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Update as of January 15, 2021
Sixteen years have passed since I first wrote an essay on my true love story of sacrifice, faith, courage, and hope. My triplets and I are meant to be here to share our miracle lives’ journey and how having hope, courage, and faith continues to positively play an important, instrumental role in our lives.
I intentionally live my life with hope, faith, courage, sacrifice, and love. Through the years, the triplets Elizabeth, Reuben, and Michael have had surgeries. For example, Reuben Luis had his first open heart surgery at 6 weeks old, then again at 14 years old on August 10, 2018. Elizabeth has had several surgeries related to being born with hemifacial microsomia, a facial symmetry syndrome that is rare; 1 in 500,000 babies are born with this syndrome. She will have another major surgery this summer. We are so excited for her! This surgery will be approximately eight hours long because they will need to implant a titanium prosthetic jaw joint to her left side and reset the jaw to make it symmetrical. As toddlers, both boys Michael and Reuben had ear tubes in their ears due to chronic ear infections.
Despite being preemies, the triplets have been blessed with being born with many gifts and are exceptionally great kids. All three were interested in learning piano at 6 years old and they actively played piano for 7 years. They learned to play golf at 4 years old and actively played golf until they were 14 years old. Reuben and Michael were in Boy Scouts and Elizabeth was in Girl Scouts. They are black belts in Taekwondo. Elizabeth has continued Taekwondo and is now a 3rd degree black belt in International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) style Taekwondo and a 2nd degree black belt in Kukkiwon style Taekwondo. She has been a paid lead Taekwondo instructor since she was 15 years old. In addition, all three have been volunteering as altar servers for our parish since they were 11 years old.
Two of them were recognized as gifted when they were in elementary school. They challenge themselves academically by taking honors and AP courses. All three were selected to be part of the Innovative Design and Engineering Academy (IDEA) at their high school. They are now Juniors in high school and are in their 3rd year in IDEA. Currently, Elizabeth is interested in aerospace engineering, Reuben is interested in mechanical or software engineering, and Michael is interested in biomedical engineering or something in the medical field.
I believe that challenges and experiences make us stronger because we always have hope and faith that it will work out. I am grateful and blessed to share that the triplets are now 17 years old! Their birthday was January 15th. I am so proud and honored to be their mom.
