Disney World

A lot of you have been asking if we actually got to go to Disney, especially in light of Sam's recent PICU visit. The answer: YES!!!

We had a fantastic time visiting with Fran, Bill's college buddy, and we tried very hard to relax after the exciting year we've had. I've included so many photos, you'll probably get bored of looking at them all. So, just scroll down to the exciting ones, if you don't want to read my blogging with each photo.

We went to Animal Kingdom one day. Neither Bill nor I had ever been before. I think it was just right for Sam, but Bill and I will always prefer Magic Kingdom.

While we were there, we saw animals from all over the world. Here are a few.

Obviously, this large bear was indigenous to the Park.

We stood in line for a long time to meet him.

Sam loved petting Pooh.

His favorite was Tigger, BY FAR! I think it's because Sam used to have this little Tigger toy that the Parris family gave him when he was little. Maybe he was familiar him.

They had professional photographers taking pictures too. If you want one of these pictures for yourself and a little larger, let me know. I can direct you to their website or send you one of ours.

Here is Sam waiting for the parade.

There was a parade in the afternoon with enormous, specially designed animals worked by one or two people. Sam really enjoyed watching all of the animals go by.

Some of the animal were very tall.

Sam collapsed after all the fun and excitement. Here he is in front of the Siberian tiger exhibit. Good thing there was a lot of glass between us and the tigers. The most dangerous ride the day we went to Animal Kingdom was the Mount Everest roller coaster. A 43 year-old man died of a heart attack at about 11am that morning.

We got to go to the petting zoo inside Animal Kingdom. When we first got there, I turned around for a second to get a brush for the animals and left Sam with Bill. I turned back around when I heard people yelling and caught site of Bill carrying Sam and running into the animal's feeding area (which was roped-off). As I gathered more information from the people yelling around me, I realized that one of the goats had stolen Bill's park map from his back pocket while he was kneeling down petting the pygmy goats. He was trying to get it back, but wasn't able to move fast enough. A park employee (aka "cast member") finally tackled the goat and got it back. I laughed so hard. The goats did it about three more times before we left the area (to three different people). So, the photo above shows how curious the goats are. It also shows the last time we ever saw Bill's hat, which was tied to the back of his backpack.

Sam meeting his first sheep.

It was extremely patient with him.

Sam especially liked putting his finger in the sheep's nose.

That evening, Sam finally got to meet Minnie. The line for Mickey was WAY too long. He liked her nose too!

The next day we went to Magic Kingdom with Fran for a half-day's fun. The last time we were in Orlando, I finagled free tickets for all of us (but only from 5pm on). Still, we had a GREAT time being there at night. They lit Cinderella's Castle up like it had ice sickles hanging off of it. It was beautiful.

Here's the family in front of the castle.

Here we are with Fran at the Country Bear Jamboree. I knew Sam would love it, and he really did.

We're waiting for it to begin in this photo. Sam loves his Uncle Fran. He wanted to be held by him a lot.

Have you ever been to the Jamboree? It looks like the same exact bears as when I was a kid. One of the bears even had fur worn off of her chest where her claws were constantly moving up and down. I was a little disappointed the magical aspect was gone for me, but Sam was riveted.

He enjoyed "Buff" the Buffalo head on the wall. When the bears were transitioning to another song, Sam would point to the wall and say "more" with his sign language.

I almost forgot to add this photo of Sam entertaining everyone in the waiting hall. He was dancing and making everyone laugh. He definitely enjoys being the center of attention.

Afterwards, Sam rode on Fran's shoulders through the Electric Street Parade.

We walked over to a new ride called "Monster's Inc. Laugh Factory." I had my reservations about this comedy show, but I haven't laughed so hard in months. It was an interactive comedy routine with different cartoon characters doing stand-up.

The cartoon character would pick different people in the audience and make them do his bidding. There was a hidden video camera and the audience member would show up on the big screen. Well, Bill was chosen and - I can't do this justice in writing - but the cartoon told Bill to give him his best dance. Bill was sitting with his arms folded and a scowl on his face when they first put his image on the big screen. The cartoon said to do a jig. Bill didn't change his position. The cartoon egged him and said to do a belly dance. Bill didn't change his position. Finally, the cartoon said to do the polka and Bill jumped out of his seat and danced this hysterical dance. Then, he sat down and put the scowl back on his face and folded his arms.

I laughed till I cried.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas.

HOME HOME HOME HOME HOME HOME

We are home today!! Sam has not had a fever for almost 48 hours! He has a massive ear infection though, so he'll be on antibiotics for a little while longer.

Thanks for your prayers. He's in such good spirits, but he's still tiring easily.

I'm going to post some copies of his rhythm strip tomorrow. They are CRAZY! His heart was beating about 350 beats per minute before the defib shocked him. Phew.

Here is some video of Sam dancing to a stupid Japanese song I sang. It was a mere two hours after his defibrillator fired.



And here he is trying to take Bill's ID sticker off. I took these with my cell phone, so they're poor quality.

Sam's in the hospital

A quick note to say that we are at WakeMed in Raleigh with Sam. He's had a cold and has been battling a fever for the last five days. Last night his fever spiked to 103 and his heart went into VTAC (irregular fast heartbeat). His defibrillator fired and we called 911.

Sam is doing exceptionally well here. His fever has gone down and has been down for more than 12 hours now.

Please continue to pray for him to recover quickly as they monitor him over the next 24-48 hours.

Thanks.

Santa Train

We got to ride a train last week on our way to Lancaster, SC. It was so much fun! It was Bill's first time to ride the train, and unfortunately for him, he was sick! It ended up being the Santa Train too, which meant Santa and Mrs. Claus got to ride with us. It also meant that every single child in Raleigh was on our train.

The train tickets had been sold out for a couple weeks and when I ordered our tickets (about six weeks in advance) I had NO IDEA it was the Santa Train. I had no intention of introducing Sam to Santa this year. Apparently Santa had other intentions.

Here he is getting ready to board the train.

Here are he and Mrs. Claus.

Santa just assumed I was expecting him and he sat down and grabbed Sam out of my arms. Sam wasn't having any of that, and he immediately squirmed out. He looks suspicious, doesn't he? In fact, both of them do.

Finally, Sam got a little a little spunk to him and stuck his tongue out. Santa couldn't let the opportunity pass and he returned the favor.

We had a great time, enjoying free breakfast food and drinks and watching all the kids tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. What makes children love Santa when he's not around and then cry when they meet him? It was a LOUD train ride, to say the least.

Sam now has Bill's cold and has been running a fever since Saturday morning. We've seen the doctor and he says it's just a common cold, but of course we need to pay extra close attention to the fever. Hopefully he'll get through this with no troubles and we'll all be ready for Disney next week.

That's right!!! We're heading on a vacation (finally!) to Disney World next Monday. We get an extra special treat of seeing Bill's grandfather while we're in Florida. Bill's grandfather hasn't gotten to meet Sam yet and we're so excited to see him after almost five years!

We're having a Christmas party here this weekend and having a real Chinese dinner on Friday night with some old friends. We even purchased a real tree. I love Christmas in America! But, we are getting quite homesick for China. Ho hum.

Thanksgiving Holiday

What a good looking family I have!!! From left to right, Uncle Brian, Adam, Kendall, Bill, me, Aunt Nancy, Uncle Mike, Sam and Uncle Patrick.

We had a great time with my family over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was the first time in my whole life that I was able to see my extended family during that time! Even more special, it was the first time in my whole life that I've seen my grandmother's house decorated for Christmas. I can't believe I've lived 31 years without seeing her tree!

I buried Sam in some leaves that my cousins raked up. He seemed to love it.

Here is Mary Ella with a cranberry jello that Kendall and I made. Kendall made it beautiful, I just made it solid.

We had about 27 people at Mary Ella's house for dinner on Thanksgiving. It was so special. Sam loved getting to know my cousins. Here's a pic of him and Jackson, my aunt Jennifer's son.

This is my Uncle Patrick. I loved the roaring fire in the background, plus the delicious sausage casserole in my belly.

Here is my Aunt Nancy with Sam. He is in love with her. Especially when she plays with the duck puppet. Right now, everything that he puts on his hands is called "duck" and says "kak kak." We got to see my good friend from high school (yes, in New York) and her family. They are workers in Lebanon and it was fantastic to see them and hear how God is moving in their lives.

Here is Sam with their daughter Esther.

And here we all are at Umstead Park on a hike this morning. Rachael is on the right - looks the same today as she did in high school.

Here is Sam with his girlfriend Laney. I have some awesome photos from today, but I don't want to hog all of them from Hollie. I'll post them later, once she's had time to blog. As you can see, Sam doesn't want anyone his age to wear shoes. He always takes his own off shortly after we put them on him.

Here are the cutest grandparents in the whole world. My coke-sporting Granddaddy and Memaw. We were so blessed to spend time with them.

And, last, but not least, here is Sam with our great friend Matt. We couldn't get a great photo, but this one is good because it shows you Sam's new sign. It means, "I want down."

Out and about

We are on-the-road this week. This is the very first Thanksgiving that I've ever been able to spend with my grandparents in my whole life. Bill was gracious enough to put me and Sam in a car yesterday and drive 11 and a half hours to Goodlettsville, Tennessee.

It wasn't a bad trip, but it'll be much better when we can turn Sam around to face forward. He's so little still.

We'll be here until next Monday and then we head back with all the other folks on the road.

In the meantime, my friends in Kunming are moving, packing and selling all of our stuff. Our friends are like family to us and will be sorely missed. Good thing we have Skype so we can call them all the time. OOOOOOOOOOOO, how our hearts ache to be back there with them and to be encouraged by them and other friends in Yunnan.

Can't wait to hear where we're going next...

I wanted to give a shout out to Erica and Steve - congratulations on your new baby! I'm so excited for you guys! Can't wait to meet him.

All I Want to Talk about is Sam

I don't have any pictures to post today, so you'll have to read my rambling instead. For some reason Bill's computer has decided it doesn't want to communicate with mine anymore. I guess my laptop said something his desktop didn't agree with. Such is life.

This last week has brought a lot of anxiety back into our little family's lives. Sam had his MMR shot on Monday and we were a little worried about it giving him a high fever (don't forget, he needs to be hospitalized if it's over 102). We Tylenol-ed him, just like the doctor said, for 48 hours afterwards. But Sam got a cold in the nursery last Sunday (of course, the first time I put him back in nursery in over two months!) and it brought with it a slight fever after the initial 48 hours. Poor little guy got poked with the thermometer more times than he wanted (he wanted zero times, in case there was a question about that!).

Every time Sam made a strange grunting noise, took a funny breath, or basically did anything, we were at his beck-and-call. We were quite nervous and this question was said (really yelled) a lot, "IS EVERYTHING OKAY? DID HE DO THAT THE DAY HE HAD THE SEIZURES?"

This coming Monday will begin a new round of Tylenol-ing (do you like my new word?), as fever can occur 7-10 days after the initial shot. So far so good though.

The GOOD news is that Sam is now running everywhere. Wait, is that good news or bad? I guess it depends on if he is coordinated at the time of running. He's only uncoordinated when he is really tired, which is when he just wakes up and just before he goes to bed. Sam's ped told me last week that since his feet don't turn outwards like most toddlers (which is fine), he is going to go head-first into most objects as he falls. Turns out our doctor is very insightful. Wow, can this kid fall!

In other news, also regarding Sam, we are trying a new nighttime routine that we hope will give all of us more sleep. So far he has been waking up twice a night (at the very least) every night for the last two months.

Side note: Can you believe it's been two months since his surgery? Times flies.

Yesterday, Bill and I finally decided to sit down and talk about a game plan while Sam wasn't screaming in the middle of the night. I know it sounds like a no-brainer that we would talk about it during the day time, but for some reason (probably too tired) we just couldn't remember to talk about it. Anyway, the game plan is this: if Sam wakes up before 2am, Bill will try to put him back to sleep. If he wakes up after 2am, I will nurse him once. If he wakes up again, Bill is in charge of putting him back to sleep. It seems like a lot of work for Bill, but if I get anywhere near Sam at nighttime, he assumes he's going to eat and gets extremely worked-up if he doesn't. It's almost impossible to put him back to bed without nursing him after that.

So, last night Sam woke up at around 1:30am and it took Bill 20 minutes to get him back to sleep. But, the good news is that Sam didn't wake up again until 6:45 and he was ready to be up at that point. I also gave him a whole 40 minutes more of sleep by putting him down early. I'm thinking that we should probably move his bedtime to 7 or 7:30pm (from 8pm) and see if that helps. I had more sleep last night than I've seen in months. Eventually we hope to have a self-soother on our hands, who will put himself to sleep without needing Bill.

I hope tonight goes as well!

To all you new mothers out there: a game plan is essential to your nighttime rest. I don't know why we forgot, but it is extremely important.

We will see Sam's wonderful cardiologist, Dr. Scott Buck, next Friday. We always look forward to our visits since Dr. Buck is such a brilliant and personable man.

Oh, and before I forget, we are taking Sam and Bill's first train ride soon. We're speaking at a place in Lancaster, SC and have decided it would be more economical, and better all-around for Sam, if we take the train to Charlotte instead of driving. Can you believe Bill has never been on a train?

What does the future hold for us? That's the question of the year. I'll let you know when I do, but in the meantime, keep thinking about us and our doctors as we all make decisions together.

Religious Views at NCSU

Courtesy of my brother, Adam. Phew. This is sobering.

Fall at the cabin

We had a fantastic opportunity to go to Bill's grandfather's cabin over the weekend in Georgia. We took a long weekend and spent a night at a friend's house on our way up there. It was a miserable drive for Sam, who prefers to spend his time toddling now instead of riding. We spent a night with our friend who used to live near us in LJ and who is now working with Samaritan's Purse. We are so sad that Matt doesn't live closer to us right now, but we definitely cherished every moment with him. He is, and always will be, Uncle Matt to Sam.

We got so many great photos while we were over in Georgia! Here are a few.

At the cabin - notice the wood-burning stove, if you can see it. It got the place up to about 100 degrees. Phew!
Here's a Bill's-eye view of the cabin.

We got to hike to a waterfall while we were there. Unfortunately, it was obvious the drought had affected the falls - as the water was just trickling down the rocks. Sam still loves that I wear him. Sometimes he'll find the Baby Bjorn in the house and drag it over to me so I will wear him around the house. It's so comfy and so nice to have him very close.

Here's another one with Sam and his daddy.

And another. Notice Sam's mouth is puckered a bit - he was saying, "oooooo" at the time.

Here I am loving on my son. He's so easy to love.

That log was perfect for him to sit on.

And, finally, Sam and his Nana.

Fall is here!

I thought about posting these in several different posts, but you might miss something that way! So, here are a ton of pictures depicting our most recent days (which have been filled to the brim with excitement).

The above photo and the next one are here at our house and were taken today.



Let me get to our Florida photos that I've neglected for too long. We went out on Fran's boat in the Indian River in New Smyrna for a little fun. Sam loved riding in the boat, though he felt it was a little windy.


He especially enjoyed driving the boat with Fran and then, when we were anchored, with me.





We went to a "disappearing" island, which was really a sandbar that appeared and disappeared with the tide. It's quite a large sandbar though. We had fun practicing walking (yes, Sam is walking when he doesn't have somewhere he wants to be quickly - that's when he crawls) and playing Frisbee.



Here's a photo of Bill with David Hudson, his best friend from childhood. They were at Vickie and Dan Watson's acting studio in Lutz, Florida. I have some photos of Vickie and Bill, but they didn't turn out very well. Vickie just had a baby too - she's a teacher from their high school. Can you believe they all keep in touch this many years later?


Next I have a random photo of Sam playing the piano. He loved the one at Karen Hester's house. He could barely reach the keys, but loved making music.


By the way, for those of you who heard about the Medtronics recall on their defibrillator leads, Sam was no affected by it. Thanks for your emails and concern. Dr. Buck, our favorite doctor in the WHOLE world, called to let us know Sam is not in any danger. Thanks, Dr. Buck!

Moving on, we went to the fair last week with Adam and Kendall. We had a fantastic time - I just LOVE the fall in North Carolina. The weather has been unseasonably warm, but the fair made us feel somewhat normal for this season.

Here are Adam and Kendall. Adam's a real photogenic guy.

Adam took this one of Sam. We love how it highlights his beautiful curls and smile.

Here's one of me and Adam together. You might be noticing that I'm much thinner than days past. I'm continuing to lose weight due to the meningitis. I, obviously, don't have meningitis anymore, but the effects will be felt for a while. I still get headaches and neck aches and I have to eat a ton of protein just to break even with my weight. Hopefully I won't go down anymore.

Here's the family trying to make funny faces. I love the circular action of this photo.

We were in a tent eating our sausages when Adam said we needed to take a photo of the food for my father. He has books and books of his photos of food. Anyway, as Bill was taking the "normal" photograph of the sausage, he started getting very animated and directing Adam to "work it." This was the end result after about four or five very funny photos.

Our neighbors, the Jones family, along with some folks from our church, got some free pumpkins, bales of hay and mums from the fair. They set some of them up outside their house and I just had to get photos.

Here is Sam with Eden. She wasn't quite as sturdy as Sam was - she's a little peanut just like Sam and a couple months younger.

Hope you enjoyed the photos - I'm sure you'll agree that Bill is a fantastic photographer. He is such a talented man and I am grateful to be the recipient of his many gifts.

Disney World

We just got back from a trip to Florida where we went to a big conference and then took a few days of vacation. We had a fantastic time seeing Bill's old friends in Brandon. We were surprised at how many people remembered him from his music internship days, and even youth group days, at Bell Shoals. Everyone welcomed us with open arms. I can't stress how much we needed the encouragement and prayers that we got during the conference.

Afterwards with went to Winter Park to stay with our good friend Fran. We had an extremely relaxing time with him when we went to Disney and then to New Smyrna to see his parents. I'll post pictures of New Smyrna later, but for now, enjoy our pics from Disney. I will say this, it was exactly what we needed after the month we had!

Poor Sam didn't get much sleep the entire trip, but he really did enjoy himself at Disney. All the sights and sounds were a little overwhelming at first and we didn't actually get to ride anything until about two hours in. I had to feed him, change him...this and that got in the way of actually doing anything at the park.

I was so excited when I found out we could go around Halloween-time. I've never been to Disney during Halloween and was excited about the decorations. The greenhouse at Disney put small pumpkins (the size of a grapefruit) into a Mickey mold and made whole Mickey-shaped pumpkins. Here we are just before getting kicked out (we didn't buy tickets for the Halloween Bash after 7pm and had to leave - but don't worry, I got three free tickets out of it!).

Here is Sam having his first bite of gigantic turkey leg. He LOVED it. It was a bit too heavy for him to hold alone though.

Sam took an instant liking to Fran and had to be held by him on more than one occasion. Fran even volunteered to keep Sam while we went on the Haunted Mansion ride. We were a bit nervous leaving him about 50 feet from us while we were inside, but Sam slept most of the fifteen minutes we were gone. Phew. Fran knew just how to make Sam happy.

Sam and I went on the Winnie the Pooh ride, which used to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. It was essentially the same ride, only a story from Winnie the Pooh was being told instead. I was a bit disappointed, actually, but Sam didn't care one bit. He loved it.

Here are the guys just before they went on Splash Mountain. Don't worry, Sam didn't go with them.

We've had our hands full since we have been back. It's a special week over at Southeastern and we got to set up a display table yesterday. We went to the fair with my brother and his wife last night and didn't make it home till late. I'm a bit delayed in emails right now, so please forgive me.