From Jada Looses her Frist Tooth, posted by Jonathan-Jenny Roundy on 1/24/2012 (2 items)

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From Decorating for Christmas 2011, posted by Jonathan-Jenny Roundy on 12/08/2011 (20 items)

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African version of a Jack-o-Lantern

While our fall festivities didn’t include our usual trip to the pumpkin farm or romp in the leaves, they did include a lot of fun! At Emmanuel & Elena’s school, the senior class put on an evening of fun events and good food!

Elena in the process of winning the sack race against all boys

Jumping for Joy

Jada zipping by on the zipline

James enjoying a grapefruit soda...yep, grapefruit!

Getting ready to blow out the candles

With all of our different moves, it seems that we make them before August when Emmanuel’s birthday is, so he usually gets to be the first one to celebrate another year of life in our new context.

Enjoying cake and ice cream with friends

Thank you so much all of you who have been and are praying for our family.  Part of adjusting to our life here in Senegal is to build new friendships.  Emmanuel having friends to invite to his birthday is a direct answer to your prayers for friends for each of us.  Please continue to pray for us as we build relationships here in Senegal.

The force is strong with you young roundy

Boba Fett - loving the dress-ups

We are so excited with Emmanuel for his new bike

Please pray for us as we parent all four of our children through this transition and beyond.  We truly need wisdom from above to parent each one of our children.

I guess they have been watching life around them here in Senegal

Since we have been here, apparently certain little eyes have been watching what is going on with life and how things work here in Senegal.  I thought you would enjoy this picture of our girls integrating in the culture!

Picking Blackberries on...then off to cool down in the lake in North Carolina

Enjoying the lake with family in the smokies

Celebrating the 4th in North Carolina with Jenny's Family

God allowed us to coordinate a reunion with the Roundy side of our family in northern Wisconsin from 3 different continents (including the us in the US of course).  It was so great to be together as family and catch up before our departure for Africa.  We all enjoyed driving the ATV’s, swimming in the lake and just plain being together as family.   The Jones were kind enough to let us stay in their place in Northern Wisconsin.

Grilling out is serious business!

A pic of us all together up north, my brother came later

Last trip to Ching Hwa was a must. This is the whole crew after my brother arrived

Jenny and Misty

Jonathan, Cynthia and Curtis first time together in a long time! So much fun!

James, Jada and Mom at the Hospital

As we get closer and closer to our departure date, we are making our most valiant attempt at crossing all of our T’s and dotting all of our I’s.  One of the items on the list is to get properly vaccinated against whatever diseases may await our family upon arrival in Senegal.  One of the “biggies” in Africa to be concerned about is Yellow Fever. In fact, depending on what country it is in Africa, if you arrive at the port of entry and do not have your Yellow Fever Vaccination Certification card showing you have been vaccinated, you may be ushered into a vaccination area and receive the vaccine on the spot.

We started by making lots of phone calls to find out the best way and the most economical way for our family to receive our vaccinations for Africa.  We spent an afternoon at the Travel Clinic here in Sherbrooke in order to get our typhoid vaccine and other vaccinations needed.  During our time there, the nurse brought up the Yellow Fever Vaccine, which was not news to us, except that this vaccinations has a lot of EGG in it compared with other vaccines that contain egg.  Oops, James and Jada are allergic to eggs, but they need the vaccine.  The Dr. called an allergist at the local hospital and setup an appointment for the twins to receive their Yellow Fever vaccine at the hospital under the supervision of an allergist, with and IV in place and ICU on alert.  This would take place over the period of 1/2 a day.  The only catch is that this is free for Canadians, but…we are not Canadians.  So we launched into the research phase.  Do we HAVE to have this vaccination?  How much would it cost to take care of this at the Public Hospital where normally everything is covered, but not for us?  Could we find a Dr. in the United States who would do this for us, maybe while we are in Wisconsin this summer?  Is the hospital and Dr. in network for our insurance?  By the way, how do those deductibles work anyhow?  What is the real risk of contracting yellow fever in Senegal?  If you get Yellow Fever, what is the mortality rate, (i.e. what are the chances you will die) ?  Can we find anyone in Wisconsin willing to administer the shot, or does everyone want to write and exception for us?  If it is not a required vaccine for Senegal, why did one of our missionary friends get ushered into the “vaccination room” when entering Senegal without their yellow fever card in hand?

We are blessed to have a couple in French Language Study with us, Grace and Dale, who are both Doctors.  They were a great help to us in even knowing what questions to ask when making the decision.  We were calling all over the place and getting no real answers, just blank stares.  Can you get a blank stare when speaking to someone on a phone?  Apparently the type of Dr. to speak with is a Pediatric Infectious Disease doctor.   We launched an email to the prayer team to pray with us for wisdom in making this BIG decision.  God has truly blessed us with a wonderful group of  people who pray with us in during challenging times like this.

We came to the decision that the risks of the disease and the mortality rate, chance you will die if you get it, lead us to the decision that James and Jada in deed needed to receive the vaccination.  The next question was where?  Wisconsin or Quebec? We tried very hard to find someone in Wisconsin who could administer the vaccination before our departure for Africa.  Froedert Travel Clinic and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin both referred us to the same allergist.  When we started figuring out dates, we were arriving in Wisconsin on July 11th and he was leaving town from July 14th – August 1st.  Oops, that’s a pretty tight schedule, but there was an opening for July 12th.  He did some research into what the protocol would look like and also spent some time hearing James and Jada’s egg allergy history.  We were praying for clear direction in the decision.  Having the vaccination in Wisconsin would be free or closed to free whereas being vaccinated here in Quebec was looking like 2 to 3 thousand dollars if all went well.  ICU is $7,993 per night if we ended up needing that.  Another hurdle was that the hospital where everything was setup for was out of network. (NOT GOOD)  Through many phone calls we found out that because there are NO IN NETWORK hospitals in our town, insurance would put the expenses as IN NETWORK.  We continued to pray and ask for prayer.  The last time I prayed about it before we made our decision I asked God for clarity.  Within the hour I received a phone call from the allergist in WI saying that he felt like our schedule in Wisconsin had NO margin for error and that it would be wise to come up with another plan.  How about that for an answer to prayer!

All ready for the hospital...magic cream applied... check, tagoderm applied...check

We were scheduled to be at the hospital at 8 AM for our appointment. We needed to get our hospital card, prepay the society of doctors and pay a bill in hospital accounting.   Well, the only place open before 8 AM was the place to get the hospital card.  I thought I would get ahead of the game and do all of this the day before.  After spending the afternoon at the hospital, I found out that I would not be able to have my hospital card until the day of my appointment.  I also would not be able to pay any of the other bills until I had my hospital card.  The lady in the doctors society office told me that she could help me and allow me to pay early, but that I would need to return the next day to have a number changed on my receipt.  There were two charges, one for James and one for Jada.  After running the first charge, Jenny received a phone call at home to confirm that it was us making the charge and release a hold they had put, or intended to put on our bank card.  Meanwhile, I was at the hospital totally unaware of what had transpired with the bank. God is in the details! This could have been a very difficult situation if I had waited until the next day and nobody was home to take the call from our bank.  God also blessed us with a wonderful gentleman, Jean-Claude De Courcy from AXE21 (our church here) to go with us to the hospital to help with language barriers in case things we “wrong”.

James and Jada received their vaccinations with very little complication! The doctor and nursing staff were wonderful and compassionate during the whole process. James and Jada both needed IVs installed  as well as 4 shots each over the course of the morning.  The numbing gel they used for Jada caused her veins to collapse and so they had to try 4 times to get the IV in and finally installed it in her arm instead of her hand.  This lead to many tears from both Jada and mommy, who was with her during this process.  After receiving the vaccination there was a possibility of reaction for up to 24 hours.  We praise the Lord that there was no major reaction. Jada had a large local reaction, but this was remedied by children’s Tylenol over the next few days.  Praise the Lord for allowing us to come through this process all in one piece and for being in the details all along the journey.

James and Jada in some of their birthday gear

It seems like just yesterday that we brought James and Jada home, and now they are 5 years old.  Where did the time go?  James and Jada are such a blessing to our family.  We had such a wonderful time celebrating their birthday with them.  I will post a few pictures here and some more facebook.  Hope you enjoy the pictures!

James opening up one of his birthday gifts

Jada opening one of her gifts

James and Jada "all dressed up"

Jada showing off a new dress from Grandma