The big day

It's been a long but great day. We left the house at 6:30 this morning to go to the ocularist in Memphis. Delie's appointment was at 8:30 and we were actually early - very rare for us. It was fascinating to watch him make a wax impression of her eye and then go through the steps of making the eye to fit perfectly and then painting it to match her good eye. We left the office at 3:30 with the prosthesis in place. Delie looks great.

We met my parents, Beverly's sister, my nieces, and the other children at a restaurant in Memphis, and then 8 of them went to the Nutcracker at the Orpheum. My dad and I took the 3 children (two of ours and one niece) under 3 home. Delie wanted to see the Nutcracker for her birthday. The local performance in Jackson was last weekend, and Delie (and her sisters) were disappointed that we didn't go, although they didn't really show their disappointment. Then Monday night my parents gave Delie (and everyone) tickets for tonight in Memphis. I know they're having a great time. Everyone will be exhausted by the time they make it home.

In other recent news, Thomas (8 months) now has his first tooth. All of our children have gotten teeth fairly late, and Thomas continued the pattern.

And we have a new dog. Yesterday a puppy showed up by our door. He's really cute and must have been well taken care of, but none of the neighbors know where he came from. The children love him and have named him Joseph since it's Christmastime.

Thanks for praying for Delie and for all of us. Delie goes back to the doctor next week for him to check the prosthesis and make sure everything is OK. It's hard to believe that we may be finished going to Memphis for a while. This has been such a part of our lives since September 13. We're glad to have this behind us, and we thank God for carrying us through it all.

Delie's big week

Tomorrow is Delie's birthday! She'll be turning 9. She's excited about her birthday, but I think she's even more excited about Friday. That's the day she gets her prosthetic eye put in. It's supposed to be an easy process for her. The hard part was done when they removed her eye almost two months ago. At that point they prepared her eye socket for the artificial eye. Now that the swelling from the surgery has gone down completely, she's ready for the eye. We go to the ocularist Friday morning. They'll spend all day creating they eye and painting it to look like her other eye, and then they'll put it in Friday afternoon - no surgery involved. Please pray that everything goes as smoothly as we expect it to. We'll let you know how it goes.