Help!!

So, Levi has been "saying" the funniest things lately. Last Sunday, we were eating out with some friends for Father's Day (Link wasn't there :(. He's on a mission trip to Miami). Levi spit up all over me and one of our friends asked "Do you feel better now?" to which Levi replied "Yeah". Tonight I was reading him the Bible story of the 10 lepers where only one leper returned to tell Jesus "Thank You!". I was at the part where the lepers first see Jesus. The line says "Jesus was far away, so the men yelled in big voices" at which point Levi yells "ahhahah help (well, it sort of sounded like help) ahaahah" right on cue. I tell ya', the kid's a genius ;). Also, he's been making pretty funny faces lately (please see top two pictures) and he's now a master of sitting up by himself. He's a fun baby. Link comes home tomorrow so life will return "normal" for a little while at least.

***Yes, I realize I haven't posted in almost a year. Let's just be excited that I finally posted again and not dwell on the past. . . ;)

Baby Levi

A lot has happened since I posted last :). I "graduated" in May with my doctorate in Physical Therapy and one week from today I will officially be done with school FOREVER!!! Granted, I still have to pass a licensure exam to actually practice, at least I won't have to go to school anymore.

In more exciting news, Link and I are expecting a baby December 14th! Here are the most current ultrasound pictures of our baby boy, Levi:

His little hand and fingers! Where the letter "f" is in "fingers" is his little finger and his thumb isn't really visible.



His profile


They don't usually do 3-D this early but he wasn't cooperating with the ultrasound tech so she was just playing around. One friend stated he looked like a chihuahua but I prefer to think he looks like a Play-Doh baby. He was "smiling" so they printed it off for us. The next picture is a bit graphic just to warm you. . .

It's definitely a boy! He was positioned funny and his head is the big white circle. His left arm is bent and he has his hand behind his head. The rest is marked :). I'm really not sure how he was curled around like that but there's a lot of things that amaze me about the whole pregnancy thing.

update

Sorry it's taken me so long to update my last post. It's been a little bit crazy around here. Mitzi passed away on Thursday, January 22nd. They did another MRI earlier that week and the cancer had taken over her body. There was a beautiful memorial service the next Thursday. She was such a wonderful woman of God and she will be greatly missed by all. Please continue to pray for the family as this will be a hard adjustment for them all.

The other thing that happened was my grandfather passed away the day before Mitzi. He was getting older and had scoliosis that made it hard for him to breathe. He passed away peacefully in his sleep. A blessing that came out of it was that I was able to see my parents and sisters and niece, Elizabeth, and a lot of my extended family that I hadn't seen in several years. It was cold in Ohio but well worth the trip.

Please Pray

We have a dear, sweet friend at church named Mitzi Brown and she is very sick. They at first thought that she had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma but now they don't know if that's what it is or not. She had a really bad night last night and things aren't looking good. She has a 2 kids in the youth group, a girl in the 7th grade and a boy in the 9th grade. She and her husband have always been very involved and very supportive of Link in his ministry. She's been feeling bad for a while but it wasn't until last week that they thought it was lymphoma and it's been going down hill so quickly. They are a wonderful Christian family and it's hard to imagine a world without Mitzi in it. As always, it is totally in God's hand. I know that God hears ours prayers and petitions and I ask that you PLEASE put this matter on your heart and raise Mitzi in prayer.

Yes, I know I'm in trouble. . .

So, both of my sisters have reminded me the past week that I have not blogged in a longggggg time. I have a facebook account but I guess not everyone can see that and I don't post news things on there much either. So, I decided to post about a few things that we've done in the month of October. Link's best friend, Brandon, called and wanted to hang out in the mountains. Yes, there are mountains about 4 hours from Lubbock and they are pretty despite the fact that they are in New Mexico. Anyway, the night before Link was leaving I decided that I wanted to tag along so the boys graciously said that I could. We had a great time getting away!!! We hit golf balls (I'm not very good), we made a camp fire and roasted mallows, we went for a hike and Link and Brandon shot things with Brandon's guns. I skipped out on the shooting part to study and give them some "guy time". Brandon has a boxer named Liberty that Chewy got along with really well. We would just let them out of the cabin and they would romp around the camp together and come back when we called. It was great to get away from Lubbock for a weekend and not be looking at a clock to see where we had to be next.

My birthday is October 28th and this year I turned 28! So, it was my golden birthday. I'm not sure if that is just a northern thing or just a South Dakota thing but no one in Texas had ever heard it called that. Link was sweet and gave me flowers as did my parents. A mom from our youth group makes cupcakes for a living (which I had just found out about the weekend before my birthday) so she made me a dozen peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting. They were AMAZING!! We also have a middle school Bible study at our house on Monday nights and she brought 2 dozen cupcakes for that as well. They were really cute.

Half Way Done!

As of this past Thursday, I am half way done with my doctor of Physical Therapy degree!!! 5 semesters down and 5 to go. It was a crazy semester. We had some pretty tough classes to get through this semester but I think everyone made it through. My grandad passed away in September from a blood disorder. Link and I were able to visit with him the weekend before he died and spend some time with him. We didn't expect him to be gone the next week but we knew that our time left with him was short. That was very hard to deal with but at the same time we were able to see our family which was a blessing during a sad time. At the end of November my uncle passed away of a heartattack. It was my mom's older brother and she was actually flying back home from visiting them when he'd had the heart attack. He had just thrown a big birthday party for his wife the night before in Pheonix and all the siblings had flown down for it. I was glad that my mom had gone to the party and had just spent time with him. Link's been soooo busy working with both the junior high and high school youth groups. It slowed down in October with the last of our 2 big retreats (which I might say he did a wonderful job with them both) and is now gearing up again with all of our holiday parties and service projects. The high school students went to the Children's Hospital and handed out presents and sang carols for the kids. It was really good to watch them step out of their comfort zone and serve (and see how lucky they are to be healthy). I've babbled on enough now. That's what's been going on.

Good News

Hello all! I just wanted to let you know that the young man that I talked about in my previous blog found out that the tumor is a pediatric tumor and is not cancer! He was finally able to come back to Lubbock from Dallas yesterday! God is good. As far as life for Link and Monica, it is good. Link's ministry is going well. Things have finally slowed down and he only has a few day things throughout the month. My school is going well but I'm looking forward to Christmas break and to finish this semester. At the end of September we picked our locations for our 8 week clinicals that begin in the March. I'll be going to Amarillo to live our friends Jay and Kami and work in one of the hospitals there. That's about all that I have for now. :)

Prayer

I've had a lot of things going on in my life that I can hopefully post about this weekend but I wanted to right a quick posting about a prayer request that I have. There is a young man named Jerrod who is in surgery right now getting a tumor removed from his brain stem. He is a freshman at LCU and grew up in Lubbock. Link had the fortune of meeting him last year as Jerrod was serving as Student Body President at our local Christian high school. He is an amazing young man. Even though we don't know him very well, Link always enjoys being around him and talking to him and I have always been impressed whenever I had interacted with him. He has been in surgery since 3:30 pm and it is now 10:45 pm. It takes about 11 hours and I wish I would have thought to post this earlier. Regardless, he is going to need prayers with whatever they find out tonight, whether it be with recovery or what ever treatment he may have to have. They made a website for him with pictures, his dad's emails and updates on his condition. http://www.jerrodshelton.com/news.html Please put him in your prayers and pass this on. Thank you!

Long Summer

Link and I have had a crazy summer. Sorry I haven't updated since June. June 4 I left for Lovington, NM to live with the in-laws for 8 weeks for my school clinical. We have to do 4 clinicals throughout our 3 years of school for 8 weeks each. My in-laws are very good to me and it was a fun time. Link has had a summer filled with camps and mission trips. It has been a full summer because Link had planned things while he was the junior high minister and then when he took over both junior high and high school ministries he got everything that was planned for both. We just got back from Pine Springs Camp last night and finally things are going to slow down for a little bit. I start back to school the 27th and then we have our fall retreat Labor Day weekend.

In July my sister and her family came up from Mexico so we got to spend the 4th of July with them and my other sister and her family. July 9th my sister Jessica and her family moved from Lubbock to Tulsa, OK. Now we're the only ones left in TX :(. It's been a hard adjustment with our closes friends moving to Amarillo in May and then my sisters both being gone. We're slowly adjusting. Then my whole family was able to get together in Oklahoma the second weekend in July. It was the first time we've all been together at Grandma and Grandpa's so it was fun. I'll try and post some pictures later of the few adventures Link and I have had this summer.

It's been a while. . .

So my school semester ended well. I passed all my classes (that's always good 'cause you get kicked out for a year if you don't) and have been out since May 8th and haven't done much since then. I planned all this cleaning I was going to get done and I maybe got half the list done. We went to Dallas/Fort Worth and saw Body Worlds (which was very interesting) and then went to a Rangers vs Twins game. Being a northern girl transplanted in west Texas, I was going for the Twangers. My first professional baseball game ever was the Twins so I couldn't cheer against them. The next day I met some of Link's friends from a church that he interned at a few years ago and then we went to the Container Store and the Cheesecake Factory. I don't like cheesecake but I LOVE the Cheesecake Factory's strawberry shortcake dessert. It is the best. We met Link's college roommate and his new girl friend for supper and had a lot of fun. We got home of Wednesday afternoon and then left again Thursday afternoon for five days at the lake with Link's family. We got back Tuesday night and have been running around getting things done. I leave on Sunday for Lovington, NM where I will spend 8 weeks for my clinical for school. I get to live with the in-laws for free so that will be nice and since it's the summer Link will be gone a lot anyway for different trips and camps so I won't be home alone. Here is a picture from this past weekend. The golf cart that is down at the lake overheated and quit working so Link's cousins (they're 9, 7, 4 years old) pushed his mom back to the trailer. We all thought it was pretty funny!

NCYM and life

Yeah, it's been a long time since I've posted. I'm not sure if anyone will read this since it's been so long. Life's been moving fast and I just spend the last hour catching up on everyone's blogs. So here's a quick catch up. In October I got to go to Mexico for my birthday and visit my new neice and see my family. It was a fun trip. My last semester finished well and then my sister and her family came from Mexico to visit for about a month. Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa came down for Christmas too. Link and I got a chance to go to CO for almost a week for NCYM and got to hang out with some friends that we hadn't seen in a while. The picture is from the deck of the resort that they had the conference at. I also got to see my friends Anne and Rob from high school that I hadn't seen in about 4 years. We then went to Winter Park and skiied (is that how you spell it?) for a day with Link's old roommate Tanner that had also gone to the conference with us. We missed the avalanche that hit by about oh, an hour and a half. And it was sooooooooo cold.... I had to stop a few times to warm up in the lodge. That's just a quick update. Sorry I haven't been good at posting. Now I have to get to the school work that I've been ignoring.

Pictures!!!

It's been a month since I posted last and I finally got my pictures developed!!! Yeah!!! Nothing much has been going on. Last Thursday I had to work at our county fair at a food booth for a group that gives PT students scholarships. Fun and grease, let me tell yeah, I totally respect anyone in the food service industry. Saturday was the Race for the Cure and my PT class got together and made a team and then my friends Kami, Cassie and TJ, and of course, Link and I ran/walked in it. It was great. I was proud to get to do it in celebration of my grandmother overcoming breast cancer. And ever since then I've been studying. . . in fact, I need to go back to studying now :(. We had one test today and one on Wednesday so that's pretty much all that I've done lately.

I love watching the fountains at the Bellagio! I could watch them allll day long. Luckly, Link enjoys them to and doesn't mind watching them with me.

This picture isn't very good (cause I was using a desposible camera) but it's from the Venician which is one of my favorite hotels to walk through.

Kami and me after the race!

I know it's been a while but I've been waiting to get my Vegas pictures back so I can post them. of course in order to get them back, I'd have to take them to the store to get developed first and I haven't done that. We bought disposables because I didn't want to take my good camera with us and I'm so used to digital that I keep forgetting to take them to get printed. Anyway, we had a good time in Vegas. Got to see the moving statues at Ceasar's and got to see a lot of the hotels that we didn't see the last time. Over my "break" we were pretty busy. Link was getting things ready for a retreat that he is teaching at the we take our high school kids on every labor day weekend. It's in the mountains of New Mexico at a camp called Blue Haven and this weekend it's only suppose to get up to 60 degress and be rainy. It'll be a nice heat that we've been having here. I made a lot of baby gifts (loopys and blankets) to give to the 17 (and counting) people we know having babies. We also had a girls' retreat at church that was a lot of fun. And I got a chance to go up to Oklahoma for a quick trip to see my cousins and aunt that live in Croatia and to see my grandparents. Link and I had a good time getting away for a couple days. Sorry we couldn't get up to Stillwater, Amanda! Now school has started back and i think this semester is going to be a lot better than last semester!! I don't feel guilty that I'm not studying every free moment and I was even able to go get my neice from daycare after I got out of class and watch her for a few hours. It was great. Anyway, I have to go dig my cold clothes out and get my bags packed for the retreat. I hope you all have a great long weekend!

Las Vegas Clarification

I just wanted to apologize to who ever I offended in my last blog. I posted that after this semester of school Link and I were going to Las Vegas, and someone took it the wrong way. There are many things to do in Vegas that do not include showgirls and gambling. It is an entertainment city filled with a lot of (clean) shows and places (Hoover Dam for example) to see. I'm sorry that I misled someone to believe that I was going for the wrong reasons. Link and I got to go a year ago to see Josh Groban (a great singer) in concert and we missed out on some really neat sites because we couldn't find them and ran out of time. So, we are getting a chance to go back and see the fun, clean parts of the city. The thing is that there are bad things to every city and I know that the advertising for Vegas is not good but I am a good person and I feel bad that someone thinks bad of me for going to Vegas. So, anyway, if you don't care then you wasted your time reading this but I just wanted to clarify. . .

Only 2 more weeks!!!

Only 2 more weeks of school and then off to Vegas!!! I'm really excited because I only have 7 days left of anatomy (which means only 7 more days with cadavers :)), 6 tests, 2 papers and then Link and I are going with the in-laws to Las Vegas for 3 days. It'll be a nice getaway. Link just got home tonight (Monday) after being in Mexico since last Sunday. They drove 26 hours (each way) in a bus. I'm kind of glad I wasn't on that trip. He got to see Toni (my sister) and Cory (my brother-in-law) and Josiah (my nephew) and Abigail (my niece) and Hannah (my newest niece) though so in that case, I wish that I'd been on the trip :(. I'm really glad that he's back. He's already crashed out asleep and it's only 8:20. Anyway, I better get back to studying.

school (ugh)

Yes, I realize I haven't posted in a while and there is a reason. PT school is hard!!!! Therefor, I have been studying and doing homework and sleeping when it is allowed and eating when my stomach reminds me that it time to leave the library and take a break. I'm doing fine is school but they weren't kidding when they said that it would consume our lives this summer. Luckly they say that this is the worst semester as far as the amount of material that we are covering and current PTs have assured me that this semester is the worst and I will make it through alive. Anyway, that's what my life consists of now. Pretty boring. Oh yeah!! My sister Toni had a baby girl on May 31 in Mexico and she is healthy and beautiful. Thought I'd add that .

One more day!!!

I like my job. I'm a physical therapy rehab aide and it's good experience for the future. But alas, tomorrow is my last full time day. have to work the weekend but those are only 2 half days and much easier than the weekdays so my real last day is Sunday. I'm still going to work 1 weekend a month just to help out and get a little bit of extra money. I'm excited because I get two weeks off and then school starts. That's kind of scary. Link and I and a friend (Kami) are going to the lake for a couple days to play on the water and do nothing and then I'm going to come back and get things organized around the house and go buy my books. I'm just so excited to have time to do nothing and whatever I want to do!! I haven't had that in a while so I'm going to cherish it. Anyway, that's it. Just thought I'd share that!

a new niece and. . .

On Wednesday my sister, Jessica, had a healthy baby girl, 6 lb 13 oz. She's precious. She was three weeks early, planned early. There were a few little complications and she was healthy so they delivered her Wednesday. My sister, Toni, and her family came up from Mexico for the baby and they will be here till next Thursday. It was an exciting day and to top it all off, I came home from the hospital and there was a letter from Texas Tech in the mailbox and I got accepted to Physical Therapy school!!!!! God has a funny sense of humor. He waited till I was having a perfect day and decided to bless me even more. So, thank you to all who said prayers for me! I start May 30 and go for the next three years straight. I'm so excited!

Oh, wonderful PT school

So I've known this since we got back from the fishing trip and I'm not sure why I haven't posted it yet. Maybe it's just because I feel blahhhh about the whole thing. So I got a letter from Texas Tech and it says that I'm an alternate for Physical Therapy school. It wasn't a happy letter, it wasn't a sad letter, it was a blah letter. They said, "If you, haven't received another letter by May 22 then you know the class is filled, thanks for applying, apply again next year and well, it stinks to be you!" Okay, so it didn't say all that, but it did say that if I hadn't received a letter by May 22, the class is full. Now I'm playing the waiting game and I want to receive a letter in the mailbox!!! That would be a good thing. I know that it is still in God's hands and that He knows what's best. I'm wondering if I accidentally prayed for patience one time and so God is making me wait. . . There still is hope though because some alternates don't hear until the end of April/ beginning of May. I don't know how many alternates there are or where I am on the list, so that makes it a bit hard but like I said, God knows better than I! Anyway, it doesn't hurt to pray, so if you could keep (or put) this in your prayers, that would be wonderful!

Fly Fishing

Link and I got to get away this weekend and spend some time with our friends, Kami and Jay. We went to a town outside of San Antonio and stayed at this little lodge that went by the Guadalupe River. It wasn't like a nice log cabin lodge but it was a good price and it was very pretty scenery. On Friday Kami and I slept in while the guys went fly fishing (and caught nothing), then we shopped while they slept and on Saturday we all went to San Marcus and shopped at the outlet malls there. That night we got to go over to San Antonio (sorry, April, that we didn't call, it was last minute) and looked at the Alamo and ate on the River Walk. Jay ate a whole rack of ribs which was very entertaining. On Sunday morning we all got up and went fly fishing and once again caught nothing but it was a lot of fun to be out in nature and not have to worry about time or have a schedule.