End of Summer/Start of School Pics

Happy Birthday Eli! 9 years old!

David's first year of playing football! He's done AMAZING!

The summer of '09 will go down as one of the smokiest in the history of Fairbanks due to wildfires surrounding the town!

This is what it looks like when blogging friends meet for the first time! Welcome to Alaska Rocksee and Hubs!! SO happy you are here!

The Tanana Valley State Fair signals the end of summer for Fairbanksans and ALWAYS brings rain!

My boys are up there somewhere!

This is as exciting as it got for the girls! :)

First day of school for the boys!

And.....a week later, first day of school for Mary Beth!

We could hardly get her to say goodbye to us!

End of the first day....she had a blast!

Seasons, Numbers and Change

The lazy, crazy days of summer in the north are over and FALL! Yes- fall has already arrived. Our leaves are changing and our highs most days barely make it to the lower 60's. Lots of rain. And I'm loving it! Yes, summer is short here and our fall is way shorter than most, but after a summer of smoke and record heat, I'm happy about it.

Summer here is crazy- sunny, late nights and little sleep make for wacky blood sugars! I have dealt with what seems like a TON of late night low blood sugars.....like in the 40s and 50s and we are suddenly dealing again with a mid-morning spikes that are just way out of range. The late night lows I think are due to eating dinner too late, then is too high to have a snack before bed and then when I check her at midnight, she's too low. Her mid-morning spikes have occurred for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, she wakes up on the low side and starving, so we don't always wait 20 minutes before she eats. That will do it nearly every time. Or we've woken up late, breakfast late and then is spiking when it's time to eat lunch. This summer has been a huge reminder to me how important a schedule is in order to keep Jada's numbers in range.


Change has occurred in a big way for our family this year! We have mostly homeschooled our kids- with the boys doing both public and homeschool. The plan had been for David to go the our neighborhood elementary school, Eli to private school and I would homeschool Mary Beth.

The week before school started and I was beginning to work on Mary Beth's curriculum, I just had the biggest knot in my stomach. I just didn't feel right about it- which is strange to me. So, I began to pray about it and just was not feeling any peace about it. I think my long days of being home alone with the kids have finally caught up to me and I am desperately needing a break. There's a whole lot more to it than that, but that's all I'll say for now. :)

So....with the instability of Jeff's job, it was quickly decided that private school for Eli wouldn't be the wisest financial decision that we could make. All three of them are in our neighborhood school and so far, we very happy with our decision. I miss them SO much, but they are doing great!

That's the short of it. With our schedule getting back on track, hopefully more blogging will come along with that. Be on the look out for more pictures of our beautiful Alaska summer in the next few days!

Quiet....for a Few Minutes

The house is quiet for a little while. Jeff has taken the four kiddos to pick up the now repaired lawn mower and to take David to football practice. I thought I was going to lose my mind several times today as my children just have had a hard time getting along with each other and making messes that they don't want to clean up. Today is one of those days that I would just like to take off and not come back until I felt like it---which may not be until next week!

Part of the reason today has gone poorly is the lack of sleep that I had last night. With no shot at dinner time-BG 155- (after an extremely active day and eating approximately 30 grams of carbs for dinner plus a tootsie roll and half a tootsie pop) Jada went to bed at 10 pm with her BG at 189. No snack because I just wasn't sure which way she was going to go. At her midnight check she was 54!! How in the heck that happened I'll never know. It just seems if she is on the go, she burns up that blood sugar almost faster than insulin could! She was hard to wake up- scared me- and I finally managed to get her to wake up for some glucose tabs and then a glass of chocolate milk. Needless to say, I couldn't get to sleep. I finally just brought her into bed with me and just knowing that I could listen for her breathing and put my arm around her was enough for me to finally relax. She woke up at 101 (yay!) and has had great numbers all day.

We are in a bit of turmoil with Jeff's job. Seems like there is always some sort of drama in our life- which I am totally tired of ! :) He went to work for these people knowing that the restaurant was messed up and that the investment company really didn't have a good understanding of what it takes to run a good restaurant. As the summer has gone on, time has revealed just exactly what kind of people these folks are, which is less than desirable. I really can't go into details, but we are beginning to wonder if they are going to be able to keep the doors open. Jeff has more than done his part- the restuarant was losing thousands of dollars a month (like $80 grand) and Jeff has brought it to turning a profit in 3 months time- but they are STUPID when it comes to how they spend their money. He's been working approximately 70 hours a week and yet, the home office just can't get their stuff together. We would appreciate any prayers as we walk our way through this. We don't want to just up and quit- but don't know how much longer he can continue to work this kind of schedule. It's draining all of us!

Prayer Request Update

It's very late-way past bed time- but thought I would give an update on my previous requests for prayer.
Sienna- the MRI was inconclusive- the shadow they saw on the cat scan was possibly a pool of blood which could have come from hitting her head pretty hard. Right now, she's doing fine- no more seizures. She has a follow up MRI in a few weeks to see if it has dissolved.
Dellie- Her surgery was successful! They ended up operating on both of her eyes because the retina on her right eye was showing early signs of beginning to detach. A few weeks of lots of rest and the doc says she should be good to go. We're looking forward to helping out them in the next few weeks with meals, helping with the kids and whatever else needs done.

Prayer Requests

It's one of those nights....I'm super tired....but my brain is rattled. I have a couple of prayer requests.
One of Jeff's cousins has a sweet little girl around the same age as my boys. Her name is Sienna and her mama's name is Mary. Today, Sienna had a seizure and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. A cat scan revealed a "shadow" on her brain. There was an MRI done as well and the results will be read in the morning. Please pray for her mama, who has had a great deal of burdens to bear in her life and just when things seemed to be looking up for them, this happens. It's so hard to understand these kinds of things, especially when they are so little.
One of my dearest best friends is on her way to Anchorage tonight for emergency surgery. The retina in her left eye is detaching and if it comes completely detached, they most likely won't be able to save it and she will be blind in that eye. Over the weekend, she noticed some loss in her peripheral vision and called for an appointment yesterday. Her name is Dellie-- she is actually our pastor's wife and is an amazing woman. She has five children ranging in ages from 13 all the way down to 1. I'm feeling helpless, too, because of having company here this week and I'm so limited at this point in what I can do.
Thanks friends, for praying.