See Teachers Video

Good Morning!

I am back at work after a little snow-day hiatus, and I just wanted to quickly share this video while I was thinking about it.  As part of some promotional work at Western, we had series of videos made to highlight what our school is about and what it's like to be part of the Western family.  I love this place, and I love my job, and I most of all love the students and staff I get to work with every day.  God is at work here, and that's such a cool thing to be a part of.  Watch this video and I think you will see what I mean!

See Teachers from Dale Vande Griend on Vimeo.

Happy Weekend! Jason and I are heading to Prom later :) Should be fun.

Spring?

I had to post this for "history"...we woke up to a winter wonderland in April. As much as I want spring and not to add any days to the end of our school year, I'm still excited to get a random snow day at home with my girls. I just don't think we'll be playing outside :)

Harper at 2 1/3 Years Old

**I wrote this last Friday and forgot to post it!

After my stay in the hospital last summer, I intended to keep up the blog partly as a way to document my girls’ childhood.  I wasn't very faithful about it, but I want to change that.  Life is short!  I recently went back and read a lot of my posts from this summer, and I was encouraged by remembering.  God blessed me all over again.  So I want to keep it up.

 

Today is the 5^th—which means Harper is exactly 28 months old.  This post is an update all about her!

First things first:  Harper is potty trained!  I took the plunge while I had a few days off of school for state basketball in March.  We just put her in undies one morning and never looked back (well, I was maybe guilty of being like Lot’s wife a couple of times, looking longingly back at the land of diapers.  BTW, how many of you watched The Bible on the History Channel?  We have been enjoying it…) She had a lot of accidents the first few days, but came around pretty quickly.  I got scared and did the Pull-Up thing in public for a while, but she did a whole lot better if I just kept the undies on all the time.  She now tells us pretty much every time she has to go!
 

 

As a way to reward her for being such a big girl (and because we really didn’t buy her anything for Christmas), she got a new bicycle!  She loves to sit on it and ring the bells, but she doesn’t really have the pedaling thing down yet.  We’re working on it.  Jason picked it out, and the princess décor was actually his deal.  I am against anything “character”-y.  At the hospital, Harps needed a short sleeved shirt because of her IV, so I sent Jason to Target, and he came back with a Dora shirt (to my horror).  Of course Harper loved it.  Same with the bike—I wanted a plain one, but she loves “Cinderlella” and all her princess friends.  Guess I’m outnumbered.

 

Harper’s speech has also been fun to listen to the last few months as it progressed.  It’s like I have a little passenger to talk to now in the van when I drive J.  My favorite lately is that she’ll randomly tell me things she does and doesn’t like.  “Mommy, I don’t like the Beast (from the Disney movie).  I like Daddy, though.”    “I don’t like the nurses.  I like Dr. B, though.  He always talks to Harper.”  She also steals lines from TV, which is kind of scary!  Awhile ago she grabbed something of mine and said, “You’ll never find it now.  AH HA HA (evil laugh).”  I was shocked!  Then later we were watching Dora, and Swiper the Fox said the same thing.  It all made sense.

 

She is also recognizing things, naming things, and getting so smart.  She knows our town pretty well and can tell if we are going home after I pick her up from daycare or not.  We’ll pass things like Grandma’s house or the library and she will recognize them.  She can count to 10 (minus the number 4, which she refuses to say), say the whole alphabet, and recognize/name quite a few letters.  She also has a large repertoire of animal sounds!  My favorite is that she also knows quite a few Bible stories.  David & Goliath, Zacchaeus, Baby Jesus, & Noah are her favorites.  She is not a fan of the “sneaky snake” in the garden. 

 

The girl still loves to be outside, and we can’t wait for Spring to really show up around here.  Last year she was such a runner that we had to put a baby gate up to keep her on the deck, but now she is doing a better job of staying where I can see her.  She loves to climb and will go up & down even the highest slides at the park.  Daredevil.

 



She is the greatest big sister.  She asks for Reese as soon as she gets up and loves to be around her.  She can make Reesie laugh like no one else.  One thing that melted my heart in the hospital--after her very traumatic IV insert (her first one quit working, then they had to poke her twice to get a new one), she was sobbing hysterically, but she said through her tears, "I wanna go find Reesie!"  She just wanted to go home and find her sister.  Sweet girl.  I can't wait to watch these two grow up together!

 

Overall, she is a joy to be around.  She is definitely strong-willed, but oh so sweet when she wants to be.  I can’t wait to watch how God works in her life and uses her in His Kingdom!

Easter Sunday 2013 & Harper Update

It's my last day of spring break, and even though it hasn't felt like much of a vacation with the trip to the hospital, I am grateful that I didn't have to worry about school for a few days.  I thought I'd spend some time documenting our Easter.

We continue to be so thankful that we didn't have to spend it in the hospital. Every day since we've come home, either Jason or I have mentioned the families that we saw there who are not so blessed.  After being on the oncology floor with Harper and thinking we might have to go down that path, we naturally have those people on our hearts.  We are thinking we want to do something with our girls to help, but we are not sure what form that will take.  We'll see.

We celebrated Easter with my family on Palm Sunday since my sister had to work the h
oliday.  My mom made a great dinner, and the kids had fun finding the candy and eggs.

My mom and dad with all the grandkids--cute bunch!  

Harper finding an egg (and E congratulating her) 

 Reeses Pieces

 Harper wasn't really ready to share, but she did let Reese look at her stuff :)

Cousins!

On Easter Sunday, we had an awesome Easter service at our church, stopped at my grandparents' for coffee with my aunt Anita (who's home on spring break), and then headed to Orange City to celebrate with the DeGroots.  Jason's aunt Helen hosted this year, and the kids had a blast hunting for eggs and playing on their farm.  

 These are all the great-grands on the DeGroot side.  Harper is hiding (pink polka dot coat), and Reese is being held in the back by her second cousin Jacey.

I shot this close-up while we were waiting for some of the cousins to come...it's Harper and her second cousin (or 3rd...how does that work?) Autumn.  They are about 4 months apart and are big friends.  Loved this tender moment between them--Autumn is so sweet!

Here's another one of those two hunting eggs.  

Grandpa Larry helped her find some eggs.

 Lots of cute onlookers :)

And to top it all off--Uncle Gerv brought out the ponies!!  This is Ella leading Harper around on Thunder (or Lightning--there were two).  She thought she was pretty cool! 

In other news, Harper had to go back in to get her blood checked this morning.  Because of the kind of test they need to do, they have to take it out of her arm instead of her finger, which kind of stinks.  She recognized the tray with all the needles/tubes, and was crying before they ever looked at her arm.  Poor girl.  I hate holding her down, but it has to be done.  I told Jason I wished he was home during business hours--I would for sure pass the job off to him.  But oh well.  We go in to have her counts checked every week for 6 weeks, and then we go back to visit Dr. B.

The numbers from this morning were 57,000, so up about 6,000 from last Thursday.  The nurse called this "acceptable," but they would have liked a higher number.  Normal is 150,000-450,000, so we have a ways to go.  She also said that every kid with ITP is different, and there is no "normal" progression, so we will just have to watch her numbers and wait.

Hopefully she returns to normal soon, and in the mean time, isn't traumatized by all the needles :)

Happy Monday!
Abby