Our Frustration

Hey all! I'm just blogging this morning to get some advise if you're able to give it. Here's our frustration. For the last month, Ezekiel has been getting up during the night and coming in our room. And when I say, "get up", I mean getting up 5-10 (or more sometimes) times a night. Meaning, Nathan and I are really not getting any sleep. For instance, he came in at 11:30, 1:00, 3:00 (six times between 3:00 and 4:30) and then "woke up" at 7:30. Amelia, however, is sleeping through the night. It all started when Zeke was tormented in his sleep, by what he described as man is a blue coat and a hat that came in through is window and spoke to him saying, "get up and go to mommy and daddy". And for several reasons, we feel like that was an attack from Satan on our family. One afternoon Nathan was praying with Zeke during naptime and Zeke pointed and told Daddy the man was in the doorway. Of course, Nathan saw nothing but began praying. Nathan said he felt a strong evil presense. Without going into too much more detail, Nathan gets very little sleep due to his hours with UPS and the church, and the less sleep he gets the harder it is to operate Watershed. We felt like Satan was "sending" this man to wake Ezekiel so that Nathan doesn't get much sleep. All this to say, the nightmares have stopped (praise God!!! and thanks to all who knew and prayed for our family). Ezekiel hasn't mentioned the man in a couple weeks, however I feel like the man coming to him at night began a habit of him waking a lot throughout the night. And although he doesn't have nightmares, he still wakes often. So basically, we are at our witts end and were wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to how to get Zeke to sleep through the night again. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Post Surgery

Just want to let you all know that Amelia's surgery went very well. Dr went in and fixed her shunt. She is such a trooper. We only had an overnight stay, so we left the hospital this morning. And since then, she's been her same old cheerful self. Thank you for all your prayers.

Ice Skating

Watershed had a mixer tonight and went iceskating. We had a lot of fun and had several visitors come to the mixer. Wooohooo!!

Baby Kaitlyn

Our good friends, Nick and Nicole, had their baby on December 29th. We went to see her the next weekend and she is soooo adorable. Lots and lots of hair. She was only 5 lbs when she was born and seeing her made me realize how big Amelia is getting. Praise God!!!!

My Musicians

Nathan has taken up playing the guitar, and Ezekiel loves playing it too. So Aunt Gwenda and Uncle Ryan got him one of his own for Christmas. So my musicians often "practise" together. Zeke has quite the collection of musical instruments, piano, drums and now a guitar. Maybe he'll be the next Mozart (or maybe Justin Timberlake...hehe).

Surgery...again

On Tuesday, we had a routine follow-up CT Scan to check and see if the shunt in Amelia's brain is drainging the excess fluid properly. Well, we found out that it isn't. So her doctor suggested that he go in a do a revision surgery to check/fix the shunt. She is scheduled to go in Tuesday morning, January 16th. So please keep us in your prayers. Thankfully, Amelia is feeling fine. The fluid has not built up to the point of discomfort for her and the doctor said it also isn't to the point of brain damage. So praise God for that!!!!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year's. I hope 2007 finds all of you doing well. We had a really nice little celebration of the new year, toasting it in with sparkling grape juice. Really it was a struggle just to stay up until midnight. But playing Apples to Apples helped a little!!!

QT with Family

Here are some cute pictures of the kids with my family. Other than my mom, the rest of my family in NY had never met Amelia, so they were excited to see her. And my mom even said that she was more excited to see Zeke and Amelia than she was to see Nathan and I. That hurt a little!!!! Kidding. But it was a nice trip (and long too-the trip took us about 8 hours, but the kids did great, Nathan, that's another story). Pictures are as follows: My brother, Bradley with Amelia and Zeke. My mom and Ed with Amelia. My brother-in-law, Ryan with Amelia. And my sister, Gwenda with Amelia.

Christmas with Mom

We were able to travel to my mom's house in NY for New Year's weekend. Gwenda and Ryan were able to travel in too. Delia and Bradley were there too, so it was a whole family event, which doesn't happen too often. My mom was really excited about that!

Bikini

Amelia's first bikini!!!

Feathers Family Christmas

After we spent the morning as a family, we went to Nathan's parents house to celebrate Christmas with his parents and siblings. Since Ezekiel and Amelia are the only grandchildren and nephew and neice, they made out pretty well :)

Christmas Morning

This year we woke up and spent Christmas morning together just us four. We opened presents and then had a nice breakfast. Ezekiel was so cute, he would open a present, want to open it up and play with it, and then would ask for another present. It was quite funny, until of course there were no more presents. No just kidding, when he was done, he just went straight to playing with his new toys. This year we had a theme to all his presents. He is a big fan of the CARS movie, so most of his presents were related to the movie. We got him all the CARS cars, the movie of course and some other CARS stuff. He was pretty excited!!

Watershed Christmas

Here are some pictures of our first Christmas season with our new church, Watershed. This is a picture of some of our core team members. And then for our Christmas Eve service Nathan and Luke lead us in communion and a time of journaling.

Santa Comes to Town

This is the first year that Ezekiel understands the concept of Santa. We've never taken him to see Santa, but this year Zeke asked if he could see Santa. So we took him to the mall to sit on Santa's lap. He was so excited!!!!! However, when we got up to Santa, Zeke wouldn't smile for the camera. Little shy!

All Smiles

Amelia has been smiling for awhile now, but finally I caught a picture of it. Actually not just one picture, it took me about five minutes and twenty pictures, but none the less, here it is.

Our Little Musician

A family that we go to church with gave Ezekiel a set of drums for Christmas. Their daughter got a new set, and they wanted to give Zeke her old set. They brought them over and can I tell you how excited he was!!!! Our son is quite the musician. He loves anything that plays music (especially the drums). So he has enjoyed them quite a bit. And might I say, his drumming actually sounds good. Not bad for a two year old!

Go Bucks!!!!!!

Thanks to his Uncle Ryan, Uncle Jeff and dad, Ezekiel is a Buckeye fan. During the games, he will shout, "Go Bucks", cheering for his team. It's really quite cute. And his other Uncle Ryan (from MI) tries to get him to say "Go blue", but Zeke is a true fan and refuses. It doesn't keep Uncle Ryan from trying though.

Potty Time

And...so it begins, potty training. Zeke is doing pretty well, although I think he would be okay peeing and pooping in his diaper for the rest of his life!!! He's been really cute throughout the whole process. And believe it or not, he prefers to run around the house without anything on, but we're really trying to get him to wear his "CARS" underware instead :)

Watershed Thanksgiving

This year we had our church (Watershed) Thanksgiving dinner at our house. Our team is so great and we couldn't have planted this church without them. God has trully blessed us with them all.

Thanksgiving

This year my family came to see us for Thanksgiving. My parents and my sister Annette, nephew Dakota, and brother David all graced us with their presence!!!! It was such a great day. And then my sister Gwenda and brother-in-law Ryan came for Thanksgiving weekend. And surprise, surprise Gwenda and I almost got all our Christmas shopping done!!! Anyway, it was a great Thanksgiving.