update - sort of

well i want to keep you up to date on how things are progressing with our baby girl.
had a quick ultrasound the other day, mostly to check for fluid around her heart which is the first sign of heart failure. they didn't see anything so things are great there. we have another Echo next week, and they'll get a better look at all things heart related. but right now things are going as well as can be expected. the baby is moving a lot, and things are falling into place for our move. so for now we stick with the same plan as before, which is basically a lot of monitoring until we make the trek to philly.

God has been very good, and is definitely meeting every need we have. that being said, please keep praying for our family as we start this journey.

specific ways to pray for us:

• healing for our baby girl- whether that happens in utero, or through the help of the doctors after birth. i'm not picky, i just want her healthy and strong.
• that we find housing in philly- we're working on it, but nothing is for sure yet
• that we find good renters for our anchorage house
• that we can stay focused on the fact that God was not caught off guard by this. He is in complete control, and we should rest in that knowledge.
• that we find a good church down there- have a few leads, but won't know for sure until we get there.

reality hurts

so the other night i decided i was going to pamper myself and take a bath. a long, warm, bath- that's all i wanted. i couldn't even remember the last time i had been able to do such a thing, so i figured i was overdue. i know better than to try and do stuff like that when the kids are awake, so i waited until they were in bed and got mentally ready for a "princess moment". i'm sure that pregnancy is reason enough for a long bath, but  i justified my indulgence by going over the fact that i had been really busy packing, cleaning, being a mom, and the fact that i couldn't remember the last bath i had was just WRONG. (for the record i have been showering- it's not like my life is so crazy that i've abandoned personal hygiene)

kids in bed- check
mental justification- check

alright, i'm settling in, starting ro relax and just when i get to thinking "wow, i really feel like a princess right now, instead of a tired mommy." CRASH!! the stupid thing that holds all the kids bath toys falls right on my head. it hurt. a lot. and it totally ruined my zen moment. 
turns out reality can't escaped by just running a hot bath, especially if you don't use bubbles.  but the only ones in the house are dora bubbles and i refuse to take a dora the explorer bath.

y=mx+b

so in my former life i was a math teacher. i taught the lowest math you could take and still be in high school. i say that just so you don't think i'm some sort of savant, because trust me- i'm not. i'm related to one, but i wasn't given that gift. if you think i'm just doing the false humility thing, you can go talk to my former bosses. they will inform you that my skills are adequate, but not exceptional. (or for that matter just ask my former students)
ANYWAYS, i've actually had the chance to do a good bit of math in the past few days. it's been a few years, and i have definitely forgotten a few things. but can i just say how good it felt to be using my brain!! to actually engage part of my noggin that doesn't have anything to do with dora, wubbzy, or dr. seuss. i'm telling you friends i'm feeling pretty awesome right now. this high is all natural.

i'm thinking about making a poster that says "MATH not METH" i think it would sell. at least other geeky math nerd teachers would buy it. i think i'm missing a major marketing opportunity.

told you so

remember how i said that my delicate little lily tends to freak people out with her climbing...

when i showed up to claim her from her 2 year olds sunday school class, i saw her climbing on the outside of the little play house thing they have. this is the conversation that  followed:
nice volunteer lady "when does she turn 3?"
me "not for another 8 months"
nice lady looking a bit shocked "oh. we really thought it was sooner than that."
me "yeah, we get that a lot"

God bless all the sunday school volunteers that deal with crazy kids that they're not allowed to spank.

a REALLY old picture that i offer as exhibit A

the afore mentioned update

so we weren't really expecting to get pregnant again so soon after gideon. but once we found out about our baby we were super stoked! trust me there was a lot of laughter- even from the doctor.  3 under 3. that was something we hadn't expected, but...we knew we wanted more kids, so bring on the craziness.

then we found out that our precious little girl had some pretty serious heart issues going on. the laughter stopped. our joy wasn't gone, just the levity that had surrounded the pregnancy. when they told us all of the statistics and explained what our baby was going to be facing, things got real serious real quick. they explained that we wouldn't be able to deliver her in alaska. we needed to be at a bigger hospital that could take care of things immediately once she was born. not gonna lie- that was a little scary.
fast forward through a few heart scans and more discussions with our doctors, and we come to find out that they have no way of knowing how long we'll need to be out of state.

our options were #1) go to seattle for an indefinite period of time, and figure out how to keep some sense of normalcy in our lives or #2) figure something else out.
we opted for #2. the more research we did on her heart condition the more we realized that the children's hospital of philadelphia (CHOP) is the top hospital for everything that we need, AND we happen to have family there. we could live in limbo going back and forth between anchorage and seattle, or we could take what little control we had, and give our family a little stability. so we prayed about it, talked it over between G and i, and talked about it with our doctors. our doctors agreed that it was a great idea, so here were are- on the verge of a temporary relocation to philly.

our plan is to rent out our anchorage house and  relocate for a year. that way we have family that can take care of lily and gideon when we are at the hospital taking care of baby girl. less stress, the kids get to spend time with their cousins/aunts/uncles/grandparents, and garret's family get's to see him more than just once a year.
here's the cool part- God has totally been AWESOME throughout this whole thing. from the seemingly little things, to the really big things- He's been surrounding us with folks that have given us the support we need (and are willing to watch our kids while we pack or go to doctors appointments ) and making this transition happen smoothly.

• for example: about 12 hours after we told his family about our plan, we got a text from them telling us that they basically had our philly house all furnished. 
• more than once we've gotten offers to help us out with a very specific need that we hadn't even had the chance to ask for help with yet. 
• we've got friends that have been in very similar situations that are helping us prepare. (bring on the NICU stories and the pictures of pediatric heart surgery) we are going into this very prepared. 
• and let's not forget to mention the obvious- most families don't get this option. we are very fortunate that garret can commute from philly just as easy as he can commute from seattle. he has a job, i don't so we're not loosing an income there, and our kids aren't in school yet so we don't have to worry about pulling them out. most families in this situation HAVE to split up. we don't. not only do we get to stay together, we get to have some time with family members that up until now we really haven't seen all that often.

so that's where we're at as a family right now. things are changing, but we're doing alright. we have lots of reasons to be optimistic and positive, so we're going with that. we covet your prayers, both for us and for our little girl. we know it's going to be a long year (medically not because of the family) but we also know that God will continue to shower us with His grace and mercy. i wouldn't have chosen this route, but i know that He's got it all under control so i'm resting in that.

on a lighter note- this does mean that come december there will be 2 mary slaugenhoups in philly. no more differentiating by saying philly mary and alaska mary. that should be interesting.

shameless plug.

 a quick shout out to my PS Photography girls. they are the ones that took all the awesome pictures in the previous post. well, all of them except the ultrasound pic. their lenses are good, but not THAT good. we have to wait a little while longer before we get PS pics of baby girl. thanks rach and tracy for the great pictures.
anyone in anchorage who wants amazing pictures should check out their website. they are worth their weight in gold, and they're fun to hang out with too.
/http://www.psphotographyalaska.com/

meet the family

so as you can see from the pictures the AK Slaugs are a family of 4 right now. i was pretty much raised in alaska garret is a pennsylvania farm boy that found his way up here during his college years, and through a few twists and turns of life ended up settling here. i like to tell him it's because God knew i was here waiting for him. (feel free to either gag or hum a richard marx song now) i'm pretty sure his family likes me, but i'm not so sure they've forgiven me for making him stay so far away from home.

mary and garret (aka G)

then there's lily joy. she's...well....how do i phrase this...she's ACTIVE. i mean that in a good way. she's our precious daughter who learned to walk before she was 10 months old and hasn't stopped running or climbing since. she's not hyper or ADHD she just likes to play. a lot. all the time.  her favorite thing to do since before she was 1 is to climb. she's pretty good at it (usually) but it tends to  freak people out.

lily joy (2)

 next up gideon, our not so little man. he's not tall like his sister, but he's got all the makings of a bruiser. let me go ahead and address the most popular question- we have no idea where his red hair came from. G and i both have a cousin with red hair, but we're pretty sure that garret's side is mostly the reason for gideon's looks. in fact little g and big G look a lot alike (other than the hair) , and tend to favor garret's mom's side of the family tree.

gideon (9 months)

this is what you didn't see in the family photo. this is the newest addition to the Slaugenhoup family. this little girl has a remarkable story all her own, and it's only getting started.

baby #3 (aka baby girl) 

theme issues

it's pretty obvious that at this point the whole blogging thing is exactly what i feared- just another good idea that never gets done. but i feel like the main reason i haven't been blogging isn't that i don't have things to talk about, it's that i don't know how to say them. is this a funny clever blog? is this a serious pensive reflective blog? or is this just one more place other than facebook for me to ramble on about the daily nonsense that is going on in my life? trying to find my "angle" has kept me from blogging. NO MORE I SAY! there are so many things going on in my life that deserve to be blogged about that i actually feel like i'm being lame by NOT sharing them. so theme be darned, i'm just going to start writing. my new goal is to update this at least once a week (we'll see how long that lasts). i'm ok with the fact that i'm not the most clever person around but i can't be serious all the time either, so the tone will probably change a lot- but that's pretty much how i am anyway. i'm about to blow your mind and do a whole different post, just to get up to date on what's going on. not that i think the info will blow you away- just the fact that i'm blogging twice in one day is impressive. maybe i should wait until after midnight just to make it count as a different day....things to ponder.