A Great Report From the Doctor

Last week Hope went to see Dr. Henderson for her 4-month checkup. Things went really well! Dr. Henderson was thrilled to see how well she has grown. She weighs 12 and a half pounds and is 23 inches long. That puts her in the 25th percentile for weight and the 10th percentile for height. Wow!!! What a big girl she is becoming. Hope does need to see an ear, nose and throat specialist on June 14th due to the fact that she is a very loud breather. Originally we thought this was due to congestion or to swollen sinuses, but when she was checked last week, her sinuses and lungs both looked good. Dr. Henderson thought that it might be something in between the two, such as the trachea. He mentioned that sometimes babies born as early as Hope was have some developmental issues with their tracheas. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. The best news of all from the appointment is that Hope has now been given the okay to go out and enjoy the world. This is something we have looking forward to for quite a while now. After being given the news, we took Hope to Clifford Lake for the long weekend to visit with Grandma and Grandpa Deuel and to meet Granny (Hope's great-grandma) for the first time. Hope also got to experience Meijers for the first time yesterday. Camden had fun telling her all about the different things to see in the store. Our family is looking forward to the beginning of summer vacation at the end of next week. It will be great to be home enjoying each other.

Relay For Life

Wow!!! What a weekend! We spent our weekend (or at least most of it) at the Rockford Relay For Life. As a whole, the Relay raised over $315,000. That is an increase of $50,000 over last year's total. Our team, Friends for Life, raised a little over $32,000. Needless to say, it was a very successful Relay and a lot of money was raised to help in the fight against cancer. We are so proud of Brent for the incredible job he does as one of the two co-chairs of this event.

Hope turned 4 months old yesterday and celebrated with us at Relay. She was able to spend a few hours there on Friday and a few hours there on Saturday. What a blessing it was to be able to have her there with us and to walk around the track as a family of five.

Ryann also had a soccer game this weekend. Her team tied, but she scored a goal. She has scored a goal in each of her last four games. We are all pretty excited about the great season she is having.

Our entire family is counting down the days until we are all on summer vacation. Camden has 6 more school days left, Brent has 12 and Ryann has 13. We are definitely looking forward to a summer of family time, friends time, swimming time and warm, sunny weather!

Hope has her four month doctor's appointment on Tuesday. We can't wait to hear what he has to say. She really seems to have grown quite a bit. She has a double chin now and even some rolls on her legs.

Thanks for checking in on us!