I just have to sit down for a little while and take a break. Ivy is watching Arthur on Netflix, and Gen is sleeping. I have not been so good about writing... and lots of things are going in our lives, so I thought I'd better update! At night I'm too tired to try to write anything cohesive.
My heart is heavy today. So many people are dealing with immense pain right now, sometimes I just wonder how they can continue to move forward step after step. Please pray for our youth pastor, Doug Rumbold (www.thedimewithdoug.blogspot.com) and wife Jessica. Last week, their 5 year old daughter, Jada, was diagnosed with kidney cancer. They preformed surgery on her and removed a tumor the size of a football from her kidney. Results just came back yesterday, with heartbreaking news that the tumor was not a Wilms Tumor (very common in children) like they had thought, but rather Clear Cell Sarcoma, which is very rare- only about 20 cases a year. Little Jada is undergoing tests right now to see if the cancer has spread to her brain. This has greatly affected our church family, and we are all on our knees begging the Lord for a miracle. Jessica, Jada's mother, also just gave birth to a healthy baby boy early this morning. Can you imagine the emotion?
We were also dealt a new hand of cards this past week as we were given an ultimatum by our landlady. We have the choice to buy the house we are currently renting, or to move out by Mar. 1st. Her grandson wants to buy the house, but she gave a us first "dibs" on the house. Unfortunately, although we do love the house, we just cannot afford it right now as we still own our house in Branson. So, Jake and I spent a good bit of the weekend looking around Tremont and Morton for homes for rent. We got a couple of leads, but nothing that really felt right. After talking to Jake's parents a bit, and looking at a home that they had just bought about a month ago (for the purpose of renting out) on the other side of Tremont, we have pretty much come to the conclusion that we will probably rent that from them. It is under construction right now as they are re-finishing floors, painting and doing some other stuff to the house, but it will be ready for us by Mar.1st. When we first received the news from our landlady, I was completely heartbroken. I love this house that we are in... it's big, it's close to my in-laws, we have great neighbors... it seemed perfect for us. I shed some tears, definitely, but I know that this is God's plan for our lives... and after a couple of days, I am actually VERY excited to be moving. I am sorting and packing much more slowly this time and am going to prepare for a very large garage sale. There is no way I am going to move all of this stuff that we just moved last March all over again. It feels good to be "cleansing" our stuff :)
Took the girls to the Dr. this morning to get their second round of flu shots, and also to get their ears re-checked to make sure they didn't have any infections going on. Ivy LAUGHED when she got her flu shots. I had coached her earlier on in the day about it, and she told me that she was going to laugh, and she did! Gen did fine too, and only whimpered a little. Ivy's ears are fine, but Gen still has fluid in her ears... meaning, that we go back in another month for another check and if there is still fluid there, we will be referred to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist to start the process of getting tubes in her ears. Ugh. Like the Dr. said, there is not much likelihood of there not being fluid... but we know miracles do happen!
We finally got some snow this morning. Everyone I know has been talking about snow for days and days on facebook, but we hadn't seen any... but it finally hit. Ivy was so excited when she woke up and talked all morning about making snow ice cream. We made some vanilla snow ice cream finally after lunch today, and she gobbled all of it up. Genesis wasn't so keen on it, but Ivy finished hers up for her too. She keeps asking me if we can make more, but I just have to put my foot down... that stuff requires a LOT of sugar. Yikes.
Okay, gotta get back to work.
