One Hundred Years Ago...

Exactly 100 years ago on Christmas Eve, WWI was waging. Over in No Man's Land, a miracle happened...

Sainsbury Chocolate factory Ad

Celtic Thunder singing Christmas 1915

Amazing!

We truly serve an awesome God!

Joy

We're Back!

After taking a rather long, unintentional break from blogging, I have decided to deign you all with a blog post. :)

As most of you know, Josh, KK, Matthias, Irene, Annetta, and I went to PA for the Ephrata Bible School.

I was incredibly blessed and challenged by all of the messages. Mick Brubaker's were especially challenging. He spoke on A Life Consumed with Pursuing Godliness. Wow. I would encourage everyone to listen to his messages!

Prayer and sharing was kinda scary for me as I didn't know any of the girls in my group. We got along great, though and I came to enjoy it. I joked that I had an international prayer group, one girl lived in Beijing, China, another in Canada, and yet another from England.

The social aspect of Bible School was probably the biggest hurdle that I faced. I enjoy people but going into a situation where I know hardly any one was extremely stretching. I really missed Abi! We always hang out together at big events and act as each other's back support in case of loneliness. By the time the week was over, I was so ready to leave. Enough society for me! But over all, I did enjoy meeting the people I did.

Would I go back? I don't know... The boys and I discussed it and we didn't really feel like that Bible School was a "fit." We all agreed that we would much rather go to the Iowa Bible School!

The day after we got home I came down with the flu- fever, aches, terrible sore throat and a cold. It was not fun! I think I'm still kinda feeling some of the effects of that flu.

About a week and a half after we got home, Dad's staph infection came back... Here is an excerpt from a letter that I sent to a friend detailing Dad's condition...

"I don't remember if I told you or not, but toward the beginning of September, my dad became deathly sick from a blood borne staph infection. That is where the staph goes into your blood stream... It's a very, very serious illness. After we took him into the ER, the doctors told us that if we had waited another 24 hrs or so, they probably wouldn't have been able to save him. He was very sick for weeks, and was on a PICC Line for his antibiotics. A PICC Line is an IV line that is inserted in a main artery in your upper arm and traces along that artery to about the middle of the chest. The IV line is then hooked up to a little machine that automatically gives you doses of antibiotics. He had that in for 8 weeks. Just before we left for BS, the doctors gave him the OK to have it removed. We were ecstatic! 

Dad also has a condition called "Psoriasis." That is where your immune system goes haywire and starts producing skin cells around 12x the normal rate. Those extra skin cells form into dry scaly patches that are extremely itchy all over your body. Mom and Dad had tried just about everything in the book to get it under control, but nothing worked. That is, until they discovered Enbrel, a drug that suppresses the immune system, which in turn, keeps the psoriasis under control. Now, since he's been sick, they took him off of Enbrel and his psoriasis has been coming back in full force.

He was looking forward to starting back into his medication, but had to be on oral antibiotics for several weeks after the PICC Line was removed, which meant that he had to wait.

There was one day after we got home that Dad noticed his knee was swelling. We all just figured it was his arthritis, but then he got a fever... We hoped that maybe he had caught what I had, but Mom still called the doctor to get the swelling checked. Staph will attack the weakest points in your body and since Dad has arthritis, we were worried that the staph might be back. Sure enough, the docs drained his knee, ran some tests and discovered that his white blood cell count was elevated. That usually means something isn't right. So, they ordered him into the hospital that night. It all happened so fast and was such a shock. Having his staph reoccur was the last thing on our minds!

I really struggled with coming to grips with it all. Why, God, why? Why couldn't he have just gotten better? Is he going to die from this? What's going to happen? The unknowns were excruciating!

They did surgery on his knee to clean everything out. That went well and they were able to clear out the infection. Dad is home now after a week long stay at the hospital. He had to have the PICC Line installed again... That was so discouraging for him! :("

I forgot to mention the infection in Dad's clavicle (collar bone) in my letter. The doctors noticed that the staph was still in his collar bone, only now it had moved more to the middle of his bone instead of in the joint. Once staph attacks your bone marrow, it's really bad.  The doctors said that they would probably need to remove the infected section. At that point, they wanted to wait several weeks to see how it would respond to the antibiotics. If they did remove, Dad would not be able to use his arm for several months. We are praying that the Lord would heal the infected area. Another surgery sounds big to all of us!

Dad's illness is the number one big event in our lives right now. His knee is still really hurting him. Please join us in prayer for Dad's continued healing. Please pray that this round of antibiotics would finally kick the staph. 

Thank you, church, friends, relatives, family, and even those we don't really know for all of your support! Without it, I don't know what we would have done! You are such a blessing!!!

Everything has revolved around Dad lately.  In other words, nothing exciting has been happening! Don't get me wrong, Dad is sure exciting! :)

I wasn't able to get Bible School pictures off of the Martin's SD card for some reason so I just copied the pictures off of their blog. Thank you, Martins! :)

We left early Friday morning and drove the 11 hours or so to stay with Elson and Ellen Miller overnight. We had a very nice time!

An Ohio Sunrise

We decided to order our food altogether at McDonalds... The total shocked us! I've never seen a McDonalds receipt for that much!

Our room at Willis and Mandy Leid's.

The boys had so much fun with this bean bag toss!

The guys' side

KK's prayer group

This is my prayer group. Back row, L-R- Malinda Martin, Jennifer Weaver, Kayla Parizo, Leah Keyes, Ashley Downin

Front row, L-R- Abbie Inman, Susan Stalter, Margaret Knelson, me

They had several special singing groups sing before some of the evening services.

Our van needed some kind of fluid changed, so Willis gave us directions to this garage. Willis kindly lent us their van for the day.

This is the Iowa group! They dismissed our group very last! We just said the they were saving the best for last. :)

It was so refreshing to take walks back behind the Ephrata Business Center during breaks.

The fall foliage was gorgeous!

Waiting for Josh to bring the van around. :)

Irene was asked to sing in a special singing group. They were practicing here.

We stopped at McDonalds for breakfast on the way home. Our coffee cups said to celebrate good times! We sure were having a good time! :)

Our new van has a built in GPS which was so useful! We have 645 miles and 9 hrs:12mins. to go! Halfway home! 

We stopped at Steak 'n Shake for a supper/lunch. I'd been wanting to eat there for a long time, so it was a fun treat! I just got a shake, the rest got meals and shakes. This was Annetta's burger.

Yum!!!

Dad and the boys bought this UnderArmor jacket for Sam. He was thrilled!

Ryan and Kelsey and Gram went on their annual NE City trip in the camper this fall.

Nate went out to visit them...

When Abi makes cheese she uses every possible item to press the cheese.

The Betty Crocker frosting tops it off!

More cheese!

Gram, Mom, Abi and I took our biannual trip to Kansas City to visit our favorite Irish stores. One of our favorite stops is at Brown's Irish Market where we get their amazing Irish potato soup!

I bought the boys a bunch of Irish treats. These are some of the things we ate while in Ireland.

The boys have been hunting every available moment. They often come home with some pretty funny pictures and videos. :)

What do you do when you are hunting and bored? Take pictures of squirrels and rabbits!

Mom had asked Aunt Carol and I if we would mind coming up to the hospital to sit with her during Dad's knee surgery. Mom's cousin Cathy insisted on coming up too. She's so funny! :)

Sam enjoyed going to the hospital with Mom...

Someone thought they were being so clever when they wrote this on the white board in Dad's hospital room.  Can you figure it out? Answer's at the bottom of the post!

Before Dad got sick, everyone in our family but Abi and I were going to go stay overnight with some friends for Thanksgiving. But since he got sick they had to stay home. Abi and I had planned to have a mini Thanksgiving meal with Gram while they were gone. mom told us we should still do it, so Thanksgiving morning found us up and at iearly! This was our "turkey," actually a chicken. :)

We have had a marauding calico cat around our place. It eats all of our cat food and fights with our cats. Nasty thing!

Abi's sour dough starter blew it's top!

A beautiful sunrise...

I was helping Abi milk one morning...

We've been having bizarre weather lately. It rained and iced alternately for several days, snowed a couple times with the sun shining for maybe a half hour total. Just last night it snowed unexpectedly. Our cats hate cold weather!, as you can tell from Opal's expression. :)

More hunting pictures...

We had the littles over for the day when Dad came home. They had so much fun jumping around on Dad's unmade bed!

We gave Lynna and Doughy sour mints. Katelyn's reaction to hers was priceless! Joseph just gobbled his right down and didn't bat an eye. :)

The boys' blind

KK said this stump was coated in about 1/2 an inch of ice!

When we sold baked goods at Griswold's city wide garage sale this fall, a lady stopped by our table and asked if we'd like to reserve a booth at her craft venue on black Friday. We reserved a table, but when Dad got sick we decided not to do it. But then, Kelsey had made these really cute brownie  mix jars for us to sell, so we felt like we should try to go. Thanksgiving day brought about a half an inch of ice, so that made us drag our feet all the more. But! Black Friday dawned early at the Grices! We were all up and at it, baking up a storm. We made caramel popcorn, pumpkin caramel cinnamon rolls, two different kinds of cookies, pumpkin bread and pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and dipped pretzel sticks. We had made pumpkin butter and apple butter before hand.

Every available space was covered in baked goods or packaging!

These pictures are kinda crummy, but this is what our booth looked like.

 The lady that owns the building had "Santa" come in for about an hour the first evening. She told us that last year, 400 kids came in to see "Santa"! This year, about 30 came in... So sad to think of all of those little children being deceived! Because of the bad weather and frigid temperatures, we sold hardly anything. It was pretty discouraging, but Mom and I had a nice time together! :)

I told Sam that this sign said "Elf Diner" because they serve Elf dishes there. :) Just an "Anguished English" thing. :)

While we were gone, Abi and Sam made sugar cookies. The evening sale started at 5:00 and went to 9, but we had to be there by 3:30 to set up. The owner closed everything down by 8:15, though, because business was so slow. After we left home, it took Abi until 8 to clean everything up! She had to milk in that time, but that only takes her maybe a half hour. Thanks, Abi!

Dad's place of abode. :)

This was one of the rare mornings the sun was shining!

We also got snow one night!

We have 30 new chicks, well they're almost hens by now.

KK is such a good (or bad) shot that he sent one arrow home right through the center of the previous arrow!

Mom was texting Diana, so she had Katelyn tell her about our day. :) Adorable!

Abi and I were heading to bed rather late the other night. We usually go up to the attic to say goodnight to boys before we turn in.

Well, somehow, as I was traipsing back down the attic stairs, I slipped on who knows what, probably my own feet, and slid down the last flight of stairs on my backside. Now, listen up, I landed very gracefully! But, unfortunately, it rather hurt. Abi was just ahead of me. She watched me slide down, and asked the question anyone would, "Are you ok?" Yes! Of course I'm ok! Just turn around until I can regain my dignity, then, please, just ignore me. My sister is very kind. Once she realized I was ok, she started chuckling, "You should've seen your face!" Ha. I'm sure it was just like a comedy. Then she went almost hysterical with laughter. Abi doesn't usually laugh really hard, but, boy, she had a good ol' knee slappin' time that night. I do have to confess, it was rather funny. :) For several days after that, I had to sit down very gingerly. My reverse aspect was ever so slightly sore...

Go ahead. Laugh at me. I don't mind when I'm the butt of a joke. :)

Ok, for those of you wondering what "Kwiturbeliaken" is... It is slang for "Quit your belly aching!" Someone else had also written after that "Itlbok," meaning, "It'll be OK." :)

So, it'll be OK, everyone! God is still on the throne, and He is faithful!