Prentending this is July 13, 2011!

Well, I am almost 2 months late blogging this! However I felt it was important to capture the memories our family had on this most important day. On July 13, 2010 Addison Hope Guo Ying Mervyn, truly became a Mervyn! That is the day that she became legally part of our family forever. Howard and I look back at that day and feel wonder and amazement. That God would truly choose us to raise this most this brilliant, silly, cheeky,beautiful & caring little girl. She has been such a huge blessing to our family. People often say how lucky/blessed she is to have us. And I can never seem to convey how it is US that are the blessed ones!

Riley and Addison's relationship has grown and developed into a beautiful friendship. They are truly sisters! Which includes some throw down rip roaring fights. And beautiful loving quiet play times where they could never imagine disagreeing with one another.(:

The above picture, is about an hour after we met our sweet girl, for the first time.....she was terrified. And being completely honest for the first 6 months we would see a variation of that same face. At first it was several times a day, then once a day, then once every few days. Well you get the picture. I can honestly say I haven't seen this look of terror on her face in many months! She is truly coming into her own, with our family. She willingly shows us love and respect. Also she is more than willing to challenge us (in a healthy way.)

Our life feels normal.....not the same normal as before, but a better normal! A new normal that includes the most amazing little girl. We could not imagine our lives without our sweet little Addy girl.

Oh and if you noticed that our sweet Addy now is sporting some new bangs.....well she and her darling older sister (note the sarcasm!) decided to play hair dresser. She has bangs starting halfway back on her head! lol! We are trying to grow them out, but it could be take a very long time, with how slow her hair grows:)

June/July Update part 1

Junk food, painting & America's Funniest Home Videos Party the night before surgery:)

Nathan in traction, playing video games. these were taken with my iphone:(

Peace out! Those glasses were from a crayola set that Paige (a fellow blogger) dropped off, along with a whole lot of candy!lol! Thanks again for visiting us Paige!

Well we have had a busy little life recently! Lots to celebrate and a few roadblocks, however all is well in the Mervyn household:)

On June 15th (the only reason I can remember the date, is that it was my 32nd Birthday!) Nathan fell on his way into the garage, coming home from youth. He unfortunately broke his left femur. It was very a very serious fracture, Howard took him immediately to emerg. I followed as soon as my bestfriend arrived to watch the other kidlets. Once I arrived the first thing that we noticed was Nate's broken leg was at least 4X's the size of the other! We knew immediately that he would be air ambulanced to Edmonton, sure enough by 4AM the next morning Nathan and I arrived at the Stollery Children's Hospital. Nathan was suppose to have immediate (within 24hours) surgery to insert a rod into the femur, however once we got to the operating room, the orthopedic surgeon's realized they didn't have the right rods, so we would have to wait for 4 days for the right rod to arrive.

Nathan hung around in traction for four days and I hung out with him, while Howard came home to managed the rest of the troops! Nate had surgery 6 days after he broke his femur and we were happy to come home and recuperate!

Its funny the second I saw Nathan in emerg, the first thing that crossed my mind was to question God! And in a split second a verse shot across my mind.... We know that in all things that God works for the good of those who love Him, those whom he has called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

That verse became our theme verse for our 10 day stay in the hospital! The people we met were amazing! I felt like we were exactly where God needed us. We got to minister to other families in need. Nathan and I prayed for strangers! We became so thankful for all of our too numerous to list blessings! When Nathan went in for surgery, Howard and I had such a great peace, it's cliche to say....but it was beyond our understanding!!! Our precious wonderful church family gathered around us in prayer and service. We arrived home to a sparkling clean home! With the fridge full of groceries and the freezer full of meals! Nathan's youth group made him cards. It was just all so humbling and amazing!

Nathan is now recovering slowly....he is having a difficult time with physio, and his doctor has threatened hospitalization again if he can't show progress. It is taking alot of my time helping him with this, and just his general personal care. He is now 70lbs and difficult to lift on and off the toilet! We have had to stay mostly at home, as he is so heavy for me to carry in and out of the house etc. I have been trying to have friends over to play with to break up the kids monotony. I have been a little bit happy that our summer weather has mostly consisted of rain and colder than average weather!lol!

It has become a bit tiresome for the other kids, to be stuck at home as well. They are not use to having me so busy with Nathan. I have to say though they are all so wonderful and caring! Its so great for us to see how much empathy they have for their brother. What a huge blessing all of our kids are! Its such a privilege to be their Mom!

We head back to Edmonton, for some more doctor consultations on Sunday, and will be extending the trip by a couple days to have some "city fun":) On a side note, this accident encouraged ( I don't know if thats the right word!?!) Howard to have a meeting with his bosses and negotiate some terms of his contract. He is giving them 6 months to find a maintenance run, near town! That will allow him to be home at a "regular" time and be here on the weekends!!! Right now he is filling in doing just that! So he is home at 5 o'clock and we have him on the weekends! All I can say is God is good! Even in the valley's....especially in the valley's!

I am hoping to update the blog a couple times in the next few days! We have had our 1 year Forever Family anniversary, Josh's birthday and the end of school, lots to write about:) Sorry I have been gone so long!

A Trip to the Doctors

Addison, my bestfriend Jodica and I made the trip to Edmonton, so we could see Addy's liver specialist last week. First I have to say we had a wonderful time playing and shopping.:) The weather was great and topping that all off we got to meet one of my favorite bloggy friends, Paige for the first time! It was so wonderful to meet in person as Paige has been such a support through Addison's adoption and once she came home. It was so neat to see the girls play alongside each other. Paige has two lovely girls in Lilah and Zoe. Above is a picture of 3 of our sweet girlies.

On to the big news......Addison's appointment went really really well!!!!! Yay! Her doctor is amazing! He did a scan of Addison's liver to look at the health. He believes that her body is possibly fighting off this virus and just wants to watch her for the next little bit. We will head for an ultrasound at home and some more bloodwork, and then we will see Dr. Yap every 6 months for now, unless things change. He didn't believe she was a good candidate for some experimental treatments that are going on, because these treatments are aggressive and haven't really shown a marked improvement in the patients at this point. Dr Yap was wonderful with Addy and took the time to answer my questions. We never once felt rushed or like he wasn't listening to my concerns for our sweet girl. He is hands down one of the best doctors we have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

I have to say that I am now sighing a huge sigh of relief!!! Praise the Lord! I thank all of you who have surrounded us with love, prayers and support. We appreciate each any every one of you, those that we know well and those that we know through our blog. We will keep everyone updated on each of Addison's visits. However our greatest prayer would be that her little body would fight this virus and clear it from her system without out any medical intervention....a very slim chance, however our family worships a God who still performs miracles daily. So I will trust in Him and His will for our sweet little Addy!

We're Back!

This post is a long, long, long time coming! I really haven't been feeling like blogging lately....however I know I'll be disappointed if I stop! So I'm going to fake it, until I enjoy blogging again!lol!

Much has been going on in our household. I guess the biggest event was our holidays. We returned a week ago from two weeks in sunny warm Florida. It was a great vacation and so very nice to have Howard with us for three weeks straight! We also had Howard's Mom come with us, which was really nice. The pictures I have added are from our family picture session at the Grand Floridian in Walt Disney World.

Our Miss Riley-roo turned 6 while we were in Florida. She had a blast getting hair, nails and makeup done with Addison at the Bibidibobidi Boutique and then dinning with her favourite princess at the Akershus Restaurant in Epcot. It amazes me that she is already 6!

I think our favourite day hands down, was getting away from the crowds at the park and heading to Clearwater Beach, near Tampa. The sand was like powder and the water was turquoise and warm, and it was a warm and sunny day. I think our next family vacation will be more beaches less theme parks! lol!

On the home front. We finally have an appointment for Addison with the pediatric liver specialist in Edmonton. I will be taking her on Friday to go see this doctor, with my sweet little girl and many questions in hand. It will be interesting to see what he has to say........ Its been a long wait and I just would like to move forward with whatever he decides to do, or not do. If that makes sense!?!

The kids are all doing really well. Addison had a fabulous time on her first family holiday. As much as she was happy to come home to her room and her stuff, she was asking the next day when our next holiday was!lol! We are working hard on her manners. Something I guess we would be doing with any 3 year old adopted or not. She had a few weeks of not sleeping well before our holiday's, but now she is back to being a lean mean sleeping machine.

I am hoping now that I have posted this post that I will back to posting weekly......we will see!

Happy 3rd Birthday Addison

Over the weekend our Miss Addy turned 3. We had a quiet celebration as she and Riley were recovering from a nasty cold. We all had fun celebrating Addison's day, and she was tickled pink to receive a Kai Lan backpack on wheels (her suitcase, lol.) Its amazing to see how far we have all come in the few short months she has been home. We are so beyond blessed!

For me, her birthday was a day of reflection, prayer and thanksgiving. I reflected on who my sweet little girls biological mother is, prayed for her, and gave thanks to our heavenly father that this amazing woman chose to carry our sweet baby girl and place her somewhere safe so she could be found, and eventually placed in our arms. My heart broke for this woman who we will never meet. I can't imagine the strength it took for her to make such a heart wrenching decision.

Our amazing little Addy is growing in leaps and bounds. Its hard to keep up with all her progress. The girl can talk your ear off! She is such a trooper. Spreading joy and laughter wherever she goes.:)

Best Field Trip Ever!

Really the title says it all. When the rest of the school was at the ski hill, for a fun day, Nathan and his buddy got to go on their very own special field trip! Usually they would stay home for these days, as its no fun watching everyone else have fun up the hill. However this year both of the boys aides, planned a fun filled day! They even got out to walk a bit as it was so warm out! Here they are on the way to the Pioneer Museum.


One of our local businessman offered his "bat cave" for the boys to hang out at for the morning! Its like a "man cave" on steroids with many vintage cars a kitchen, XBOX 360 and theatre screen!

Nate was trying to tell me that he needed this car, and it was for sale for only $25,000! LOL!

Yep! Best field trip ever! Car racing!

we are so blessed to have amazing staff at our school who love our kids. We have attended school's where the staff is just there for the pay cheque. Not this school, they make an attempt to include all the students in fun days, even if that means planning a whole different trip for the kids who can't go up the ski hill. So thank you! You certainly made these boys day.:)

How time flies!

I remember this day like it was yesterday! Nathan's first day of Grade 1 and Josh's first day of Kindergarten and our sweet little Riley! Sometimes it feels like you blink and they are Pre teens and almost 6! Oh how I love these little munchkins! And how quickly I forget that they were once little like Addison, it reminds me to drink up every second with them! Before I know it they will all be grown and gone!