I had to say good bye twice today

Lily and Karlos found a caterpillar and Luke got to hold it!

Today was a challenging day, it began by Luke's alarms going off, I thought perhaps he was getting sick, but thankfully he is doing just fine tonight. I know that I've haven't updated the blog in a while it's been a very busy time here at the Searles home. My brother and his wife came for a long over due visit from Denmark, we hadn't seen them for almost 5 years. We've had a wonderful time these past few weeks, filled with lots of family times together. They left this evening to go back home, my brother has lived in Denmark for 28 years and really is very Danish now, which is a good thing since he is married to a wonderful Danish Lady. We will definitely miss them and hope they won't wait another 5 years to return again.

Here is the whole family, minus my nephew Jesse and his wife Rebecca, plus my Uncle and Auntie and their grandson Greg and of our course the Rodriguez family which we've adopted into our family, minus Juan who was in Kuwait, but got home on Sunday. Whew I thinks that's all!

Here is the original 7, my parents, Cindy, Ray, Jill, myself and Lori

Here we are with our wonderful spouses!

Here is our ever expanding family, Daniel with his girlfriend Sara & Natalie with her fiance Josh

On the way home from the airport, I had to shop for ingredients to make Luke's food, yep it's that time again, I began his food process tonight cooking the meat for his formula. While my parents and I were at Costco getting the ingredients we received a call saying a very close friend of our family was in the process of dying and if we wanted to see him before he was gone we would have to head over the Hospital. We went in to say good bye, it was very hard to say the least. Ken Carter is an amazing Godly man, he was in a diving accident about 30 years ago that left him a paraplegic, he spent the rest of his life either in a wheelchair or a bed. Ken never got bitter about his life, he chose to love and serve God the only way he could, he would spend hours praying for people and his prayers were powerful. It was so hard saying our good-byes, he could not talk as he is hooked up to a ventilator, but he could still mouth words and the last memory I'll have of Ken is saying, I'll see you in heaven one day, then he began to sing a song, though I'm not sure just exactly what he was singing. He was almost unrecognizable as his body is very swollen, his heart is shutting down, but his face was radiant with the love of Jesus. I know that soon Ken will be rejoicing up in heaven running again, free from his horrible crippled body. Luke and our family has lost two of our biggest prayer warriors in the past few months, first my cousin Karlon and now Ken, both would spend time praying for Luke on a regular basis and I know that their prayers made a huge difference in our lives, which I'm extremely grateful for and am going to miss greatly.

Well I really do need to sign off, tomorrow will be a very busy day, but then what day isn't??

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Suzi

Luke loves his Auntie Lori!

Our Sweet Daughter Natalie is Marrying the Man of Her Dreams Joshua Thomure!

Here is the news you've all been waiting for: Natalie Sue Searles our sweet daughter is marrying Joshua Lee Thomure, we are not sure of the day and time yet, they are hoping sometime either at the end of September or early October. Wow, I don't know if I'm ready for this, but I guess I don't have a choice. I'm filled with mixed emotions, I'm so excited for Natalie and Joshua, they've loved each other for a long time and now the time is right for them to move forward. At the same time, it will be a huge adjustment for our family to lose Natalie's amazing unwavering help and support in the home. Change is good, but ever so hard.

Joshua has already been around so much these past 4 years that he is already part of the family, all the children are so excited to get a new brother. Joshua was born in Missouri, he came here in 2004 days before Luke's accident. He was in the same ministerial program that Daniel was in down in Centralia, WA, he has a amazing passion for GOD, he is the youth pastor at our church, he loves Natalie's little brothers and sister and they adore him. In fact Lily asked who she would marry now that Josh is marrying Natalie, I think in her little mind she had already planned to marry him one day, a little young wouldn't you say? He has always been very kind and compassionate with Luke, always gives him hugs and kisses and has been one of Luke's hugest prayer warrior. We are truly blessed to have him join our family officially.

We had a very busy day today, church this morning, followed by a celebration dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, ran to Costco, came home to drop off things and kids, left right away to go to the airport to pick up my brother and his wife, who are visiting from Denmark, went to my sister Jills home for dinner, came home put the kids to bed, got the laundry going, caught up on some computer stuff, finally posting here and then I'm off to bed. Looking forward to a busy, but hopefully fun week with family get togethers and outings. Luke had a good day, though the heat of the day was kind of hard on him, I'm so thankful that he is doing better.

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Suzi

Luke is doing so much better, except for the complaining which I hopes stops today!

Hey thanks for the prayers, Luke is doing so much better, Praise God. Now I hope he will stop yelling today, I think his muscle tone has kicked into high gear and he has been in a lot of pain. I had started him on a new medication, but the Dr. felt we should stop it until his sickness was done since one of the side effects can be respiratory difficulties. I hope when we begin it again today we won't see any ill side effects.

We are looking forward to a very busy day, a huge secret will be revealed today, I'll let you know later what it is. Also my brother and his wife are coming for a visit today from Denmark, haven't seen them since right before Luke's accident in 2004. I'm exhausted but happy, we got the house completely cleaned inside and out, the bills paid, the check book balanced and our new front door and garage doors ordered. I love productive days! Now we can enjoy the week ahead filled with lots of family activities.

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Suzi

Don't forget to check back later for some very BIG news!

High Fevers, Low Oxygen, sound familiar, ya Luke needs prayers again!

Luke could use some prayers once again. He came down with something last night, ya we pulled another sleepless night. He has been running a very high fever and is on lots of oxygen. I took him to the Dr. this afternoon and he was amazed at how good Luke's lungs sounded, of course while we were in his office he was doing great, it wasn't until we came home again did he have another set back. Anyway all this to say we would really appreciate some prayers coming our way, thank you.

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Suzi

Finally a post!

Where to begin??? So much has happened since my last post. Let me begin by saying that Luke has been doing good. He has been healthy our only concern right now is the fact that his muscle tone has gotten worse lately and yet we have him on more Baclafen then ever before. We begin a new medication tonight called Dantrolene, we hope that combined with the Baclafen will help loosen up his way too tight muscles. Bending him lately has been a challenge, though we know that when I go away he always tends to get tight, he continues to stay that way even though I've been home over a week now. The Dr. told us that it would take a few weeks to see if there will be any positive changes with this new medication. If this one doesn't work we may begin thinking about a Baclafen pump, though I really don't want to go down that road.

The rest of family is doing good. Amy just got back from her 10 day missions trip to the Domincan Republic, she went with a team from our church to minister to the people there. They were kept busy daily with lots of meetings and manual labor. I had a wonderful time on my cruise to "no where", I hope to go on another cruise again someday and this time take will take Gordy with me. It took me a few days to get my land legs back, I felt dizzy for about 3 days, but praise God that is all gone now. The day before Mother's Day I blessed my Mom by taking her on a wonderful day full of exploration to some new beaches that we've never been to before and new area's of our Rain Forest here in WA state. We really do live in a amazingly beautiful place, y'all should come visit us if you ever get a chance.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Mother's Day this year. It was not a good day for me after getting home from my wonderful exploration day with my Mom and friend Yoli, I got very sick. I went to bed that night with horrible chills and fevers, the next day was spent entirely in bed, though I did get up for a few minutes to follow Ezekiel's home made map that lead me to his beautiful home made Mother's Day card. I spent the next day in bed also, I'm feeling better now, though still feel a bit weak and am not at 100% yet. It's weird but I believe I've had more health issues than Luke lately, my thyroid has been acting up. Today I found out that I have Hashimoto's Disease, it basically means I have a thyroid who can't decide if it wants to be hyper or hypo, not much fun that is for sure. It seems to be something that is in my genes, my mom suffered from the same thing until God healed her about 10 years ago, therefore I know that God can heal me also and that is what I'm praying for.

I realize that this post is long enough and I don't even have any pictures in it to share, that will have to come soon. But I need to share a few prayer requests with my fellow prayer partners: Noah is very, very sick and desperately needs a touch from God, Valerie Grace also needs a touch from Jesus right now, check out their prayer links for more information and please keep Luke in your prayers that his precious little body would loosen up soon. Of course it goes without saying that if any of you ever need any prayer or know of someone who does please let us know so that we can pray for you, faith is increased by numbers!

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Suzi