It's awful quiet around here today...

 Beth Marie spent most of the day Saturday with very little voice... ...and most of the day Sunday watching videos in our bedroom with a fever... Today she's feeling a little better--unless she tries to talk.  If she talks, she coughs this terrible croupy cough.  So, she's hanging around in her sweats, waiting for her voice to recover...  

This is a little girl who usually has a lot to say...so it seems pretty strange not to hear her voice chattering around the house. But I'm sure she's savin' up...and she'll be making up for lost time very soon....

Wow...what happened to Christmas?

Whoa, was that Christmas that just flew by?  Sorry, I musta missed it!

I found our Christmas doll sadly positioned like this on Christmas morning.  I think this picture speaks well of what Christmas was like at our house this year.  :-)

  It's been an unusual few months around our house...    Since mid-October when we started waiting for the Chicken pox to arrive, we've had sickness in our home almost continually.  Our calendar was full of events that we never attended--many of which went on without us.  It's always a strange feeling when, for various reasons, life in our little corner of the world comes to a standstill...while time passes by everywhere else.  Time, like so many other blessings that the Lord gives us, is a resource.  While activities and memories can be made on any day, a day missed is a day that can never be recovered.  In some ways, it's a little sad for me to think of all of the family gatherings that went on without us...the decorations that remain packed away in Rubbermaid bins...the cookies that were never baked...and on and on it goes.  And again, I am reminded that we have much to be thankful for as this is certainly unusual for us to have such a streak of poor health.    I am also challenged to redeem the time.    The word "intentional" is one that Mike and I have discussed a lot in recent months.  It can be so easy to slip into "survival mode" in life, going about our daily routines on "auto pilot", and before you know it, the time escapes you and all of your good intentions of quality time and fruitful ministry never happened.  The days turned into years...  The pitter-pat of precious little feet in the house has grown quiet...   Relationships have grown cold because they were never nurtured...  And you wish you could go back and cherish the moments that passed you by. So, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to make each day count.  There's nothing wrong with counting down the days on the calendar until holidays, or birthdays, or vacations.  But tomorrow cannot be taken for granted.  So, I'm again reminded of the importance of being "intentional" about making memories in our family on the good days so that it's not so hard when life has to stand still again for awhile. 

One of the reasons why I like having this blog is that it has been encouraging to look back on the discouraging days and remember the good ones.  I'm thankful that we have many good memories to reflect on...and these will mean so much to Elizabeth when she grows up.  And I'm challenged that there is still much more that we can do to redeem each and every day that the Lord gives us!

Been spending a lot of time...

Here.  This is not exactly how I hoped to kick off the holiday season with my family.   Unfortunately, I came out of Thanksgiving weekend with a nasty bug. A very...nasty...bug. But the Lord is so faithful, and while this is one of the worst bugs I've had in years, I am counting my blessings.   First, I am so thankful for my sweet family who have taken special care of Momma.  I would have understood if they would have gone about their lives and left me in my own little corner.  After all, I'm not pleasant company.  But they have gone out of their way to show love and kindness to me, and that alone has made this bug almost worth it.  :-)  I am so grateful for my family. I'm also thankful for my sweet little companion, Gretchen.  Did you notice her pictured above, faithfully cuddled around Mommy's head?  There's no place in the world she'd rather be, and her devotion is a comfort to me. Finally, I must sheepishly admit that one of the things I am  most thankful for is that this, too, shall pass.  On my third night in a row without sleep, I spent a lot of time thinking...and praying...  My prayers started something like this, "God!  Take the pain away...pleeeeeease!"  Then, I revised my prayer to, "God, I am so weak.  Please give me strength, and rest to recover."  Both prayers were essentially the same.  I was praying for recovery.  In my sleep deprived state, I found myself thinking, "Wow, when I get better, I will be SO thankful to swallow without pain..."  I caught myself saying that and thought, "Would I also be thankful if the pain never went away?"  Hmm.  That's a hard question to ask yourself in the midst of pain, isn't it? I thought a lot about my Mom who has suffered for the last 8 years or so with severe rheumatoid arthritis.  She lives in near constant pain...the kind of pain that will never pass.  She doesn't complain.  I have never seen anyone suffer as graciously as my Mom.   I thought I'd call her the next day and tell her I was thinking about her and praying for her.  So, with what little voice I could muster, I dialed her up and told her how much I admire her strength.  Her response: "Well, your day will come."  (Ha!  Mom doesn't express much sentiment.)  Well, when my day comes, I pray that I will be half as faithful as she has been.  I have a long way to go...  

Chicken Pockers!!

The chicken pox have been going through our extended family since the end of summer.  We do not vaccinate, so we knew it would be best for Beth to be exposed to the chicken pox as young as possible.  Yet, we didn't exactly want to expose her "on purpose".  So, when the first round went through, we kept our distance and let it run its course.  Then came round #2.  The chicken pox arrived at the Walters house (my sister's children and Beth's cousins), and since we knew it would never be possible to keep our families totally separate for the length of time that it took for the chicken pox make its way through their large family, we figured we were doomed.  So, we allowed Beth to be moderately exposed.  This is supposed to be a "highly contagious" virus, right?  Well, apparently not as contagious as we thought...  It took a full month of increasingly direct exposure to her cousins for her to finally get the chicken pox.   Poor babe.  Here she is in her special "Pooh" nighty that we bought just for the occasion.  (It had a large neck to avoid popping blisters when putting on and off.)  This was taken on day 4.  The first few days were more just body aches and fever.  The blisters emerged very slowly for Beth.  But by day 4, the blisters were coming like crazy, and she was overwhelmed.  The itching was getting miserable by this point, and she knew that she had plenty of days of itching ahead of her.  This was the day that I spent mostly laying in bed with her, tea tree oil dropper in hand.  We watched movies together, and she would point, and I would drip...for...hours...  Yeah, it wasn't fun.

If an area of skin would get too warm, the rash would spread like wildfire...  Her poor little face had it the worst. 

This was on Sunday, day 5.  She missed her friend's birthday party, and so Daddy came home from church with a bag of party favors.  These made a sick little girl's day!

This pock (pictured above and below) takes the prize for the biggest pock we've ever seen!  It was the very first blister she got, and it grew with every passing day.  It was HUGE.  Putting ointment on it several times a day made Mommy very queasy...



Here is our arsenal of products that we used to manage the symptoms.  If you ever get the chicken pox in your house, I now know what works and what doesn't.  Tea tree oil and ASAP silver gel were our best weapons against the itch (and both have antiseptic properties as well).  The expression on Beth's face the night I brought home "BUTT PASTE" was pretty priceless.  Yes, Butt Paste.  The zinc oxide relieves itching without crusting like calamine lotion--which is good on the face where you don't want scarring.

By this point, we're about a week into the chicken pox.  Beth is feeling much better, and some of her sores are starting to scab. 

 All scabbed-over.  She was no longer contagious at this point, and she was very excited that she could finally put on a cute hat and get out of the house.  We're so glad to have the chicken pox behind us!