So Much To Be Thankful For!

We are looking forward to spending our Thanksgiving in Philadelphia, although we'd obviously rather be back in West Michigan.  Shawna's family is headed out for the long weekend for the holiday and to celebrate her brother, Kurt's, birthday.  Funny, this is the 4th birthday we'll celebrate at the Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill, NJ (Kurt, John, Shawna, and me...they are staying there which is fabulous....great pool, and one last chance for us to get back to ONE of our places of extended residency on this journey).  As you can see in the pic below from the last week that Janet was out here with the boys and Shawna, fall in Philly is beautiful and the forecast for tomorrow and Friday is in the mid-60's!!!  Yee-haw!!  A bit nicer than the 6 inches of the snow that I departed from Sunday morning at Midway International Airport in Chicago.  

 After a week at home without the boys, I was ready to get back out to Philly, but not after a weekend spent in balmy northern Wisconsin with my second family, the Hope Men's Basketball team.  We had a great start to the season with wins at the University of Wisconsin LaCrosse and the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point (the defending national champions).  I hate being away from my family but if I had to choose one other group of people to be with, this group of coaches and unbelievable young men would be right at the top of my list.  Good luck this weekend, guys, v. Aquinas College and Cornerstone University.
Speaking of "other"families and more folks to be thankful for during this holiday season, I need to recognize my co-workers at Zeeland West High School.  I shouldn't just limit it to my school as the support we've received from all of the Zeeland Public Schools and the Zeeland community has been tremendous and this whole odyssey would not have been possible without their support.  It turns out that the West Michigan Ronald McDonald Housewww.rmhwesternmichigan.org/ was doing a fund raiser by selling Ronald McDonald red and white striped socks.  Well, one of my colleagues and great friend, Hannah Stein, caught wind of it and found a television news clip and made Colleen Johnson, my principal aware of it and they spear headed a drive at ZW for the staff to all purchase the socks as they knew that we were reaping the benefits of the Ronald McDonald House program in Philadelphia.  Check out this pic!!!

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/article/20151122/NEWS/151129885/13406/NEWS

Every single staff member bought a pair as well as many of the students!  I cannot be more blessed and thankful to work with a group of people that not only work extremely hard at their trades, but care for students more than outsiders will ever know, and care about and support each other as they have Shawna, the boys, and me.  Funny that last spring in my speech to the graduating class, one of my key points was to surround themselves with incredible people because life is much easier and more fun if you can do that....case in point!!  Actually, I'm not quite sure if everyone bought the socks in support of the RMH's, our family, or because Colleen said they could wear jeans if they did (FYI, if you ever need teachers to do something a little above and beyond, just allow them to wear jeans for a day at school....for some reason, we love that except for Nate VanPutten, who I teach next to, who, in my 9 years at Zeeland I've never seen wear jeans....c'mon Putty).  And Go DUX this weekend as the football team, under the leadership of an unbelievable coaching staff, has, once again, made it to the state finals!!!
CHOP moved up Shawna's weekly appointment to Monday of this week as her amniotic fluid levels have been a little low (not sure if that's how you spell it, and a quick disclaimer - if any of the medical terms or explanations seem fuzzy, just ask Shawna for a bit more clarification...she may as well add an MD to her name after this...not that I'm not paying attention but I'll blame my lack of precision and knowledge on terms and definitions of the medical stuff on the fact that 1) I'm a man and we just don't always pay attention to detail as we should...I'll admit it.  2) In many of the meetings/ultrasounds I've been trying to keep a 4 and 2 year old monsters from checking each others heart rates, opening and closing the cool foot pedal hazardous waste baskets, playing with IV hookups, or anything else they can get their hands on in a hospital room....I mean, a kids paradise of cool things to play with, right!!  The medical staff mentioned to Shawna that if her fluid levels were still a bit low this week, they may go ahead and proceed with the CSection as they have no concerns about the baby's health if she did need to deliver early (ha, early, Shawna KO'd the odds and has made it 36.5 weeks!!).  The ultra sound actually showed her fluid levels went up over the past week from 8.8 to 9 (see Shawna, I do pay SOME attention to the details) so they are holding off on the CSection until the 37 week mark.  Shawna completed all of the pre-op work and signed the consent papers!  Last few day for us playing man to man (boy to boy) defense as we'll have to implement our zone defense soon!  Never my favorite style of play, but we'll have to get used to being outnumbered for, oh, the next 18 years or so.  Last night at dinner we did finally realize we should probably decide on a definite boy and girl name....suggestions?

So, we'll be shipping the boys home with John and Janet this weekend.  It's their last few days (hopefully) at the RMH and will be bittersweet sending them off.  It's kind of the first part of our move back home but they've come to have so much fun here playing with each other (they've become best buddies through this journey, and often refer to each other as "Buddy"), and experiencing so many cool things such as a great halloween, guest pets coming in often, the Philadelphia Flyers players and their sorority sister-looking wives (great story to go with that if you ever have a few free minutes), air hockey in the basement, bus tours of the city and other museums, etc.  It won't be their last time in Philadelphia as we've grown very fond of this magnificent city and are thankful for all that is has offered us and made us feel at home over the past 3 months, and will definitely be making trips back...shoot, it's only a 12 hour drive (another great anecdote about travel involving something we've come to discover about most folks not from the midwest and their travel habits if you ever have a few minutes).  Hopes are that Shawna will be discharged from the hospital late next week with baby soon to follow.  The next post should have some pics of our beautiful new blessing!
BTD (Back To Diapers!! - thanks, Myles, for potty training this fall and allowing us a few weeks of being diaperless, for the most part)

From Philly with much to be Thankful for -

CHOOSING JOY

-Jeff

BTW, Northwestern is 9-2 if anybody cares...no big deal.