I'm thankful that God gives me His amazing strength during this busy Christmas Season

I know that I've said this many times in the past, but truly I think I've been busier lately than I've ever been. I'm very thankful that this time my busyness has nothing to do with Luke being unhealthy or with appointments for him. He has been doing great lately and I'm happy to say that we took him over to our friends Yoli and Juan's home last night and didn't need to take even one machine with us. He has been doing so awesome with his breathing and coughing when he needs to, we no longer need to take his suction machine all the time. To say this is a huge relief, is putting it mildly.

I took him into the dietician last week and he is doing great on his weight and height. He has gained back the weight that he had lost right after his surgery. He is looking very healthy lately, he should be since he is by far the healthiest eater we have in our family. He too has been keeping busy lately. I took the kids to two Christmas parties last week, the first one was where Luke has his Physical Therapy, it is a wonderful place and all the staff put on a wonderful party with games, crafts, snacks and of course pictures with Santa. Then on Thursday we went to Gordy's annual Christmas party at REI headquarters, it is a wonderful time of fun and catching up with his friends that we only get to see once a year. I will try to post some new pictures for you all to see very soon. We also had a picture of our family done on Wednesday night for our annual Christmas cards, I'm hoping to get them out very soon.

Lily turned one on the 20th, it seems impossible to believe that she is already a precious little one year old walking around the house. God is so gracious to give us such a beautiful and sweet little girl, just as her middle name is Joy that is exactly what she has brought to our family a lot of joy. I'm so glad that she is so obedient already she doesn't even bother the tree or other Christmas decorations we have out around the home.

On Sunday Amy put on her 4th annual Christmas play at our church. She loves to direct our children's pageant's each year, this year instead of writing one again she used one already written called "Wise Guy's" it was both very touching and at times very funny as children's play usually end up being. Natalie sung in the choir and also did a solo when she played the part of Mary, she sung so beautifully and looked like a wonderful Mother of Jesus. Needless to say this has added to the busyness I was talking about at the beginning of the letter, since they had much preparations to do for the play.

On Monday I decided to take the day off with a few friends and two of my sisters to have a "Monday Funday," in Seattle. I was blessed by a faithful follower of the blog, someone I've never personally met but definitely feel like we are kindred spirits. Anyway she and her husband pray faithfully each day for Luke and our family and she felt the Lord told her to bless me with some money to go have a day of fun, a day that I could just go and forget about all the stresses at home. It was a wonderful day and we all had a great time. Thank you Shirley and Ed.

I hope that you are all able to slow down during this busy season to take the time to thank our precious Heavenly Father for sending His one and only son, Jesus. He was willing to come down to be born as a little baby. I am thankful that Jesus, chose to live on this earth and give His life in exchange for us to have eternal life. I thinks it's so exciting that all we have to do is be willing to ask him to forgive us our sins and invite Him into our hearts. The awesome reward for doing this is to spend eternity in Heaven with Him. If you would to talk more about God's love for us or have any questions about eternal life please e-mail me at howslukedoing@yahoo.com

I would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year. You all mean more to me than you can even begin to imagine. Thank you and I pray that you will be blessed beyond your wildest dreams.

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Sue

P.S. Thank you Teena for sharing with us about Melissa Snow, her web site as you mentioned is http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/inputSiteName.do?method=search&siteName=melissasnow
I pray for her daily. If any of you have prayer requests for us at any time please share them I know we have many prayer warriors reading this blog.