A lil' bit of EVERYTHING

It has been awhile. I will be honest, I did NOT think many people read my blog. Just in the last week I have had two very random people come up to me and say, "sounds like there's some good things happening in your life" and "I've been reading your blog..." WOW! And about a month ago a mom had asked me if I would consider blogging different kids ideas! So...here's a little update on pretty much everything.

Let's start with Ashalyn's surgery. All went well. She ended up having lots of bleeding and scarring in the ear so the surgery was an additional 45 minutes where they took her tubes out, cleaned it, removed some of the yuckiness, and put a brand new set of tubes in. In addition to the tonsils and the adenoids being removed! It took her a week, but she is back to eating and drinking and back to her happy self. We sure did miss that personality of hers. However, it got to the point where the doctor told us whatever we could get her to eat.....I thought I tried everything! Finally I thought, maybe if we took popsicles over to her cousins house and shared with them she would want a popscicle! Well, they were eating cookies when we got there and sure enough, that stinker went straight for a chocolate chip cookie and downed two of them. Didnt eat for 3 days and made mom and dad look silly!! But the problem is....we started a VERY bad habit! Every night before bed, for breakfast and at lunch time she begs for cookies! On occassion she gets her way and we make hot cookies and milk for bedtime snack...but this mommy isn't sure how long that will last!! (she literally is asking EVERY NIGHT!)

Next topic: our foster care. We found out the week of Ashalyn's surgery that there was a few month delay on our paper work...which puts us back to February in getting our license. (baby is due early april late march) We figure that might be a little too much all at once, so we slowed down our speed on trying to get everything done by November. We have all but 12 hours of our training done. And most of our home study. However, we are going to hold the rest of that off til after the holidays and then start back up. We will then still get our license in Feb. but are going to wait til a few months after the baby to take our first placement.

Which leads me to the baby! A friend of mine called me up and told me that the CPC was doing ultrasounds for free one day for a training of the new machine...so...we got an early sneak peak of our little GIRL!! Yup, we are expecting another girl. Kynzie Caraline! Ashalyn stared in amazement as she watched her little sister move around on the u/s machine and now if you ask her what the baby's name is she says, "baby sister!" And then goes on to say her name, "Kynzie Line" She seems to be pretty excited for as much as she understands at her age. I've had a few ask how we came to pick Kynzie for her name, which we have found to be a very neat story!!

Ashalyn's name really had no meaning behind it. It was a name we both loved and agreed on. Faith (A's middle name!) is pretty self explanatory...we as parents made the commitment to raise Ashalyn in knowing our Christian faith and our prayer for her is that she comes to know and except that same life!
Miranda's name didnt come as easy. We already picked out one girls name and had a very hard time deciding and agreeing on another. A few months before she was due to be born we agreed on Miranda, but could not agree on the middle name. Nick wanting Lyn so we could stick with the "yn" names and me choosing Irene, after his grandma Edna Irene, and my great grandma Irene. So when the accident came and Miranda was born, I was SOOO out of it, I'm not even sure if Nick was in the room with me at the time, and they asked if the little one had a name yet, I remember not even thinkin about it, and the name Miranda Lyn Irene Rice flowed from my mouth. We knew before hand that the name Miranda meant "miracle". Now, that sure did not seem like any miracle to me....but looking back at how bad it could of been, we have seen some miracles in our story!
Briley Jordyn, with Briley we were not far enough that we could tell the gender of the baby, so Bryleigh being our girls name and Jordyn being one of our boy choices...we decided Briley Jordyn could be very gender neutral.
And now to Kynzie Caraline...We went through name after name. And both very much liked Kenzie. However, like I mentioned...we wanted to stick with yn names...so we debated and we even asked an english teacher if we spelled it Kynzie if that would change the pronunctiation. She told us that she believed it would change the pronunctiation to Kinsey...so, we thought about it and we actually couldnt decide then which name we liked better, but we knew we LOVED the KYNzie spelling best...so we looked up the name meaning of Kinsey and sure enough that spelling was there....and the meaning....it just BLEW US AWAY. Brought instant tears and goosebumps to both of us.
Kynzie: the kings victory over the evil one
WOW! Take our entire story and put that meaning into a Christian content. When we felt like we had been beaten to the ground over and over by Satan....our amazing Redemer and Lord picks us up and defeats him!! We have a healthy pregnancy and each day are one day closer to holding our baby, our living miracle!!
HOW AMAZING AND AWESOME IS THAT?!?!?!