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!