Latest Lowdown

Things are going well here. Just for a quick little update...

Joel's cross country flight didn't go so smoothly last week, but yesterday's cross country was super. He goes on another tomorrow morning, so be lifting him up for that. They are pretty stressful and there are many things that he has to remember to do specifically. Thanks.

For those of you who don't stop in at my other blog, things are going great for me on the weight loss front. I have decided to do Weight Watchers again (did that very successfully after Hadley) and things are moving right along.

The kids are all doing very well. Cass continues to sleep wonderfully (and eat and poop and smile with the same excellence). :) Eissa is such a mess and is enjoying life as usual. Grady and Hadley continue to love going to their class every afternoon and are spouting off new Portuguese words every day. Tomorrow is a holiday, so they will not be going tomorrow or Friday. Joel will also be off on Friday, so we are looking forward to a long weekend here.

One other thing...got this email from our friend in Longview to update us on O.L. Thanks for your continued prayers. They are obviously working.

04/29/2008 Update

Only got to have surgery on arm today because his blood was too low - Received two units of blood to correct low blood count.
Will have surgery again on Thursday for arm and ankle.
Will probably NOT have to have a hip replacement after all if his pelvis continues to mend and heal well.
Was having a lot of pain and discomfort today overall but the mobility is better in both of his hands.
Still needs lots of prayer for healing and peace over his body.

And, now some pictures of the last few days...

Our friends' son, Pedro (you've seen pictures of him before), comes down and plays with the kids sometimes. He brought down some sidewalk chalk the other day. The kids had a blast with it...and are still. Here are Grady and Eissa being artists. They are all really quite good...Grady and Hadley have stick people down and Grady is even branching out into more elaborate people. He's already surpassed his Mama's artistic skills. :)
I love this picture of Eissa.
Some of Grady's art. I saw it and thought that maybe he was drawing one of us holding Cass. He said, no...that wasn't a baby, it was the boy's arm...he was pulling up his pants. :) Funny. You'll probably have to click on the picture to see that detail.
Joel was working on the mower and Eissa promptly went and got some of his tools. She was really into it.
"CHEESE!"
Working together on a sidewalk chalk project.
My goofy oldest 2...Grady ignoring the camera and Hadley just being a ham.
I got done nursing Cass and Eissa was sitting in her seat. So, she got some company. It was really cute. And now a lot of pictures of that little sharing of the seat...
Aww-wee.


Another smooch.
This is the way Eissa looks when she is "telling" something exciting (telling in quotations because she doesn't actually talk alot quite yet).

A little honk honk on the nose...poor Cass.
Another "cheese" for the camera.
Eissa getting a little done with this scene.
One more hand-hold for the road...
...and another kiss for the road.
Oh...and, another honk honk for the road too. ;)
Horsey in the kitchen. It started out as just the girls sitting on Grady, but then Grady turned into a horse, much to the girls' delight.
Just Hadley gets a turn.

"Cheese" yet again.


Eissa's turn.
Then Eissa laid down and wanted to be the horse.

A little tongue action. Cass tagged along with me to the Asas ladies' meeting that we had last night (of course...I have her food). She was dressed in this oh so cute dress. It was a gift from Daniel and Dana Ryan way back when Hadley was first born. Super cute. Thanks Ryans.

O.L. Update

I asked our friend Amy to give me an update with all the details she knew this morning. She is such a good communicator and really delivered. I don't have a lot of time, so I thought the easiest thing would be to just paste her email here. Hope she doesn't mind. But, it gives you all the details as of late.

At the end of that there is another brief email that one of our other friends there in Longview wrote to us today updating us. Such great friends we have there. Anyway, loved the last line of his email. For those of you who know O.L., what he says in that last line is a good sign. :)

Ok. Here's the story as I know it from his cousin Kim.

Friday night he was heading North on Hwy 31 just past Reo. A Dodge Ram with 5 passengers, including drunk driver, was heading South on Hwy 31. The Dodge Ram lost control, cleared median, flipped and landed on OLs car and smushed it like a pancake. It took the jaws of life 45 minutes to get him out. One passenger in the other vehicle passed away. One passenger is walking with a neck brace. Another passenger is walking with minor injuries. Not sure about the other two or which one is the driver.

They did surgery on him for about 8 hours or so. His face got hit with something and his left eye is a little blurry and swollen but I'm pretty sure he'll be able to see fine when the swelling goes down. He has a vertebrae that is compressed (I believe that's what they said, I don't think it was shattered but it may have been). His right arm is ok for the most part. His right hand mobility is stiff but he made a Longhorn sign for me yesterday! :o) His left arm is in bad shape. There is a bone missing (probably crushed) so they've had to leave his arm open until they decide how to fix it. He has broken ribs but neither lung was punctured. He has no major internal problems in regards to organs or brain. His pelvis is completely crushed and he'll have to have a hip replacement because of it. His right leg is broken and his right ankle crushed. I believe they've already done some surgery on the ankle because he's in a cast (I'm not sure if it's a hard one yet or a soft one bc it was mostly covered by a blanket). His left leg is also broken and his left foot is swollen some. I'm not sure which femur is broken in which leg and what the other broken bones were.

He's being moved out of S-ICU tomorrow or Wednesday and into a private room. He will be in the hospital at least two weeks and will then be going to stay with relatives in either Kilgore or Longview. From what I know, he is expected to walk again once his bones heal. He'll definitely have to go through some therapy. He has several more surgeries ahead which I know one will be for his hip replacement and one for his arm. I'm not sure when these are scheduled.

He's supposed to be reevaluated today by the physician and we'll know more. He is swollen in several places but it's going down. He does have a new cell phone now but his SIM card was at his cousins last night so we weren't able to get it up and going. It should be up and going today or tomorrow but because of his limited mobility, his use of it will be limited. But, he wanted one so we got him one! He's still the social one! His mind seems to be functioning well. He was recognizing pretty much everyone whenever they were within range of his "good" eye. He's on a morphine drip right now but he says it's not working well. I'm sure it's working better than if he didn't have it though!

Anyways, that's the scoop that I know. He is thankful for everyone's prayers and well wishes. He's already making plans for when he gets out even though that is still very up in the air!

And now for the 2nd email...

He looks for the most part himself except his left arm was in a sling, his right leg was fully covered and in a cast and his head got scalped a bit so his hair was messed up. He was his talkative self though. He did seem to be in a lot of pain. The nurse said he should be in his own room in a few days and I plan to go see him again then. Keep praying.... Oh, and he seemed to be most upset that his phone had been smashed in the accident, lol.

O.L.

I want to ask you all to pray for someone very special. Lots of you know O.L. Some of you don't. But, we found out yesterday that he was involved in a really bad wreck around 3:30am Sat. morning. He was hit by a drunk driver and there were 3 cars involved. One of the drivers was killed.

They rescued O.L. out of the car with the Jaws of Life and took him to Good Shepherd (the hospital I used to work at in Longview). He had no internal injuries, but did break many bones and had to have surgery. Both legs and his pelvis were broken. One ankle was broken and one foot was crushed. One vertebra was broken. His left arm was broken in three places and is missing a section of bone.

As of the report I got yesterday, he was in ICU after surgery on a respirator. Our friends were there waiting for him to wake up.

It is truly a miracle that he didn't suffer more injuries than he did...and that he is even alive at all. We thank and praise God for protecting O.L. Please continue to pray with us that he would be healed and restored completely.

O.L. is SUCH a special friend to us. He is an AMAZING friend actually. Thank you for your prayers.

New Blog

I have started a new blog. It will be all about my weight loss journey this time around. I started it to keep myself accountable. I will be sharing all about what's going on with me in that area and also will be posting some of my menu ideas, great recipes, and health/exercise tips. Should be interesting, if you are interested in that sort of thing. :)

Anyway, you can check it out here and be sure to add it to your favorites or bloglines to keep track if you want. Oh, and I posted for the first time yesterday, so scroll down to see the beginning...there are now 2 posts on that blog.

Now, some pictures of course...


Eissa looks so cute in the background of this picture to me...holding her bat. :)

I love this shot of Hadley and Cass. Cass loves to have her brother and sisters around.
Some more pictures of yesterday's picture-taking.
I love how they were looking at and taking care of Cass in these pictures.


Eissa helping me cook supper yesterday afternoon. Amazing what some beans in a bowl with a spoon can do for an 18 month old. ;)

The kids made these yesterday at their school.
Joel and Grady made this last night in the kids' playtime before bed.