Thank you!

...for all the support that has come my way over the past few days...here and on Facebook. The decision to make a big change of this nature took a while to wrap my brain around but I feel nothing but relief now that I have made it. I have an appointment made...July 31st at 9 AM I am meeting Susan to try the CIS programming and we will see how that goes. She said that we have never tried the CIS strategy before and agreed that it was a possibility so I am interested to see if it will make any difference at all. I have heard from several users of that strategy that have had encouraging things to say...that is exciting :)
While at the HLAA convention in Nashville, our family had the privilege of working with Cindy Dyer, whose photography can be found here: Cindy Dyer's Blog. Cindy offered to photograph our family about a year ago but because of schedule conflicts we never could make it happen. I finally got to meet Cindy in June and she spent quite a bit of time with our family one afternoon taking pictures. The woman does spectacular work...and also a tremendous amount of it...so I have been patiently waiting to see how they turned out. It finally got to be too much for me, though, and I e-mailed her and asked to see just one particular picture...one where we just let the kids be goofy and hang out. She obliged by sending it to me right away...and it was so cute! She has asked that I not share further pictures just yet...as they are for a project...but she said I could post this one on my blog, so I did :) I think this one turned out so cute...my eight year old is making a funny face, but that's what that age tends to do in pictures, I think :)
One more quick observation and then I am headed to bed. I have talked to a lot of people over the past three years about CIs and have mentored, been mentored by, supported and been supported by a lot of people in that time. One of my buddies, Ulf, has been around for a long time...I've probably known him about two years. He has been desperately needing a CI for a long time but because he lives in Norway and there is limited funding for his hospital to do CI surgeries, he has had to wait a very, very long time. I don't know what time it is in Norway, but I know that Ulf is FINALLY having his surgery today, on Wednesday, July 22nd. I get excited about ALL CI surgeries, but he has waited a very long time to hear again, and I feel a tremendous amount of joy that his dream is finally coming true. Keep Ulf in your prayers and if you feel like it, swing by his blog and congratulate him. I know he hasn't posted on the blog a lot lately but the last I heard on Facebook everything was still on. He would love to hear from you. Keep him in your prayers!
Headed to bed...night, all :)