Back to my blog!!

How to even begin this post? 

How do I start blogging again after almost a year?

For my husband this is simple - he handed me the computer and said "go outside alone and blog"....while this is most likely from pure sweetness (it's true, he's the best) it's also possible that he was tired of me talking about how I never blog, how much I loved blogging, or maybe it's because he's worried I'm losing my sanity with 3 kids all day long (a viable thought)  No matter what the reason I'm glad to be here. 

I love blogging because whether 1 or 100 people read it really doesn't matter. You are able to put words to everything going on inside or in your life and one of my favorite reasons for blogging is that is serves as an online journal of my family that I love looking back on. I've never been good with photo albums or baby books - my poor kids - there was even a scrapbook completely done given to me by my mother in law where all I needed to do was insert pictures.....ask me if that's done. So I love that I can look back through my blog and re-live memories I had forgotten. The editor in me can see that many posts were badly written or in desperate need of spell check, but now it's like, "Eh, who cares, I'm glad I wrote it anyways". 

So I am back to blogging. For me, it's a time when I finally SIT, breathe, stop from the hundreds of miles and hour I've been running all day, and allow things to seep in. Honestly I know that is what has often kept me from blogging this past year. We've been on a tough road with our daughter's health. And every time I would open up the blank page to write - it was like I didn't want to dive deep once again into thinking about it and writing about it. I would see a post from a year or two years ago where I was writing about the same issue and instead of feeling refreshed by blogging I would feel discouraged that I am still praying for the same stinkin thing I am today. But more on that later. 

So update on our life = We will celebrate our 8 YEAR wedding anniversary this month. GEEZ time 

is flying. We have 3 kiddos, an old house, a cat, a growing garden (woot woot!), amazing church body, friends who we consider family, full time incredible "job" and family that lives all around us. Life really is good-----God REALLY is good. 

Jules is still hiccuping. All. The. Time. We have had more appointments than I could ever count but the final ones at UCSF last week have explained that she does in fact have EOE - an autoimmune esophagus disease. Unfortunately after lots and lots of tests and studies they strongly believe there is NO correlation between this disease and her hiccups. Say what??!? I've pushed back on this a lot - it seems impossible to me that hiccups and an esophagus disease have no cause or effect on each other. But after this appointment I really see their point, and unless we see a strong reason why the two are interlinked, it just doesn't make sense. The doctor said to me "Sorry, we found another issue when we were looking to fix another problem." Yikes lol. We are trying another new medicine, diet changes and a page long (I wish I was kidding) list of more blood work to do. So that's the plan with the her medical issues. She's still severely behind in speech, so we are having a private therapist come for the summer to work with her. I hope it helps! It breaks my heart that she uses mostly hand motions to communicate with friends and family or she will come get me and ask me to tell them something. I would love to see her talk and be able to express herself! 

William is like a breath of fresh air in terms of medical, behavioral and social things. He's just a "normal" little guy and while it may sound terrible to say, he is such a joy in our household because it's a reminder that sickness and medical issues aren't always the case. Things can and do go right a lot of the time :) And right now for whatever reason he's been such a good boy with behavior. We'll take it while we can because I'm sure that'll change real soon!

LUKE !! Yes we had baby #3!!! (Another reason blogging has suffered). It was SO much fun not finding out the gender this time around and made the delivery so much more fun. Several nurses hung around because they had been waiting to see what we would have. He has been a joy and blessing to our family. Number 3 has been an amazing addition. It's so cool to watch our kids interact with their new sibling and we have treasured the newborn stage so much more than the other times because we know how quickly it passes. I want to freeze time! That being said he's also been our fussiest baby by far. Come on, I thought for sure baby number 3 was supposed to be the easy going one!! Sadly he has some refllux issues and....get this....hiccups constantly. Don't freak out yet....I haven't. :) But he does also have what looks like a lip tie we possibly having to fix so maybe that will make him a happier baby.

Global Fellowship has been booming with life and growth. We truly love what we get to do and it's just the best feeling after so many years of waiting on God to show us what he wanted us to do with our lives to wake up everyday feeling right in the niche of what we are supposed to be doing. Our ministry there is to recruit, train and send missionaries - specifically those with a passion for youth ministry. We act as the mobilization team haha - just the two of us until we find more staff. Our days look different every day. Jeremy is in and out of the office doing meetings, skypes and trainings. I join in several days of the week at the office and at home. It's just awesome to see God use us even though we are undeserving and through difficult times in our lives. 

Now that all that updating is out of the way I'm excited to jump back into blogging. Even if it's just you reading mom :) :) I love reading back and watching God truly grow me as I work out how to express what is going on in our life. He has often brought things to my attention because I'm attempting to write it down that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Until next time!