Pictures and Video of Mya

I've posted a bunch of pictures of her on my Facebook. If you don't have Facebook and would like to see them, click here.

Thank you & address correction

Thank you so much to those of you who have left comments on our blog and Facebook...they have been so encouraging and have really made our days a little brighter. We're slowly healing, just trying to get through each hour. We miss Mya so much and we are also grieving our dreams of being parents right now.

Our Princess is with Jesus

On August 16th at 10:15pm we became parents to the most beautiful, precious little girl, Mya Anne. We left for the Sudbury hospital on Thursday afternoon after I had a non-stress test done in Blind River since the baby hadn't been moving like usual. Blind River sent us to go to Sudbury to get them to check things out so we excitedly got everything ready, hoping that we would get induced that night and we would get to finally meet that little one. About an hour after being in Sudbury the doctor decided we needed to do an emergency C-Section to get the baby out because they could see that she was in distress. Dan wasn't able to come into the operating room because they had to put me right to sleep. When Mya was born she wasn't breathing and her heart wasn't beating. It took the doctors 10 minutes to revive her and they weren't sure how long she was without oxygen before she was born. Mya had to be hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes (as you can see in the first picture)- she couldn't breathe on her own. She wouldn't physically respond to anything - pain, noise, or touch. It was so hard to see her laying there like that. We tried to spread the word to as many people as possible to pray for a miracle for Mya because we know that God could heal her if that was His will. Whenever we heard another newborn baby crying in the ward, we wanted to bad to go tell the parents how lucky they are to hear their baby cry. Let me encourage you if you have a baby to enjoy every sound and movement your baby makes. Even when it drives you crazy. On Saturday after the doctors did some ultrasounds and x-rays, the doctors came into our room with the news that our sweet baby had extensive damage done to her heart, liver, and kidneys due to the lack of oxygen. They also monitored her brain and found that there was no activity on the upper part of her brain which is what makes her function normally. The doctors that were in the room said that the team of them recommended that we remove the ventilator. This broke our hearts and was probably the hardest moment in our lives. How do you let your child go? How can you do that? This was such a hard decision but we knew we had to. We prayed that God's will would be done, whether He would heal her or bring her to Himself. We realized that we need to live the words of the song "Blessed Be Your Name" when it says "He gives and takes away…when the darkness closes in… still I will say, blessed be Your name". With both of our parents at our side, we held Mya as the tubes and wires were removed from her little body. We didn't know if she would be able to take any breaths on her own so we thought those were our last moments with her. She surprised us and was taking little breaths all by herself. The nurses asked if we had an outfit for her and I didn't really understand why we would dress her, but we took an outfit out of the diaper bag we brought for her and they put it on and bundled her up. She was so beautiful. For the next 10 hours, we got to hold her and cuddle her and sing to her and kiss her and smell her and just watch her as she breathed as long as she could. Most of our family was able to be there and hold her and fall in love with her in the time we had which was a huge blessing. We don't know what we would have done without them. We have been so blessed by our little Mya and we feel so thankful that we had that amazing 10 hours to hold her as if she were a normal baby. No, we never got to hear her cry or see her eyes and watch her smile, but we fell so in love with her and she is part of the soul that Dan and I share. When Dan and I are apart we feel like there's a part of our heart that's missing, and I said to Dan yesterday that now we'll always feel that because there's a 3rd person that shares our soul now. Mya will always be our firstborn, our precious daughter. We are so proud of her. We will never forget her and we will talk about her forever. Down the road when we have more children, they will know all about their big sister. Dan has been such a rock through all of this. He is definitely grieving and has moments where he doesn’t think he has any tears left, but God has given him such strength. He’s given me strength too but Dan’s definitely a couple steps ahead. Our love for each other has grown so much. We don’t know why God allowed this to happen but we thank Him anyway because He knows best. We can already see ways that the short life of Mya has impacted lives. We are thankful that Mya is now with Jesus and that she didn’t have to live a life hooked up to tubes and sitting in a wheelchair and in pain. Leaving the hospital today was really hard. It was a safe place away from the reality of the world going on outside. We had the best nurses in the world and they really nurtured us. We miss them and won’t forget them. They talked with us and cried with us and treated us like we were their family. Our plan is to head back to Goderich tomorrow and live with my parents for a few months. Dan will be able to collect EI for a while and I have 15 weeks of maternity leave. We plan to just spend lots of time together healing with our families. We want to do a bit of traveling to see our friends and just pray for God’s leading in what to do next. Our address will be: 36445, RR#5 Goderich ON N7A 3Y2 The celebration of Mya’s life is going to be on Wednesday August 22nd at 1:00pm at the Maitland Cemetery in Goderich beside where Mya’s body will be buried. Please pray for strength for us for this. We know that there are people praying for us all over the world and we thank you so much. Daddy's girl

Weekend with Jay & Deb

On Friday Jay (my brother) and Deb and the kids came for a few days. We all stayed at one of the cottages here at the camp...it was a great time!


On Saturday morning we found this bat on the window (the INSIDE!)...thankfully we got it out of there with an empty Pringles jar.


Boating....




Wolfie tried kayaking for the first time and it turns out he's a natural!


The guys took the kids out in the canoe fishing numerous times throughout the weekend...


...and Sequoiah caught a fish!!


...gutting the fish for supper


Mmmmm...brunch

37 weeks

This is 37 weeks...
I'm still feeling pretty good. I'm definitely more tired these days though, but I'm able to nap when I need to so it's not a big deal. The other day I had some regular contractions but they went away :( We're at the point where we're ready to have the baby any time now, although it still seems VERY unrealistic that within the next 5 weeks at the latest, we're going to be parents!!! Yikes. We can't wait to meet this baby though.

Pop Shoppe

Does this bring back memories for you like it does for me?? Dan and I were on our way back from Sudbury and we found this in a little convenience store. We used to get this as kids...I remember it being such a treat! I haven't seen it in years!!!

Visit with Mom and Karen

Last Sunday Mom, Karen, and the boys came for a visit! It was such a great time. We stayed up late talking and laughing, and spent both afternoons at the beach. It was so refreshing.

Dan took the boys canoeing, which they loved. Sam thought the canoe was going to tip the whole time but he was brave :) Mom and Karen and I hopped in a canoe too...that was a fun experience. I wish we had a picture of that but we were too scared (and smart) to bring a camera with us into the canoe since none of us are experienced canoers.

Dan on the job

So we're here at Galilean Bible Camp. Dan keeps very busy every day as the Program Director. His job is to make sure that all the activities for the day are planned, organized, and happen on time. His day starts at about 7am and he doesn't really stop until 9:30pm.

At this point we're really uncertain what we'll be doing in the fall. We are in process of application with CSSM for Dan to be the full-time Assistant Director here at Galilean, but we're not totally sure that's what God has for us. This is a bit of a scary thought since we have a baby coming in about 5 weeks...but we're trusting that God will reveal His plan to us at just the right time, just like He always does. We'd appreciate your prayers if you think of it!

You could also pray for Dan to be healthy. He hasn't felt 100% since Honduras. While he was in Honduras he got his cluster headaches back - which he's been on some strong meds for - but he still has lingering headaches all the time. He's going to see a doctor about it soon...hopefully everything's okay.

31 Weeks

Me and my big belly at 31 weeks. I feel pretty huge. Strangers come up to me in the store or wherever I am and for some reason want to know whether we're having a boy or a girl and when I'm due and then they proceed to tell me either a) "Oh, you're pretty big!" (thanks!), b) "You've got a while to go!" or c) "Oh, that's coming up really soon!" I tend to like option "c" better.

Our Move

Our move went very well. We decided to split up the 26 hour drive into 3 days. The first night we stayed with Ivan and Jessica and baby Elijah in St. Pierre, MB and the second night we stayed in this great Holiday Inn Express in Munising, MI. We didn't run into ANY construction and we had no truck problems.

We arrived in Blind River on Monday (we left on the Saturday) and unloaded our stuff into a house in town that we will sort of use until the house we're supposed to live in at the camp is ready. We will mostly be living out of a room in the lodge at camp until mid-July when we will have to settle into our house at camp if it's ready, or the house in town (so we're ready for the baby). It's hard having so much instability at this point in our lives, but through it all we're trying to really trust God that He knows what's best for us.

Huge truck, huh? Don't worry, we didn't fill it...or come close. We ordered a 17' truck and they didn't have one available, so they upgraded us to a 26' truck at no extra charge.

We still had tons of room left when all our stuff was loaded



The baby moved so much when we were driving! It probably had something to do with all the bumps. And all the peanut M&M's I ate.