Shortest hospital stay in his life!

We're out!!! Noah had a great night, was able to eat regular food this morning, and seems to be in absolutely NO pain! We are home (at my parents' house) where Noah is playing with his sisters and cousins and getting ready to take a nap. At 28 hours, this is the shortest hospital stay he's ever had! We'll be heading to our house tomorrow and appreciate your continued prayers for Noah's complete recovery. God's goodness to us is overwhelming!
Love to all,
Ashley

Surgery Success!!

Noah has made it successfully through his surgery! The doctors finished performing his appendectemy about 10:00 am this morning. Noah is now in his room (the same room he was in for 10 days in December) sitting in mommy's lap watching the "strange" Wiggles. Thanks again for all of your prayers for Noah, we our so thankful the we have so many friends and family trusting God with us for him. Dr. Howell told us that Noah will be in the hospital for a couple of days and then we get to go home on Sunday! Please continue to pray that Noah will recover quickly from his surgery and that he will not want to get to active until we leave. Thanks again and to God be the glory!



P.S. - As you can probably tell from my inferior writing skills, this is Matthew signing off!

Surgery tomorrow!

Dr. Howell called last night and wants to do Noah's surgery tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 23rd) at 8:00 am. We have to be at the hospital at 7:00, and the surgery should take about 1 1/2 hours, so hopefully we'll be back in Noah's room ~ appendix free! ~ by around 10am if everything goes according to schedule! Thanks to everyone who is praying and who has offerred to help with the girls and pets, etc. We treasure each of you and are so blessed by the love you've shown us! I'll post just as soon as I can after surgery to keep you all up-to-speed on how he's doing. Now, off to pack...

Nothing yet

Just letting you know that we're still waiting to hear about when Noah's surgery will be. We've been told to call the clinic tomorrow and maybe we'll get an answer then! We'll keep you posted...

Trying to be flexible...

Well, folks, we were just kidding about Tuesday! We got a call today that Noah's doctor's father-in-law passed away yesterday (Saturday), and his funeral is scheduled for the same time as Noah's surgery. Please keep his family in your prayers...as we all know, it's hard losing a loved one. Surgery should be rescheduled for sometime this week, but we'll know more when the surgeon's assistant calls us Tuesday. And we'll let you know, too!
Shifting gears...I never learned to in a car (I STILL can't drive a stick shift!!), but I'm slowly learning how to in life : )

Surgery this Tuesday!

We wanted to show you these cute and fairly recent pictures of our children and ask you to please be praying for us, especially Noah, as we head to Augusta on Monday for his surgery on Tuesday. We have to be at the hospital at 11am, and his appendectomy will begin shortly thereafter. They expect him to only be in the hospital for one or two nights - we've never stayed such a short time in the hospital with Noah, so this seems like a real treat!! We have some specific prayer requests:

• that Noah will be content to only eat and drink clear liquids on Tuesday morning and nothing at all after 9am...he LOVES his juice and we need for him to forget it during those few hours!
• that the surgery will go smoothly, just as the doctors expect it to, and that God will guide their hands and instruments as they remove his appendix. They should be able to do the surgery laparoscopically, and that is what we're praying for - his recovery time should be much shorter this way.
• here's a Mommy request: that he would not experience much pain or fear or any other thing that a little guy shouldn't have to experience! I'm thankful beyond measure that his IV will be started AFTER he's anesthetized - his veins didn't cooperate very well last time and starting IVs was the yuckiest part of his whole hospital stay in December!

Our family has requested prayer so much in the last 18-months! We truly appreciate your love and generosity in holding us up to the Lord. We are certain that we all are here, healthy and strong, due to God's great mercy in answering your prayers and the prayers of many others. Noah will have such a story to tell one day, won't he?

At Matthew's suggestion, we enjoyed a night out last night by going to Red Robin as a family (it was really yummy!) and then wandering around Barnes and Noble. Well, you only wandered if you happened to NOT be in charge of Noah at any given time...if you were in charge of him, you raced through the store, whispering apologies to the poor patrons that Noah whizzed past as he giggled and squealed. It was fun for us...but I'm sure that store will never be the same! Matthew wanted us to have a fun night out before being stuck in the hospital for a while, and it was a much needed break away from home for us.

I'll post again as soon as I can on Tuesday to try to keep everyone up to date with what's going on. Thanks again for praying!

Love,

Ashley, Matthew, Noah and the girls

P.S. By the way, if you want to reply to any of our blog posts, but you don't want everyone who receives these updates to receive your reply, remember to close this email, and send a message to our regular email address (apiquette@att.net).