Christmas 2009

Here are just a few shots of our Christmas for you to enjoy!

On Christmas Eve, we had to celebrate with Arizona family via cell phone. We traditionally have a sibling gift exchange. This year we had Aunt Gentry and she had us! Here is a picture of the boys enjoying the bubble wrap that came with her gift!



Here are the boys enjoying some of their cousins on Christmas. Luke is always concerned that the twins have their pacifiers! If you remember when we visited last Thanksgiving we have a picture of him doing the same thing last year!!





Here is Gracie resting with Mommy. She is all girl, even the way she folds her hands to sleep!



Gracie got to meet another great-grandmother,Great-Grandma Morgan!



Four generations of Morgans!



Here are all three with their Great-Grandma, what a blessing to still have three great-grandmothers alive to enjoy!



Luke just walked right up to Great-Grandma and said "I want a kiss please!"



This morning we woke up in our hotel to a not so fun surprise: Ben was sick and throwing up! So Mommy stayed at the hotel with Grace and Ben while Daddy took Luke to go visit with Grandma and Grandpa and do some laundry for us!

Here is Gracie starting to enjoy some tummy time, with a mat her Great-Grandparents gave her for Christmas!



Here is our poor sick Ben, wrapped up in towels, because it was the only way we could contain the mess while in a hotel setting! Did you know that ice buckets make very good puke buckets for toddlers? Yuck! Tis the season!


We are not sure how much more visiting we will get in for this trip, it will depend on how Ben is feeling, and if Luke catches what Ben has! We are grateful we have had this time to visit with family.

One month old!

Today our baby girl is one month old! It is so hard to believe that time has flown by so fast. We made it safe to PA yesterday and have been enjoying visiting with family. We will post more pictures later of all of our Christmas visiting, but for now just wanted to post a few pictures of our 1 month old Grace!

Here is our Gracie getting to meet her Great-Grandma Grace Shirey!



Spending time with Daddy



Our baby girl at one month



It has been so much fun to watch her personality start to show itself. All in all she is a very easy going little one. She is so alert and playful, she loves her big brothers a ton! Just in the past two days she has started to coo a lot, and she is smiling in response to Mommy saying her name and kissing her face. What a joy it is to watch her as she grows!

Our Family Christmas

So, as promised....here are a few photos of our family Christmas. This year we did not put up a tree. We will be in PA for the actual holiday, and it was just too much this year to decorate a tree with a newborn! We kept it simple! We are praying you have a wonderful Christmas season as we have been! Here are a few of our favorite shots....and then to follow, a montage of all of the shots that just didn't make the cut, but make us laugh anyway. Have you ever tried getting a 3 year old, a 2 year old and a 3 week old all together in a picture that looks half way decent? It is a comedy of errors, I can assure you!

Cuddling in Mommy and Daddy's bed



Our Christmas fireplace.....instead of a tree



Stocking fun...



Big trucks for our boys...





Tea set for our girl!





Mommy and Gracie



Our three gifts from God



Family of 5!

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Merry Christmas with Love,
Jeff, Mer, Luke, Ben, Grace and Miss Clara

Yeah Daddy!!!

Monday we were able to watch our Daddy graduate from a police academy!!! We are so proud of him. He has worked so hard the last 4 + months, and has done so well! Please pray for him as he now starts the intense application/hiring process. Pray that he would find the right job quickly and that God would protect him as he serves both our community and our family!



Luke and Ben did so well at the graduation, although they are not fans of bagpipes! There goes our family trip to Scotland!!! Gracie was quiet too....except during the moment of silence for fallen officers. It was then that she decided to make herself known.




When it was Jeff's turn to graduate and walk across the stage, Luke shouted in a somewhat Jersey/ New York accent... "What's my Daddy doin'????" Ben was shouting "Yeah Daddy!" for the whole room to hear! Thankfully they are still little and cute and nobody minds the break in decorum!



Grandma and Grandpa, and Jeff's brother's family were all able to drive down for the day to help us celebrate! It was also Gracie's first visit with her Morgan cousins.




Our daddy is our biggest hero!!!!!! We love you daddy!!!

December Fun

We have had so many updates on Gracie, I have not had time to keep you updated on the happenings of our boys. Luke and Ben are having fun enjoying the cold weather and all the Christmas festivities. We will be in PA visiting family for Christmas....so we celebrated our family Christmas together this morning! There were even snow flurries, so we can say we had a white Christmas! I will post more pictures of our Christmas later.



Here is a new twist on the Nativity scene.....



The trip to Bethlehem was pretty slow going on a donkey....but the ride home via lights and sirens was much faster!



This was the scene we discovered one afternoon while Luke and Ben were playing with their Little People nativity scene. Luke informed me that Mary was taking Baby Jesus in the police car to jail! We obviously need to work a little more on our Christmas story rendition!

UNC Visit

Today was a very long and difficult day, but well worth it! Today we went to UNC to have a sweat chloride test done to find out if Grace has a form of cystic fibrosis or not. Praise the Lord, they were able to get enough of a sample (which is difficult with newborns) so we do not need to repeat the test later on....and the best news of yet.....it was negative! This is fantastic news, it means for sure, that Gracie is only a carrier for CF, and she does not have any form of the disease at all!!!

The test and whole experience was pretty intense. I am not sure who is more worn out and who cried more, Gracie or me. We are so grateful for the good news, and are so thankful for all your prayers for our little one.

We are now home, and have crashed from the exhausting experience. We are ready just to hibernate for a bit since it is now snowing outside!



Thanks again for all the prayers and loving support for our family during this stressful experience!

Gracie Update and three weeks!

Today our Gracie is three weeks old! It is hard to believe these first few weeks really have flown by!

We finally have some news to share concerning Grace and her newborn lab results. We have been waiting for the past week to hear from UNC about an appointment for further testing. So of course, we have been a bit on edge wondering what these results would tell us. We finally got a letter in the mail yesterday at 4 PM telling us that we were supposed to be at an appointment at UNC at 10 AM that morning!! We called UNC right away, and they have no idea why we were not notified earlier, but wanted to reschedule us for an appointment in January!!!! (Little did the poor woman on the phone know, that she was dealing with a very emotional postpartum Mommy that was already worried sick about her daughter!) I burst into tears while on the phone, and the kind woman told me that because Grace is so young, that she would talk to the director of the genetics/ CF testing program and see if they could get us in any earlier.

This morning I received a call from the director, and it was such an answer to prayer! He was so apologetic that somehow the ball had been dropped and we were not notified of the testing appointment. He scheduled us to come in this Friday at 1 PM. While on the phone with him, he asked how much I understood about Grace's lab results. I told him that it was my understanding that these new tests would tell us if she was a carrier for cystic fibrosis, or if she had the disease. At that point he was appalled that we had not been given all the educational info that was supposed to come with the appointment information.

In a nutshell, this is what he said (if I understand it correctly, we will get more info Friday) : In order to have CF Grace has to have two mutations on a certain gene, one from each parent. She only has one mutation, so unless the DNA test was wrong (which is what they will check on Friday) there is NO WAY for her to have full blown cystic fibrosis!!!! In fact the mutation she does have on that gene (the R117H mutation) is actually the mildest CF mutation possible, so even if the DNA tests were originally wrong, and she does have two mutations, there is still NO WAY for her to have full blown CF, at most she would have a mild version which would be a metabolic disorder syndrome.

Did you catch that???? What an answer to prayer......NO full blown disease possible! Thank you Lord for answers even before our appointment! We will update you as soon as we know anything else after our appointment and testing. Down the road both Jeff and I will need to be tested, to see if both of us, or just one of us is a carrier, so that we will know the level of risk for the disease for any future children God may give us. Now we just pray that Gracie does not grow up and fall in love and marry a man who is also a carrier, but God already knows and is in control of all of that!

To celebrate our good news, here is a montage of more pictures of our three week old baby girl!

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Time with Grammy

Today was a difficult day for our family. We had to say goodbye to our Grammy, as she returned home to Arizona. She has been such a blessing to us for the last three weeks as we have been adjusting to the recent addition to our family.

We are so glad she was able to be here to meet Gracie.



Luke and Ben have had so much fun getting to know their Grammy, although it now makes the distance seem so much greater with her gone.



Grammy was full of fun ideas and games for the boys. They even got to make a gingerbread house with Grammy!




All of us wish she could stay for much longer, but she is missed at home too. So for now we will share her until our next visit, which will hopefully be soon!!!!





Thank you Grammy for the gift of time that you gave us! We love you!!!!!
Jeff, Mer, Luke, Ben, and Gracie

Gracie Update

Thank you so much for the overwhelming response of prayers and support for our family. I have not updated as of yet, because we really don't have any news at this point to update. We are in a holding pattern waiting for UNC to call us with an appointment for the next round of tests for our Gracie.
Over the last two weeks plus we have been to the pediatricians office every two days since she was born for weight checks. Some very positive news is that over the weekend, and by Tuesday (her 2 week appt) she had gained 6 ounces in 4 days!!! That is a huge answer to prayer!
We will continue to keep you updated as we know any new information. Thank you for your prayers!
Love,
Morgans

Urgent prayer needed

We don't even hardly have the words to come before you to ask for your prayers. As most of you know, our precious daughter Gracie will be two weeks old tomorrow. We just received a phone call from our pediatrician's office that one of the newborn screening tests came back flagged for cystic fibrosis. Over the last two weeks we have been struggling with weight gain and other issues with Grace. We will be going to UNC specialists for further testing. Of course we are praying that all these tests would come back with a different answer, but we are also praying that God would give us the strength to handle whatever answers we receive. Our Pediatrician spent awhile discussing the test results with the genetic specialists at UNC, and based on her lab work they are hopeful that Gracie is just a carrier for CF, and would not have the full blown disease. Would you please join us on our knees for our daughter? Please feel free to forward this request and ask for prayer from anyone that will go to His throne for our family.

Believing Him,
Jeff, Meredith, Luke, Ben and Gracie Morgan

Our first week with Gracie

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