Three Years

Today is our three year anniversary! We celebrated on Monday night by going to the new California Pizza Kitchen and then played a game of bowling. I hadn't been bowling since college so I started off a little rusty. We both played fairly well and had a great time! Just as we were getting ready to head home we got a call that Suzie really missed us. We had a great time just the two of us but were glad to get home to our baby girl too:)

I praise God for giving me such a wonderful husband! He is my best friend, leader, counselor, encourager, and a model of Christ's love. I am so thankful for him!

We're Moving!!

The Lord has provided a full time ministry position for Kyle at First Baptist Church, Roosevelt in none other than Lubbock, Texas! Kyle lived in Lubbock for four years while he attended Texas Tech University. It's a town of about 200,000 located in West Texas. The church is actually out in the country, about 15 minutes from town. Kyle will be the Associate Pastor overseeing Youth and Childrens Ministries. We are SO excited that the Lord has allowed us to move to such an amazing church. The people there are so warm and generous and we can't wait to serve alongside them! Of course with the excitement also comes a little bit of sadness as we have to say goodbye to many friends and family who have played such a crucial role in our lives. We will miss them dearly, but trust that God will allow these relationships to grow despite the distance.

Here is a picture of our new church home:

A Few New Words

Things are trucking right along here in the Sanderson home. With three more trips scheduled in the next month, we are super busy and the time is just flying by. Suzie seems to have completely recovered from her ear infection (praise God!) and aside from not sleeping through the night quite yet, she's doing just great!

Physically, she is still very behind in her development. BUT, she is making progress and for that we are so thankful. She can stand with a lot of support but still doesn't make any effort to try to cruise. She can maintain the crawling posisiton for longer, which is good. Her physcial therapist thinks she actually could crawl on her hands and knees if she wanted too, but has no desire to since she's so good at army crawling. Boy is she fast! She still won't pull up to sitting, but again I think she could if she wanted to but she just really doesn't like sitting:)

The exciting thing is that her language skills seem to be developing very nicely! She loves to try to repeat us. She will just stare at our lips when we talk to her and you can tell she's often trying really hard to figure out how we're doing it. Here are some of her new words that she'll say when she hears us say them:

(Mama, dada, amen, and more are old words)
Love you (sounds more like Luh oooo)
Baby (sounds more like bay bay)
Bye Bye
Hi
Ball (she'll say ball ball)
Ba Ba (for bottle)
La la la (when we sing a song she'll sing along with her la la la)

My favorite is that she loves to say, "Uh oh" and will just travel around the house throwing a toy and saying, "Uh Oh," over and over and over again. It's so sweet!

Here are a few recent pictures of our little urchin.

She still makes this funny face when we take her picture:)





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Deal of the Week

This deal of the week is too good to pass up! It's from CVS of course:)

Retail Value of my purchase:
2 Glade Sense and Spray starter kits: $9.99 each
1 Glade Fragrance Collection Candle: $9.99
2 boxes of Fiber One Granola Bars: $4.29 each
1 Gallon of Milk: $2.49
Normal total with tax: $43.96

What I Paid:
Glade Sense and Spray Sale Price: $5
2 coupons for $4 off
Glade candle sale price: $6.99
generated $6.99 ECBs
1 coupon for $3 off
Fiber One Bars sale price: $2.50
2 coupons for $.40 off
Milk sale price: $2.29
bars & milk generated $3.00 ECBs
$4 off coupon for purchase of $20
My total: 15 cents!!!

And the best part is that this is all stuff I can use! My best deal yet:)

Sickie

Sorry we haven't posted in so long! We've been busy here in the Sanderson home. We took a trip to Texas and after we got home Suzie got sick:( She was throwing up on Tuesday and I thought it was a little flu bug. By Thursday she started tugging on her ear. After a fever on Friday morning, I took her into the doctor and sure enough, she has a double ear infection. Poor baby! She really is quite a trooper. She has been pretty happy except when it's time to go to bed. She has been absolutely refusing to sleep in her bed the past few nights so none of us have gotten very much sleep this week. Last night she threw up again, but she is on antibiotics now so hopefully that will stop in the next day or so. I've never done so much laundry in one week or taken so many showers in one day:) But everything else is well here and I hope to post some new pictures soon. Just wanted to let you all know we're still here:)

Videos Galore!

Suzie will be 15 months in just a few weeks! She is doing wonderfully, aside from not sleeping very well at night! She was teething for a couple weeks only to have just one tooth break through. Then she had a cold and then began teething again! She had the second top tooth break through just yesterday, but unfortunately she is out of the habit of sleeping all night long. Plus we are doing a lot of traveling the next month so I'm not sure how she's going to get back in the habit! But when she gets enough sleep she is just delightful:)

Here are some new things she's up to along with some videos:
waving hi and bye consistently
signing more and all done
blowing kisses
trying to repeat many words that we say and imitating a lot
folding her hands to pray and trying to say, "amen"
learning to use her thumb and index finger
patting her hands to "Patty Cake" and "If You're Happy"
putting objects in and out, on and off
getting more stable at standing (with lots of support)
starting to take steps with lots of help
trying to get from standing to sitting
playing peek-a-boo
taking her bow out and trying to put it back in:)




The following two videos are from one of Suzie's therapy sessions. She is doing much better at using her right hand! But she does hate sitting and would much rather lie down all the time:)

Thankful

This morning I was reflecting on both God's sovereignty and mercy and it led me to pray for Suzie and thank Him for how well she is doing. I was convicted that I am not nearly thankful enough for how kind God has been to our family. I was convicted that I do not give all the glory to God in my conversations with others. Suzie's therapists are constantly saying how well she is doing and it is the perfect opportunity to tell them how thankful to the one and only true God I am. I interact with high school students a couple times a week and I want to praise our gracious God to them as well. I asked the Lord to grow me in verbalizing a heart of thanks to Him for His incredible mercy, so I thought I'd start here, on our blog. I am SO incredibly thankful to Him and humbled that He has chosen to answer so many of our prayers with a yes! I know that should He say no to these requests, He is just as merciful. But I have every reason in the world to constantly grateful to Him, and I pray that I would share that so much more with other people.

Yesterday we went to the neurosurgeon for a follow up and got great news. Suzie's head size has decreased a tiny bit from the last visit and her head size has now gone from the 80th percentile to the 50th! Her shunt seems to be working well and we are so grateful for a good report. Here are a few recent pics of our family. Thanks for keeping up with us!
Suzie playing with her friend Kaitlin at a High School Staff meeting.

Suzie has her very first cold right now:( The only thing that will comfort her at night when she's all stuffy is being with momma. Needless to stay we have had a rough few nights.

Suzie in a box!

Trying to escape:)

Chilling with mama

I wonder what she's up to...

Daddy bringing the Word!

She looks like such a big girl when she's kneeling!
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Suzie's new thing is to make this very funny face every time we try to take a picture of her. She does it as soon as she sees the camera. The good pictures above are hard to get now! Here are several shots of her funny face.