Update on our new life

So as many of you know, Grant, me, and the kids moved to Florida.  After about 8 months of praying and feeling like we were supposed to move, we finally were able to.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.  Packing up my whole life and leaving.  I have lived in Washington my whole life.  I have never been away from my family before.  It has been very tough, but I feel like it was a good move. 
We get to be near Grant's brother, sister in law, and our beautiful niece!  We are all settled into our new home.  We were in a tiny 1,000 sq ft house with three girls who have tons of toys.  now we have 2200 sq ft and I love it.  I find myself wondering how we ever lived in such a small house.  And now we have more than one bathroom!  Yay, 4 girls and one bathroom was going to get harder and harder to do. 
 Brooklyn is all registered for her new school and starts in three and a half weeks.  I am not sure how I feel about not being the only one raising her :( but I know it will be great for her. 
There are so many kids in our neighborhood!  My girls have already made quite a few friends and there are so many more to meet. 
We have tried out quite a few churches.  man we are great at going to churches on weeks that there is a guest speaker or a not normal service.  We have one more church to try out then we are going to go back and try the churches again.  We have only seen one normal service and we ruled that church out.  We are enjoy this time to find a church and see how different one church can be from the other, but I am so ready to find a church! 
Normalcy for us has not been set yet but we are having so much time to just be with eachother.  In Washington I felt like we never had time together with Grant and the girls.  It has been a great time to grow stronger in my already great marriage and to spend time just having fun with my girls and Grant.  We have been to Disney World twice.  We want to go one or two more times before out annual passes expire.  Ironic how now that we live an hour away from Disney, we can no longer afford an annual pass :(  But I am glad that we had them for these first 2 months.  We also went to the beach which was so beautiful and the water was so warm!  I did jump our quick when we started to see jelly fish though!  Kinsley has no fear of water.  She giggles when she goes under.  She scares me and makes me smile all at once.  And Malia has turned out to be shy.  I never saw that one coming!  She is the one at home who is "singing" (screaming) at the top of her lungs all day. 
I am looking forward to what God has in store for us!
I am missing my family so so much.  I am so thankful that my sister is flying down here in 13 days!  That will help with my homesick feelings.
I miss you all back home!

Faith

I have been thinking a lot lately about faith.  My faith is the most important thing in my life.  Jesus died for me and saved me.  As a Christian it should be my job to show Jesus' love to people.  We recently moved across the country to Florida and we have been trying out churches.  The first church we went to we were sitting in service and behind us was a women who seemed to have some brain damage or was on some drugs, not sure but something was off with her.  She was talking loud and being disruptive.  Pretty quickly a few people in the service swarmed her and said she needed to leave.  She needed to go out in the lobby because she was being disruptive.  Her response was tears.  She started crying and saying "I just want to listen to what the Pastor is saying, I want to listen to the beautiful music.  Why are you being mean?  Why are you making me leave?"  I was instantly moved to tears.  I wanted to stand up and fight for her.  Yes she was loud and yes she was disruptive, but what was it harming?  She was searching for God and wanting to learn more.  And Christians response to a hurting soul was to kick her out.  She was asking it so the people that already know and love God couldn't learn more.  To me it seems like if we have a chance to reach an unsaved soul we should take it.  What was it going to do, oh man I wasn't gonna get my weekly teaching in one time because some lady was loud.  I felt so bad for her and it made me think about how that is true too many times.  We talk about reaching the lost and teaching people about God's love, but if it makes us uncomfortable or is an inconvenience then we second guess it.  My goal in life is to show people God's love by loving them and accepting them.  When God gives me a chance to teach someone about him I hope I don't ignore it and move on because I like my comfortable life.  

Specialists

Man the last 6 months has gotten away from me...
About a month ago we took Kinsley to the orthopedic.  He looked at her x-rays (they were not very good, taking x-rays of a 12 month old is tricky) and watched her walk a little and looked at her legs.  He said a lot we are not going to know.  We have to wait till she grows more and see what happens.  But he did say she will have to have surgery on her knee.  She has a valgus knee, also known as knocked knee.  It is a simple surgery with a quick recovery.  Until she has it he said it will probably be painful for her to run and maybe even walk.  He also said she would need a surgery for the leg length difference.  There is two options and only time will tell which one she needs.  If her leg length difference is less than 2 inches then she will just need a block put in her good leg when she is almost done growing.  That evens out the legs.  If it is over 2 inches then she will need leg lengthening surgery which is very intrusive, very painful and has a long recovery.  Essentially what they do is break the leg, put a metal cage around it that has screws that you turn everyday and it stretches the leg out a millimeter at a time.  He said he cant tell where her length difference is going to be but he is guessing right around 2 inches so we are hoping it is right under so we can do the simple surgery.  It also looks like her ankle will need surgery, but he couldn't tell for sure because there was no x-rays.  He wants her to get looked at again in a year to see how she is doing and if they can figure out more.  Everyday I watch her and just smile when strangers tell me she is so balanced and a great walker, runner, climber.  They can't see what is wrong with her and they are amazed at her.  Thank you God for blessing her and making her far succeed what we thought she would be doing. 

Kinsley's Birth

It is fast approaching my babies first birthday and I figured it was time to write down how Kinsley came into this world, or should I say flew into the world...

Tuesday afternoon on February 28th 2011 I started having consistent contractions.  They were not too bad, but I knew that they were not going away.  Once I entered active labor with my older two children, labor went fast, so I figured I should head to the hospital.  When I got there the nurses checked me and a doctor came in to talk to me.  He said that the nurses and my doctor wanted me to go home because I wasn't progressing, but he suggested that I stay the night in the hospital because he thought Kinsley would be born fast once labor started.  I agreed.  So I received some light meds to help me sleep through my contractions so I would be well rested.  I woke up at about 3:45 with painful contractions.  The nurses came in and said I was dilated to a 3 and was now in active labor.  By 4:15 I was telling the nurse I needed to push.  She told me I probably had to go to the bathroom.  I told her this is my 3 child and I know what labor is like and asked her to check my progress.  She said she wasn't going to check for a few hours because I was not ready.  For the next hour I kept telling the nurse i needed to push and she kept telling me I needed to go to the bathroom not push.  Finally I decided if the nurse wasn't going to let me push and I was going to have to stay in agony for a while I needed an epidural.  Actually, I figured they can't give epidurals past a certain point and so I was sure she would check my progress before giving me one.  But she didn't.  So in came the anesthesiologist.  He made my Mom and sister leave the room because only one person (Grant) is allowed to be in the room while getting an epidural.  Kylie and my Mom stood right outside my room.  Right as the anesthesiologist finished I decided there was no more trying not to push.  I said out loud to no one in particular "I am going to push!" No one listened.  I was sitting on the edge of the bed (that is how I needed to be to give me an epidural) started to lay down, my water broke.  At this point between my water breaking and my screaming dramatically increasing the nurses realized what was going on.  All their eyes got huge and they started running around like crazy trying to get things ready.  In the process of them running around, Kinsley decided to make an appearance.  Grant saw while non of the nurses did and he got a scared look and put his arms out to catch her (now I laugh remembering his look then his hands).  Thankfully a nurse saw reached over and caught Kinsley.  When I say caught Kinsley, imagine a movie where a baby is born and flies across the room....pretty much that is what happened.  From the time my water broke to her being born was about 10 seconds.  The on call doctor did not even make it into the room.  He didn't even get notified.  When he did get to the room he looked at me and said "I told you it was going to happen fast.  You would not have made it here if we sent you home".  Needless to say about 3 minutes after Kinsley was born the epidural kicked in.  Oops.  Kinsley was born at 5:40.  An hour and 25 minutes after telling the nurses I had to push.  Had they listened I would have had 35 minutes of active labor.  I am worried my next baby will be born if I sneeze around her due date. :)  My Mom and sister were out side the room when they heard my screaming get louder.  They tried to come in and a nurse said they we not supposed to be in here and the ignored her and were just able to run around the curtain in time to see Kinsley born.  Kinsley just wanted to make a dramatic arrival.  She wanted everyone to know she was here. 

The stess of life

God works in ways I least expect.  I always have these ideas in my head of the way things should go.  Get married, have kids, buy a house, spend tons of time with my family.  As a kid dreaming about the future that is what you think.  Fairytale ending.  Once you get married everything is gonna be perfect.  God has other plans that I would never have thought I could handle.  My marriage is great and for that I am thankful.  But I never really thought about all the other stresses of life that everyone goes through.  Grant working all the time, being tired when he gets home, having bad work situations, and still struggling every day to pay bills.  Going through times where you are worried about businesses closing and not having a job.  Every stress and every worry has helped me grow.  Helped me realized that God is more important than where I live or what I eat, even down to little things like not having cable.  God always takes care of us.  Even when we do not make enough in a month.  Somehow we make it through and we are fine.  Right now we are going through a short sale process on our house.  Our house is for sale for $100,000 less than we bought it and there is little interest.  We only bought is 5 years ago.  As stressful as it is, and no matter how much of a failure I feel like, this has been a huge growing experience.  God will always provide for us.  Sometimes we go through tough situations but it is only to make me rely on God and go to him with my prayers.  Unfortunately it seems like when my life is going good and I am not stressed that I rely on God less.  I hate that thought.  That when I should be thanking God for a great life he gets pushed off.  Being stresses and worried or hurting is what draws people to God.  So even when it feels like what you are going through is horrible and you can never handle it...you can as long as you lean on God.  God has a plan.  He knows what is best not me.  I am frustrated our house is such a good deal in our minds and nobody is interested, but God knows what he is doing.  He is preparing Grant and I for our future.  It might not be the future we dream about, or the future we think is going to happen, but it will be the future God wants us to have.  We might be stressed about money and paying bills for the rest of our lives, but if that is what it takes to make us rely on God then bring it on.

Fibular Hemimelia

Well our results from the geneticist came back.  Kinsley has what is called Fibular Hemimelia.  Fibular hemimelia is the complete or partial absence of the fibula bone.  It is a mild form thank goodness, because severe forms have lots of surgeries to fix it.  The x-ray showed that her fibula and tibia were both shorter than those in her right leg.  It also showed that her femur is shorter, which we had no clue about.  It is her 2nd toe that is missing.  There was not x-rays taken of her ankle but it seems like she might have a ball and socket joint instead of a hinge joint.  This is making it a little hard for her to walk but she is adjusting.  So for treatment the ankle could have to have a reconstruction but that all depends on how the orthopedic thinks she is doing with it.  She will have to have some sort of lift for the leg difference.  And of coarse she will have different shoe sizes.  When she is close to done growing the doctors will go into her good leg and put a staple in the growth plates so that the leg stops growing so the leg difference can even out.  That is for a difference of 2 inches or less.  If by some chance there was more of a difference (which does not look likely) she would have to have some very serious leg lengthening surgeries.  Thank you Jesus it is not supposed to be that far off.  It is a little scary thinking about them messing with the good leg.  But I guess that they can watch the growth until then to be able to tell when to stop the growth in that leg.  I am relieved that it was not the other problems the geneticist was looking at (one that can cause cancer)!  This will only affect her leg, not her health.  My heart does break for her with the problems she does have.  The poor girl already has a limp :(  But I know God will take care of her and she is so pretty and sweet and tough that she will be able to handle any teasing she receives.  It does feel good to finally know for sure what is wrong with her leg.

Kinsley the determined

Kinsley is my 10 1/2 month old daughter.  My youngest of three.  The last two weeks have been eventful for her.  She is learning to walk.  I watch her take a few steps and fall and she wants to get right up and try again.  She tries over and over all with a big grin on her face.  Her dedication amazes me.  Not the normal dedication of a baby learning to walk, but a child with a disability learning to walk.  With each step I see the difficulty she is having.  With every step my heart breaks for her.  But she keeps that smile on her face and keeps trying.  A few minutes after Kinsley was born Grant looked at me after examining his perfect daughter and told me she was missing a toe.  The nurses did not realize it, they were a little frantic after my whirlwind labor (that story will come later).  I looked at her foot and sure enough she had four toes, two of which are webbed together.  At first we thought that was it.  That the poor girl would be embarrassed of her toes and never wear flip flops.  But as she started to grow we started realizing that her her foot was much smaller in length and width, her leg was shorter, and the newest realization is that the ankle has some structural problems.  We were told that when she started walking we would see the extent of her problem.  Now she has started walking.  I sit in my house and want to laugh and cheer that she is overcoming her leg disability and walking so young, but I also want to cry every time I see how hard it is for her.  She has a hard time going straight.  A lot of side stepping and going in a circle.  Her little ankle rolls funny and gives out.  Yet she gets up with a smile and tries again.  Amazement.  I feel like if it was me I would sit on the floor and cry after the first time.  My Christian walk is the same way sometimes.  I try to live good and try to follow Gods laws, but over and over again I fall.  Sometimes I stay down for a while and wallow.  I want to be able to bounce right up with a smile and say "It's ok, I will just try harder this time".  I want to have the dedication of my baby.  I pure sincere smile.  To keep going and keep trying no matter what is thrown my way.