Home!

First and foremost thank so much for all your prayers. Chirsta is home now and doing a lot better. She is still sore and is adjusting to having the stint. Caden and I are glad to have her back! We will keep you all posted and let you know what comes up. The potential for future pain and problems are high but hopefully she will be the ones that get missed.

One Lesson Learned

As I sit here in this dark hospital room it is hard to watch your wife and unborn child deal with what is going on. Feelings begin to set in over known faith and it becomes easy to want the pain to go away. Through this experience God has taught me two things (He probably wants to teach me more but I am to hard headed to learn). The first is that I am very blessed. God has granted me a wonderful wife. I know a lot of times I take for granted how awesome of a wife I have. I allow my schedule to get filled up with "important" things but I allow the truly important things to slip by un-noticed. Its sad that it took an experience like this to realize what a blessing and joy God has given me with Christa. I have also learned what a blessing I have with this family. I know that all parents think their kid is the best but to be honest I am blessed with not only a great wife but an awesome child.

The second thing that God has taught me is that life isn't about my comfort. The reality is that life as we know it is broken because of our sin (my sin). We suffer in this life because of all of our selfishness (my selfishness). To many times I think that since I am a believer than I am do the "good things" in life but the reality is that God never promised the "good things" that I am thinking of. God did promise His Son, strength, wisdom, and eternal life. I read Philippians 4:4 this morning and Paul tells the church at Philipi to Rejoice, and again I say rejoice. Its easy to rejoice when your finances are good, jobs are steady, vacations are enjoyed, health is good, and things are "stable." But when you look at when and where Paul was when he wrote this it takes on a whole new angle. Paul was in prison and had just been beaten for his faith and this wasn't the type of prison we have today. This prison was beneath the ground with no light and had all kinds of rodents running around with a stench that was worse than a port-a-john on an over crowded work site in the summer. WOW! I find it hard to rejoice when a kid calls out of work or the coke machine goes out at least I have a nice home with a/c to go home to.

I find myself too many times longing after the "good things" in life and miss out on the simple yet life giving things that God has promised. I pray that God would grant me the desire to seek after Jesus and the things He longed for and not for the "good things" that I think will make my life complete.

Not So Good News

On Thursday night Christa began to feel sharp pains in her back on the left side. As the night progressed the pain became more and more unbearable. Around ten o'clock we decided to head to the emergency room to see what was going on with her pain. As the minutes passed the pain increased (Christa later said that the pain she felt was worse than giving birth to Caden). Anyways, to make a long story short (I know for some of you are thinking that for me that's impossible) she has a kidney stone that is 11mm in size. This is twice the size of the average kidney stone. She has been in the hospital since Thursday night but has made some progress. Things have been a little more complicated since she is pregnant and therefore the standard procedures to deal with a kidney stone are not an option. They did take an x-ray and it came back with some good news. The stone is at the opening of her ureter tube and her bladder which means it has made its way down the ureter tube which is the hardest part. The down side is that this still doesn't mean she will pass it anytime soon, however we pray she does. If she can't pass it in the next couple days she will have to be have a tube inserted into her kidneys and a bag on the outside of her hip to drain her kidney. This is something that we are hoping will not happen because it can cause an infection and she would have to take antibiotics to prevent any infection. Since she is pregnant that is not something that is healthy for the baby to have on a long term basis. So, please pray that she will be able to pass this stone sometime in the next couple days. She has taken a turn for the better and they have worked out her pain medication so she is in the least amount of pain as possible at this stage. We will keep you update as we find out new information.

Big News

We just want to let everyone know that we are expecting baby #2. He/she will be due Dec. 3. We will hopefully find out what we will be having in July.

Bed time

Caden is too cute. At night he likes to sleep with Elmo, Mickey and Earnie. He also asks for water every night. He is definitely a creature of habbit. I can't believe he will be 2 years old next month! His cousin Jackson let him borrow the helmet. He loves to wear it. And in the last picture we were having fun in the sun! The kids love to play outside.