It All Started With Some Chinese Food...

At least, that was the running gag for the five days we just spent in the hospital. Here's the long story:

On Saturday, Scott was ill. He had severe stomach pain and indigestion. Eventually, he threw up, so we assumed stomach virus, or maybe something he ate. (Apparently, he thinks eating expired yogurt is a good idea.) By Tuesday, rumors of a stomach bug were in evidence at both of our workplaces, and I had an upset stomach, too, so we figured Scott had just had a bad case of it. His abs were still feeling sore, which we attributed to having thrown up so much.

He was feeling generally better by Wednesday night, so after Nicky's TKD, we opted for take-out Chinese as a treat. The General Tso's pictured above was actually Nick's - we had chicken with broccoli and tried a little Hot and Spicy Shredded Beef, which we agreed was neither hot nor spicy.

Around ten o'clock, Scott tried to lie down on his right side to go to sleep. He was overtaken instantly by viscious pain in his chest and upper abdomen. Long story somewhat shorter, I took him to the ER. Apparently, the magic words in the ER are "chest pains" because they hauled him back to a room and had about 6 techs hooking him up to all manner of equipment fast enough to scare the heck out of both of us. He was still in really bad pain, but as the night went on, it started to ease back a bit. Once they had ruled out heart attack, the pace slowed down. Morphine and what they called a "GI cocktail" of Maalox and Lidocaine ditched the rest of his symptoms. Through blood tests and ultrasounds and various poking and prodding, they determined that Scott had gallstones. So our question was, okay, how do we fix that? Turns out you remove the gall bladder. Now, it's been a LOOOOONG time since life science, and I was a bit shaky on the purpose of the gall bladder. Turns out, it's useful, but fairly optional. Okay.

Then things got weird. Plan A was to figure out exactly how long Scott had been sick. Do they count from Saturday? If so, he has to leave and come back to get the surgery later, cause the gall bladder is probably too inflamed to remove. Do they count from Wednesday? If so, time to have surgery, RIGHT NOW. They needed blood tests to figure it out.

Problem was, the blood tests came back showing elevated liver numbers. This meant a shift to Plan B. If Scott's liver numbers were high, that meant he might have a gall stone in his bile duct. So, before they could decide when and how to operate, they needed to do a procedure called an "ERCP" or something like that. In plain English, they needed to stick a camera down his throat and poke around in his bile duct to get rid of any stones. Cause if the stones went into his pancreas, that was BAD.

So they admit him. I call Cyndy, who rushes to watch the kids, who had been sleeping alone at home. We get half an hour of sleep or so, and spend the day waiting for his procedure. Finally, they say that it will be on Friday at 2:30. At this point, Scott is actually feeling fine, although there are nurses and visitors in every half-hour or so, which precludes any actual rest. (I had used Facebook to send out an SOS and our family and friends were in the know. The visitors and cards were nice, because Scott couldn't sleep anyway.) So most of Thursday passes uneventfully. At least we know WHEN they plan to do the next test. I ran home to shower and came back with everything Scott needed to be as comfy as possible. The kids wound up spending the night at Barry's. We owe Cyndy and Barry big time.

Friday, they take him down for the procedure. They assure me I can just wait outside the door. Scott is a bit nervous, cause, hey, camera down throat. But everyone is acting like it is very simple. An hour passes. Then another. Finally, they wheel him out and he is vomiting all over himself and looks frankly horrible. I try to follow but get stopped by a nurse who wants me to talk to the doctor and not go near the recovery room, but go back upstairs and wait. That's completely not going to happen. I am clear as crystal that I can't go in the recovery room. But I can sure as heck stand in the hallway outside so I can walk him up. Turns out later, he was asking for me from the second he woke up, which I could have told them. Anyway, I talk to the doctor, and he's basically, "I'm sorry, the procedure failed, we couldn't get into his bile duct. Now we have to do an MRI." I was thinking, okay, so if an MRI works, why not do that FIRST? Cause it's a whole lot less invasive. But he insisted that for most people, this works better cause they can get the stones out at the same time this way. Whatever. Didn't work for Scott. So Plan C was do the MRI. If there was a stone in the bile duct, immediate open-abdomen surgery. If not, leave, and come back for a laparoscopic surgery in two weeks.

The day before and Friday morning, Scott had been feeling pretty silly to be in a hospital bed. Frankly, he felt fine, and it was weird to be hospitalized with no symptoms. Not so after the ERCP. All of his old symptoms came back, plus additional post-anesthesia garbage. He was sick and miserable Friday night and Saturday. During this time, he got no word whatsoever about when the MRI might take place. Meanwhile, the kids stayed with Barry again and then with Jon and Laurie. Poor things - bounced all over the place.

Sunday morning, still nothing. So we took to being annoying. Everyone who came in, we asked when Scott's MRI was going to happen. I had left for an hour or two each day to take care of various aspects of our life, and on Sunday, I had to run our car (which thought now was a GREAT TIME to break down) to the mechanic. The brakes had started making dangerous sounds when I delivered the kids to Jon and Laurie's for overnight babysitting on Saturday. When I got back, they were finally wheeling Scott downstairs.

The MRI went smoothly, but we were again back to waiting, with no information being given. We knew that either Scott would get surgery right away, or he would be sent home. Either way, all that needed to happen was for a doctor to look at the MRI. So we waited impatiently until after 5. Finally, I decided I needed to go home and get the kids something to eat.

Trust me. The words "We just won the lottery!" or "We're going to Disney World" have nothing on a phone call saying "Come get me! I can go home!"

The doctors didn't find a stone in the bile duct. So we got to take Scott home late Sunday night. I had to practically lock him in the house to keep him from going to work Monday morning, but I'm glad he didn't because he's been sleeping or staring around exhausted all day.

He has to go back for a follow-up, where they will determine if the multiple antibiotics he is taking have fixed the inflammation. Then, he will need to schedule surgery, and he will probably miss some work after that as well. But at least he's home for now!

Here's the kicker to all of this. Most of you know Scott has lost 96 lbs. Turns out, weight loss can cause gall stones. How much does that suck? He worked so hard to get healthy, and it made him sick!

Thanks all, for your prayers and well-wishes! Please keep Scott in your prayers as he finishes this process out with surgery later in the month.

Me Too, Iguana

Nicky doesn't want to get left out of the project praise this weekend. He also had a project to complete - a poster of Venus. He did a really nice job on it.

Why is he working on it on an unmade bed with unfolded laundry behind him? Well, to tell it like it is, Scott and I are sick. I've had congestion and coughing and sneezing and headaches and stuffed up ears and body aches since Friday. Scott's worse off, though. He ate some expired yogurt and ended up throwing up all night so now he's exhausted and his abdomen muscles are in pain. Considering all of that, it's pretty good that the laundry at least got cleaned, the house is clean except for our unmade bed, the kids' projects are done, groceries were bought, Sunday School was taught, nieces were watched overnight, and the kitty box for our caged cat was replaced. Along with runs to the store for Gatorade, saltines, new printer ink, and various other needful things.

Tomorrow I will probably go to work. Probably. Cause I think I might get more rest there.

Kairi's Rocking Animation Skills

Kairi created this stop-motion animation film using Powerpoint slides and Windows Movie Maker. She changed each slide a little tiny bit, and then saved all 200 slides as .jpeg images. She then used the images to create her movie. It was pretty irritating to her that over 200 slides only made a movie about 2 minutes long (and that was with some of the slides repeating 20 or 30 times so that the characters would dance, talk and sing). Still, not too bad for a thirteen year old screenwriter/animator/director!

It was a project for her science class about the rock cycle, but I'm sure you'll figure that out when you watch. (The video seems to be only sporadically working. If you're dying to see her project, let me know and I'll send you a DVD.)

Not Even Possible

It's not even possible that I just went to a meeting about choosing my daughter's high school classes.

Not even remotely possible.

This course catalog?

Optical illusion.

The whole "this-is-what-she-needs-to-take-to-get-into-college" business? Inconcievable.

'Cause there's just no earthly way Kairi is going to high school next year. I haven't even gotten used to her being a teenager yet.

In fact, didn't I take this picture of her yesterday?

Playoffs? Playoffs?

Who needs the NFL playoffs? (Granted, we might have a slightly different take on that if either of our teams had made it past the first round.) But thanks to the thawing temperatures Scott and Nick had their own playoff round in the backyard.

Granted, football is a bit odd when you have no defense. Or maybe it was no offence. Hard to tell at times.

Basically, it involved a lot of running, catching, and tackling - so that's close enough, isn't it? And I did mention it thawed, right? So it also involved a lot of mud.

While victory celebrations broke out often...

I think the final score may have been "who knows" to "who cares".

P.S. Yes, I know I still haven't figured out how to work my new camera. It was nearly dark, and I was taking pictures out of the second story window. I'll get there!

One Resolution Down

One of my New Year's resolutions was to finally finish my Disney trip report. I didn't include our Disney vacation on this blog since I didn't want to duplicate it in two places.

Our summer vacation story can be found here:

A MouseEars View of Grand Gatherings

Whew! Now all I have to do is read the Bible, catch up on my scrapping, and keep this blog up to date. (Cause there's just no way I'm going back to over 200 lbs, so that resolution is in the bag.)

By the way...

Like my new camera? From Christmas morning on, all the photos on the blog were taken with my new Kodak Z915. It's not exactly the camera I wanted, but it's a million times better than the cheapo replacement for my last camera, and at least several thousand times better than my last good camera. It has a 10x optical zoom, too.

I'm still figuring it out, so my pictures aren't great yet, but I've taken a few that were pretty much beyond the range of my previous cameras. Like a shot of Kai that's reasonably sharp in very low light:

And our Christmas tree without a weird orange glow:

And an extreme close-up of some Hershey kisses:

Maybe someday I'll get an even better camera, but for now I'm lucky enough to have a husband who knows that I can't go without a decent camera for very long! And this one is more than decent. Lucky me!

And My Resolutions, too

The new year is a time for reflection and to find a guidepost for future goals. But for some reason, I'm just not feeling any of that this year. I do know there are things that need to get done, and some places where I can improve myself, so I'll go with this:

1. Keep my weight down. Both Jenn and I lost a lot of weight this year, but we still have some left to go. I want to be able to step on the scale come January 1, 2011, and see a number that indicates a healthy weight.

2. Be more patient. With the children, Jenn, work, traffic, myself...

3. Fix up the house. Finish painting the halls and bathrooms and garage door. Clean up the yard. Tedious work, but I'd be happy when it was done.

4. Read the Bible and pray more. This is always on my list, but never seems to happen. This time, for sure!

Happy New Year!

We had a very low-key New Year's Eve. I've been feeling a bit under the weather this week, and I took a long afternoon nap after sleeping late. When I finally surfaced, we headed out to dinner (Lone Star) and a movie (The Princess and the Frog). I liked the movie better than dinner and I liked dinner quite a lot.

When we left the movie, it was sleety and nasty, so we drove home carefully and spent the next two hours putting away all the Christmas decorations and doing a quick housecleaning. That left us with about half an hour to watch Dick Clark (who just makes me vaguely sad since his stroke) and wait for the ball drop.

My new year's resolutions for this year are:

1) Never. Ever. See a three-digit number starting with 2 on my scale. Ever again.
2) Keep up with this blog.
3) Read the Bible more.
4) Catch up my scrapbooks so that I'm less than 2 years behind.
5) Finish my Disney trip report.

My chances of acheiving those goals? Hmm....

1) I BETTER freakin' acheive that one. I'm so not going back there.
2) Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha.... (Okay, so I'm not starting out with the right attitude there...)
3) I'm going to try - and not just when I'm waiting for church to start.
4) Hm. We shall see. The problem is, I take too darn many pictures.
5) Question is, do I even remember the trip at this point??!!

Ah, well, here goes nothing! Welcome 2010!

But Where Is Our Snow Day?

We've had two spectacular snow storms already this year. First, the night of Advent Workshop, it snowed enough to coat every tree, house, car, and yard in fairy-tale white. Then, on the 18th - 19th, we had a big ol' NorEaster that smacked the mid-Atlantic with 1-3 feet of snow. We only got eight inches, but that's not half bad. Now they're calling for snow on New Year's Eve.

So what's the problem with all this pretty seasonal weather?? It keeps happening on weekends and holidays! That means no snow days, and of course, getting out of school is half the fun.

Lucky 13

Could somebody please tell me where our cute little 5 year old is, and how she got replaced with a teenager? I mean, really, how rude!

This was not a year for Kairi to have a big party, but we were blessed to have Grandma and Grandpa here to celebrate with her. The six of us had breakfast and watched Kairi open her birthday presents. Mostly she got clothes and DS games, but she also got a makeup box from us and a beaded cross necklace that her great grandma had made.

Hannah, Faith, and Juli were dropped off for church, and we met up with Barry after church at Burrito Grill. Everyone had their fill of tacos and burritos and quesadillas and chips and guacamole. Barry and Hannah gave her another makeup kit, so now Kairi has enough makeup to last her entire teen years! Then we had to hurry back home in order to get to the Rave to buy tickets for Kairi's birthday movie, Sherlock Holmes.

Kairi's friend Kaitlin was visiting from Nebraska, so Kairi invited her along to the Birthday movie. We met at the Promenade Shops and had ice cream from Maggie Moos and let the girls wander around Claire's and Aeropostale while Jenn and I browsed around Barnes and Noble. It was a big step for both of us letting Kairi wander around without us. Kairi and Kaitlin had a great time, but unfortunately none of us particularly liked the movie. The girls said they didn't understand, Jenn was bored, and neither of us thought it was "Holmesian" enough.

After the movie, Kaitlin had to go home, but the rest of us had a great dinner of fettuccine alfredo, which was Kairi's pick. She also picked a red velvet cake which we had picked up at the Fresh Market. Kairi got to open one more present, a frog from Cyndy, who wasn't able to make it to lunch or dinner.

All in all, it was a happy birthday. But if it were up to me, she would be 13 again next year.

Christmas Chaos

Let's put it this way.

There were presents.

And there were hugs. And there were relatives.
And there were more presents.And more relatives.Which meant more presents.And more hugs. With kisses. And cooties.And lots and lots and lots of food.
And, of course, presents. And did we mention the food?

A merry Christmas to all. And is it time for good night yet???

A Very Special Present

I got a very special present this year from Mom. The nativity scene above (actually, there are many more pieces, that's just a close-up) was hand-painted by my grandmother. I have always loved it, and Mom decided she wanted to give us heirlooms this year. I will treasure it always!

Best of all, it reminds us that the greatest gift of Christmas can't be bought. He was already given to us all, on a quiet night in Bethlehem.

Yes, You Can Open ONE

Every year, it's the same thing.

Everyone gets to open one present early.

Why? Cause we all know what's in them, that's why! It just wouldn't be Christmas without snuggly new PJs!

Thanks, Grandma!

Nicky's First Concert

According to his quarterly writing piece in fourth grade, Nicky is "living the dream". He's wanted to play brass for years, ever since his sister started with the French Horn. But his aspirations are longer and slidy-er. He wants to play trombone.

Turns out, he's pretty darn good at it. After a slight mishap where he traded his slide with another player and neither of them could get their trombones together, Nick played "Jingle Bells" like a pro in the Holiday concert. Best of all, Grandma and Grandpa were here in time to see his very first concert.

Here's hoping he sticks with it - so far he's loving band.

Nobody messes with Santa. You know that, don't you???

This year both Jenn and I decided to do most of our shopping online. Many of our presents were ordered through Amazon.com on December 10th and December 15th.

Shopping online was supposed to be easier. Neither of us would have to brave the crowds (although we did go out for Black Friday again this year). The presents were going to come right to the house. It was going to work out perfectly.

Except now it is December 22nd and we are still expecting three shipments. We got a lot of our presents yesterday. Maybe it was because of the snow over the weekend, I'm not sure. All I know is that I think next year I am going to order online earlier, or brave the malls instead.

Must Be Santa

Who else could get away with giving out presents a week early? Only Santa. Or as our family calls him, the "REAL" Santa. See, Faith and Nick have both noticed those imitation Santas that seem to float around this time of year. But the REAL Santa goes to Daddy/Uncle Scott's work for breakfast. So we caught up with him there, and got presents and delicious breakfast.

Good thing the photographer had a nice camera. My replacement is HORRIBLE, and I was frustrated all morning trying to get semi-decent shots.

The girls were delighted, but I caught a vague hint that this may be a dying tradition for our own two. But they still love the bacon from the buffet!

But I Like a Cookie...

Christmastime in our household means it's also baking time. This year, Jenn and I had the extra challenge of dieting while making the cookies, which is no small feat. Friday night, we made the sugar cookie dough so it could be baked this morning and decorated by our kids along with Faith and Juli. We started early this morning with fudge and candy cane cookies, since both were somewhat difficult, so the little ones couldn't help us with them. Cyndy, her friend Ben, and the girls came over sometime midmorning and helped with peanut butter blossoms, reindeer cookies, and cutting out the sugar cookies.

Unfortunately, not everything went according to plan. With only one mixer and one oven, it was hard to get the cookies done in an orderly and timely fashion. By the time the sugar cookies were baked and cooled, the girls had already left, so Jenn and Kairi did most of the decorating while I replaced the thermostat in the water heater, which had broken for the second time this winter.

In the end, we made about 25 dozen of assorted types of cookies, including two new recipes (peppermint blossoms and peppermint double-decker fudge). They were all delicious. Many of them ended up going to work and church, with some left over for Christmas.

Advent Workshop

We finally got to go to Advent Workshop after several years of conflicting schedules. But it couldn't be TOO easy, so of course we had a snow storm that evening.

It was no big deal, though, as we arrived before the snow became a driving issue. And when we left, kind members of the church ran out and brushed off the cars. Cyndy brought her girls, and we all had fun making crafts, eating yummy food, and watching the talent show.

Next year, I think Drew and Nick need to work up a comic routine. They are already the church clowns, anyway!

Deck the Halls

We got our Christmas tree early this year because the marching band ran out of trees last year before we had a chance to pick ours up. It was Jenn's turn, and she got a tree that was nice and full, but unfortunately it was a little shorter than we usually get, and it turned out to be crooked. But it was the first one we saw, and it looked good enough.

Jenn and I got the lights and garland up, then all of us hung up the ornaments. It's an eclectic mix of older ornaments, gifts from Jenn's students, and things that the kids made at Advent Workshop and school over the years. They might not match, and they might not fit a particular theme, but they are definitely "Us".