More getting old

Mark went to the doctor last week because he had to get a new prescription for some medication that he takes everyday and the ARNP that we see, Ms. Leslie, said that she would write the script but he needed to schedule a physical. So, he went to the physical last Monday. She ordered lab tests which he did last Friday when we went for our eye exams at the Ft. Riley hospital. It was fasting lab work.

Well, the nurse called and I took a message for Mark (because of course she couldn't discuss anything with me). Mark called her back yesterday afternoon and she said that his thyroid levels were not right and that they had sent a prescription down to the pharmacy for him to pick up and that he needed to come back in and see Ms. Leslie ASAP.

He went for that appointment today and Ms. Leslie told him that his thyroid isn't working at all. She said that it is very rare for a man to have thyroid problems (Mark is her 2nd man in her entire career that she had treated but she sees at least one woman a month). So, he will have to take medication for the rest of his life. She asked if he was fatigued, had mood swings, had gained weight, etc. Well, he gets up most days at 2:30 am to go to work and we work 3 jobs so who wouldn't be tired. He has gained a little bit of weight but that had only been since his back injury 3 1/2 years ago (he isn't as active due to the back injury). So, he wouldn't have thought anything was out of whack.

He will start the meds in the morning and then will go back to have his levels checked the first week in April. Then they will decide if they need to adjust his dosage.

Ms. Leslie said that there is no telling how long he has had this condition. She said that she had records as far back as seven years where Mark has had blood work done but no one ever had his thyroid checked. Odd!!

Getting old

Went to the eye doctor today. Knew my prescription had changed but didn't realize how much. I have to get bi-focals. Of course, when Mark got bi-focals last year I teased him and laughed and called him old. Well, I turned 40 in November and was complaining about being old. I guess the eyes are the first things to go??? LOL!!

Of course, Mark and Sarah had eye appointments too so they were both there when the Dr. said I had to get bi-focals. They laughed at me! I don't see the humor though. Oh well. Happy day!

Photos of Hannah

These are pictures of Hannah that were taken up at school in her pretty blue dress. Just wanted to share as I think my daughter is beautiful.

Sarah's Art Project

This is "Franklin" the Turtle. He is Sarah's art project. Isn't he the cutest thing? About Franklin - the assignment was they had to have a group of partners and they had to create a "robot". Franklin is their robot. He is a waiter robot. You can lift up the doors of his shell and there is a tray inside with candy. I just thought he was sooooo cute!! They got the assignment on February 1st and it was due today. They had to present and demonstrate their project. The girls couldn't decide who would get to take Franklin home so they asked their art teacher, Mrs. Crouch, if she would like to keep Franklin. She said that she'd love to. So, Franklin now resides in the art room at the middle school.

These are the partners - Cara, Sarah and Shylee.

This is the candy that was inside Franklin.

Hannah on her ski trip

This is Hannah snowboarding.


Hannah snowboarding some more

Hannah preparing to go on the rope challenge course (sticking her tongue out at the person taking the picture). Lovely outfit if I do say!!! LOL!!

Sarah's Birthday Pics

This is my goofy birthday girl with her "princess" crown that one of her friends gave her and her Tweety Bird birthday cake. I know she turned 14 this year but she is still my "baby" girl. This picture just proves it. LOL!!

This is Sarah with her friends (from left to right) - Cara, Rachel, Sarah (of course) and Cherie. They stayed up until 4:15am on that Saturday morning. Oh to be a teenager again (NOT!)

Home from skiing

Well, Hannah made it home from skiing today. She was supposed to come home yesterday but Kansas City International Airport was closed yesterday because of the snow and slush that we got the night before, so her flight was cancelled. She was a little freaked out about that but the airline put them up in the Radisson. She said it was a really nice hotel. Their bags had already been checked so they didn't have any luggage with them either.

Her flight got in around 9am this morning and she was glad to be back. We took her back to school this afternoon after hanging out in Kansas City. We went to The Legends, ate at Applebee's and went to Cabella's. We had never been to Cabella's. It was cool!!

Once she gets home this weekend I will post pictures of her ski trip.

Happy Birthday!!

Today is Sarah's 14th birthday. She has a few friends over for a slumber party. I will post pictures soon. They just grow too fast. Soon they'll be gone!! Waaahhhh!! (Yippeee!!) LOL!!

Ski Trip

Well, Hannah called me today to say that she is having a blast on her ski trip. Today she tried snowboarding and said "it was the bomb" and that she was "shredding it". :o) She is a teenager you know!! They were going tubing tonight. I hope she is taking pictures since she took her camera. I will post some if she did once she gets home.

Love Is In the Air...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!

Flight

As I posted earlier, Hannah left yesterday for her ski trip. She was flying for the first time that she would remember and she was scared to death. She called me yesterday at work and said that they had arrived safely. I told her that I knew they would and that I wasn't worried. She said "I thought I was going to die!!" Silly girl!!! Anyway, I hope she is having fun.

Here is the first pictures that I have received of my newest nephew. Isn't he a cutie??? I think so. Mom and baby are doing fine. They got to go home on Tuesday. My nieces, Arianna and Melieah, were mad at their Mom for being gone too many days!!! They got to stay with their Grammy but were very glad to get to go home.

Packing for a trip

Well, we are getting Hannah packed for a trip. She will leave on Tuesday to go to Breckenridge, CO on a ski trip. She is part of a Campfire group called "Adventure Fitness". It is a group of visually impaired children/teens. This will be her third year going on the trip. The only difference is that this year they will be flying instead of taking the bus and Hannah is scared. This will be the first time that she will be old enough to remember flying. I have told her that she will be fine but I don't think that she believes me.

Anyway, when she goes on the trip they go skiing with sighted guides, they go tubing and they do a ropes course. She absolutely loves the trip. It makes me nervous when she goes because it is my job to protect her and I am not able to be there to do that. Being visually impaired and skiing just don't go together in my mind but I have to believe she will be fine. I have told her that just because she is visually impaired there is nothing that she can't do if she sets her mind to it. It would probably scare me more if I were there to watch her ski instead of letting her go on her own.

We'll just pray she is safe and has a good time like she always does!!

Well, off to finish helping her pack.

New Baby!!!

I am so excited. My baby sister, Carla, had her baby this morning. This is baby number three. It was a boy. They named him Treyven Mekai. He was 5 lbs 14 oz and 19 1/4" long. He was born around 3:30am this morning. Today also happens to be my mom's (his Grandma's) 61st birthday!!

She wasn't actually due until March 13th (I think) but she can't carry her babies to full term so he was a month and a couple of days early. He is doing fine though and didn't have to go into NICU. He is holding his body temp and breathing on his own (as of 8am Central time this morning). His mom is doing fine too.

This makes me an Auntie for the 34th time!!! (That's alot of nieces and nephews!!! Whew!!)

Now, we await the birth of three more babies on my side of the family. My cousin, Eric and his girlfriend (I think - not sure if they are married or not) are due March 4th. My sister's daughter, Alicia, is due on April 3rd. And my brother's daughter, Lisa, is due April 13th.

I thank God for the new life that we have been blessed with today and pray that the one's that are expected will arrive safely.

More white stuff, even MORE ready for SPRING!!

UGH!!! Yesterday we had thunderstorms in the morning and then the rain froze. Around 6:30 pm it started to sleet and then turned to snow around 7 pm. Sarah and I took the dogs out to walk them before we went to bed around 10:15 pm and there was already 4 inches of snow!!!

Sarah didn't have school yesterday because it was already starting to freeze on the ground when I took her to school earlier than normal because she was supposed to have a field trip. And they didn't have school today.

Okay - here is the snow we got between 7 pm last night and 7 am this morning - about 9 inches. I am soooooooo ready for spring!!! Oh!! Did I say that already!!!???? This picture is our back patio.

This is after we shoveled a pathway through the snow on the patio.

This is my covered car. Mark took my office assistant and I to work today in the truck since it is 4 wheel drive.

I don't want anymore snow/ice/cold stuff!!!

Ready for SPRING!!!

Today was rainy and miserable. It couldn't decide what it wanted to do. It wasn't doing anything when I got up this morning a 6:45. Then it was spitting a little the first time I took the dogs out. The next time I took them out it was raining. Then about an hour or so later it had stopped and the sun was shining. Then it just got cloudy. Mark had to work today (thank goodness since he's been off the last 2 weeks and was driving me bonkers) and since Sunday's are also the days that we take Hannah back to school I drove her up to his work (Sarah and I usually go but we had choir practice) and it was still overcast, it was drizzling and then the wind started to pick up some (imagine that - wind in Kansas). I think it only got to 36 degrees. By the time Mark got back at 5 pm from taking Hannah to Kansas City it was foggy. I am SOOOOOO ready for SPRING!!! I am DEFINITELY tired of winter!!!

Sarah and I had Community Choir practice this afternoon at church. Our Community Choir sings an Easter Cantata on Palm Sunday every year. This is Sarah's first year singing in the choir. After that we came home and read our books and I decided to take a nap. I was tired but that's what I get for staying up until 12:30 this morning, scrapbooking with Sarah and then getting up so early.

The girls have been scrapbooking and Hobby Lobby had a sale on their books, buy one get one free. So, I decided that I was going to scrap book our wedding pictures. This is my new project for now. The girls do a really good job of putting their pages together. Sometimes, mine go together good and other times they just don't seem to fall together very easily. Oh well, the scrapbook is better than the "old time" photo album they were in. The kind that you pull the plastic protector back, insert the photos onto the grippy stuff and put the plastic back down and their supposed to be that way "forever". Yeah right!! The grippy stuff doesn't stay "grippy" forever and they were starting to fall out of the album. Hence, my scrapbooking project. Maybe once I can figure out what's wrong with my camera, my camera dock or whatever isn't letting it charge then I'll take a couple of pictures of the scrapbook and post them.

Our "dumb" Dogs

Chloe is the one in the top picture. She will be 2 years old on April 22nd. Sadie is the one in the bottom picture and she will be 4 years old on July 28th. They are purebred Bassett Hounds.

Sarah and Basketball

This is a couple of pictures of Sarah and her team. They took 2nd place in their end of the season tournaments on Saturday, January 26th. In the team picture, Sarah is in the back row, the tallest one in the middle. This was her last game as a middle schooler. Mom is saying, "boo hoo".

A couple of more pictures of the ice storm.

Ice Storm

These are pictures of the ice storm that hit on December 10, 2007. The pics are of trees in our yard and our neighbors. I laid awake at around 3 am in the morning and kept listening to all the branches fall. It was eerie over the next couple days to hear branches and trees falling due to the weight of the ice.

We were lucky at home that we didn't lose power but only about 3 times for a total of about 30 minutes each time. Our town has fuel run generators to keep our power plant going. Even if we had lost power - we heat our house with a wood burner anyway and we have a gas stove - so we wouldn't have frozen and we wouldn't have starved. We'd might have died from boredom though. There was one point when the power went out that Sarah and I were playing Uno and we continued to play by candle light and flashlight. That was pretty interesting and kind of hard to tell blue and green apart, but we did it.

However, at the plant where I work we were without power from around 1 a.m. on December 10th until 6:45 p.m. on December 19th. From the 11th through the 14th I pretty much ran back and forth from home and the plant to take care of anything that came up, like payroll (pretty important huh???). Then the 17th through the 19th, they had my office all hooked up to a generator that they had running to the breaker box. Our phones were hooked up to the generator and my fax/copier was hooked up too. I was wearing coveralls and my heavy coat and boots to work and we used a propane tank heater to keep somewhat warm. It was NOT fun!!!

Anyway, we all survived and they got us up and running again. We did have a few friends who didn't get power back until December 24th.

Just Beginning

I am going to attempt this blogging thing. I love reading Rose & Dennis' family blog when I get a moment to get online to do so. Since we are so far away from family I thought maybe I should try this. I will try to update as often as possible.