My silly little girls

Bekah was telling Hannah all about worms: Worms make racoons, then they become butterflys and have wings. They fly all over the place.

Every time Hannah gives us a kiss she makes us promise not to wipe it off. Then she'll tell us that we can only wipe off the slobbery parts.

A Lesson Learned

God has been teaching me so much in the last few weeks. He has been showing me how important it is to trust fully in Him, to experience joy in each moment that He gives me and to make all the little moments with my family count. It is not always easy to learn these lessons, but knowing that God is right there with me through it all makes it ok.

As most of you know, a few weeks ago I got the call telling me that I was on modified duty until we could figure out a way to protect me from the Neoblue bili lights at work. I didn't know at that point if I would ever be able to work in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit again. That was my home away from home. My friends were there. I loved my job and enjoyed all aspects of what I did. And I was good at it. My heart stopped and I began to grieve. . . the loss of my unit, the loss of my friends and the loss of my place in this world. I now had no safe niche to go to at work and just felt lost and oh, so alone. I cried out to God to show me His will. I knew what I wanted. . . desperately wanted. I wanted to go back to my job and have that security back. I didn't want to go any where else. And I prayed that God would open the door for me to go back to the NICU. But I also knew that God has the power to place me somewhere else. He would do what ever was going to bring Him glory and honor-not just what I selfishly wanted. I wrestled with Him, for days on end. I prayed while driving, while sitting alone at work for hours, while in bed. Every moment of the day turned into a time to seek God and allow Him to work in my heart. And slowly He did. I kept praying that He would help me to find joy while on modified duty-feeling like an outcast. That He would help me find joy if I had to work in another unit. And that He would give me joy in each area of my life whether it was what I wanted or not. Slowly, ever so slowly, God gave me peace that passes understanding and a joy that only comes from Him. I was able to find a real peace knowing that God may be moving me to another place in the hospital and knowing that I may have to work on paperwork for a few months until it all got sorted out. I love having a relationship like that with God. He made me and He loves me. The God of the universe cares about my heart and will do what ever it takes to make me more like Him.

Then God gave me hope that a solution might be available. My optomotrist gave me a pair of glasses to try around the bili lights. Then my Uncle Scott found a brand that said it would block out 99.9% of the light wave that the bili lights put out. After working at Sutter teaching mock code stuff at skills day, I had a day of modified duty. I took the glasses to the unit and worked up there for a couple hours. The neoblue light was there and with the glasses on, I was fine. No headaches at all!!! I was super excited and so thankful that we had found a solution in only a week and a half. The next day I was allowed to go backt to work and ended up picking up a 12 hour shift that night. The following night I picked up another shift. I had a baby on a ventilator that had two neoblue lights on him. Because of where he was we couldn't use the drapes that protect our eyes from some of the light waves. I still didn't get sick. Not even a hint of a headache. God is so good to me.

Today at church I could see so clearly all that God has been teaching me. It felt like God was showing me all those things that I had been learning the past few weeks. Pastor Bauer was talking about how God always has a plan. He is the God of the universe. He created all things and is in control of all things. He doesn't need us giving Him imput or advice. He has a set plan of what He wants to do. When the crowds came to Jesus on the mountain, they had a physical need at the end of the day. All 5,000 men, plus women and children were hungry and needed food. Any town was too far away to go to and they didn't have enough money to buy bread for all to eat. God was testing the disciples to see what they would do. Instead of remembering the many, many miracles God had done in the old testament and all the miracles that Jesus had done and trusting that Jesus could do something great, they gave up on the situation. They didn't fully trust that Jesus had a plan or that He was big enough to do a miracle and provide for the peoples needs. Jesus was testing them and they failed the test. He did provide for them. One child gave Jesus all of his lunch-5 small loaves of bread and 2 small fish. The disciples still didn't think that Jesus could do anything, but He proved them wrong. He turned that little lunch into enough food to feed 20,000 people with 12 baskets left over. He can do so much more than we can imagine. Why don't we trust Him more? Why do we give up when we face something hard and not cry out to God to provide and do something amazing. He cares for me and He has a plan. It probably isn't something that I would have come up with. His plan is most likely bigger and better than I could have ever dreamed. I want to encourage you: Trust Jesus with all your heart. He has a plan for your life. He can see the whole picture and will do what is best-not just what you think is best. All that He does, He does to bring Himself glory. We need to be focuses on Him and not on ourselves. If we spend our day listening to ourselves whine and worry, then we become unhappy and full of pride and selfishness. When we focus on thanking God for all He does and all He has done for us, our focus moves from ourselves to God. We will be filled with peace and joy and our minds will be transformed. I am going to continue to strive to keep my focus on Christ and be filled with thankfulness in the good times and during the trials as well. God is good, all the time!

I thank God for letting the glasses work. I thank Him for protecting me from the migraines at work and allowing others to be protected too. I praise Him for letting me be able to work in the NICU again and for only missing 2 weeks of work there. I thank God for my family. They bring me such joy and blessings. I thank Him for the hard times when I cry out to Him and am drawn closer to Him. I thank Him for working on my heart in so many ways and changing me daily into more of the person that He wants me to be. I thank God for all the little things and am so glad that He cares about the little things that bring us joy. Thank-you God for all you are and all you do. There is no one like you!!

Library Time

The girls love the library. Bekah loves the computers that she is allowed to play with. Hannah loves pulling the books off the shelves and piling them on the table. We go to the library every 2-3 weeks and get 10 to 20 books. We read these books until the girls have just about memorized them. Today we invited Michelle and her little ones to go with us. It was fun spending the after noon with them.


Bekah and Max enjoyed playing games on the computer. We don't ever let her touch our computers so she loves that the library has ones that kids can play on.



Hannah wanted to dress herself today. If you look closely you can see that her jacket is on completely upside down. I just kept looking at the jacket and giggling.






Hannah is too little to play the kids games on the computer. She did want to listen though. Hannah had to put the head phones on her head all by her self. These are some of my favorite pictures.

Fun messy activity

I have a fun book that has a lot of fun ideas for toddlers. One of the ideas was to put shaving cream on a tray and color it with paint or food coloring. We did this with the girls. I found out the hard way that the food coloring I used kind of stained my hands as well as the girls. Nice!

I love it when the girls are sweet to one another.



They were so excited to do something new and fun.

Hannah is my super clean girl. She doesn't like to get her hands dirty, ever. It took some convincing to get her to stick her hands in the shaving cream. After quite some time she really started to have fun.


I think the best thing that we did was practice letters. I would draw a letter with a spatula (had to keep my hands clean so I could take pictures). Bekah really enjoyed getting to make letters.




The girls had a lot of fun playing in the shaving cream.


I put an art shirt on Hannah. I forgot to put one on Bekah. Not a good idea. She got food coloring on her sweater and it won't come out. Whoops! Lesson learned.

Trusting God When I Can't See Around the Corner

I have wanted to be a nurse since I was a child. My sister was in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia when she was a little girl. I loved visiting her there. The children's hospital was amazing. I remember seeing a little girl named Justine who was in the same room as Megan. She was 2 years old and was getting breathing treatments every few hours. One nurse came in to give her a breathing treatment. The little girl was scared and crying. The nurse had no compassion and held her still and made her breathe the medicine while she was screaming and scared. The next nurse that came in to give the breathing treatment was great. She saw that the little girl was scared and so played games and made it a fun thing for her. I loved seeing how a nurses approach made all the difference in the world to a child. That made such an impact on me. I chose at that moment to be a nurse when I grew up. No child should ever have to have a bad nurse and I wanted to be the best nurse I could be so that my patients would have a good experience.

I held onto that dream and made it a reality. Eight years ago in June I became a NICU nurse. Eight years ago I found the best job in the world. I love what I do and I love the people that I work with. Up until now I thought this is what I would be doing until I retired as a gray hair old lady. Up until now. Now I'm not sure whether or not I'll ever be able to work in the NICU again.

Awhile ago my nemesis, the NeoBlue Bili lights, entered our unit. For whatever reason, the lights hate me. And I hate them. Ok, it is mutual. . . We hate each other. Every time I see the lights I get sick with in 2-3 minutes. I get an instant migraine which causes my stomach to hurt, I get dizzy and I get a headache. The last time I worked with a baby under these bili lights I had to go home sick after four hours due to what felt like the worst food poisoning case in the world. The bili lights had caused me to throw up and feel like I was going to pass out. Not cool!! After 3 hours away from the lights I was totally fine.

I talked to my manager and she had me talk to the disability office to figure out what we could do. I filled out the paperwork and gave some ideas of ways to modify my work environment so that I could work in my unit without getting sick. Today I got a call from the disablilty manager. She told me that I was on work modification until we can figure out what can be done so that the demon lights (my words, not hers) would not affect me. Then the real blow. If a solution can not be found, I can never work in the NICU again. I tried to see if we could just forget the whole matter and have me just deal with the severe migraines. That was not going to happen. So now I am on modified duty and I can only go to work and do projects.

This was probably the worst news that I could have heard. I cried and Chris held me and told me that we would get through this. I cried some more and tried imagining my life with out my job as a NICU nurse. It was a pretty hard thing to do. I have been wrestling all day with my fears and trying desperately to give them to God and just fully trust in Him. He gave me my passion and my love for nursing. He gave me my job and the joy that I have in my job. I know that He can take it away just as quick as He gave it to me. I know that He is in full control. He can heal me of this affliction, help me find a way to deal with it or He can redirect my path. I know what I want. What I desperately want. But I also know that He has plans for my life that I can not fathom. There have been so many things in my life that have happened that I thought were horrible things and I wanted them to be different. Looking back, I can see that God orchestrated them in His own way and with His own timing to make me into the person that He wants. I am trying to fully submit to His will. Not with worry and fear and grumbling, but with joy and trust and hope. It is not an easy path to go down when I can't see the end. I'm sure that I will have to give this burden back to God at least a few more times. But one thing I know is this: God is Good. All the time!!


Here are some pictures of my sweet unit and a few of the nurses that I love dearly. This is a place I hold dear to my heart.
My own sweet baby in the NICU.

Daddy and Bekah

Bekah is definitely a daddy's girl. She adores her daddy. And he adores her. Bekah absolutely loves it when daddy takes the time to chase her around the house and tickle her. He wrestles with Bekah and she climbs all over daddy. Every night mommy puts Hannah to bed, but Bekah always wants her daddy to tuck her in. They share a special bond. I love to capture little moments like this between my sweet husband and my first born.






The other day mommy was making dinner while daddy watched the girls in the living room. I called them all to come in for dinner. Bekah told me I had to come see daddy first. This is what I saw! Of course I grabbed my camera and snapped a few pictures.


Bekah tucked daddy in and got him all comfortable.


Daddy was so comfortable that he didn't really want to get up and come to dinner

I love the little teddy bear tucked in daddy's arms.

What precious moments and special pictures. This is the best time of my life right now. I work 3 night shifts a week and Chris works at the radio station 2 times a week. That leaves a whole lot of time for both mommy and daddy to spend time with the girls. It is wonderful having the time to spend with each other and have both of us there to handle the kids and everything else. I love being able to tell Chris that I need a break and let him deal with the girls. God was so wise when he made families with a daddy and a mommy. Anyway, i am cherishing this time with my girls. My life does seem like a circus at times. Some times there are too many things on my plate or we have a bad day, but I just love my family and my life. God has blessed me above and beyond what I could have ever imagined. I am so thankful for my family and for just being able to fully enjoy them.

Easy Flower Headbands

A few months ago, my sweet sister sent me a link to a post on Shabby 2 Chic's blog. On her blog she showed step by step instructions on how to make head bands with flowers on them for kids and moms. I loved the idea and have been eager to get the time and the supplies together to be able to try this. Today I had everything ready to make them but I was unable to get back to the post on her blog. Fortunately I remembered how to make them from memory. I love how they turned out. Have fun making some for your selves and your little girls.


Start with elastic cord. I got several different widths of white and cream colored elastic. This is knit elastic by stretchrite: 3/8 in x2 yds. It can easily be dyed to match whatever flowers you have. Measure the childs (or mommy's) head and cut the length of elastic 1/2 inch shorter.


Pick out the flowers you want to use on the headband. I found several $1.99 stems at Micheal's that had enough small flowers to make 1-3 headbands. You want to get flowers with several layers of silk petals. Pull off the flowers and lay them out on the table.

Next cut a small piece of felt to use as a backing for the flowers. This piece was only 29 cents. Cut a strip of felt if you are going to put a few flowers in a row on the headband. If you are doing one big flower, then cut it into a circle a bit smaller than the flower.

I love to include my little ones in any project that I am working on. Here I let them hold the elastic in place. Put the ends of the elastic together, slightly overlapping. Then use a glue gun to adhere the felt to the elastic band.




Take apart the silk flower. It comes apart easily. Lay out each of the pieces of the flower.

Using your glue gun, put a smalll drop of glue where you would like to put the flower. Gently press the first petal down.

Add each layer of the silk flower onto the flower petal you have already glued down. Continue this until the flower is complete. Then glue the other flower petals down where you want them. I centered the largest flower in the middle and then put two smaller ones next to that.

I got a box of gems to place in the middle of the flowers just to make them look pretty.

I glued one gem into the middle of each flower.


Here is a gerber daisy that I was working on.


I laid out the petals of the flower so I could just grab them and glue them in order.


Here is the finished product. I just love how it turned out. I didn't have a gem big enough to glue onto the center so I just put the center of the flower back on it.






My little ones loved their new head bands.