Trying to Catch Up

Wow, the past several weeks have been a wild ride. Here are some photos of just a few of the things Adi has been up to.

First, of course we did Easter eggs. Adi had a lot of fun coloring them, and that same night Adi ate 3 hard boiled eggs! That's a lot of eggs for a little Adi!!
We celebrated Easter early this year with Grandma Harney and family because Aunt Janet was in town. Of course I forgot to take the camera but I did get a cute picture of Ad before we went over, all sweet like a princess.
The following weekend was birthday number 4. Wow, my baby is four. Totally amazing. So she was pretty excited to celebrate her special day with friends and family. Here you can see her little disco jig in front of her princess house that she keeps calling her bedroom (she's trying to convince me to clean out our junk room so the "babies" can sleep in there. When I ask her how many babies she consistently tells me, "three". Whoa. That's a lot of babies!)Here's my berry lover's blackberry topped angel food birthday cake. We kept it pretty simple this year with so much else going on.
Here's silly Adi with Caed and cousin Kayla. Getting ready to open some birthday presents. Thank you so much everyone! She was and is so blessed.
And the hand made book given to Adi is such a treasure. It's a book of ABC's with various photos of the McCoy kids and Adi throughout. We totally love it. It's amazing!Finally, Easter day. Adi wanted to be an Easter princess. I love the veil with the crown. So cute.
Hopefully I'll be able to follow up with more photos soon. Shane, Kris and Maddi are in town from Oregon this week so I do hope to get lots of pictures of the family being the silly people we are.

I Wanna Be a Rock Star

I love music. There's nothing better than live music, well maybe there is: live worship music. When I found out that Cam was going to see several bands at the US Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids with the Vineyard youth group Wildfire, I was pretty jealous because of course I wanted to go too. But Nana and Papa were going to be out of town and Cam forgot to call Grandma Marsha so I was on my own with Miss Adi.

So, when our friend Kari decided that she wanted to go, we said, "hey, how about Kari rides with Adi and I and we all go!" So that's what we did :) I didn't get any photos but our friends the Boelk's did: http://boelk5.blogspot.com/2009/04/wild-fire.html The second photo has Amy Boelk, Kari, Adi and I worshipping (I think Adi is giving me a kiss) during Mercy Me's set which was phenomenal.

Now I have a 4 year old rock star wanna be. So fun!

All This Chicken Talk

Photo by Matthew Holst of the Iowa City Press-Citizen printed in the Des Moines Register
So cute, Adi kept popping up with chicks that she wanted to show the photographer, too. I'm so glad they chose one of the pics that had her in it too :) Last week I learned that the chicken ordinance I thought had already passed in fact had not... yet. According to Misha Goodman, the director of Iowa City Animal Control, the entire animal control ordinance is under revision, and part of that revision includes urban chickens. Unfortunately she doesn't expect the revisions to go before City Council until mid-summer. So to my dismay, I submitted to the fact that we can not raise chickens in our backyard - yet. As Cam and I prayed together that night I felt an urge to ask God for His favor. "It's silly, I know. But God, please bless our chicken endeavor with your favor".

The online petition was born last Tuesday. The same day I got a call from reporter Gregg Hennigan with the Gazette who randomly came across the petition on twitter and thought it was interesting. His article caught the attention of Jennifer Delgado, reporting for the Daily Iowan. Her article cleverly titled What the Cluck? led to an opinion article also in the Daily Iowan.

I talked to three papers in three days. The third reporter was Gunner Olson for the Des Moines Register. That article just ran today. I really appreciated the amount of research Gunner did regarding ordinances in other Iowa towns and he was a lot of fun to work with.

Just yesterday the Press-Citizen published an Opinion article which favored urban chickens. Eric Johnson of Iowa City also wrote a guest opinion in favor of urban chickens in our city. Yay Eric! I don't know you but I'm totally greatful.

This process has been really amazing. I'm excited about all of the support the effort is receiving. I'm especially grateful to my good friend Alicia Koch who is working right along side me as we are carried forward in this endeavor. I honestly do feel carried, I couldn't do this on my own. I often think, "I don't even know what I'm doing, why do people want to talk to me about it?" but then I'm reminded that I do know what I'm doing and God's got my back (and my front, my top and bottom).

Yay Urban Chickens. And onward we move.

Today we are saying good-bye to Grandma Maxine Driscoll. She passed away Monday morning surrounded by family. I'll always remember her warm smile, generous heart and love of the saxophone. What a dearly loved woman. Cam and I lived in her backyard in a mobile home when we first started dating. It was really wonderful to get to know her and help out while we were there. Max was such a blessing to Cam and I, especially early in our relationship. We will miss her terribly but know that she is with Jesus in heaven, and there's no better place to be.

Praying for Grandma Max

Last week Grandma Max took a tumble. She broke her right wrist, her left shoulder and being a saxophone player this was pretty devastating. She had a rough time during surgery yesterday, I don't know exactly what happened but everyone was called to come to the hospital as Maxine's heart was only working at 20% and her other organs weren't doing so well. I'm not a medical person, but I know that the ICU doctors were doing everything they could.

We first struggled with whether or not to take Adi to the hospital but in the end we just brought her along. Sweet Lavender Leaf (Adi's alter-ego) seems to be really great and lightening the mood in a room full of anxious people. Not that we expect that from her, she's just good at turning frowns upside down. She chose not to go into the room to see Grandma and we didn't press the issue.

Cam and I went in and were just quiet after announcing our presence. And then we prayed. It was difficult at first, we were so emotional. But God's spirit was present with us and we prayed for more. Max hadn't been very responsive before but she did respond to prayer. We told her we loved her and saw her moving her lips in a way that looked like, "I love you too". We prayed more. We lifted her up to God. We assured her that she was never alone, that Jesus was with her. Her eyes were wide open by the time we had to go, there were so many family members there to see her. We don't have a medical update yet. We don't know if God is going to keep her here on earth with us or if He's going to take her home. Either way it is well with our souls. We celebrate Maxine and all that she has done for us. And we continue to pray.