Children of the King

Our calendar for October is nearly empty, but September has more than made up for it. On Saturday the
girls had play practice at church, then I decided to take them apple picking, and while we were there we thought we'd use up the Maize Quest coupons they earned in their summer reading program.

I avoided the large corn maze, but we did enjoy the bamboo maze, the tipping board maze, the corn house and the three story slide.  We visited the pumpkin patch, which was fairly sincere.

That evening we headed out to the Mid Autumn Festival with the Families with Children from China group. This was our first time there with Ruby. She was not too interested in any of it except the fact that they had a table covered in scissors and paper. She went to town cutting confetti, her favorite new pass time.

For Children of the King Sunday, the kids put on the play 'That's so Daniel.' They've been working on it for months, ever since spring. Pearl was Servant 1, and Sapphire was a lion. Ruby had practiced with everyone, but when it came to being on the stage, she was much more interested in starting fights with her big sister than singing, so she was limited to one song.

The kids performed in the evening too, followed by a spaghetti dinner. I loved seeing the whole cast play together after the show. They've got such a strong community of kids here.

We had co-op this week too. My class made the soap Sapphire and I had tested earlier, and it went very well.  We talked about how oil is hard to get off without a detergent, and the kids loved stirring the pot of shaved soap and water. One mom told me her daughter lugged her new soap to soccer practice and the grocery store; so cute.  Sapphire has been allowed to join the kindergarten classes now, so she is feeling very proud. I help a little with Pearl's last class, which discusses the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. Her teacher uses a neat, engaging video that shows a guy catching creatures from the beach area and explaining their adaptations.

Today I took Pearl and a friend on a field trip. We met up with a bunch of other home schooling families to go for a trip on the Underground Railroad. Women dressed as Quakers met us at a historical home, a real stop on the Underground Railroad. We walked with them through the woods, pausing to hear about what the real journey might have been like. The atmosphere was too lighthearted to capture the fear the escaping slaves must have felt, but it did drive Pearl to gobble up a graphic novel about Harriet Tubman I had brought along for the long ride there.

I was able to fulfill an item I sold at the church auction this summer. I prepared and served local wines paired with international cheeses at a friend's house for a party of five. The pairings worked out nicely, and everyone seemed to find something they really liked. The wines came from Naylor, Allegro, Nissley, and Moondancer, all nearby wineries.

This week I also took Ruby to the ENT. They've suggested we have tubes put in her ears. She does not seem to have scarring, and I haven't noticed extra ear infections, but liquid behind her ear drum may be making sounds muffled (and they know they know the liquid is there), so they want to allow that to dry up and clarify sounds for her. They said it would be a five minute procedure, and that she'd hear better right away.  It might even be a little overwhelming as she suddenly hears how loud the world is.


My husband is still feeling tired this week; that's his main issue. He just finished the antibiotic to work against the lyme. 

Daniel's Consult

The ugly bump pointing down on this image is his aneurysm

After talking with the surgeon yesterday, we were relieved to learn that Daniel will have the less invasive surgery on Oct. 9th. This is the one where they put a catheter in via the femoral artery, then thread a titanium coil half the width of a hair up into the aneurysm until it is filled with the stuff.  The idea is that the coil will be so packed in there it will stop blood flow, and the blood vessel will, if it behaves well, create a new blood vessel wall and totally annex the aneurysm.

She said that this option and the through-the-skull clamping both have about 5% risk of some unpleasant result, either minor or major, but from what I've read this has nicer outcomes. Plus, the recovery time is much speedier this way. If things go well, he could be released the following day.  If they have to put in a stent, and they won't know that for sure til they get in, then it would be two days in the hospital. But with even with the stent, she felt that he could return to normal activity after three weeks, once the femoral artery had healed from the incision.

Just so I'm not the only one to remind him: he isn't supposed to lift more than 5lbs, and he has to limit himself to a brisk walk.

We felt very informed. The surgeon spent half an hour explaining things. We were a little late for our appointment in the Infectious Disease (ID) clinic, so we rushed over there and sat down. Then it slowly dawned on me that we were in the *Infectious* Disease waiting room, so I tried very hard not to touch anything.

Daniel's ID doctor was delighted to see us. He spent an hour and fifteen minutes going over Daniel's lyme with great enthusiasm. At one point we thought he even got a little giddy about it. We figured he was glad to see someone who did not have HIV and was really recovering; plus Daniel's lyme is so 'textbook' that they all seem thrilled about it.

I'm thrilled that the recovery is textbook too. The one course of antibiotics will have routed it, though he has some post-lyme symptoms of pain in his right forearm and wrist, plus the extreme exhaustion he faces in the early evening. The doctor seemed convinced this would dissipate, and he said that the surgery date would be fine. He'll check in with us when Daniel is back at Penn next month.

Thanks once again for the ongoing prayers!

Birthday Month

Our September has had unexpected events, but we also needed to fit some birthday fun into this month. the two little girls have birthdays two days apart. My husband's stay in the hospital forced us to cancel the first party on the calendar, but we have since made up for it.  During the Actual Birthday Weekend my parents cooked dinner and lit up a bonfire Friday night for both girls, and their aunt, great-aunt, and others joined us for that.

The next day my in-laws had dinner and birthday pie. This year Ruby knew just what to do with those candles. As for presents, my mom gave them all canvas bags, and Ruby has taken to carrying her large collection of special washcloths in it, as well as her baby pillow pet gift from Grammy and Poppop. She now requires it to sleep.

While I was in Germany I met a couple celebrating the husband's "birthday month," and I realized we do that too, just without the official title (They had flown from North Carolina to Munich just to see a Rod Stewart concert, so their 'birthday month' luxuries are a bit more extreme than ours).  Our birthday bliss included visiting the York Fair to dawdle at the 4-H petting zoo and see the large farm animals. Pearl did not want to give up this kitten.

Two days later I took the bigger girls to a tea party with Sapphire's good friend Miss Darlene. We tried out the nearby Red Brick Bakery for lunch and scones.  The girls loved picking out their own tea cups. Lunch was very good, and I thought the scones were perfect.  We did have to explain to Sapphire that princesses do not use straws to drink from tea cups.

We also enjoyed birthday fun with our friend Jett and his family, and Nana will be taking the big girls to see Noah at Sight and Sound at the end of the month. 

Pearl works on her piano theory and Sapphire looks on

A final event of the week, which was not billed as a birthday treat, was a visit to a nearby powwow.  We went several years ago, and I felt like it would be the perfect thing to do on a not-too-hot late summer day.  We grabbed a friend and headed across the river.

The drums are mesmerizing, but Sapphire was hooked on the dancers. They have all different outfits and gear. Some just throw a shawl over their shoulders and hop into the circle to step dance around the fire. Sapphire's favorite was a man who had the turkey feather tail, the feathered headdress (but not like the ones in the 1950s movies), and a twirling stick that left her very jealous. The kids stomped around the fire during the Candy Dance, and Sapphire tried her own moves outside the circle, entertaining all the retired folks in our section of the lawn. It was a warm, family-oriented experience.You aren't really supposed to take pictures, so I didn't.


For school, we've been focusing on types of rocks with Pearl, and this has led to several experiments cluttering up the counter, I mean adding to her education. She liked growing salt crystals best.

Sapphire likes to join in when she can, so this week we did an experiment just for her. She oversaw the creation of our own line of liquid hand soap.We made half a gallon of hand soap according to a very easy recipe. Sapphire was thrilled with all the stirring while we melted shaved bar soap in water.

This Thursday we'll be heading back to Philadelphia for consultations with the infectious disease doctor and the brain surgeon. I very much want to know what our October will look like as far as Daniel's recovery, and we'll know more Thursday evening. I'll try to post that when I can.

10 Years of Ministry & Start of School

The kids made Daniel look like the gift he is

We were totally blown away by the worship service the church had prepared for this last Sunday. It was a celebration of Daniel's 10 years at our church, and with all that is going on, it was a perfectly timed piece of encouragement.

As we drove in, he noticed the parking lot was unusually full, and he asked why would so many people be here. Then he saw his parents and sister's family, and wondered aloud what they were doing there, but it was time to church to start, so he sat and seemed shocked when the elder announced that this would be a special day to honor the work God has done at our church over the last ten years.  He said later it was a total surprise and wondered how he could have missed all the preparations that went into it.

There were lovely songs, sweet poems for both of us, and the woman who headed up the committee that brought Daniel to our church spoke about that process. They presented the girls with plush lambs and silver crosses on chains. The church also purchased a Chinese elm in Daniel's honor, and they have a nice spot picked out for the tree and the commemorative stone plaque to go under it. I imagine few people in ministry ever have so much appreciation expressed at any time in their life, so we are very blessed.

It was all so touching and thoughtfully arranged.  I very much enjoyed the slide show they had of us starting with our first appearance at a church social ten years ago, the baby shower they threw for a very rotund me, the arrival of our girls, several baptism and weddings of dear friends Daniel was able to lead, while Ray Boltz's song "Thank you for giving to the Lord" played. The retired, former pastor was present to help Daniel spread the symbolic light of Christ throughout the congregation while another favorite song, "Light Your Candle" played. 

After the service we were treated to a sit down meal with homemade dishes, two real cakes, and a money cake that I will have to figure out how to take apart sometime (the cake's creator said she'd make these for a church fundraiser, if anyone is interested, soI'm advertising for her).



The previous week we had returned home after my husband spent several days in the hospital. He is feeling much better--the back pain has mostly eased, thankfully. Now he just seems very tired. He's gone from sleeping 3 hours a night (fitfully, due to pain) to twelve hours, like he can't get enough sleep.  On Monday night he put the little girls to bed at 7:30 and told Pearl to read for an hour, then immediately collapsed into bed. The whole house was eerily silent when I got home from class a few hours later.

Last week we returned home from the hospital and points east in time to begin our first week of school just one day late, but we made up for that quickly. Second grade has begin! And preschool has started all over again!

Here they all are on the first day of school.  We have begun Pearl with a bit of review, and things go pretty smoothly until we get to the creative writing. I have to rethink my approach there.

CHAMP, our co-op, started this week. I'm teaching a Science in the Kitchen class, and I brought Sapphire in with the Kindergarteners and First Graders to give her a break from the nursery. She enjoyed counting out froot loops to make a color chart. Pearl has classes in math games, writing, and amazing nature. I'm so thankful to have these other godly mothers offering their talents to enrich her education.

Home Now

Daniel got out of the hospital yesterday at lunchtime and was home for dinner. He has already seen a huge improvement in his neck and back pain due to the antibiotics treating the lyme. He slept for 12 hours last night, which is a huge blessing following a month of just 2-3 hours a night of sleep. 

He's pretty tired still and a little bit foggy, but happy to be home and moving toward a plan for treatment. He'll see the doctor in Philly on Sept. 19th and will schedule surgery after that. 

Brain Surgery

I had planned to write about a family reunion and Labor Day picnic this week, but our weekend took a strange turn. On Friday evening one of Jasper's adult karate students noticed his teacher had a facial droop. I ended up taking Jasper to the Chester County Hospital ER where we were fast-tracked since facial droop suggests stroke.

The staff relaxed after examining him and were about to give us a regimen for Lyme Disease and send us off, but the CAT scan came back with an abnormality that had the ER jumping. We got some disconcerting news that he had a 1 cm bleed in his brain, and they were sending him to Penn Hospital in Philly. He wasn't feeling any worse than he has for three weeks, but he ended up meeting his flight crew and boarding a helicopter for the 10 minute flight. The neurosurgeon wanted him there quickly and with a nurse by his side. Since it was out of his hands, he was thrilled to ride in a helicopter over the Philly skyline and refused the drugs they offer passengers to 'take the edge off.'

The next day we found that the blip wasn't a bleed, but an oddly shaped aneurysm, or balloon off the side of a blood vessel deep behind his right eye, which could lead to a bleed.  We were given some possible treatments, then told why the less invasive one would not likely work in his case. They wanted to operate because he's so young, and risk of hemorrhage grows over time. His hair will get even shorter, folks.

When I asked one doctor how dangerous the surgery would be, he said, "Well, it is brain surgery." Later, driving down Rt. 76 out of Philly, I chuckled about that. Usually when brain surgery comes up in a sentence, the speaker is being metaphoric.

So, after mostly waiting through the Labor Day weekend in a hospital bed with subpar tv and plenty of Sudoku, Jasper learned he'd eventually be discharged and would have to schedule the surgery for sometime in the next month. He's also being treated for Lyme Disease, which probably caused his back pain. As of Tues. night he is still in the hospital following another test which may or may not be the last one. I've brought the girls home to York County for the night.

The little girls did not seem to notice he was gone as they were feted by their aunts and grandparents and saw several of Chester County playgrounds. Sapphire seemed to think her daddy was at karate all weekend. I did bring Pearl in to see him, and she enjoyed making friends with his nurse, but soon she got bored of hospital life, and her obliging aunts took her home.

We are very blessed by the prayers lifted up and support we are receiving from our family and friends. Prayers now can be that the surgery is scheduled when God sees it needs to be, and that the outcome and recovery are smooth, and that we will use this testimony to serve God in new ways. The wait for surgery will be a little rough, as he is not to strenuously exert himself or spike his blood pressure; of course, he's been living with it for months or years,  but knowing about it does make us uneasy.



Our deep thanks to everyone who has prayed for us over the last few days. It has been humbling. We were a little boggled at being so calm given such an unexpected diagnosis. It must have been all those prayers for peace.