Just Sharing Some Pictures

From Christmas!  Better late than never.  This is mostly for myself just to have pictures on here to remember Christmas 2012.  We went to Washington and had fun with cousins and friends.  

 Estelle's viking hat that daddy got her.

 Cousins!

 My 4 bestest friends in Washington and my kids.  I think this is the first picture we've gotten with all of them!  I just love all these kiddos.  They range in age from 8 1/2 to about 4 months.

The annual fondue party with my friends from high school.  This year it was hosted by Brianne.  Good times.

 Lesha, Matt and I drove down to Seattle to meet Michele and family.   The boys went to the Seahawks game and us girls and Hazel did a little shopping.  It was a great kid free night for me!

 Sledding on New Years Day.  Estelle and Abby had such fun together!

We Are Here

 We are finally in Kodiak and settled.  We got here about 2 1/2 weeks ago. The last two months have been crazy.  We went to Washington for Christmas and three days later the movers came to pack our stuff up and they left with it on January 9th.  We stayed in Coronado for 10 days and then headed up to Washington (again) on January 18th.  We drove up (I will share some pictures later), Reese got on the ferry with the cars to head up to Kodiak and a week after he left, the kids and I flew up to Kodiak.  So needless to say, it is nice to be in our own home, with our own stuff and own beds.  I am loving our house, already feels like home!  Here are a few pictures I've gotten since we've been here.

 There are bison here!  So cool, they live in the wild about 45 minutes from here.

 Estelle is her usual dramatic self.  One day she insisted on wearing her bathing suit.  This was her at some point that day.  Bathing suit, fairy wings, Belle high heels... playing with her jewelry and "makeup."  Oh my.

And Lane is enjoying exploring.  The back yard has been fun for him to play in and he's met the neighbor boy and has been playing football with him after school most days.  The adjustment was the hardest on him with starting a new school.  He is into his 3rd week now and I think it's going much better.  His school seems great.  He is in a 2/3 combo classroom which I think is great since he is old for his grade.  

I really haven't even known where to start with the blogging.  It started out that I just didn't have much time for blogging with the move etc.  Then as time went on, I think I kind just didn't want to think about having to type out what is going on with me.  But I have taken some time and gathered my thoughts.  We know now that my heart condition is the same thing my mom had.  It is a hereditary heart condition.  It's not brought on by lifestyle choices like diet, alcoholism, or drug use, high blood pressure, high cholesterol etc, like many heart diseases are.  I am doing well physically.  I feel pretty normal most the time and thankfully I haven't had any arrhythmia's or heart racing episodes.  But two days before we left Coronado to move up here I had a meeting with one of my cardiologists.  That day he told me that based on the knowledge that they have about this disease I have, that I should have a ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) implanted.  This ICD would control any arrhythmia's that I might have.  I was shocked by him telling me this since I had never had an arrhythmia, I knew that I would probably need one in the future, but now?!  But they don't know when these arrhythmia's will start and they want to have it in place before they do.  These arrhythmia's can be deadly like my moms was.  I sat in the doctors office holding a defibrillator in my hand, I was speechless. 

Over the last month, I have been overwhelmed.  I have been angry.  I have been in denial.  For a good couple of weeks I tried not to think about it, I busied myself.  After all, I have a lot to busy myself right now.  We got the entire house painted and unpacked every last thing.  I needed to make a doctor appointment here so I can get a referral to a cardiologist and get the process going for all this, but I didn't want to.  What I wanted was to enjoy my new home, get settled in, have fun decorating.  But today I finally went to the doctor.  Nothing new to report, I am just in the process of getting a referral to a cardiologist in Anchorage.  But I am on the right path.

Through this process God has been working on me to be aware of His presence, lean on Him for peace and trust in the hope I have in Him.  I ran across these words today that I had written in my journal.

"Hope is acting on the conviction that despite what we see with the natural eye, God is working in the spiritual realm to accomplish his perfect will in our lives.  His hope does not disappoint."

I have realized that I need to take time everyday to reflect, to decompress, to listen for what God is saying to me.  After Case died I found myself setting aside time everyday to grieve.  It sounds weird, but I found that I needed to sit down and make myself think about Case, read my bible, write down my thoughts.  I think if I hadn't done that, maybe I wouldn't have really processed everything, really grieved.  You can distract yourself and keep busy in order to not face things head on, but that is not healthy for me.  And I am finding that to be true now too.  I can be in denial and put off what I really need to do, or I can face this head on.