Hi everyone!

Its sadly been over a year since the last family blog post. But I would like to change that. Most of our family and friends are on Facebook and that was so easy but honestly, I am thinking of deleting us from FB altogether. Seems like there has been more computer viruses since we joined. And since we depend on our computers for work and school, not very helpful when we are constantly debugging our systems! We also have family and special friends who don't have FB and have asked for an update so this is especially for you!!!!

So much has happened in a year, which I suppose is true of every ones lives. I remember as a kid, a year was a very long space of time. Now, as a mom of 5, a year seems to pass so rapidly!

I will try to give you all a quick update on us but as large as our family is, there isn't anything quick about it!

We have been blessed with great kids. Noah and Kelly are 14 and will be Freshmen this fall. We are still having school at home and they are doing very well. We tried French this year but never really got the hang of it so as Freshmen we are going back to Spanish for 2 years. Then giving them the option of taking it 4 years or allowing them 2 years in another foreign language. Noah's still drawing and doing well at it. This winter we went to Florida and he got the pleasure of co-piloting a few minutes in our cousins airplane. John, my cousin, has his own bird now and Josh and Noah got to see Orlando from a birds eye view at night. Was quite the treat. Noah is considering aviation as a career. Kelly is getting quite tall and just more beautiful, if that's possible! Gabriel thinks she is his other mommy and loves to take rides in her wheelchair on her lap, its so cute! She got a cell phone so that's her big hobby right now. We tease her that she will get "textitis".

Josiah just finished another year of tee ball. Hes getting so big. Looks like a mini Noah, who looks like a mini Josh. Josiah is tall, lean, and fast for his age! He also finished kindergarten and is looking forward to 1st grade. He is really into hot wheels. All his money earned goes towards collecting hot wheels he doesn't have. I can't understand how he knows which ones he does and doesn't have but he never buys a duplicate. Amazing. Must be a guy thing!

Kloe is 4 but very tall for her age. Doc says she is the height of a tall 6 year old. She is all girly girl. But can be quite the tomboy, just in a dress and sparkly. She wants to climb trees with Josiah, but has to apply her lip gloss first. Shes so cute. Her hair is so dark and curly but way down her back, almost to her legs. Every time I give her scissors in preschool I cringe and watch her so closely. It would break my heart to see her cut her hair! Shes also very mothering. She likes to mother Gabe, its very sweet. She also likes to dress up the dog, since Gabe won't allow her to apply make up. But, the dog isn't into that so he ends up hiding from her, lol. Last week I saw Rocky sporting a pearl necklace and hat. I swear that dog looked at me like "if anyone finds out, I will bite you!". haha

Gabriel is 19 months old and no surprise, he is very very tall. In the church nursery hes heads above all the other kids. He is so tender and loving. Loves to give hugs and kisses and rough it up with the Kloe and Jo. He is their constant shadow. He looks so cute in our sea of raven hair, he is quite the blondie! And with his blue eyes its adorable. He loves outside. You mention the word and he takes off and waits at the door clapping and yelling yayayaya. He will love the summer pool times!

Josh is doing well. His heart is strong and healthy! We thank God for that everyday! He is working as a Design Engineer at DePuy. He has a great job with wonderful benefits and we are very pleased God has provided this. He is working a lot of hours right now. He may possibly have to go to France for work this summer. I had hoped to go along but maybe next time. He really enjoyed co-coaching Josiah's tee ball team this year.

As for me, I have been referred to the countries best Nephrologist for my kidney disease, thankfully she works at IU! We finally have a dianosis so we are working on a treatment. My kidney stones are MUCH better. However all the bone issues, trouble walking, frequent infections etc she says are because of a Rhuemotology issue. I was quite surprised and frustrated. After all this time we had hoped now we could move on and learn to just deal with what we have. Now I am having to go thru new testing and a slew of huge treatment meds as some critical blood levels were very low. Those meds are making me pretty sick. She started out doing the treatment pill for my bones twice a month. My levels weren't responding much so she upped them to twice a week. I have a loving and supportive family helping me thru this. I have great friends encouraging me and it seems like even when I have nights that I am up sick all night someone will text me a 2 a.m. and tell me God loves me! Its been amazing! I don't understand the WHY of this journey but I know that God does and I trust Him.

As a family we are all looking forward to a normal summer for once! We plan on swimming, picnicking outside, movies on rainy days, sleeping in on the weekends, long walks outside and just being together.

Thanks for stopping in, let us know how YOU are doing and we will try to post an update much sooner! We have missed out on a lot of extended family and friend gatherings thru all this so please update us on your lives, we miss you!

Love and hugs,

Andra

Been a long time!

Its sadly been over a year since the last family blog post. But I would like to change that. Most of our family and friends are on Facebook and that was so easy but honestly, I am thinking of deleting us from FB altogether. Seems like there has been more computer viruses since we joined. And since we depend on our computers for work and school, not very helpful when we are constantly debugging our systems! We also have family and special friends who don't have FB and have asked for an update so this is especially for you!!!!

So much has happened in a year, which I suppose is true of every ones lives. I remember as a kid, a year was a very long space of time. Now, as a mom of 5, a year seems to pass so rapidly!

I will try to give you all a quick update on us but as large as our family is, there isn't anything quick about it!

We have been blessed with great kids. Noah and Kelly are 14 and will be Freshmen this fall. We are still having school at home and they are doing very well. We tried French this year but never really got the hang of it so as Freshmen we are going back to Spanish for 2 years. Then giving them the option of taking it 4 years or allowing them 2 years in another foreign language. Noah's still drawing and doing well at it. This winter we went to Florida and he got the pleasure of co-piloting a few minutes in our cousins airplane. John, my cousin, has his own bird now and Josh and Noah got to see Orlando from a birds eye view at night. Was quite the treat. Noah is considering aviation as a career. Kelly is getting quite tall and just more beautiful, if that's possible! Gabriel thinks she is his other mommy and loves to take rides in her wheelchair on her lap, its so cute! She got a cell phone so that's her big hobby right now. We tease her that she will get "textitis".

Josiah just finished another year of tee ball. Hes getting so big. Looks like a mini Noah, who looks like a mini Josh. Josiah is tall, lean, and fast for his age! He also finished kindergarten and is looking forward to 1st grade. He is really into hot wheels. All his money earned goes towards collecting hot wheels he doesn't have. I can't understand how he knows which ones he does and doesn't have but he never buys a duplicate. Amazing. Must be a guy thing!

Kloe is 4 but very tall for her age. Doc says she is the height of a tall 6 year old. She is all girly girl. But can be quite the tomboy, just in a dress and sparkly. She wants to climb trees with Josiah, but has to apply her lip gloss first. Shes so cute. Her hair is so dark and curly but way down her back, almost to her legs. Every time I give her scissors in preschool I cringe and watch her so closely. It would break my heart to see her cut her hair! Shes also very mothering. She likes to mother Gabe, its very sweet. She also likes to dress up the dog, since Gabe won't allow her to apply make up. But, the dog isn't into that so he ends up hiding from her, lol. Last week I saw Rocky sporting a pearl necklace and hat. I swear that dog looked at me like "if anyone finds out, I will bite you!". haha

Gabriel is 19 months old and no surprise, he is very very tall. In the church nursery hes heads above all the other kids. He is so tender and loving. Loves to give hugs and kisses and rough it up with the Kloe and Jo. He is their constant shadow. He looks so cute in our sea of raven hair, he is quite the blondie! And with his blue eyes its adorable. He loves outside. You mention the word and he takes off and waits at the door clapping and yelling yayayaya. He will love the summer pool times!

Josh is doing well. His heart is strong and healthy! We thank God for that everyday! He is working as a Design Engineer at DePuy. He has a great job with wonderful benefits and we are very pleased God has provided this. He is working a lot of hours right now. He may possibly have to go to France for work this summer. I had hoped to go along but maybe next time. He really enjoyed co-coaching Josiah's tee ball team this year.

As for me, I have been referred to the countries best Nephrologist for my kidney disease, thankfully she works at IU! We finally have a dianosis so we are working on a treatment. My kidney stones are MUCH better. However all the bone issues, trouble walking, frequent infections etc she says are because of a Rhuemotology issue. I was quite surprised and frustrated. After all this time we had hoped now we could move on and learn to just deal with what we have. Now I am having to go thru new testing and a slew of huge treatment meds as some critical blood levels were very low. Those meds are making me pretty sick. She started out doing the treatment pill for my bones twice a month. My levels weren't responding much so she upped them to twice a week. I have a loving and supportive family helping me thru this. I have great friends encouraging me and it seems like even when I have nights that I am up sick all night someone will text me a 2 a.m. and tell me God loves me! Its been amazing! I don't understand the WHY of this journey but I know that God does and I trust Him.

As a family we are all looking forward to a normal summer for once! We plan on swimming, picnicking outside, movies on rainy days, sleeping in on the weekends, long walks outside and just being together.

Thanks for stopping in, let us know how YOU are doing and we will try to post an update much sooner! We have missed out on a lot of extended family and friend gatherings thru all this so please update us on your lives, we miss you!

Love and hugs,

Andra

Summer Break

Alas...summer is here.. will post news soon. Here are some pix we did for Joshs bday present

Love,

The Barker Zoo

Life from the "Zoo"

Its been busy. Josh is almost done with school. The kids have about 7 weeks left. Looking sooo forward to summer. Thank you everyone for your prayers.

Andra and "The Zoo"

Update:

I wanted to post an update for our fam and friends. Josh has gotten emails wanting an update but he's so busy trying to make up school and work that he can't even get on the computer to do it and this IS something I can do for him! I have a wonderful, devoted, and loving husband and children.

I had been doing spectacular until a few weeks ago. I could tell my right kidney wan't draining right. I saw my Urologist and told him how I felt but that otherwise I felt better than I had in a year! Then Kelly and I went shopping the same day for 5 hours at the mall. I woke up the next day thinking I was tired from shopping. After a few days of feeling like I had the flu or tiredness I called my doc to see what the urine culture showed. Nurse said there was a lab mix-up and it had gotten thrown out! I was like "What?", and why does this seem to always happen to me :-) I told her that I was feeling pretty sick, I knew something wasn't "right". She said my doc was off until Monday (5 days away). We redid the test and I waited... Over the weekend I felt terribly ill. By Monday, I knew something was really wrong. I called my doc and couldn't get thru for hours. I called my family doc who was able to look up my test results and he said they were not good and to go straight to Lutheran Hospital in Ft. Wayne. I refused: I didn't want to leave my kids....

Until, my husband came home in the middle of the day and told me he was praying for me and that I was supposed to go to the ER, he felt like God was telling him that my life depended on it. How can you argue with that? LOL

We got there and my BP was 199/114. I was tachacardyia. They bumped me ahead of the other patients waiting. A doc came in and said I was staying and to feed Gabe one last time because I was really sick and they needed to medicate fast. I had no idea things were THAT bad until that moment.

I was in the hospital all that week. My BP kept spiking. I was diagnosed with pylonephritis again. It is psudemonos AGAIN... I am home now on a PICC line. I do antibiotic infusions 3 times a day. They are making me so sick. Some days I can barely eat. I am on home health care. We are praying so hard that the treatments work this time. I will finish my 2 week round on Monday. I see the doc that day and we will wait 3 days and retest to see if the bug is gone. if its gone, we are done. If its not we retreat with stronger medications.....

Its a very rare bug to be in a kidney. And once it get there, it doesn't want to leave. The x-rays etc have shown that I have a birth defect. My ureters that go from my kidney to bladder are structurlaly too small. This isn't helping.

Gabe is finally taking a bottle. Poor Josh had to literally drip the formula in his mouth the first 3 days. He is not minding it so much now but his tummy isn't liking it. He is so confused... I feel so sorry for him. He was an on demand nurser, had never really taken a pacifier. Now when I try to hold him, he gets mad because he can smell the milk but can't seem to understand why I won't feed him. Thankfully, to the docs suprise, my body is still making a lot of milk. I am pumping and dumping for now to keep up my supply. Hopefully this will be over soon so we can get back to nursing.

The other kids are doing great. I sure missed them while I was gone and vice versa. We took spring break this past week to rest. Josh only has 5 weeks of school. This is a really bad time for his wife to be sick. Sorry hun!

After my appt on Monday we will go from there. We are hopeful the kidney will drain once the infection is cleared. If not, I will need a kidney tube again. Pseudemonas in the kidney is usually from a contaminated catheter. Thats frustrating to know this is propbably all caused from a hospital mistake.... But God knows all and will take care of me, of that I am SURE!

We so much appreciate everyones help, prayers, emails, phone calls, meals, etc. In a time like this, when one day life is going absolutely perfect, then the next its turned upside down.. its so nice to feel loved.

And to my mommy~ Once again, you are so wonderful to me. Thanks for taking care of all of us. I seriously don't know what I would do without you!

Andra

Birthdays....

I have teenagers now. Two of them! In three years they can drive. How excting and depressing is that? Watching them grow is such a blessing. Knowing it means they are one step closer to adulthood and spreading their wings is terrifying. I never want them to leave me. I love having their constant twin banter in my home. Noahs hilarious joskes at midnight and Kelly's constant witty remarks. They should have a primetime show those two! But I know God has big plans for them each. I just pray in the meantime that the clock can slow down.....

I will post bday pix next week.

Growing....

They are all getting so big :-(