New Year's Eve

WOW! If you don't know what it means to need a vacation from your vacation, you should hang around here for a few days during the holidays. Here's a condensed version of the last ten days . . .

My mom arrived on the 21st and we headed straight to San Diego to go ice skating with Ed's parents and all their kids and grandkids. That was fun!

We celebrated on Christmas Eve with Ed's aunts, uncles and cousins and were treated to a special dance performance by Max, Isabella, Aaron, Sophia, Mason and even Abby. They reminded us that entertainment doesn't have to be sophisticated or well planned. Sometimes being together is as good as it gets.

Christmas Day was quiet and perfect. Max and Sophia each got one gift from Santa and LOVED it. Ed, the kids, my Mom and I ate lunch at home, watched the Laker game and napped. Ideal!

Ed and I had date night while my Mom was in town to enjoy the kids. We saw two movies on the same night and even had time for dinner and a little shopping. Those nights are rare and much treasured. It's too bad that it takes us a full day to recover anytime we get home after midnight!

An overnight trip to LA with my Mom was fun and action packed. Dinner in Malibu, a visit to the Santa Monica Pier, another movie, lunch and an all day shopping trip in Glendale were almost accomplished in under 24 hours. We try hard to get it all in when we get a chance to be together and it almost works!

New puzzles, Barbies, Star Wars galore, Disneyland, Wii, new DVDs, uploading iPods, lots of dinners out and one old dog that got skunked (not recommended, BTW)!!!! We are blessed, worn out and looking forward to another terrific year. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your family and the coming year brings good health and more happiness than you need. HAPPY NEW YEAR. God Bless you and yours . . .

Pray for Ema, please

UPDATE!!!

Ema made it home to celebrate Christmas with her family. Surgery went better than expected making her recovery less painful and easier on her little body. Thank you all for your prayers for Laura, Tony and their girls.

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If you regularly visit our blog, you know that we have been praying for our friends the Prater Family. Their daughter Ema was hospitalized in October for complications from pneumonia. A battery of tests revealed that she has cavities in a portion of her right lung that are an invitation for infection. While they don’t know yet how or why this is occurring (the high dosages of antibiotics mask most diagnostic cultures) they have determined through constant monitoring that Ema will require surgery on Friday morning.

From the CAT scan, they know that surgery will require taking at least the upper lobe of her right lung with the possibility of also impacting the middle lobe. The surgery is rare and challenging as they will access her lung by separating her ribcage through an incision in her side.

Please make an effort to take time from your holiday schedule to say a prayer for this family. Ema needs our prayers for strength and recovery. Her sisters, Devyn & Halle, need our prayers for comfort and reassurance. And most of all, their parents, need our prayers for the strength to watch their baby suffer knowing it’s for the best, clarity of thought to navigate through all of the details and faith that a divine plan will be revealed to them in time.

I urge you to share your love for your own family and friends. Life moves so rapidly that we forget sometimes (I am the MOST guilty of all) that every moment is delicate and any one of us may well need prayers sometime soon for a tragic loss or unthinkable fear. God Bless you at Christmas, and always.

Going to See Santa

Max was ecstatic to get the chance to see Santa over the weekend. I love that he has dance moves for EVERYTHING. I hope that the kid in your heart will let you be this excited about the holidays, too. There is nothing better than the magic that Christmas brings. Have a great week!

p.s. with the promise of some candy and hot chocolate, Sophia gave in to her Santa aversion. It was a successful and sugar~filled trip for everyone!

Before and After

Go Rockets!

Shutterfly Shared Picture Detail
(click the link for photos from game)

Max Montoya played his first rookie league basketball game today under the watchful eye of Coach Eddy, aka Dad. Our poor Rockets didn't fare so well against the Lakers, but it was an exciting game and the fans were wild. That's mostly because half of the stands were filled with Max's family and our dearest friends. Max was able to come say hi to his fan club at half time and he loves that crazy crew almost as much as I do.

We are so blessed to be surrounded with people that love us and support us. Their love is what gets us through the tough times and makes the good times even better. I am not sure if we can fill the stands at every game, but a crushing loss is a lot easier when you're with the ones you love.

Go Rockets!

Update for Prater Family

I checked in with my girlfriend Laura this week to see how she and her family are doing. They were going to do additional xrays of Ema’s chest this week to see if the cavities were still present in her lower lung. Her update is below. Please continue to keep them in your prayers. I trust Laura and Tony to do what is very best for their girls and think that maybe our prayers could even be for their sanity. God Bless them for staying in with their three ladies at such a busy time of year. That’s a job!!!

Have a great weekend wherever you are!
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Ema's good, thank you for checking in. Last week’s appointment showed the cavities are still there, as expected. Her blood work is looking good, but
Infectious Disease is getting concerned about going into week 7 of this antibiotic. Can cause issues that are rare, but they'd probably happen to us. It's a marathon - we really won’t know whether they'll need to take part of her lung until Spring. In the meantime, we need to protect her from getting any upper respiratory infection. With that, Halle has also been pulled from school. Such a bummer for her - she LOVES school. Devyn has strict hygiene rules when she gets home. We're trying to live in a bubble
as much as possible. No Santa visit, no Birthday party (the twins turn 3 on the 12th), no holiday parties, no outside visitors and reducing exposure to others as much as possible. Our Dr. is concerned about the influenza virus, which could be dangerous for her. Taking it all week by week and trying to be patient. It's a lot of family bonding until we get to Spring and hope that our lives go back to normal.

Nothing to Say

My Nanny used to tell me "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all." I will let that statement stand on it's own and just post this cute photo of my babes from Thanksgiving in San Diego last week. It was warm, sunny and peaceful. We are so blessed. Hope everyone is having a great week.

Thanksgiving is a State of Mind

As we head into the holidays again, I am conflicted with being homesick and not quite living in the spirit of the rapidly approaching season. I miss my friends, I wish I was with my family in Florida and not so burdened by professional obligations and restrained financially. This was shared with me by someone very special and I thought I would share it here. From our family to yours, a very Happy Thanksgiving

This article was originally written for and published in World Magazine, November 18, 1995.

Even in the midst of temporal troubles, there is always something to be thankful for. Thanks-giving isn't easy. Two things make it difficult.

(1) Our sinful natures act like a ship's anchor let down at sea. When we try to stir ourselves to give thanks, we find our souls are "dragging anchor." In the Bible, lack of gratitude is a characteristic of the unbelieving heart. Even Christians have to struggle against this "tendency to ingratitude" that remains with us. As Bishop Ryle once observed in his quaint way, we are prone to hide our blessings under a bushel and to set our troubles on a hill.

(2) That brings us to the second hindrance to thanks-giving, which is the troubles we all experience in our lives. It seems that every time we get the wind of thanksgiving in our sails, a front of reality moves through our lives, and our souls are becalmed.

This Thanksgiving many of us will be struggling with such things as ill health, job uncertainties, inadequate finances, family tensions, spiritual depression, disappointed hopes, fresh grief, and lonely isolation. It's not easy for your soul to feel gratitude or to give thanks when it struggles against the drag of natural ingratitude and the becalming effects of reality. But let me give you one fundamental reason to be thankful. You're supposed to! One verse among scores is sufficient.

"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus"
(I Thessalonians 5:19).

Maybe you were expecting me to say something different, but don't discount the value of knowing it's a Christian duty to give thanks. Sometimes I ask my wife if she loves me. Usually she answers, "Yes." Then I ask, "Why?" and her usual answer is, "Because I'm supposed to."

I might prefer to hear that she's compelled to love me by irresistiblepassion, or that I'm so wonderful that she can't help but love me. But I've learned to take comfort and to feel security in her commitment to love me because it's her duty as a wife and a Christian.

The Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America were similar in their outlook. They arrived in December 1620 as a band of 102 men, women, and children. By April 1621 only 50 remained. But they planted crops, hunted, and fished, and when the fall arrived they decided they had much to be thankful for. So in October, a community of Christians, who had lost half their population the previous winter, who had no more than a toehold on their new homeland, did their duty and set aside a day as a feast of Thanksgiving.

Giving thanks because you're supposed to is not an impossible task. If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit has planted a seed of gratitude in your heart. As you look at life through the eyes of faith, you'll see many expressions of your heavenly Father's goodness. And as you face with faith the sometimes harsh realities of life, you'll see that the really important things can't be taken away. The Father's love, the forgiveness of sins, the promise of the resurrection are blessings you can't lose. The seed of gratitude, watered with faith, can produce a great harvest of thanksgiving in your life.

Let us give thanks. It's our duty!

Precious Ema Prater

Below is an email update from Laura. Sweet Ema has come home and is being monitored closely. Please continue to pray for their family and remember to hug your own sweet peas every chance you get. You just never know when it's going to be your turn to request prayers.

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Thank you all so much for your prayers, support, and fabulous dinners! We're so blessed to have such wonderful friends surrounding our family.

Ema is on oral antibiotics for a few weeks and is thankfully tolerating the taste. She'll continue each week with lab work, x-ray, and doctor appointments. The first of December we'll have another cat scan done to take a closer look at the progress of her lung. We're hoping the cavities that are developing will scar and she'll be over this crazy infection. Otherwise, she'll need surgery to remove any remaining infected tissue in her lung. Please continue to pray for Ema's ability to heal without the need for surgery.

She's so happy to be home, and we just love having our three beautiful girls playing together again!

Thank you again for your continued prayers and friendship.

Sincerely,
The Prater Family