December 26th

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We were blessed with several things the last few days, starting off with being able to spend time with both our families. We also had a Christmas shopping date one night and a dinner and movie date tonight, very rare for us, but much needed and we really enjoyed.

We enjoyed watching Bryan's face when he saw that Santa had come to our house. After spending the morning with him, we spent the afternoon with Luke. Playing Christmas music and opening his gifts. The greatest gift was something we couldn't imagine. An icon featuring Our Lady of Charity blessed by the Pope circulating the Nation landed in Luke's room. We couldn't believe it. For 24hrs he had in his very own room this beautiful painting dictating the story of 3 Cuban men in trouble out at sea and the seas calmed right where they found a statue of Mary floating with a board on it that was inscribed "I am the Virgin of Charity". The men were saved by this statue. There was a shrine erected in her honor. The Knights of Columbus are circulating this icon around the nation and our local Knights felt that Luke's room would be a good spot for it to visit. All we can say is that we felt very blessed. We all said some prayers upon it's arrival. I've included a picture.

As far as Luke is doing, he's doing very good. He hasn't had the back slide that was expected coming off of the steroid. His lung doctor says that Luke is just short of a miracle in this department. It's wonderful to hear this good news, it was music to our ears. We've decided to postpone the Cardiac Catheter procedure. There's still not a complete certainty that Luke's heart is big enough to have the hole closed and we want to make certain that he only has to undergo this procedure once, so we are holding off a bit for him to get a little bigger. He'll remain on Nitric Oxide and have a repeat Eco Cardiogram next week to see if his pressures are stabilized.

He's a very social guy, smiling a lot at everyone and today enjoyed floating in his bathtub getting all clean.

He's about 10 1/2lbs right now and looks really good, he has a few "rolls" on him.

We appreciate all your prayers and support. Merry Christmas!

Melinda