Special thoughts...

Well, these special thoughts are not coming from Jess today.  This is Candace (daisy24girl) logging in for Jess to tell everyone that her internet is down and she won't be able to post for a little while.  I think it's driving her nuts!!    Since I have the absolute honor and joy of being Jess's best friend since we were very little girls... and knowing her precious heart so well... when I say the following things about her, you can know that they are true.

We each have our faults.  Our weaknesses.  Our quirks and tendencies that can drive others around us crazy.  But we each have our own treasured gifts, talents, and special ways of showing love and sharing life with people that endear us to their hearts, in spite of our flaws.  Sometimes... even because of them.

Jess is one of those rare and special women who has a way of brightening up a room just by her presence in it.  She is spunky and vivacious, with a bright smile and a light in her eyes that makes you wonder what gives her that inner joy.  She has a zest for life and adventure and loves to do things on the spur of the moment (of course, that gets harder the more little ones you have to grab and take with you!!!)  Her life is characterized by her passionate love of God and desire to honor Him in each decision and choice she makes.  She loves that man of hers and adores their babies, seeking to be a wife and mother that models a heart of selfless love in their home.  She is friendly and warmly open to strangers and dear friends alike.  Her tender spirit is sensitive to the Lord's working in her life and her gentle honesty in relationship makes her a faithful friend.  I have learned so many valuable life lessons and found my dear Jess to be a faithful mirror of my heart and life as we have shared life together.  I have been stretched to be a better woman and am so thankful to have a friend who loves me enough to be painfully honest with me in such a gentle way.

I can only hope that each person is blessed in their life to share a friendship with someone like I have experienced in Jess.  Honest, open, caring, forgiving, believing in you, praising, sharing, crying in pain together, pointing you ever back to our Loving Savior.  If you know her, you know I am right!  Faults?  She has them... but they pale in comparison to the womanly strengths Christ is shining in her day by day.

Jess, you are a treasure.  May you know and feel that down to the tips of your toes today.  May the Lord bless you abundantly and to overflowing as you have touched and blessed the lives of so many people with your precious heart!!  YOU ARE LOVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          J oyful and bubbly

          E  nergetic

          S ensitive to the Lord

          S pontaneous

          I ncredbily beautiful - inside andout!

          C ompassionate heart

          A rare woman and treasured friend!!! 

Moments like this make it all worth it, don't they?! She is so incredibly precious to me!!

Why is it that things always seem to happen in threes? Well, my week has been such a jumbled mess of good, bad, and terrible things that I'm not quite sure where to start.

Ok well, let's start with THE GOOD...

My lovely mother got on a plane Monday morning to come bail me out of the hole I had sunken into with school and the house. I was in desperate need of a morale boost and she is always the best cure for.... well, just about anything that is ailing me both physically and spiritually. I needed a mom fix bad and she was headed to my rescue! I couldn't have been more happy and excited. But during my prep for her to arrive in mere hours, as I was cleaning away in the guest bathroom my poor Tyler comes running in, trying to get enough air in her lungs to really start seriously crying and was holding a very bloody finger to her chest. As I pulled her hand back to survey the injury I nearly passed out. The tip of her little pinky finger was gone! Just gone!! Her poor little fingernail was perched atop a bone with no flesh around it until her first finger knuckle!! I freaked. Usually I pride myself on having the coolest head in emergencies involving my children but that time, I must admit, I completely lost all composure. And what happened next kinda runs together and gets jumbled up when I try to think about it. We did package up the finger, that was still caught in the door where her sister had slammed it to keep her out, and took it with us to the ER where Todd was able to meet me once my amazing friend, Jenn arrived to watch the other kids. They took X-rays and several specialists examined it and they carefully cleaned and wrapped it but were unable to reattach the tip. But they are assuring us that it will just grow back. The tip of her bone was smashed as well so they put her on a high powered antibiotic and now we have to keep an extremely active 3 1/2 year old from making her injury worse by banging it into things or submerging it in water! ....yeah, if you know Tyler, you know that that would be fighting a loosing battle!! So yeah... that experience is definitely what I would classify as THE UGLY!

So the only bad thing now is that my computer started having hardware problems so it is in the shop and I am stuck using this old decrepid thing to get all my papers finished for class and no real way to get my pictures uploaded. So no pictures for now of Tyler with her bandage or of the fun we are having with mom. Yeah... so that's THE BAD!

A little out of order but now you are updated.....

Our fun day at the new Bass Pro Shop in Olathe, KS (playing with Photoshop here and went a little wild... sorry...)

The fish tank that totally captured Todd's imagination.

Trenton and Tacey fighting off a wild bear!!

Tyler looks danger in the face and just smiles....

Pretty poses

We had such a fun day!! Our Easter weekend was very special! No studying, lots of eating, and precious fellowship! More news to follow....

Today marks the end of Reproductive and Todd is officially done taking finals!!! Yay!! I know he is relived to now be able to focus full time on boards. Todd really enjoyed Repro and surprised himself with a renewed interest in women's health. Todd delivered our first 4 babies at home with only our moms (and occasionally a friend of mine) as assistants and did an awesome job so he is definitely ahead of the game in this section. He used to borrow extra doppler machines from the ambulance and bring them home so we could sit and listen to the babies' heart beat. And he always studied like crazy during my pregnancies to prepare for... whatever. He was so amazing! I have always had babies with whoppin' 15 inch heads  and he was so incredible at delivering that head so that I never tore one time!

Anyway, now he has to really get going studying for boards on May 24th. This test is massive and he really feels a lot of pressure to get it right the first time. They will be going through Integrated this next 6 weeks to recap the past two years so hopefully that will help with studying. I need the strength to leave him alone and keep my own schooling on track. I have finals the first couple of weeks of May so I need to find a way to keep my stress from adding to his stress... a major challenge for me since this is my first semester in college! I've never taken finals before and I'm not really sure how to be prepared.

The kids are getting totally used to mommy going to school after making supper and they look forward to daddy time in the evenings. Not so sure daddy does, however since babysitting eats up study time. But... Granna to the rescue!! My wonderful and amazing mother is coming April 16th to stay for 2 weeks to help me work on some projects and care for the children in the evening when Todd needs to study and I have to prepare for finals. Then, when she goes home, she is taking Tyler and Tacey back to her house and sending my baby sister, Gracie for another 2 weeks until I'm finished with finals. I have such an amazingly supportive family!!

Busy times, busy times! Each day, by faith....

                                                    This is the Tegan look.
    That, "I know what's going on here..."expression.
                     That look that mommy and daddy love.
It makes you pause & go, "What's in that lil' head?"
        The look that stops her siblings in their tracks...
                                           And gives the dog shivers.
                   China blue eyes, stoically taking it all in.
        Serenely observing the world from her purch.
                                     This is the Tegan look of looks.
                                      How we love this little girlie!!

4 Love suffers long and is kind;
love does not envy;
love does not parade itself,
is not puffed up;
5 does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
thinks no evil;
6 does not rejoice in iniquity,
but rejoices in the truth;
7 bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
8 Love never fails...

I Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills...

...from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.

 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: HE shall preserve thy soul.

 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore!" Psalm 121

Well, my spring break is over and now life is pushing in with all it's hectic-ness.  It was nice that both Todd's and my spring break coincided and we kicked off the week with a long day of picnic's, biking, and exploring. And then the stomach bug took hold of the house. True to Francis form, the sickness made it's way through the house at a crawling speed. Instead of everyone getting sick all at once and getting the whole mess over with, no! It has to take it's jolly time infecting everyone and leaving me to clean up vomit all week long instead of all at once over a day or two. And once all the kiddos had finally been infected and everything had been washed and the bathrooms disinfected.... Mommy and daddy get their turn!  It's some kinda cruel fate that I was dreading all week but had no idea how bad we were about to get it!! Yikes, I haven't been that throwing up sick in years!! Anyway, enough with the yucky parts of the week.... We also had tons of fun biking with the kiddos whenever we had a day of reprieve between sickies. I took lots of pictures that I don't have time to edit and post now but hopefully I'll get a chance soon.

Then Saturday night we had a St. Patrick's day party and that was fun! The Irish in me couldn't resist cutting out shamrocks and finding old Irish music to fill the house with! The kids just loved every minute of it...

And a quick update on the scholars in the house (humm... that would be all of us.... Are we gluttons for punishment, or what??) After taking a week off to hang with the kids and me, Todd is studying like mad for boards in May. Much prayers needed on that front. Everything hinges on his passing boards to get into the residency he wants. His classroom work is coming to a close this May and then all that is left of medical school is two years of clinical rotations in the Kansas City area before graduation in May of '09. That can't come soon enough for me.... And then for me, my classes are going well. My two writing intensive classes: English 101 and Business Comm are work but I'm making all A's in those classes so far. That is my comfort zone. Stuff I know about. But my Art History class is kicking me in the rear!! Her class is extremely hard and as it stands right now I am getting a very low C in that class. It's gotta come up or I will be unable to live with myself! My Econ class is so infuriating (as I've mentioned, but it keeps getting worse!!). Good thing my grade isn't based on my opinions in class. That guy hates me! I keep calling him on his lack of facts or truth to back up his ideas and he gets so angry at me he turns red! Of course most of the time in his class I bet he can see the steam coming out of my ears but I'm trying to keep my mouth shut now. We'll see how this week goes... But haven't had to crack open his book yet to pass the quizzes and tests with a B average so I guess all those years of listening to my dad explain economics and hundreds of hours of Rush Limbaugh have paid off.

So that was a way longer post than I intended to shot off here but oh, well... Now you're updated...