Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Here it was a great celebration, not just the normal Christmas stuff we always do, decorations and presents and such, but well it really turned into a celebration of life. First of course, is the celebration of Christ's birth that gives us new life and strength, and hope, and peace so that we can make it to each new day. Then there was also the celebration of my dad's life, this is his 17th Christmas in heaven with Christ, and we enjoyed a 5-pounds-of-carmel Christmas remembering all the fun stuff that dad did at Christmas time. The celebration of Mark's mom's life, this is her 2nd Christmas to celebrate face to face with Christ and we enjoyed lots of fond memories of Christmas's with Nancy. It was also the 1st Christmas that Mark's best-friend Troy spent with Christ, and through the tears there were lots of great remembrances of all Mark and Troy's good times as kids. This is also the very first year that John was home for all of the Christmas celebrations at the two churches. He had a great time at the Christmas dinner the week before Christmas and loved the children's program Christmas eve and by the time we got to the 9:30p Christ Mass he was in full tired-silly go, go, go mode, it was an event to be remembered! We're also very thankful that this was the year that my mom came to stay with us for Christmas! John has had a great time telling Grandma this and that and his favorite was to sign "Christmas Tree" and take her to see every one of them that he could find. It was great to get to visit with Grandma and share Christmas and John's birthday with her, it was also so nice to have her here to talk to when we were in the midst of scary things going on with John.

The week of Thanksgiving John had two episodes of non-responsiveness and spent 48 hours in the hospital for each episode and no answer to what it was. During the Moog School Christmas party it happened again and this time answers were to be found, but they were scary. His EEG was normal but on his MRI they found that he had lesions on his brain. At this point there are tons of test results out, but everyone from John's Pediatrician to his therapists, etc., believe that it was a viral infection that although it did damage, it will heal completely. There is an outside chance that it is a progressive debilitating metabolic disorder, and we won't have the all clear on that until more test results are back. But we've been told that each day that John continues to learn and grow is another day we can have peace of mind knowing that it is most likely just a viral episode that is over and healing. So far each day has been full of new things and we are thankful for each one of them!!