Spoiled....

My sweet husband and kids surprised me with an early Christmas present yesterday. I am so excited about the greenhouse and have planted all the heirloom veggies I got for free on Listia. I can't wait to see what comes up and eat the delicious fresh veggies. The kids also planted tons of flowers in my little love heart garden in the very front of our house yesterday and it looks so pretty. I LOVE our autumns and winters here and am looking forward to getting out potato and onion crops in soon and trying out some sweet potato this year too! I will post pictures soon!!!!! To top off my holiday weekend, we are waiting on Princess Laya to deliver our first bunnies of the breeding season, she has built a nest of hay and fur and is probably waiting for the cover of night for the arrival.

Small things, big miracles.

When Ethan was born and suffered a severe Hypoxic Ischemic insult (HIE) we never would have dreamed where we would be at today. His life was destined to be very short and probably spent in a vegetative state. I don't know that we fully understood the gravity of the situation at the time. I was getting my dream come true to be a mom and I wasn't going to let a little brain damage get in the way. It is only now after all the struggles and fights and ups and downs, unknowns and clear test results that we have a better picture. There was only one thing that mattered back then, and that was that I was going to cherish every moment I had with my son and do what a mom is suppose to do.....love, nurture and teach. You have to take what doctors tell you with a grain of salt and realize that ONLY Heavenly Father knows what is in store for this precious life and rely on him to give you the strength to face what ever may come. I have been incredibly blessed that Ethan was not in a vegetative state, and his life was not ever meant to be as short as doctors anticipated. I have been given this amazing child who despite many challenges is very determined and goal oriented. That said there are a great many things Ethan has accomplished in his 10 years, but just recently, the he has gone through a huge developmental growth spurt. These may seem like very small things to the parents of a typical child, but they are miracles to us. Ethan's latest accomplishments are things that I certainly did not expect to happen....he is completely out of diapers, and today marks 5 weeks without a tube feeding. It has been a tremendous amount of effort but with our help Ethan has met two of his goals....I can say he met them because I know how stubborn my son is and I know that after his effort he will never go back to tube feeding as he really wants it out for his eleventh birthday and I will do all I can to help him make that happen.