Life as a Leach

We're all missing "our" boys that we hosted for a few days from Uganda.  They were pretty special!  Caleb wrote them both letters last night.  We sent them these pictures, as well as a Spiderman coloring page and a special picture from Abby.  :) It's amazing how kids can make such an impression on you in such a short amount of time.  Just look at the joy on these boys' faces.  They are SO sweet, and have seen much more pain and dealt with more challenges in their young lives than most people see in their entire lifetime.  We will never forget them.  Thank you for opening my boy's eyes up to a much bigger world!

I have been really thinking lately about how thankful I am that Abby was born into our family.  Not just because I'm blessed to be her momma (and oh, how I am!!), but that I have been considering how different an outcome it may have been if Abby had been born in a third world country, or to a very young mom who seemingly had no other options, or to a family 30 years ago, or in a Communist country that doesn't believe in the sanctity of life. Being born 30 years ago, even to a fighting family like ours, the medical knowledge of how to treat kids with issues like Abby's just wasn't there.  CCMS had just recently been identified and was pretty much a death sentence.  Kids with trachs were usually sent to pediatric nursing homes because pediatric home care was pretty scarce.  Certainly, kids on ventilators were not at home. Thank you, Lord, for giving Abby to us at the perfect time, in the perfect place. I was just explaining to Caleb how we don't believe in luck ...

Abby and Caleb carved pumpkins last Sunday.  Caleb did most of his carving himself, although he did not enjoy digging out the pumpkin guts. He made a storm trooper with all sorts of battle scars.  So he says. Abby didn't do too much with the carving, but she liked to play with the seeds and cheer us on while we carved.  I carved her a Hello Kitty pumpkin.  It leaves a little to be desired, but I'm satisfied as long as she thinks it is Hello Kitty!  

It was a good mail day!!!!   My long-time friend Elizabeth sent Abby and me the cutest  bracelets ever!  What a fun way to start the weekend!  Wanna see?!? Mine is a sweet little bracelet with black Swarovski crystals.   On either side of the heart, I have one garnet and one opal because they are Abby and Caleb's birthstones.   I knew about that part, but the heart with the sweet picture of Abby and Caleb (with We Choose Joy on the back!!) was a complete surprise.   I LOVE IT! Abby's teeny little bracelet is, of course, Hello Kitty.  :)  There are dark and light pink Swarovski crystals on hers, with a dangling Hello Kitty charm.   This girl woke up in a nasty mood after her nap.  The tears immediately stopped when I handed her the bracelet.  Can you guess what her favorite part is?? Both of our bracelets are very well-made.  Elizabeth creates all of the tiny links in betwee...

There's a new friend in the Leach house tonight.  His name is the D3200 and he is my new Nikon.  Let me give you the brief version of this long, convoluted story! My camera had been gone for a month, so I called Best Buy to find out what the deal was.  The only correspondence I had received was an email two weeks ago saying that my camera had been fixed.  So imagine my surprise when the Best Buy employee told me that my camera had been "junked out," which means that they would replace it. This would be fine, except that it voided my warranty--which I still had for 2 more years! If the company had called me to let me know that they couldn't fix this cosmetic issue, I would have just had them send my camera back.  It worked perfectly fine and I really wanted the assurance of the warranty. But since they never told me, my camera was long gone and Best Buy is telling me that my warranty is void now and I'll have to buy a new one.  No...

Despite illness's best efforts to keep us from the pumpkin patch this past weekend, we were still able to go.  We went to a new-to-us patch in hopes that it would be a good place to take the youth group.   Two and a half words. It wasn't. The place was, dare I say, a bit ghetto.   The workers didn't seem to care at all about their jobs and they weren't the slightest bit helpful. There was trash everywhere, cigarette smoke drifting through the air, and the family-oriented pumpkin patch  had a beer garden.  Half of the adults there were drunk.  Lovely. Nevertheless, Abby and Caleb had a good time.  They watched a cute little movie called Spookly, and then got pictures with a big blow-up Spookly. There was a corn teepee that Abby liked to play in (this was the structure that made the teepee) There was a pseudo-hay pit, but it wasn't deep enough to really jump in.  The teenagers there just dumped it on each other. ...