2009 at a Glance

The year 2009 has been another big year for the Vicena family. We began the year with 6 week old baby Isaac and have enjoyed the adventure of becoming a family of five. In January, Josh was offered a position in a urology program up in Detroit, MI. We accepted and began preparing for the move from Columbus, OH to Michigan. While we were very excited for the new career oportunity and felt that it was an option that God literally dropped into our laps, the prospect of moving was diffcult. We spent the Spring months of 2009 soaking up every last minute we could with our wonderful friends in Columbus. In June we made the move (with some major help from family and some of the BEST friends in the world) to Michigan. We spent July and August enjoying the summer and getting unpacked and settled into our new house. August brought a fun chance to meet up with our dear friends, the Ross girls, at my parents' house for a couple of days. That was a major highlight for the kids and me as we were all pretty homesick for Columbus. Another major highlight was our big trip to Rochester, NY to see my brother, Ben, and his wife and kiddos. We had such a great time on our first big cousin vacation! Then we were greeted by my friends from college, the Linds and Galmarinis, when we got back to Michigan for labor day weekend. The big adventure in September was Seth beginning school. He LOVES it! And I love to see my big boy's excited face every day as he tells me all about his day at school. We enjoyed the Fall with some fun family get togethers, trick or treating, and time with friends. God has blessed us with some good friends from our ORU days here in Michigan and the Neufeldts have been huge for helping us transition to Detroit. We are loving the time we get to spend with them now that we live close! Another great weekend for me was a women's retreat I attended with my mom. We had a great time growing in the Lord, staying in hotels, going shopping, and then I was lucky enough to get to see several of my Columbus, doctors wife, girlfriends for coffee and dessert. That did my heart good and I needed it. (Thanks girls!) Thankgiving brought tons of excitement with Josh's sister visitng and my brother, Dan, and his wife surprising us with a visit. We jumped right into the Christmas spirit in December and have enjoyed just spending time as a family and talking more about the incredible gift of Jesus 2000 years ago. While the past couple of months have brought a couple mildly stressful situations; like Seth's possible dignosis of cerebral palsey, Lilah's first major facial injury, and Isaac swallowing velcro (yes, we are still waiting for that to pass)... it has ultimately been a blessed time with family. I am hoping the year 2010 brings many more joyful times together and that we contiue to get settled into Michigan and find our place here. We're still kind of working on that. The year 2009 wasn't the easiest year, but we learned that God is faithful and that He provides and that He works out every little detail. So Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends and may 2010 be a great year for all of us! Love you!

"Something good is going to happen..."

So as many of you know, I attended Oral Roberts University for undergrad. My dad attended the ORU med school back in the early 1980s and my husband and two brothers also attended ORU. Needless to say, I grew up with a little bit of Oral permanently lodged into my heart and mind. Oral Roberts started his medical school with a passion for "merging the healing power of medicine and prayer." This vision is perhaps one of the main reasons Oral is so revered by my family. Coming from a family of doctors and standing at the beginning of my husband's medical career, the idea that medicine and God's power go hand in hand is a concept Josh and I are passionate about. Oral began his ministry after his own miraculous healing of tuberculosis at age 17. He went on to pastor churches and host crusades where he reminded people that our God is a healing God. Oral Roberts was the first minister to bring the message of God's healing power and salvation to the masses through television. He's written more than 130 books and founded Oral Roberts University. Oral Roberts' ministry has forever changed the concept of reaching people for Christ. He has changed the world.  For anyone who has not seen the news today, Oral Roberts passed away yesterday at the age of 91. We are certainly thinking of his family and close friends right now who are grieving and missing their dad, grandpa, and friend. However, I have to see Oral's death as being an event of great joy for a man who's body was wearing out and who is now in his perfect, heavenly body with his Lord and with his "darling wife, Evelyn."

When I was a senior in high school and looking at colleges, I made a trip to Tulsa, OK to visit family and my parents made me tour ORU while we were there. I was not interested in going to ORU, but I humored them. I toured the gaudy, gold campus that looked like it was straight out of the Jetsons. It was designed to be futuristic back in 60s, but architectural style still has not quite caught up with the honeycomb details and pointed arches of the ORU campus. It's almost laughable. But then you drive by the giant praying hands and you get that gut-churning feeling... that one that tells you you have just entered someplace special. The ORU tour takes you through the prayer gardens and to the prayer tower where somebody is praying, 24 hours a day, for all the requests that pour into the ministry. You see the flame burning above as a symbol of the ever-present power of the Holy Spirit and you feel it even more, it's like electricity... it's not JUST someplace special... you can feel the actual presence of God. You know immediately that these grounds are almost sacred. Yes, it is a university where thousands of young people have goofed off, pulled pranks, stayed up all night cramming for tests, flooded the dorms to make human slip and slides, and done their fair share of complaining. BUT... it is also a place where young people gather in the prayer gardens for spontaneous worship times with just their voices and a guitar and a place where students would gather around to pray for a struggling friend in the dorm rooms. The grounds of ORU have been a place where students were trained to be a whole man; mind, body, and spirit, and where they could discuss their faith openly and share new ideas and challenge old ones. It's a place where young men and women learned not only their course material, but also how to take their faith into every man's world, whether it's the office, a hospital, their homes, or capital hill (and yes, ORU grads are in all of those places). The grounds of ORU have birthed vision...thousands of visions in young people who then went out into the world to accomplish the thing that God called them to. Oru has been the training ground of alumni who started too many ministries to name, many of which have absolutely changed the world forever. And when you think about all of it and the vision upon which Oral Roberts University was founded, it's difficult not to feel chills at the power of God on that campus, that training ground, that holy place. The heart and sould behind ORU can be summed up in the statement that God gave Oral many many years ago:

"Build Me a university. Build it on My authority and on the Holy Spirit. Raise up your students to hear My voice, to go where My light is seen dim, My voice is heard small, and My healing power is not known, even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Their work will exceed yours, and in this I am well pleased."

Needless to say, I changed my mind about ORU that Fall day in 1998. I finished my tour of the ORU campus with the presentation about Oral Roberts and his ministry in the visitor center at the base of the prayer tower and God moved my heart, very simply... I knew that I was to go to ORU. I'm thankful I did. I enjoyed my education in Communications at ORU and learned lifelong lessons from teachers and friends that had nothing to do with the classroom. But isn't that what learning really is, afterall? So on this day after the passing of a man who committed his life to bringing the healing power of God to people, and who started a university that trained so many of us to "hear God's voice and to GO where His light is seen dim and His voice is not heard, and His power is not known" ... I want to say thank you, Chancellor Oral Roberts. Thank you for teaching us to "Expect a Miracle!" and to believe that because we serve a great God, "something good is going to happen."

Some interesting quotes from and about Oral Roberts:

"Oral Roberts was a man of God, and a great friend in ministry," the Rev. Billy Graham said in a statement Tuesday. "I loved him as a brother. We had many quiet conversations over the years."
Note: Rev. Billy Graham dedicated Oral Roberts University in 1963

"If God had not in his sovereign will raised up the ministry of Oral Roberts, the entire charismatic movement might not have occurred," said Jack Hayford, president of the California-based International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, in the statement. "Oral shook the landscape with the inescapable reality and practicality of Jesus' whole ministry. His teaching and concepts were foundational to the renewal that swept through the whole church."

Before his death, Roberts said, "After I'm gone, others will have to judge how well I've obeyed God's command not to be an echo but to be a voice like Jesus," the statement said. "As far as my own conviction is concerned, I've tried to be that voice with every fiber of my being, regardless of the cost."

Princess and The Frog

So this is just a very quick post as it is 1 am and I don't have time to really catch up right now (I will try to do that soon)... But I wanted to post this fast as a heads up to other moms of "princess wanna-be's" who might be planning to see the new Disney Princess and The Frog movie. We took the bigger kids on Friday night. I will start by saying that the story and characters, etc. were super cute! Really great concept infused with a lot of great cultural influence from New Orleans/jazz/etc. I LOVED that princess Tiana is one of the first Disney princesses who finds success based on the principle of hard work and not just wishing on a star... (or being pretty and having a nice singing voice). HOWEVER ..... the villain in the movie was WAY too much for us. I realize that there will certainly be lots of differing opinions on this subject and lots of parents will be fine with it. But we nearly walked out of the movie. The villain is a voodoo doctor who does tarot card readings, has voodoo dolls, and a talisman with the prince's blood. When his evil plot begins to fail, he calls on the help of his "friends from the other side" or demon like spirits. His payment for their help is the promise to give them access to all the wayward souls in New Orleans once he gains power. And when his plans goes completely awry, his blood debt is his own wayward soul. The villain's scene ends with his screaming, horror-filled face being dragged into the flames of what I can only assume must be hell. His gaping mouth of terror is etched into his own tombstone, leading Seth to ask the question "mommy,why was that pirate so sad on the hard wall?" Let me just say, I wasn't quite ready to explain the spiritual realm to that extent of horrifying detail to my 4 year old. We simply said that the man was very bad and made bad choices and his conequence was that he had to go be with the bad people and he was upset about it. I am hopeful that most of the stuff went over the kids' heads and that they won't even remember it. And like I said, I know that some parents would be fine with the movie. I personally felt like it was simply too real. This was no "bippity boppity boo" Disney magic or wave a magic wand and the villain turns you into a toad kind of magic. Voodoo is a very real witchcraft that a lot of people fully practice. It is a very dark, sinister, and evil kind of magic that is actually put into use by people and those people believe that it works and is real. True witchcraft is not somethng to be made light of in my opinion and is definitely not something I want my young children exposed to. I wasn't really planning to take the kids to see a Disney princess movie and then have to have a real conversation about demons and hell and fortune-telling afterwards. Just too much for us. And the kids found it to be scary, especially the parts with the "spirits from the other side." Needless to say, The Princess and The Frog will NOT be joining our Disney video collection. bummer.

holiday fun

So I thought I'd add a quick update following the Thanksgiving holiday. We had a great Thanksgiving this year. Josh was on call so we had to stay in Michigan, but we were lucky that family came up so we didn't have to be alone. Josh's sister was in town for the past couple of weeks from Tulsa. We loved getting to spend more time with Vanessa and the kids had blast getting to play with cousin Victoria. My parents planned to come up with my granddpa, so we were excited that we would still get Thanksgiving with family and the grandparents. It was my first time really hosting a big Thanksgiving where I actually planned everything and handled the majority of the cooking and housed people... the whole shibang! I started cooking on Wednesday and planned to have everything wrapped up that night when my parents came in because we were going to order pizza and all snuggle to watch the new Disney move, Up. (BTW, BEST movie out there right now!) So, I was in the kitchen finishing the stuffing and I was on the phone with my mom who was about an hour away from the house. Suddenly, the dog started barking and we hear a knock on the door. (odd, because we were not expecting anyone at tht moment) So, Vanessa opened the door and I hear gleeful screaming from all of the kids (including Josh) and then see Josh run across the foyer and leap (yes, leap) full body into another man's arms. As it turned out, my brother and his wife had driven all the way from Virginia Beach to surprise us for Thanksgiving. BEST SURPRISE EVER! So we got to have Dan and Lauren with us as well and it was awesome. We very much missed the other boys though. Dave is stll in China. He enjoyed mongolian barbeque for Thanksgiving (with dog meat, which is apparently kind of a specialty meat over there). And then Ben and Sarah and the kids were in NY where Ben was working most of the holiday. His first big holiday as a doctor... working... typical. We also celebrated Isaac's first birthday during dessert because half of the family was out of the country on his actual birthday. He enjoyed his carrot cake cupcake, aside from the moments when nearly suffocated himself by shoving icing up his nose. But once we cleared out his nostrils, he enjoyed his cake. =) We decorated the Christmas tree and the house last weekend and are full-blown in the Christmas spirit around here. We've spent the rest of the week just hanging with Josh's sister and now that she has headed back to Tulsa, we are gearing up to do our Christmas shopping. Not terribly exciting, but that's the recent happenings around here. Happy holidays! Here's few pics from the past week.

Isaac was not so sure about everybody singing loudly and staring at him during Happy Birthday.

Seth was in the Christmas spirit. We found him like this the night we decorated the tree.

And not to leave out Lilah... on her way up for a bath. She's ready if butt cleavage ever makes a comeback (not that we would let her out of the house like that) It's funny because the poor thing always looks like this. She just can't seem to keep that tucked into her pants, ever.  =)

One thing I'm thankful for

In recognition of this Thanksgiving holiday I would like to pay tribute to just one of the things that I am so thankful for. That would be friends. Great friends. The kind of friends who you can laugh with, cry with, go into battle with, and if need be, huddle together into the corner on the floor of your kitchen while you slurp down cold tomato soup in an attempt to hide from your children.  ...   So, this last weekend my very good friend, Ruth, came up for a visit... with her 3 children. Add that to my 3 and we had a very busy weekend with 6 children age 7 and under. It was fun and my kids enjoyed having some other kids around to play with. But anytime you get 6 kids together in a house for a whole weekend, things have a tendency to be loud and little chaotic. =) At some point around Saturday evening, I think, Ruth and I stopped really even trying to talk because we realized it was a futile effort that would result in being interrupted in exactly 3 seconds by some child who had been wronged, or hurt, or was about to be wronged or hurt. There are very few friends that are good enough to hole up with along with all of your offspring together. But Ruth is one of them. And I am thankful for those kinds of friends. At one point we had fed the kids their grilled cheese sandwiches and were out of chairs, so we sat on the floor of the kitchen and tried to have a conversation while the kids ate. Ironically enough, we were discussing how sometimes we felt that we had lost a certain sense of identity outside of being a mom. We love our children and are grateful to be able to stay at home with our kids. But there is a huge fear that we will have nothing to talk about outside of kids and mommyhood. Someimes you feel like you do very little of significance when you spend the majority of your day wiping bottoms and doing laundry. When we were young and we dreamed about what we wanted to do with our lives, we always knew we wanted to be moms and that we wanted to stay home with them.  But it never really dawned on us that there would be little else we would be able to do, at least for this phase of life. Motherhood is so all-consuming and sometimes you just wonder if making babies and taking care of babies was meant to be your whole exisistence. (By the way, your doubts, fears, and failures as a mother are also things that can only be shared with the dearest of friends. Just one more reason I'm thankful for the kinds of friends God has blessed me with) Anyways, We were expressing our deepest desires of taking a shower without having to jump out wet and naked to check on a screaming child, or of eating a hot meal, or finishing a conversation, or sleeping until 9am when Seth ran into the kitchen (yes, they had found us by this time) and announced with peals of laughter "Lilah pooped and it's EVERYWHERE! Is that so funny????" Ruth and I burst into laughter (mine might have been a little mixed with tears since the pooper was my kid), which Seth took as a validation that it was, indeed, so funny. In reality, that was the laugh of two women who had finally been driven past the brink and into the realm of insanity. I cleaned up the poop, we took the kids outside to play, and then made a trip to McDonalds for dinner before Ruth left for home. It was a great time with a "kindred spirit" kind of friend. That's a shoutout to Anne of Green Gables fans, which I am. If I am Anne Shirley, Ruth is my Diana Barry. If you have not seen Anne of Green Gables and have no idea what I am talking about, you MUST watch it. It's the best girl movie ever. So my kindred spirit friend and I survived, and 2 days, 3 boxes of mac and cheese, several pots of coffee, and I'll admit, one long island iced tea later, we are planning our next get together to be children free at a hotel in Toledo for some shopping and girl movies. =) Although, our kids barely survived, Malachi has a self-induced black eye from a bouncy ball and toy to the face, Seth has a nasty knock on the back of the head from a sword fight on the bed gone wrong, and Peyton has the winner of the hematomas for the weekend with a wicked goose egg right above her eye after falling between the benches at McDonalds. ouch... So here's to the many friends in life God has blessed me with who have been there, helped me create the best memories, and make every day more fun and survivable. Love you all!

Lunch with the kids

We are having kind of a lazy day today. Just playing and hanging out for the most part. So when lunch rolled around I had the time to try to think about a way to make a healthy lunch that the kids would eat. They wanted eggs so I decided to make them egg sandwiches. We had some steamed green beans for dinner last night so I chopped up the left overs and scrambled them into the eggs for the sandwiches. Seth HATES green beans. It's the one food we usually don't even force him to try anymore. So I was skeptical that he would actually eat this sandwich. He's not blind, afterall. It turns out he could be, however, colorblind. He gobbled down the sandwich. Loved it! Lilah even told him there were green beans in it. He said that she was not telling the truth and I just told him it was eggs, cheese, and mustard. And then he asked me what those "red" things were inside his sandwich. I said it was a vegetable and changed the subject. We have been looking for signs of color blindness in my boys because it is genetically very possible that they could be color blind, or more accurately, color deficient. All of my brothers are color deficient and the gene is carried on the x chromosome, so I may very well be a carrier. Seth's is not quite old enough to officially have tested for it, so we don't know for sure. But if red green beans are an indication... well, enough said. =) Seth and Lilah each ate an entire 2 egg sandwich, an orange, and then some pudding because they said they were still starving. They have grown into their big appetites for sure. Gone are the days of sharing food off mine and Josh's plates. On Sunday, they each ate a hamburger from McDonalds, 5 chicken nuggets and fries. On Saturday they each ate 4-5 pieces of apple breakfast cake and 5 sausage links. And we are cutting them off because they are constantly saying they're still hungry. It's crazy! So today I happily watched the kids scarf their sandwiches and orange slices and listened to them tell me stories about their imaginary pets. Seth has a pet lizard that peed all over the house yesterday and needs to be punished, apparently. And Lilah has a pet butterfly that poked her in the eye with a graham cracker and then climbed onto her sandwich, so she ate it.  hmmmm..... I just asked them to get better control over their naughty, invisible pets and dropped it. And just so that Isaac doesn't get left out... His newest thing is that everytime he wakes up in the morning or at naptime he lets me know by standing up in his crib and slamming it against the wall until I com get him. If Seth is the imaginative one, Isaac is his brutish, physical counterpart. Although he does seem to have something of a sensitive side because I often find him pulled up to the piano, playing the keys and singing along with his tune. cute. =)

yucky week

Our kids have been sick, sick, sick this past week. We're pretty sure they have had croup. Fortunately, Isaac has not seemed to catch it. He's the one it would be most dangerous for. Lilah is still really sick. Seth is feeling better. This morning Seth got up, washed his face with soap and water, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and got dressed. He then chastised me for still being in my pajamas at 9am. Yes, he's feeling better. =) It's been a rough few days though. Lilah got sick first and has stayed sick the longest. On Saturday Seth was feeling really badly and developed a nasty conjunctivitis. So Josh went to get eye drops that we had in the cupboard to treat him. We put the eye drops in and Seth FREAKED OUT saying that they stung. We were only able to get one round of drops in each eye. So about an hour later we had to put in another round of drops. Seth went nuts again and we were like "why is he freaking out about this? These shouldn't really hurt?" So Josh put a drop in his own eye and said it was horrible. He took a closer look at the bottle and realized he had been putting ear drops from Seth's last ear infection in Seth's eyes. No wonder. oops. Way to go Dr. Vicena. We felt terrible. It was a Bausch and Lomb container and Josh just missed the little ear picture on the side. I don't think Seth will ever let daddy live that one down as he has told everyone in the family about it and still talks about the stinging drops that daddy shouldn't have put in his eyes. lol... Other than that, the weekend has been pretty uneventful and has mostly just been laying around watching movies. The one highlight was yesterday afternoon. Lilah was having a particularly rough day yesterday and really just slept on the couch ALL DAY. She only got up a couple times to vomit mucous from the coughing. Seth was doing better so he went to the store with Grandma to get more ibuprofen. He came home with pink carnations for Lilah and presented them to her with a smile and a hug. Lilah was thrilled and hopped up immediately to put them in water. She gave Seth a hug and a kiss and felt so special. She felt like such a little princess and I thought it was nice that her first flowers from a boy were delivered by her very caring and sweet big brother. Precious mom moment. =) So, today we are all staying home for one more day and resting and then I will be wiping down and Lysoling the entire house!