Do you know what it’s like to live with a fairy?  Let me tell you, it’s amazing.  Elsie is in to videoing the process of cleaning up a room or space.  Which, of course, requires a mess to tidy.  Which, thankfully, our family of eight can provide in abundance.  I have come home from errands to a vacuumed bedroom, a made bed, fluffed cushions, a wiped down kitchen, a picked up laundry room.  The only stuff she leaves behind is fairy dust, which I can deal with just fine.
Betty is currently into sewing.  There are currently 6 very large pillow-looking objects wrapped under the tree.  She requested a LOT of stuffing from the store and the sewing machine has been whirring.  The other night she was mending Jack’s sweat pants.  Whenever anyone breathes any words remotely close to: “There’s a hole in this…” or “My shirt ripped…” a quiet hand literally snags the object in mourning and brings it back with a fresh mending job.

Harry is talking.  Two to four word sentences that make me laugh and swell with awe all at the same time.  He adores oats and frozen blueberries for breakfast every day.  We have what we call the “toddler bowl of apples” when it’s left at Harry height: each apple has one or two bites out of it.  It’s the perfect snack!  He loves to help me do laundry by going inside the washer or dryer after the clothes are removed and then play hide-and-seek inside the huge pile of clean clothes.  He doesn’t like it when I sing, but adores getting horsey rides from Nadine or being tossed in the air by Elijah.  He loves “The Umbrella” book and calls it “Hola”, because the tree frog says “Hola” at the beginning of the book.  He adores being outside and taking car rides.  Sometimes when I get home after a short errand he will say, “Mama!  GO!” because he wants to keep driving!  That’s my boy!

Jack is back to wrestling full time.  He is tough and getting stronger every year.  His coach is pretty cool too.  In fact, I have a HUGE thing for his coach.  Yep, Matthew is the official head coach of the Coatesville middle school.  It’s something he loves to do.  Jack also has done a terrific job with his tutoring this year.  He is more confident reading and spelling, and now Nadine is doing it with him as well!

Nadine had a rough start to the school year.  She was diagnosed with Mono, and after a few weeks of exhaustion and sickness, she is doing so much better!  A little piece of paper has made her very excited left her parents blinking, wondering how it’s scientifically possible for sixteen years to go so quickly.  Who knew permits could cause grey hair?  She also had to have a CT scan done of her sinuses which revealed a very large polyp on the one side.  She is having surgery for that at the end of January.  Despite the many trials she has endured, she is always smiling and such an encouragement!

Elijah is an incredible young man.  He is almost as tall as Matthew, which has led to some funny laundry mishaps between the two of them.  We might have to start labeling their clothes like you do for camp, so Matthew’s jeans don’t keep disappearing.  He learned how to fix cracked iPhone and iPad screens, which is a very handy skill these days.  He is my go-to chef when I’m running around late and supper still has to be made.  It is an incredible phase of life to have older kids who love to pump gas, can make yummy dinners and manage the house!

We had a very challenging week this month after a routine surgery for Matthew.  He had the same procedure done in January, which was to open his airway even more and remove some scar tissue from the subglottic region of his throat.  The surgery went very well.  He was awake for it, which is just as awkward and awful as it sounds.  But he did well and felt great that day and the next. 
The third day, however, he woke up and tried to cough, but nothing happened.  He was unable to get very much air when he tried to breath.  The noise he made when he tried to cough made me jump up from where I was serenely reading in the living room.  He was standing in the hallway and barely could talk, but the words, “Call an ambulance,” made my hands start to shake.  I had my phone in my pocket and quickly dialed 911.  Six minutes later the EMT’s arrived and got him into the ambulance.  Thankfully, the little girls had spent the night at grandma’s so they weren’t home.  Harry was happily watching Peppa Pig and barely noticed the slew of strange people come in and out of the house.  Nadine woke up when she heard me on the phone with the dispatcher, and both her and Elijah were incredibly strong through the whole ordeal.  Jack woke up after we left.

I went along for the ride, in my pajamas, with supper stains down the front of my sweatshirt.  It’s crazy how those things don’t matter when life feels tottering.  Nadine sent me a picture of the sign I had made the night before: All your hopes and fears are met in Him tonight.

About ten minutes after Matthew received a cool mist nebulizer treatment, he began to perk up and was able to talk and cough again.  After a lot of tests and scans, nothing showed up abnormal.  As best as we can figure, since we forgot to run our humidifier, the dry air caused the scabbing from the surgery to crust over in such a way which blocked his airway just enough to make it very scary.  We both have had a few emotional days in the last two weeks since it happened.  So grateful his attempts to “stumble into heaven” as he put it, were not successful.  God has more for him to do here yet!

I’m so grateful for the opportunity we had to take a cruise in the Caribbean in October.  It was incredible to earn it through the company I work for, and bless Matthew in this way!  I’ve always dreamed of being the one to treat him to something special like this, and was so enriching for our marriage!  The Caribbean will always hold a special place in our hearts.