Rambling........... I'm blaming it on lack of food!

I wonder if anyone else is having problems with their blog today? I am. For some reason I haven't been able to change fonts or font sizes and I've been having problems with bolding and italics. But anyway......

2 weeks ago Justin came home from school and we went out for dinner for my birthday. We had so much fun! We went to a Mexican restaurant, which reminds me of home (Texas), so that's always a good thing. The food was good and so were the margaritas! : )

Tiffani, Justin & Lila- apparently Lila's trying to escape from Justin's beard !

Tiffani & Justin-they kept making crazy faces but they finally let me get a good one.

Lila- hanging out at the table like a big girl!

And now for a Lila update. After much research Lila is no longer on soy yogurt. Or soy anything for that matter. I'm a big "everything in moderation" person- and even though I had read about the negative long-term effects of soy I didn't think that much about it initially. Yogurt is a staple for Lila and since she's lactose intolerant there aren't many options available. But it just kept bugging me that she was eating soy yogurt every single day. That's not exactly moderation. We tried goat milk yogurt- that was a definite "no go". She wasn't having it. So we tried coconut milk yogurt and she likes it! More research and we decided to stay with it. Realizing that evidence can be found on the internet to support pretty much ANYTHING you'd like to believe, in these situations you just have to go with your gut. Our gut says stick with the coconut milk yogurt.

And speaking of "our gut", I'm referring to my husband, Nick, and me. I am so thankful for him. He gets Lila ready for school every day before he goes to work. That's their time together and they both love it. And while I do most of the "work" with Lila- it is my part of the deal- he's interested in every little detail of her life. Her schedule is a bit crazy but we feel like it's worth it. She's happy and she's thriving, so hopefully we're right. She goes to school 4 mornings a week, has private physical therapy every week and private speech every other week . We try to participate in a playgroup most Thursdays, when she's not in school. We "play letters" - working on the alphabet and letter sounds- every day and are starting Love and Learning tonight. It's pretty hectic most days. Some people think it's too hectic. That we have her too involved. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Sometimes it wears on me- like everybody's life wears on them once in a while I guess. It takes 1/2 hour to drive to Lila's school- one way. That's 2 hours of driving for 4 hours of school. When I start thinking about all of the things that I could be accomplishing during those 2 hours there's something I try to keep in mind. Something I keep going back to. When I found out I was pregnant with Lila I had everything set up to go back to school. I had been tutoring in 2 inner city schools and it was my utmost and I do mean utmost desire to work in the field of juvenile probation. A long story that will be saved for another day, but finding out that I was pregnant at 40 when I had 2 grown kids wasn't exactly good news to me. I was mad. And as weird as it may sound, I stayed mad until we found out at 16 weeks gestation that Lila had Down Syndrome. That got my attention. Okay, God, I'm listening. This scripture became real to me that day.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8

There wasn't anything wrong with my desire to help those precious kids that are in trouble and growing up with such pain, but it wasn't God's plan for my life.

Linda