Wedding Bells

One of the most exciting things that has happened during our time back was that my brother got engaged! He proposed in Austin on March 4 and we were able to be there (hiding) in order to take pictures. After she said yes, we appeared and took some more pictures and then went to dinner with them (my parents kept the boys). We love Jenna and are so excited for the two of them. They are both in college and have about 3 years left, but are looking forward to their life together. We are thankful we were able to be there for the engagement because we won't be able to return for their wedding in July. :( It has been a blessing to get to know Jenna more and spend time with them together. I'm so excited to be getting another sister-in-law and so happy for my brother to have found his wife! We know God will be truly glorified not only in their wedding but more importantly their marriage!

A Little Update

We are still in Texas! I have really slacked on updating the blog and I'm sorry for that. We are still waiting on our visas to return to East Asia but for now we're enjoying time with family. Here's a picture from today - all the cousins on Micah's side of the family except the oldest one, Preston, who has graduated from college and lives in Denton.

The older ones, Katie (top left) and Blake (top right) are Micah's middle sister, Paula's. Sadie (bottom right) is 3 weeks older than Reister and is Paula's youngest. Jackson (in green) and Rachel (bottom left) are Robin's - Micah's older sister. Paula and her family live just around the corner in Sulphur Springs. Robin and her family live in Denver but are here visiting this week. So we're having lots of family fun!

Mason's Surgery

I'm sorry I haven't updated the blog in a long time! In case there are some of you that didn't hear about Mason's surgery, I'm pasting the emails I sent out below...

January 28th

Hi Friends!

We just wanted to remind you that Mason will have his surgery tomorrow (January 29^th) at 7:30am CST. He will have both eye muscles operated on as well as his circumcision. He will have a blood factor administered to help his blood clot properly shortly before the surgery. Micah and I are in the hospital with him now and will stay with him tomorrow night as well. Reister is with my parents in Austin. We hope to send out an update tomorrow night to let you know how it goes. Thank you so very much for your support and pr@yers! We are trusting in our Sovereign G0d!

Blessings,

Michelle for all the Webbs

January 29th

Hi Everyone,

Thank you very much for your prayers! We truly felt them! We both had a real peace as we waited during surgery and were very much aware of G0d’s presence and sovereignty. Mason got out of recovery by almost noon and has been resting/sleeping in the hospital since then. The surgery started a little late because there was a mix up on getting him the blood factor that he needed to help him clot properly. Once it was finally found and administered, his surgery began and both the circumcision and eye muscle surgery went fine. We spoke with both doctors afterward and they said that everything went well. So far Mason has been asleep (but moving around and sometimes trying to rub his eyes) since he returned. We’ll just pretty much hang out here in the room with him and wait for his eye doctor to come by later to check on him. The urologist will check him out tomorrow morning. Then, as long as the hematologist is satisfied with his recovery we should be discharged tomorrow.

What a blessing to have access to such great healthcare and physicians. We are very thankful that Mason could get this taken care of during our time in the states.

As far as his eyes, he will most likely continue wearing his glasses but will hopefully have less crossing as a result of the surgery. It would be awesome if the surgery provided more of a complete correction, but only time will tell for that.

We love you all and thank you very much for your prayers and encouragement!

Michelle for all the Webbs

Update as of February 7th:

Mason is recovering well. His eye doctor saw him again on February 4th and said he looked good but to continue wearing his glasses indefinitely. Mason is far-sighted and that problem is isolated from his strabismus (eye crossing) problem. We have to give him eye drops and ointment every night that he doesn't like very much but other than that he doesn't seem bothered by his surgery. His circumcision is also healing well.

Sweet Reister

A couple of nights ago when I was laying with Reister for a couple minutes before he went to sleep he said "Mommy..... I love you all the world!"

I sure love my sweet Reister! (even "all the world")

Happy New Years!

I guess I should say Merry Christmas too! Maybe I'll eventually post some Christmas photos...

We had a very busy December as we traveled all over Texas before landing in Austin to spend Christmas with my family. It was a lot of fun to be there with LiLi and Poppo and Uncle Sean! But right before Christmas we got the sad news that my grandfather (my Dad's father) had passed away. My Dad, brother and I all drove up to Kansas to be with my grandmother and attend the memorial service. Micah stayed in Austin with my Mom to keep the boys. We were able to still be with my Mom's side of the family on Christmas day. The day after Christmas we drove up to Denver to visit Micah's oldest sister, Robin. Micah's other sister & family and his parents joined us as well. We had a great time together and got to enjoy the snow as well! Reister was a big fan of sledding while Mason enjoyed being pulled around on the sled.
Now we're in Sulphur Springs for a week. We'll be traveling to the east coast next week and then be back in SS for several days before heading back to Austin. The latest with Mason is that he's most likely going to have a combo eye surgery and circumcision on January 29th in Temple. He's going to have a trial procedure on the 22nd ordered by his hematologist to see if a certain injection will cause him to produce the necessary blood factor to make surgery safe for him. Although the eye surgery is normally a short out-patient procedure, Mason will need to stay overnight for observation to make sure he doesn't having any problems related to his Von Willibrands (bleeding disorder).
I wish I was better about posting updates and pictures but I feel like we have just been SOO busy and crazy with all of our traveling. For those of you who still read our blog, keep coming back! I really do hope to catch up someday - especially before we head back to the land of slow internet! :)

Cookie Making

On Thanksgiving we made sugar cookies (shaped like turkeys, leafs and pumpkins) with Reister's cousin Sadie. We used blue and pink icing! :)


Reister had an itch ...


Sadie got a little more into it than Reister, and therefore got a little more flour on her :)

Six Sweet Years

Some of you may know that Micah and I are planning to take a short trip without the kids in February to celebrate our 5th year anniversary (but really at more than 6 years of marriage) We decided to not do too much special in terms of gifts, etc for the last couple of years so we could save up to take the trip. Micah's parents will keep the boys then. But we were able to go out to eat on our actual anniversary this year (November 15th) while my parents kept the boys. We tried a new seafood place near my parent's in Austin and it was really good. You can't tell from the picture, but we sat in what is called a "snug", a booth that has a curtain you can pull shut for privacy. Kinda fun! We enjoyed a night out by ourselves and were able to walk about a bit afterward. What a blessing it is to be married to such an awesome man of God, my very best friend!

Doctor's visits

This update is late in coming, but I wanted to let you all know about how Mason's doctor appointments have been going. On November 5th, I took Mason to Dallas for two appointments - with a pediatric urologist to follow up on his kidney issue, and with a pediatric ophthalmologist to follow up on his eyes. The first brought good news and lot of praises to God on our part - Mason's left kidney (that has been enlarged since he was in the womb) was perfectly normal in size! He has not had any infections or problems related to this since his birth, but it has always been something that needed follow up. The second appointment wasn't as encouraging. The ophthalmologist examined Mason and said he thought he still needed to have surgery to correct his crossing. He also said that Mason's eyes were sometimes straight with his glasses on and sometimes crossed. Apparently, this is uncommon - normally with the glasses on, a child's eyes should be straight all the time, or still crossed all the time. Mason's crossing is intermittent. This made the doctor concerned about whether there were any underlying neurological problems. He recommended that Mason see a pediatric neuro-ophthalmologist to rule out any neurological problems before surgery. As you might guess, that kind of doctor isn't exactly easy to find. But God really really provided because I was able to get an appointment with one in Temple, Texas (one hour from Austin) the following Tuesday. That doctor, Dr. Tredici, examined Mason and said that he doesn't think that Mason had any neurological problems. He said that really his condition is somewhat common. He did dilate Mason's eyes and determined that he needed a stronger prescription and changed up the instructions for patching his eyes. We will see him again on December 16th and will discuss surgery at that point because he also felt that Mason would need surgery to correct the crossing.
It is a little confusing that Dr. Yu in Hong Kong had such a differing opinion but I think Mason just was having a really good day in terms of straightness that day. Dr. Yu also said that he thought there was a possibility Mason might still need surgery or that the American doctors might have a differing opinion. So... we're continuing to pray for Mason and for the doctor's to have wisdom. We'll probably stick with Dr. Tredici in Temple instead of returning to the doctor in Dallas. He is both a ped. ophth. and ped. neuro-ophth. so he seems well qualified.
We appreciate all your prayers and will try to keep you updated as we know more!

Back in the USA

We arrived to Texas last Friday night. Our trip back was pretty good - the long flight over the ocean is never fun, but it was a little shorter this time (almost 11 hours) so that helped. The harder part was the jet lag that lasted about 5 days. The boys had a hard time sleeping through the night and therefor so did we. But then after they started sleeping through, Micah and I still had a hard time for a couple nights! Now we're all on Texas time - even with the time change off of daylight savings time.
Micah is in Louisiana for the week but the boys and I stayed in Sulphur Springs. Mason has two doctors appointments in Dallas on Thursday - for his eyes and kidney. I'll post after those to let you all know how they went.
We're really enjoying our time back so far. I'm loving the food and abundance of Dr. Pepper! I've thought of several things worth blogging about as far as differences between life here and back in Asia but I'll have to post another time as I'm pretty sleepy right now! :)

Mason Riding

This is from about a month ago, but thought you might enjoy seeing Mason on his riding toy.

A couple of pics and our trip home is soon!

Here's a recent picture of some local friends that came over


Here's Reister doing a craft recently (Thanks, Sarah, for the idea!)


We leave Friday to head back to Texas! Please be thinking of us during our trip - we'll be traveling for about 24 hours from about 9:30pm Thursday night to 9:30pm Friday night (Texas time). We are getting pretty excited, but we're busy trying to pack and say our goodbyes here. It's going to be so weird living in America after being in Asia for four years! I will try to post while we're back in Texas as often as I can!

Mason's eyes update

Mason and I got back from our quick trip to Hong Kong today. We saw Dr. Yu yesterday and he said he saw improvement in Mason’s eyes – so much that he does not recommend surgery. He said Mason’s eye crossing is intermittent and is not the infantile condition that requires surgery. Dr. Yu increased Mason's prescription when he saw Mason in July and he thinks that was very helpful for his vision. He said to continue with regular visits while we are back in Texas to the pediatric ophthalmologist we saw in January to monitor his progress. He needs to continue wearing his glasses and patching his stronger eye for one hour a day.

So we are really praising G0d for answering so many pryrs for Mason! Thank you very much to all of you who have expressed concern and pryed for Mason! We're so glad he won’t need the surgery and agree that he eyes do seem straight a lot of the time, especially when he’s wearing his glasses.

By the way, we have our tickets to return to Texas on Friday, October 23rd! We can't wait to see and catch up with many of you over the six months that we're back in the states!

Tickets!

We got our tickets to go back to the states! We're going to be back in Texas for almost six months - we don't know exactly when we will come back here, but it will probably be sometime early to mid-April. But the important date right now is October 23rd! We will be flying into DFW that night. We are getting very excited! We can't wait to see all our family members and friends and just enjoy life in America for a few months. We'll be staying primarily in Sulphur Springs with Micah's parents but will be making lots of trips to Austin to see my family and some other trips to other places to see family and friends. Woo hoo! We would have been in East Asia for four years if we stayed till October 28th. In some ways it's gone by pretty fast, but the fact that we're going back with two kids really puts things in perspective! This last month is going to fly by, I'm sure!

What a sweet big brother

This was all Reister's idea. He wanted to "feed" Mason - wanted him to lay in his lap and everything! He loves Mason so much!

Mason's Walking!

Mason finally learned to walk. He's almost 15 months! I find it really funny that he walked this late because Reister walked at 10 months (on the day). But every child is different, and I've heard of kids not walking till they were 18 months. Anyway, check out this video I took yesterday. He's gotten even better today. He actually started walking a little bit almost two weeks ago but I didn't really count it till he could walk across the room totally unassisted. Do all kids walk with their arms up like that when they first start walking? I think I remember Reister doing the same thing! I don't know if the video will still come up, but click here to see Reister's first steps again.