WOW...It's been WAAAY too long

I'm so sorry!  I cannot believe it has been 3 months since I updated.  At least there hasn't been any "say it isn't so" situations.  I'm going to highlight what has been going on in our lives and will start updating more often.  God is good!

**Jon's dad, John, had double knee replacements.  His new knees are awesome!

**Sara, Jon's sister, got married in May to Paul!  The kids were in the wedding.  What a precious time with family and celebrating this happy time for Sara and Paul!

Oh my gosh, I just have to tell one funny story from this trip.  So I decided to take the kids to Dallas for the wedding a day earlier than Jon was going.  It was the first time I had ever flown by myself with just the kids.  So I mapped it all out and got seats in the back row right by the restroom.  Kids did GREAT!  No problems.  So on the way back I had Jon with me.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  We are boarding the plane.  The babies are in front of me.  Luke is behind me and Jon is behind Luke.  I stop and briefly tell the flight attendant about Luke's severe nut allergy (By the way they don't serve nuts on any of our flights for Luke).  I look up to head back to our Row 5 seat.  I do not see the babies.  I yell "BABIES".  Nothing!  I think to myself, were they in front of me or behind me.  I quickly look behind me and only Luke stands there, I couldn't even find Jon at the point, he was no where in sight.  So I look forward and yell louder "BABIES"  Nothing.  But some of the passengers that had already seated, pointed in the back, but I still don't see my children!  So I yell at the top of my lungs,  "BABIES!"  And 2 little 3 year olds pop up from the very back seat of the plane and say in their squeaky voice, "Yes."  And come running down the isle toward me.  I had to explain to them we do not own this plane and we cannot just sit wherever we like.  LOL.  Can you imagine what those people on the plane were thinking when I was yelling BABIES, and then out comes these grown up children?  Haha or they were thinking WOW, this lady has lost her BABIES.  Oh Goodness!  Everyone on the plane was snickering!

**Jon got hearing aids!  Yes!  He gave me permission to write this!  Everyone that sees him is curious and some people ask why he wears them.  So if you see him you will know why!  The carboplatin he took for his high dose chemo unfortunately damaged his hearing.  He has moderate to severe hearing loss.  The hearing aids have helped a TON.  It has improved our marriage 10 fold:o)  Also I like using them if we are out at a restaurant and I want to hear what the surrounding tables are talking about!  Great for eaves dropping!  So be careful if you are near me in a restaurant.  LOL

**June -- Indy 2 month appointment--Jon's bloodwork and x-ray was ALL CLEAR.  PRAISE GOD.  Here are the kids waiting for Dr. Einhorn to come in and meet with us.  They were marvelous during the appointment, THANK GOODNESS!

**Vaca road trip to Indy, kids got to go and do all the fun things they loved while living there--great fam time! On the way back stopped in Dollywood!

Here we are on a boat on the canal.  The kids begged everyday we walked to canal to ride these paddle boats and we always told them NO because they were too expensive! 

Ryan saying GOOD-BYE to the mini-monorail at the hospital.

Here we are at the Butler field!  So cool to run around.  We stayed right beside it.

This mural has been painted on the canal right below our old apartment since we left.  The boys can't even stand up straight in the picture because they are laughing so hard!  It reminded them of the "old ladies" that lived below us and gave us such a hard time!

Little rain storm at Dollywood!

Gymboree memories.  The kids had a blast!

The kids first night in INDY.  On the canal being GODSTRONG!

**Pool and beach everyday--great family time.  This summer we have savored hanging out with each other and especially Jon!

**Jon went to Liberty for a week to do a class

**Jon's paternal grandmother, GG Roma passed away.  She was 95.  She is now with Jesus.  Such a Godly lady and so glad our kids got to know her.  Our kids were able to go out there a couple of times and spend quality time with her.  We will miss her so much but know that she is in a much happier place!!

**The babies turned 4!!  Yes, they are still my BABIES!  And yes I'm sad they are 4.  But they are not sad so we must embrace this!

**Luke starts Kindergarten in a few weeks!  I will be homeschooling him.  I look forward to my year and will savor every second I have with all 3!  Lord willing, Luke will go to 1st grade at Jon's school next year, Riverview Charter School.

Next week we will head to Indy again for another check up.  Please pray for us as fear begins seeping in the closer it gets.  We still have a hard time not being fearful everytime we go.  We know, we KNOW God is in control.  And we do TRUST Him!  But our human nature takes over sometimes and we just have to pray and ask God to take away the fear!  It's a battle!  The following weekend we will head to Phoenix, AZ for the funeral of Jon's sweet grandmother.

We continue to be GODSTRONG!  And praise God for all He has done in our lives!

Say it isn't so…

Yes, more Strebe drama:

 First of all let me say, I know I told you Jon would be writing a blog post, and he IS going to. I have asked him on several occasions, but in his defense, he was finishing up one of his masters classes (yes, he is already back taking classes for his masters in administration). Isn't he amazing? Most of you remember that when he was diagnosed in December 2012, he was literally in the middle of his masters program. On top of that, he is working at least 4 nights a week (on top of teaching all day) so literally he has been staying up until 1 and 2 am and then getting up and doing it all over again. He will soon write his blog post:o)

 A week ago Ryan came down with a cough that quickly turned into croup. He had croup for the first time in Indy back in the fall. I remember getting up with him and he was gasping for breath. It was SO scary but it did not last long at all. He just kept having the barking cough. Well, this time he had croup AND stridor (he literally was gasping for breath and it was so scary). After we tried all the things we knew to do, we called the nurse and she called the doctor and they said to take him to the ER. So at 11:30pm, we made a 911 call to Jon's parents to come over and sit with the other kids. We left for Savannah with the air cranked as high as it would go. It was FREEZING in the car but thankfully my friend told me to take a blanket for Ryan! So we made the 35 minute ride which by the way seemed like FOREVER! As I'm sitting in the back with Ryan, he literally cannot talk because of his swollen voice box and then he would cough the barking cough and start the stridor. It was just scary! Once we got to the ER they took him fairly quickly and took him back for a chest x-ray and also gave him a steroid shot. By the time we left, 3 hours later, he was a different child! Here is the before and after pictures.

This is Ryan soon after we got to the ER, waiting on his chest x-ray.

Here is Ryan getting his chest x-ray.  Jon figured it was no big deal to be in the "line of fire" since he gets these ALL the time!

 And here is our baby boy at 3am about to leave the hospital with steroids in his system.  He was a MUCH happier boy!

So poor Jon, got 3 hours of sleep that night and then had to work days/nights for the next 3 days.  Now you really know why you haven't heard from him!  I have NO idea why our kids end up in the ER!  I sometimes think maybe I freak out too much, ha.  Well, I think I do but to confirm that I wasn't over reacting I confirmed with the doctor we made the right decision to come into the ER…WE DID!  The last time we drug our feet on going to the ER with Luke, he ended up having an all out asthma attack, throwing up and would not talk at all.  SUPER SCARY!  But like Jon said, we are thankful our kids are not dealing with something more serious.  ER visits for croup and asthma, we can handle!
BTW, Luke now has bronchitis and is on steroids and antibiotic and breathing treatments.  His asthma is just getting so bad so if he gets a cough it goes straight to bronchitis or pnemonia.

Some more fun things:

I crashed my car into Jon's car the other day (NO, NOT HIS SPORTS CAR, HA).  I mean, really??  It's bad enough to have your car wrecked, but to run your car into your own car!  UHHH.  At the time though Jon and I were just thankful no one was hurt and that I ran into a car and not a person!  Keeping life in perspective!

LOVED my Mother's Day.  I have 3 miracle children and being a mom to them is the biggest blessing EVER!  Jon did SUCH a great job of making me feel SOO special and so did the kids.  They all went over the top!  Such a blessing to be married to Jon and have these 3 beautiful children in my life.

Last thing, there are 3 people I would like for you to pray for!  They are cancer patients and have been on my heart lately!  One is Mike, just went through a bone marrow tranplant.  Please pray for his body to recover and God to heal him of this cancer.  Jaron, testicular cancer patient that went through same treatment as Jon at IU at the same time.  He is now doing a clinical trial.  Please pray that God will work in his body through the medicine that he is on.  He is such a strong man, and loves God.  Pray for his wife and 2 little girls!  And the last is Mark.  He is also a testicular cancer patient and also went through same treatment as Jon right after Jon at IU.  He is having some abnormal test results.  Please pray for the doctors as they move forward.  Pray for peace for Mark and his family!

God continues to work on me with my fear issues, especially with my children and Jon.  He definitely keeps giving me MANY opportunities to trust him and give my fears to HIM!  He is so good like that!  Here is a verse He gave me the other day:

When I said, "My foot is slipping," your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.  When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.

Thanks and we continue to be 

GODSTRONG!!

Ya'll, I promise, you can't make this stuff up!!…

I'm getting sick of writing this title as much as you are getting sick of reading it.  But there is no better title!

This is the weekend we are in Indy for Jon's check up on Monday.  We flew out of Atlanta so that we could drop the babes off at my mom's house and Luke came with us.  We came on Saturday so that we could enjoy the city with Luke and the fun memories we made while here.  We arrive at the airport Saturday morning and start toward the security checkpoint.  When Jon shows his license, they tell him it's expired and he needs to step aside.  TSA comes over and ask him for another form of identification. Jon opens his wallet and shows them all he has is credit cards and a Riverview badge.  They look at everything and surprisingly were fine with it.  So we were a little flustured but happy it turned out and went on our merry way.

We arrived in Indy and decided I needed to go rent the car since Jon's license was expired and they proabably wouldn't let him.  I walk up to the counter, give my license and the lady took it, started entering information and had a funny look on her face.  My license was expired too!!  We could not rent a car.  Quickly, I'm trying to figure out Plan B, and…

Luke says, "I HAVE TO GO POO…QUICK!!"  Jon gets him and takes him to the bathroom and he has a ZOO BOO POO.  If you remember from my post during our Indy time a Zoo Boo Poo is when you poo in your pants because in Indy the month of October at the zoo is Zoo Boo and when Luke decided to poo in his pants everytime we went there, we started saying it is a ZOO BOO POO.  I guess a funny inside joke in our family.  Even still if the kids have poo in their underwear they run around the house saying ZOO BOO POO.  I know this is personal BUT if you have kids, have had kids, or have nieces, nephews, babysit, etc, you can totally relate to what I'm saying!!  You have experienced something similar to the ZOO BOO POO.

Welcome to Indianapolis!!  Wahoo!  The Strebe's are back!

So plan B was take a taxi!  We kinda feel like we are in NYC.  Everytime we need to go somewhere we call our taxi.  O my, you just have to laugh at this point.

We took Luke to the Children's Museum here and he had such a great time!  Even though the reason we lived in Indy was not the highlight of our life, the kids had a great time and made such great memories and it is fun to re-live those with them.  So much so that this summer we are planning a road trip up here when Jon gets his next check-up and letting the kids do all the fun things they did while here.  They talk about their memories here all the time!  Luke was just disappointed that we weren't staying in our apartment!  LOL

Please pray for us this weekend as Jon prepares to have his check-up on Monday which includes a chest x-ray, blood work and exam.  We will fly back to Atlanta on Monday and drive back to HHI that night so that Jon can be at work on Tuesday.

Please also pray for Jon's dad.  He just had double knee replacement in Dallas, TX.  They live 5 minutes from us but since Sara is an orthapedic surgeon she could get him connected with an excellent doctor and he will stay in Dallas for a few weeks doing rehab.  He is out of the hospital and has moved to the rehab facility.  Pray he will continue to heal and his knees will get strong and be pain free.

Blessings and through all this the Strebe's are 

GODSTRONG!

I'm embarrassed to admit but I never submitted this post.  So 2 weeks later…

Jon's scan was ALL CLEAR!!  Hallelujah!  We feel so blessed!  Thank you all for your prayers for us during these difficult times.  God is good!

Jon is at the Master's today.  One year ago today he had just finished his last round and was struggling throught the weekend.  He feels so grateful to be there and was super excited this morning!  Again, God is good!

We will remain,

GODSTRONG!

You can look forward to the next post that will be written by Jon and he will tell about his recent speaking engagements that he has been priviledged to do.

You can't make this stuff up...

Seriously, it's crazy!

A week and a half ago on Sunday night, Emma Kate was up all night throwing up.  She felt fine the next day so we were like OK, weird.

Tuesday afternoon I take the kids to the library.  We all go to the restroom and Emma Kate gets her finger slammed in the door compliments of my sweet little boy blue--AKA Ryan.  It looked terrible.  The librarians really thought I needed to take her to the doctor so I did.  We weren't sure if it was fractured or what.  The doc said it was probably ok, and they cleaned it and sent us on our way.

That  night, we ate at Moe's.  We all ate the same thing except Jon and the kids got chicken, I did not.  They all got sick at the same time about 6 hours after they ate the meal.  Kids were mostly throwing up, Jon felt super nauseated, and terrible.  They were sick all day Wednesday.  I mean seriously, I cleaned up more throw up that day than I have the whole 5 years.  Everyone had their own personal puke bucket.  I assumed it was food poisoining.  Made sense to me.

Friday, I wake up in wee hours of the morning, SOOO sick.  It was awful.  I got dehydrated and weak very quickly.  At 6:00AM Jon says he is going to get a sub.  I say NO, you can't stay home from school AGAIN!  I told Jon I would figure it out.  By 7AM I could not even get out of bed except to go do my "business."  I am not being dramatic, it was so awful.  Jon had to stay home.  I was as sick about that as I was sick!

So now I"m thinking ok, maybe the kids had a stomach virus and I caught it.  NOPE!!  The kids got sick again with a stomach thing Sunday/Monday.  This time it was the other end if you know what I mean.  No throw up buckets but wow…ok, I won't go into detail.

To add to the confusion, on Saturday I smelt a horrible smell in our house.  I discovered that our gas line to our grill (that is not hooked up) had been turned on.  Gas was pouring out of it.  So I turned that off and the smell went away.  Well Sunday night when I went to bake a coffee cake for the garbage men, there was no more gas for my oven.  OK, I started freaking out!!  Like panic attacke mode.  At this point, Jon and I are questioning how long the gas would have had to leak out to empty our tank that wasn't even due for a fill up for 8 more months!  My big question was, how long have my children been inhaling gas fumes?  Of course when I look up on line inhaling gas, symptoms include flu-like and gastrointestinal issues.  We have been sick since January 24th!  I decided to call the local fire department.  At 11PM, 4 fireman come out in their brand new huge fire truck to check out our house.  There was no detection of gases in our house and they did confirm that the gas valve being opened could have emptied the tank within hours.  That definitely made me sleep easier.

So basically, Jon and I have concluded that he and the kids did have food poisoning.  Then I picked up a stomach virus, and the kids picked that up from me.  All but a day or two here or there, the Strebe's have been sick since January 24th.  We have now gone 2 whole days this week well!!  Please continue to pray for us to stay well!!  We are staying outside all day everyday we can!  We even got to go to the beach this week.

We anticipate our trip to Indy at the end of March for Jon's 2 month check up.

Thanks for praying for the Strebe's to continue to be…

GODSTRONG!

Get your tissues out…A message from Luke

   



    So this is Jon finally writing a post.  I know, I know, you probably thought I have fallen off of the face of the planet, but I am still here.  I wanted to share a story with you about something that happened with our 5 year old son Luke this week.  It was one of those moments that you will remember for the rest of your life.
     I have been putting him down at night, as I am in between basketball and soccer officiating seasons.  It has really been a sweet time for me to be able to spend this kind of quality time with him at night.  For the past few nights, he and I had been talking about salvation, and what it meant for Christ to die on the cross for us, to wipe away our sins.  Equally important we have been talking about how important the resurrection was in the whole process.
     Thursday night, we were reading a Bible story, that happened to be the resurrection story, and of how Jesus died on the cross.  After reading the story, I rocked him for a song, and then was sitting in his bed for a song, when we continued to talk about "believing in Jesus".  We talked about going to heaven, and how when we ask Jesus to come into our hearts, that we would then some day join Jesus in heaven.  We talked about the importance of believing in Jesus, that he came down on this earth to die on the cross for our sins, only to rise three days later.  I asked Luke if he believed everything that we had talked about, and he answered yes.  I then said, Luke do you want to ask Jesus into your heart, and he said yes I want to ask Jesus to come into my heart.
     Well, I knew where this was headed, so I went and got Donna to come into Luke's room.  All three of us were in the bottom bunk bed, and I reviewed with Donna everything that we had been talking about.  I told Luke that I, momma, grammy and gramps, Nanny, and Aunt Sara had all asked Jesus to come into our hearts, and that we all had made the decision to commit our lives to living a Christ like life.  I then asked him if he wanted to pray that prayer.  He said yes, he would like to ask Jesus to come into his heart.  He then told me, why don't you pray, and then I'll repeat what you say.  How he knew to say that, I will never know.  He is a very insightful young man.  So we all bowed our heads, and prayed.  Luke ended up asking Jesus to come into his heart.  One of the proudest, and happiest moments of our lives.  To be there when our son commited his life to follow Christ, is a moment we will never ever forget!  I am confident that everything that we have been through this past year played a part in our son giving his life to Jesus.  God has been at work in his heart for a long time, and this was the culmination of that hard work.  Since then, we have had Luke call many of his family members and tell them of his exciting news.  He has such a heart for God, and is so spiritually deep, that I am certianly not adequate to cultivate that spiritual deepness.  I am confident that God is going to use his life for His glory and am very excited to see what exactly that looks like!  Pray for him.  I am certain that Satan is working overtime to discourage and deceive him since he made the decision.  Pray that his heart will continue to love God more everyday.  Pray that God will prepare him to be used for His Glory in the future!  Cannot wait to see what God has in store for our little Luke.  He is so very special.

Luke is:

GODSTRONG!

Jon's scan clear and I remembered the other childhood teaching moment!

Jon is already feeling much better and his scan was clear.  Also his bloodwork was great.  PTL!

I remembered what I was going to write about Emma Kate.  One night  I was putting the babes to bed.  The routine is I put both of them on my lap and rock and tell them a story.  When the story is finished, Emma Kate jumps off and gets in bed by herself and covers herself up.  I then rock Ryan to sleep.  They are usually asleep within 10 minutes.  This particular night, Emma Kate jumped in bed, covered herself up and said, "When is Jesus coming to get us and take us to heaven?"  So I told her it wasn't time yet.  She said, "but I really want to go.  How will we get there?"  I told her that it wasn't our bodies that go to heaven, but our spirits and that we would get new bodies.  Well, that got her attention.  That led into a discussion about whether we would have eyes, noses, ears, etc.  It was just such a sweet conversation.  Oh to have childlike faith.  My children say often they WANT to go to heaven.  Emma Kate just has 2 request, that she can take her Tianna dress and her water bottle in case she gets thirsty.  So precious!

Tonight Jon and I were putting Luke down and Jon mentioned to me that Luke does not play with his Monsters University thing anymore because he is missing a piece.  Luke said, "Oh, I just want to play with it one more time before I go to heaven--but Oh, I really want to go to heaven!  I really hope we have our eyes because I really want to see the streets of gold."

Oh My Gosh!  After these 2 conversations I just want to melt.  The HOPE that they have in Jesus at this young age is amazing!  They WANT to go to heaven and meet Jesus!  They make my faith and trust stronger!

One last thing.  I have mentioned before that Luke does a quiet time at night.  He is really trying to learn from the Bible and put it into practice.  He has been struggling with telling the truth lately.  So I told him today I was proud of him because he made the right choice in telling the truth.  He said "I'm trying really hard to be sweet and tell the truth, but sometimes it is really HARD."  What a great opportunity to talk about the fact that YES, it can be hard but if we keep in God's Word and ask Him to help us, we can do it.  But we will have moments of failure.  We have to pick back up, ask for forgiveness and keep going.  Love, Love these teachable moments.  I learn SO much from my kids!  LOVE THEM!

Strebe's are:

GODSTRONG!

This and That

2 funny stories I left out of the IOH trip:

1.  I lost my voice during the trip--completely lost my voice.  I could only whisper.  Ironically, that night IOH sends each couple on a date.  Normally I would be super excited about that, but in this instance not so much.  I'm getting ready thinking what the heck are we going to do tonight--Jon can't hear and I can only whisper.  This should be a lot of fun.  So we went off on our date and again, ironically, we were at a sports bar.  TV's were blaring above us (Jon really can't hear when there is background noise).  Needless to say we didn't talk much, Jon read lips a lot and we had a great time regardless!  Both of us love to eat and the whole meal was taken care of--we could literally order whatever we wanted.  The date was amazing!

2.  The last day we were there we were set to go to Sea World.  The plan was to head home straight from Sea World.  Because we had 2 cars in Orlando (read my previous post), we didn't quite know what to do because we are very frugal and did not want to pay for 2 cars to park at Sea World.  So Jon finds a Walgreens near the entrance and we park his car there.  At the end of the day, we head back to Walgreens.  His car is NOT there!  Initally I thought it got towed, but Jon went and ask the manager and he said they do not tow cars.  It hit us, the car had been STOLEN!!  We sat there and wondered what in the world we were going to do.  On a side note, I was worried about how we would recover this car that is probably worth $8k but not replaceable.  Jon was only worried about our clothes that were in there and my new Nike shoes!!  LOL.  As we sat there, Jon said something just isn't right.  Maybe we are at the WRONG Walgreens!  YEP!  We were!  We found the car at the Walgreens 1 mile down the road!  You can't make this stuff up!

Our last activity we looked forward to for months:

During high dose chemo in Indianapolis, we planned several things we would have to look forward to when it was all over. One was the IOH retreat.  Check.  One was the Duke game.  Check.  And the last was the Disney Live Tour featuring Sophia and Jake.  Something for every child to enjoy.  So this past Thursday we suprised the kids and took them to Charleston to watch the Disney Live on Stage Tour.  Check.  It was bitter sweet.  Now we can move on with our lives.

The family sickness:

We are all getting better.  Luke, Ryan and I are completely better.  Emma Kate still has a bad cough but is acting fine.  Jon on the other hand was getting worse last week.  He was running a low grade fever at night, migraine headaches everyday, extreme fatigue, cough, congestion, and on Thursday pushed the stroller from the collesium to the car and was so out of breath I couldn't believe it.  I put my foot down and made a doctor's appointment.  By the way, he worked during this time of feeling awful.  So we went on Friday afternoon and the doctor really believes that it is bronchitis.  He put him on an antibiotic, but because of his history sent him for a chest x-ray and did some bloodwork.  We have also been in touch with Jon's oncologist and he wasn't overly concerned but agreed additional testing needed to be done.  We know this is in God's hand but it is during these times, we start having fear creep up.   We feel confident that all it is is bronchitis because this antibiotic has kicked in and Jon is already starting to feel much better.   Praise God.  But we always get anxious finding out the results of the tests. Pray as we wait to get word of the results.

Some great teaching moments:

1.  The kids got some candy for Valentine's Day.  I am not a big candy/sugar person.  We try to limit it. So when the kids get it, it's a treat.  They each got a bag with some hershey kisses in it.  They carried around their bags for days.  I never thought a thing about it.  One day I remember seeing Luke with something in his mouth but honestly things started happening and I forgot about it.  The next day I saw him open the pantry, grab something and run to the bonus room.  I decided to see how it would play out.  When he came back down I asked him to open his mouth.  He was thoroughly embarrassed that transitioned into bawling.  He was caught.  He not only had eaten all of the kisses from his bag but had moved to eating the kisses in the big leftover bag.  Luke is our rule follower so for this to happen was unusual.  But what a great teaching moment.  He is very sensitive to the Lord and to what is right so he obviously felt bad.  Jon had a good talk with him and all is good.  By the way, Luke does a quiet time every night and he said the other day, "Momma I have been learning in my quiet time how to be sweet so when I wake up I'm really trying to be sweet."  I'm telling you, God has some great plans for that boy.  I feel so humbled and inadequate to be his mother!  Just for fun, here is the evidence of the stolen candy.  This is looking straight in the bag.  See all the hershey kisses papers?  And he also had eaten a small bag of M&M's.  

2.  I can't remember the next teaching moment.  LOL.  It was something with Emma Kate.  It's 9pm and my brain shuts off.

One last Inheritance of Hope story:

On the retreat a 23 year old man attended with his girlfriend.  He has been battling testicular cancer, had high dose chemo at the same time as Jon at IU Cancer Center, but unfortunately not a favorable outcome.  They are trying a different chemo right now.   I read on his Facebook he recently accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.  And he ran off that day and marriend Montana.  Congrats to this great couple.  And this is affirmation once again that IOH is such a superb organization.  I know for a fact that seeds were planted that week.  IOH--you are such a blessing to so many!!  Please continue to pray for Jaron and complete healing in his body!

The Strebe's remain:

GODSTRONG!