Moving Day

Moving day has arrived, the truck will be here Friday morning and we will arrive in Grand Forks Sunday afternoon, ready to meet the truck that is supposed to arrive with all our things Monday.

How did we get to this point so quickly when the last thing many of you heard James was going up by himself to work while I stayed here with the kids? Here is the story. . .

Both of us have been super excited to buy a house for a long time. Although we new it was a long shot we thought moving to a smaller community would be a great way to make that dream a reality. James and I went a couple times to look at houses and the 2nd time found a house that looked to be a perfect match. With the help of James' parents we put an offer down and low and behold it was accepted. You'd think at this point I would continue on by saying this is the house we are moving into. . . nope!! After finding out all was going to fall into place, no one had peace over the decision. James and I thought it would work and were willing to 'make' it work the way we wanted, but the Church didn't think it was wise, us getting into that much financial commitment with the start of a new job and a big move, James' parents weren't thrilled about certain areas of the house and so James and I knew we couldn't fake it anymore and surrendered to the fact that the house wouldn't be ours.

Feeling very defeated we figured the more we thought we had things planned out the more God was trying to tell us it wasn't for us to plan out it was for Him to do it for us. A couple nights later we received a phone call about a potential house we could rent for a while, to get us settled, while we looked for something else. So that is the plan for right now, we are not sure where things are leading, all we know is God wants us out there and He has a plan that is slowly unraveling.

We are still unsure about Caidy's surgery date, we called the Plastic Surgeon and he is on holidays until the 20th of November, which leaves us in the dark as to when and how soon we will be coming back here for that, but God is in control!

Also I want to tell a little about the cleft team appt we had a couple weeks ago at children's. It was pretty overwhelming, yet very insightful. There were a total of 5 different people/drs that Caidy had to see and each did their own little assessment of her.

~ First the speech pathologist, a great lady who was very encouraging and gave us a lot of info regarding Caidy and sounds she is making. She really likes to growl, which James and I thought was kind of cute, but it turns out this is a very bad sound to make due to where she is making the sound, from deep in her chest. We need to encourage her to be making 'm' and 'n' sounds as well as getting her to blow air out of her mouth, since the flap that separates the mouth from the nose isn't there for Caidy she hs to learn this. We have started tapping her mouth, similar to when you play cowboys and Indians the sound the Indians make!! (ha reading over this it sounds really unprofessional but I hope you understand what I am trying to say!!) Anyway it helps her to make sound out of her mouth instead of only nasal sounds.
~ Next was a ENT, ears throat and nose Dr. He was very nice but told us that Caidy has quite a bit of fluid in her ears, very common in cleft kids and he will check again on surgery day and if it is not self corrected she will need to get tubes put in.
~ We saw a different plastic surgeon who was very informative. He explained that Caidy's lip will go through stages as it heals where it looks 'bad'. We are in the stage now and it will only get better by healing and hopefully the scar will loosen and there won't be quite as noticeable of a lift in her lip. He also said that they may not fix where her lip came undone from her first surgery until a revision before kindergarten, which means another surgery, but also means it may take better if it is given lots of time to heal properly before messing with the scar tissue.
~ We saw the cleft nurse who was a little concerned about Caidy's weight, she is 15 lbs 8oz, which is in the 5th ish percentile. But I know my milk isn't as fatty as formula, both Leah and Elijah are small so we are not too worried. It was so encouraging as well how proud she was of me to be still pumping for her! :) That made me feel good and gave me a little boost to be able to make it past her next surgery.
~ Next was the hearing test, unfortunately since I suck at paying attention to details I can't remember what this dr is called, but oh well! This was I think the most discouraging part of our day, and unfortunately the last person we saw. James went with Caidy into a booth where they perform different tests to check her hearing and it turns out she has moderate hearing loss because of the fluid. This is something that will correct with tubes, but still may mean that she will always have some hearing loss. Please be praying with us for this as it is just one more thing for us to worry about and we don't need to.
~ We were supposed to see a different orthodontist as well, to get a different perspective but after all this we asked that we skip this because we had to go our regular that afternoon!! It was a long day but informative none the least.

Thanks for sticking with me this long!! We do have a new address and phone number already but obviously I don't feel comfortable posting any of that, so as soon as we get our new e-mail address (we can't get the same internet provider there) I will be sure to forward that on to everyone!! Thank you again for all your support and we trust you will be praying for us and the kids through this transition.