Make sure you read the next post because I just wrote it right before this one.  Due to technical difficulties, I lost a previous post, so I am trying to recreate an abbreviated portion of it.  While Janell’s mother Stephanie was here we made a brief church history tour.  We visited Nauvoo and Carthage.  It was a beautiful day, so we took the horse and buggy tour the church provides for free.  Apparently, the Asian lady bugs thought it was a great day too because they were flying about in swarms that day.  We could not walk more than a minute outside without having a few landing on us.  essentially they look like regular lady bugs, but are bigger, multicolored, and are massively more numerous.  The Nauvoo residents called them corn bugs and the Iowans call them Chinese lady beetles.  I looked it up.  The Iowans are right (not to mention handsomer, more sofisticated, and better at football).  They are particularly pesky since the tour guides told us they bite.    Anyway, they never bit us although one climbed down my shirt and a few got in Janell’s purse and flew out in the car.  Now back to the trip.  It is always a spiritual journey to visit Nauvoo.  One day we will take a more thorough tour, but this time we had to hurray to make it to Carthage before it closed.  That jail house was an exceptionally sacred place.  I was very surprised by how much they kept original, including the door with the bullet holes.  It was there that the prophet Joseph sealed his testimony with his blood.  I highly recommend visiting both places.  Enjoy the photos.

Horrah for thanksgiving!  I don’t have class all week.  It is going to be great.  We bought a small turkey and have decided just to do thanksgiving on our own.  It should be really fun, since we have never prepared a turkey before.  Lillia is doing well.  She is sleeping more and more.  She is just about 9 pounds now, which is good for her.  Her next sergery is on the 2nd of December.  The poor girl has to go through so much so early in life.  In a way it is good, because she may not remember any of it.  We really do have a lot to be grateful for.  Anyway, Janell is happily sleeping at the molment, so I will have her share or write something later.  Uh oh.  Lillia is starting to shout.  Thank you for visiting and have a happy thanksgiving!

Well she ate and went back to sleep.  Exceptionally rare.  So, two weeks ago we celebrated halloween late by decorating spooky gingerbread houses we bought an post-halloween clearance sale.  We would have saved them for christmas, but the icing holding the houses together was bright orange. 

The candy bats tasted great.  You can probably guess which one was mine.

Anyway, the video page is now up and we will be periodically adding things to it.  If anyone finds any neat videos, please let me know and I will post them. (rated G only).

We have experienced some technical difficulties with the site, but we are up and running again.  I lost one entry and will have to remake it later.  If you missed it, it was about Janell’s mother’s visit and our church history trip and of course, Lillia. Lillia is doing great and gaining weight every day.  She is doing all of the normal baby things as well.  Thank you for visiting the site.

We are so grateful for all the prayers and help we have recieved in Lillia’s behalf. She has been such a strong little girl and we feel very priviliged to get to be her parents. This last week she experienced sugury where they put in a shunt and it seems to be working nicely. Her head cirumferance has gone down which is very good. She has finished her round of antibiotics for her lung pnumonia (sp?) and doctors say that that looks very good. She has been doing pretty well with her feedings and so we are crossing our fingers that we will get to bring her home sometime next week for a little while before her next surgury. In about a month she will come back to repair a liver hernia where a piece of her liver is pushing up into her diaphram. She has been such a strong little girl and she is such a beauty ( I swore that as a mom I wouldn’t spoil my kids but after all that she has been through, I just want to give her what ever she wants!)

Our next obstacle will be her next surgury in a little over a month and then just hoping that her shunt will continue to work correctly and that her brain will expand so that she can be developmentally as normal as possible.  (Below is her diaphram and the shunt tube curled around her stomach.)

Our baby is now in a crib in the nicu and is doing very well.  Janell is walking and feeling much better.  Her release date should be tomorrow.

Lillia Lynndee Robinson was born at around 2:00 today kicking and screaming.  She weighs 6 pounds 14 ounces.  The C-section went smoothly.  She is very healthy and normal except for her enlarged head.  For those of you who don’t know, she has hydrosyphallus (SP) and will undergo brain surgery fairly soon.  We don’t yet know how it will effect her ultimately, but right now she is in very good health and we are very happy to have her.  She also has very long legs and is very active and cute.  Mom is also very healthy and happy. 

  Hurrah, we made it back to Iowa!  After 20 hours of flying we are back in Iowa.  Before we get to how sentimental we are now about the US and particularly Iowa, we should probably go over the rest of our trip.  Brussels was wonderful.  Our apartment was very well equipped and comfortable.  It is such an international city.  Consequently a lot of the locals speak English, sort of.  Almost everybody says they speak English, but we found that most do speak but not very well and Janell and I had a hard time communicating sometimes.   On the street, we hear English everywhere because there are so many expatriates. 

                There are three very strong wards in the area.  The meeting s are held in both English and French and everyone who does not speak both languages, gets a head set for translation.  Most of the members are foreigners.  There are particularly a lot of Africans.  They make up about a third of the ward.  Additionally we have met people from the US, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Russia, Armenia, Kazakstan, Switzerland, The UK, and Denmark.  Janell got to teach the Sunbeams for a few weeks while we were there ( it was an English speaking class).        

                We also got to visit the temple in The Haag with our ward’s youth group.  (It is not actually in the Haag, but it is close enough).  It was a beautiful little temple in one of the most beautiful areas we have seen in Europe.  After visiting the temple, we walked down the street to a milk shake place and ordered a shake from a guy with a Mohawk and all kinds of piercings.  The irony of it was that he spoke great English and was one of the nicer guys we spoke with while in Europe.  Maybe that was just because we were used to rude French speakers.

                Janell and I purchased unlimited public transport passes and had many adventures taking random busses and trams.  We tasted all kinds of chocolate and decided that Belgian Chocolate is excellent, but no better than French or Danish chocolate.  Belgian Waffles on the other hand, are extraordinary.  They make them fresh on every block and they have waffle vans that cover every half block during peak hours.

                I spent long hours on an international employment law project involving input from 21 different attorneys in 21 different countries.  I had to work through and edit several pages of legal memoranda from each country and gather additional content and clarification from each of the 21 attorneys.  This was particularly hard since some of the lawyers spoke English marginally at best.  Anyway, I got a lot of great experience, but the late nights were unpleasant for both of us. 

                By the time we were finished, Janell and I were very excited to spend some uninterrupted time together in Denmark.  We rented a little euro-car in Brussels and took off through Belgium, Holland, and Germany.  It was probably the most scenic drive we have ever taken.  Everything in our path was so green.  It was supposed to be an 8 hour trip, but we took a few wrong turns, got stuck in some bad traffic, and ate at a German restaurant for an hour, so it took 11 hours.  Our little Diesel Eurocar unbelievably made it the entire way on one tank.  Janell said Denmark was the most beautiful country she and seen in Europe.  I would have to agree.  Fyn is an Island of rolling hills, straw roofed farm houses, and fields of wheat and corn.  That is the island where Ken, Sally, Robin, Thea, and their children live.  They live in a coastal town called Nyborg.  It was very nice getting reacquainted with everyone.  I now feel like I at least know who all of my cousins are.  They all seem to be doing well and Janell and I had a great time with them.    Our cousins on Fyn range from 3 to I think 15.  I am not exactly sure how old Bell is.  I have a few pictures I should post. 

Janell Feeding the swans

We went to the pastry shop every day.  Danish pastries are easily the best in the world.  We immediately asked which pastries contained marzipan, and to our pleasant surprise the lady at the counter pointed out most of them.  I guess a better question would have been: which ones don’t have marzipan or which ones have the most marzipan.  Oh well. 

                With Mormor we went down the Copenhagen coast to Helsinger and took a fairy across to Helsingborg, Sweden just to say we had been there.  On the Danish side we saw Hamlet’s Castle from the sea, which was very beautiful and then we climbed another castle in Helsingborg.  Mormor climbed all the way with us, carrying jam and cheese sandwiches.  We made sure to buy candy on the boat as well, because it is cheaper there because taxes do not apply.  We wrote two post cards to Kessia while there. 

In Front of Hamlet Castle

Janell and I flew out of Cairo a week ago and spent a few days in Paris.  It was pretty nice.  It would have been more nice if we weren’t sick from something we ate in Cairo and the French people weren’t rude to us.  Then again, without rude French people, it would not really be France.  Anyway, Janell and I climbed all 668 Eiffel tower steps.  I was so proud of Janell for going where no pregnant woman has done before (that I personally know.  We then climbed down and haggled with the Arabs to get really good deals on the cheap souvenirs they were selling.  For a minute it was like being back in Cairo.  In both Paris and Cairo, people on the street try to sell you stuff and if you do not talk them down to at least a third of what they are asking, you are getting ripped off.  That being said, the sites were amazing.  The Louvre was fantastically beautiful.  Even the walls and doors were exquisite.  It could have done without some of the nudity though.  In school, we learn that some artists rendered nude artworks.  What we now realize is that almost all artists did and most the paintings in the Louvre feature nudity.  Oh Well.  We are in the international city of Brussels, which we will write about in a different entry.  Briefly our apt. is great, and we are settled in and enjoying our time.  Cheers!

hi from cairo.

Forgot to pay the bill so the took down the site.  Anyway, I have a lot of pics to post, but I don’t have time to post them so I will post a picture of our backyard and post more later.

Yes, this is what we see when we step out of our complex.  It is phenominally awesome!  I guess if I am going to be taking law classes, this is the place to do it.  Within the week wee will post the others on our picture database.