Happy birthday Owen!

Miss you, buddy.

Pasta Dinner

Pasta Dinner  to benefit

  The Angel Garden Infant Cemetery  

           When:

Saturday July, 21^st 2012 4-7pm

Where:

Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church

733 Ridge Road

Sellersville, PA 18960

Reservations:

For reservations you can find us on facebook "The Angel Garden," e-mail us directly at angelgarden.pa@gmail.com or call 215.721.3969 and leave a message with your name, number of attendees, a phone number for you to be reached at. 

Suggested donations are $10 for adults, $5 for children
        5-12 and children under 5 are free. 

            Help us get the word out invite your friends and family!
                                       

Whoever said, "Time heals all wounds" never lost a child.
Happy Birthday Cole. Hope it's better for you then it is for us.

Saying Goodbye too soon

Today marks 2 years that Owen went to heaven.  I remember all too well May 27th, 2010.....  The sounds of all the alarms as Owen was "coding" the visions of nurses trying to resuscitate him...  Letting him go....  That was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my whole life..  That horrible day that I wish I could erase from history.  I feel like I have too many days that I wish I could erase from history.  I wish I had both of my boys here with me.  Clearly God has other plans for us.  I will never understand why He took both of our boys let alone either of them.  My heart hurts when I think of all the pain Owen had to endure in his 7 months and 6 days that he graced this earth.  You would have never known he was in any pain.  Looking back now I know that he was in pain.  Sweet sweet boy... 

Owen, you are loved and missed dearly..  Daddy and Mommy would love to selfishly have you & your brother back!!!! 

Our last family photo

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to join up with some new friends in Team X-T.R.E.ME. and photograph them running in the Pocono Tough Mudder. The Pocono tough mudder was a 12 mile obstacle course around the Pocono Manor Golf Club. Which if you've never been there, it has some insane hills. They had to swim through dumpsters full of ice to running through live electrical wires...They do this all with gas masks on. Here is a slideshow I put together from the event... Click Here

random photos from our trip

Slideshow of our hike up Taal Volcano

We miss you Cole!

Philippines

We've been pretty busy over here in the Philippines. We are usually up around 6am and are getting ready to go out to various ministries in the morning. On Monday we visited the women's group that they call the "Deborahs." Today we visited the Men's group called "Barnabas." These small groups of people are the future of the ministry. The goal at Lambat is to train and equip leaders for the communities to preach the gospel. In the afternoons we've been doing alot of tourist-e things. We went into old Manilla and experienced the craziness that is the capital city. The ministry we were planning on going to tomorrow is being discontinued so instead we are going hiking on the Taal Volcano. I've been shooting between 500-1000 photos a day and I'm pretty busy in trying to keep my head above editing them all. The Philippines is super Americanized and their malls are unbelievably huge with about 15 {no lie} workers per department of the store. You're constantly followed by a worker and they're super friendly. We'll probably write out each day with pictures when we get home.

The flight over here to the Philippines wasn't so bad. They constantly feed you and the movies they had playing were just barely interesting enough to watch. We didn't even start the books we brought along to read. We might of slept two of the twenty-two hour flight. We lucked out as our row of four seats only had three people sitting in them. Both our lay overs in Detroit and Japan were less than an hour long which was great. In Japan; Ashley was talking to a filippino woman who was worried Ashley wasn't going to be safe and was asking her all kinds of questions about where we were going and why on earth would you go to the philippines.
Our first stop on our way home from the airport is of course the 24 hour McDonalds. We got fries which tasted better then back home. I'd like go to back sometime this week and get some rice and fried chicken.  We went to bed around three am and got up around 7 to meet Lori Ann. She is the executive director of Lambat and is the one that I am teaching photography to. We went out and did some sight seeing touristy things after going over photography basics.

Today we went and visited the kids bible classes. They teach a 10 and under class that meets in somebodies driveway and they feed the kids, too. To some of the kids this maybe the only meal they eat for the day. While the kids were still in class we left and went and visited the riverside, which is where they live... in shoddy, make shift huts down an embankment next to the river. They also do one on one bible studies with the parents in their homes. We will upload pictures when we get back to the states. It took over a half hour just to upload the one of the volcano above.
Tomorrow night we will be going to a bamboo festival http://www.bambooman.com/bamboo_organ.php

A Ticket Out of Here

Tomorrow early afternoon we are leaving for the Philippines.  Tonight, we are staying over night in LaGuardia near the airport so we don't have to worry about fighting traffic and risk missing our flight tomorrow.  Not to mention how early we would have to get up in the morning to get to the airport by 10:30am.  We will be traveling for a total of 21 hours.  We will have internet access when in the Philippines so be on the look out for some updates. 

Thanks for your prayers for safe travels.

Two Weeks Ago

As I reflect back on two weeks ago today I remember walking into CHOP on the morning of Coles open heart surgery.  I was carrying Cole into the hospital and he had a huge smile on his face and was kicking his legs, he was so excited.  I thought to myself "Oh buddy if only you knew..."  I have to believe that he was probably thinking to hisself "Oh mommy if only you knew that I am going to go be with Jesus and Owen today..." 

Oh Cole, Momma misses you dearly sweet boy.

Missions Trip

We have been invited by Lambat Ministries to go to the Philippines from February 22-March 5th.
We will be photographing different aspects of their ministry, for use on a new website, for promo shots, publications, etc. We will also be giving the executive director a crash course in photography with the purpose of her being able to keep updating things as time goes on. We both are really excited about this opportunity. The 23 hour flight...not so much.
Below is a summary of Lambat Ministries:

We (Lambat), teach, train and equip pastors and teachers there with
free teaching/training seminars and free Biblically based materials to
participating churches. We reach about 15,000 or so people. It's
huge. It's expanded so much that our materials are now getting into
public schools and local governments cause there's no separation of
church and state there.
We have materials from pre-K through 12 grade. We have courses
specifically for pastors and teachers. And for pastors, seminary type
courses.
We promote Bible clubs,which are weekly, or twice a week 'sunday school' type things in the
community.

Thankyou

Thanks to all who have been so supportive of us in the last weeks. Helping get Cole's service together in such little time, food, financial support, food, emotional support, food, cards, food, flowers, and more food...
Special thanks to the William Penn Inn and Village Caterers for providing the luncheon and planning it before we even thought about it!
Suess and Sadler Funeral Homes for providing their exceptional services totally free. Preplan your funerals with them.{seriously}
And thankyou to the random person who gave the funeral home an extremely generous tip. Thankyou.

Cole's memorial service is going to be at Branch Creek Church on Sumneytown Pike in Harleysville, on Friday January 27th at 10am. There is no viewing. Thankyou.

1

For those who haven't heard, Cole is with his brother Owen.

Pray

Cole isn't doing well. They are taking him to the Cath lab to see why his oxygen is so low. We need a miracle.

Update 2

Still in. Doing well

9:45 update

We just got our first hourly update. They just finished prepping him and opening him up and are about to start with the repair.
Cole did great. Everyone can't believe he didn't cry at all while they checked his vitals and did all that stuff. Our cardiologist came by right before he went back with anesteia. We went up to talk with Cole's surgeon and he explained what he planned on doing. Pulling out the shunt they previously put in and add some conduits to his PAs hoping to help them grow. More in an hour...

Pre-OP Visit

We are sitting in our room at the RMH while Cole takes his first real nap of the day. We had a crazy morning of packing and getting the house in order to leave for the next week or so. The appointment was at 2pm and couldn't have gone better. One of Cole's surgeon' minions came in and explained everything we needed to know about the surgery. Up until talking to her we both were pretty in the dark as to what they were going to do or even what the options were. She made sure we understood everything and how they do it all.
 We have to be at CHOP at 6:45am for his visit. I think they'll take him back to the O.R around 8-8:30. Not really sure how long it'll be. His first surgery was 5 or so hours so this should be that if not longer.

When we got back to the car, Cole fell asleep while nursing, Choked, threw up, and then dropped his head and fell back to sleep twice. Scared the crap out of both of us. We've seen that look one too many times to not freak out.
And... Here's a clip of Cole enjoying the snow. He really loved it...

Surgery update

Our internet has been down for over a week now and haven't had a fast enough connection to get a good update in. Cole's second surgery has been set for January 24th. He'll have his pre-op appointment the day before.  This surgery is a more proactive step to hopefully help his pulmonary arteries to grow. If all goes well; we should only be in the hospital for four days.
 In preparation for his surgery we are being extra, extra careful about germs and will unfortunately be missing the baby dedication at our church this time around. Hopefully, next time.
 Cole is doing so well as you can tell from the pictures. All he ever wants to do is stand up on his legs.
Thanks for your continued prayers and we will update you again on the 23rd.

Christmas photos

Seven Months

I know we say it every time we put up bear pictures, but seriously how is it possible that Cole is 7 months already.. Cole is actually now 7 months and 9 days old!!! Owen went to be with Jesus when he was 7 months and 6 days... Cole is such a sweet baby. He has quite the personality. He's very serious, but if you try hard enough you can get him to smile and giggle. He is a mommas boy for sure... More and more everyday!!! He is so over laying down and always wants to be sitting up!! After he is 6 weeks post op from his open heart surgery I am packing away his swing and bouncy seat. He has been also standing up alot, of course with us holding his hands. I am wondering if he will skip the whole crawling stage due to the fact that he won't be able to be on his tummy or put pressure on his chest for 6 weeks after his surgery. We started him on baby food about a month ago and he just started to somewhat like the rice cereal. He still isn't too sure about everything else. I am super cautious with what I give him because of his dairy allergy. He is still getting up 2 times in the middle of the night to nurse, but he does go right back to sleep.