Embryo Adoption

We have some dear friends, Todd and Jen Wright, who have struggled with infirtility for the last 5 years. A little over a year ago, God revealed to them His plan for their family. Embryo Adoption. I can't tell their story anywhere near as good as the lovely Jen, so please visit her blog here. You will be blessed by reading it, even if you don't personally relate to the struggles of infirtility. Jen and Todd have adopted 12 precious babies from a couple who had their family through in-vetro and wanted to give their remaining embryos a chance at life.

Jen and Todd were recently featured in a local news story about Embryo Adoption. Although it is just a snippit of their story, we are so excited and encouraged to see Embryo Adoption getting the attention it deserves, and so desparately needs, especially in light of the fact that we now have an administration in Washington that has no regard for the unborn. We pray that God continues to enlighten the world to this beautiful gift of life He has given us! Please take a few moments and watch this:



Life is precious. Life, as definied by God, the creator of life and therefore the only one capable of defining it, begins immediately upon fertilization. Just because a child isn't living and breathing outside the womb makes it no less a valuable person than you or I. I don't often do this, but I ask anyone who reads our blog and has a blog or any other way to repost this, that you please pass it on to help spread awareness of this all too well kept secret.

Joshua v. The End Table

In this corner, weighing in at 36 lbs, Joshua.... Andrew... MAPLE!!! (Crowd goes wild!).

In this corner, weighing in at... well, I don't know because I've never weighed an end table... *deep grumbly voice* The End Table (Boo! Hiss!).

We knew the day would come. It was only a matter of time. Joshua ended up in urgent care last night after a run-in with the end table. He was spinning around in the living room after his bath, right before bed, and said in a playful voice "Oh no, I'm going to crash!", but then actually lost his footing and slammed eyebrow first into the edge of the end table, giving himself a nice 3/4 inch cut. After we got the bleeding to stop, we took a good look at it and decided he had done a good enough job to need some stitches. We found the Phoenix Children's Hospital Urgent Care in East Mesa that would be able to patch him up. So after getting him dressed in his jammies, we headed out.

I had no idea what to expect from him. I would imagine the thought of stitches would be pretty scary, so I allowed him to live in blissful ignorance for the most part, only telling him that the doctor was going to come in and use a special tool to fix his boo boo. He got a nice dose of numbing medicine, and then it was time for the big show. They washed it out with a high pressure syringe with cold water, which he was very much not pleased about. He cried, but didn't fight it. When it was time for stitches, the doctor had me hold him with my arms and legs to help keep him still. He did a fantastic job staying completely still, and after a few minutes, he fell asleep, and slept through his last 3 stitches. He did so awesome. So when it was all said and done, he walked away with 4 stitches, a stuffed cheetah, a Kung Foo Panda Book and a red popsicle. We finally got back home around 11:00. What a night! But we were thankful that it was "just a flesh wound".

Flat Stanley

Over the weekend, the boys and I went with my dear friend Julie up to Montezuma's Castle and Sedona. Julie invited us to go so that we could take some pictures with Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was sent to her from a little girl from North Carolina who is in 1st or 2nd Grade and wanted to learn some things about Arizona. Of course Julie planned on taking pictures of Flat Stanley with a cactus, a cowboy hat, and other things that are synonomous with Arizona, but she (always being the over achiever) wanted to send her some pictures of something a little out of the ordinary, hence the trip to an ancient native american dwelling carved into the side of a mountain!

It took us about an hour and a half to get there, and along the way Josh and Ben became good friends with Julie, making up games involving stealing shoes. I hadn't been to Montezuma's Castle since I was a kid. I think Josh was a little young to understand what exactly it all meant, but he did think the thing on the mountain was pretty cool. After our history lesson, and Josh taking TONS of pictures of random people and trees, we headed up to Sedona for lunch. The weather was beautiful, and of course I was so destracted with the kids that I didn't take any pictures while we were there! But take my word for it that Sedona is a must see in your lifetime! After lunch we headed home. It was a great way to spend a Saturday... and I think Daddy (who got to enjoy the day at home fiddling around and relaxing all by himself) would definitely agree!

A Gardening We Will Go

Now that the weather is nice, we have decided to designate one small corner of our backyard for a garden. Whether we are actually capable of growing anything edible is yet to be determined, but it seemed like something fun to do with Josh to teach him how fruits and veggies grow... because right now he thinks they come from the vegetable factory to the grocery store. My resident researcher, aka Andrew, looked up the best way to plant and found a very handy tool for Arizona growing. He discovered that the best thing to do is to make a planter box, which sounded right up his alley. He's always looking for reasons to get his power tools out and grunt accordingly. So after the box was built and in place, off to the Home Depot we go to pick out our plants. After much deliberation we decided on strawberries, "husky" cherry tomatoes and red and green bell peppers. Josh and Ben were great helpers spreading the soil around and digging holes for the plants, and Joshua has been meticulous about watering the garden every morning and then going outside every afternoon to see if anything new has grown.

Our garden is just over a week old, and everything is still alive, which is very exciting. We're starting to see new buds forming on the tomatoes and peppers, and some of our strawberries are getting pretty big. I hope that we will be able to taste the fruits of our labor sometime soon! Here are some pictures of our adventures in gardening!

He's a RAD Dude

Here we go, yet again. Another waive of illness has stricken our family. Right now it's Ben's turn to be down with it, after the other three of us have already had our turn. He started with a fever and a cough on Sunday morning, and he hasn't really gotten any better. And of course, in true Benny style, he started to get the respiratory issues. He hasn't been too bad, and we've been on top of it with regular breathing treatments and running the humidifier, but that just hasn't cut it. He had to stay home from school today (they took his temperature at 3:55 on Tuesday and he had a fever, which knocks him out for the whole next day), so he spent the day with my mom. Apparently Grandma looked like a comfy mattress, because he slept on her almost all day. That is really not like him, and the last time he got so sleepy and lethargic it was because he wasn't getting enough oxygen. So I decided that a trip to urgent care probably wasn't such a bad idea. So after dinner, off we went. Thankfully, there is a pediatric urgent care about 1/4 mile from our house. We were there for 2 hours, got 2 breathing treatments and a steroid injection, and got 4 prescriptions as lovely parting gifts. The doctor was awesome and really spent time with us explaining what was going on. He was able to tell us that Ben has bronchitis and Reactive Airway Disease (RAD). Basically, he's got very sensitive lungs and when he gets a cold, the tubes that lead to his lungs tend to get inflamed and restrict his airway. He warned us to not let anyone tell us that he has asthma, which is completely different from RAD. He suggested that once we get past this flare up, we should meet with our pediatrician and discuss and more aggressive preventative treatment. Poor guy. The good news is that he should grow out of it. When that may happen is anyone's guess. Hopefully we can get it under control soon so we can put a stop to these frequent flare ups!

Words, Words, Words!

Ben seems to be close to hitting the "word explosion" that toddlers go through. It seems as though he's spouting off a new word every day! I've been wanting to post some of his words so that in a few years we can look back and remember this fun stage! Here, in no particular order are some of Ben's favorite words:

Nana = Banana. This kid loves bananas so it's no surprise he learned this one so quickly!
Shoe
Na-n = Mommy. Don't ask me why.
Daddy
Joshua
Doggie - and he'll sometimes say Copper, too
Up
Down
Out
Ho = Help - this is one of my favorites! If he's having trouble doing something, he'll look at you and say ho-ho-ho, and his mouth is so animated about it. Love it!
sesast = breakfast.
Dite = light
Uh-oh
cheese
sees = Please
da-chu = Thank you
Hello = telephone. He picks up any phone he can find, puts it to his ear and says "Hello!"
Bubble
Hi!
Ball
tractor
tissue
doctor
yes
yeah
bench
kitty
fishy
towel
window
glasses
Moooooo cow
Lots of animal sounds

I know there are tons more that I am blanking on right now. But you get the idea. He is very much NOT the Silent Bob his big brother was at this age. This morning he surprised me by putting two words together, which is something he hasn't really done before. After he was done with breakfast, he started pulling at the straps on his booster seat and said "Want out." When I repeated back to him "you want out?" he replies "Yeah." That's the first time we have had such a dialog. Very exciting!

Welcome, Baby Adria

What a happy day it was on Tuesday! Andrew's sister, Kerri, and her husband Jonathon, welcomed their first child, Adria Lynn Jones. She was 7 lbs 4 oz, 20 inches long and so beautiful! She looks so much like her mama already. We couldn't be happier for them. Kerri and Jonathon are going to make wonderful parents. We're so excited to make a trip out to Las Vegas next month to meet our newest little neice (this makes number 6 on the neice/nephew ticker for those of your keeping score at home!). Isn't she just so pretty? Congrats Kerri and Jonathon. You done good!

Thought It Was A Booger But It's-Not

Josh got a cool new red shirt that he wants to show to all of his friends tomorrow. However, he wore it for a good part of the day, so obviously it needed to be washed. For some reason, this was upsetting to Josh, and through the ensuing tears, this exchange occurred:

Daddy: "But Josh, we need to wash your shirt for tomorrow... it's dirty!"

Josh: "No, it ISN'T DIRTY!!!"

Daddy: "Yes it is buddy. See, there is a giant booger, right there" *points to big booger in the middle of the shirt* (he's 3, it happens!)

Josh: "NO. THERE'S. NOT!!! It's a LITTLE booger!!!"

Despite Josh's rock solid rebuttal, the shirt made it into the wash...