Surgery for Micaelyn

Please be in prayer for Micaelyn.  She has surgery tomorrow to remove her tonsils and adenoids.  It may be only a "minor" surgery, but she is considered a high risk patient.  Also she is understandably very nervous.  The last surgery (tongue reduction) she had was very traumatic.  She was in the PICU for 4 days.  During most of that time she was on a ventilator with an NG tube, catheter, multiple IVs, and restraints to hold her in place and keep her from pulling all the tubes out.  Plus there was tremendous pain from the surgery wound.  She was supposed to be in a medically induced coma, but the sedation drugs didn't work very well on her.  Which meant they kept maxing her out on multiple drugs which caused even more problems.  To make matters worse Caleb was still recovering from his own surgery so I wasn't able to stay with her all the time (plus the staff preferred us not be there very much as the slightest movement from anyone in the room would wake her).  And when they had taken her back for the surgery she had screamed for me with all her might (the "happy juice" they had given her had no effect on her).  Anyone who has adopted kids that have dealt with previous abandonment and trauma will tell you this is one of the worst things for our kids.  From the child's perception the parent is abandoning her, letting her go be further traumatized.   After the surgery Micaelyn was obviously very traumatized.  She was withdrawn for quite some time.  Even now she talks about how we "left her there," how much she hurt, how much she missed me, etc.

Please pray there are no complications tomorrow (no parent likes hearing their child is "high risk" before surgery).  Pray she gets to come home afterwards instead of being admitted.  Pray for an easy recovery, and please pray for God to give her peace and comfort, for no abandonment/trauma issues to arise.

After her last surgery

This was when we were leaving to go home.  This is the sad withdrawn look she had for quite awhile after surgery.  She finally perked up when we went to Dollywood one evening.  It was a ride on the carousel that made her smile.  Not but a few days later I was looking through some pictures we had finally gotten developed from her foster family in China and saw a picture of her taken shortly before we adopted her.  She was on a carousel with her foster grandmother.

Autumn Snowfall!

We are truly blessed to live in a place as beautiful as the foothills of the Smoky Mountains!

The trees were still full of beautiful fall colored leaves underneath all the snow!

Jonah's first time seeing now.  (He did get a coat on right after these pictures was taken - I just had to capture his initial reaction to the snow!)

The big kids were too busy playing in the snow to stop for pictures, so I took a few of the babies and quickly got them inside to warm up!  Elianna LOVED the snow and got MAD when I made her go inside.  Hannah was mildly interested but didn't really want to play in it.  Jonah was very curious, happy at first but fairly quickly lost interest.  He seemed to think he couldn't walk in it as he kept looking at his feet and stayed firmly planted in place (unusual for him) unless I held his hand.