1 Year Has Past

1 year ago today, I was standing in my son's room, on the phone, tears pouring down my face.  I felt a panic attack coming, not knowing what to do . . . praying and asking God, why?

It was a beautiful spring day, I had spent the morning at a friends house.  I walked to pick up my daughter from preschool when I saw I had a text message from a team member who said their was an accident and one of our staff's son had an accident . . . and it was bad.  For the entire walk to pick up my daughter I prayed for Tim, for healing, prayed for wisdom for the doctors . . . . I prayed hard.  When I returned to my friends house I got a phone call from my husband who said that he had gone to the hospital (he was the communications director and needed to be on site), he said that Tim had been playing at a nearby apartment complex and had fallen through a window into the underground car park.  He said it was bad. 

When I got off the phone my friends I prayed again and then headed home.  Once home I talked to my husband again and that is when he told me, he said "Tim, isn't going to make it."  I burst into tears and started pacing around the house trying to catch my breath.  I couldn't believe it!!  Tim was going to die, my friend was losing her son!  How could this happen.  At this point my Chinese helper looked at me and asked what was wrong.  Through my tears I tried to talk, I tried to explain to her that my friend's son was dying.  It was so hard to say it out loud.  She become very concerned for me and told me I needed to calm down.  At this time I was 9 months pregnant (my due date was 1 week away) and she was nervous I was going to make myself go into labor.  I was pretty hysterical so I tried to calm down.

What do you do when you find out a 10 year old little boy isn't going to make it?  I decided that I had to go to the hospital, I didn't know what I would do there, but at least I would be there.  Plus, my husband needed his phone charger, because he needed his phone to stay  in contact with others.  So I said that I would bring it over, but before I could go over to the hospital, I had to wait for my friend to bring me my phone because I had left it at her house. 

I told my helper what I was planning and she started to yell at me and was very concerned for me.  She thought it was a terrible idea for me to go to the hospital, after all, if I was freaking out this much at home what would I do if I was at the hospital.  She was convinced I was going to put myself into labor.  I thanked her for her advise and said that I was going to go anyway . . . after all my husband needed his phone charger . . . plus it gave me something to do.

The hospital was only 2 short blocks away and the weather was so beautiful . . . too beautiful for this terrible accident to have occurred.   The fresh air was nice though, and it helped me to catch my breath, and once in the hospital I actually felt a little bit better.  I was "doing" something . . . . really just sitting with a bunch of other outside of the ICU . . . but at least we were close.  I remember when Tim's mom came out, she fell into her friends arms and began to cry but I remember even in her tears she had her beautiful smile on her face.  She wiped her tears away and talked to us a little bit.  I remember though every time she or her husband came out you could tell that they were obviously said but they kept calm through it all.  She sat down next to us and shared what was going on but headed back into the ICU after about 15 minutes.  The hospital really doesn't let visitors in the ICU - including parents, but had let Tim's parents in.  She didn't want to lose that privilege so she returned back to Tim's side.

At this point they were working on getting Tim transferred to Hong Kong to see if there would be anything that they could do for him there.  The health care in China is not as advanced as in other places in the world.  Our insurance company and staff worked very hard to get Tim medi-vac'd to Hong Kong as soon as possible.  It was the next day, Saturday, around dinner time that they finally were wheeling Tim out of the ICU and onto a plane to Hong Kong. 

Our staff had made sure that there were people outside the ICU all day and night while Tim was in the QD hospital.  When they wheeled him out, there were a good number of us, they stopped for a second, we prayed over him and then we sang as he wheeled him away.  I remember feeling so frightened and scared.  He was so little, so young.

My husband had been at the hospital for just about 24 hours, only coming home for a few hours of sleep the night before.  He now was going to head up a meeting for our staff.  I had to stay home because small children were not allowed.

During the meeting I remember feeling so torn, my friend - no - we all were losing a sweet little boy, but at the same time I was going to be giving birth to my second son any day.  I was just praying that I wouldn't go into labor.  I didn't have the strength or energy to do it.  How could I mourn the loss of Tim and celebrate the birth of my son?

When my husband finally came home that night I shared my concerns and fears.  It was comforting to talk with him, he understood what I was saying and said that death and birth is part of life.  (It doesn't sound comforting but it was at the time.)

Being the communications manger, my husband was the point man for any news.  So, when Tim arrived in Hong Kong safely we got a phone call.  Now we waited to hear what the hospital would have to say.

Sunday morning was another beautiful sunny day.  My family walked to McDonald's for breakfast and that is when Tim's mom called with the news.  The doctors said that there wasn't really anything they could do for him, he was brain dead.  His parents had decided to try and donate his organs, which meant that they were going to have to take him off of life-support soon.

At our fellowship service the news was shared with the community and spent the entire service singing and praying for a miracle.  We sang this song that really comforted me  "Blessed Be Your Name". (You can read my post from 1 year ago here.)  It says that in the good times we Bless His Name and in the hard times we Bless His Name.  God gives and God takes away.  In the birth of my son God is good, and in the death of Tim, God is good. 

It wasn't till Tuesday that Tim was actually pronounced and his organs were donated.  Tim's liver, kidneys and corneas were given to those who needed them.

Thursday morning I woke up and told my husband I thought that I was going to have a baby that day.  A few hours later my second son came into the world.  God had given me the strength to make it through the delivery and my mother was even able to be there!  (Huge blessing!!)  But when my son was born, he was not breathing, he wasn't moving, he was lifeless.  I thought of Tim and began to cry . . . "I'm going to lose my son too".  But after a very long and scary 10 minutes of suctioning, quiet prayers and tears my son was stabilized.

As I sit here, 1 year later, holding and nursing my 1 year old.  I give him extra kisses and hold him a little bit longer, squeeze him a little tighter as I shed a tear for my friend who no longer can do that to her son.  I grieve her loss and try not to take for granted what God has given me.

Skate Cake

As tradition goes I made my daughter a special "fancy" cake for her birthday.  Originally she asked for a flower cake with a number 6 on it.  As time drew closer to making the cake she changed her mind and said she wanted an ice skating cake and she wanted it to be blue.  So . . . let the cake making begin.  

This year, as I blog about this event I decided to "write down" all the recipes I used so I didn't have to search and search next time for them.  (Now, I will just have to search for this post)  For the look of the cake I searched and looked at many pictures but pulled most of my ideas from these two cakes.

Ok, so lets talk cake . . . . I'm not really sure my daughter even likes cake so when it comes to flavor she didn't really care.  When I suggested chocolate and peanut butter she totally went for it (our family are huge Reese's PB Cup fans!).  I found this recipe for the cake and used this recipe  for the filling and then I had a brilliant idea to cut up peanut butter cups and put that in the filling.  

When carving and decorating cakes it's a good idea to have a crumb coat and then put a second layer of your frosting.  The crumb coat will seal any crumbs from the cake so they don't show through the decorating layer.  This is especially important when you are decorating with frosting, giving a nice clean look.  I saw that this was very important when I made my daughter's Rocket cake.  This year I did a crumb coat because . . . I have always done a crumb coat.  (Not really a good reason to do something.)  I decided that doing a crumb coast is not only not necessary when decorating with fondant but detracts from the cake's flavor.  Because I was making a peanut butter frosting the crumb coat, a simple powder sugar frosting, detracted from the flavor. - Lesson Learned (hopefully) - Ok, so back to what I did with this cake.  When decorating with fondant it's a good idea to use butter cream frosting as it makes a good glue to help fondant stick to the cake.  I used this peanut butter butter cream recipe.  I also made my own fondant, I made two batches one using this recipe and added blue food coloring and almond flavor into it before I added the powder sugar.  The second batch I used this recipe which is basically the same as the first.

Covering the cake with fondant did not go as smoothly as last year . . . still learning!  First mistake was rolling more than we needed and letting it sit too long after rolling it out.  Our first attempted we failed and had to try again.  The second attempt I think we used too much crisco making it too soft and "melty".

I learned from my new friend some very helpful things about modeling with fondant.  You can use a lot more crisco on the fondant than I thought, it can make it too wet though, but, then you just have to add more powder sugar to it and it's back to normal.  I think I found that when adding so much food coloring to the fondant can cause it to dry and crack. But when making shapes you can just rub and work with the fondant and smooth out cracks and seems.  We tried to make the ice skate out of complete fondant but it didn't work,  The fondant wasn't firm enough and kept falling down and not holding it's shape.  (I would like to try adding Tylose Powder to the fondant to make it into gum paste, which is more firm and stiff.)  We ended up using a cut out shape from card board for the ice skate and a hanger shaped into the number 6.  I didn't have silver food color so I bought pearl dust and painted with it.  I also bought white and blue pearl dust and used that to give the cake a sparkle to it.  We put snow flake "sprinkles" on top as well to give a snow look (not shown well in the picture).

The taste of the cake was very good!  As I cut it the smell of peanut butter brought me to a happy place.  The filling was by far the best part!  I thought the chocolate cake was a bit dry but the frosting was very moist and so the dryness of the cake really balanced that out.  Just about everybody loved the fondant and ate almost all of it. 

Overall I was very pleased with the cake, it wasn't too hard (I was going for simple) and my daughter said it was the best part of her birthday!  I'm still learning and hope to make even more improvements next year. 

Surgery #1 - Done

So yesterday was my baby's surgery.  To be honest I hadn't put much thought into it, I didn't think it would be a huge deal.  It's just a common everyday surgery, I had gone through it with my first son.  Really though our focus is on our daughter's surgery on Friday.  (She is going to have tubes put in which should fix her hearing loss that she has been suffering from for about 1 1/2 years.)  But I guess because he is 10 months old instead of a newborn the surgery is more involved (at least I wasn't given any other options and I'm kicking myself for not researching to see if there really was).

The surgical staff was very nice and took great care of us.  my only complaint was the doctor seemed to be in too big of hurry to stop and really answer my questions.  I think he was trying to make up time and get back on schedule, my son's surgery ended up started 30 minutes late.

The staff explained to me what was going to happen to try and prepare me but when it all happened I some how didn't feel prepared for it.  I carried my son into the operating room and placed him on the table.  All these hands appeared putting lots of monitors on his tiny body.  There were sweet voices to go with all these hands calling my son's name and telling him sweet encouraging things.  They encouraged me to keep talking to him and then they put a mask over his face to breath in the anesthesia.  He squirmed and cried a little and that's not pleasant to watch but that wasn't really the hardest thing for me.  I watched him fall asleep but you could tell he wasn't really sleeping a nice peaceful sleep.  He looked drugged, his eyes were open but you knew he wasn't there.  That was hard!  As I looked at him I thought to myself, what in the world am I doing to him, they just put drugs into my tiny little boy and now he looks . . . . awful.  As they pulled me away from him everybody began to ask "Are you ok?".  My thoughts were "Absolutely Not!! What are you doing to him!! Isn't there another way!" But I sweetly said "Yea, I'm fine." Then my thoughts went straight to Friday and how I would have to watch that whole thing again with my daughter.  I almost lost it, I don't think I can do that again!

I packed up my things and headed to the waiting area and did just that.  It was nice to get texts from people and to know that they were thinking about us.  I HATE being alone and somehow that made it feel like I wasn't alone.

The surgery took an hour, the doctor thought it would only take a half hour.  When he came out and talked to me he said that nothing happened out of the ordinary but that my son was a little oozy making things go a little slower.  I'm not sure what oozy means but the doctor did ask if he had recently had a cold because that can cause oozy-ness.  After giving me care instructions he sent me back to the waiting room for the nurses to call me back when my son was ready in the recovery room.

When I walked back there I didn't even recognize my son.  They had a do rag on his head, an IV in his arm and he was just laying there "asleep" but not looking very peaceful, you know that drug sleep.  I began to talk to him trying to get him to wake up and that's when the screaming began.  You have to understand my son is the happiest baby with biggest smiles on this planet.  He has the sweetest personality but this awful drug turned him into a cranky monster (ok, maybe not that bad but it gets my point across that he wasn't himself).  I immediately began to nurse him and that calmed him down but he would end up just going back to sleep.  Every time I would try and move him he would just scream, push and kick me.  It was hard to handle him all by myself, the nurses tried to help but didn't really know how.  I didn't really know what to do.  So I tried to be as still as possible and we sat there nursing for about an hour.  It was a sweet time.  I finally was able to get him to sit up and dress him so we could go home.

He spent the rest of the day sleeping or nursing and sleeping.  It was about the time his daddy came home and carried him around that his smiles came back and he actually began to crawl around. 

Overall everything went smoothly but I'm so glad that it's over.  We have a ways to go with the healing but we are on the way to recovery.  Unfortunately, we get to do it all again on Friday.  I'm thinking it shouldn't be as bad with my daughter but I'll be prepared this time.

My First . . .

 

(check out that hot car model!)

At 30 I bought my first car . . .

 

and at 30 I crashed my first car.

 
To find out what happened read here. 

Giving Thanks

Being that it's November, a month we like to take time to focus on giving thanks, I am working on giving thanks. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 "Be joyful always; pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

Waking up in the morning no one says, "I think I would like to get into a car accident today." I certainly didn't.  I was so upset, humiliated, feeling dumb, feeling sorry, wishing I could go back and get a redo, thinking about how much it's going to cost me.  But taking a deep breath, remembering the verse, "In everything give thanks" and getting some perspective I was able to think about all the things I can and should be thankful for.

• No one was hurt
• The 3 children that were in the car were all calm and very patient (aka no one was crying raising the stress level)
• My nephew's wife was with me, it helped to have an adult with me to keep me calm and keep my head straight
• My brother-in-law answered my phone call and gave me excellent advise
• Even though I was the one who did the rear ending, I wasn't given a ticket meaning the police thought I wasn't being a reckless driver
• God protected us, the accident could have been much MUCH worse
• The police report went as quickly and smoothly as it could go
• Nothing was too complicated (referring to the fact that I was driving my mother's car, have a Tennessee license, and having insurance coverage on a different car)
• Love and supports of my family and friends through the situation

This whole accident could have been much worse than it was and for that I am very thankful!

Feeling on Top of the World

I had an awesome day.  I woke up and was able to do devotions with my husband before he went to work.  Then I was able to get a work out in and read up on some good friends who are on the mission field before my boys got up.  After eating breakfast I put the boys in front of a little TV so I could clean the bathrooms and bedrooms upstairs.  (The boys TV was over before I was done but they were good "helpers".) Once lunch was over, boys were down for naps and my daughter and I rested for about 30 minutes we were back to cleaning.  We were able to finish our downstairs cleaning and made dinner.  I would also like to note that my 2 year old made it to the toilet for all his peeing needs!  We ended the day with our small group meeting.  It was a great day, I felt on top of the world!  I haven't been able to get all that done in . . . . let's just say a very long time.  But as I put myself to bed I reminded myself that there will be days like this and then there will be days when nothing gets done, I don't have any energy, I'm not able to get dinner done on time, my son doesn't make it to the toilet and nothing seems to go my way.  But by the grace of God I will be able to make it through that day too.

Following God's Voice

Many are wondering why we left China.  It has been the first question that most people ask.  I have a feeling that because we love China and were very sad to leave that people think that something happened that caused us to leave.

I just want to clear things up, we were not asked to leave, nothing happened that caused us to get hurt and want to leave, we really just felt because God was leading us back to America.  We do love China and we will always have a special place in our heart for China. We loved the experience, the culture, the people and the friends and relationships we built there.  We have so many great memories there.  (All three kids were born in China!) So it's easy to understand why someone might be asking . . . "Why did you leave?"

I believe it was a year ago that my husband was really feeling unsettled in his job and began to seek God for guidance.  My Husband knew he wasn't going to sign another contract at his job, but we really wanted to stay in China.  So we began to pray that God would bring something to us.  There were several things that did come up, but as we looked into them and sought God's guidance, we didn't feel that those were the things that God had in mind for us.  Time was running out, our job was coming to an end and God still hadn't made anything clear yet.  So we planned to pack up and head back to America.  When we made this decision it was made evident to us that that was what we were suppose to be doing.  Oh, how God provided for us!

We moved to China about 6 months after we were married and have been there ever since.  Spending all that time away, our families really haven't had a chance to get to know the respective spouse and us as a couple.  We also had three kids who don't really know their grandparents and cousins.  We want to spend time with our family and our family to be able to spend time with our children.  We also want our kids to get to know America!

We had been in China for almost 8 years!  It was a great time of learning and growing, but it was about time for a break.  Life can be hard in China, if you want to cook Western food, you have to make things from scratch (sometimes even making the ingredients from scratch, --- one time I had to make corn syrup).  All the attention we and our kids get because we have white skin and light colored hair can be very overwhelming.  Because of the language and culture, anything we do ends up taking a lot more time than you think.  We enjoyed the challenge of learning and using another language, but that can also be tiring, It's hard work!!  And no matter how well you know a culture there is always something that happens that just makes you go "huh?!".  After 8 years we have learned to expect the unexpected, because it will happen!  So I say all that to say, we need a break from it all and come back to America and rest.

So as we began to make plans to head back to America we were given a financial gift which was such a huge blessing!! We were able to bring stuff back from America and then have some money to live while we looked for a job and also buy a car.  Also, once we got settled into my mother's place, my husband began to look for a job.  He did not look for very long and it was only 2 weeks when he was offered a job that he really wanted!  It's amazing that during this time when people are losing jobs, or jobs are very few that we find a job in just 2 weeks!!  It is the perfect job for him and he is loving it!!  We really feel that God has had his hand on us through this whole thing and as things work out, we really feel that we are exactly where God wants us to be.  God is taking care of us!! and we are so blessed and thankful.

We don't know how long we'll stay in America. We hope to rest and spend quality time with family.  We would love to go back overseas, but as of right now we don't have any plans set for that.  We will continue to seek God and listen for his voice to lead us.

Mixed Emotions

This past week I have felt just about every emotion the human can feel. Here I am 1 week from my due date, a time of excitement and anticipation, a time to celebrate new life, nervous . . .
and I find my self crying, grieving, morning the loss of a life. A young 10 year old boy who should be outside playing in the sun, riding a bike, running around chasing his friends but instead he is moving on from this earth.

How can I celebrate a my new son's life when my friends are losing theirs?

Our fellowship this Sunday spent time praying, crying and singing. We sang this song, I have sung it a dozen time before, I have always enjoyed singing it but this Sunday it had an all new meaning to me. I had been crying my eyes out the night before, pouring my heart out to God, sharing my feelings with my husband and here on Sunday morning God touches my heart through this song "Blessed Be Your Name". In the song it talks about how we bless our God's name when things are good and how we bless His name when things are hard. When God blesses us or we are going through trials we still need to praise Him for being Him. When everything seem perfect or when we are walking through a difficult and painful trial He is still God & He is perfect. Whatever God does, whether He chooses to pour out His blessings or I feel He has turned away I will choose to say "Blessed Be His Name!"

The bridge hit me; "He gives & takes away, my heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name." It is God who gives and takes life. Whether we are morning the end of a life or celebrating new life we will Bless His Name!

"Blessed Be Your Name"
Matt Redman

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

Lessons in Birthday Cakes

I have been trying to write this blog for over a week but was first uninspired, then unmotivated and then I was kicked off line because our VPN was blocked. Here I am, finally writing this all down. I am writing this blog, not really for others to read but for my own future reference. I want to document the things that I have learned from making these birthday cakes so I can remember for future endeavors (if I dare to try again).

This all started 3 years ago when my not yet 3 year old daughter told me she wanted a Rocket cake from Little Einsteins for her birthday cake. At first I just laughed but as I thought it over I thought that I could possible do it. I looked online for cake ideas and found something that I liked, thought of a plan, and then asked my friend (an artist) to help me. I was actually really pleased with how it turned out.

The only problem with this cake was that there was too much! I could have just done the rocket and had plenty of cake (we aren't huge cake fans). I made a 9x13 chocolate cake that was used for the sky (covered in blue frosting). The body of Rocket was made from two round cake (one was actually cooked in a bowl), the recipe I used was given to me by my sister that is suppose to be very good for carving and shaping. The engines were made out of gluten free chocolate cup cakes.

Summary of the things I learned from making the Rocket Cake
1) Freezing the cake makes it a lot easier to carve and frost
2) Doing a crumb coat frosting will help seal in the crumbs so your final frosting coat is nice and smooth
3) When trying to get a a deep red frosting you should mix it up at least a day in advance, when you stir it up the next day it will no longer be pink but a nice brilliant red

The next year we decided for my daughter's 4th birthday to have a Dora the Explorer themed party. This year I wanted to try making fondant and I also wanted to make the cake taste good. Although I think the cake is pretty cute (my favorite were the stars shooting out of the cake) I almost gave up in the middle of the project and was really disappointed with the end result. However, I was happy with how the cakes tasted, the top was red velvet and the bottom was chocolate with chocolate ganche & raspberry filling.

A few things I learned from making this two tier Dora Cake:

1) Marshmallow fondant dries out & cracks very easily
2) When covering a cake with fondant you need to do it quickly or else it will pull, tear and crack

3) It is very important that your cake is carved flat, DON'T try and cover mistakes with extra frosting - too much and the frosting melts and then the fondant falls/droops
4) Less filling (as well as crumb coat frosting) is best; when using a filling you don't want too much or the cake will bulge.

For my daughters 5th birthday she wanted a princess theme so I thought doing a castle could be simple enough. I started searching on line again for ideas and found some ideas that I liked. After the previous year's fondant frustrations, I wasn't looking forward to working with it again. But my friend pointed out how much prettier the cake with fondant looked and I figured I could give it one more try. I hoped to remember the mistakes from the year before and improved on it.

First thing I did was make the marshmallow fondant much more "wet" than the previous year. This made working with it a bit easier, it didn't dry or crack as much. I also rolled out the fondant much thicker than the previous year which also helped with the cracking. Secondly, I decided to go back to the dense vanilla & chocolate cakes since I wanted to build with it. I knew they wouldn't taste as good but hopefully they wouldn't fall, bulge or slide.

For the bottom cake (purple tier) I used a dense chocolate cake (actually tasted pretty good) baked in two 9x9 pans and layered them. The second pink tier and the purple towers I made a 9x13 dense vanilla cake. After freezing all the cakes I assembled them together using a thin layer of crumb coat frosting. The top tier I carved to a nice square shape and the towers were cut using circle cake cutters with wooden skewers placed in the middle to hold them together. The bottom pink towers are made of chocolate gluten free cake, also cut with cake cutters and held together with wooden skewers.

I have to admit that going into the project I had a bit of a bad attitude, I was nervous and thought it was going to be a disaster. But once into it I started to have fun! I was really pleased with the final outcome thinking it was super cute. It was really pretty simple to make and everything went pretty smoothly. I did struggle frosting the towers, the carved cake kept falling apart. But once I let them freeze it was much easier to frost.

Here are a couple things that did go "wrong" with the Castle cake (but I'm not exactly sure how to improve for next time).
1) Most of the towers were fine but a couple of them the fondant began to slide off (possibly too much crumb coat frosting? possibly the fondant was too thick and heavy pulling it down?)
2) After sitting out all night the fondant's color faded; I guess it needs to be covered but how do you cover a huge carved cake?
3) Need to make sure the cakes are carved evenly and flat (I know I "learned" this the year before - I did a much better job but still had some mistakes

So after making 3 "fancy" cakes I think that I have learned a lot but the big question is "Was it worth it?" I was a little disappointed with my daughters reaction when she saw the finished caked (but she is a bit like her mama and doesn't show too much emotion). But we all have great memories, I had fun creating a master piece, and hanging out with my friend as we made eatable art.