Well, our Easter didn't go exactly as planned. We were going to go to Santa Barbara on Sunday to attend services with John's family and then go to his dad's house for lunch. John is still dealing with health issues. He saw both our family doctor and a gastroenterologist on Friday. The specialist started him on yet another antibiotic. They seem to think he has a really persistant infection in the colon. We ended up going to the hospital on Sunday morning to meet with Dr. Lin, the gastroenterologist, with the idea that John might be admitted. Instead Dr. Lin is going to do a complete colonoscopy on Tuesday. He wants to look at every part of the colon from top to bottom, not just the lower section where the diverticulitis was. Hopefully this will finally provided us with some answers.

The kids were out of school on Friday, so Mom went to Santa Barbara and picked up Michael's son Kasey so that the kids could color their Easter eggs. They each got to do six eggs each. I'm going to try to attach photos. They had a ball and didn't make to big of a mess. On Saturday I went out in the backyard at Mom's and hid the eggs for all three kids to hunt for. They found all of them with just a little help from Michael and I. John was taking it easy at home and didn't get to participate.

Easter Sunday did bring a special addition to our extended family. My cousin Brian Girsch and his wife, Danielle, welcomed a little girl to their family. Eden Mae Girsch was born at 12:08am Sunday morning. Mom, Dad, baby and big brother Noah are all doing great. This makes great-grandchild number four for my Aunt Pauline. Brian's sister Charity (the one in Missouri) is expecting a second daughter any day now and his sister Lea has another baby due in June. Our family blessings just keep multiplying!

Update on John

John is feeling better today. He was able to work a little more than half his normal day. Thanks to all who have included him in their prayers.

Getting Started

I love reading other people's blogs, so I thought I'd give it a try. Since I'm new at this please bear with me.

March has gotten off to a very hectic start. Timothy and Catherine have both missed school due to illness. Timothy has had a cough that just doesn't want to go away. Catherine has had an infection in both ears and to make life interesting they both had conjunctivitis (pink eye). This was all at the same time. Finally got them back to school last Thursday. Now John is sick. We spent about 4 hours in the emergency room yesterday. Apparently it's a flare-up of his diverticulitis and/or his ulcertive colitis. He's going to be OK, just has to watch his diet and take the antibiotics. When this happened the day after Christmas he was in the hospital for 4 days. So far I have managed to avoid all of it.

Both kids are in the school choir this year. They are going to be doing a production of "Cats" in May. Timothy has been chosen to do part of the introduction for the performance. He seems very excited about it, but considering we can't hardly get him to go up front and sing with the other kids at church getting him to stand on a stage in front of a much larger group of people and recite a part from memory is going to take some practise!

Well, enough for now. Time to get the kids ready for bed. I'll try to post every couple of days or when something new happens.