Surgery Central

It's been a tough couple of weeks for our family.  In early September, Nathan had surgery to get tubes put in his ears because he's been through too many ear infections this year.  The surgery went well, but it was tough watching him come out of the anesthesia which was uncomfortable for him.  Since then though he's been doing well with his ears. 

Then an exact week later James had surgery to get his torn ACL repaired.  He tore it back in high school in a skiing accident and his knee just learned to adapt.  As he's gotten older though it's been more annoying and painful and he wanted to prevent any more damage to his knee.  The surgery went really well, but the recovery is going to take awhile.  The first few days James was mostly laid up and felt really tired and loopy from his pain meds.  Now it's been almost 2 weeks and he has much more mobility.  He's started physical therapy and today he even drove!  So he's making great progress.  We still have a ways to go, but I'm proud of how well he's been doing. 

Amidst all this Nathan got the flu and had his first bee sting.  So it's been a little overwhelming and very busy--especially for me who's been trying to take care of my sweet boys and keep the rest of our lives afloat.  Thank goodness for our incredible parents who've given us so much help and attention (thank you Warners and Spauldings!)  Looking forward to our lives getting back to normal soon!

Poor little guy

Nice hat James!

Thank goodness for meds!

Nathan's Dedication

On August 18, 2013 we had a Dedication ceremony for Nathan.  For those of you who aren't sure what that means, our spiritual beliefs are to have a child dedicated to Christ which means the child's parents, family, and close friends help raise the child learning about, observing, and exemplifying the love of Jesus and His teachings.  Then when the child is at an age where he can understand more and make a decision on his own, the next step would be to get baptized.  Over the years our church has gotten so large that they don't perform baby dedication ceremonies during church services anymore.  The awesome part about that is we got to create our own unique ceremony that could be intimate and personalized.

We held our ceremony in the beautiful backyard garden of James' parents' house.  It was a gorgeous sunny day and Nathan was surrounded by his closest family and people who love him.  Darin Hanson, our wonderful campus pastor performed the ceremony and we couldn't have asked for someone more thoughtful and personable.  It was a really special day and we look forward to the future day when we'll get to celebrate Nathan's baptism.

Darin asked us as parents and Nathan's family to adhere to various promises and commitments

James and I then read some special messages we wrote for Nathan--our own promises to him

Beautiful cake from Grampa and Gramma

Heidi and Jesse Fader--Nate's amazing godparents!

Nate's whole loving family.  Notice he's pointing up to heaven.  He's a quick learner.  :)