Prayers needed!

To anyone who is reading this, I have a favor to ask... a prayer request.

Good friends of ours have a 3 year-old daughter, J, who was just recently diagnosed with infantile scoliosis. (Abnormal curvature of the spine.) Her spine had a 40 degree curvature to it, so she's had to wear a brace 23 hours out of the day for the past few months. As a result, the curvature luckily has decreased to 30 degrees.

J had an MRI to see what exactly was causing the scoliosis, and the results weren't great. She has a malformed cerebellum (that's the lower part of the brain) which is protruding through the hole in her skull that leads into the spinal canal. She also has a large pocket of fluid in her spinal canal around her spinal cord. As she is growing, that space is getting smaller and smaller causing the scoliosis.

Needless to say, our friends then had to make an appointment with a pediatric neurosurgeon to discuss their options. They were told little J needs to have brain surgery.

The surgery is taking place tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 11am. I know you don't know who this little girl is, but please say a prayer for her for a successful surgery and a speedy recovery. Her family and friends (including us!!) have all been on pins and needles wondering how she will do with the surgery. Supposedly most kids who have this type of surgery done are able to go back to school within 1 week, so hopefully she is back to her sweet energetic self soon!

Thanks in advance for the prayers.

"Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...you look much better upright!"

Well, I hope everyone had a great weekend :-) Mine was pretty busy! Friday I went up my Grandma's house for a birthday party. My cousin and his kids were in from MD and were staying at my grandma's... most of the family hasn't seen them in years, so my uncle had a birthday party for both the kids (his grandkids) while they were in town. It was nice to see everyone! Alyson played strange with everyone for awhile, but started warming up to everyone a little later in the evening! She still would only come to either me or my mom. She DID go to my aunt though... she probably thought my aunt was my mom, since they're twins!

Saturday, I took Alyson up to my mother-in-laws to see all my neices and my nephew! All Russ's brother's kids had spent the night over there Friday night, and were staying most of the day Saturday too. Russ originally told me he didn't think it was safe for me to drive up there due to the snow coming (they live in an area where the county won't really treat the roads with salt very much.) I felt bad, because I had gotten all ready to go, and so I told Russ, "Well YOU call your mom and give her the bad news, because I'm sure she and the kids are looking forward to us coming." So he called her and when I got on the phone with her, I could hear the kids say, "Aunt Betsy's not coming????" So I felt bad and told Russ I'd go, but that I'd just keep an eye out on the weather. I ended up staying over there for a few hours, and by the time I got ready to leave, EVERYTHING was covered with snow. It took me twice as long to get home, but I made it. It was worth it though, to see the kids. They all loved seeing Alyson, and were playing with her all afternoon. They all wanted to take turns holding her... it was too cute! They had made cookies right before we showed up, and lemme tell ya, Alyson LOVED those cookies. :-)

Now onto Sunday... Russ, the lucky boy that he is, got to go to the Steelers/Cowboys game at Heinz Field. While I was envious, I wasn't jealous of the fact that he'd be freezing his boys off while I was sitting on my couch in our warm house!!! He bundled himself up with a gazillion layers of clothing and said he was sweating by the time he got ready to leave the house... but by the time he got home he was happy he'd put that many layers on...he said his feet were freezing!

Unfortunately for him, but FORTUNATELY for me, the Cowboys lost. (Yes, I married a Cowboys fan, despite the fact that my WHOLE family, myself included, is a bunch of Steelers fans!!) The guy he went with is a Cowboys fan too, so they were both bummed about the game. I enjoyed it though!!

So while her daddy was gone yesterday, Alyson decided to get into EVERYTHING. She was climbing on chairs, climbing on tables...and.... knocking down the Christmas tree. Yes, knocking down the Christmas tree. I was in the kitchen and heard the ornaments clinking around, but figured she was just trying to squeeze between the couch and tree in order to reach the end table (she likes to grab whatever she can off the top of it.) So I peeked in the living room to see what was going on, and it was like slow motion... the tree came toppling down and she just barely got out of the way. It scared the crap out of her, and I just stood there with my mouth open. You always think, "Noo.... that won't happen to ME!" and low and behold, the tree comes down. I didn't want to yell at Alyson, because I mean, would she really know what was going on?! She was screaming and crying already...so I just picked her up and put her in her highchair to get her away from everything. I tried tipping the tree back upright (wishing Russ was home to help me!!) but while I was underneath it, I didn't realize one of the legs on the tree stand had folded back underneath the stand, so the tree fell right back over again, this time on top of ME! Well, Alyson saw it falling and screamed even more, poor girl. Finally I realized what the problem was and unfolded the legs of the stand so the tree would actually STAY UP. Fortunately, not many ornaments broke...just two, and most of them actually stayed on the tree.

So that was yesterday's action. Aside from that, I just finished up my outside decorating (in less than 20 degree weather with minimal feeling to my fingers!!), and then *tried* to relax. I just kept an eye on Alyson....AND the tree :-)

Feeling better now :-)

Thank goodness I'm feeling better today!! I couldn't keep ANYTHING down yesterday. Russ decided he was hungry for breakfast food at 6pm, so he went out to eat since I was in no mood to cook. I told him to bring me back pancakes because I *thought* I'd be able to tolerate them. No such luck. I got through the day yesterday on one little bowl of applesauce and about 3 cans of diet mountain dew. Fun stuff.

Today was good though. I'm still not 100% but I feel MUCH better. I could actually think about decorating for Christmas again. I turned the Christmas music channel on tv, put my window decorations up, and then decided to tackle decorating the christmas tree. I have the tree pretty much all done, but can't seem to find my tree skirt. I have SO MUCH STUFF sitting out in my spare bedroom, it's hard to tell where it is until I start putting things away again. It looks like I'm celebrating every holiday up in my spare bedroom... all my different decorations are sitting out because I want to put everything back in the bedroom's crawl space in a SOMEWHAT organized manner....lol. My everyday decorations are in one corner of the room, my fall stuff is on the bed, and all my christmas gifts and christmas decorations I haven't yet put up are somewhere in the middle. My husband doesn't dare look in there or he'd throw a fit...lol. He's such an anti-clutter person!! Not that I'm a messy person, I'm just not as neat-freakish as he is. I tell him, "Hey, at least the room's not like this ALL YEAR! Give me a break during the holidays!" I told my mom I'm going to hold her hostage one day next week so she can come help me organize my spare bedroom.

But back to the tree... I knew it was going to be slightly more interesting this year with a toddler running around, but jeeeeeeeeeeeeez! It was exhausting! As soon as I brought out my two big storage containers of tree decorations, she was ALL OVER THEM. She pulled out my beads, which instantly got completely tangled...needless to say, they're not on the tree now. And you know how the round glass ornaments have the little detachable part that fits inside the top of them that holds the ornament hook???? Yeah... she got into one bag of ornaments and pulled ALL THOSE OFF. They were all sitting on the floor beside her. So I didn't put AS MANY ornaments down low on the tree... the ones I put down there are ALL non-breakable, and since we have an artificial tree, I bent the end of the branch down over the ornament hooks so she can't pull them off. She tried for awhile, but eventually gave up. (ONE POINT FOR MOMMY! WOO HOO!)

Oh, and while I was decorating the tree, she decided to start a new trick... my little monkey has graduated from crawling up on the dining room chairs to crawling FROM THE CHAIR ONTO THE TABLE. I had to pull her off of there like fifty gazillion times, then finally she spent the rest of my tree decorating time in her highchair having goldfish crackers and milk. I now have to keep all chairs completely pulled away from the table so she can't get up there. I'm sure it won't be long until she realizes, "Hmm... all I have to do is push this chair over there....." She's a quick learner, I tell ya.

Well, I'm gonna finish watching the Rockafeller Christmas special! (I'm SO into the Christmas spirit, I can't help it... I absolutely LOVE this time of year!)

What a day...

Well, it's a good thing I got all my fall decorations taken down yesterday and got the inside of my house decorated for Christmas (minus the tree)....because today I am a MESS!

My husband went to bed lastnight around 9pm or so because he knew he'd have to go out working in the middle of the night since it was snowing. Close to midnight he came down the hallway looking like death, carrying a blanket and pillow and laid down on the couch. He was moaning and groaning about how his stomach was "a wreck." He said, "Yeah honey, dinner tasted great, but it just wasn't the same coming up the second time around."

At this point, I felt fine... I was tired, but other than that everything was great. Then it was like BOOM, it hit... my stomach felt funny and I ran in the bathroom to greet my dinner for the second time around. Not fun.

So we were back and forth at this for awhile, then we laid down for awhile. Around 2am, Russ woke up to go to work and said he felt "a little better" but that he had thrown up again. I said, "Yeah I'm getting that feeling too..." and he said "Oh, believe me, the second your feet hit the floor you'll be running to the bathroom again." Which, unfortunately, was exactly what happened.

So we decided that the only thing that could have made us sick was the dinner I made, since it was the only thing we both ate that was the same yesterday. That was about 5:30pm or so, and we started getting sick around midnight. Dinner tasted great though, which is what I don't get. I made stirfry, and am always VERY careful to cook it thoroughly. I mean, the day I bought the meat for it, it went straight into the freezer, so it's not like I let it sit out long. The veggies I used were a bag of frozen ones, so no problem there... so I dunno.

So today I woke up headachy with an upset stomach but that was it. It felt more like a bad hangover than anything. (Not that I've, uh, been hungover at all...lol) I just feel worn out, and so does Russ. But what has me wondering is that I all the sudden started feeling chilled and checked my temp... 99.3. Not an especially high fever that I normally get with the flu, but not my normal 97.6 either. And THEN I started getting achy all down my neck into my lower back.

Needless to say, I have NO IDEA whether this IS food poisoning, or a mild case of the flu. Grr. I've been online looking up the difference between food poisoning and the flu, and what I've read says that food poisoning gives you bad stomach cramps, etc... which I haven't had.

Sorry for the most interesting post, but I'm just kinda confused and bummed here. My relatives are coming in at the end of the week, so I'd hate to be sick and miss out on seeing them..and most of all if this IS the flu, I definitely don't want Aly to get sick.

If anyone has any experience with food poisoning, let me know if you think this is what I have. Being a nurse, you'd think I'd know, but they're just so similar which has me completely baffled.

Alright, off to TRY and lay down a bit.

Goats, shopping and cheesecake...what could be a more perfect weekend?!

Hello :-) I hope everyone had a nice, relaxing long holiday weekend! Did anyone go out and do lots of shopping on "Black Friday?" I told myself I WAS NOT going to go shopping that day because I didn't want to have to get stuck in the crazy hectic crowds, but my husband decided he wanted to go out and have a "family day." I wasn't complaining...my husband rarely suggests we go out shopping!

We decided against the mall though. I figured that would be TRULY nuts. We went out to dinner at the Pittsburgh Chop House, then just decided to go to Sams Club. The crowd there wasn't any different than usual, in my opinion. Aly started getting a little tired and fussy at Sam's, so we just called it a day and headed home (after I made Russ sit in the drive-thru line at Starbucks for 15 minutes because I was totally craving a caramel mocha!!)

Saturday when I woke up, fully intending to take down all my fall decorations and start decorating for Christmas, Russ says to me, "Let's spend time together today. I got all my paperwork done, and it's not snowing... I'm not busy which is RARE, so let's go somewhere!" I had lots of house cleaning and laundry to do, but I gave in and figured that the cleaning and laundry will ALWAYS be there, so what's another day putting it off!

We decided to head to Wheeling and went to the Good Zoo at Oglebay with Alyson :-) I was just upset because we didn't make a final decision on where to go until we had left the house, so I didn't have my camera with me :-( Oh well, I'm sure there will be a next time soon. Alyson was a LITTLE interested in things... they have a huge model train exhibit downstairs and she really liked watching all the trains go around, and the little planes flying around above the train tracks! She also liked looking at all the fish and birds....she'd just stare at them with her mouth open! Next we went outside and strolled her around to see the animals. We went down to the barn and saw a donkey, pig and barn owls, then went over to see the goats and llama! The goats were the funniest things. You can actually walk inside the gate to interact with and feed them, and it was hilarious! They didn't want anything to do with us while we were inside with them, but once we got outside the fence and bought some food for them, they were ALL OVER US. They practically tried crawling over the fence when they knew we had food. That's what scared Aly... she was in her stroller staring at all of them, then they started jumping up and sticking their tongues out to get the food Russ had. We were both cracking up, but Aly didn't see the humor in it.

After the zoo, we went to the Olive Garden to eat... which I have been craving FOR-EV-ER! Olive Garden is like a treat for me.. we don't eat there very much. Afterwards I decided to splurge and bought a piece of raspberry cheesecake, which Alyson had no problem helping me with. She picked up a spoon and started sticking it in the cheesecake so she could feed herself. The poor girl wanted NOTHING to do with her chicken fingers and fries, but she was all over that cheesecake. Hmm...like mother like daughter.

So it really was a great family weekend... until we got home yesterday. We quickly found out why Alyson was fussy during dinner and on the way home... she wasn't feeling well, and let us know that by puking on the living room carpet. Not once, but twice. I had JUST changed her into her pj's and had her all ready for bed, then she got sick all over herself, AND all over Russ. I felt so bad for her, she didn't know what to do. Needless to say, she went STRAIGHT INTO THE BATHTUB. Poor thing. Luckily she was fine this morning... no fussiness or anything during church, and she ate a decent amount for breakfast. I was REALLY hoping she wasn't coming down with the flu. That'd be the first time she's been sick... she had a slight sinus cold when she was 5 or 6 months old, but nothing since. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Well, I'm off to bed. It's already way later than I planned to stay up. I just got all into this Britney Spears documentary on MTV. It's pretty interesting, I have to say! Portrays her in a totally different light than the tabloids do.

But anyway... nighty night.

Thanksgiving updates

Well, I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving and filled your bellies with turkey and all kinds of yummy things!! :-) Me, I'm STILL full from about 5pm. I enjoyed lots of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc etc... I think I ate enough food to last me through the weekend.

Anyway, Thanksgiving Day for me was, well, interesting. It's been go-go-go from the minute I woke up this morning... baking and getting things ready to take with us, then leaving for Russ's mom's house around 12:45pm. We had his mom's to go to at 1, then my parents at 4.

As I said in my previous post, this was the first holiday in a LONG while that we've spent with Russ's brother and their family. I didn't go there with high expectations that everyone would be holding hands and singing songs while swaying back and forth, but I WAS hoping that it would be a bit of a 'new beginning' to get the family back on track.

It was, to say the least, civil. Russ and his brother didn't talk much, but when they DID talk, it was civil. A bit forced, but pleasant. Basically "hi how are you, how have you been" small talk. (It's a start, I figure.) But I felt somewhat that you could have cut the tension in the air with a knife at times. It's just that no one really knew what to say to eachother. I mean, no one's gonna come out and say, "So.... uh...where have you been the past 3 years?" Ugh. I felt like I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs trying to think of things to say. I mean, what do you say to people you really haven't seen in 3 years because your husband and his brother are both too stubborn to give a little and put some effort into mending their relationship?!?!?

And the kids... oh. It just BROKE MY HEART to see them so grown up and to know that all this mess caused me to miss out in the past 3 years of their lives. I mean, the youngest was just a baby when Russ and I got married, so she doesn't know me from a hill of beans. When we walked in Russ's mom's house, she was sitting on the floor playing, and just looked up at us and stared as if she was thinking, "Who are YOU?!" It's just so sad. The girl is 3 years old, I'm her aunt, and she has NO IDEA who I am. The next youngest MIGHT remember me, but I doubt it. She was in our wedding, but was only 2 1/2 or so at the time. The two oldest girl and the only boy are the ones I got to know the most, and so they were talking to me alot, about what they've been up to and everything. It was so great to talk with them and hear about them being in dancing, basketball, singing lessons, etc. They are all growing up so fast and I really don't want to miss out on any more years of their lives!!

Tonight as I got into bed (obviously not able to sleep, being that I'm up writing this now), I talked with Russ about everything. I said, "SO...what do you think about today?" and he goes, "I dunno. It went ok, I guess... it was nice." So then I started talking about the girls and how one of the older ones told me before we left, "I just asked my mom how come we don't see you, Uncle Russell, Alyson and Nana very often." It BROKE MY HEART. I wanted to cry. I told her, "Well, we'll be coming over with your uncle Jon and Aunt Krissy at Christmas!" ANd she smiled and said, "Ok... but you need to come over before then. Come over before Monday, ok?" Then she just smiled and I gave her a big hug, trying to fight back tears as I walked out the door. So tonight when I talked with Russ about what she said, I started crying again and had to get out of bed for some "alone time" just to think. So here I am, blogging away.

This just sucks because I NEVER grew up around any disagreement in my family. I've never had to deal with not talking or associating with family members until I married into Russ's family, so I don't know HOW to deal with it. I just know I miss those kids like crazy and I just hope Russ and his mom and brother can resolve their differences and we can go back to spending more time together again. I know it's never gonna be a perfect relationship, but I'm hoping today was a small step in the right direction for everybody.

Here is a pic we had taken at the end of the day... My mother-in-law's husband's children are on the left hand side in the back. They are all sooo nice! In the front are all Russ's brother's kids :-)

Hopefully there's ALOT to be thankful for...

Snow, snow and more snow... that was the forcast for today. And it'll be more of the same tomorrow. So needless to say, today I just stayed in my warm house with my little princess and my furbabies while my husband was out working. I baked some pumpkin bars to take to my mother-in-law's house and to my parents' house on Thanksgiving. Figured I'd at least get that out of the way.

Speaking of Thanksgiving... this year ought to be interesting for us. It is the first holiday we're spending with Russ's brother, who we really haven't spoken to in a few years for different reasons I won't really get into. Basically it's just a lot of disagreeing where Russ, his brother and his mother are concerned. I'm basically stuck in the middle, wanting to spend time with my in-laws but wanting to do right by my husband too, ya know?

Anyway, we're going to Russ's mom and her husband's house at 1pm, then to my parents' house at 4. Russ's mom informed us a few weeks ago that she asked Russ's brother to come, and he said he would. She thought Russ would be upset about it, but he's totally fine with it, which is great. He's been wanting them all to just put everything behind them and be a family again, but that just hasn't happened yet. It's starting to between his brother and mother, but it's not quite there yet.

I'm looking forward to seeing their family though... I think it'll be good for everyone to be together for the holidays. I mean, Alyson is 17 months old and she's never met her cousins at all. That just kills me. I really want her to be close with them...they're all such sweet kids. I've thought MANY times about taking Alyson over to see them (regardless of what Russ had to say about it) but when everyone stopped talking, Russ and I hadn't been married long and so I hadn't been around them much...I didn't feel like I was at the point where I could call and just stop by whenever. I dunno.

So maybe being together for Thanksgiving will help things along.I reeeeeeeeally hope so. I'd just hate for them to act weird towards ME... like I said, I just feel caught in the middle of this mess. I don't know why Russ chose not to speak with his brother in the first place. He says it was because his mom would call and talk about what mean things his brother said to her, and Russ was just tired of the whole situation and wanted no part of it. I just wish he, and everyone else, could put the past in the past WHERE IT BELONGS and get along again.

That's my wish for the holidays. It would be SUCH a blessing if it happened.