On March 6th we CELEBRATED Caleb's "Re-Birthday" as we have for the past three years. I'm so glad we choose to celebrate this day every year. Instead of dreading this day, we look forward to it. We don't dwell on what we "lost" that day but rejoice in what we gained and WON that day! The enemy was defeated on March 6, 2007 and continues to be defeated everyday!

We enjoyed having family and friends over to celebrate Caleb's life with us. Each year the number of people are fewer but there are always some new faces. We are so blessed for all the people in our lives who have and continue to pray for Caleb and our family and whom support us in various ways.

Towards the ending of March we were informed that Evercare (the insurance co. for medically fragile kids) would be decreasing the level of care for Caleb from RN to LPN. This means that all our current nurses would no longer be able to take care of Caleb. We were devastated. We've been so spoiled and wonderfully blessed to have such skilled nurses. Patrick is a part of our family and to take him away from being able to see Caleb so often every week would affect Caleb greatly. Caleb usually doesn't cry but when Patrick was talking about it, he started to cry. Evercare is taking drastic measures to cut back on services for kids who really need it to cut costs. We chose to appeal this matter and it has been a migraine for me the past month! It's so ridiculous that no one in the company can get their story straight and I'm constantly making calls and going around in circles. Choosing to appeal this was a leap of faith. I don't know of anyone who has appealed it and our nursing agency does not know of anyone who has done this also. So we chose to fight. The biggest problem would be that if we lose, we have to pay back the costs of RN's during that appeal process. I will be mailing in my appeal letter on Saturday. Please pray over this matter for us. My life would change a lot if our appeal were denied...but Caleb's life is what's most important. Thinking about him and how it will affect him brings me to tears.

We all got quite a treat one weekend in April! Patrick took us to his friend's house in Hakipu'u. Terry and Nakoa were so gracious and wonderful for letting us hang out at their beautiful home on the water and took us canoe sailing on the canoe Nakoa built. Caleb had so much fun sitting up front on his daddy's lap. His face lit up as the wind brushed across his face. He certainly loves the water! Micaiah was calmed by the ride and started to fall asleep. It was a beautiful day for us all after such a stressful week! We can't wait to go again!

I'm sorry I haven't posted for three months but I hope someone out there is still checking this blog at some point! I'm usually too exhausted to think and write.

It's been stressful for me with the cutbacks that are occurring but I'm confident that God is with us and I know that whatever happens, he will take care of it all.

We had to take Caleb into the ER a couple sunday's ago. He had a fever that kept going up and needed a bit of oxygen. In the past he has went downhill pretty quickly so after seeing that he was getting worse we decided to take him in. I really don't know what he had but they admitted him and he stayed for two days. They thought he might be at a start of a pneumonia. They took blood tests but nothing too much out of the norm. They also did a culture of his secretions and had expected something to grow in it...but it didn't. He was up to 5 liters of oxygen by the time he was in the ER. But by the next day we started to wean him and was completely of oxygen by the following night. He finished his antibiotics but never got completely better. By the following Thursday he wasn't doing so good again. We decided to take him in to see his doctor. Patrick suspected that he had a pneumonia. The doctor also did. So his doc put him on the antibiotics that Patrick suggested. We also had to take him to get xrays and blood tests again. By the following day Caleb was new little boy! He looked 100% better and was back at his baseline.

Yesterday Caleb had an appointment with his surgeon who put in his trach and gtube. As I mentioned previously, this doctor said he thinks Caleb doesn't need his trach anymore. We had went in to talk about this issue again. Since all of Caleb's past pneumonias has been due to a trachietis infection, the dr said that he thinks it would be better for him. Well his doctor said we could just pull it out and see how he does. He was confident that he would do just fine. I thought he would have to be hospitalized and watched closely for at least a 24 hour period. But the dr caught me off guard when he calmly said, "no, I can just pull it out right now. We can go grab a bite to eat at the cafe and come back and see how he's doing!" My jaw dropped and I was speechless. So he said, "okay, let's try it. i'll just pull it out and we can see how he does." Well, he pulled it out and covered up the hole. Caleb didn't cough at all during that time which concerned the dr so he put it back in after awhile. As soon as he did that Caleb turned and looked straight at me with eyes that said, "I didn't do it. I'm sorry I didn't do it." That melted me...but I assured him that it was okay. We were both caught off guard and I told him he WILL do it! His dr is so great. He didn't discourage the thought afterwards. Instead he said, he needs more time...he needs hours of this to get used to it. His doctor is still confident that he can do it and to hear that from a doctor after that is music to my soul. So we will be scheduling a day to do this at home. Patrick will be making arrangements to stay with Caleb for a 24 hour period during that time to ensure that everything goes well. The downfall in doing this is that if Caleb does not do well during this then he could get another pneumonia. But he already gets pneumonias often so it's worth the try. I've started to pray hard about this situation. Caleb and the rest of us has waited so long for this. We know that nothing is impossible with God. Please pray in faith with us and I will surely post when we will be doing it once we know.

Oh yes! And we got our new van! It's almost exactly like our old one except that the ramp is better. It slides out from under the floor rather than folding up. Caleb's wheelchair should be fixed tomorrow and we'll be all set! I finally drove through the intersection that our accident occurred. I had the boys with me too. I prayed before and through it all and felt like I achieved something when I did it. It was a fear for me since it all happened. But finally going through that exact place brought me much relief and peace. Praising God through it all!

PS. My pictures wouldn't upload so I'll have to try it again later...