Kenyon Gregory

Well it was eleven years ago today that Monty and I welcomed the first addition to our family. I was 40 weeks pregnant. At my doctor appointment on the 30th, my blood pressure was high and I had the beginning signs of preclampsia. Since our son was showing no immediate signs of vacating the cozy home he had occupied for for 9 months, my doctor decided to induce before things got any worse. I was told to go home and get plenty of sleep and then be at the hospital at 5am on the 31st. Well it is hard enough to rest when you know you could go into labor with your first child at any time, hard enough to stop thinking "am I ready? Do we have everything we need? Are the baby things clean enough? Is this house clean enough to bring a newborn child into? etc. etc. etc" Just try resting while you count down the HOURS until you know it is gonna happen. I did my best to sleep and got to the hospital right on time. After filling out paper work, hooking up to a fetal monitor, and starting my IV, the medicine to induce labor was finally started at about 7am. Daddy watched cartoons as I tried to rest. Around 930am the doctor broke my water and by noon the contractions were coming pretty strong and I was using the breathing techniques we had learned in our child birth class. I thought I was doing just fine and was handling the labor well but the nurse kept explaining that things were not moving very fast and finally talked me into taking some pain medicine in the IV to "take the edge off". It really did the trick. I could still feel all of the contractions but was in a place that I did not care-the pain was not bothering me. I relaxed. I mean REALLY relaxed. When I was having a contraction I would sit up and breath through it but as soon as it ended my body would relax soooo much that I forgot to breath. Mom kept having to remind me to breath between contractions so often that they finally but an oxygen mask on me. Around 4pm, the nurse again was explaining to me that the process was not going very fast and it was a lot for my body to handle and tried to talk me into getting an epidural. I did not want it and did not feel like I needed it. We seem to think that experts know best and I really wish I would have stuck to my guns but she finally convinced me. I was in pretty hard labor and as soon as the epidural was in place I felt instant relief. The anesthesiologist said it did not look quite right but I told him it felt great so he left it alone. If only he would have stuck to his guns and fixed it then, things may have turned out differently. I felt good and the pain was gone and I slept for a few hours. I woke up realizing that the epidural was working fine for the left side of my body but not at all on the right side. I was in excruciating pain on one side and felt nothing on the other. Several attempts to adjust the medicine did nothing to help. The right side of my body was taking ALL the pain and stress of full blown labor. I was dilated to a 9 for 2 hours until the right side started working against the left side and started to tighten up. All I could do was cry in agony and the babies heart rate was starting to be negatively affected. I was then given the option of taking out the epidural and putting it back in correctly. With contractions 30 seconds apart, I knew there was no way I could have stayed still through that process. At 9:30, the decision was made that the baby was not handling thing well and I was knocked out for and emergency c-section. I remember seeing the gas mask beside me and begging the doctor to put it on me before the next contraction hit. He put his hand on my throat and I was out. I never saw the mask come any closer to my face and later told my mom that I thought he had choked me until I passed out because all I remembered was his hand on my throat. At 9:45 Kenyon was finally born. I was out from the surgery for awhile and got to stop by the nursery window to see my baby in the "baby cooker" on my way back to my room around midnight. Finally at about 2 am he was done cooking and they brought him to my room and I got to meet my son. He was gorgeous!!! He was also asleep and stayed that way until about 8 am. I guess it had been a pretty long night for him as well. I hate that I did not get to hear my son's first cry. I was not the first person he saw or that got to hold him. I did not even get to meet him until he was about 4 hours old and he did not see me until he was about 10 hours old. I wish that we would have had those special first moments of bonding but I do know that with or without that-nothing could have made me love that little baby any more than I did. I can not believe that it has been 11 years since that night. There are so many memories that are as fresh as if they had just happened and I am sure some that I have forgotten but one thing will never change...I get that same feeling I felt when he was first placed in my arms every time he holds my hand or (tries) to climb up on my lap for a little bit of mama's cuddly love time. MY SON! I LOVE THAT BOY!

A Trip to the E.R.

Sundays are the one day a week I run all day on a few hours of sleep, actually sometimes it is more like minutes. I have never been an early to bed early to rise kind of person. Even when I have to be an early to rise person-the early to bed part always gets me. I normally do not get to bed until AT LEAST midnight each night. On Sundays I have to get up around 2:30 am to deliver Sunday papers. I get home between 6:00 and 7:oo am. I then get to sleep until about 8:30am before getting up for church. After church, we come home, eat lunch and lay down for a nap of (hopefully) 2 hours before heading back to church. I have tried many times to adjust my schedule but the world is against me. It is not possible for me to get any more sleep. Yesterday, I was determined to change that. We had eaten supper, dishes were all put in the dish washer and everyone's church clothes were neatly laid out for the next morning by 7:30pm. The kids had all gone back outside to enjoy the last minutes of day with the understanding that they had 20 minutes until everyone was inside and baths were started. I had EVERYTHING set up to be able to be in bed by 9:00pm-10:00 at the latest-what could go wrong? WELL I WILL TELL YA....Kalysa decided to spend a portion of her last 20 minutes on brother's skateboard. Kalysa is my most cautious one so she would NEVER try to stand up on the skateboard, she sits on her knees. Our driveway is a pretty steep hill so she wont ride down it either, she was in the neighbors driveway which barely has an incline at all. Well she hits some gravel, the skateboard stopped and she didn't stop-instead she fell over the end of it onto her face. She scraped up her nose and forehead, ended up with a HUGE fat lip and a missing front tooth. Kenyon and Keslee came running and screaming that Kalysa got hurt and Monty and I went running. Colton was already with her and had her picked up and trying to comfort her. I brought her in the house and got her cleaned up some but she would not really let me see(apparently she is so cautious because she also FREAKS OUT at the sight of her own blood!!). Her top lip was SOOOOO fat that I was afraid the tooth was lodged in it (we looked for it in the drive way and didn't find it) so we headed to the ER. Well the tooth is gone, she probably swallowed it. Her lip was very swollen from the impact but amazingly was not even cut. Her gum is pretty torn up and bruised but it doesn't look like the tooth broke off-luckily it ALL came out. My kids took after their mama so we don't loose baby teeth until between 7 and 8 years old. At least it was a baby tooth so the permanent tooth should come in fine-even though it may take a year or two. I will spend tomorrow trying to get her into a dentist just to double check. Well needless to say, we didn't get home from the ER until about 9:00 and THEN had to do baths and the girls hair and I got to bed about 11:30. It was a little earlier than midnight but not what I was hoping for! Now I just have to get used to seeing my baby girl smile with out her tooth. Oh well, I had to do it when Keslee was 2 and knocked her tooth out, but that is a whole different story!

Special Delivery!

Last week in school we began our study of our 4th continent-Africa. Right in time, we received a special delivery from Monty's sister. Latrese is in the Air Force and is stationed in Washington D.C. She is Monty's only sibling and she has no kids of her own(yet-we are still hoping for some cousins someday=)) Every so often we get a big box in the mail from Aunt Latrese filled with all kinds of goodies for everyone. This past December she took a trip with a friend to Africa and apparently did some shopping. Monty and I each got some shoes and the girls got some African outfits. She said she did not find any clothes that she thought Kenyon would wear which she is probably right because he does not like anything that may draw extra attention to him or make people look at him. He was very excited to receive a dart gun shaped like a fighter plane complete with lights and sound.

Here are Keslee and Kalysa in their new outfits.

See all the detail work on the front, that I am sure if hand sewn.

Here is Keslee in my favorite one. She looks so pretty in red. In each of our studies of the different continents we look up pictures on line and often have a page to color with traditional dress from the area. It is just so special to actually have some of the traditional dress and from someone that the kids(and their parents) love soooo much. She also sent souvenirs from Spain and California and a whole bunch of post cards with the different important American attractions around D.C. There was also a sack full of candy. I forgot to ask if they were from Africa or Spain(so Latrese, if you read this let me know). It had several different types of Chocolate bars. It is interesting to see how different candy is in other parts of the world. The chocolate was chocolate but not as sweet as ours and some of them had cookies kinda like out Kit-Kat bar. Even though they looked the same, they taste very different. Thank you Aunt Latrese for all the Great gifts and thank you for enhancing our school day! WE LOVE YOU!!

To God be the Glory!

God has really been blessing us in so many ways. I tell ya, I knew he would provide needs and wants but I wasn't expecting it to happen so fast. In this new year, Monty and I have both been really been trying to learn to pay our tithes faithfully to the church. When you have not been trained that way from the start, it is extremely difficult to muster up the faith all of a sudden and trust God to do what he said he would. Then in the month of February, we had a series of sermons on stewardship. They were really great and we both really learned alot. We have tried to give "what we could" but now are giving what we should. It really helped to realize that we are not giving God 10% but instead he is letting us have 90%. WOW! When he lets us have 90%, how could we ever think that we could do better by keeping any of God's part than He will do for us. I know God will and does provide-I never doubted that he CAN-but my issue has been the fact that I have done sooo wrong for sooo long, why would God even WANT to bless me. Well I am here to tell ya he does, and here is some proof. On Friday the 6th, my washer quit. I had done a load of laundry and when it was finished and I was putting them into the dryer, they were soaking wet. I had to squeeze them out before drying them. I ran another load(real small one) to see what was happening and found out that it was not spinning AT ALL. It did not even TRY to spin. Did not even making the whirrringg noise like it wanted to spin....just stopped, drained and that was it. I called my grandma, since she is the garage sale queen, and it was a Friday afternoon, and she does have a cell phone now. She had already hit every garage sale in town and had seen no washers. She was pulling up to her last sale of the day but said there was no mention of a washer in the ad. Well wouldn't ya know she called me back and said she asked that lady if she had one and she sure did! It was not advertised and was at a different house but she had one. I got a washer for $40 and never even had to be without one for a full day! I tell ya, God is Good-All the Time-All the Time-God is God! It would really be great if that were the end of the story. A few weeks back I had been looking at some furniture and wishing we could get some space saving captains beds and get rid of some dressers. I never mentioned it (out loud)because it just was not something that was possible for us to do at this time but I guess someone heard anyway. The day after we got the washer, a friend texted to ask if anyone wanted a full size bed with 8 drawers and a pillow top mattress. Someone she worked with just wanted to get it out of their garage. WELL I WANTED IT! The couple wanted it out of their garage so bad that they not only GAVE us a bed that was probably close to $1000 new but they even delivered it to our house. It is gorgeous and Kenyon now has a bigger bed with all his clothes tucked into the space saving drawers underneath and his books and cds and radio and model car all nice and neatly displayed on the shelves of the head board.

Monty had a great time putting it together and see where he is sitting....

That is the space under the bed, between the drawers for extra storage accessible by a neat little trap door in the foot board.

OK, so I thought it was for extra storage but apparently it is now the club house of one very excited almost 11 year old boy.

AND-daddy gets to be a member of the club!

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!

My little Glori-Bell

I am a little late on posting the update on my little Glori-Bell(a nickname I have called Kalysa since she was tiny-now I am having to teach her that her middle name is just Glori not really Glori-Bell!). She went with blue for what was originally going to be her last cast but that has changed. She will now have 2 more. I will explain....when your foot is at a 90* angle-flat on the ground-that is zero. Every degree you pull your toes up is a positive number and every degree you push your foot down is a negative number. Normal range of motion is + or - 25 to 30. When Kalysa started this set of casting, she was at a -30 and that was as close to zero as she could get. Each week she has made progress. Before this new blue cast, she was only getting about a +5 so we have added 2 more weeks of casts and then she will have a splint to wear.


Last week, after the blue, she picked red. She was able to stay at zero really easy and got to about a +12. Another therapist met us at her appointment this time and made the mold for her splint. They will have it ready they day she gets her last cast off as well as a pair of cute little pink and grey sneakers that are made to fit the splint easily. They have a deeper inside so the leg that she doesn't have a cast on will have extra insoles so she will be balanced. Today she got her last cast. She choose green(l'll have to post a picture later. She is too busy enjoying the wonderful spring weather to pose for pictures.) She was able to get to +18 so we are gonna do some extra stretches this week and see how far we can get it. It does not look likely (especially since this is her 4th time for botox and casting) but it would just be wonderful if the casts and the splint would do the trick and she was able to avoid surgery. Please keep her in your prayers.

Homeschool Convention

It is that time again. Just about a month and a half left until our big homeschool convention is held May 1 and 2. I got my OCHEC magazine in the mail this week and now I am SUPER excited! This is just my 2nd year to homeschool and therefore just my second convention. At last years convention, mom and I tried to take in everything we could. I had so much fun and really enjoyed the workshops I attended. It is just so uplifting to be in one room with a couple thousand other (mostly) like-minded homeschoolers. If ever I feel alone in this journey, I just have to remember the crowds of people trying to hear every speaker with smoke coming from the ends of their pens trying to take note of every word spoken so not to miss one single inspiration given and polite but still on a mission parents as they look through every curriculum book available waiting to hear the Lord say "This is the one! This is the one that will automatically make your children brilliant and teach them to love Me with all their hearts regardless of the faults of the teacher. BUY IT MY CHILD! BUY IT!" Oh no-I am not alone! After I left the convention last year, I was inspired and pumped up and oh so excited for the new school year. The Lord did lead me to the curriculum we are using-although I am not sure it is automatically making my kids everything I and the Lord would have them to be-but I am very happy with it. I did not do any buying at the convention last year. Mainly because I had no idea what I was looking for when I started and did not take money so I would not be tempted to make impulse purchases. This year I know what I want and am hoping to be able to do some serious shopping. Getting the OCHEC magazine in the mail has brought back that same excitement I felt last year. I read the articles of some of this years speakers and saw some of the titles of the workshops and I have to say, I think it is gonna be awesome. One of the most exciting parts for me this year is that Amy and a few ladies from her church are making the trip from the Texas panhandle to attend our convention. I love being able to share this homeschool journey with my very best friend. I can feel the excitement and anticipation building for a great new school year. It came at just the right time too. I needed that feeling and inspiration to keep going for the rest of this year. We have had a good year but the momentum has slowly been dwindling. The arrival of one little magazine in my mail box has given me a new boost to finish strong. We have to finish up so we will be able to start the AWESOME new school year I now know we are gonna have. So what about you? Are you going to a homeschool convention?

One of God's Greatest Creations!!!!

I think that one of God's greatest creations by far was the sister. I LOVE my sister, Chastanie(ok I love Jacinta alsobut Chastanie is the sister I grew up with). Chas and I always shared a room. She has always been my best friend. We do not have secrets from each other and I think, for the most part, we have always gotten along. I am sure we had our squabbles over the years but I can never remember a time when my sister and I had a serious fight. There has never been a time that we were "not speaking" to each other. We played house together, played barbies, acted goofy, giggled, whispered, experimented with make-up, and just grew up together. To this day, we could probably pull out the Barbies and pick up where we left off. Chas and I still talk several times a week. I loved growing up with my sister and I loved being the big sister. Know matter how old she gets, I will always be her big sister. Often times I really miss those days together in our room, especially when I walk in on this scene...

Keslee is a true big sister. She is always taking care of Kalysa. She loves to try things out on her. She will get out the brush and rubberband and go to town on Kalysa's hair. In true little sister style, Kalysa puts all her faith in her big sister and lets her have free reign.

If she ends up with 15 pony tails, 32 barrettes and 4 scrunchies-she is happy to wear it all day just because her sister did it. I see myself and Chastanie so often as I watch my girls grow up together. I know my life was enriched in more ways than I will ever know just because I had a baby sister and I am so glad that my girls have that same thing. Seeing them made me start reminiscing about times with my brush, barrettes, rubberbands and a hand full of my sister's hair. Fixing her hair was one of my favorite pastimes and just like any good little sister-

(Chastanie-sometime in the 80s)

proudly wearing the 53 braids her big sister did was a given.