I'm so lost even My GPS won't save me

It seems everywhere I go right now, even if I've been there before I've gotten so horrifically lost, even my gps can only half of the time get me out of the mess I've driven into... It takes prayer to find my way anywhere anyway.
Last week I went to take Jonathan to register for Kindergarten at his assigned school. It's nearly 6 miles away and it takes 2 freeways to get there but that's just the area.  Like all great stories that I've heard about getting lost...It either involved the weather or how much gas was in the car.
In our case it was only the temp outside. it was at least 104 degrees outside. gas was not ever an issue.
Okay so we were lost, and as I was trying to get us onto a road I needed to be on (going back to the freeway and trying this again was an option) I found a park next to a big ditch.
Drove through a residential neighborhood and got back onto a main road just a couple of blocks shy of the school.
we arrived and began the process of de-boarding our car.  There were about 25 people and their kids standing in line.  Since the only shade was next to the building and Sarah was definitely sweating and turning red...I immediately ditched the line and went into the shade... Later I went to the back of the line and did not regret my decision to get into shade.
The time came for them to open the doors and we waited there for 7 minutes.
Never did I know until now I moved to the land legalism (an all the bureaucracy and all the needless paperwork that comes with it).  There were Papers explaining the papers that all it said was the normal stuff, name address, birthday, etc.  But do I REALLY need to fill out a SPOKEN language survey 3 times?
and doesn't your phone and car insurance just as legal as your electric bill since they all say what your address is?
I didn't have a copy of our lease to prove we live here...so they said here's the paperwork, come back when you have it all filled out with the lease.  We did not at the time have a copy of the lease so it was a good thing to go get our copy.
It turns out that we needed to come back this last week for a meeting so they could say they needed to test him.Blah blah...
They don't have IEP's here but ARD's(but the idea is the same)
We are glad we got a medical diagnoses last year because without one we would have been ineligible for services when he turns 6.
The rest I don't understand and I really without a reservation, DOUBT Andrew knows(even though he says he does).  These people weren't speaking plainly and were talking over our heads.  Just do the paperwork FOOLS...Call it what you will it's the same. Apparently, they didn't expect us to know so much about the IDEA law, and didn't expect us to have the paperwork we did (with his diagnosis)... and certainly didn't know we knew they are trained to CUT services and not add them.
Thank you to the lady for emailing me to tell me ahead of time to be prepared for a battle. Helped us to get prepared and prayed up.
They didn't think we could get a pediatrician that fast , but we did that morning and got a solid MD that's got my back on this who will hold these people to what they say so Jonathan and Daniel get what they need to succeed.
Don't mess with....
Okay you're thinking TEXAS
BUT
It's MOMMY

Even when I'm hopelessly lost... I know my child and I know what I need to do to get it done.
We saw a great pediatrician with a hyphenated last name at a practice called MyChildren's.  We were able to get both Jonathan and Daniel in within 1 day. (totally unheard of here to get a new patient appointment. Usually this takes several weeks and maybe there is an appointment available.  God knew I needed that appointment to get everyone settled back with specialists etc and medication.  Sarah will go at the end of September for her 9 month appointment. (thanks to Dr. S for buying us some time)..

Be Blessed

Cherished Children and Starting School

Being a Pal Mommy and having kids of the age of starting school. I thought I might just take this as an opportunity to  explain what a cherished child is.

 What makes a cherished child: A cherished child is in many circles I travel in , any child that was either born or adopted after a loss. They are known by many names: Pal baby, Pal kids etc. Of course all kids are special... but to a PAL mom our kids are cherished

PAL- Pregnancy or Parenting After Loss.  And yes you CAN call yourself a PAL mommy without ever having to be a part of  the webMd or the grad forums. At least here with me and my friends.

I know several in real life (IRL).  One special Mommy to me is in her PAL pregnacy...she's having a girl. Due just after Sarah's birthday after having suffered 8 or more miscarriages and one failed adoption!
I am pretty sure she'd take any and all prayers for her and her baby.

I'm of course looking forward to Jonathan's first day of school. For us this is a long awaited milestone.  We tend to celebrate a lot of things in our family because well, why NOT?
I'm going to take my camera and some tissues because I will definitely be shedding some happy tears.

I posted earlier on Facebook a question and I have friends who will be sending their kiddos off to school for the first day of school...


Kids Starting Kindergarten in 2011

Jonathan (8/22) My Child
Benjamin- Kristy's son
Cheyenne-Alisa Schmoak's daughter Cheyenne
Paul- Kela's Son
Kaden- Heidi's son
Warner- Beth's Son
Amber- Lori's Daughter
Dillon-Amanda's Son
Shayli- Toni's Daughter 




Pre-School or Pre-K
Daniel- (my son) (after he gets tested)
Jordan- Amanda
Derek- Dawn's son (who missed the cut off for registration for Kindergarten by ONE day. What GIVES?)
Athena- Kelli's Daughter
Memphis- Alisa's Daughter

Patrck- son of our friend Brooks and Cynthia (who intentionally missed the cut off by 2 weeks) (whom I consider family)
I know Christy was trying to get Sarai into a preschool.  I hope Patrck got her into one...

Now you know I won't be the only one shedding tears this year  so I'm blessed!

As a praise report a friend of mine named Jennifer started her new job today...I am anxious to hear how it went..

Remembering Christy

This is Christy (also known as Screamingbird for those who knew her on Pregnancy After Loss and the Grad board).
I've known her (without actually meeting her in person) for almost 6 years. I met her on WebMD on one of their forums after I miscarried Samuel. She was one of the first people I got to know.
Like me she was there because she had suffered through a miscarriage. I met a ton of my other friends through the same place the same way. These are my PAL mommies. We've gone on to have cherished children, and grown to share a great deal of friendship.
To be honest I probably can credit my friends advice and support for the kind of parent I am
. We have all shared so much of our lives with each other. We've laughed together and wept and got angry when things were going on with our closest friends.
Christy has a little girl she fought for to even give birth to...I remember when she was put on bedrest.
She had her and her daughter Sarai became a cherished child to this community as do every child in our community.
2 years ago Christy was diagnosed with AML (a form of Lukemia). We watched her fight that disease with everything she had and found herself in remission.
Fast forward to nearly a month ago, when she found out she was sick again with Lukemia. 
As a friend and part of the community we all readied ourselves and rallied together to help her fight.
She went through a round of Chemo and shaved her head (more as a symbolic thing to say this aint going to take my hair or anything else "I got this")
three weeks ago as she was recovering from Chemo and getting ready to go get her bone marrow transplant, she got a fungal lung infection. Her immune system was low due to chemo so although normal people could have easily fought it off, something else happened.
Unfortunately nearly 2 weeks ago the lung infection weakened her heart, and she had a couple of cardiac arrests and passed from this world.
This rocked the PAL mom community to the core. I am certain my feelings are shared to a certain extent. This was a real shock. Everyone who knew her thought she's got this licked. she's going to bounce back.
The only thing is...
She DIDN'T.
And now there's a 4 year old girl (who was adored by her mom) without her mom.

Being a mom with kids around the same age as hers, I immediately bawled for a while, hugged my kids and thought about what would happen to my kids if something like this happened to me.
I guess it's time to go do both a will and a living will. No one wants to think about stuff like this.

It would be impossible to say we are not grieving. We all are and I believe that although she's not in pain and in a better place, she's not here with us.

She is in God's glory. Someday we'll see her again along with the babies that are there with her that we all never had a chance to meet. We'll see her again... For real and she's probably playing scrabble and going streaking through the streets of heaven.
I just want to tell heaven you took another of my friends. a GREAT one. Rest in Peace Christy. We got it.

I am officially and you'll have to excuse me pissed at cancer. I hate you! Stop taking my friends, my family and most of all I hate you for separating moms and their children, and children from their mothers. Both of these totally suck. Please God, I know you hear my prayers find a cure for this horrible thing called cancer. Thanks.

Trina (who is hugging her kids)

My 200th Post- Welcome To Texas

Welcome to my 200th post.
Welcome to Dallas/Fort Worth, TX.

We completed our move in 2 very difficult phases.
First we got a majority of what we owned into a 14 foot trailer. This was a very time consuming and energy consuming task. Even more so in more than 100 degree weather. The rest was either given away, put on pallets to be sent to the retail store that Andrew is working for or sent to a friend's house to be shipped to me later. 
Because our children are very important to us and we were almost certain  that they were feeling the stress of our move we decided with our family friends that it was best if all of the kids and myself traveled via airplane to our destination. This would prevent the pain of traveling for a long time with small children (2 of which are in diapers) and it would also make more room in the vehicle.
We are close family friends with a friend of ours who was able to use her buddy passes and we flew American Airlines. Thank you Cynthia... Our hearts are very grateful for your generosity.  It took a few hours to get on a flight but once we were on, we eventually were on our way... The plane was full of families of Boy scouts. Some were in uniforms..
Both Jonathan and Sarah fell asleep on the plane as soon as we too off. Daniel was a true handful between taking off his seat belt, and trying to take off his clothes and go streaking on the airplane.all whilst being loud and comical.Many people stated that I was really brave for flying with 3 kids.  NO I was INSANE  for flying standby with 3 kids. I was brave for carrying it out. I should be awarded the mommy badge of honor.

Thank you to Jennifer and Jonathan W. and Barbara (also known as Babz and sometimes my anonymous commenter)and  George P.- Barbara hosted us at her home and took us to the airport. We are really grateful for the southern breakfast you made for us because it was after 6:30 pm when  we landed in Texas.
Major thanks to all that came and helped, lent prayer or emotional support.

Andrew left a few days later and drove across several southern states. It took him a day and a half. to get here.

Thanks to a friend's and God's providence, we hired professional movers we stumbled upon whilst driving around our apartment complex. This was a independently owned local company and not a major chain. The owner worked on every job. They were all very nice and within 2 hours all of our stuff was in our third floor apartment. This would have taken Andrew and our friend Brooks 3 weeks in this weather.  And it was well more than worth what we paid for them.  I will never move without movers again! I just wish we had this on the SC side of our move, It would have been much faster..

Here is a picture I took on my phone last night. I hate my new phone. I had to give up my Blackberry Bold. I loved that phone.
The trailer is now back on craigslist for 2600. and Andrew will be looking for another cheap but reliable car to drive himself to work.

Prayer requests- We will be taking Daniel to the School district office here to get his speech assessed to see if he needs speech therapy.  He's not talking very well.
We will also be looking for a great pediatrician. and we need to do this in the next couple of days. We've had a few really rough nights with Sarah whining and crying. While I believe  she's beginning to cut her first tooth, I'd love to rule out other things.

Don't think that for a minute I wasn't going to mention a friend to a lot of my friends of mine... Christy lost her battle with Lukemia on the Friday after I arrived here.  She left behind a 4 year old daughter, a husband and a step daughter who just delivered a healthy baby girl (so she became a grandmother during her last days of life)...
We are all grieving the loss of this friend/sister.
I will be writing in my next post about this.
Be blessed

Saying goodbye

Someone asked me if they could subscribe via email... You can on this  Right hand column at the top---->
 It will email you my posting when I post it...

This week end was full of very challenging emotions.

We had a  going away party at Cantina 1511.
We had invited so many people I thought we weren't going to be able to sit in the area with glass walls called the "fish bowl". Here's a pic of everyone who came. and since I hate it when I look at someone elses photographs and looking at people with no names I will tell you about them below the picture.

Left to Right Top to bottom... and I'll do kids last...
Myself, Andrew. Harold and Donna H, Jonathan and Jennifer W,Crystal O
and her son Ahren(4).
Sarah Grace(6m), Daniel Robert(2 3/4), and Jonathan Andrew(5)- The last  3 are mine :-)

By now you know Andrew and I. Harold we met a long time ago at a Home fellowship. We were worshipping and praying for each other. I prayed for him and a great friendship developed between our family and him..  I also enjoyed Praying on healing teams with him and many others. He met his wife Donna while on a prayer team.  He was married at the age of 80 and is definitely one of those men who never let their age show.
Jennifer and Jonathan we met through mutual friends of ours. Funny how we always make friends from the friends of  others.  Over the years and especially over the last year we have become close.
Jennifer lost her job through no fault of her own  and she needs a job.  She is studying to become a Christian education person, so she can become a youth minister.

Crystal O: We met her and Jim at a home group and became friends. When we first met them Jim and Crystal were newlyweds. They were indeed and still are the cutest and amazing people.

This was so amazing and bittersweet. Amazing because when we moved to the Carolinas  we had been married 6 months and knew absolutely nobody.
Look at our friends, and this picture is but a mere fraction of the amazing friendships we have carved out here.
Bitter sweet because we will not be  seeing them as often as we are used to.

Sunday we went to Antioch... The church we have been at for the past year... We've met so many amazing people there. Our Hearts are really sad to say see you later.
They prayed for us and sent us as missionaries to Texas. Because if you didn't know Texas is like a whole other country. I really hope that isn't a prophetic statement.

I will definitely come back and visit. I love all of these very amazing people. That and I REALLY want to go on the Israel trip with the Wynns. If you would like to contribute to this trip or want to go with me please contact me.v  I will be getting the info myself. 

So Until next time be very blessed.

Moving and other fun activities.

Okay so the last two weeks have been really, really busy at our house.
We have had all the doctors appointments that we normally have at this time of year. We are so glad that we got the chance to see all of our doctors/Specialists.

We went to the Developmental Pediatrician for Jonathan (as you read in my last post)
We went to The pediatrician...In fact we've been twice. Once for a recheck for Daniel and one for Sarah who got the same respiratory bug we all got.
I went to see both my OB/GYN and my Family Medicine doc.- I had a serious bout of Bronchitis and it brought with it several days of having a blazing fever of 104.
I have weaned off of medication temporarily but will probably happily go back on some when I find me a new doctor.
We went and had a visit with Jonathan's genetics doctor...
God I puffy heart that guy.  Sorry to say we totally dreaded the idea of going and seeing him in the beginning as well. Best experience with Jonathan with a specialist (prior to going to developmental peds).
As a side note on the genetics: I will never EVER google un reviewed results ever again. We were thinking Jonathan was dying and had cancer... and were terrified something was about to turn ugly. God was probably definitely giggling at me because it turned out totally stellar. He's fine.

We saw Jonathan's eye doctor...His eyes are stable although we have to wait for his eyes to get worse before we can do anything more.  They were slightly worse, but not enough to do anything but put a patch over one of his eyes.  Forgot which eye I have to do that to so being a human, I will have to call back and fight my way through voice mail.

Andrew- Has gone to both a sleep specialist and his internal medicine doctor.  He now sleeps with a cpap and is totally the quietest sleeper in the house. A CPAP is Continuous Positive Airway Pressure.  It shoots a constant flow of air into his nose.   The machine itself is silent. The chin strap he wears to help keep his mouth closed... Is by far the sexiest thing.  and by sexy I mean this...If it helps him get the restful sleep he needs... then that is the sexiest thing ever. I can sleep in peace knowing everyone is sleeping well.

I am going to leave with a little bit about loading a trailer.  Most of the stuff in my home can be put into the back of a trailer.  Most of the big stuff was absolutely the heaviest stuff ever. We will be hiring a couple of people for a couple of hours (for money and or food/beverages). My back hurts now and hopefully next week our chiropractor can move things back into place.

Be Blesed: Next entry will be about actually leaving and our going away party.
Hopefully Sarah and I will make it out to the DFW area.  We haven't exactly even penciled in how we're getting out there.   This is taking all of my patience and faith... I am a planner and the more I know ahead of time, the better and calmer I am.

Much LOVE

Big Bad Wolf: Misunderstood?

We went to the Developmental pediatrician yesterday for our appointment for Jonathan. Jonathan has been being seen by a developmental pediatrician because he has language, gross motor, fine motor and cognitive delays in his development.  Last summer we did some genetic testing and discovered he has a deletion on the 21st chromosome.  This is so rare, that every time someone gets discovered to have this, all our information about symptoms, development, etc. gets put into a world wide database..
The visit went rather well and it seems that medication for Jonathan's hyper-ness  is working although we just reached a level. Could it be dialed in a little better? Yes, and it will as soon as our move to Euless is completed, and we get us a new pediatrician.

The pediatrician we see only sees kids with developmental or behavior issues. 
I am very glad we got to see the developmental pediatrician.
When I was told by the genetics doctor that we needed to see this guy, my gut reaction was that he was the big bad wolf.
This was the LAST thing I wanted for my child. I didn't need another professional or another human being for that matter, pointing at my child and putting another label on him.
Jonathan is five years old, and has had quite a life of doctors and specialists...I'd prefer at this point to try and limit the trauma from the medical community. He gets traumatized by all the poking and really HATES blood work.
I went on a facebook page a couple of my friends had been on.  It's called Shut up About Your Perfect Kid. It's a community of people who are either parents of special kids or someone who works with them or just loves one.
This page is actually created by the authors of a book of the same name.  Although I haven't read this book yet (shrugs and hangs my head in shame) and I will... Trust me it's in my amazon shopping cart right now.
I went there with questions, and got not only an answer, but also a ton of encouragement and support.
Someone suggested that I take my son to see what they said and not to worry, these aren't finger pointers.

I was really pregnant at the time with Sarah and had just spent a week in the hospital in November. I drove slightly outside the 40 minute circle of late pregnancy. I actually drove 40 miles.
I was not really sure what to expect other than feeling like I had completed  an application to the ministry school I graduated from AGAIN. There were so many steps in getting him seen there, that made completing mortgage paperwork seem like it was EASY.
When we came to the appointment and finally met the doctor I was so shocked. He was so easy to talk to just because of his manner and not just because he looked like a friend of ours named Brooks.
 He answered every question I had, that he could answer. Gave me names of books I could read, and educated me on Individual Education Plans (or more commonly know as an IEP).
He was NOT the Big Bad Wolf that I thought he would be. In fact he became more of a coach, a teacher, and a cheer leader.
Which leads me to ask: What things are you afraid of?
When you really look that unknown thing down, is it realistic to be afraid of it or we just afraid of too much?
Just as a matter of fact, there are real things that we should be afraid of;just to keep us safe.I am not trying to reduce that reality, at all. 
I just checked off another thing I was afraid of off our list and it's an exciting experience.

Be Blessed and go conquer your giants!