Update...(sad and good)

At 6:45 pm last night Baby Anna Joy joined Jacob in heaven. She started having uncontrollable seizures and her right lung was still collapsed. Her parents had to make the decision after being informed medically speaking there was nothing left for them to do and they didn't think she would ever survive. Please lift up her parents, Matt and Alissa, in prayer.

How my heart breaks for any parent that ever has to decide to take their child off of life support. While a part of me is jealous because that does mean they can hold their child one last time and love on them, they still have to choose that. I am glad we didn't have to make that decision with Jacob, because I'm not sure I could have. I am jealous that we didn't get to hold him again. The last time I held him, I was running into the ER with him in my arms. We didn't get to say goodbye. We didn't get to tell him one last time how much we loved him, how much he meant to us, and that we would miss him more than words could ever say. I didn't get to kiss him goodbye. The way he died and how fast he died took so much away from me. It kills me a little on the inside that I didn't get to hold him when he was born (I had a c-section for those you who didn't know) and I didn't hold him till he was 5 hours old and than I didn't even get to hold him nor be in the room when he left my world.

So okay lets get back to some stuff that will make the tears dry up that I have running down my face..
For 12 hours my friend Theresa and I, baked, baked, and baked cookies...536 to be exact. The kids decorated them all. We used a homemade cookie dough recipes and made homemade frosting. We did it for about 4 hours yesterday and 8 hours today. One oven, 5 cookies sheets, tons of flour, sugar, vanilla extract, crisco, butter, milk, and eggs-- our backs were killing us from bending over to get things into and out of the oven. We are donating 150 cookies to the 30 students at Rob's command that are staying here for Christmas and the rest we are donating to the chapel as they are collecting them to give to airmen that are staying here as well. They need 1500 cookies. We cooked and are donating a little over 1/5 of the cookies they need. We had fun though..but I'll be good if I don't make another cookie for a year.

Caleb is now starting to talk. It's quite cute. He says "datty" (for daddy) and he can "mommy". He has about a 50 word vocabulary now. He is also starting to say some sentences.. "get this" "my puppy", "me bite" and you should hear him say "hey" its so darn cute!!

Samuel is as active as ever and is as smart as a whip. He loves learning about wars and is really into WWII. My dad will be so impressed when we see him in March with Samuel's knowledge of military history. It is hard to believe that Samuel is only 7 years old. You may have noticed me writing Samuel instead of Sammy. Well a few months ago Samuel informed us he no longer wanted to be called Sammy, he wanted to be called by his name..Samuel. So there it is.

Silas is something else. He is so into bull riding and being a "ride 'em cowboy". He wants to be one when he is an "dult" (adult). He loves to push him limits with us and oh you should see his temper tantrums..you'd better get out of the way when he's throwing one. He is doing well in school. First couple of months was a big adjustment though. You wanna know something crazy about the schools here..Silas is doing stuff in pre-k 4 that Samuel was doing in kindergarten and 1st grade in California. He is learning to sight read (next year he'll start learning how to read phonetically), he is learning how to do patterns, he is writing his name, knows almost all of the shapes, can count to 20 (at the end of kindergarten in San Diego they had to know how to count to 25, here they have to count to 30 by the end of pre-k 4).

I am totally blessed with my boys!! love them all to pieces and than some!