So Much Life!

As usual, things are hopping around here. I"m not sure if anyone is still reading my blog,so if you are please leave me a comment and say hi. So many of my friends have stopped blogging, and I'm trying to get back to my diligence of reading blogs again. I love hearing about your families.

First of all, if you haven't been by lately, you can hop over to see pictures of Ashley's 4 weeks in Kenya HERE and HERE. And, Briana is in the midst of the production of Camelot, and you can see those pictures HERE.

The younger girls are plugging away at learning and loving life.....except when I make them clean up their messes. We have been working on a lapbook on the Fruit of the Spirit, but have taken the last few weeks off.
In early October, the 4 of us went to North KY to the Creation Museum. They liked it pretty well, although, we didn't find it to be extremely kid friendly. They are adding a hands-on kids area soon, though. They did enjoy parts of it, though.

We also got to meet a blog friend while we were there!

Jennifer and I had a great time visiting, the kids had a great time together, and the time just flew by. We talked for almost 3 hours.
We also visited an old high school friend the day before while we were there. We had not seen her since graduation, but we have become much more acquainted as friends on Facebook.
After our visit with Jennifer, we went into Cincinnati, and had a great time walking over the big purple pedestrian bridge in the rain. We crossed the Ohio River, and walked from OH to KY and back again. : )

Let's see, also in this past month, we've celebrated 2 birthdays. Ashley, our oldest~which most seems to surprise most people....that she's the oldest~ turned 23. Seven days later, Briana turned 20. The day after Ashley's birthday, we went over to Briana's to celebrate their birthdays together. We had a fun night of bowling.
(Briana is on the bottom; Ashley on top!)
We were supposed to be going camping this past week, but unseasonably cold temps made us have to postpone it. We're hoping to go next week, but are watching the weather. God worked out the timing anyway, because as it turns out Briana had an emergency, and I was back over to her house for 3 nights. Her 6 month old kitten, who is her baby to the core, started having seizures. He was already anemic, which turns out is probably related to this. He was in the hospital for 4 nights, and they thought he was better, but the day after he came home, they started again, and were often and very violent. He was diagnosed with something called FIP, which is basically encephalitis ~ swelling around his brain. Friday, the vet told her she needed to consider putting him to sleep. She was so heartbroken. I went over to help her through the weekend. In the meantime, the vet called and told her to put him back on the steroids. Long story short, it helped, and 11:15 pm Sat. night was his last seizure. The iron is getting into his system, and he is getting his energy and life back. Two problems, still. One, he is not drinking water, and we don't know why. She is having to mix as much water as possible into canned food, and she's giving him some a couple of times a day in a syringe. It is keeping him hydrated. They're still working on what is causing that. Second, the FIP is incurable. He will always have to take steroids, at hopefully a much lower dose eventually, and needs to avoid as much stress as possible. When she comes for a visit, they will have to increase his steroids for the time to try to prevent the seizures. Due to all of this, he may not live a full life expectancy, but he might. God has blessed us with answers to heartfelt prayers so far.
Briana and I spent a painful, but sweet time earlier in the evening Sat. night (when things looked grim), sitting in the floor while she held Snickers. We cried together, and she began to think and talk about the funny things he did all the time. Before long, she was laughing so hard. I just thank you Lord for answering those prayers!!!
While I was gone, the rest of my family surprised me, and chipped in on the work of buying apples, making applesauce, and canning it. All 3 of the girls helped, and James did the actual canning. Those times of asking him to, "please do this while I run and do this, " paid off! : ) He was paying attention to what he was doing! They did a great job, and got it all finished. Such a HUGE relief to me!
So, here I am, back at home, as of last night. I took the day off today, and took a nap, too! I am incredibly thankful to see the sun these last 3 days, after day after day after day of dreary skies and rain. Hope the Lord is blessing your families and days!