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I’m heading to the North Pole Today, No really…

I’m heading to the North Pole today. Well, first I’m stopping in Seattle, WA. My brother Jeremy is picking me up from there where we will drive his two vehicles onto a three day ferry that will take us into Alaska. Then its a two day drive that will take us into Canada, then back into Alaska, ending just outside of Fairbanks in a town called North Pole. Ok, so its not actually the top of the world North Pole, but its pretty close. Now I’ve been told that it gets as low as -40 degrees there – but its not bad because its a dry cold… (a little Phoenix humor there… Ok a very little Phoenix humor there…)

Anyway, as romantic as heading to the North Pole just before Christmas might sound, its not going to be all that romantic. I’m leaving my family here in Phoenix and the purpose of the trip is to help my brother move there. I haven’t been away from my wife and kids for this long before and I’m going to miss them terribly. I haven’t been away from Lexi at all since she was born and I don’t believe I’ve ever gone more than a few days since Zander was born. This trip is going to be almost 12 full days — and I just now realized how romantic that sounds as well – with the 12 days of Christmas and all. For those of you doing the math, yes I’ll be home for Christmas – Wow – this could have been a made for TV movie (too bad the writers are on strike).

Anyway, I hope to get a few pictures of the Northern lights, and I will enjoy the time with my brother (at least when we are not driving through winding mountainous roads, or unloading moving trucks full of stuff). This time of year the sun doesn’t really come up in Alaska – it kind of rolls along the horizon for a few hours in the middle of the day. Its going to be cold. I even went out and bought some long-johns for the trip.

Here is a picture of winter in Ohio – it was cold there but at least the sun was up.

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Family

Lexi’s Birth Story (as told by Stephanie)

As most of you know, I’ve suffered some complications with the birth of our daughter, Lexi. I’ve made some improvements, but boy has it been a rough road. Since things have been crazy here, we haven’t even had the time to call our family to let them know of the great event has taken place. Sorry family. But this post is so that everyone knows what has been going on. So let’s back up to Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at 800am, when we arrived at the hospital.

Ok, it was more like 8:05, 8:10—we had to be late or it wouldn’t have been the Sackriders. When I got to the hospital to be induced, they took a urine sample and I had one point of protein (protein in the urine is a sign of toxemia). Not too bad since I’m there to be induced, but that was the start of everything. I was almost 5 cm when I arrived, so they said to walk and try to get the labor to start naturally. I walked and walked. I was progressing but at 3:00pm my doctor decided to start pitocin. At 5:30pm, the doctor broke my water. I was still laboring quite well at this point with no pain killers. At 7 cm, I began to feel labor pains in my legs that were more intense then anything. I finally asked for the epidural. Both my hubby and my nurse tried to talk me out of it but the pain won. I just couldn’t imagine going for an hour or longer in the intense pain that I was in. I was vomiting and shaking from the pain. So the nurse checked me at 7:30 before the epi was given—8cm. By the time he was done I was over 9cm and all of a sudden the room was filled with people flying around setting up. Seems I went much faster then anyone had predicted. At this point my blood pressures were rising. But I was unaware of it. At 8:00pm I began to push and at 8:13pm Lexi was here.

Continue reading “Lexi’s Birth Story (as told by Stephanie)”
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Family

Being Mr Mom is hard work!

Lexi HandbookFirst, I want to thank everyone that has been praying for Stephanie and me. I know that a lot of you out there care a great deal about us and we know your prayers have been with us. Stephanie is still on bed rest. We have a follow up appointment for her blood pressure this Friday and today we take Lexi to her first doctor’s appointment.

When we had Zander, Stephanie did the overnight feedings. She is a stay at home mom and has always been great about letting me sleep so that I could get up for work the next day. There were many women that commented that I should help with the over night stuff and my favorite – “she doesn’t get the day off while you are at work, so why should you get the night off?” I usually replied with something like “And I don’t get to take a three hour nap in the middle of the day – she sleeps when baby sleeps – I sleep when my boss does”. Stephanie changed most of the diapers, handled most of the feedings, and allowed me to (for the most part) just enjoy Zander. But this time – she is on bed rest…

Stephanie’s mom is here and she has been wonderful in helping with meals and cleaning and Zander. We’ve also had several meals provided by members of our church. Just last night, we had the best chicken pot pie meal I have ever had – which included salad, rolls, and a desert cake (Thank you, Connie)! The outreach has been grand and help me realize that family doesn’t stop with people who share your last name. Still with Stephanie being on bed rest, I’ve been up for many of the over night feedings, I’ve changed more diapers this week with Lexi than I think I did with Zander for the first three months. I’ve washed bottles, done laundry, attempted to clean (although I don’t do the same quality job Stephanie would do), and this time around we have a three year old to keep engaged in non-destructive activities! On top of all of that, I’ve had to go back to work this week.

My job however has been wonderful, in that I’m allowed to work from home while Stephanie is on bed rest – a blessing most people do not get. It’s still difficult to stay on a conference call while your three year old is yelling, “Daddy, come play with me” or “I have to go uckies!” – Or trying to explain that the last instant message was from my son and not me, I would never have typed “fjsdaklnzxvzxnasvaiqvfasdiqa dasl;fdasnsd” and I don’t know what it means.

Being Mr Mom is hard work! I know there are women out there that love to comment during times like these, “Now you’ll appreciate your wife more” or “See, its tougher than you thought”, but comments like that suggest that I didn’t already appreciate my wife or that I thought her job was easy. I’ll try not to come back with “try writing a script to install the new version of drivers that will work on linux and windows” or “if you think that’s tough, trying building a virtual server that time syncs with the database server so your application doesn’t crash on reboot”. I’ll try to hold those comments back, because my wife’s job is tough and she deserves the recognition regardless of whether or not my day job is tough too. I’m not as good at it as she is, but God (and Grammie Shorey) are helping me pull though while Stephanie gets better.