Surgery

Cameron had surgery this morning to unclog a tear duct. He is very sleepy, but it looks like he will be back to his cheerful self soon! They had to put him under, so it was a little scary on our part. The surgery itself only took a few minutes but the whole process took about 3 hours. He was a trooper even though he had not eaten since last night. Hopefully, this will help with the recurring ear infections and the need for antibiotics!

Finally the day has arrived! I am an official "minivan" driving momma! Who would have known that I would actually be excited about this...We FINALLY decided on a 2002 Poniac Montana. It drives well, is roomy and Gavin loves the DVD player. I must say, I am happy with the way things have turned out. God works in mysterious ways...we are actually coming out on the better end...who would have thought??? Anyways, with all this new found freedom, we have been busy, busy, busy. Isn't it always that way?

Me, Jason and Gavin participated in our church's living nativity this weekend (http://www.faithlafayette.org/page616.aspx). For those of you that don't know, it is 12 scenes from the bible, acted out. It is really cool. This year, we all were in Bethlehem. Me and Gavin were commoners and Jason was a Roman soldier. Gavin was so cute in his biblical attire...wish I would have gotten pictures. Since it is Indiana, we actually have two different sets of cast for each scene so that no one has to stay out in the cold for very long. Just this weekend we saw more than 4,000 people come thru! It is truly a must see thing! Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous (for Dec) and it was more fun than sacrifice. Gavin had a blast and I am sure he will tell you all about it.

I can't believe that Christmas is almost here (8 more sleeps according to Gavin) :) Jason has the whole week of Christmas off plus a few days in January. I am looking forward to it! We are planning to go north Christmas day and then spend a few days there to visit with family. It will be busy, but we are looking forward spending time with those that we don't get to see very often.

Update

Just wanted to give everyone a quick update...The fire investigator has looked at the car and has determined that the fire most likely was started by a leaking fuel line. Again, we are SO LUCKY that no one was hurt and that we got out when we did! There has been a recall on our vehicle on this particular problem but it should have been fixed as this recall was BEFORE we bought the vehicle in 2004. The investigator is looking into this and will pull up the vehicle's history to see when this work was apparently done. Either way, the car was determined as being totaled (shocking, I know) and we are in the process of getting insurance all squared away. So it looks like we are going to be car shopping this weekend :) Although this is exciting, you all know how stressful this can be. Please pray that we can be patient and be good stewards of our money. I will keep you updated as we find out more -Jaime

Bye, Bye Car....

As many of you know, and some of you don't, we had some scary action at our home this last Friday. Coming home from a doctor's appt, I decided that I would like to hit Kohls for a sale they were having. While there, I called Jason from a friend's cell and asked him to run to the store for me, as we were hosting some friends over at 6. So after 45 mins or so in the store, we started home. The car began to act funny and really started to smell hot. Needless to say, my greatest fear was breaking down on the side of the road with NO cell phone and two small children in the car. I tried to roll through the stop signs and get home ASAP knowing that Jason would be there to check out the car and try to diagnosis the problem. Well, I made it home (into the driveway) and as I shut off the car, I noticed the hood was smoking. As I investigated further, I saw flames in the engine compartment! All I can remember is that I knew I needed to get the kids out and to safety. So I yelled at Gavin to get out and started to get Cameron out. In my panic my fingers did not seem to work!!! I remembered that Jason was home so I ran to the house and ran the doorbell crazily and started screaming for help. We got the kids to safety, called 911 and thankfully Jason was brave (and smart) enough to put the car in neutral and let it roll out of the driveway. Thankfully he was there because there was no way I would have got into a burning vehicle. Not more than 4 mins has passed from the time I first got home to Jason moving the car and the whole front end was in flames. By the time the firefighters got there, the whole car was fire. Needless to say, I was not very calm and collected as I had just got out of the car with the kids. All I can think about is, what if...
What if I would have taken a different way home?
What if Jason wasn't home to move the car?
What if, what if, what if????
Thankfully, I know that God is in control of all things and we can only use this trial to bring glory to Him!! Thankfully it was not in His plan to allow our house to catch fire too. Thankfully it was not in His plan to allow one of us to be injured...or worse.
A car is just stuff and we can't take it with us. So even though it is frustrating and scary that a '02 Trailblazer can just catch on fire, it doesn't really matter. Please pray that insurance will come through as smoothly as possible and that we can move on as quickly as possible. Not having a vehicle is hard! I have posted some pics for those of you interested. Praise the LORD we are all safe!

This picture was taken just minutes after moving it from the driveway. To say the least, we are lucky to have gotten home when we did! All I can think about NOW is, how in my panic did I think to grab my camera??? I guess I thought if I didn't, I would never believe what I thought I was seeing.

This is of the car BEFORE the firefighters arrived. Needless to say, there was no saving it!

Here she is....Wow! Poor car :( Just so you know, we probably won't get a Chevy again!!!