Noah's 2nd ER trip

Our oldest made it TEN years into his life before visiting the ER and now he's been twice in the last 3 months. (First time was in March when he cut his arm at the pipe shed.) Thursday night, he went on a Father/Son hike in the woods and woke up Friday morning with his eyes almost completely swollen shut and hives from the neck up. We did Benadryl every 4 hours all day yesterday and all night last night, but it wasn't getting any better. I knew the Pediatric Clinic in MP was open on Sat. mornings, so we were there by 8 when they opened. AFTER I filled out all of the paperwork, they told me they don't accept new patients on Saturdays. GRRRRR! I started to tell the lady that I grew up going to the Pediatric Clinic and I was pretty sure Dr. Stagg would let us in. Also, Dr. Chapman was the one there today. I stayed at his house and lead a Disciple Now Weekend when I was in college and attended church with he and his wife for years. I think his daughter was even in my VBS class. Anyway, I didn't say any of that. She told me they could see Noah on Tuesday or we could take him to the ER. There's no way we were waiting til Tuesday. He was miserable.

After calling hubby and debating the merits of the hospitals in the surrounding towns, he thought we should just go downstairs (we were already at the hospital in MP) and go to the ER there. I have never heard anyone say anything good about the Titus ER and I had just told my Mom last night that I wouldn't go there unless I absolutely had to. Well, we ended up having a very good experience. There was only 1 man waiting and they got us right in. The doctor was very kind and the nurse really helped ease Noah when he had to get a shot. Soooo, 1 ER trip, 1 steroid shot, 1 steroid pack, and 1 super-duper Benadryl prescription later, he is on the mend....we hope. We will probably never know what he touched in the woods. It's not Poison Ivy because there's nothing on the surface of the skin.

I have to close this post with an AMAZING blessing from God that we received yesterday. Just to set this story up: our health insurance stinks. It's expensive and never pays out a thing. Basically, it's catastrophic insurance and that's about it. Noah's 1st trip to the ER which took less than 30 minutes and involved skin glue (which came off the next day!) was $933.00. That's with no help from the insurance company. So, I did what my Mama has always taught me to do and wrote a letter. It was a nice letter. I wasn't ugly. I just stated that in our opinion, skin glue was not "surgery" as they were calling it. I asked them to review the charges because we felt that $933 was excessive.
Ok, here comes the good part:
Yesterday, we got a letter saying they had reviewed his case and our bill was reduced by $769 for a total of $163!!!!!!! I was stunned! I wrote the letter because I knew I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at least TRY to fight the bill. I never expected it to do any good though. We are so thankful the LORD took care of that bill. We have many more things to be spending our money on right now than $900 skin glue!
Never a dull moment here....

GLA update

So, this week we learned that IBESR (Haitian Social Services) is closed until July 31. This means that GLA cannot present any dossiers until August 1st. This post described more about why they're closed and it's a good thing, even though it means more waiting. Dixie said they will continue to give referrals of children throughout the summer and be ready to submit those dossiers on August 1st.

Here's my hope/thinking/theory (Robby's too): we feel like we'll get our referral sometime this summer so that our dossier will be ready to be presented to IBESR on August 1st. Makes sense, right? As I've said many times, it's all in God's hands and we are good with that. Right now, there are 13 dossiers sitting at GLA. We know we are one of those 13. There are many more kids there than that number, so we are confident our baby girl is there and being given great care.

Until next time....

Summertime Jonah

Today Jonah decided he wanted to transform into "Summertime Jonah". It was hard for this Mama to shave off those blonde locks, but I assured him they will grow back. He just decided on his own that he wanted his head "shaved like Noah". I talked to him for a while about other people's reactions. He tends to get very upset when others fuss over him or make a big deal out of him (growls angrily like a bear). So, I wanted to make sure that he wouldn't get upset because the change is quite drastic and others will notice and comment. He said, "I'll just say I have a haircut like my brother Noah."

 The BEFORE picture

 During....he said, "Do you think we could make a wig out of all of that hair?"

 AFTER....still my same sweet boy.

His favorite cartoon is Ben 10 Alien Force. Ben is a boy who can change into different alien figures. So, Jonah and I talked about how has transformed into "Summertime Jonah". It will take a while to get used to this guy living at our house. : )

Mamas

Being a Mama is truly a calling. It's not an accident. It's not a job. It's a calling I've had in my heart since I was a little girl and rocked my dolls to sleep. This post puts it all in perspective:
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/motherhood-is-a-calling-and-where-your-children-rank

Catchin' Up

In the past 24 hours, I've had two different people tell me that they read my blog. : ) Makes me happy! So, I figured I should do a better job of writing. This is a busy time of year. Here's what we've been up to lately:

**Homeschool Day at Six Flags (photos)! Last year was our first year to go on this day and we'll never go on a different day. The weather is perfectly warm, but not blistering. There's no big crowds or long lines and the people are all NICE! It's wonderful! Last year, the boys were totally clueless and enjoyed every minute of their new adventure. This year, they each had an agenda which made things more difficult. We ended up splitting up, so I didn't get as many pictures this year. I'm bummed that I missed the family photo in front of the big chair.

**Wrapping Up the school year. I can't believe our 2nd year of homeschooling is coming to an end. I have a long ways to go before I'm a veteran, but I feel like we've got a good routine going. Our co-op is amazing and we are so blessed to have such a wonderful "family" of local homeschoolers. Noah still puts up a fight, but I just think that will be school with Noah from here on out. We have loved the Sonlight curriculum which was new to us this year. We have read TONS of great books and loved every minute of it. I'm still planning next year and not sure how that schedule's going to look. I really like the idea of year-round and taking more breaks with long stints in between.

**Extreme Home Makeover: McCraw Addition
When Baby Girl gets here, that will make 4 kiddos for us and only 3 bedrooms, so we're adding on. We have a great contractor that does business with us and he's drawn up some very creative plans. We're adding on to the north side of the house--master bedroom and bathroom. We'll probably shuffle a little afterwards and move Noah into our current bedroom so Gracie can have his room. Still thinking on that. I know a girl needs more space than a boy when she's older, but she won't need much space at first. Luke and Jonah will still bunk together, but their room is expanding which is a good thing. I am trying to be excited, but I am a bit nervous. I'm just not a spatial/artistic thinker and when Robby draws the diagrams on paper, it's really hard for me to imagine it in real life. I've always told him that the thought of building a house is very daunting to me and I think it would really freak me out. Starting with a blank canvas is just too much for me to contemplate! If you show me 2 pictures from "Southern Living", I can tell you which I like best, but just dreaming up a bedroom and bathroom in my mind is really mind-boggling. That's why we go together so well. Robby is super excited and ready to start picking things out and I'm just trying to wrap my brain around it all. As of now, the plan is to start mid-June and the contractor says it will take 60 days. I know contractor-speak. It will be more like 90 days, I'm sure, with several setbacks in between. I'm prepared for that. It will be such a blessing when it's all finished, but it will stretch me, that's for sure!

Another project I'm tackling this summer is painting the brick wall/hearth in our living room. It's very dark and I've dreamed of painting it since we moved here. I've been researching it online and it doesn't seem that difficult. It will really brighten up this room with the dark floors. We haven't picked a color, yet, but we're thinking a really light buttery yellow, similar to our living room in our McKinney house. We're going to use the same color on the living room walls and in the kitchen/school room, too. I painted the kitchen red about a year ago and it's just too dark. Needless to say, this will be an interesting summer!

**Make new friends, but keep the old: one of my best buddies that I grew up with is saying goodbye to the city life and moving back home! We grew up across the street from each other and I'm so excited that we'll live close by again. She has 2 boys and homeschools, too. It's all good!


**Waiting......still.
No news from Haiti as of now. From the timeline they gave us, the end of May would be the EARLIEST we would receive our referral. So, I'm not even getting the tiniest bit hopeful til then. I have several "friends" in our GLA Yahoo Group who've been waiting more than 3 months on their referral. I know God can do anything, but I'm trying to be realistic, too.

That's all I've got for now. If you've read this far, bless you.