Thanksgiving 2005

 

What a year for giving thanks… After worry and drama last year with doctor’s visits and surgery and high peaks and low valleys, I am so grateful to have only a little news to report on the Ray family’s year in 2005!

 

Our big news is that we moved to the suburbs this year, something I never imagined I would be willing to do. But here we are, and after all the upheaval of moving, (not to mention several months of two house payments!), we are beginning to set down roots here in Mesquite. We love our new home and feel blessed to be here.

 

Our children are adjusting well to new schools and making new friends, while staying in touch with the old. Vanessa and Isaac enjoyed a special trip to Williamsburg, VA with my mother and a family friend, and numerous sleepovers with Kurt’s parents, this summer. They have had a great time indulging their hobby of playing NeoPets, and are excelling in school. We are very proud of them.

 

Virginia’s surgery was as successful as it possibly could have been and she is truly just a different child than the solemn, introverted, largely non-verbal toddler she was before surgery. She is full of energy and life and strong opinions now, speaks in long, complex sentences, and is teaching Kurt and me how to be parents of a “two year old”. Although she is our third child, apparently Isaac and Vanessa never got the “Terrible Two’s” memo, so Virginia is having to be the one to break us in and keep us humble. After only eight months on growth hormone replacement therapy, she has grown more than twice as much as she did the entire year prior, and we are hopeful that she will be back on the growth chart, (even the 5^th percentile would be great!) by the time she turns three next March.

 

2005 saw Kurt complete his CISSP and MCSE certifications and he continues doing well at McAfee. I completed my childbirth educator certification and had the joy of teaching many more couples and attending some of them in labor- plus I got my own website this year! The more I work in birth, the more I love it. Legal transcription and volunteer work have also kept me busy this year, along with my “real job” of being a wife and mother!

 

We hope that 2005 has been a joyful year full of blessings for you as well.