Baby Levi

A lot has happened since I posted last :). I "graduated" in May with my doctorate in Physical Therapy and one week from today I will officially be done with school FOREVER!!! Granted, I still have to pass a licensure exam to actually practice, at least I won't have to go to school anymore.

In more exciting news, Link and I are expecting a baby December 14th! Here are the most current ultrasound pictures of our baby boy, Levi:

His little hand and fingers! Where the letter "f" is in "fingers" is his little finger and his thumb isn't really visible.



His profile


They don't usually do 3-D this early but he wasn't cooperating with the ultrasound tech so she was just playing around. One friend stated he looked like a chihuahua but I prefer to think he looks like a Play-Doh baby. He was "smiling" so they printed it off for us. The next picture is a bit graphic just to warm you. . .

It's definitely a boy! He was positioned funny and his head is the big white circle. His left arm is bent and he has his hand behind his head. The rest is marked :). I'm really not sure how he was curled around like that but there's a lot of things that amaze me about the whole pregnancy thing.

update

Sorry it's taken me so long to update my last post. It's been a little bit crazy around here. Mitzi passed away on Thursday, January 22nd. They did another MRI earlier that week and the cancer had taken over her body. There was a beautiful memorial service the next Thursday. She was such a wonderful woman of God and she will be greatly missed by all. Please continue to pray for the family as this will be a hard adjustment for them all.

The other thing that happened was my grandfather passed away the day before Mitzi. He was getting older and had scoliosis that made it hard for him to breathe. He passed away peacefully in his sleep. A blessing that came out of it was that I was able to see my parents and sisters and niece, Elizabeth, and a lot of my extended family that I hadn't seen in several years. It was cold in Ohio but well worth the trip.

Please Pray

We have a dear, sweet friend at church named Mitzi Brown and she is very sick. They at first thought that she had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma but now they don't know if that's what it is or not. She had a really bad night last night and things aren't looking good. She has a 2 kids in the youth group, a girl in the 7th grade and a boy in the 9th grade. She and her husband have always been very involved and very supportive of Link in his ministry. She's been feeling bad for a while but it wasn't until last week that they thought it was lymphoma and it's been going down hill so quickly. They are a wonderful Christian family and it's hard to imagine a world without Mitzi in it. As always, it is totally in God's hand. I know that God hears ours prayers and petitions and I ask that you PLEASE put this matter on your heart and raise Mitzi in prayer.

Yes, I know I'm in trouble. . .

So, both of my sisters have reminded me the past week that I have not blogged in a longggggg time. I have a facebook account but I guess not everyone can see that and I don't post news things on there much either. So, I decided to post about a few things that we've done in the month of October. Link's best friend, Brandon, called and wanted to hang out in the mountains. Yes, there are mountains about 4 hours from Lubbock and they are pretty despite the fact that they are in New Mexico. Anyway, the night before Link was leaving I decided that I wanted to tag along so the boys graciously said that I could. We had a great time getting away!!! We hit golf balls (I'm not very good), we made a camp fire and roasted mallows, we went for a hike and Link and Brandon shot things with Brandon's guns. I skipped out on the shooting part to study and give them some "guy time". Brandon has a boxer named Liberty that Chewy got along with really well. We would just let them out of the cabin and they would romp around the camp together and come back when we called. It was great to get away from Lubbock for a weekend and not be looking at a clock to see where we had to be next.

My birthday is October 28th and this year I turned 28! So, it was my golden birthday. I'm not sure if that is just a northern thing or just a South Dakota thing but no one in Texas had ever heard it called that. Link was sweet and gave me flowers as did my parents. A mom from our youth group makes cupcakes for a living (which I had just found out about the weekend before my birthday) so she made me a dozen peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting. They were AMAZING!! We also have a middle school Bible study at our house on Monday nights and she brought 2 dozen cupcakes for that as well. They were really cute.

Half Way Done!

As of this past Thursday, I am half way done with my doctor of Physical Therapy degree!!! 5 semesters down and 5 to go. It was a crazy semester. We had some pretty tough classes to get through this semester but I think everyone made it through. My grandad passed away in September from a blood disorder. Link and I were able to visit with him the weekend before he died and spend some time with him. We didn't expect him to be gone the next week but we knew that our time left with him was short. That was very hard to deal with but at the same time we were able to see our family which was a blessing during a sad time. At the end of November my uncle passed away of a heartattack. It was my mom's older brother and she was actually flying back home from visiting them when he'd had the heart attack. He had just thrown a big birthday party for his wife the night before in Pheonix and all the siblings had flown down for it. I was glad that my mom had gone to the party and had just spent time with him. Link's been soooo busy working with both the junior high and high school youth groups. It slowed down in October with the last of our 2 big retreats (which I might say he did a wonderful job with them both) and is now gearing up again with all of our holiday parties and service projects. The high school students went to the Children's Hospital and handed out presents and sang carols for the kids. It was really good to watch them step out of their comfort zone and serve (and see how lucky they are to be healthy). I've babbled on enough now. That's what's been going on.

Good News

Hello all! I just wanted to let you know that the young man that I talked about in my previous blog found out that the tumor is a pediatric tumor and is not cancer! He was finally able to come back to Lubbock from Dallas yesterday! God is good. As far as life for Link and Monica, it is good. Link's ministry is going well. Things have finally slowed down and he only has a few day things throughout the month. My school is going well but I'm looking forward to Christmas break and to finish this semester. At the end of September we picked our locations for our 8 week clinicals that begin in the March. I'll be going to Amarillo to live our friends Jay and Kami and work in one of the hospitals there. That's about all that I have for now. :)

Prayer

I've had a lot of things going on in my life that I can hopefully post about this weekend but I wanted to right a quick posting about a prayer request that I have. There is a young man named Jerrod who is in surgery right now getting a tumor removed from his brain stem. He is a freshman at LCU and grew up in Lubbock. Link had the fortune of meeting him last year as Jerrod was serving as Student Body President at our local Christian high school. He is an amazing young man. Even though we don't know him very well, Link always enjoys being around him and talking to him and I have always been impressed whenever I had interacted with him. He has been in surgery since 3:30 pm and it is now 10:45 pm. It takes about 11 hours and I wish I would have thought to post this earlier. Regardless, he is going to need prayers with whatever they find out tonight, whether it be with recovery or what ever treatment he may have to have. They made a website for him with pictures, his dad's emails and updates on his condition. http://www.jerrodshelton.com/news.html Please put him in your prayers and pass this on. Thank you!