Hi everybody,

Don't ya just love Northern IN? Only here can you have a "green" Christmas and a white Valentines Day :-) Ok, so this year it was a white Christmas but some years its not. This winter has seemed to drag on and on. BUT, the sun has been shining his face so at least it helps to lift the mood and monotony of winter.

Normally, we home school in our room in the basement. But when the gray sky's of old man winter kicked in it was rather depressing! When the sun began to shine we moved upstairs. It makes for more clean up at the end of the day but its been well worth it. To see the sun flowing thru the windows has been sooo nice! Its too cold most days for the kids to even play outside but its very nice to feel the warmth of the sun coming thru the windows.

We are so much looking forward to Spring. I can't begin to tell you how much we anticipate it!

And with Spring always comes new beginnings. New flowers, new life and new hope. We met a new doctor last week for Kelly. He was really great with her. We were all impressed. We have decided, barring anything new between now and then... to have surgery. It is pretty involved and he said quite painful but Kelly says she is ready for the challenge. She is now old enough to understand (as much as a person can) how much pain will be involved. She has done well with anesthesia the last 3 surgeries over the past year. That was biggest thing holding the medical professionals at bay before. She had a fever of 105.9 after surgery when she was a toddler so they weren't willing to give her anesthesia her for very long.

This surgery will take all day. She will be in the hospital in Indy for 5 days after and we will stay in a rehab facility for 2 weeks after that. She will then be going to Ft Wayne for Pt like always but now 2-3 times per week after rehab. And continue home PT daily as she currently does. It will be 18 months of rehab and intense PT. During the 18 months it may seem as if she has regressed but that's not the case. She will have to use her walker and wheelchair especially at first. But, the goal is at the end of the 18 months that Kelly will use her sticks for her daily walking. She can walk around our house etc right now and we hope that will even get better after surgery. There are no guarantees but if we don't do anything things will get progressively worse in the next 12 months.

They will be rotating her hips back to their normal position. They will be putting her big tendon on the side of her knee caps to pull them out and plating and screwing the knees on both sides. Some bone work, tendon work etc etc. They are planning on two doctors working on her at the same time.

Surgery is hopeful for the end of April. We are awaiting the GAIT study right now. Then we will meet with the surgeon next month so he can go over all their finding with the study, measurements, and x-rays and talk with Kelly again.

We know how hard this will be for her. We are committed to helping her thru this and know that she will do fabulous. She is so strong! Her only real question for the surgeon was "how long will it be after surgery before I can get back in the pool, cause that's my favorite PT". I truly admire her courage, I can't imagine being faced with something like this at 12!

Speaking of "12", the twins had a birthday last week! Constantly reminding us all that they will be teenagers next year! I can't cope with that. Where does time go?? :-(

We had a fun day off school, ate pizza, played games and had ice cream cake. We are taking them to the Children's Museum this week too. Josiahs bday is this weekend so we are celebrating it all at once. They love the CM, and so do we!

Josh is off work this week so he is utilizing his time to get ahead in his college classes so he can be almost finished when Kelly's surgery rolls around. Its nice having him here during the day. I enjoy spending time with my husband!

Everyone her has been pretty healthy. The normal winter colds and germs but nothing significant, thankfully! It seems everyone around is hacking and coughing or has the flu of some sort. I hope we can escape the yuckies!

We had such a nice Valentines Day. Our church had a banquet. The kids had their own thing and the adults had a very nice dinner and entertainment. It was fun!

Hope everyone is doing well.

Talk to ya soon!
Andra