Home For Now

This is the most central spot in the kitchen we can find. Food will fly in any direction from this point and his arm isn’t good enough to hit the carpet yet.

Well after much prayer and discernment we have decided to stay in BC for awhile.   This decision has been a very difficult one to make and we appreciate all of you who were praying for us during this process.  We have very mixed feelings about the whole thing, but we do believe that God has us in Canada for now. Burundi is still on our hearts and we are very open to returning in the future, perhaps when our boys are a bit older.

When Jonas naps, John gets on the ‘kid games’ which is basically playing Dora the Explorer and Thomas the Train games.

Our life here has been a bit crazy for the last few months.  Major life events have been happening at warp speed.  Our third son, Owen, was born just 4 days ago, Dani had a major health scare during the c-section, we just bought a new house (a first for us!), I have been trying to decide what career options to pursue, Dani will be starting up work as a maternity doctor again, and of course, we are all trying to adapt and settle into our roles  back here in Canada.  All of these things have created an underlying stress that comes from feeling like we are floating around aimlessly without knowing exactly what the future holds.  Despite the state of things, we are finding ways to have fun such as swimming, skating, hockey, fishing, visiting family and for myself I am taking a French course at UFV just for the sheer joy of it.

Boy number three gave us the biggest scare with Danica

Baby Owen Hunter McKenzie was born by planned c-section on Oct. 24 2012. He weighed 8 lbs and is a beautiful, healthy baby boy with thick dark hair. John loves being a big brother and Jonas is a little indifferent! It is fun to imagine the three boys growing up together. Dani scared everybody during the c-section operation when she had embolic event of some sort. For all you non-medical people out there, the gist of it is is that a blob of foreign material entered her blood stream and caused her heart and lungs to act out. It may have been an amniotic fluid embolism or an air embolism that travelled up her veins to her heart and lungs, causing her to have an irregular heart rhythm, crushing chest pain, very low blood pressure, coughing, and a sensation of suffocating. When all of this started happening, the mood went from light-hearted to very serious in a hurry, and they whisked me and baby out of the operating room. Thanks be to our God, Dani was OK, which is a blessing when we heard the stats afterwards about how deadly an embolism like this could have been! Mom and baby are healthy and doing well, and we are settling in as a family of 5 at home.

We are really excited to get into our first house.

Well we are almost the new owners of our very first house that we will be (hopefully) possessing on Dec.1.  We really look forward to our first Christmas together in a new old country and a new house with a new baby and general newness.  We have never before in our married lives put down ‘roots’ in a place, so this will be the first time.  It feels weird to be 35 and to be doing this stuff now.

We will be sad to leave this place because it is finished just as we like it and babysitting runs cheap with Grandparents living upstairs!

So having a new baby around is a bit tough in a basement suite.  We feel a bit crowded in here with all the new baby stuff like car seats, new baby toys, #1 diaper boxes (so small btw), breastfeeding pillows, and multiple other things that babies need.  Overall it’s great and I wouldn’t change it, but we definitely feel like we have changed from an average sized family to a decent sized family.  I wonder how it would feel to have 5 or 6 kids…that would be craziness!

Well, that’s it for a little update on what has been happening in the McKenzie household over the last little while. It is exciting to be setting down some roots here in Abbotsford, but it also comes with a sad feeling for all of the friendships we made in Burundi that we will be leaving behind. It is hard when your heart is torn in different places, and it feels like you have to say good-bye to family, no matter where you end up deciding to stay.

With much love!

The McKenzies: Scott, Danica, John, Jonas, and Owen