Joel's Journey: Christmas dinner.....

Monday, December 10, 2012

Christmas dinner.....

Along with my dad and Shirley being here and celebrating Christmas with us, we always have a dinner.....but not the night we open presents!!! We learned a long time ago that the little kids are too excited to eat and so it was too much cooking not to be enjoyed!!!! Saturday night was our "dinner party!" We had a marvelous ham, brisket, sweet potatoes casserole, roasted fingerling and green beans with creamy tarragon dressing, stuffed yellow squash, and a pear salad with raspberry cream!! The salad was sooooo good!!

Course we were so full we had to wait a bit for dessert but I made an Italian cream cake, a pecan pie, and we had tons of candy I had made, peanut butter balls, toffee, peanut clusters, mocha truffles, sugar cookies, and Shirley made some of the guys fav things too!!! Soooooo we had to enjoy our flavored coffee Caleb an d Kristen got us a little later in the evening!!

So blessed to have all my children around our table and our beautiful new daughter and grand baby on the way!! Thank you dad and Shirley for coming and blessing us!!!

1 comment:

Teena said...: Looks wonderful! Love seeing how all of you celebrate! Wow... beautiful.

Hugs...; December 10, 2012 at 7:14 PM

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Joel's Story

Joel, our 11th of 13 and a twin of Josiah, at age 3 was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer, on December 6th, 2006. Joel had three perfect years of health and he and Josiah celebrated their 3rd birthday Sept. 13th, 2006. The first of Oct. Joel started having unexplained fevers for a few days and would return to active play. After the fourth round of fevers we took him to our family Dr. which they said his iron was low, so we treated that for a few weeks and took him back only to have his hemo. showing lower than before. We were referred to a hematologists and saw him a few weeks with blood checks twice a week. At a visit on Dec. 4th we showed the Dr. the bumps, (which were tumors but we did not know at the time) on Joel's head and he was very concerned and we were told we needed to admit him immediately and start extensive tests the following day. Joel went through rigorous testing and then the dreaded results were given. Joel was at a stage IV the most extensive stage, but we were hopeful that the Lord would use the means of Chemotherapy treatments to restore Joel's body. Joel endured 8 1/2 days in the hospital, came home for Christmas, and returned for his second round of chemo Jan. 3, 2007. Joel had a seizure that night after midnight and went into a coma due to a tumor bleeding in his head area and causing his brain to swell. After tests the following days, the Dr. declared Joel "brain dead" and took us to court to force us to take Joel off life support, as we did not agree with the medical field's definition of death. Our family sought to stand with the scripture, "life is in the blood,"and until Joel's heart quit beating naturally, he was living. We were making arrangements to bring him home and on January 23, 2007 his little heart stopped beating and he went to be with the Lord Jesus in heaven. Our lives are changed forever. God is faithful in the midst of this trial and we look with great hope to be with him someday.