New Years Eve at Pilot Mountain

Despite it being 48 degrees and 50mph winds - we spent the morning hiking Pilot Mountain with Dawnya, Neal, and all the kids. We froze.... but it was gorgeous!! The sky was a beautiful blue and was so clear! So absolutely GLORIOUS!

Dawnya and Neal are good friends of ours from Indiana. In 2004 during one of our visits to their house in Evansville, we attended their church with them. That weekend we left their home KNOWING that we needed to do more for our family, we needed to find a church home that we would all enjoy and grow in. They have played a crucial part in our family's growing faith and we continue to grow every day! What a blessing it is to have them here with us to celebrate the New Year!

This past Sunday, one of the Elders at our church gave the weekly sermon. He talked about the New Year being a Revolution instead of making selfish New Year's Resolutions: Instead of the resolutions being about me.... they should be about God. It got me really thinking... there's a lot that I don't let Him into... that's what I need to change!!

This year...

1) I will let go of trying to control my life and let Him take the reigns. When He is in control all comes together as a part of His perfect plan.

2) I will let go of worry. If you know me I am bad about this! I will have faith that He will provide in times of need.

3) I will bring Him into our home on a daily basis. In our every day life, this often gets pushed aside. Coming home late from practices and work we often rush through dinner and scurry the kids off to bed... not taking the time for proper prayers of thanks and praise at mealtimes and bedtimes.

4) I will step out of my comfort zone and participate in a small group this year. My lack of knowledge of the Bible has always shied me away from joining a small group. I'm always afraid of sounding "stupid" for asking questions or asking for explanation. This is a huge thing for me, but what a better way to come closer to Jesus!

Happy New Year to All and May God Bless Each and Every One of You Abundantly in 2009!!!

Christmas Morning...

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family, here in North Carolina, and back home! We wanted to share a taste of our Christmas with the kids with each and every one of you!

The first few are the Christmas Eve photos of the kids opening their gifts from Great Grandma Rosie (Reinhart). Each year - the kids get jammies from her and they open them Christmas Eve to wear to bed. Thank you Grandma Rosie!!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

To our friends back home - see you next week!

Love Always

Another Year Goes By...

My Favorite Christmas Picture of Mom, Dad, and the Grandkids

(minus Paige and Abbi!)
Devin on the left, Kayleigh on the right; Mom holding Chase on the left and Jake on the right; Dad holding Samantha
Christmas 2008

Dearest Mom,

Another year goes by, another Christmas Eve we spend remembering the years we had with you.

The cookies are baked, the presents are wrapped, and the Christmas music is playing non-stop. The kids are all so excited about tonight's Christmas Eve dinner and coming home to read the story of Baby Jesus, and then opening their first gift for the year and then they'll anxiously drift off to sleep.

Tomorrow is the big day though... the day that they'll all open gifts. Mike and I are looking forward to their smiles more than they are looking forward to the gifts, I'm sure! I promise we'll be talking about you as well, how your gift to them is being the Angel walking beside them each and every day.

I miss you so very much, words cannot describe it. Though it would be so selfish of me to want you here with us when I know you are spending your Christmas in the glorious heavens pain and cancer free; I still wish you were here. To see you one more time, to tell you one more time Merry Christmas, to watch you dance around on Christmas day with the kids to that Patti Page album just one more time.

My heart and love is with you always!

Merry Christmas!

Michelle

Rehab Christmas Dinner

I am blessed with the best rehab staff ever! I don't feel like a "boss" at all... as a matter of fact I hate the word "boss" and they know it!!

Tonight we went to Olive Garden - 12 of us! We laughed a lot and just had fun! Our poor waiter had to deal with us for 3 hours!!! What a trooper he was (and what a tip we left)!

A big thank you to Tricia, Beth, Anne, Rene, Evelyn, Karen, Lisa Jo, Renee, Jalaine, Sherise, and Joan!! You are awesome to work with!!!

Dear Santa,

These are my most favorite ever jammies ever, and my Dora slippers are 3 years old with holes worn through the bottom. But Mommy says they're getting way too small and laughs every time I come out of my room in them. So won't you please bring me new ones this year?

Love, Paige

And We're Still Not Done...

6 dozen cutouts
4 dozen monster cookies
8 dozen chocolate chip
3 dozen peanut butter kisses
8 dozen snickerdoodles
3 dozen buckeyes
2 dozen raspberry pinwheels still in the oven and
Gingerbread men to make tomorrow

My Mom would be proud!

I'm Gonna Start a Tally...

On the amount of money we've spent on Devin's accidents, injuries, and emergencies. He comes to me tonight and says "maybe I should borrow the crutches"... you know that can't be good!

Come to find out, he rolled his ankle in track about 4 weeks ago and didn't bother to tell us, he just kept running on it... FOR 4 WEEKS! Then - Tuesday he rolled it again and KEPT RUNNING ON IT! So tonight it was finally bothering him enough to ask for help.

So off to Primecare we went... a few x-rays and tests later he's in a walking cast for the next 3 weeks. Seems he now has an "anterior tibiofubular ligament injury"!! In English that means that he sprained it a month ago and was a goofball who kept running on it so he made it a whole lot worse! According to the doc it's the least common ankle sprain, but the most serious and hardest to heal....

I can't contain my excitement... and by the look on his face in this pic I don't think he can either!

Happy Birthday My Love!

amazing

brave

careful

daddy

energetic

faithful

great

helpful

irrisitable

jolly

kooky

loving

mellow

nice

optimistic

polite

quiet

realistic

sweet

thoughtful

unusual

vibrant

witty

x-tra special

youthful

zany

Just a few of the things we love about you!

Happy Birthday Michael!

Happy Birthday Sweet Emmi!

Happy Birthday Emmi! We love and miss you so much! Can't wait to see you over the New Year holiday!!

Love Mike, Michelle,

Devin, Kayleigh, Chase, and Paige!

Meeting the Big Man in Red

Paige has been so excited all day about meeting the big man in red tonight...

What? You don't know who the big man in red is?! Well.... it's SANTA of course!

As soon as Daddy got home from work she had her coat on and headed out the door to the van!

She waited patiently for over an hour to see the big guy and then very proudly told him she wants a Nintendo DS AND a real computer LOL! She just smiled as he told her that Santa likes to bring surprises too... she said that would be just fine with her (whew!!).

More Cookies... Compliments of Devin!

Week 2 of baking was quite successful! Devin woke up bright and early and decided that HE would take charge. By 11am, his friend Lauren came to help. Our freezer is filling up fast...

- snickerdoodles
- monster cookies
- peanut butter blossoms
- buckeyes
- chocolate chip cookies
- 2 loaves of spice bread

We're gonna have to padlock it soon. I'm not sure Mike can hold out another week and a half!

Happy Birthday Grandma Lyons!

The kids all give a shout

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA LYONS!"

(and so do we!)

Love and Miss You!!

Mike's Cracker Jacks Day!

Ever just have one of those days... starts out the wrong way and just doesn't quit! That's what today's been for Mike... believe it or not he's still smiling!

We started the morning by waking up late... or should I say... he started the morning late because I hit the snooze button too many times! He jumped up and got in the shower, but by then the kids had already showered just before he got up there so he suds'd up and then a blast of cold water hit him! Yikes! I manage to quickly get dressed and head out the door so that I wasn't late to a morning meeting.

Next... getting ready to pack up his briefcase and Paige says "we don't have our lunches packed"... another Mommy oops! I usually do that in the evenings. But wait.. that's not all... Chase says "we are out of lunchmeat too"! So now... Mike's scrambling a lunch together (our school is a no peanut school so that rules out the PB&J), still recovering from a cold shower, running late, and then....

He finally gets all the kids piled in the car, hits the garage door button, and the spring busts on the automatic garage door thingy above him!!! Now... he's stuck in the garage! He was able to disable the automatic opener, but when the spring broke, it broke something else and even manually the garage door wouldn't stay up! The kids get out of the car, Kayleigh RUNS them the 1/2 mile to the bus-stop so they don't miss the bus, and Mike works on figuring out how to prop the garage door open with a ladder, then finally gets his car out. Wait... it's not over!

Let's catch up...
gets up late
cold shower
scrambles for lunches
piles kids in car
garage door spring breaks
kids start running
props open the garage with a ladder...

He takes off down the road to wear the kids are and they are still at the bus stop about to get on the bus. He notices Paige is crying... seems Mike didn't have her water bottle sealed properly and it poured all over the already crazy lunch he packed for them and was leaking out the side of the lunch bag!! So he jumps out of the car, takes her lunchbag, gives her his last $5 in cash to just buy lunch, and gets her off to school with no time left for him to go to the ATM and races to work...

Poor guy! What a trooper he is though! Even as he was telling me about the morning he was laughing about it. I think I'd be throwing things as soon as the blast of cold water hit me!!

Kudos kind sir! You are an awesome father and an even better husband!!

We've Started the Cookies...

If you know our family at all... you know we make an obscene amount of cookies each year at Christmas. It's something my Mom used to do also. We start the first weekend of December and make double, even triple batches of each cookie. They get frozen and we start pulling them out a few at a time on Christmas eve. Often, we have Christmas cookies clear through January. Well, today we TRIED to start the cookie making......

First.... the mixer stopped working. Seems that dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies in the past has finally fried our mixer. So, it was Dad to the rescue to hand mix a triple batch of snickerdoodles that were in process. Talk about a thick batter to mix up!



As you can see though... it was even a rough job for him!

Then... Kayleigh misread the instructions and baked them for 15-17 minutes!!! She left the kitchen for a few minutes and went back in to find a room full of smoke! The cookies were BLACK... all 4 trays that she started with!!

Finally, after battling all the mess, hand mixing, ruining over 5 dozen cookies, and filling the house with smoke... they were finished!

Next week: Mission Cut-Out Cookies...

Dad's Home From the Hospital

Wanted to update since I left everyone hanging... Dad is home from the hospital and seems to be doing well. They didn't get to do the heart cath because of his kidneys functioning poorly. He'll have to follow up with his kidney doctors and cardiologist at the VA center in Michigan and when it's safe, they'll proceed.

For now he's to take it easy (if you know my father, you know this is going to be a challenge for him!) and he'll need to be very careful of anything he does over the head... even something as simple as washing his hair will cause him to fatigue. He says he's got that handled... he'll just shower with Cassie LOL! His sense of humor tells us he's definitely feeling better!

Thank you all for emails, prayers, phone calls, and more! It's so good to know that we have friends and family who care so much!

The Reason for the Season

Kayleigh and I attended a Christmas Dinner Theater at my friend Beth's Church (Old Town Baptist Church) Thursday evening for a mother/daughter night. Their church presented "Child of Love: Christmas in the Eyes of the Creator" by Ken Parker. What a great way to kick off the holiday season... remembering the REASON for the season!

Each year, before any gifts are opened, one of the kids reads the story of Baby Jesus.... both at our house, and at their grandparent's house. It's a tradition that started at my in-laws house after our first child was born (the first grandchild). We all look forward to it and the kids have all enjoyed reading the story. The adults enjoy it just as much... often, us softies end up with tears in ours eyes... both from hearing the story, and watching the kids sit quietly listening as the story is told.

So... if you haven't already, I encourage you to stop and remember why we celebrate Christmas... to celebrate the birth of our Savior. He is the REASON for the Season!

A Holiday Facelift!

Figured the blog needed a holiday facelift to match the season.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Happy Anniversary Dad and Cassie!

When we lost our Mom in 2003, we almost lost our Dad too. He had given up on hisself, stopped taking care of hisself, and within three months was in heart failure. We often said that when Mom passed, she took Dad's heart with her. His pain was so hard for all of us to see.

That all changed in the spring of 2004 when he met Cassie, who we believe is a gift sent by my Mom to take care of our Dad. Mom and Cassie never knew eachother... but you'd never believe it if you met Cassie! She has brought such fun and a reason to live back to his life. We couldn't have been happier when we found out that he decided to make her his wife.

You see, she's not like any other second wife to a widower. She has kept Mom's memory alive in so many ways! There are many pictures of my Mom, as well as my Mom and Dad in my Dad's new house with Cassie; Almost as many as there are of Dad and Cassie. She openly talks about my Mom all the time and never tries to change the conversation. She makes sure that all the grandkids remember who "Grandma Casto" was and she has so wonderfully taken the roll of "Grandma Cassie".

At Dad and Cassie's wedding reception, my new step-Mom said something to my sister and I that I will never forget. With tears in her eyes she said:

"Your Mom has made your Father the man he is today. For that, she will always be a part of our life and she will never be forgotten."

I know that my Mom was smiling down upon us that day, just as I smile today.

We love you and miss you so much! We can't wait to see you again in January!

Happy Anniversary Dad & Cassie!!!

Update...

Dad's been moved to his own room and is stable. Receiving IV meds, is on oxygen, and has lots of monitors on him... but he's stable and doing good. I was even able to talk to him for about 30 seconds - my step-mom was able to get a cell phone in the room.

The hospital he's in is not his normal hospital, so he doesn't have his cardology doctors there... but Cassie said that they the doctors in Toledo have been in contact with his doctors in Michigan. That's a huge sigh of relief for all of us - it took 4 years to get his meds all straightened out and where they needed to be... don't want someone coming in and messing them all up!

From all of us - Thank you for continued prayers! It means the world to us to know we have such great friends and family!

Urgent Prayer Request for My Dad

We received word around 9:30am that my Dad was taken to Defiance Regional Medical Center with severe chest pain, difficulty breathing, etc. He was then transferred to The Toledo Hospital - a larger hospital where they can meet his needs easier. This is the last I've heard... being 12 hours away is horrible!

Please pray!

Happy Birthday Cyndi!!!

Let me tell you about my friend, Cyndi....

Cyndi and I have known eacother for 10 years now. She's an amazing lady who juggles working for the Dean of Academic Affairs at IU and doing private work for some professors at IU. Add to that raising 2 fabulous boys as a single Mom. Even with her crazy schedule - she's managed to attend all sporting events, school programs, dinners, meetings, awards ceremonies, and more! Oh... and did I add she's also a full-time student! This gal does more than Mike and I can accomplish together!!

Cyndi is a hard working, go-getter who has taught me so much about living life with what we have and being content. I am blessed to call her my friend!

I miss you! Hope you have a great birthday!! Eat a piece of cake for me!!!