Learning to Trust

This is our little Micah now!! The first pic we have with no tubes on his face and only one IV in his hand!:)

The day after surgery

The day before surgery

3days old

After a rough first day a life

So lets start at the beginning..... on the 22 of Nov. I go into the hospital after taking my in-laws for a walk on the pier and thinking my water broke! I arrive at the hospital and it has indeed sprung a leak, but no dilation. So I am told if I haven't gone into labor by morning they will start me! I spend the night in the hospital, a place I hate to be! in the morning around 11 I am started on "The Drip" no one wants this because it is horrible, but my baby will for sure be there soon so I deal with each contraction as they come! James is finally aloud in to see me at 5:30pm and not a minute earlier (very strict visiting hours in fact only 2! A nurse comes and asks if I can feel the lovely contractions I am having (the lady in the bed moans and cries through each one, I prefer silent tolerance) I tell her I do and they decide to move me down to labor and delivery ( I must be at least 5cm I think) WRONG...I am about a 2 barely even open and it is now 7:30 and I have been on the PIT for over 8 hours! But as they give me the options for pain management I realize that if I want James in the room I cant have any drugs! I tell the nurse I want to use the mental pain management technique she told me she would go get a midwife and I almost yelled at her that i don't want a midwife i want my husband! She looks at me and then reluctantly agrees! James is aloud in for 20 minutes before another nurse kicks him out! It is now nearly 9 and I am still at a 2! SO i fight through contractions till 1:00 am and then after 13 hours on this drip and 28 hours of no food i cant do it anymore! I tell the nurse to check me and if i am not close i need an epidural. SO they check me and i am maybe 3cm the nurse says! I lose mental pain management and tell her I want the epidural NOW! She agrees and gets the lady to give it to me as they are getting me ready for it I start to feel funny! The lady says I must hold still but I can't my body wont! I tell her I don't want it till I know what is wrong and then a nurse asks if I feel like I want to push? That is how I feel but she had just said i was only a 3 so she checks again and I am now 7 and the baby is on his way( this means no epidural) so i call James and tell him to get here FAST! The three nurses then tell me I need to relax and they all leave the room! What a great idea! I call James and he talks me through a few more contraction so I don't push but finally I cant help it I push weather I want to or not! He tells me to yell and that he is almost there! I yell help as a nurse walks past my door she comes in crosses my legs and tells me to relax till she can get help! I try to relax but there is nothing I can do he just came out! Micah James was born at 1:37 am on Nov 24th and weighed 4.25kg the nurse was there to catch him and James arrived seconds later when I asked if he was here and they told me his was in the hall! I nearly lost it because I knew they weren't letting him in! SO he was allowed in and we loved our little boy! This is where things went a different direction then what we thought...........He was born very blue and after 2 hours was still blue but nursed and was breathing well so they tell me some babies just take longer to get color and that he will be brought to me shortly and we are both moved to different floors(me to recovery and him to pediatrics) the next thing I remember is a nurse coming in and telling me she needs blood for my baby and that he has been moved to ICU and someone will be there shortly to take me to him!! I call James and ask what is going on he says he will tell me when I get here but that Micah has something wrong with his heart! We end up finding our that he has transpositions of the greater arteries and will be rushed to another hospital where he will have emergency surgery! (one thing you must know is that getting out of this hospital is like trying to get out of jail) i am told i have to stay at least 24 hours but James gets in a taxi and races to the hospital! Finally a nurse who is in charge of mental heath after birth comes to talk to me! She sees I have been crying and tells me it is natural to feel depressed after having a baby! I tell her my situation and she realizes why I am crying! She gets the doc to release me on account it is not healthy for me to be a room with 10 other women and there babies when mine my not live! So i am released to my in-laws as long as I go straight home! I do and James waits for the baby to get out! That first day is kind of a blur after that! They say his first procedure went well and they will now wait a week before preforming open heart surgery! The first week was filled with ups and down as I saw him improve and got to hold and feed him knowing that on on Tues the 30th he would be put back to square one and we would once again be back in limbo! The 30th came, James and I were at the hospital at 8 in the morning and 8 hours later I saw my 6 day old baby wheeled out with more tubes them baby! They told me to wait and a doctor would be out to talk to me! 2 hours later they let me in and the doctor explains that they had to leave his chest open in case they need to go back in! I look at my little baby who is being kept alive by more machines then I have ever seen and who chest is still open and decided it was time to go home and prep for the weeks ahead! The next few weeks all kind of mesh together! For 2 weeks we were aloud to see our baby for 2 hours a day, he was sedated and so we would sing to him and talk, we could only touch the top of his head so that is what we did! Once his chest was closed we were also given a hand to touch! We saw him take steps forward and take steps back, Go through more procedures and then get better. Finally on Tuesday the 14th of Dec. he was moved from the surgical cardiac ICU to the NICU! This means we can see him from 10-10! Finally on Wednesday I was able to hold him and James got in to hold him today! He is an angel and we love him so much! His surgery was a success and now we just have to wait for him to finish a treatment because he got an infection in his opening, but at least we will get him home and that is what we want most! Maleah has still only seen pics but she loves them and always tells me she loves baby Micah! She has been a champ through the whole thing! I told James that he could add anything to my story when I wrote this blog, but he has about 40 pages written in his journal about his perspective so hopefully one day I can get him to publish his on here too. We love our little Micah!

Happy B-day Maleah Grace!!!

So our little angle turned 2 on the 22nd of Oct!! I dont know how she got so big so fast! She was so excited for her birthday!! We did a two day celebration!! The first day we had luch with dad and then we went to a cake shop and let her pick a cake!! She picked a really yummy rocky road cake that was as good as it looked!! We took the cake to meadow and sang happy birthday!! That night we ordered pizza and let her watch her favorite show "Sleeping Beauty"!!

She was so excited cuz the cake had marshmallows on the top!!

Trying to figure out how to blow out the candles!! Daddy had to help a little!!

Maleah and her birthday cake!! Thanks Maxims

That night after she went to bed we blew some balloons and put out her presents!! James and I were like kids on christmas the next morning waiting for her to wake up!! It was one of the rare morning that she slept in but when she did wake up it was so fun!! We could have just got balloons and she would have been the happiest girl in the world !!

She loved her princesses!! All 7 of them!! She knows them all by names and sings there songs

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE MISS MALEAH!!

Summer Adventures

The summer started with a day on a Yacht for Maleah and I!! We went with some friends to a private beach and just played all day on and off the boat!! It was something not even James had ever done before and it was a blast. James still hasn't, haha, he had to work.

Maleah discovered it was quicker and easier to go through the window then to climb the latter!

She also taught our friend Yen to go through the window and by the end of the trip everyone was climbing through the window.

We have very much enjoyed having Arnica here and one night we took her to the light show! We had not been to the show since we've been back and it was one fun night!! It was very hot!!

We had parties with friends and BBQs on the roof

Maleah and I went to Disneyland a few times but it was so hot that we had to try and stay in shows the whole time!! But she got to meet all the princesses and cried for every single one.

Squidding (Fishing for Squid) was a new adventure for everyone also!! We boarded a boat at 8 in the evening and they took us to the middle of the ocean....then a light is shinned on the water and everyone is given a string with a hook on the end and there you go!! When you catch one they fry it up for you right there on the boat and you can eat it!! Cant get much more fresh then that.

I didn't eat one personally but James said they were great

Slurpee for the heat

Pizza on Friday nights

She was starving this night. She almost ate the whole thing!

B ball in the mornings

I play a different sort of ball!! Am I about to pop?......YES!!

We love where we live!!

Doing Great!

We are just plugging along. Sorry for no updates lately. Summer is our busiest times so I've been working like crazy and Cassie and Maleah have been playing like crazy. I'm always happy when they come and visit. Maleah is growing so fast. She is fearless. As you can see from the video she loves jumping off of tall things. I even got her to turn around and just fall back and I would catch her. All the things that other kids her age fear, she loves. She loves swimming by herself, riding the rides at Disneyland, playing hide-and-seek in the dark, and jumping over tall buildings in a single bound. We love her.

Hi everyone! It's a Boy!

In the Chinese language when you take the word for girl 女 and you add the character for boy 子, you get the character for good 好. It makes sense, right? When a family has a daughter and a son it is considered lucky. We are very lucky! We are excited to announce that we will be having a little baby boy in November. We made the announcement a while ago on our Facebook pages but quickly realized that not everyone is on Facebook, so we wanted to post here as well.

We are all so excited. Maleah is so cute. We have decided to go through the public hospitals, but in order to know the sex of the baby we had to go to a private doctor. Cassie and Maleah made the trek on their own since I had to work. Maleah knows that she has to be a helper to her mom so she is always so patient at the doctors office and listens well. When Cassie was getting the ultra sound, Maleah was up on the bed with Cassie and she got so excited when she could see the baby. "Baby! Oooh Mom! Baby!" She is doing pretty well with the whole concept of the baby being inside Mommy's tummy. Then she saw and recognized the hand (we don't have to worry about counting the fingers on this one) "Hand Mom, Hi Baby, Hand!" It is so cute! The first thing she told me when I got home was, "Baby hand Dad!" She is really going to be the best big sister. For example- The other day at church Maleah heard the baby behind us start crying. She got very concerned and started saying "Ooh Mom, Tissue. Baby cry!" We were sitting close to the back and it was a ways to the door with a lot people to walk through. It didn't stop Maleah, she hoped down, informed us she was going to get some tissue and then started walking towards the door. At that point where she knew that if she took another step she couldn't see us anymore she looked at us, looked at all the people sitting on the bench, and then I could see in her eyes that leap of faith where she took a deep breath and plunged into the unknown. I was so proud of my brave little daughter. When Cassie went after her she found Maleah distracted by the water dispenser. She was getting paper cups and attempting to fill them up. I wonder what her plan was to get the tissue for the crying baby, but I'm sure she would have found the solution. We love that girl!

We also love our little boy who is growing so fast in that tummy. We will be pulling out the ball gloves, basketballs and soccer cleats. We are having a boy and we are so blessed!

Playing Catch-up

So we are playing catch-up on the blog. We have been doing a lot of fun things and going a hundred miles an hour all at the same time. I spend a lot of time at work building up the business, so the time we do spend together is important to us. Dinner is one of those times. One night we had a picnic on the living room floor. Maleah loved it! The next night really got into it and cooked crab. Cassie picked some winners from the fishy guys selling seafood from their boats on the pier. Then Dad got to come home and cook the little guys. (Maleah started to get attached to the little fellas but she was okay with us cooking them and really loved the meat.) The picture above shows Maleah and I getting an up-close look at the crab. You can't see the crab very well but you can definitely see my leopard spotted slippers that I wear all around the house.

During the Tin Hau Festival they built this massive building completely out of bamboo, ties, and tin for the roof. It was so big. It took them about a week and a half to build it so they could perform Chinese opera for 4 days and then they took it back down. It probably held over 1000 people. It was such an amazing structure.

Yesterday Cassie and Maleah decided to have a fun day together at Disneyland. They went on so many rides, by time I got home from work Maleah was down for the count and Cassie was fighting to stay awake to visit. Maleah got to meet Tigger, one of her favorite Winnie the Pooh characters. Both Cassie and Maleah loved the Lion King show! Cassie loved it so much she became emotional watching the inspirational story of Simba. (It also could just be the pregnancy hormones.) Stay tuned for our Dragon Boat Festival update!!

Hong Kong Disneyland!

Once upon a time...
Maleah wasn't exactly sure what Disneyland was but she could tell that it was something exciting. The second we boarded the Disney train, custom designed with Mickey shaped windows and handles to hold on to, she knew that it was a magical place. We are firm believers that dreams really do come true, and today we stepped into a world that our little princess knew nothing about and will now dream about for a long time.

We are getting pretty used to Maleah being a celebrity. It still bothers us when people touch her face, but the random pictures and people always trying to talk to her is just an everyday thing to us. Not that I'm saying we have the most beautiful girl in the world, (which would be a valid claim) but YOU bring your blue eyed curly haired child over here and see if you like people asking to take pictures with your kid like they were one of the Disney characters. It wouldn't stop the whole day... (We did like the Disney cast member helping us with this shot though:)

We hyped up the excitement as much as we could before we got there, but we may have over done it, because the second we got off the train Maleah started running around saying, "Oh Wow! Oh Wow!" to the pathway and the park benches leading up to the park. She was so excited she had to climb on this bench. I assured her that the best was yet to come!

I remember looking at a picture of me as a child trying to pull out the sword from the stone, and that has always been one of my favorite things about Disneyland. I felt it only appropriate to pass that on to my children by having Maleah give it a tug. Her first ride was Winne the Pooh. She wasn't sure what to think at first. She wasn't crying like the other children her age, but she was very serious trying to take everything in. After her second ride she was set. Every ride after that was a blast and she loved it! The 3D movie did cause her to jump a bit but she handled everything like a champ.

Seeing so much joy on your child's face really makes being a dad the best job in the whole world. We had a great time celebrating our birthdays a week early with our beautiful little girl. We even treated ourselves to a nice restaurant in the park where they served us things we wouldn't usually get, like roast duck, chilled jellyfish, and Chinese flat mushrooms. The food was great, the atmosphere perfect with the parade going by and the company was one of a kind. We played up until the very end. Luckily for us Maleah fell asleep an hour before the fireworks which gave us the opportunity to find the perfect spot and just rest while we waited for the grand finale of our day.

...and they lived happily ever after, The End.

Sunny Days

Finding Starfish on the beach!

This is another great lesson we learned at Noah's Ark...How to write on the walls!

Staying cool in the mist!

Maleah was so excited to see her best friend Graham! All morning she was yelling "Gaam! Gaam!"

It was Labor Day yesterday here in Hong Kong. Putting in 10-12 hours a day opening up our new Center the girls and I were due for some fun time. We were up (thanks to Maleah) by 6 Saturday morning. We had a bowl of cold cereal, (which is really a treat for us since both milk and cereal is expensive.) cleaned up a bit, and went up on the roof because it was so beautiful and Skyped grandma and grandpa. We were ready for the day by 9:30! It was awesome! The Jazz were playing game 6 Saturday morning for us so we had to watch. Now when I say watch, we actually don't see the game. I pull up the ESPN Gamecast which instantly writes out who shot the ball, who fouled, and so on. Then I find a radio station that broadcast the game online. (this week it was small town Salina Utah) Cassie will even cuddle up and watch the little blue or green ball bounce around the animated basketball court. It was the perfect start to the perfect day. (I guess almost perfect...I really wanted the Thunder to beat the Lakers and force a game 7) We then went with or great friends the Carlsons to Noah's Ark. Cassie is sure it isn't the real one! Inside they tried to brainwash us about Global Warming and things, but overall it was a great experience. The kids had fun and that's the important part. We ended the day at pretty good Japanese restaurant. The sushi and fried shrimp were great.
Sunday was another beautiful day. Church was great and we found starfish at the beach! Now we are going to have breakfast for dinner! I love it! What a great weekend!

Who needs the lens?

There are a couple of fashion statements being made out there that I'm not quite picking up on. The number one being kids wearing glasses frames without the lenses. What are you thinking kid? Sure it's cute that you and your girlfriend are wearing the same frames, but your going to get your eyeball poked! I can't tell if you are on a crusade to make the kid who was called "four-eyes" on the playground feel better about having to wear glasses in order to SEE or if you are actually just rubbing it in. "Ha! You thought I needed glasses like you!? Well I don't! No lenses!" I mean come on! The next one is for you ladies. What's up with the things that look like boots, but the toes are open like a sandal? You can't make up your mind? It's just kind of weird.

Happy Easter!!!

Maleah and Grahm next to the pizza box at the Easter Party!

Ever since I can remember I have always loved going to my Grandma Kate's parties. Whether it's Christmas, the camp-out or the 24th of July, the event is always one to remember. A great party brings people together to share memories, fun, and of course good food! One of my goals in life is to be as good of a party host as my Grandmother is, because a party is only as good as its host. Even though we are missing our families this Easter we couldn't pass up the opportunity to invite some friends over with their kids and have our own Easter Egg Hunt. It was a blast! The kids had fun and the food was good. We had Paisano's 24" pizza, which fed 7 adults and 4 kids. The pizza was awesome! Thanks for everyone who came and had a great time. We had to improvise a little bit due to the rain. The morning was so beautiful. The sun was out and I was up on the roof enjoying life with my shirt off cleaning up for the party. By 3:00 pm when everyone started showing up it was pouring rain. So we had to opt for having everything inside including the Easter Egg Hunt, but the kids loved it.Here are the kids making their Easter Baskets!

The picture really doesn't do the huge slice of pizza justice! It is so big!

Hong Kong Pizza

I don't know how it happened. Perhaps it was one of those stories where someone was cooking in the kitchen and an ingredient was accidentally added and they liked it so much it stuck. I'm thinking more along the lines of a lack of creativity...Any way you slice it, using Thousand Island dressing as pizza sauce is just not good in anyway. That's how Hong Kong people like it. They like it so much the Pizza Hut chain in China gives the option of Thousand Island dressing. Some pizzas only come with it. (I may have just puked a little in my mouth) With all of this food confusion going on it seems impossible for a guy to find a decent slice of pizza. Then came Paisano's Pizza, New York Style Pizza. This stuff is the real deal. Sold by the slice and bigger than your head the pizza is awesome! The other night we went in to get some Calzones for dinner and the following situation occurred. Three characters: Big Al- The Italian New Yorker who owns the place (and doubles as my next door neighbor), The Local- Just another young kid with his priorities messed up, and James- The fly on the wall.
Al- "What can I get fo' ya?"
The Local- "I would like this one," pointing to the top pizza, "with Thousand Island dressing."
Al- "What!? You must be confused! That place is around the corner...We don't do that here. That's just wrong! It's the worst possible combination! I'll put it on your salad, but not on your pizza."
The Local-"But we are local people and that is what we like."
Al- "Then you can go to Pizza Hut, but this is real New York Pizza!"
After a little more clarification he was able to convince the kid and his friends to get "The Godfather" fully loaded with the best Italian meats. Its good to know that when we have had enough rice we will always have Paisano's, and Al can continue to tell people to go to Pizza Hut if they want Thousand Island dressing, it doesn't seem to slow the demand for the real deal.

Settle Down!

Cassie pointed out to me today that ever since we've been married we haven't planned on staying somewhere longer than a year. We've lived in Cedar, Hong Kong, Dallas and now we are back. This time we hope to be here for a while, however, as all the foreigners here know, Hong Kong is just a temporary home before we all return to our homes. Until that time comes for us we have been putting our house together step by step. This is the closest we have ever been to having a place full of our own furniture. This week we got a TV stand and a rug and WOW! It really makes a difference. I was excited when Cassie was out doing hair and they called to tell me the stuff was coming early. I wanted to surprise my wife with the new layout so I hurried to do my own arranging. She loved it! I love it! It feels good to have a place where we can have family and friends over and feel good about having them in our home. So here is the open welcome. If you are ever in Hong Kong you are welcome to come stay over, have a BBQ, or just relax...

Floored!

We wanted to save some money opening our new business so we decided to do the floor ourselves. We started at 5:30pm Friday night and finished just before 12:30 Saturday morning. We were so determined to finish it and now we feel like anything is possible! The exciting thing is that we have a great company culture. My business partner, Koon and I were set on doing it ourselves. The receptionists thought that it would be a good experience and came to lend a hand. Even after telling them a number of times that they didn't have to stay and that they could go home, they wanted to stay and see the project through. We are about having fun and working together to do it. What an awesome thing! We are now counting down the days to opening. It's going to be awesome!