2015 Christmas Letter

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” - Luke 2:15

Merry Christmas! Blessings to you and your family.

This was Zeke’s first year participating in a Christmas program and the above passage was the theme. “Come and see! Come and see! Come to Bethlehem and see!” Izzy was in the same program, both in the preschool class. Zeke did his part of standing and singing what he knew and Izzy did a good job performing.

Our family highlight this year was a road trip out west, replicating much of our honeymoon, to celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary (details here and highlights here). We stopped at seven different national parks, monuments, or forests. We camped for three nights in Yellowstone which was quite a bit cooler than we thought it would be in the middle of July. We were again impressed by how well the kids did with all the driving and all the hiking/walking they did. We caught quite a few geysers at the right time in Yellowstone, but were a bit underwhelmed with the number of animals we expected to see. Theodore Roosevelt National Park, on the other hand, was a surprise as we saw way more bison there than expected and the kids had fun seeing all the prairie dogs. Another thing the kids had fun with at all the national areas was working to obtain their Junior Ranger badges. Some were easier than others, but it is a great program to encourage learning about the history and unique features of each place.

Soon after returning from our trip, we were excited to go down for Steph’s sister Danielle’s wedding. All three kids had roles and did a pretty good job doing what they were supposed to do.

A unique find of our family came from traveling to Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store, not too far from our home. They carry over 150 varieties of root beer. What started as a treat for Isabella has turned into a mission to find the best root beer of all time. We have started holding blind root beer tastings and all vote on our favorites. Once we get through as many as we can, we will start retasting our favorites to determine a winner.

Ryan and Steph were mostly up to the same things this year. As mentioned above it was our ten year anniversary this year. We can not believe how fast the time has flown. We have truly been blessed with each other and by the little family we have grown. We can not wait for the next ten years (if anything, this little family will be close to all moved out!)

Ryan coached Elisha’s flag football team and Steph ran in a couple bigger 5Ks in the Twin Cities. She even convinced Ryan to run with her in next year’s Warrior Dash.

Elisha started third grade this year. He also started taking piano lessons which has opened a whole different part of his mind. He’s done very well so far and we think he is committed enough that we bought a used piano. We bought it from a company that collects and fixes old pianos and then sells some and donates others to places and children that can’t afford them. Ours over 100 years old and is in somewhat rough shape, but sounds great and looks very cool. Elisha continued playing sports this year. He was in a new baseball league where his coach did a really good job developing the team’s skills to prepare them for kid pitch next year. He also did soccer and flag football again, and tried out a la crosse camp. It went well the first couple days, but the last day had kids of all ages, so the interest dropped off quite a bit. We’ll see what next year brings. He has kept this fall busy by being in another fantasy football league. He was able to draft his favorite player (Odell Beckham Jr.) so the rest of the results are secondary (although looking like he’ll play for a second straight championship).

Izzy started preschool this year. She goes all day three days a week. It was a bit of a rough transition at first, but she seems to have hit her stride now, and has always been so excited to go. She loves her teacher and has made some great friends. Izzy has gotten pretty good at sight reading small words. She’s ready to move on to level two pretty soon. She lost one of her front teeth a few weeks ago, but we’re not sure if both will be gone by Christmas. Izzy started a gymnastics class last winter and has been going all year. Her coordination, focus, and concentration has greatly increased and you can see those skills developing her personality as well. She tried out t-ball this summer (another thing with brother Zeke). Mom and Dad both ended up assistant coaching as it was pretty much a four station skill camp each week with a couple kids kind of participating while the others sat and played in the sand or cried. Finally, Izzy signed up for dance this fall and we were very impressed with her recital last week (dance 1 and dance 2).

Zeke started the year off with another surgery to remove his nevus. We were amazed that he was healthy enough to go, but the surgery and recovery went well. He had second surgery at the beginning of December to hopefully remove the rest. The surgeon was hopeful that we got it all, but the biopsy came back that there is still some left past the edges that were removed. We have a follow up scheduled for the middle of next year, but chances are we’ll have to have at least one more surgery to get the rest. As mentioned above, Zeke also tried out t-ball this summer. Besides that, he loves hanging out with his buddies at daycare and at home is always roughhousing with Elisha or Dad (and even sometimes Izzy). He has somehow turned out to be the storyteller of the group and always has something to tell us to crack us up.

God’s richest blessings on your 2016!

Love, Ryan, Stephanie, Elisha, Isabella, and Zechariah

2014 Christmas Letter

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” - Matthew 2:1-2

Greetings and Merry Christmas! Blessings to you and yours!

We had a very fun this year and started getting a little busier, something we're sure won't stop for a LONG time. Our big family event this year was a road trip down to Kentucky, primarily for the annual Cairney Open, but highlighted with a two night camping trip at Mammoth Cave National Park. We also stopped at for state capitol buildings along the way as well. Check out our whole trip here. The kids were total troopers and did a lot of their own walking in our cave tours, a couple hours a piece - one two miles and the other with hundreds of stairs.

Ryan didn't do a whole lot this year, but did get to go to Disneyworld for work in February. Steph started selling wonderful, practical, and affordable thirty-one products this year and even earned a trip to Denver for the annual conference for her early results. They did each run their first 5Ks this year. Steph ran the Twin Cities Color Run (which was MLB All-Star Game themed) and Ryan ran in a 5K for the Good Shepherd School.

Elisha started second grade this fall. He was given the opportunity to jump to third grade math and seems to have done very well with it. He continues to do very well in everything else he does. He was on Coach Pitch Baseball, Soccer, and Flag Football teams. It was his first time doing team soccer or football. He did really well in soccer, always running as fast as he could and making quite a few good defensive plays, making good passes, and scoring quite a few goals. He was a star defensive player in football with quite a few interceptions and even ran one back. Constantly an analyzer, he always talked through his performances on the way home. Running his first fantasy football team this year, he is in the championship this weekend. Football has become his life, it is ALL he talks about. Even Ryan is looking forward to the season end. He still enjoys reading and playing video games at home. He even saved money for over a year to buy his own Nintendo 3DS this past month.

Isabella has become even more of a star of her own film this year. She is very much into playing with her babies and dolls and it is rare if at least one character doesn't break into some song. When not making them up, she loves singing other songs she knows as well. Her big passion this year was Frozen (as with most American 4 year old girls). She contributed probably a million of the YouTube views for "Let It Go". She memorized it so well that she was eventually performing the song with actions from the video with the house as her set. Her costume would follow suit and change as well through the song. It gave us great entertainment. Isabella is really enjoying writing her letters and pointing them out when reading. She's starting to give sounding out some words a shot, although she has memorized all the states by shape in her little state book. Isabella had to get glasses back in February and she took a step towards being as beautiful as mommy by getting her ears pierced for her birthday.

Zechariah has turned into a little clown, always saying the funniest things. He became a big fan of Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Disney's latest story in the Peter Pan universe. He was an avid Fruit Ninja player and while he does love to eat fruit as well, he also likes to eat anything else laying around. If the other two don't eat us out of house and home, he will. If you haven't heard us say it before, we are certain he will be a fullback or linebacker the way he plows us over. We took this year off for surgeries for the little guy, but will be starting back up in January. There's a chance this could be the last one, but chances are he will need probably just one more after that to finish with at least the main procedures for removal of his nevus.

That's all for us for this year. We hope again hope you had a blessed 2014 and God's blessings on 2015!

Love Ryan, Stephanie, Elisha, Isabella, and Zechariah

2013 Christmas Letter

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. – Luke 2:14

Merry Christmas to you! We pray that you have been blessed as we have this year.

2013 was a pretty laid back year for us. Our biggest venture of the year was a family wedding in June, but other than that we mostly stuck to home and relaxed. It was our first full year in our new home in Elko New Market and we have really grown to love it. The neighborhood is great with plenty of space for Elisha to ride his bike and a nice loop for walks and trips to the park. We had a membership to the Minnesota Zoo this year so we made quite a few visits there as well. The visits got quite a bit more spaced out as the year went along, but one of our last trips was quite memorable as the kids got to feed a giraffe. Ryan has played guitar in church about once a month and now sits on the board at church as secretary. Steph transitioned to a training position within Best Buy. It is quite a bit more in line with what she would ultimately like to do. She likes it a lot and is having fun writing and presenting trainings.

Elisha continues to amaze us with everything he does. He is now in first grade at Good Shepherd and is doing quite well. He has really gotten into reading. It is recommended that he read twenty minutes a day, but being a little competitor he decided he would try to read at least forty a day and so far has almost always stuck to it. We started half and half between him reading to himself and us reading to him, but he has taken off and is already even reading some starting chapter books. He played T-Ball for the first time this summer, but spent almost all his free time at home - when it was nice out - playing football or baseball in the backyard with Dad or Mom. He spent his days during the summer doing a day camp at the local YMCA. He enjoyed going on 2-3 field trips a week and swimming at least once a week. He also got to go to his first Timberwolves game (thanks to a reading program) and his first Vikings game (thanks to the Vikings not doing so well this year and tickets being dirt cheap).

Isabella believes she is the mommy of the house. She regularly orders her little brother around to take naps, go to church, or go shopping with her. She has gotten more into princesses this year and even got to go on her first movie date with Mom to see Frozen. She immediately wanted to watch it again and loves to talk about all the characters. The first thing she does when she gets home every day is put on one of her princess dresses. She's even convinced she will be marrying Prince George. When she's not checking her hair in the mirror in her room, she is probably dancing around the house singing some amazing made-up songs.

Zechariah is definitely the baby of the family, but he does do a decent job of sticking up for himself when being picked on, mostly by #2. Zeke hasn't clung on to too many toys or characters yet, but does love it whenever he sees "M-Elmo". We have also nicknamed him our Baby Hulk and even dressed him up as such for Halloween. As noted elsewhere in this blog (with another post hopefully soon to come), Zeke had two surgeries this year to continue to remove his nevus. The first took out a little chunk and inserted two expanders under his scalp. The second removed a giant portion of what was remaining and removed the expanders. We are constantly amazed at the resilient bodies God gave us and the physicians he has placed in our lives to take care of Zeke.

Feel free to bookmark or follow this page for updates throughout the year. We'll see how good we'll be at keeping this up to date.

God's Greatest Blessings on 2014!

Love Ryan, Steph, Elisha, Isabella, and Zechariah

Fill 'er Up

July 3rd came quickly. Here are some pictures from that morning. More story below.

Pictures from 7/3/2013:

We both went along to the appointment to make sure Zeke stayed as calm as possible. 

First, our doctor put a numbing cream over the stitches and the ports (a new term we learned that day for where the additional fluid would be injected). We then walked a couple laps around the building to give some time for the cream to kick in (we also gave him some of his extra strength tylenol). After about half an hour, we went back into the office to get started.

Daddy held Zeke during the procedures to help make sure his head stayed as still as possible. First up was removing the stitches. Zeke did very well during this part. Everything came out cleanly and the scars looked very good. Next was adding more fluid into the balloons. Zeke got a little upset during this part, but it was probably pretty scary with all of what was happening, especially with a second part to the day.

It's a little tough to see in all these pictures, but the ports are just in front of each of the two bags. The doctor described them as having metal bottoms so that the needle isn't able to got through the bottom. We're not sure how the top is put together, but the doctor puts the needle into the port which then passes the fluid to the balloons through a tube. Only a small bit of blood comes from the injection site which clots after just a few minutes. It is pretty amazing.

Here are some pictures from 7/7/2013 showing the tightness around the skin after the first fill-up. It's pretty amazing to see how the skin grows and relaxes during the two week stretches in-between office visits.

Pictures from 7/7/2013:

Round Two

Everything healed up extremely well from the first surgery. Aside from a scarline that seemed to hide itself, especially once Zeke's hair grew back out, you could hardly even tell he had the first surgery.

While we didn't notice Zeke being bothered by the nevus at all, we did start to notice one of the other characteristics of the tissue - it is very thin and rips easily. There were many times while Zeke was learning to walk (or just crawling around) that he would bump his head just like any toddler would do. But, if he hit it just right on the nevus, there would be a little rip in the skin followed by some blood. It always seemed to only last for a minute or two and wouldn't re-rip or anything like that. So while sometimes bothersome, again it did not impact the way Zeke behaved.

Everything else was pretty normal for Zeke. He did go through a several month stretch of not being able to shake a cold/pneumonia/cough thing. He was on antibiotics several times and also started taking albuterol treatments to help out. Things seemed to have cleared up this summer, so we think it was just some bug that wouldn't go away. I don't think any of our doctors have thought it has been related to his nevus in any way, so that has been good to know.

4/6/2013

On 4/24/2013, we met with our plastic surgeon again to review Zeke's progress and talk about next steps. She was very happy with how everything had healed and felt it was time to move to the next stage. While she felt that she would be able to get some more tissue with another excision, she thought that now would be a good time to try a tissue expansion. She didn't feel that she would be able to get as much skin as she'd like through an excision and it would be better to try an expansion earlier than later. This made us a little nervous because of all the risks that come along with the procedure. However, after talking to the doctor a little more extensively about the procedure, we were reassured that the risks are actually quite low and that if anything did ever start to go wrong, we would be able to stop the process, remove the expanders, and regroup.

So, we decided to go forward with the expansion. She would attempt to insert two, one larger one on the top of his head and a smaller one behind his ear towards the back of his head. We scheduled the surgery for 6/18/2013. Before having the surgery, we also met with his dermatologist just to make sure nothing seemed to be changing with the tissue. Again, everything seemed to be looking fine.

Pictures from 6/17/2013:

This time around, surgery was going to be outpatient and also at the Children's Hospital in Minnetonka. Elisha was enrolled in a summer day camp at the YMCA so he went there for the day while Isabella went to daycare like normal. We did drop them off a little early to make sure we checked in at time, but expected to easily be home by normal pickup times.

Again, surgery went just as well, if not better than planned. Not only was our surgeon able to get both expanders placed just how she had hoped, but she was also able to do a little bit of excision off the front part of the nevus during the surgery. She was able to get a strip about 1x4 inches (this is a bit of a guess, we can't quite remember, but somewhere in that range!). We were able to hold Zeke while he woke up this time which was helpful because he was very upset as he woke up. This was likely due to being hungry, pain, and just not quite understanding what was going on. We were able to give him some painkillers, so that helped quite a bit. When he woke up later in the afternoon, he already seemed pretty much back to his normal self.

Pictures from 6/21/2013, you can see the slightly inflated balloons:

Then on 6/24/2013, we had a one week followup to make sure everything was looking okay.  As has become pretty normal with all of this, everything was looking great.  We scheduled our next followup for 7/3/2013 to remove the stitches and fill the bags for the first time.