Update on the twins... and home renovations...

The good news is my friend's preemie twins celebrated their 2 week birthdays this past Saturday. The bad news is that they still have a long way to go. I am starting to lose track of all the surgeries, procedures and issues that they have been dealing with lately (nevermind which one has had which surgery and such) but I can sum it up by saying when one appears to be doing good, the other starts to go downhill and vice versa. So far they have had to deal with bleeding the brain, surgery to disconnect a windpipe and connect the esophagus to the stomach, heart murmurs, a hole (maybe 2) in the small intestine (possibly caused by the medication for the heart murmur) and now possibly a staph infection. Those last 3 are in reference to Isaac's condition from yesterday after talking to my friend. We originally had dinner plans with them for Sunday evening, but we ended up cancelling due to impending surgery for Isaac to see why things started going downhill yesterday afternoon. But it turned out that they didn't put him through surgery after all. Poor thing is getting pumped with 6 different antiobiotics to try to clear that infection. Despite all that, they are trying to stay positive but I can tell they are getting worn down and they just sound exhausted. I just wish things would level out so they didn't have to ride this crazy roller coaster everyday.

In other news, I have started doing some work in the house over the past few days. I spent this past weekend removing the wallpaper from the dining room as well as the wall that followed up the stairs. Boy what a mess that was. Thank goodness I rented a steamer, otherwise that stuff was never going to come off. Next I need to do some prep work, but before I start painting the wall, I'll be painting the ceiling in the kitchen and the dining room. So I've got lots of work ahead. Stay tuned!

Here are some "before" shots of the walls. Notice the lovely "pizza hut tablecloth" wallpaper! Also notice my trusty little sidekick observing from the dining room table.



And the "after" shots...Going...

...Going...


...GONE!

Prayers and hopeful thoughts urgently needed!

This past Saturday I received a very startling phone call from a close friend and co-worker. This is the co-worker who is pregnant with twins. Well I should say was pregnant with twins, as the reason behind her phone call was to let me know that she is now a Mom! But right now she needs support and many, many prayers, because her two little boys (Isaac and Christopher) were born at 25 weeks. Isaac weighed in at 2lbs, 1 oz and Christopher weighed in at 1lb, 10oz. I visited them at the hospital on Sunday and couldn't believe how tiny they were! They made my own 4.5lb preemie look like a giant! Only a few days old but they are already having to fight a battle for each day. Christopher has already had surgery and Isaac (the bigger of the two) had been doing well, but ended up having bleeding in his brain yesterday.

Both my co-worker and her husband are very active in their faith and several of their friends have put together a prayer blog for them: Campbell Babies' Prayer Blog

These 2 little boys need all the prayers they can get!!

The end of January is nigh...

It's been almost a month since my last post so I should probably update this before it gets too old and I lose all my readers (not sure how many there are anyway, but I don't want to lose the few I have!) Not too much has been going on though. Both J and B have been battling either a cold or the flu lately and I'm doing my best not to catch what they have. I think everyone is starting to get cabin fever though. I would love to air out the house, but that's not happening anytime soon with this chilly weather. And B would love to play outside, but that doesn't really help his cold. And even J is getting antsy to be rid of this cold weather.

On a brighter note, I have been working out somewhat regularly (my goal is 3-4 times a week) on my trusty elliptical machine. I think it's working out well - so far I have managed to lose the weight I gained over the holidays. And I was able to add a little weight-lifting to the routine on Saturday as I helped one of my friends move into a new apartment. It went really quickly - they had a lot of friends over to help. In total they had one moving truck and 7 cars/trucks packed
with stuff. Their new place is really cute. It definitely has that cozy cottage feel to it and so far they love it. And the location is perfect - one of America's top 10 best small towns! They're really close to us now - which is great!

On to 2008...

While 2007 ended on a sad note, we are doing our best to move ahead to make 2008 a good year. Last year was filled with many changes and a few firsts for B - new job for me (a new car too!), B starting nursery school preceded by his first summer camp at that school, his first flight, his first trip to Disney, his first realization that Santa really does exist...the list goes on. And while I am not good at keeping New Year's resolutions, I do hope to keep one and that is to blog much more. Especially when it's one of the main methods of communicating with a childhood friend who lives 5 minutes away from me - yes that's you SJ!!

And I guess it wouldn't hurt to through in - exercise more, eat healthier, and spend more time with the family. I'm bound to get a few of those in during the next 362 days, right?

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas 2007 - the Good, the Bad and the Heartbreaking

Ok - I know I haven't posted in a while but I have a very good reason. I'll get to that in a bit. First, let's start out with what happened the Friday before Christmas. I picked up my cousin from the airport right after work and that was the start of a very fun weekend. That night we saw the lights up at Forest Park and had dinner and drinks down in Hartford. The next day we went down to New York City and let me tell you - the Saturday before Christmas is NOT a good day to visit Rockefeller Center. I swear half of Manhattan was present in that one city block. But at least it wasn't freezing cold, which would have made it twice as unpleasant instead of just bumping into a million people to get a good shot of that huge tree. We also spent quite a bit of time in Times Square, stopped at an Irish pub for a few beers, headed to the Charmin holiday bathrooms after that (Free toilets in Times Square! You can't beat that!) visited Madame Tussaud's wax museum and had a great dinner at the Heartland Brewery. All in all it was a great trip. Sunday we spent most of the time closer to home and preparing a bit for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, the good cheer ended on Christmas Eve. First a little background...

The week earlier, J's grandfather had gone into the hospital mostly for shortness of breath. They discovered that he had a few blood clots in his lungs as well as fluid around his lungs (he had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure a while back) that were making it hard for him to breathe. They gave him medicine to break up the blood clots, but that in turn negatively affected his kidneys. Fortunately, the medicine to remove the fluid from around his lungs appeared to be working rather well. By the end of the week, he was doing pretty well and we were anxious to know whether or not he'd be discharged from the hospital in time to celebrate Christmas with us. Unfortunately, that all took a bad turn on Christmas Eve. His body stopped reacting to the medications. The fluid came back around his lungs and the doctors began talking to the family about hospice care and prepared us for the worst. They pretty much gave him 24-48 hours to live.

The dreaded phone call came at 5:15 am on Christmas morning that he had passed away around 5 am. So Christmas this year was a very somber one for J's family. Despite the fact that his grandfather's health had been declining over the past few months, none of us was prepared to see him go that quickly not to mention on Christmas day. The family had a small private service for him a few days after Christmas and now we are in the process of healing and trying to move forward. And everyone is doing their best to stay strong for J's grandmother, who has not been taking things very well at all.

I think you'll remember my post a while back about Christmas-giving... Well I honestly believe that something was telling me to break out the holiday cheer a little early this year. Thankfully we had the whole family together for Thanksgiving and I'll never forget grandpa's face when he went into the living room after dinner and saw the tree. I'm so glad he got to see it one last time.

Here's a great picture of B w/his great-grandfather C. A. Rowley 1918-2007.

Snow, then sleet, then freezing rain, then more snow

It's been a pretty active weather-week over here. We received a solid 12" of snow on Thursday, which caused me to have a 2 hour commute to get back home and we ended up missing J's big company Christmas party on account of the bad roads. Then today we got hit with a ton of sleet, which changed over to pouring freezing rain, and now it's snowing again. Sheesh - never was the popular New England weather phrase "wait a half hour and the weather's bound to change" more apt than today.

But on a brighter note - I love my new car! Actually I love the 4WD in my new car! It was sure put to the test on Thursday when I climbed a massive hill in our neighborhood that was covered with at least 4" of snow. Two other cars were stuck trying to get up, but I had no problems at all. There was no way my old Honda would have been able to get up that hill - go RAV!!

In holiday news - Christmas cards were sent out earlier last week and my Christmas shopping is DONE! Nevermind that - I'm also done wrapping all those gifts! AND my cousin from Canada IS coming down for Christmas! So I'm excited! And Christmas is only about a week away!

I wanted SNOW not ICE!!

This blog has been sitting here rather neglected for the past few weeks, so let me take a few moments during this yucky, icy day to give a quick re-cap of the past week's activities.

First of, Thanksgiving turned out great and all of my stress over planning and preparing for the feast turned out to be well rewarded. I can honestly say that all 15 of us ended that day with full bellies and good cheer. And thanks to my sis-in-law's boyfriend, we even ended the evening with a bang as he set off the last remaining fireworks left over from the summer. The mild evening turned out to be perfect for it. Now I'm wondering if this is going to have to become a new family tradition to have fireworks on Thanksgiving...hmm...

And the very next day I finished cleaning up and went right to work putting up the rest of the Christmas decorations in the dining room. So now we are entirely in the Christmas mode instead of being 1/2 Christmas and 1/2 Thanksgiving!

And to top it all off - I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping! Just one more thing to get for B and his cousin and a few stocking stuffers and that'll be it. Nevermind that, J thinks I've gone completely mental now because not only is my shopping almost done, but I have already finished wrapping everything I have so far! (Only spent an hour and a half to wrap 17 gifts - not bad!) But I do have to give him some credit. He actually started his shopping last week, which is crazy for him since he's usually out there on Christmas Eve still shopping.

Next up - Christmas parties! I'm starting to lose track of how many parties we will be attending this year. At last count I think we were up to 4 not counting one that we are hosting. They range from the extremely informal, beer, wings and a grab bag to the formal company-wide cocktail party. Three of the parties are related to J's work in some way, one is for the Land Trust (which J is now the proud VP of!) and the last one that we will be hosting is a small group gathering for my co-workers. On top of that I offered to host Christmas this year for the family and we started a tradition last year of having a few friends over to ring in the New Year too. Sheesh - I'll need a vacation after all of that! But THAT is why I wanted to get the shopping out of the way early.

And while all of this is going on, I am desperately trying to get my cousin from Ottawa to come down and spend Christmas with us. It would be great if he came down, but right now it's up in the air. And I figure being busy at this time of year won't be too a bad thing. It'll help work off those million or so calories that I'll be inhaling over the next few weeks!