6/1 update

Lots of things still need to happen but it looks like little Miss Carissa Faith may get to visit home for the first time later this week. Preparations started in earnest today with making sure she did well in a carseat. She seemed to think it was pretty cool, as you can see. She even spit up on it a little just to break it in. I think she learned that trick from Luke. I still have to teach her to yell at the vehicle in front of her if it doesn't go quickly enough when the light turns green. That is a little difficult to teach since she will be facing backwards but we will work on the general principle.

Carissa's hemoglobin was up a little today and her platelets have gone down since her transfusion Friday night but not as quickly as after the last platelet transfusion. She is eating very well these days and even had her feeding tube removed last night.

We received delivery of enough oxygen tonight at our house to keep a horse in an iron lung alive for quite a while. I think there is something wrong with it though because none of the balloons that we filled up floated up and our voices sounded the same whenever we breathed it in and talked with it. I'll ask about that tomorrow.

• Please thank God for Carissa's progress and that we are able to start making plans to bring her home.
• Please pray that Carissa will continue to improve and that preparations and that doctors' consultations will go well.
• Please pray that Carissa will continue to improve on producing and managing all the different blood components and that her lungs will continue to develop so that she can go on room air at her followup appointment in a few weeks.
• Please pray for Dante, who was across from Carissa in the level 3 NICU and for his mom, Misty, and that Pamela can run into her or touch base with her before we leave.
• Please pray that as people hear of Carissa's miraculous journey that our Almighty God will receive the glory.

Philippians 1: 9-11 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Thanks for all your prayers and please keep interceding for Carissa. She still needs your prayers every day!

Yours and His

Terry