thankful for thanksgiving :)

It was so good to be back home for Thanksgiving!  Three months away from home is just too long. (don't worry, I do realize that it will be far worse when we move to Papua New Guinea!  God's grace will be sufficient, that's what I keep going back to!)

We had about 4.5 days in Indiana, and we made every moment count :)  It was a very busy weekend...filled with family and friends!

We started out by visiting my dear grandma, who had moved into a nursing home since I last saw her.  It was so good to visit with her!  I love my grandma :)

The first night, we had a double birthday party for Layla and Ivy.  They both have November birthdays, and Jill and I thought it just made sense to do a double party.  The girls were very excited, as you might imagine!  Here they are, decorating for their party...

I just love this picture of my dad with the birthday girls :)

Matching "Frozen" gifts...if you couldn't tell by these pictures, these girls like that movie!!

My mom had some crafts planned for the girl cousins (same craft I made as a child!  Love those star ornaments, mom!!)

It was so much fun to just be with our parents and Aaron and Jill's family!  By the way, epic fail on my part--I didn't get any pictures of us at Nathan's parents' house!  So sorry Dad and Mom M!  I'll make up for it at Christmas :)

This was a very cooooold day!  But I don't think these girls even noticed!

Nathan and I had a fun date together--in the middle of the night!!  Last year we did the same thing...we went shopping on Thursday night after our kids were in bed.  It is so much fun and just so strange to be shopping at Kohls and Target with tons of people at midnight!  We also met up with our dear friends for a Starbucks date at 2 am...so much fun!  We dropped into bed around 4 am...and I felt it the next day, that's for sure!  Totally worth it, though :)

Another of the evenings, we were so glad to get together with friends!  It was great to get these two cuties together again...

Our friends who hosted us also planned a fun game.  It was a dads/boys vs. moms/girls game, so right away that made it super fun.  By the way, the girls' team won :)

Here are the boys, ready to dominate us girls!

Each team had to complete five "missions"...such as this one, where us girls had to make brownies without reading any instructions.  Let's just say they turned out...interesting :)

The boys' team had to make a pyramid...good job, guys!

I just love stick on mustaches...so adorable :)

I was also so glad to be in town for my friend Christy's baby shower.  It was so fun to sit with these ladies and reminisce about high school days...haha!  We've all grown up a lot since then :)

It was such a fun weekend, but also good to get back to training.  We only have 3 weeks of training left until we graduate...and I cannot believe how fast it has all gone.  Wow.  More to come soon!

A day to celebrate Layla :)

Today was Layla's birthday!  She turned five years old...she is growing up so much.  This girl brings our family an unspeakable amount of joy!  She is very fun and spunky and so sweet and affectionate.  I thank the Lord for blessing our family with Layla Raine!

Just for fun, here are some baby pictures of Layla.  I cannot believe these were five years ago!  What a sweet baby she was (with quite a head of hair!)

And here she is today.  What a beautiful little five year old!  We started out her day with pink oatmeal...a "daddy special" :)

Some very dear friends took us out for lunch today, and the waitress brought out a huge bowl of ice cream for Layla!

Our other kids were happy to share it with her :)  I love Daisy in this picture!

And we finished the day with a cute Hello Kitty cake tonight--provided from the Lord in the "food pantry" here at MTC!  (basically a place where food donations go...so this $20 cake was free!  Thank you Lord!)

We love you so much, Layla!  We couldn't be more proud of you and we are so excited to see what the Lord does in your life.  Happy Birthday!!

"catch up post" #3: some halloween cuties :)

Wow, Halloween seems like so long ago now!  Now it is almost Thanksgiving...how time flies.  

On Halloween, Kaine and Halle had a little "parade" at their school.  Parents could come and watch, and then join the kids in their classrooms for a Halloween party.  I love school events that I can attend for my kids!

I love this pic of my sweet Halle, so proud of her Elsa dress.  And I love that the two other girls in this picture also have Elsa dresses!  Oh my goodness, in that parade it really seeme like 50% of the girls were dresses like Elsa.  That crazy movie!  (But just fyi...I secretly love it!  And check down below to see what ALL of my daughters dressed up like for Halloween!!) :)

I went back and forth between two classrooms...at Kaine's party...

...and Halle's party.  I brought Layla with me that day, and Halle so sweetly shared all of her treats with her little sis.  I just love love love moments like that!

That evening, our family walked around the MTC campus for trick or treating.  Such fun.  And yes, my three girls ALL have Elsa dresses.  Some of you may see these resurfacing as Christmas presents next month, too :)

My youngest Elsa :)

My girls were thrilled to knock on our friends' door and see their sweet baby Louise dressed up like a little strawberry!  She was so adorable...right when we all saw her we couldn't stop gushing over her cuteness:)  (I think in this picture she is getting tired of all the gushing though...)

The girls sang "Let It Go" when people gave them candy :)

We met up with a bunch of other cuties...we just love living on this campus!

Thanks for putting up with all of these "catch up posts"!!  This might be the last one...we shall see :)

"catch up post" #2: snake adventures.

A few weeks ago, Nathan was across campus when he and a friend spotted a copperhead snake!  To kill it, our friend ran over it with a car...repeatedly :)  Nathan brought it home to show our kids, and Kaine really wanted to skin it!   Nathan thought it sounded like a good idea, so he and Kaine skinned their first snake!

There was quite an audience of little people :)

I was really impressed with Kaine--he is so much braver than his mama!  I am so proud of both of my men :)

Then, a week or so after that, we were driving along and saw another snake slithering across the road!  (Shudder!!)  If it were just me, I would flee that thing as fast as I could.  But Nathan...nope.  He stopped our van and got out, to try and capture it.  Ha!  It was a pretty busy road, so we had some cars to wait for.  The poor snake got ran over THREE times while we were watching it!  And then it was still alive!  

Nathan went into the road and hooked it with a bungee cord from our van...

And then he tried to coax it into a sack...and he hooked it to the top of our van.  Sigh.  Life is interesting with that man!

So now, we have 2 snake skins in our house.  Pretty gross, if you ask me.  But actually, this is very good training for our future life in the jungle!  And I am VERY thankful that Kaine seems to be decently brave around snakes...I hope he will be willing to be my "snake killer" in the tribe :)  

"catch up post" #1: the airshow.

As I was looking back through some pictures, I realized there is so much that I missed in sharing on our blog!  So...here is the start of some "catch up posts" :)

So, the first one.  If you remember, my mom and dad visited us back in September (read that blog post here).  During that visit, we went to an airshow.  I had planned to blog separately about it, but I totally forgot!  So here it is :)

My dad loves airshows, and things like that.  So when they were thinking of which weekend to visit us, I remembered that there would be a local airshow, so it made sense for them to come that weekend! 

Kaine was very excited for the airshow--way more than the girls :)

The airshow was really a good one, for being in such a small-ish town!  The girls weren't too sure though--notice Halle's hands on her ears.  She has hated really loud sounds ever since she was a baby!  Haha...and this picture was taken right after we got there!  So anyway, the girls tolerated it :)

It was a good time with Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jan :)

But...the girls started to burn out pretty quickly!  The sun was making them grow weary :)  But they kept pretty good attitudes!

We saw a lot of hands on ears :)

And then came the jet truck.  This jet truck is pretty much that--a truck with a jet engine.  Therefore, it is extremely fast and EXTREMELY LOUD.  We all thought it was really awesome!  Daisy...not so much :)

Poor baby :(

But they ended up having a good time anyway!  Here are the guys with the kiddos, coming back after a race to get ping pong balls that had been dropped by an airplane (if the kids could get a ping pong ball, they got a prize!)

Such fun memories :)  Dad and Mom, we are so glad we could share our air show experience with you guys!  We love it that you were there to make memories with our kiddos.

my lasik story.

Background:

• My eyes first started going bad in second grade.

• As a result of this, my parents scheduled me an appointment and purchased me some hideous lovely blue-green plastic rim glasses.  (I should mention that I did pick them out myself--so I can't totally blame my mom) :)  That was the first of many a pair of glasses.

• I was stoked to get contacts in high school!  Thank you, mom and dad!!

• In our early marriage I briefly thought that LASIK would be really nice to be able to get--even though it seemed very scary at the same time.  But at that point, they told me that I wouldn't be a good candidate because my eyes were getting worse at every appointment.  So it would be wise to wait.  (Plus, at that point I'm guessing LASIK would have cost us a TON of money.  So it probably wasn't an option anyway!)

• Speaking of my eyes continuing to get worse...my eyes were REALLY bad.  Like, Nathan was shocked to find out that I couldn't make out the numbers on his alarm clock (on his side of the bed)--and they were big numbers!  Just looked like a bright green blurry blob to me!

• For the past 10 years or so, I hadn't given LASIK surgery a thought.  It kind of scared me to think about, and I just figured I would deal with contacts my whole life.

• Then...just a couple of months ago, a classmate of ours got LASIK in Kansas City.  He came back to classes and told Nathan and I all about it--including the fact that it pretty cheap (for LASIK)!  As he talked to us about it, Nathan started to think that maybe we should consider LASIK for me...

• I was terrified.  No way did I want my eyes cut open with a laser!!  However, Nathan wanted me to consider our circumstances.  
• #1--Even though LASIK isn't cheap, contacts aren't cheap either.  
• #2--Because of #1, I always tried to use my contacts as long as I could stand it.  I think I was supposed to throw them away every couple of weeks or so, but I would try to make them last months.  More than one person told me that this would be very damaging to my eyes later in life!!
• #3--We are planning to move into a remote jungle.  Hiking through the jungle, living in extreme humidity, probably canoeing for hours or even days...lots of circumstances like this.  Worrying about glasses or contacts sounds like a pain in those living conditions.  

• Considering all of this, we decided to look into LASIK...and we decided to give it a try!

So, this brings me to this past weekend...the big day!  I was actually pretty scared for this surgery, even though over the years it has become a very routine surgery!  But still, there is just something about letting someone cut into my eye that just made me nervous...  

We left our kids in great hands--Nathan's parents drove down to stay at our house with our kids.  Thanks so much, dad and mom!  Also, huge shoutout to Nathan's dad, who just recently had knee surgery--we are so glad you felt well enough to come, dad!

So on Friday morning, Nathan and I arrived at the LASIK place.  They first had to examine my eyes to even determine if I would be a good candidate or not.  And I was!  That was a relief.  They scheduled surgery for early in the afternoon.

Also during the exam that morning, the doctor had noticed that my eyes are pretty dry.  She really recommended that I get "punctal plugs" before the LASIK.  Punctal plugs are basically teeny tiny little "plugs" that are inserted into the bottom tear duct, which prevents my natural tears from draining as fast.  It helps to prevent dry eyes, which is especially a problem post-LASIK surgery.  So Nathan and I consented to get these punctal plugs put in (mainly because they offered to do them for no extra charge!)  It is a really easy procedure--no pain, they just insert the little plug right into the tear duct.  

However...as history would repeat itself, I passed out while she was putting them in!!  (Remember this post from last semester?)  Oh, this was discouraging to me.  The punctal plugs weren't even in yet, and I still had to undergo lasers cutting my eye open!  Oh boy.  I was nervous. 

By the grace of God, (I know there were lots of people praying for me!) the doctor got the plugs in without any more fainting!!  I really gave God all the glory for that one!  Then I was ready for my surgery...

(as we took this picture, I was really hoping it would be my last time wearing glasses!)

I went into the operating room and Nathan took this picture of me--believe me, that is a nervous smile!!

Praise the Lord, the surgery went soooo well!  It wasn't the most pleasant experience, of course, but it really did not hurt at all.  Just some really uncomfortable pressure, plus the thought of what they were actually doing to my eye was not fun to think about.  But seriously, the whole procedure took mere minutes.  The laser was actually only on for like 30 seconds on each eye!  It was so fast.  I was sooo thankful and just thanking the Lord that it was over so soon.  And I was so glad that I could hold Nathan's hand during it--I am surprised his hands aren't bruised I was crushing them so hard!

So they released me with instructions to keep my eyes closed for four hours!  What??  So I took a nap, but when I woke up, my eyes were burning so bad--the numbing drops from the surgery had worn off.  Nathan quick went to the store to fill my prescriptions (and bought me some Diet Coke...what a great hubby!) and when I started taking my prescribed eyedrops, the pain got so much better.  I could hardly open my eyes though--they were so sensitive to light and they just felt really weird.

Nathan took such good care of me :)

The next day, I woke up--and my eyes felt perfectly normal.  And I could SEE!!  Wow, what a strange feeling to wake up and reach over for my glasses, only to see that I could see clearly already!  I am still marvelling over it.  What an amazing thing technology is!

Nathan and I enjoyed the rest of our time in Kansas City--we had fun going to Ikea and Trader Joe's, and out to eat.  Oh, and we also stopped at Cabella's  (we had to pose in front of the grizzly bears to show our kids!)

If I had to sum up this LASIK experience in two words, it would be thankful and amazed.  I am amazed at technology.  I still cannot believe that just seconds under a laser could correct my vision...Wow.  And I am so thankful that God allowed me this opportunity to get my vision corrected.  I imagine it will be so nice to not have to worry about that when I am living in the jungle!  I am also thankful for so many of you who were praying me through this--thank you, friends!

the LASIK decision

I gotta make this short, but you can pray for me today!  Nathan and I are headed to Kansas City for me to get LASIK surgery on my eyes.  I'll give you more details later, but we have to get on the road :)  

Two prayer requests:

1. That my eyes will be eligible for the surgery.
2. That I will make it through the surgery!  Without passing out that is :)

Thank you friends!  Love you all!