Friday, January 18, 2008

Goin back....Christmas!

Okay, so I warned you that I was going to backtrack a little to fill everyone in on the last few weeks.

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! We started out by celebrating Jesus' birthday on Christmas Eve at a residential treatment center for children in the foster care system. Our family had carefully chosen and wrapped gifts for an 8 year old girl living there. Her name is Breia and here is the link to her adoption photograph: http://www.heartgallerytexas.com/portraits/158.htm. She is a beautiful girl that needs a loving family, and we were it for the Christmas holiday. It was such an incredible experience for our kids to see how some children spend the holiday's. Not by choice, but because of the situation they were born into. God has big plans for Breia, and we are praying that the right forever family is out there looking for her right now! We ended our time there with a meal of pizza, after Breia herself invited us to share her Christmas Eve dinner with her.

We then headed to church for an intimate candlelight service, full of all the old carols and praise songs we know and love. The evening ended with new snuggly jammies (thanks to Grandma and Grandpa ;-), some unwrapping of gifts, and a bedtime snack.

Christmas day was very relaxing thanks to the crock pot! We had our first-ever Christmas meal in the Johnston home. We have always had Christmas dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and since we stayed home this year it was a pretty relaxed affair. During dinner we shared all the gifts we had received all year long, and realized that God had blessed us many times over. We were all a little homesick for missing friends and family, but enjoyed not having to worry about road conditions :-)

P.S. Tried to add photos, but there seems to be some issue right now. I will try to add them to another post.

Kiki


The two weeks before Christmas were spent trying to help our 5 year old male cat, Snuggles(nicknamed affectionately, Kiki). He had developed crystals in his urinary tract and they were making him extremely ill. After $480 in vet bills and watching our poor Kiki try and pass the crystals, similar to passing a kidney stone, we decided the time had come.


However, the vet had developed a particular fondness for him and when we brought him in she asked permission to do the very expensive catheter/antibiotic treatments to see if she could clear up the problem. She explained that she would need us to relinquish our rights to Kiki and that the vet clinic would adopt him if she could help him heal. He would then become a blood donor cat for them and help all the other sick cats that come in. They felt that his wonderful personality and extreme size would make for a great clinic pet. I know this sounds crazy, but the vet clinic is a beautiful, huge, old victorian home with plenty of room and lots of employees to love Kiki. It seemed a wonderful option for us since the $1,700 for treatment was not in the budget.


So, this is for you Kiki and all the snuggles and laughter you brought to our home. We love you and miss you!

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Catching up...


How terrible! I was so excited to get this blog up and running, and then we have had one thing after another happen over the last two weeks to keep us from posting. So, to fix this I think things will be a little backwards. I will add some pictures from Christmas, our cousin and his family's visit here over Christimas vacation, and Isabelle's birthday. Then hopefully we can go forward from then on.


We have had a little health issue (I'm sure no surprise to ya'll who know and love us ;-) with Eli. Last Tuesday we took him to urgent care because he was having trouble breathing and was wheezing terribly. He was diagnosed with asthma and prescribed steriods by mouth, plus albuterol treatments through a nebulizer every 4 hours, and to top it all off...antibiotics for a nasty ear infection. Now before you all think we had not cared for the little guy in days...he had no symptoms but a runny nose on Sunday and Monday. Woke up Tuesday to a temp of 99.9 and the wheezing. He wasn't even grumpy!


By Friday he was pretty cranky, and he HATED the nebulizer treatments. I took him into the pediatrician and the good news, no asthma! The nebulizer was not doing anything long term for him, so the doctor tested for other things. He also said that he had two of the worst looking ears he had seen. Turns out he has RSV, and the most we have to worry about is making sure he gets plenty of sleep and clear up the ears (which are a well known side effect of RSV). Yay!


Now it is over a week later and we are just finally turning the corner with the wheezing and back to decent naps.


I've added a picture of Eli having one of the nebulizer treatments :-( He was so sad.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Here's to 2008!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We've arrived!

Always the last to try something when it involves technology...that is the Johnston way. It took us forever to get cell phones, a computer, then the Internet (not to mention eBay), and we still don't have cable or a satellite dish. Blogging just looks like such a fun way to update out of town friends and family, that we couldn't resist any longer. This will be a family blog, so that means you could hear from any one of us at any time...We will have fun posting pictures and making our background fun for you over the next couple weeks!