant we went to for our family's Christmas activity. Ethan, Aaron, and Tammy playing legos. My mom had them in storage and Ethan wanted them to take home to play with his friends. Hmmm... My parents new house. On a walk with the family and dogs. This trail is by my parents house and follows an old rail line. Tammy and Ethan went through a lot of junk that they had in storage at my parents. My mom had also decided to give her wedding dress to the thrift store. She was very thin when she got married and no one in the family could fit her dress. We were taking one last look at it before it got donated. We played Bible Pictionary one night. Playing with my dad was hilarious. Monarch ski area. Aaron, my brother, and my dad went ski...

Our own little Christmas celebration before we left for Dallas. We had chocolate fondue with strawberries and bananas and opened presents and stockings. This is Aaron opening his electric kettle I got him for work so that he can make hot tea, Ramen, dried soup, whatever in his office. This is Aaron trying to get Seal interested in his present--catnip toys. Seal was very interested but he wasn't showing it because the dogs were there to observe. He played with his toys later after the dogs left him alone. This is me getting my one of my favorite stocking stuffers--dark chocolate!!!! YUM! Aaron giving the dogs their favorite treat. Houdini especially LOVES rawhide bones. Abbey with her cone collar on. She looked like a little Chinese doggie. Thankfully we took it off on Friday and she has been much happier. We are now in Colorado at my parents. WE're about to go to ARC to look for skis for my dad. Dad, Aaron, and Ethan are going to go to Monarch tomorrow. I am glad I can't ...

This could be our last visit to the cardiologist!!! Unless our high risk doc feels like he sees something the cardiologist needs to look at he thinks that Maddy's heart looks fine now. The way he put it was if he had not seen us before he would say it looks normal. He thought it might be still slightly shifted back in the chest just a bit, but couldn't even say that for sure. If had definitely rotated back into the correct position, the anatomy looked good, everything looked normal. So we are praising God today for this great news and all of you can praise him with us. This is an amazing blessing from God. We are still praying for her feet of course because we don't know what is going on with them, but that is not as huge of a concern as the heart for us. At least, not right now. Thanks for all your prayers and keep praying for us. Other news: We had Abbey fixed on Sunday. We went to a mobile vet clinic in Lewisville. She was pretty groggy the first night. She hate the cone...

We went to the high risk pregnancy doc today for another sonogram. This time he could see all four chambers of the heart, the pulmonary valve, etc. In his words it looked "dramatically better". He feels there is still some slight compression on the heart and that we need to continue watching it. As of now he cannot see anything that is causing it and the MRI did not see anything either. He also felt that the hands were okay. They are not clenched fists at least as he first thought, meaning that the fingers aren't overlapping each other. Her hands are still in fists and she won't open them but he said he has had other babies that have not opened their fist in the sonogram but the hands have been normal at birth, so we still have a lot of hope for those little hands. He was able to get a better look at the face today, no cleft palate, so that is a huge blessing. The feet are still concerning. They are definitely clubbed but she is also not moving them. She is moving her...

Quick update. We got a call from the doctor's office this afternoon. My chromosomes are perfectly normal, thank you very much. Aaron is the one with the variant in chromosome 15. So the baby got it from him. This is great news!! Praise God!!! They also did not see any "masses" on the MRI around the baby's heart. So they have ruled that out, praise God again! Thank you again for all your prayers. I can't say that enough. Keep them coming! :) We have gotten so much good news but we definitely still need your prayers for the baby and for us, well I should say me specifically, to stay steady emotionally. We went to listen to a performance of Handel's Messiah last Friday by the DBU choir. One of the verses from the piece was really encouraging and comforting to me. "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd, and He shall gather the lambs with His arms, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.--Isaiah 40:11" This verse just str...

Just wanted to put up some pictures of goings on for a change. Our party was fun last night. I took pictures of the people who came, BUT my camera has never taken good pictures of people in indoor lighting since I dropped it on our hike in the Grand Canyon. Really annoying but oh well! The people always come out kind of blurry. The picture of Seal is as close as I could get to a pose in front of the Christmas tree with him. haha. The dogs did pose for me. They were awesome. I told them where to sit and then I told them to stay and they actually did it for me until I told them I was done. They are growing up! :)

Well, I was holding off updating because I thought the doctor's office was going to call us with more information, but I haven't heard from them. If they call today I will add to this update. So yesterday was the MRI. I can say that I hope I don't have too many of those in my life. They are very uncomfortable because you go into this tiny little space where you can't see anything except the top of the machine in you face. You can't move, so if something starts falling asleep, too bad. They had me on my back of course because they were trying to look at the baby and I have to say that it gave me a backache. Anyhow, more importantly than my small discomforts, the initial things she was seeing were positive. No holes in the diaphram that might be allowing organs to shift up and move the heart over. She said she had 100's of images to look at and so she was going to analyze those and then call our doctor yesterday afternoon. So I'm hoping they will let us know w...

The high risk pregnancy doctor's office called today and the results from the chromosome test are normal. This is great news. Praise God! is all I can think over and over again. They said there is a slight variation on chromosome 15 but it is not enough to explain the problems they have seen with the baby. It is possible that Aaron or I could have this variation. If so then we'll know the baby is definitely fine from the chromasomal standpoint. So we are going in tomorrow morning to get our blood drawn to test and see if one of us has this variation. So we are thankful for good news again today. We still don't know what is going on with the heart necessarily. We'll go in for the MRI on Thursday to try to learn more about that. So please keep praying for Maddy and us and that God will protect her. When I think about the past two weeks and how much things have changed it really amazes me what God can do and I attribute all of it and me and Aaron being able to get through ...