A Year In Review

I sit here, New Years Eve 2015, thinking where has the year gone?

Some of the BIG happenings...

• Between December ('14) & April, Joshy was hospitalized 3 times with pneumonia.  Each time his blood counts bottomed out & he required blood transfusions.  He had been transfusion free for more than a year, then BAM.  It honestly felt like we had lost years in the recovery process, thankfully, once the pneumonia cleared up his levels would bounce back.

• In April, Kei started attending school full time at the special needs school connected to the hospital near our house.  She is blossoming in school. 

• In April, Joshua was allowed to return to his school, the other special needs school in our area (a 15 min. drive) instead of having the teacher come to the house.  He doesn't attend full time, but he does go every day.

• Juggling 2 different special needs schools & driving the kids back and forth has been challenging.  Two different sets of moms & teachers.  Two totally different schools, but each school fits the needs of Kei & Joshy.

• In April Jerry did not go back to what, at one time, had been his main school.  The past few years they have slowly been whittling his schedule down.  They were going to cut his classes by half again which would mean  he would have been traveling more hours than he was teaching.  Heavy class loads, hours on end of paperwork with no compensation & travel, it just wasn't worth it.

• During the winter, Joshy's hematologist gave tentative permission for a trip to the states.  We couldn't travel during cold & flu season.  We needed to be careful of extremely busy travel times.  We needed to take extra precautions, but if we could get blood counts to hold we should be able to travel.  With this in mind when we set the ECS school year calendar (April-March) we were able to plan our summer vacation for September.  We held our breath, prayed a lot, and made double plans - just in case he couldn't travel, but we bought tickets anyway.

• Bekah turned 18 on June 8th. Cannot believe she is a senior and will likely be flying the coop before long.   Jerry also broke his foot in June.

• We celebrated our 30th anniversary in July.  We had planned to climb Mt Fuji, but Jerry's foot would not allow it..  Maybe next year.

• In August, I, Laura, went white water rafting.  I survived, had a blast actually, but the same weekend our refrigerator died!!

• All 5 of us spent September 6th ~ 21st in the Indiana.   It was a crazy 2 weeks.  Not nearly enough time to see everyone.  It was still an amazing trip filled with many memories, especially spending time with our oldest daughter & her children.

• Just after our return from the states, Kei went on her school trip.  They had an over night trip to Niigata city which was packed full of adventures.

• In November Joshy turned 13.  We now have 3 teenagers in the house!!

• We had record attendance at Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Christmas out reach events.

It has been a full year.   I am thankful for everything we encountered, the good, the bad, & the ugly.  I am thankful to have made it through another year.  I also wonder what 2016 will bring.

Happy New Year!