Heartache and Blessing

Today was a day of both heartache and blessing.  On the blog earlier today, I posted that Abigail had to go home from school with a fever.  When she went to the doctor this morning, her fever was up to 103.  The doctor stated that Abigail definitely needs to be fever free for at least 24 hours before being around Grace.  By this afternoon, Abigail was throwing up and still not feeling well.  Please pray that Abigail recovers quickly from this and that Kristi and Andrew don't get sick as well.  From a selfish perspective, Kristi and I still wanted to push it and have them fly out tomorrow night, but we would never forgive ourselves if the kids got here and Grace got sick and then wound up back in the hospital for Christmas.  Therefore, we are returning to the previous plan and Kristi and the kids will be flying out on Friday night.  While that's only three days away, I can't even begin to tell you how far away that feels.  The comfort in it all is that we know that God is in control of all these details, and since He is a just, loving, and good God, we know that there is a reason for this delay, even if it doesn't make sense or seem fair to us right now.

The blessing in all of this came around 1:00 pm when I received a phone call from the front desk stating that they heard about our situation and that the rest of the family would be flying into town, so they wanted to see if we would be interested in upgrading rooms at no additional cost.  I said, "Well, if it's not going to cost us extra, then we would be happy and grateful to accept the upgrade."  We moved into the new room and I was amazed.  It is two bedrooms, in which the smaller bedroom is bigger than the room we were previously in, and the bigger bedroom has a dining table, bar, couch, chairs, and king bed.  There are three seperate entrances to this new suite.  Our family will probably never be able to stay in a hotel room this large ever again.  They even sent up milk and cookies for Grace and I this evening.  So, we found out from a friend, who spoke with her friend, who is a corporate booking agent, and he spoke with Marriott and they so very generously were willing to bless us with a significantly upgraded room, their treat!!!  Can you believe this?  We don't personally know the person responsible for this blessing, but we can't thank you enough for your willingness to help us out and bless us in this way.  Thank you!!!  We are so grateful, humbled, and amazed at all of this happening.  We are thankful to God and to anyone and everyone involved in each and every blessing and prayer on our behalf!  Thank you so much and God bless!

Marriott has always been our hotel of choice whenever possible, but now we are officially their biggest fan! 

Here are some pictures of the room upgrade:

And here's some pictures of Grace preparing for the cold weather:

Have a wonderful night everyone!  Thank you for your continued prayers and support!  God bless and Merry Christmas!