Dear Caleb,

Today you are 15! It's hard to remember life before you made us parents. Somehow 15 years seems like an entire lifetime, but it also feels like we blinked and reached this point. Watching you grow had been nothingness short of amazing. MAnd this year has brought about a lot more growth than many of the previous years.

Physically, you've gone from a boy to a man-child in less than six months. It seriously seemed to happen overnight. One day we were looking down at you, the next day we were eye-to-eye, and then suddenly, we had to tilt our heads ever so slightly in an upwards direction to talk to you! Your voice changed. You ditched the 14 year buzz cut and began to care about hairstyles. You have peach fuzz on your face and pimples that leave us constantly reminding you to wash your face! You lost your chubbiness and traded it in for a more athletic build (not easily earned, but well deserved after enduring of two seasons of tough sports). You went from thinking girls were weird and saying you just wanted to grow up and live the single life to being way more interested in girls and even dabbled in the relationship world at the beginning of the school year. Indeed a lot has changed in just one short year!

As has always been the case for our sentimental child who loves predictability and tradition, all of the change has not been easy. High school has definitely had its share of ups and downs so far. You're trying to navigate academics that are challenging (a first for you...who always found school to be ridiculously easy). You've taken on two new sports and rose to the challenge, but it wasn't always easy (especially with a broken finger just a few weeks into the football season). You've been looking forward to tackle football for years and it was a blast, but definitely not easy. You tried out for basketball, a sport you love, but were heartbroken to not make the team. It didn't keep you down for long though and you bravely jumped headfirst into a completely new sport...wrestling. You learned so much and came such a long way in one season. You didn't let the sting of not making basketball keep you from taking another risk by trying out for volleyball, which (thankfully) you made. You're juggling a lot and the added challenge of figuring out where you belong socially is probably the hardest of all the issues you're facing. We keep hoping and praying that you'll wake up one day and just be comfortable in your own skin and confident in who you are. We pray that you'll see yourself through somewhat of the same lens as those who love you the most. High school is hard though. You try so hard to look through all of the wrong lenses and try to fit a mold that you're not meant to be in.

No matter what this next year brings, we are looking forward to walking right beside you through it all. This past year is proof that SO much can change in a year. Even though we've had a lot of tough, tough moments, we keep clinging to the hope that this won't be your story for long. We pray that this birthday is a fresh start for our favorite Freshman. We hope that one day we will look back on the growing pains of this year and maybe be able to share a mutual laugh about it all. For now, though, our wish for you as you make your birthday wish is that this year is filled with an abundance of peace and joy. We pray that you will learn to lean heavily on the faith foundation that you've built and that God will help you see yourself as the amazing person He created you to be. We love you so much and know that you're here on this earth to do great things. You've already left such an impact here over the past 15 years and we cannot wait to see what your future holds.

Love,

Dad and Mom  

Health Hazards

The past few months have had their share of health problems in the Sturm home. On the bright side, at least we are going to reach our deductible nice and early this year!

We passed around some sickness right before Christmas. Caleb had it the worst and was down for several days during his first-ever round of high school finals. He handled it like a champ and managed to do a great job on his finals! It turns out he had the flu. We found that out when he went in to the doctor for an odd skin rash that was forming. That ended up being a Staph infection and he immediately started some killer antibiotics.

We made it through the holidays without much else, but mid-January brought about a drastic increase in the random stomach issues Caleb had all Fall. He started having episodes of extreme pain and cramping that began to happen more and more frequently. After leaving school early one day and seeing him in excruciating pain, we took him to urgent care where they drew blood and even did a CT scan. Not much showed up there, so we were referred to a pediatric GI doc. After and ultrasound and endoscopy (and several more flare ups), he was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome due to stress and anxiety. This opened up a whole new can of worms that we're still in the process of working through, but at least we have some answers!

Joel felt like Caleb didn't need to get all of the attention, so he went ahead and got a concussion at wrestling practice! When we picked him up from practice, he let us know that he had a bad run in with the mat after being dropped on his head, but he didn't seem to make a big deal of it. We carried on with life and he was fine for 24 hours. Then the symptoms began. He spent an entire night throwing up every hour on the hour. He had terrible headaches and was extremely sensitive to light. The doctor at urgent care diagnosed him with a concussion and the poor kid had to spend the next three weeks adhering to some pretty strict restrictions....no sports, no recess, and NO screens! We were all quite thankful when he was finally symptom free and could get the all clear from his doctor! Needless to say, we're going to think long and hard about what the future of his sports career will look like. We know that concussions can happen anywhere, but we sure don't want to have him go through this again if we can help avoid it.

On top of all of these major health scares, we managed to pass around some yuck early in February. Tyler tested positive for Covid and was down for the count for several days. We're assuming that the other two people to fall ill around that same time (Mom and Caleb) probably also had Covid. We aren't sure how the younger two avoided it, but we're glad they did!