2013 Year in Review

Macie is now 10 years old and a smart, helpful and independent one. She is in 5th grade and involved in student council, plays the piano, flute, and ukulele. She did soccer in the fall and will be starting basketball season here soon too. She's growing up way to fast (in the good way) and has even started babysitting her siblings a little. Such a blessing to have her as our oldest child!

Dominic is 7 and in 2nd grade. He's doing great in school and so enjoys time with his friends. He was the quarterback again this year on his tackle football team.   He had a great season and it was fun to see him be the leader of the team. Basketball starts in January. He's the comedian in the family and always keeps us laughing! He will be baptized in February!

Tessa is 6 and in Kindergarten. She LOVES school and is reading like crazy! She was on her first soccer team and she scored a ton of goals each game. True to herself she was always pretty serious about it but would shyly turn and smile after she scored to see if we saw. She loved it!

Claire is 4 and we are doing a little preschool co-op with some moms at church. She enjoys that and it is so good for her shy nature to get out of the house away from me. She is our little girl who loves lipgloss, nail polish and making sure she looks just right in her oddly matched clothing and skirts.

Alice is 2.5. She has had quite the year of speech therapy, wearing eye patches and wearing the cutest lavender glasses you've ever seen. She started out the year not saying any words or sounds and is now saying her own mixed up sentences. She is still behind for her age but she has progressed so much and loves when her speech therapist comes a few times a month. We've spent the past 1.5 years trying to correct her crossed eyes but not enough progress was made so two weeks ago she had eye muscle repair surgery. She's healing up great! Alice is a happy, teeny tiny little girl who keeps us laughing and washing pen, pencil, crayon and markers off the wall all the time!

Anthony is our little miracle baby (now 5.5 months)! Truly he is here on this earth because many prayers, blessings, fasting, modern day medicine and the loving and guiding hands of our Heavenly Father!! In January were surprised with the news that we were having identical twin boys. We were thrilled and beyond amazed to be having 2 boys! We got the heart breaking news at an ultrasound in February (at 16 weeks) that one of our sweet little boys has passed away and the other was severely anemic and was fighting for his life. Identical twins carry so much risk and we were faced with the trials that this brought. Just a few days after we found out this news we went to OHSU in Portland where they performed a fetal blood transfusion to save our baby. It was a very serious, stressful and complicated procedure that ultimately saved our baby's life. I had probably 25-30 ultrasounds during this pregnancy to do everything to keep track of his quality if life in the womb and create the greatest possible outcome for him. Anthony was born on July 3rd at 11:57pm. He was a healthy baby but was born without skin on both sides of his stomach and scar on his head, arms, neck and knees. None of the doctors here in Salem knew what it was so they sent pictures to OHSU and they new just what it was. A rare condition that is a result of losing an identical twin between the gestational age of 15-17 weeks. We treated his skin like you would a burn and within 4 weeks it was completely healed. Another miracle! He's got some fabulous scars that will forever remind him of his twin brother and the miracles that Heavenly Father provided in his life. Anthony is such a good happy baby and is getting so chubby and cute. We love him so much!

Cole and I are doing great. It was a busy year with a complicated pregnancy and the demands of owning your own business but we have truly been blessed! We've been married 11 years now and started dating over 15 years ago . . . crazy how much has happened in all those years!

We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!!