With A New Year Come New Challenges

Happy New Year everyone!! I hope everyone had a great Christmas :)
It has been wonderful having my son home for the holidays. He heads back to school tomorrow to start his initiation process to become an active member of his fraternity house and then school officially starts back on the 17th. Damein is enjoying the University of Missouri very much and we are extremely proud of him. He has been invited to attend a Leadership Conference in St. Louis later in the month and we look forward to many new opportunities for him this semester.
Darein has been doing extremely well this winter so far! We are so excited at how well she has done as she is usually sick a lot from October through March. She did not volunteer at the zoo during the month of December as she took some time to catch up on some rest and spend some time with her grandparents. We are ready to get back into the swing of things though starting this month and what a month it has already turned into. She had her Christmas party at the zoo the first Saturday of the month. She had a great time and received some neat items from the zoo. She has already started working on the annual church Valentine banquet. She has started back to her Art Club on Wednesdays at school and has been doing great things in that club. She loves her art so much and is learning a lot. Her guinea pig was her FFA project but unfortunately she passed away in December. She has started taking her chihuahua to puppy lessons on Tuesday nights and I am hoping she decides to make Daisy her new FFA project. Daisy is doing a great job being trained and is a very good dog for our family. We love her so much and have had her about a year now.
Darein will go to see her endocrinologist next week for a check up and we expect a short visit with a good report as she has been doing great. Darein was afraid that she was going to have to have a cysto-urethrogram this year for her left kidney reflux and was extremely upset over the possibility of having this test. It is very traumatic for her and it was more than she could bear to even think of having to have it. I called her urologist in Kansas City and was told that she would not need to have that test done this year. They want her to get an ultrasound and an xray and then see the doctor afterwards so we will do that later this summer in Kansas City. Darein, me and her father are ecstatic to say the least that she does not have to have that test. She has been through so much from day 1 and it is hard to see your child dread a test so bad that is required.
I have decided to volunteer on Thursdays with my parents at the Grand Oaks Mission, which is a ministry of the Baptist Association for the needy. My parents have been volunteering for a few months and have really enjoyed it and asked me to consider it. I feel like this will be a good thing for me to do with my parents and am looking forward to it. I've been wanting to do something like this for some time but haven't found anything that I really felt strongly about, this was the answer to my prayers. We make weekly visits to our hometown to visit with my mother-in-law, try to check in throughout the month on my parents and my husband's aunt. I am so very thankful right now that I am able to stay at home. I know I've said this many times but sometimes you realize just how important it is to stay at home more than at other times. Its hard when people ask you what you do and you tell them you are a stay at home mom and then they ask you how old your children are and you tell them one is in college and the other one is 16. You wouldn't believe the looks I get, the long pauses, etc. Is what they don't realize, is that we are a very close family both with my side of the family and with my husband's side of the family. You see, it took a village to raise our children. Without my parents, my brother and sister, my mother-in-law and my husband's aunt, close friends and of course God my children would not have turned into the incredible children they are today. Every one of these people helped us take care of Damein while me and Shane would run to Columbia, St. Louis or Kansas City with Darein for doctor visits and hospitalizations. Damein never attended a baseball game or practice without someone close being there to watch him and cheer him on and report every detail back to us on anything we missed. Every one of these people helped us with Darein by watching her when we needed a break, needed a place to leave her while we participated in events going on with Damein, etc. Every one of these people still continue to help us as we still have needs arise that cannot place us at two places at once. Our parents are now aging and need us to be there for them now as they have always been there for us. So, though I am a stay at home mom I am also a stay at home child, here and available to repay the favor to these great people who raised us and helped us raise our kids. I cannot think of a greater way to spend my time.
I know our lives are busy and I know they get hectic and I know that we get overwhelmed but it is extremely important to count our blessings in the midst of all that is going on. I find that I get overwhelmed when I look at my calendar for the month and I start trying to find a place to add an appointment and then start thinking of another appointment that I am going to need to make. These are the times that I have to take a deep breath, focus on today, talk to my husband who is great to remind me to start counting my blessings and then start counting my blessings. God is great and will not give you more than you can handle. When I think I have no control over my life and it is stressing me out, I just remember that I am exactly right...God has control over my life and if I just turn it over to him and let him carry the burden I don't need to worry because he will make my life way more wonderful than I ever could. I have started trying to work out some, eat better, read my Bible daily, listen to my Joyce Meyer podcast and just overall have a richer and fuller life. I have yet to accomplish each and every one of these things every single day but I try to accomplish what I can and turn the rest over to Jesus and ask him for a better day the next day.
I hope everyone has a wonderful 2012 full of rich blessings! However, please know that challenges will come and its not a matter of if they will come or not but how we will handle ourselves in the midst of them. My grandparents health is failing rapidly and I dread the day they will no longer be with us. Darein will be going through an incredible amount of changes this year as she will be getting braces, possibly new hearing aids, being in her back brace until at least May with a couple of more appointments with her orthopedic doctor, appointments with her geneticist, urologist, and plastic surgeon. She is also still very involved with volunteering at the zoo, being in Art Club,involved in her church and those extra curricular activities, learning to play several musical instruments in her free time and learning new sports with her Champion Athletes group as well as taking on teaching her puppy obedience in puppy lessons. She has never been this busy and yet she is meeting all of these challenges head on and winning!! It may be too much, but it helps her stamina and pushes her to do as much as she can and teaches her about learning her limitations as well. If she can be involved in so much and meeting these challenges so well then surely I can too :)