Saguaro National Park

We decided to take a drive to see some "cacti" in Arizona. We picked I think the most beautiful day of their trip to do so! We came home from church, packed our lunch and drove about 1 1/2 hrs down towards Tucson to this national park and OH MY GOODNESS, it was breathtaking! So here we're eating our lunch!

I thought this was a very cool looking cactus. The way its' arm grew downward.

This here is a dead cactus. This is what it looks like "inside" of a cactus. SO INTERESTING. They are like several sticks on the inside, and inside the sticks is a spongy type substance that can hold a bunch of water for a year so it keeps alive. NEAT!

Our way of keeping track of "busy boy." :) He LOVED it!

They wanted to see cactus! THEY GOT TO SEE CACTUS! :)

Perspective of out tall some of them are!

ONE of the injuries we experienced throughout our hike. Laine learned that it's not a good idea to "kick" a cactus! :) Yep! He had a NASTY thorn in his big toe!

Taking a rest! :)

Our beautiful hike, to which we almost didn't get back before dark!

Laine & Elizabeth having a heart to heart chat!

Towards the end of our hike. HARD WORK carrying two kids!

Some of the beautiful rocks.

Sweet Elizabeth and the kids.

I thought this picture of our family turned out really well! :)

Our miracles!! Laine, Ezra & Chavalah

Do you think Laine enjoyed his day and hiked hard!?

Baridons! My SECOND family!

Elizabeth & Laine working on a wood project together.

Elizabeth & Chavalah

Playing Checkers!

Some good friends of mine, and as I indicated in the title, my second family, came out to Phoenix for a visit! Elizabeth has already been out to see us a few years ago, so this is her second time, but Marilyn hadn't been out here to visit. Can I just say, WE HAD SO MUCH FUN! And I think they'd agree! We just relaxed, PLAYED, relaxed, ATE, relaxed, SHOPPED, relaxed, etc.

THANK YOU ELIZABETH & MARILYN for coming out to see us!!! We love you guys!

Ezra's Hospitalization

Well, we started our year off with a BANG! : ) Ezra started getting sick right after the New Year. It started out on a Friday with a higher fever of 103 and continued through the weekend until Monday and went all the way up to 104.5. He threw up in the middle of the night Saturday and then not again until Monday on the way to the hospital. He didn't have much of an appetitte it didn't seem and if anyone that knows our little Ezra, the kid eats ALL DAY! So by the time he woke up that Monday morning (almost 11), he looked absolutely miserable. He just wanted to be held, still running a fever, refusing to drink or eat ANYTHING now, so after visiting with our pediatricians' office over the phone, they advised me to have him checked in the ER. So, Ezra and I left within minutes and went to the Pediatric ER. We were not there even 15 minutes and they had Ezra hooked up to fluid. He was so low. By late that afternoon, they told us we'd be getting admitted for further observance and by 9:00 PM we were finally in our room! It was an exhausting day! Ezra had a virus called Adenovirus. It's not uncommon apparently. They start with a high fever, then break out in a rash all over their body and get blisters inside their mouth! Ezra had every symptom there was! NO WONDER HE DIDN"T WANT TO EAT OR DRINK!!! At about midnight this first night, I hadn't left Ezra's side for one second, and I asked the nurse if she'd come into Ezra's room for just a few minutes while I ran to the bathroom (I hadn't gone in the entire 12 hours that I was there), and she said, "I don't have time to just stand in the room with him, so if you want to leave his door open, I can listen to see if he's crying then keep an eye out on him that way." So, I RAN to the bathroom (down the hall, mind you) and RAN back, was gone a max of about 5 minutes and he had RIPPED, and I do mean RIPPED his IV out of his hand! He was sitting in a pool of blood all around him! It was actually quite scary! I was so upset! We didn't sleep at all the first night, the second night we slept better. And then we were discharged too early! Our pediatrician was going to send us back for readmittance after following up with him the following day. He was not happy with our discharge! Ezra was still VERY sick and VERY dehydrated!!!! But, we managed to get by with drinking a whole cup of Gatorade before 5PM. He is all better now, just still a little bit of the rash coming out, but they said that was normal for about a month after.

Wrapping him in a "burrito" so they could get his IV in! :(

Took two people to hold him down! He was a fighter!!!

Doesn't he look awful!! This was waiting in the waiting room with IV hooked up.

Ezra peeking out the ER door BEGGING to go home!!!!

In our room! BIG IMPROVEMENT! What one bag of fluid won't do for a very sick and dehydrated little boy!

Here's the rash that broke out all over! Hard to see. Sorry.

Daddy came for a visit. They both fell asleep in the chair.

Playing "peek."

Aunt Shi Sha came up to the hospital to see him.

Opa came to see us too! Very sick little boy at this point!

Oma & Ezra

Cutie in his crib!!

NURSE Aunt Rachel! Ezra at this point was very unwilling to drink anything for me and we were headed to our third night of staying at the hospital. Aunt Rachel came to the rescue! She got him to drink and eat sherbet!!! THANKS, AUNT RACHEL!

Granny had JUST flown in from Iowa! He was happy to see her again. We had just seen her in October.

Little Scare!!!

Some of you have seen my comment on facebook, and some of you are just reading this on my blog for the first time, but I wanted to come to you guys AGAIN and ask for prayer! FOCUSED PRAYER!!!!!

Some interesting things have transpired in the foster care/adoption for Chavalah. We met with her social worker just this morning and have a better idea of what's BEEN going on and what's GOING TO go on in the days ahead! A few short weeks ago Chavalah's biological mom showed up at the CPS office asking to see if she could see not only Chavalah, but her "adopted" children as well from both foster homes (us as one), which means, she wanted to see Ezra. Our social worker informed her that for sure she could NOT see her children that had already been adopted, but that she'd have to check with her supervisor about visitation rights for Chavalah for right now since the termination of parental rights haven't gone through yet.

Good news is the hearing that is now set for February 18 (please pray specifically on this morning) is an EXPEDITE to the April 8 permanency hearing. I went to two separate meetings and questioned the reasoning as to why we were waiting so long for the permanency hearing when NOTHING was happening before then, and the judge had mercy on my questioning and ordered to expedite that hearing. So, NOW, instead of waiting another 6 weeks to have the permanency hearing and setting a Termination Of Parental Rights hearing within thirty days of that, we are expected to have a TPR (which means we can then petition to adopt and mom CANNOT have any more visits) by the 18th or so of March!!!!!

Our social worker for Chavalah told the birth mother that she needed to contact her attorney if she was interested in having contact again with JUST Chavalah! My prayer is that she doesn't contact her attorney!!!!! This is a very difficult part of being a "shared" mother role, while I understand the value of it (for Chavalah wouldn't even exist in our lives if it weren't for this biological mother), it's a very hard thing to send "MY" child on a visit with a complete stranger to Chavalah! Especially after all the abuse.

Chavalah's social worker also said that CPS (Child Protective Services) is NOT changing their plan of action towards permanency even if the biological mother has "reappeared." IF there will be visits (which the state/CPS HAS to show they've at least made efforts to provide the visits that the mother wants or else the judge may see favor for the bio mom), we've been told it would only be ONCE a month for ONE hour, SUPERVISED!!!!

Now, please keep in mind, that despite the news we've gotten today, while it may sound "good" and all, that it can change at ANY MOMENTS NOTICE! Literally! If we haven't learned that lesson more than anything through this foster care journey it's just that!

One more thing to mention as way of acknowledging how God has literally protected our lives from more of a mess in our future!!!! The social worker said that the biological mom had tried going to the Social Security office to look up her sons' (Ezra) whereabouts and information and couldn't get any information on him. Literally, two weeks prior to this we applied for a NEW SSN for this very reason (as ALL of our information is under the old until we have a new). FORTUNATELY, they weren't even able to find the old SSN as it had already (JUST) been changed to our new SSN with the new name applied to that number!!! Had she tried literally even ONE WEEK before to retrieve this information using the old SSN, she would've gotten ALL of our information including our names, addresses, SSN, etc. GOD IS SO GOOD!!!! And His timing is PERFECT! I know this full well!

So, please keep praying for things to go smoothly. Please pray that whatever happens, that we will have the right attitude towards what we have to do. IT'S SO HARD!!!! I can hardly function just thinking about all the things that could change so quickly. This is why I'm coming to each of you for prayer about this.

I'm sorry this was so "random" in order of which I shared everything. My mind is consumed right now and I'm not able to communicate very smoothly!

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!! I'll post here every time something changes. Which could be frequent until we're through the TPR hearing!!!

Good night!

So, many of you have been begging for me to start posting again! More than one of you, so I have STARTED to try and catch you up! Things are starting to quiet down a little more since after the holidays and Ezra's unexpected hospitalization and virus, so you should start seeing more "steady" posts along the way instead of this MASSIVE blog update run.

I have made 5 new posts below and still have 7 more posts to go, including some updated pictures of our new yard and a few more home projects we've done on the inside, so keep posted in the next few days, I should have more to come!

For now, I'm signing OFF! Good night! Sweet dreams! Sleep tight!

AWANA Gathering

Visiting while waiting for everyone to arrive.

Eating!

And...............for dessert!!! Chocolate Trifle!! Mmm! Delicious!

And..........for the other dessert, Strawberry Banana Trifle!!

For going on three years, Laine has been in AWANA at Maricopa Community Church! Benjamin and I couldn't be any more thankful for the people that have dedicated their Sunday evenings to the bettering of our children. They are the most AMAZING people there are and they have loved, welcomed, mentored and helped Laine memorize God's Word in his heart and verses he'll keep in his heart FOREVER! It's absolutely dumbfounding to me when we come to a "review" section what he'll actually remember! I'm amazed. And it's all thanks to Maricopa Community Church and their people! So as a token of our appreciation, we had everyone over for dinner!! We had a BLAST! I think there were 13 of us total! Our kitchen was PACKED!

I found it! :)

So here is little Ezra that fell asleep in the Bumbo seat! Cute comparison picture! This was July 2007! Wow! Hard to believe it was that long ago! So, Ezra was 3 1/2 months old in this picture!