Happy New Year

Are your resolutions written? Are you ready for the new year? We celebrated pretty quietly at home. Gabe was the first to conk out and Kendrick followed just before 11:00. Justin made it to midnight and was pretty proud of himself. We had the Travel Channel on while passing the time and they were showing other celebrations around the world. Justin got a globe for Christmas, so we got it out and showed him where the other cities and countries were that we saw on television. We are definitely ready to embrace a new year. 2007 will be a long-remembered year in our house. It has been almost exactly a year since the first ultrasound which started us down a very uncertain road. I didn't save any of the emails we sent out before Gabe was born, but my Mom did and she printed the ones she had and brought them up at Christmas. Reading through them was close to reliving it again. It was quite a year with more emotions experienced than I can ever remember before. Fear, uncertainty, joy, elation, sorrow, - pick any emotion you can think of and I think we were there at some point. We have more blessings than we can count. In just our little family, there are 100 digits to count on (50 fingers and 50 toes) and I don't think it would be enough to count them all. Things happen for a reason and I know Gabe's life and struggle touched people and changed them - it certainly changed us. Sometimes the reasons for what happens in life are right in front of us - obvious lessons to learn. Most of the time I think they are more mysterious and we aren't meant to know - we can guess and do our best to make sense of what has happened and why it happened and maybe we will figure it out, or maybe we can learn those lessons as "faith lessons". Some things just are, some things just happen and at some point we rely on faith or we fall.

We have been blessed with three miracles - three happy, healthy and beautiful boys to love. We couldn't ask for more. As one year closes, we celebrate a life begun here with us. As another year begins, we celebrate a life begun again with Christ. To quote my brother, My Grandmother is free. She is home. We miss her dearly and ask for your prayers for our family. Thank you.