Princesses and Dirt

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Every year I mention how much I love fall.  It is my favorite of all the seasons.  Fall Festivals, Cooler temperatures, Postseason Baseball...  I love it.  We've had an awesome few months so far, visiting the zoo, celebrating my birthday, her cousins and great grandma's birthdays, and going to some fall festivals.  Today was absolutely beautiful reaching a high in the mid 70's with a nice cool breeze.  We visited the Heritage Village for their annual Fall Jubilee.  We had a great time, taking a look at how folks lived in Florida before the population exploded.  There were crafts, old houses and buildings, exhibitions (Rope making, Sugar Cane Syrup Making, Spinning Cotton), Bluegrass Music, and lots of great food.  Ava particularly enjoyed the School House...

Speaking of, Ava has started Pre-Kindergarten, and absolutely love  it.  She is picking up on everything extremely quick, and making lots of new friends.  The following pictures has some pictures of her all made up from a princess party some schoolmates held.  Samuel is hitting a huge growth spurt mentally.  He's starting to say words much more clearly, and in a simple way express a few things he wants.  Both of the kids are such a joy and a blessing.  We have so much fun with them.  Here are some pictures of a few things we've been up to this fall...

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Here are some pictures of our Summer...

Zoo Pictures

Random Summer Pictures

This has been an eventful couple of weeks.  About 4 weeks ago, Ava was at the dentist when the dentist found she had 4 cavities.  Awesome!  So, at the time she was oddly excited to get her "silver" fillings.  Exactly a week after getting her first two fillings, she started acting very noticeably different.  It was like she really developed a different personality.  She was overcome with worry, and the desire to express every thought she was having.  And she was gravitating toward expressing every bad thought, and even gravitating toward thinking them.  We told our parents about this behavior and asked them to pray for Ava.  Nancy called, and mentioned that while she was praying she had remembered that Ava had her teeth filled, and had looked up the content of these fillings  Evidently the Amalgam "silver" fillings contain more or less 50 percent mercury!

So, the next day, I emailed a friend who's husband is a dentist.  Alfred is a more holistic dentist than most in the field, and he told me it really sounded like her body had been reacting to the mercury in the fillings.  Evidently a small group of people are very sensitive to mercury, and susceptible to poisoning.  Alfred works in Pensacola, and offered to take out and replace the fillings for free, offering to see if he could find an office to borrow in Seminole (he lives in Seminole, and commutes).  Meanwhile he told us to buy some Chlorella, and put it in Ava's drink.  Chlorella has molecular properties that bind heavy metals to it, and then Ava passes the metals out in her stools.  The night I called him, had ended, easily the worst day we had experienced thus far.  Ava before bed was repeatedly telling me she was thinking that she didn't love me, and then telling me she didn't love me, then immediately breaking down in tears even when I had reacted telling her that I knew that she did love me and that I loved her too.  On top of this she had left a couple of drops of urine on the floor after taking a bath (she had been commenting on burning while peeing, or drops coming out at random times).   This was only a taste of the type of behavior we were experiencing, and this blog isn't log enough to document everything.  So, we immediately bought some Chlorella at the whole foods market, and called Alfred back and tell him that we would drive her up to Pensacola to get the fillings out.  Pensacola is an 8 hour drive from here...

Thursday, a couple days after calling Alfred, Ava and I left for Pensacola to get her four fillings replaced.  It was a long long drive full of hours of singing, game playing, and playing with dolls.  Ava had been taking the Chlorella for a couple days then, and it seemed as if she was getting a little better.  She wasn't saying the very shocking (very shocking) things she had been saying for a couple weeks hundreds of times in a day.  Her expressions were mostly geared at saying that she was thinking people are stupid (let me tell you, in the course of the trip, every single person in the world was found to be stupid.  Even non existent ones, like her Alvin the Chipmunk doll).  We finally arrived in Pensacola, and Alfred labored and took these monster amalgam (they were huge) fillings out, and replaced them.  We were then off for the 8 hour trip back home, arriving at 4 in the morning.

You are going to think I'm crazy, and typically I have never been deep in agreement with all "holistic" medicine approaches.  However, I do believe a lot of holistic dietary approaches.  That God has given our bodies a fantastic ability to heal itself, and certain foods/herbs have properties that help our bodies heal itself.  I also believe that some things we do to our bodies hurt this ability to heal itself.  Nearly a week later now, and I am not kidding, Ava has almost completely changed.  I don't know if it is too soon, but I do know that it isn't in our heads.  She had been expressing these crazy thoughts and attitudes hundreds upon hundreds of times a day, from waking to sleeping.  Sometimes she would even wake up and say this stuff.  Yesterday, she had maybe 2 or three of these expressions, and they really might be what any kid would say.  She is bubbly and full of life again, running around.  As parents we can correct her now without her just completely losing it for a long period of time.  The insane emotional swings have been gone for about 3 days or so now.

Jesus has been very gracious, answering prayers...  His faithfulness to us is staggering.  We would have never been aware of this potential problem if he wouldn't have made us aware.  We are extremely tight on our budget, and replacing fillings isn't cheap, considering healthcare won't cover it, and people would think you are crazy.  We wouldn't have been able to do this, at least right away, if Alfred wouldn't have offered (If you are looking for an Asian Church, he is the pastor of New Harvest Asian Church).  Alfred changed these fillings out completely at no cost to us.  He is a great blessing to us, and we thank God for him.  Jesus is very gracious to us, and continues to show his faithfulness.  We thank Him for this, and we thank Him for brothers and sisters like the Choi family.

On a separate note...  Is it just me, or is it crazy that we are using mercury in teeth fillings, and in vaccines?  Considering how toxic mercury is?

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We have had quite a week.  We celebrated Ava's 4th birthday on Monday, April 25 2011.  We were surprised to hear a week ago that My sister Holly, her daughter Rylen, and my Grandma were going to be coming to visit us.  We have had a great time, and have been playing around at Disney World for the past few days.  Here are some pictures from The Magic Kingdom, and other Disney locations.  Happy Birthday Sweetheart, you are such a blessing to your family!

Some fine dancing from the Ross's home today...

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This past Thursday, Samuel celebrated his 1st birthday.  We had a wonderful smoked brisket dinner with family, and Grandma made an excellent Elmo birthday cake.  Aunt Kelsey flew down the night before and was able to celebrate with us, and has been visiting the past week.  We will miss her when she leaves.

This past week, Samuel has been showing his interest in things, especially when outdoors, by pointing at things and either yelling or making noises.  He has started walking nearly everywhere in less than a week.  It seems as if he's doing something new every day.  Here are some pictures of Samuel's birthday!

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We're pushing into the second week of February, and I'm feeling the post holiday blues, so I thought I'd throw a few Thanksgiving Vacation pictures up.  We spent this past thanksgiving with my family, and had a wonderful time.  There were quite a few firsts.  Samuel received his first haircut from his aunt Kelsey, and Ava went hunting for the first time.  While hunting we saw a flock(?) of about 50 Turkey, and we really didn't see much else.  We did have some luck a couple days later and shot a couple Pheasant, and quail.  We cooked it up before we left, and it was very good.  Sam was also able to meet my side of his family for the first time, and had some great moments with the family, including the famous(infamous?) 4 generations photo...

I love the Fall.  Even in Florida, I love the fall.  Fall in KS means crisp beautiful weather, High School football, Men talking about high school football on Saturday morning at the gas station, planting wheat for next year, moving cattle in for the winter, rust colored heads of milo as far as the eye can see, dove hunting with dad, and pheasant hunting with dad.  Growing up, Fall was the time of year we would take hay rack rides into the country and have a fire and weenie roast out in the middle of no where with our Church family.  Fall was the only season in Kansas, the wind didn't blow at around 45 mph.

Every year for the past 8 years I've been in Florida I've missed a true Autumn, and usually it is usually in the fall, that I get the itch to move north.  The itch lasts about one season, and then I remember come winter, what I feel, is the number one reason to live in FL...  That said, Fall in Florida is time to do some gardening.  The gardening season here usually runs from September to May(ish)+, and today Ava and I just finished getting our garden in.  We've planted some Collard Greens, Snow Peas, Spinach, Mix Lettuce, Peppers (Green Bell, Red Bell, Black Bell, White Bell, Red Chili, Jalapeno), Lettuce (Romaine and Butter crunch), Basil, Dill, Cucumbers, and Marigolds for the soil.  I'm excited, as I feel good about the garden, and for the first year, Ava planted most of the entire garden.  I love gardening with her, and she likes guessing what color the seeds will be, holding the seeds, planting them in the dirt, and covering them up with soil.  It never ceases to amaze me how a plant can come from such a small seed...  Last year we would pray before we planted each vegetable, and this year when it came time to plant the seeds, Ava reminded me that we needed to pray for them.  I asked her if she wanted to pray, and she prayed "Dear Jesus, thank you for this seed.  Please help it grow.  Amen".  It warmed my heart to hear her pray that this year...

Ava's turned into quite a little girl.  She has probably the warmest little spirit I have ever met in a little girl, very innocent, fragile, and beautiful.  Although sometimes I'm pretty sure she uses tears to get her way.  She loves to help, and take trips to home depot with me, to get gardening stuff.  She loves to help do almost anything.  Today we all washed the car, and she was having a blast washing the car with us, washing in her little 2 ft by 2 ft circle.

Samuel is really advancing.  I wrote last month how he has started sitting up, and this month he's waving, saying ma ma (yeah he's very much a ma ma's boy...  for now), and today he started trying to get up on all fours.  His top two teeth have just arrived to match the bottom two, and he eats so much better than Ava.  He seems to like baby food, eating a stage 2 package of food for breakfast and supper.  Ava didn't like baby food much, so this is good...  He is a big dude, wearing 12 month onesies without any spare room (he has been through 5 of them today as it seems to be a big poop day).  He's very active, and loves to scream, smile, cry, and jump in the Jumparoo.  He's a great baby...  However, he doesn't nap well at all, and still wakes up 1 or 2 times each night at least...

Well, thats about it for this time.  We have had the best weather this fall, of all the time I've lived here.  I'm sitting down now, with the windows open, and an awesome cool breeze blowing through the house...  So, to all our friends and family, we love you and miss you!!!

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6 months ago today (in about 13 minutes exactly), Samuel was born!!!  The past few weeks his legs have been strong enough to stand him up on my hand, like I did with Ava when she was little.  He seems to really like it (He must feel like a big boy!).

**Update**

I was running through the blog postings of Ava when she was 6 months old, and noticed that she was sitting up.  I decided to try and sit Samuel up on our bed.  Sure enough, he sat up for the first time, for about 10-15 seconds before wiping out on the bed.  This along with nearly puking in my mouth when I was holding him above my head (a very near miss, I jerked to the side at the last minute, and the puke missed my mouth by centimeters) has made this quite an eventful 6 month half-birthday!  Here are some pictures!