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I was looking through some old blog entries and found that in Jan 09 I had looked back through 2008 – first looking at it from the perspective of how we survived our most difficult year to date, and then also looking back at how God has richly blessed and upheld us through that difficult year (2008…The Year of God’s Blessings ). So I think I should do that again for 2009!
First of all, 2009 was much easier than 2008, that is for sure! But we did have some trials as well. And definitely some major blessings along the way!
Winter of 2009 was centered around Esther’s recovery from her open heart surgery. This went really well and she was able to go without her feeding tube in less than two weeks after her surgery – that was a major blessing! We were soon preparing for Jeremy to come home on his pre-deployment leave at the end of February. We had a great week with him, including an open house with lots of friends and family coming to see him (and our new home!).
Springtime found us getting some serious schooling to make up for the previous fall, working with Esther through therapy to gain strength and begin to learn new skillss, putting in gardens, a new front yard, new driveway, and a great check up at Children’s for Esther. Esther did end up going to ER once in June – she got croup and was having trouble breathing – but they were able to fix her up and go home – no hospital admits this entire year! PTL!
Summer was definitely busy – we planned and put on the biggest birthday party ever – it was so much fun!!! We also went camping – but I was unable to enjoy it very much as I was sick the entire time and ended up with bronchitus and a sinus infection…we finished out the summer with a great day at the beach! We also dealt with cancer on Esther’s face that was so traumatic for us as it bled profusely at the least provocation, but turned out fine after minor surgery to remove it.
Fall was a wonderful time to get back into schedules, schooling and planning for celebrating a whole month with Jeremy home in November – we had a great time with him home that long! We did have some big struggles due to the economic troubles, but God provided for us through it all…even coming through in miraculous ways just when there seemed to be no way to meet all our financial challenges. We also dealt with cancer on Esther’s face that was so traumatic for us as it bled profusely at the least provocation, but turned out fine after minor surgery to remove it.
We rounded out the year with our first Christmas in our new home – Christmas tree in front of the window, icicle lights on the house, game nights, puzzles, and best of all, Jeremy was home for 2 weeks again! Esther really enjoyed her first Christmas…especially the wrapping paper and boxes!
Also throughout the year we’ve seen Esther stop struggling to grow, going from 12 pounds to a whopping 26 pounds from January to June! She’s refined down to a nice 25 pounds now due to being so active. When Esther went to her first therapy session at the end of January she couldn’t even hold her head up very well, and could not lift it off the ground if she was laying on her tummy….now she’s camando crawling all over the house, sits up all by herself, gets up on her hands a knees, wave and says “Hi”, waves “Bye Bye”, gives the best baby hugs ever, has a great sense of humor, and loves music and Signing Time Videos!
So last year, our blessings far out-weight the slight and temporary troubles of 2009, and I can see God’s hand upholding us through all. His mercies are new every morning.
I’ll end this post with a comparison photo of Esther just home in Jan, as compared to her at Christmas:
As most of you know, we use many local Work-At-Home-Moms to sew all our products. Each of them have their own home businesses, part of which is doing the sewing for us! Through the years we’ve had as many as 12 WAHMs working for us, but we usually have an average of 8. They have to commit to working at least 10 hours a week for us, and I personally train them so that our products have a consistency of finished product that normally would only come from having them all sewn by the same person! Each of our seamstresses were trained over a period of about 2 weeks, spending around 2 hours in training one day, then practicing at home for one day, and then back for the next step.
I recently asked a few of our seamstresses if they would be willing to share a little about themselves with our customer so they could get a better picture of how our business works, and how purchasing from us helps support women working at home with their children – not people working in factories across the ocean.
So stay tuned, to learn about each one and see how your are making a difference in the lives of these women!
For today, I’ll start with our shop manager – my daughter, Jessica.
Jessica doing her favorite thing - holding a baby!
Jessica completed her education almost 2 years ago, being homes-chooled for all of her education. She began working for me a soon after we began Snap-EZ as the work load became moer than I could handle alone, starting with learning to sew each of the products and apply the snaps. Then she began doing the shipping for me, and also processing returns and exchanges. She now has added managing production as well – creating cut lists and putting together bins for our seamstresses to pick up. She is very happy that she can work from home, and avoid having to go out into the public sector to work in the typical places that young people work – working the hours she wants to work, in the comfort of our home, and enjoying the challenge or planning and executing the activities that keep our business running!
On a more personal note, Jessica enjoys playing the piano, going to movies with her brothers, playing games like Monopoly and Nerts, baking cookies and learning to cook new dishes. She loves to go camping, and is learning to work on cars – she recently learned to do soldering and helped her dad to rewire his project car. She loves babies, and hope to one day be a wife and mother.
And best of all, anyone who puts a photo up between now and the end of January will have their name entered for our January Facebook Contest (you could win either coffee or Snap-EZ Gift Certificates!!!)
We had some fun with Esther recently – she has a really unique way of getting around…a mix of camando drawl, the spits, sitting up, and rolling to get wherever she needs to go…
If there's a will...
And as far as eating is concerned, she has no problems with that either:
Esther efficiently eats a piece of birthday cake
Did you seen her palm that piece for later with her left hand???
Daryl’s surgery went really well. We rested the rest of yesterday. Only problem today is my neck went really out last night so now I’m also limited to the recliner as I can not hold up my head without intense pain. I’m doing OK with some left over pain meds from my oral surgery last summer….Daryl’s on pain meds as well…what a pair today – loopy and stuck in our recliners.
My friend, Laurie came through for us and let us pilfer their movie collection so we are now doing a movie marathon….
Daryl is oing to be having minor surgery tomorrow morning. But, as you have probably heard, that any surgery has it’s risks, so I’d really appreciate your prayers tonight for good sleep, and tomorrow for a good outcome and quick recovery. He’s having an umbilical hernia repaired and we have heard from many that the recovery is very painful and slow.
Thanks also for your encouraging words about my continuing to blog…I promise I will as often as I can!
Sorry this is short, but I had a whopper of a day and have a headache to match!
