Under His Wings

December 29, 1999 3:12 PM.....a highly anticipated moment met with mixed emotions.  For 5 months I was told that the baby I had just  given birth to was going to die.  It was very apparent when our Gabrielle Renee was born that sadly the doctors were right.  As a matter of fact, Gabrielle's neonatologist told us moments after she was born that it was one of the worst cases of Anencephaly he had ever seen.  He was near retirement age, so he had probably seen quite a few cases in his career. It was an honor for me to carry our sweet girl to full term.  Today I'm counting my blessings we had her for the 14 hours (plus the 9 months in my womb).   She could have been still born.  Her doctor only expected her to live an hour if that after her birth. Last night at church we sang Jesus Loves Me per Tim's request.  He had another song picked out for our hymn favorite night.  I hinted I wanted Jesus Loves Me.  The moment Tim sang it to Ga...

When Tim mentioned he wanted a Hormel 3 lb ham for our Christmas dinner, I was thrilled.  Memories of my house filled with the aroma of said ham baking in our oven every Christmas morning flooded my mind.  YUMMY!  I can't wait to pick up on the tradition tomorrow morning. Some other Christmas memories have been brought back in the past week.  My oldest son, Elijah, brought home some Turtle candy from his best friend's house one night.  Mike's mom works at the local candy factory that makes the delicious nutty treats.  It was a tradition on mine in my Grandma's later years (she's been gone 11 years), to get her a box of Turtles and something with a teddy bear theme. The same Grandma also liked pretty sweatshirts.  I saw some at Kmart when I was there.  I bought a beautiful black sweatshirt with a cardinal on it on Saturday.  It reminded me of watching my Grandparents feeding peanuts to the cardinals off their back door.  It's a tradit...