Merry Christmas Eve!

The perfect little gift!

At the end of the year, I commonly think back over all that's been done in the previous 12 months. I've been recently looking through our many pictures, that act as our family journal. I was flipping through the difficult photos of Mya in the hosptial only 5 months ago, I can't help but think of how close to losing her we were... I continue to be reminded of the healing power of God. From the thousands of prayers for our daughter, loving hands of the medical staff, and hundreds of notes/words of encouragement we received from friends and family, there is no question in my mind that our little girl has a wonderful purpose in life. The only way we made it through the difficult time was our faith. We had no choice but to give our little girl to God, since relying on God was our only option. The odds were against a successful surgery, not to mention Mya's survival. I've never been in that kind situation before, totally out of control. Once we surrendered our "control," we were clearly guided to make several right choices, and with it came an amazing sense of peace. Many people commented on how "together" we seemed. We can take no credit for that! Remembering the pivotal times of chaos, I'm immediately brought to tears just thinking of the amazing amount of grace that's been given to our family. I feel such a level of gratitude, that I'm often unable to put it into words. The result of God's healing hand, our faith and the prayers of many others is a beautiful little angel girl, who I couldn’t be more thankful for this Christmas season. What a gift! Greater than that, is the birth of Jesus this season. I can't imagine giving up my only child for others... what a sacrifice. Praise God, I don't have to. We are so thrilled to be enjoying every moment we can with our busy little toddler today. From the deepest part of our hearts, we wish you all a wonderful Christmas and pray that you too can find the best gift of all this season.

Holiday Fun!

This is my favorite time of the year. Between decorating the house, Christmas music and cards from friends and family, I enjoy all the little details included in the wonderful season. I didn't realize that a special little girl would make it all the more magical! Surprisingly, Mya hasn't done much to terrorize the Christmas tree, she likes to look at the decorations, but she is pretty good at leaving them alone! One of her favorite decorations is the Nativity sheep. She makes her own little sheep sound, including sticking her tongue out, it's pretty sweet. Her hair has finally grown enough we have to pull it up to keep it out of her eyes. Needless to say, taking the tails out each day creates a pretty funny little style, creating many photo moments of the little girl bopping around. It seems that we're constantly grabbing the camera to capture a little moment, she's such a little sweetie right now! I've said it before, but I love this age!

Mya just discovered this door stop...

Snack time and jingle bells.

A new favorite activity is washing her hands, and playing in the water. Without many words, she's pretty good at telling us when she wants to play in the sink (standing at the closed bathroom door and pointing to it and grunting). I love that it's something fun right now! It makes clean up time less painful for all of us.

I wonder what Santa's bringing to Mya? This car seems a little too small for her these days...

Annual Tree Hunt

Today we enjoyed our 3rd annual tree hunt with our friends, Chris, Danielle, Emma and Micah. It's always fun to go get our tree and have lunch together. We spent the rest of the day decorating our tree and our house, both inside and out. My favorite birthday activity! We had a wonderful weekend together, enjoying little Mya giggles and witnessing the excitement of Christmas through the eyes of a beautiful little girl!

Mya all geared up for finding the best tree!

WONDERFUL NEWS!!!

Today we met with Mya's cardiologist. We are thankful to report that her rapid heart rate that was measured about 2 weeks ago has now decreased and is back to a more normal level for her. The Dr is assuming it was due to a cold she had. She still has bluish lips and cold limbs at times, and we've not found a solid reason for that symptom, but her heart is working very normally. We'll keep an eye on a few other things in the next week or two to see if we can figure out the source. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS!!! We were thoroughly relieved with the news. Our cardiologist gave us a lot of her time today for an appointment that was scheduled last minute, she seemed very relieved as well... this little one has a lot of people caring for her! I was really worried yesterday... Many thanks to everyone who prayed for her, it is always an option that her little coronary artery could cause her problem, and I was afraid that if we had a negative visit, she'd be admitted today for more testing. GOD IS GOOD! Since we had great news and the rest of the afternoon to spend together, we enjoyed playing at home, but did a little Christmas shopping this evening. Mommy & Daddy got suckered into this little chair at Target... she loves it! I thought we were going to keep it wrapped and give it as a gift for Christmas, but I think Daddy was more excited than she was, and he opened it tonight. Pretty cute! What an amazing Christmas season for us! We are overwhelmingly thankful for her current health and for every gifted moment we get to spend with our beautiful girl .

A bit of a scare...

We'd like some prayer for Miss Mya, we are headed to the Cardiologist tomorrow for somewhat of an emergency appointment. Two weeks ago we took her in because her lips were blue and her limbs were pretty cold. They put a heart monitoring device on her to be worn for 24 hours, to test her heart rhythm. Since that time, she's continued to have blue lips consistently in the evening and today our Cardiologist called with the results of the monitoring test. Her heart is beating faster than most kids her age. Needless to say, we're concerned for the outcome of tomorrow's appointment. They're going to test her level of hydration, if she's possibly anemic or if she has any other "easy fix"reasons for the symptoms. If there isn't any obvious reason, we may need to consider another heart catheritization test, to see if her coronary artery is still impeding the flow from her heart, causing the poor circulation. This would include sedation and the breathing tube back down her throat. This is usually an outpatient procedure, but with her history, she'd have to be admitted. Something we really don't want to go back to deal with. We'd appreciate all of your prayers, I'm pretty nervous for the situation.

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Idaho for Thanksgiving. Mya had a ball playing with her cousins, it was so wonderful to see them enjoy each other so much! She enjoyed her first time on the trampoline, a four wheeler ride and an Idaho football game. We all had a great time with family!

Mya's first pig tails!

The first time jumping on the trampoline at Grandma & Grandpa's house.