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Happy 14th Birthday Olivia and other news...

Today is my beautiful Olivia Joy's 14th birthday. It is a bittersweet day for me cause I'm excited to see my little girl grow up into a young lady, and she is not with me today:( Her and Adrienna went to Grandma and Grandpa Fishers for a couple of weeks where they are having a Great time!) Oh the joys of summer vacation and the blessing of having my parents relatively close by for the first time in 10 years. I had to put the pictures on another post as Olivia is my computer tech and I'm lost without her.

Oh yeah back to my bittersweet moment( see how easily I get distracted!) I'm sad to realize how quickly Life can pass you by. Just yesterday I was enjoying my roly poly curly haired baby girl and now she is a teenager. I still enjoy her but in a different way. She is a great girl and I'm so thankful to have her as my daughter.

As for other news.... we have been on summer vacation for a month now, and I realize I hadn't blogged even once!

Its been relaxing, no rushing , well not in the day time at least, we've had a very busy church schedule with outreaches, revivals, concerts, you get the picture. Its been nice though...We've been to the beach, the county fair, celebrated Father's Day and our 17th anniversary. Summer. I love it! So hopefully soon I can get some pictures up , in the meantime I'm enjoying the kids and reveling in staying up late and sleeping in.

Snow Day!

Look We can see Snow!

Getting Closer...

Looks like fun....us Californians are pretty creative ...

....Using boogie boards as sleds!!!

Adri trying to make a snow angel

                                                                   Me sliding down no sled, hands free.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to all my wonderful friends, Hope your day is a joyful funfilled remembrance of why we celebrate this wonderful day.

God thank you for your wonderful gift of your son Jesus, I can never repay the price YOU paid for my life, I'm so grateful.... Everyday!

I feel so blessed to be able to have my parents and my sister Em along with Rose, Leah, and their Families celebrating with us, this is the stuff memories are made of.

Sea World Fun

                                          Shark!!

                                         Jessica my beautiful purple ballerina

                                            Me and my sister Leah! She's really not That much taller than me. HeHe

                                          Isaac and cousin Brian

Seaport Village

My mom and my niece Madeline are here in San Diego for the last couple of days and we are just enjoying it. My sisters and I took her and some of the kids to Seaport Village which is a fun tourist spot.

If anybody can tell me how I can post captions under the pictures that would be awesome, in the meantime ... Here are the order of pictures.

1. The "boys" Posing with the "living cowboy" statue
2.Jessica with a parrot on her arm
3.Me and Benjamin having a "conversation"
4. Grandma and Grandkids
5.The Pirate Kids
6. Mom and her girls

Madeline

My niece Madeline is here visiting for a few days and spent the night with us last night. She is an absolute crack up. She says things so seriously and matter of factly too. So here are a few: Olivia and I took her into walmart this morning and she says" Look there's a brown man just like Uncle Arty" ..... and then poor Adrie put some perfume on and Madeline walks up to her and says " What is that awful smell" And then Olivia was doing her spanish work on the computer and Madeline was pretending to be a kitty so Arty comes out into the living room and so she starts growling at him and said" I only growl at mexicans" We could not stop laughing... Where does she come up with this stuff? By the way she LOVES Arty just in case you were wondering. It was so cute last night when she saw him for the first time, She yells Arty and throws her arms around him. So Em I hope you read this cause we are having a grand ol time with your kid here:) As soon as I gets some pics I'll put them up.

Benjamin Update

I wanted to give a victory report on little Benjamin. Rose took him to the doctor for some blood work and all his bilyrubin levels are completely normal for the first time since He's been born. He is doing so awesome! So far he does everything that a baby his adjusted age should be doing. What a precious miracle he is. The pictures are of Benjamin before and after. The Elmo was bigger than Him when he was born and now you can see how much he's grown!

Beautiful Girl/Silly Boy

Here are a couple of pictures of Jessica and Isaac. Jessica is all girl and wanted me to take a picture of her hair cause we curled it! and Isaac feels that his calling in life is to entertain our family and anybody that will give him the time:) In the Picture where he has a snow hat on, he has his stuffed animals stuffed inside =P and the picture of him on the door, well... he was trying to lock his big sis out of the house. I also included another pic of Benjamin, he's turning into a lil chunky monkey. Love it!

School

No we are not starting school yet but I'm making some changes for Adrienna and Olivia. For the last 2 years They have gone to a private school that I really love. I was conflicted though . Most churches do not do half of the things that we do, that is not a slam its just the truth. It's no secret that our lives revolve around whats going on at church, and I did not realize how stressfull it was trying to keep up schoolwork and homework and do all that we do until we started summer vacation and I felt like I could breath again. Because I really like the school and it has been a huge blessing for us I was obviously reluctant to change , but I know for my own sanity and stress level I cannot continue, so we are going to do the k-12 online program. It has been recommended to me by a few different people and so with the help of God we are going to be doing this for Adrienna's 9th and Olivia's 8th grade year. I'm very nervous but I do believe this is the direction God is leading me for my two oldest at this time. So Pray for Me Please!

Miracle Baby: Benjamin

I've been wanting to blog about my nephew Benjamin for a little while now, but I've had to gather in all my thoughts and feelings and think about how to properly write this all down. So I've decided to write this from my perspective as not only an aunt but a sister too. See Rose is my youngest sister out of us six girls, and we almost lost her.....

I believe that If Jesus tarries God has awesome plans for little Benjamin, it seems that from even in the early months of Rose's pregnancy the devil was trying to kill him. I can remember praying for Rose in her early months , being afraid that this tiny precious life even at 2 and 3 months would miscarry, as Rose was having a lot of bleeding and at one point even being at the hospital thinking she lost him, but there was his little heart beating.
Its wierd when you go through a traumatic event how you remember the littlest details, its like time just stands still in those crazy fearfilled moments. Yet there are other things you just can not remember, like I can't remember if my mom called or my sister Leah texted me that Rose was in the hospital having Benjamin. I think it was both. I remember thinking -praying GOD NO! At 26 weeks old how in the world could he survive and I'm thinking about Rose and Joel: how do you deal with your baby dying. It felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I was in the nursury making sure everything was ready for service which was going to start in 10 minutes and I ran out to the sanctuary crying telling Arty we had to pray right now and so we did. I immediately started texting people to pray for a miracle, not knowing if This little baby was born dead or alive. We were playing the waiting game. On top of that we had a first time visitor to church, so I had to pull all of my emotions together and that was the hardest thing to do, all I wanted to do was run to the hospital and make sure everything was ok. As soon as service was over I met my sister Leah at the hospital, where she was waiting to hear some news at that point Benjamin had been born at 2lbs 2 0z. So we sat in the waiting room just waiting to hear Something. Rose's doctor was so awesome, He would come out and talk to Leah and I and give us all the technical information. Basically what happened was the placenta tore away from the uterus and caused her to have internal bleeding, but nobody knew that till they did the c-section . Rose just kept on bleeding and bleeding, but we didn't realize how serious it was for Rose until the dr came to get us so we could see her before they wheeled her down to do this procedure to stop all the bleeding and he told us that if it didn't work they would have to do an emergency hysterectomy. I think that was when I started to freak out a little bit. She was way too young Only 26 years old. Looking back We just prayed with all of our hearts that whole day and I can just see the hand of God moving over that whole situation. I believe God gave Rose the Doctor he did, He saved her life. Rose looked like death , I cannot explain that statement, but Leah knows what I mean. So Rose got sent to the ICU , Benjamin to the NICU. Thank God my mom flew out that very day and was there for the next month. I belive my sister Jennifer came up later on that week, at that point I believe Rose had gotten something like 4 blood transfusions through out the week, but God kept her alive and our whole family is so grateful for everybody's prayers. The first time I saw Benjamin it was so surreal. Here was this little intsy winsy baby, my fist was bigger than his head! We all were in love!! He was perfectly formed! The most precious miracle I have ever seen. He was not even a week old when we got the phone call from my mom calling for my sister to tell us that they had done a brain scan on Benjamin and he had stage 4 bleeding on the brain and in the dr's own words he had 80-90% chance of having cebral palsy. Once again The emails, texts, phone calls went flying asking everyone to pray for a miracle. God is so faithful becouse at 5 1/2 months Benjamin is PERFECTLY FINE no signs at ALL! We are believing God that even in the future as he gets older he will not develop any symptoms of cp either. The hand of God was just all over him in that NICU. From the christian respiratory therapist who told Rose She sees miracles in that place all the time, to his amazing development the whole time he was there. Its been said that its a long difficult journey for preemies becouse they will do good and then regress continually, and that never happened for Benjamin, He only progressed and did good from day one. He had a hole in his heart- we prayed and believed God for a miracle and I believe God honors our faith and they decided not to do surgery and the hole closed up. Praise God! That was just one of the many miracles we have seen. Currently he roles over, smiles, pushes himself up on his little skinny arms and he nurses. That is a miracle!! Ask Rose!! I have to say That she is my hero! What she went through in those crazy 3 months, I wouldn't wish on anybody, but she trusted God and spoke words of Faith and we are seeing the results of that now. I want to thank everybody who has faithfully prayed for Rose and Benjamin(and the rest of the family) I have no doubt in my mind its because of those beautiful, faithful, incredible prayers of so many people and churches that Benjamin is where he is at today. Our entire family can never say thank you enough. We are so thankful for friends like you and a fellowship like ours. To God be the Glory Forever and Ever Amen.
Benjamin is now 9lbs. 21 in long. He's growing!

Happy Birthday Olivia

My Livie Love is 13 today! I can't believe it! Seems like yesterday she was born, now I have TWO teenagers. Wow. We went to our favorite place in all of San Diego. Coronado. It was a gorgeous day and it was made even more fun by the simple fact that my sister Emily is here on vacation with her friend from Philly:) Glad you're here Em. Here are some pictures. Benjamin had on the cutest trunks and rash guard shirt, and then their is Isaac in the water. Featured is a picture of a house here in Coronado. I wish I could live on this island, but alas its for the Rich, sigh..... Oh well at least I can sit on the beach here right! When I get to Heaven My mansion is going to be even nicer than these "shacks" on the beach, although I will say I was reading Revelations yesterday and it says that When the New Heaven and Earth is here there will be no Sea. What?!! . I'm slightly dissapointed, I always said I was hoping that my mansion would be beach front property. Wow how did I go from Wishing my Liv happy birthday, to mansions? I can be so random sometimes. Ha. Sorry for the run on sentences too:( Anyway back to Liv, more pictures coming.

and some more pics....

I guess the other pictures of all the kids are on the other camera:)

San Diego County Fair

Rose, Leah, I, and all of our kids went to the Del Mar Fair otherwise known as the San Diego County Fair. It was a lot of fun. The theme this year is Taste of Food, My favorite topic. They also had a lot of Garden stuff (demonstrating how food is grown) and of course a fair is incomplete without the rides! So here are a few pictures of our fun day. If you're wondering why only Adrienna and Isaac are the only ones of my kids here in these pictures its becouse the other two are in Az in this week, its actually kind of quiet. Isaac is in true form for the camera, He is such a goofball, and Adrienna's second favorite animal are horses and she got to pet one! We had to take a picture of the elephants too becouse she really wanted to ride them, but it didn't happen. Melissa remember when we were 13 or 14 and rode the elephants at the zoo, wonder if they're the same ones. J/K. There's also a picture of a family made out of Butter!!!! Pretty cool.

Happy 16th Anniversary pt. 1

Happy Anniversary To the best Husband in the world! I can't believe its been 16 years and four kids later. Time really does fly when you're having fun :) I have to give my mom some credit here for my happy 16 years so hear goes: Mom thank you for showing me what being a good wife and mom is like. I remember in my school days always being asked what I wanted to be when I "grew up" and I remember saying " A Wife and a Mom" and that is what I am and I've never regretted one moment of that, thanks to you . Thank you for insisting that us girls as teenagers had to cook dinner for the family at least once a week, Arty was especially grateful for that when we got married. My only problem was scaling down the menu from 7 people to just 2 of us. I'm so appreciative of you teaching me how to really clean, Now I'm doing the same with my girls, Arty would like to thank you for making me iron, I still hate it but I love him enough to do his work clothes( church stuff goes to the dry cleaners:)) You are and were a great example of what a pastor's wife ought to be and I reference all the time of the things you used to do, especially your graciousness with people. And lastly I'm so thankful that you always loved Arty, even when he first came into the church. It was becouse of that That I knew He would be someone I could be married to for the rest of my life. Thank you for all your influence into my married life both Arty and I will be very grateful for you and Dad.
Love,
Me:)

And....at the park