Surgery

Dave will be getting screws put into his leg tomorrow. Please pray. I am not looking forward to all the complications this will cause in life but I am grateful we didn't let this 'go' any longer. I need to make a bunch of phone calls now so...I'll write more when I can.

Dave's version

First of all, (this is Dave, and I believe I'm blogging for the first time) as a courtesy to those of you who have weak stomachs-- the pictures and following description gets graphic, at least according to Mel. She suggested I not even put in any pictures, but, come on, what fun is that? Besides, I'm a pretty visual guy, so the photos suit me well. If you qualify as one of these squeamish people, simply read only the next sentence and the last little paragraph (skip the long middle one and the pics at the end), and pray for us; otherwise, enjoy.

Well, if you haven't heard already, I broke my ankle a week ago Monday evening. I was running hard to first base in a church softball game; it was going to be a close play, so I stretched as if to get there sooner. I WAS safe, but my leg was fully extended when I hit the bag, and instead of having a bent knee and the impact going through my entire leg, it just went to my foot/ankle, which crumpled immediately, accompanied by the sound of a number of unnerving pops and cracks. Needless to say, I was a little freaked out-- My lower leg and foot went numb for about a minute, after which I realized I still had feeling (because it hurt a lot) and limited mobility in my toes and ankle. I went home before finding out that we lost the game anyways. After a few hours, it was much better, and every day it has kept improving. Everyone that I talked to said I didn't need to see a doctor, and everyone who saw it said I should. Well, eventually I grew frustrated by the speed and length of my improvement, so I went to the clinic on Saturday. After some painful poking by my family doctor and 3 x-rays, the radiologist was only allowed to tell me that I was a "tough guy" and that it would "take a long time to heal," (both things I already knew.) My doctor, however, told me something I didn't know when soon afterwards, he informed me that it WAS, in fact, broken-- I believe he said there were 3 fractures. After this, he gave me what looked to be a summer time down hill ski boot, which I've since found out, is just as uncomfortable as the real thing! It certainly was more comfortable than any of my attempts at wrapping it, and would go well with the Salvation Army crutches (or "crunches," as Mo calls them) that I got earlier in the week. My doctor continued, "I'm not an orthopedic surgeon," he informed me (again something I already knew), "but call his office on Monday to set up an appointment for that afternoon."

So, there you have it, the last few days of my life summarized in a little paragraph. What I've left out is that Mel, Mo, and Mel's family (but most often Mel) have been wonderfully patient and helpful the past few days. As far as the photos are concerned, the first 3 pictures are from Tuesday, the day after it happened, and the last 3 are from today, Sunday. When you read this, or think of any of us, please pray for wisdom for the doctors, healing for me, and patience for all of us.

How it looked on Tuesday (the day after my 'incident'), notice the swelling in the last picture!


This is how it looked Sunday (5 days later), notice the swelling has gone down somewhat, but the bruising is just ugly, and immense! I'm pointing to what I believe to be the broken ankle bone, which ironically doesn't have as much bruising nearby, go figure!

Fractures are not fun

Did I write about Dave's ankle yet? Yeah at softball last Monday he sprained it...or so we thought. He went in today b/c the swelling was going down, but not that much. He had an X-ray done and it's fractured in 3 places. He currently has a boot. This coming Monday he will be seeing the orthopedic doc and he may 'order' surgery. Not good...so again, please pray. Dave may not be able to do the last 2 weeks of summer school as planned!! I already asked God to give me patience! If you know me, you know I could always use a good dose of that anyways! We'll keep you posted. Until then, if you see some guy at the store in the electric wheelchair, it's probably Dave =)

Foster care news!!!

We finally got in touch w/our SW - she was on vacation and had erased our first message on accident! So now she knows it was from us and emailed us back. We thought her final report needed to be done for us to get kids, but that's not true! They have actually had our name come up and they are looking for a match for us. So we could get kid(s) soon! It was so exciting to hear that and we are feeling READY!! The thought of having a baby in the house again has made us laugh, cry and worry a little too. We started talking about getting out of bed in the middle of the night, making bottles, wiping big messes....ok, those things mostly made us cry, but there were good thoughts too! The snuggles, the wrapping them up like burritos, the itty bitty socks, the making them gurgle and smile...we can't wait. I mean we can, we'll have to, but in the meantime we'll be cleaning and reviewing the supplies we have. Please keep us in prayer! This is what we want, but of course, more importantly, we are seeking God's will in this. It is our prayer that He prepares us for what may come...and that He is with the kid(s) and family and SWs. We know it won't be the easiest transition, but we depend on Him for so many things and we know He has provided for us in so many ways. Ok, sorry, I'm getting a little snuffly here...I know a lot of you have asked for updates! So now you know as much as we do =) Thanks for hanging in there w/us!

Being a 3 kid family

As I said before, we had 2 of our friends' foster care kids for a week. We learned a lot about how long it takes to go anywhere w/more than one kid! I still wanted to avoid using the van as much as we could and since we couldn't find a way to bike, that meant using the double stroller and carrying the baby (he was still probably 20 lbs or more!) in the backpack. I pulled the grocery cart! Yeah, that was our big grocery run. After that we used the van a lot to go to parks and the local free zoo. The kids liked the zoo! For us it took a lot of planning to remember 3 times as much snack and 3 water cups and the extra clothes and of course the camera! Overall it was a fun week and we are soooooo ready to have foster care kids of our own!

Camping

After my brother's wedding, we took some time to go camping! It was so much fun...We took some neat pics, so here are a few of my faves! I'll put a slideshow on the sidebar too...


The best part was hearing Mo wake up every day and ask to go see some animals! We saw deer, cranes, woodpeckers and of course caterpillars and bugs. It was cool to teach Mo to listen for the evidence of woodpeckers even when we couldn't see them. He would announce to us whenever he heard one!

Athletic we are not...

So on Monday Dave severely sprained his ankle at the church softball game. I have pics, but I don't think you want to see them. On Tues I fell off my bike in the driveway!! I'm fine, just a sore wrist. The worst part about all this is that we are reminded that we have never been athletic! And probably won't be!! At any rate, our plans to go camping have been canceled and we'll see what we are going to do now...We love parades, so we are definitely going to take in one of those! I'm going to write a few other updates, but I wanted to start w/this one!