My babies have grown up!

 My blog designer reached out a month or so ago.  She wanted to know if I would like to update my blog?  Well, I really hadn't thought about my blog for quite a while.  But she made me a deal that I could not refuse.  Amanda is wonderful to work with.  She would have done a complete up do on my blog.  However, I really like the over all look of my blog.  So she updated the girls photos on the header.  My babies are no longer toddlers or middle schoolers.  Three are in college, one a senior in high school getting ready to go to college this fall and the youngest is a junior in high school this year.  How does time seem to stand still most days and then I turn around and WOW! The years have flown by!  And such beautiful young ladies they have become! 💓

Anyway if you have a blog and would like to update it.  Please contact Amanda Carlisle at https://www.simplystelladesign.com/ and tell her Christie sent you.  You will be pleased!

Now I need to get back into blogging.  Now I not only have my daughters to blog about, I also have three beautiful grandkids to talk about.  We are still grieving the loss of my stepson and I have no idea if we will ever get over it, but we have his three kiddos to spend time with and watch them grow up.  Neil will be 2 in April.  He has grown up so quickly it is hard to realize he is almost 2 years old!  Eddie will be 3 in May.  And big sister, Jillian, will be 5 years old in July!  We see them about every other month and watching them grow up is so much fun.

So a big HELLO to my former readers.  Hope you have time to come back and catch up on our family.  We are always busy doing something.  The 3 girls in college kind of have their own lives and trying to keep up with their schedules is confusing to me.  I ask that they try to keep our family calendar up-to-date with the hours they work so I can have some idea of who is where and doing what. Keeping up with the high school dance team can be quite a whirlwind, but that is winding down for this year shortly. 

Glad to be back!

Hello! Is anybody out there?

      So I have been MIA for a few years.  I would like to start blogging again.  I guess the best way is to try to fill in the missing parts of the past few years.

     So I was working in September 2016 and I hurt my back preventing a patient from falling to the floor from the toilet.  Yes, we have been told that we should "assist" them gently to the floor so we don't hurt ourselves.  My brain is wired that I am supposed to protect my patient at all costs.  So I managed to hold on to the patient, turn and get a hold of her wheelchair and pull it close to the toilet, and maneuver her from the toilet to the wheelchair with no injury to her.  However, my lower back was not impressed with my heroic movement.  I was sent to the emergency room and an MRI found that I had bulging discs and degenerative changes in my lower spine.  As this was not the first time I had injured my back in the 20+ years of nursing, it was the first time that workmen's compensation said that they would not be able to help me.  So I tried physical therapy, steroid injections and even had radio-ablation of the nerves that was causing all the pain.  Really nothing was helping.  I was unable to stand on my feet for a 12 hour shift.  I tried an 8 hour shift and found that I could not move for two days after.  Then we tried 4 hour shifts.  Some days are more rigorous than others and some days I would come home and literally be in bed for the next two days as I was unable to move about freely.  I filed for disability and then for the next two years I was without insurance as I was unable to work enough hours to keep my insurance active.  I also could not work/make too much money because then I was obviously well enough to work.  It was a catch 22 situation.  Don't work too much, but if you do you do not qualify for disability.  

     Well finally after 2 years of suffering, they agreed with my physician's that I was disabled and had been for 2 years.  In February 2020 I "retired" from work.  I have been playing catch up with all the physicians that I have been unable to see for the past two years as I did not have health insurance.  I am still catching up.

     In the meantime, my husband of 21 years was on a heart transplant list.  He received a Left Ventricular Assistive Device in February 2018. His LVAD was to be a bridge over to heart transplant and he was very close to getting one.  Then his health started declining.  He fell several times and his pacemaker/defibrillator shocked him one night and that was the beginning of the end.  He went to the hospital to wait for his heart, but instead his lungs failed.  He was put on life support with the goal to give his lungs a break so they could heal, but then his kidneys failed.  The cardiologist kept thinking that he would turn the corner soon and would be able to get his heart transplant that he had dreamed of for years, but in the end...we turned the life support off.  He passed away very quietly at that time with his 5 daughters and myself at his bedside.  We have had to tell ourselves many times that he lived at least 15 years longer than he ever thought was possible.  But things just did not line up as we were hoping they would.

     So the girls and I have been plodding along.  Many days it was one foot in front of the other.  School has been great at keeping them all busy.  And I have tried my best to keep life as normal as possible.  They still miss their Dad, but it gets easier as each year passes.

     We started spending more time with their big brother, Nicholas, and his wife, Shelby, and their kids.  Jillian is 3 years old and Eddie is 11 months.  Shelby was pregnant and because of Covid-19 we were babysitting frequently as she was the only one who could go to her prenatal visits.  The girls started to love being Aunts!  So much fun as Eddie was learning to walk and in no time was almost running!  Then in April along comes Neil!  Another nephew to love on.  Nick and Shelby had moved and were very, very busy raising their family along with trying to fix up and make their "new to them" house livable.  Sure, they were under stress.  3 kiddos under the age of 3 years old, one being a new baby.  It it very stressful to be young parents especially in these Covid times.  

     Then on August 17, the unthinkable happened.  For reasons we can only guess, Nick took his own life.  His wife and I found him that day.  It was a sight that I will never be able to unseen.  The only saving grace for me was the look of peace on his face.  I hope he has found peace, but his decision has caused nothing but heartache for those he left behind.  Not only his wife and children, but his 5 little sisters and I miss him so much.  We wish that we had seen any signs of what was coming.  But he acted like his self and there was no clue that this would happen.  He was my stepson for 22 years and I honestly never thought he would go to this extreme.  We are living with the what if's and constantly asking ourselves if there was any sign we missed.  In the meantime, his wife and children have moved about 4 hours away, closer to Nick's mother.  The aunties are brokenhearted that we can not spend as much time with the kids but we are hoping that we will be able to go soon to spend a day with them and we will try to see them as frequently as we can.  Their well being is utmost in our hearts.

This is Nick with Zora when she was 3 years old.  He was a wonderful big brother and an amazing father and parent to his three children.  I wish that I had told him that.  I will try to do a better job of giving credit where credit is due to people in my life for now on.  Wish it hadn't taken something like this to show me that I need to speak up.  

So we are missing the two men of our family.  Hope they have gotten together and are having a good time.  I will try to start being here a little more often.

Maybe it is time to start blogging again?

It has been quite a while and a lot of things have happened.  I actually think I will try to start keeping this blog at least a little more updated.  Stay tuned.......

14 years ago......

This 21 pound, nine month old bundle of joy was handed to us at the Civil Affairs Bureau office in the Guangdong province of China.   We had waited 405 days for her referral and with a bit of a bump in the process we were on the plane to go meet her just a week after our referral came for her.  All the other families in our group were getting their babies from another province so we were the only ones who would be meeting our baby that day.

She was very stoic during our first few hours together.  She was watching us like she was very interested in this alien looking family who had met her.   She did not cry and there was a little bit of a smile a time or two but mostly just curiosity as to who these people were she was being given to.  As long as we mixed her formula hot and had 10 ounces of it that she could suck down in a few seconds she was very happy.

Her older siblings were fascinated by her and big brother had her cackling a time or two.   She was a rolly polly little Budha baby whom the orphanage said was given the very best formula...which we also was loaded with sugar...no wonder she was a Budha belly baby :)

Even though she was a Non special needs infant, don't let that beautiful face mislead you.   She tested positive for syphilis and had to have two very large injections of penicillin to treat the disease and remove it from her system.  She also had to have a spinal tap to make sure that she did not have any problems with her spinal fluid being taken over by the syphilis and we had long bone xrays to make sure she was okay....and okay she is.   She does suffer some hearing loss from the syphilis and wears hearing aides bilaterally and she does have some vision loss caused by the same disease.  She has been diagnosed with ADHD and takes medication to help her concentrate and the rest of to stay sane when she forgets to take the medication.

But we can not imagine our lives without this firecracker in it!   She keeps us all on our toes and her OCD tendencies keep us in line.   She has the tenacity of a horse and she will go far in this life.

We love you ZoraLin MeiHe to the moon and back!  They were so right that you were our child!!

2nd runner up in spelling bee

Kendalan decided in Kindergarten that she wanted to be a spelling bee champion.   She has practiced every year.   A few years back in 4th grade she was the third runner up.   This year she was the 2nd runner up and will be able to participate in the State spelling bee in February.   Dad and I both attended the spelling bee.  There were 15 participants from 4th, 5th 6th, 7th and 8th grades.   We were on the edge of our chairs as the participants walked up to the podium.    It was nerve racking for me, I can only imagine the stress Kendalan was under.   Many words would have put me out a long time before the word "opinionated" knocked her out.   Personally, she and I think she spelled the word right but the judges did not hear her correctly.   Oh well, she will go to the spelling bee and in the mean time we will be practicing lots of spelling words.

Today was supposed to be an icy day out.   However, it was rain instead of ice.   I felt like I had been cooped up in the house for several days and decided that I would run to JoAnn Fabrics and get the things that I needed to start preparing to make a T-shirt quilt.  Zora decided to go with me and as usual, Mom was convinced to buy some fleece so Zora could make her boyfriend a blanket.   I think that it turned out very nicely.   Tessa, Kendalan and Zora tied the fleece after Mom cut the pieces straight and cut the "fringes" for them to tie.   The back is red.   Nice colors picked out by Zora with a little influence from the boyfriend :)

Our dog, Pugston, has been having some health problems.   He has a deformed toe with nail on his right front paw.   The nail grows and curls back into his toe if we don't get them trimmed frequently. We were very busy this summer and his toenails grew almost overnight it seemed.   The next thing I knew he was limping and favoring his front right foot.   He will NOT let us trim his toenails.  He turns into a 50 pound mass of muscle and there is no way that Dad and I can hold him down to trim his nails.  So we have to take him to our vet each time.  We thought that we had the nail thing under control after taking him every 3 weeks to have them trimmed, but I have noticed that he is limping pretty bad each morning when he gets up.   It is almost like he is getting arthritis in his legs.  He also had his teeth cleaned a couple of summers ago and a couple of tumors removed.  It looks like his teeth are giving him problems again and he has a couple of bumps that are suspiciously looking like new tumors.   He will be 9 years old on January 29th.   I did some research this past week and his breed of dog has a life expectancy of 9 to 15 years.   We do not have the funds right now to have his teeth cleaned...if that was an option and it was very expensive to have tumors removed.  We are praying that we will not have to let him go to the rainbow bridge soon.

Dad continues on his IV inotropes.  He had an appointment in Omaha this past week and they said it looks like he is doing great.  So we are keeping the IV running and the phone lines open!

Heart status

Dad was in the hospital over the New Year and his birthday.   He is now on IV inotropes that he is getting 24 hours a day per a tiny IV pump attached to his right arm where he has a PICC line.   He has been listed as a 1B status on the heart transplant list.   This is second in line as a 1A status is in the hospital on life-saving support systems.  

The girls and I drove to Omaha to see him right after his birthday.   They taught him how to do Snapchat.   Mom is still a Snapchat novice...don't care!   Then we went back on Tuesday and brought him home.   Mom gets to care for his IV pump here at home after having passed doing it in the hospital and again here at home with the home health nurse watching my every move.   Very nervous having someone watch over my shoulder even after all these years of being an RN.

They say that it could take up to one year before he could get a new heart.   He met a woman in the hospital who had been listed 5 weeks before and she was going home with her new to her, week one new heart.   She looked and said she felt great!  

While there are things that one must resolve in their heads and hearts about organ donation and transplant we have thought of what another family has to go through to give life.   It is not easy for either family.   We are not praying for anyone to die, we are praying that God will be in the right place and His hands will guide the doctors.

Happy New Year

So out with the old and in with the New Year!   Here is to 2017!  2016 has been a long year full of ups and lots of downs.   We are excited to start a new year and we are anxious to start it out with a big bang.   Or lots of horn blowing.  (Note to self...you have to listen to the horns.)

RaeAnne is bringing the year in with one of her besties.   Hollie and Rae started Kindergarten together and have remained friends all these years.   We always enjoy Hollie coming for a visit.

From our family to yours....Happy New Year!!!!

Annual Christmas photos

I try to take a photo of the girls by our Christmas tree each year.  I thought it might be fun to look back over the years.

This year.  Pugston has started liking being a part of the family.  Not sure he really likes the hat but he tries.

Last year Chrystal, our Washburn Exchange Student participated in the annual tradition.   Pugston jumped in again.

Then the year before that.

Or course we spent the holiday in Branson one year.   It was fun.

And then the year before Tessa was home.

Merry Christmas Eve

Here it is Christmas Eve.   Many things have been going on around here the past few weeks.   Dasher has been all about the house keeping the girls on their toes and the nice list.

Mom spent some time in the hospital this past week with a small bowel obstruction.  Not the way I like spending a few days but the care was great and I am slowly returning to normal.

Dad is pursuing getting on the heart transplant list at University of Nebraska, Omaha.   So Mom gets out of the hospital on Sunday evening and Mom and Dad head to Omaha Monday afternoon.   After two days packed with multiple tests and procedures we were back home Wednesday evening to help RaeAnne celebrate her 17th birthday.  

No way can she be 17th!   Where does the time go?   It really seems like just the other day that we met her in China.  One of the tests Dad had in Nebraska was vascular.  The RVT (Registered Vascular Technician) was a very nice guy and he told us about how school had really changed him.   We came home and had a long talk with Rae about maybe this was maybe something she could look into.

The weather in Kansas has gone from super cold to almost summer again.   The high for Christmas Day is predicted to be 63 degrees!   After last weeks lows of -3 and wind chills of -20's we are ready for warmer weather.  So much for a "white" Christmas.

The girls and I made Christmas Crockpot Crack this afternoon and boy is it Yummy!   They have been eating it like they are already addicted....guess that is why they call it what they do.  

So while all the girls are snuggled in bed...well, actually they are stomping through the house like they have horseshoes on :(    Our family wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and to all a Good Night.

Winter concert at high school tonight

Tonight RaeAnne played in the band for a winter/Christmas program and Zora sang in the choir.   Zora sings soprano and was lucky enough to stand by her friend Liberty who sings Alto.   The dresses they wear for choir belong to the school.  So no altering could be done.  I managed to use small safety pins to pin Zora's dress on so it would not slip off her shoulders and drop to the floor.   The problem with having one style of dress available....well not every one fits in that kind of style.   Fortunately with 4 small pins we had everything looking pretty.  Here are her sister RaeAnne and Zora before we left the house.  RaeAnne decided to use the straightener to work over her hair tonight.  Not sure where that idea came from but she did a really nice job with little sisters Tessa and Kendalan giving her tips along the way and it really makes her hair look nice.

Zora invited her boyfriend Andrew down for the concert.   His Dad and Mom dropped him off at the house so he could go with us.  I had been busy running errands in town and had only come home about 15 minutes before he arrived.  Zora has been excited that he was coming out to her concert tonight because his birthday was November 20th and she had been anxious to give him his birthday present and Christmas present.   Having a boyfriend who lives 45 minutes away can kind of put a crimp in their getting together very frequently.  Which is actually okay with her parents.  Even though he is 16 and has a car, his parents do not want him driving to Topeka, so we have to play musical cars and after his parents drop him here, then we usually either take him home or meet up with them in town somewhere after they get through shopping.

Since our vehicle only holds a max of 7 people, I opted to stay home and get a few things done here while everyone was gone.   Sometimes it is very nice to have the house to myself when I am vacuuming or trying to put things away.  I was able to vacuum tonight and get most of our Christmas cards ready to mail.   Mark wrote the annual Christmas letter very quickly last week and although it sounds very depressed, it does go along with the stress we have been feeling since early this summer. We are so anxious for 2017 to start.  It HAS to be a better year!   It certainly can't get any worse than this one has already been.

So Zora stood by Libby and their friend Kaylee sit in the audience with Libby's mom and tried to make them smile.  I think it backfired, if looks could kill, I think Kaylee May would no longer be walking on this planet :)   They still looked very nice in their dresses.  This photo actually shows them with smiles on their faces.

Dasher has been finding new places to hang out around our house.   It always cracks me up to see where he has landed each night.  Here are some of his recent escapades.  In the fire place!  He must know we have not had a fire in this house since we moved here.  Then he was sitting on the mantle beside a candle.  Guess he likes mood lighting.   Dasher is attracted to the ladies :)

Christmas is coming up soon.   Not sure when Dasher will leave us and stay at the Northpole with Santa and the elves, but as long as he is coming we are getting a laugh of where he lands for the day.

This and that

I have continued to be suffering from back pain.   Physical therapy helped, until the last visit when they tried decompression.  Ouch!  It started hurting about an hour later and it was not pleasant. I was released to work 4 hour shifts then 8 hour shifts.  After two 8 hour shifts in a row my back was throbbing.   Back to the doctor and right now I am waiting for the neurosurgeon's office to call me.  I am really not looking forward to possibly having surgery on my lower back, but I am excited to not be in pain anymore.

Since I have not been able to work, we had to make some hard decisions here.   I was still making payments on Cranberry....my 2013 Ford Expedition that we bought in December 2013 after Mark and the girls had a head on crash in our old Expedition.   I named it Cranberry as it was maroon and we bought it right after Thanksgiving.   It has been a fantastic ride and I will miss it.   RaeAnne's minivan will serve dual purposes for her and I in the meantime.   I feel like it isn't fair to Rae that she has to "share" her ride, but there really isn't an alternative to the situation.   I hope that one day I will be able to have an 8 passenger vehicle to call my own again.

Kendalan and Tessa had their music concerts this past week.   It is amazing to see how far they have come...from the first few weeks squawking and making the most terrible noises as they tried to play their instruments to the beautiful music they are now able to make.   I am very proud of these girls and the hard work and practice they do to make sweet notes come out of their flute and clarinet.

 
Tis the season for Dasher to arrive.  He has already made a trip to and from the Northpole to take Kendalan's list to Santa.   Here are a couple of the places he has landed this year.

And of course, we had to make our annual trip to see Santa at the mall.    The gal that was working with Santa asked me how many years have you been coming to see Santa here?   Gosh...quite a few, they are not little anymore :(