2007--Lucy's year in review
We end the year with Lucy a giggly, chatty, healthy (almost) 18-month old and her parents the most relieved and grateful people around. Let's take a look back at the rest of the year...


Lucy was a lot of people's valentine back in early 2007, and she finally started crawling in the spring, rather than just scooting or rolling around.

Lucy was a bathing beauty at the beach in May,

a 1 year old birthday girl in June (who took her first independent steps right around that day),










and a party girl/dancing queen extraordinaire in August at Dave and Susie's wedding.





The girl is shown here dressed for school
in late September, little did we know at the time it was our last carefree and innocent week of 2007. She went to the hospital the next week, on her 15 month birthday.






October was not our favorite month, but our little monkey was doing really well by Halloween. She was finally released on November 2nd, exactly 5 weeks after we went in. We won't go into all the details here, but in case you are just joining us feel free to use the "Lucy's health updates" link to your right to get caught up.

Thanksgiving earned its name this year, with a pack of Lucy monsters gathering in Omaha for the holiday. People keep asking about the shirts. An artist we know about makes these shirts for kids, and Chris/Matt/Ruby gave Lucy one as a present. The monsters all have names, and our friends picked this particular shirt because it happened to be named "Lucy monster." It has kind of become a signature outfit for our adventurous and spunky gal, and when she got sick we asked the artist to make some in adult sizes as rally shirts. Angel and Russ also have shirts, though Angel was too preggo to make the trip to Omaha for Thanksgiving.

And that brings us back to the present. We look forward to driving to Minnesota for Christmas, and to meeting baby Gavin (Angel's baby on the way) early in 2008! Sheri's grades are in, the shopping and mailing are all done, and we are just enjoying some unhurried time together before the holiday. We visited the toddler room at Lucy's school this week and she was happy to jump right in with the older kids. She'll start again full time there in January. Life seems to be inching slowly to some kind of normalcy.
We have had the highest highs and the lowest lows in 2007, and are hoping for a lot less drama in the coming year. Lucy still has a few lingering health concerns that are being monitored, but she's doing great and doesn't seem sick in the least. We got a crash course in our health care system, and learned more than we ever wanted to know about how the body works. Lucy has had (and continues to have) excellent care and we feel extremely lucky to have good insurance and to live in a city with such a solid medical community. Things could have easily turned out worse than they did, and we thank God constantly for her healing. We also pray with Lucy each night that all the other sick children get better soon and their families will have the support they need, as we did. We feel certain that our country can do better by all of our children when it comes to health care and plan to get more involved in these efforts in the coming year. Here's a shameless plug--if you are looking for a good place to make year end donations, you could consider a gift to Children's Hospital of Omaha, or to the one in your own community. We choose to give to "charity care," as our Children's Hospital provides care regardless of ability to pay. We still grab on to Lucy and kiss her about every 15 minutes out of sheer gratitude, and we expect that we will probably need a little time to work through some lingering feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about her health. But mostly right now we're just relieved and very very happy.

Despite the past few months, the basics haven't changed--Lucy's growing smarter and more wonderful every day, we're busy but happy balancing work and parenting, and we continue to think Omaha is a great place to live. We've had many visitors and have also done some fun traveling with the girl. We have spent good and scary times with family and friends and have realized anew how lucky we are to share this journey with so many people we love.