Christmas and New Year's Pics

As promised, here they are.... (the New Year's pics are repeats from my previous post... I put all the pics into one slideshow so I could email it out to friends and family!)

Happy 2009!

Well, I hope everyone had a great New Year's Eve and is having a wonderful 2009 so far :-)

On New Year's Eve, we went over our friends Dean and Joelle's house and celebrated with a bunch of our close friends. All of us basically have little kids around the same age, so obviously due to the little ones' bedtimes, we didn't all hang out until midnight. It was still a great time though. Aly was such a trooper...she was still awake and raring to go until about 11pm when she started yawning. We only live about 5 minutes away from Dean and Joelle's, so it didn't take long to get home. We put Aly to bed and Russ and I rang in the New Year by ourselves, watching the ball drop with Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest...lol. :-)


The New Year has been good so far... it was nice spending time with Russ's brother and our sister-in-law. They left on the 1st to go to Minneapolis, where her family is from, and on the 4th they are heading back to Alaska. We're all trying to persuade them to move down here... if not close to us, at least to the lower 48! (Don't think I mentioned this before, but my SIL is 4 months pregnant, so we all want to be able to see their baby more than once or twice a year!!) It'll probably be a few years before they move (if they DO move), since they have work commitments up there for the next 1 1/2 to 2 years. So we'll see.

What else to talk about....

OH. New Year's Resolutions. #1 has already gone partially out the window, but I'm getting better. I always make more than one resolution. This year's are:

1. Lose weight. (But since all the TV shows say to make SMALL goals that are realistic, the first part of that resolution I hope to do is "Exercise at least 3-4 times per week.")

2. Not procrastinate so much.

3. Keep in better touch with friends and family.

4. MAYBE.... give Aly a baby brother or sister??? (We'll have to see about that, because it takes more than just ME to do that...lol. I'm ready, but I'm not so sure Russ is yet!)

So there are the resolutions...the ones I can think of right now, anyway.

I'll finish this up with some pictures of New Year's Eve.

Here is Aly opening up one of her presents from our friends.


The kids exchanging presents


Russ (in his little kids party hat!) and our friend Brandon


Me, Russ and Alyson


All of us...The Hunt/Klink/Bucci/Riley families (except for Dean's mom Stephanie, who was taking the pics for us!)


Alyson and Guy drinking their sparkling white grape juice (and LOVING it!)


Gotta get every last drop!

Christmas updates :-)

I fell asleep for a little bit on the couch earlier tonight due to being TOTALLY exhausted, and wouldn't you know that once I got back to bed, I was wide awake staring at the ceiling. So here I am, blogging away :-) Figured I might as well update since it's been awhile.

I'll start off with my last post... as I said in that, our friends' daughter J had to go back to the hospital last week. We ended up visiting her on Monday night, and she was ZONKED from Morphine...poor thing. We took her a little dog with a santa hat on that sings "Santa Baby," a coloring book, and a huge helium balloon shaped like a reindeer. She was in and out of sleep the whole time we were there. The next night she was spiking fevers and they found out she had an infection in her spinal fluid, so she had a PICC line inserted (an IV they put in if you're going to need one for more than just a few days), so she's been on antibiotics for that. The GREAT news was that she got to come home Christmas night. She just has to continue IV antibiotics at home for awhile, but she's slowly getting back to her old self.

I was so impressed with Children's Hospital though... they were awesome to little J. They brought paints and all sorts of activities for her into her hospital room, which she LOVED... and on Christmas night, while J and her mom and dad were all sleeping, "Santa" snuck in and left a little Christmas tree and a huge bag of toys for J. It brought our friends to tears the next morning when they saw everything, especially since they hadn't gotten alot of Christmas shopping done due to everything going on. She got barbie dolls, My Little Pony, coloring books, a magna doodle and all kinds of great toys. It really cheered J up because she was worried Santa wouldn't visit her!

J came home in the early afternoon Christmas Day. Santa and Mrs. Claus made a special visit to little J at her house on the 26th, once she was feeling a little better, so they celebrated Christmas that day. The good thing is that their other two kids are 2 and 1, so they really had no idea that they were celebrating Christmas a day late.

My sister-in-law, Alyson and I went over to see J and her family lastnight... she is doing great! All smiles and running around as if nothing ever happened. What a blessing! We ate dinner with them and played with the kids and their new toys for awhile.

So that's the story with J.

Now, backtracking a bit to Christmas Eve. We had a big get-together at my Grandma's like we do every year on Christmas Eve. We had a lot of laughs, a lot of food, and a lot of my uncle's homemade wine. (Which, of course, I had to sample every kind he brought.) Good times!! Russ didn't stay very long though... his brother and his wife flew in from Alaska, and he went and picked them up at the airport while I stayed with my family. So I didn't get to see my in-laws until Christmas Day.

Ahh, Christmas Day. Now THAT was interesting. It was pretty much go-go-go from the start. We went to mass at 9am, then came home for a few hours...I made us all breakfast then we put Alyson down for her nap. While she was upstairs, we opened up our presents to eachother. Russ got me a necklace that has a mother and child intertwined (kinda in a heart shape), with Alyson's birthstone in the middle. He also got me a dell laptop...in PINK! My other laptop just died one day, so I had been using his... he's happy to have it back now! As for my presents to Russ, I got him clothes, some Dallas Cowboys stuff, a wallet, and a grab bag full of odds-and-ends things... nothing all that exciting. He's so hard to buy for, because he always seems to go out right before Christmas and buy whatever he needs...silly boy.

So after we opened presents, we THOUGHT it'd be awhile before Aly got up, but she didn't sleep long at all. We headed over Russ's mom's house to be with everyone. Russ's OTHER brother (the one who lives close to us) was there with his wife and kids, and we weren't sure how that was going to go. It went pretty well though. His brother was just his usual a-holish self, for lack of better words. As Russ says when it comes to him, "If you have low expectations where he's concerned, you won't be disappointed." Which he wasn't expecting much more from his brother. His brother got him a Santa Claus that stands on this little pedestal... you press a button and Santa goes, "Ho ho ho... I've heard you've been extra good this year, so Santa had an extra special present for you" then he turns around on the pedestal and pulls his pants down. Yeah... that was Russ's present from his brother. I call it the "screw you" present. Russ's mother was TICKED about that. Oh, and then, Russ's mom's husband's family has a tradition where you say a prayer for whoever got you the gift you're about to open... and when Russ's brother opened our gift, he just said a really crappy prayer, like, "Thank you for the love that is Russell, the generosity that is Russell" and was just totally smartassed about it. I SO wanted to say something but I kept my mouth shut. If they had been getting along it wouldn't have been so bad, but since they're NOT really close, it was totally a slap in the face to Russ. Guess it's just one of those "you had to be there" situations.

Anyway, the rest of the day went well though... we ate dinner , talked with everyone for awhile, then came back to our house to meet up with MY parents. They TOTALLY spoiled us with presents. Even the dogs got two huge bags of presents. They were loving it. Alyson opened up all her presents (from us AND my parents) while my parents were here. She was more into the Christmas thing than I thought she'd be, which surprised me. She tried opening her presents once we coaxed her a little, but mostly it was me who was the present-opener. Aly got a babydoll, a baby stroller, a grocery cart, Dora bath toys, clothes, the Fisher Price Learn About Town, Fisher Price musical friends table, blocks, leapfrog fridge dj,pots and pans set, etc etc etc... she has enough toys to open up a store now.

The day after Christmas, I hung out with my sister-in-law K (the one from Alaska) while Russ and BOTH (yes, BOTH) his brothers went out to lunch together. From what Russ tells me, the lunch went pretty well. Later, Russ and I went to Cabela's with both brothers and their wives... a lovely family evening....lol. (Russ's brothers are both big into hunting, and Russ got this grand idea that he wanted to buy a gun. He ended up getting some huge gun (AK 17, I think???) like they use in the military. What for, I dunno. So he dropped some mad amount of money on this gun, and was all excited.

After all that excitement (yeah right), we all ate at Olive Garden. It wasn't as tension-filled as I thought it would be... it was good for all of us to get out together for a change. That was a first, actually. Russ and his in-town brother probably talked more over the past 3 days than they have in the past 3 years.

Anyway, onto yesterday... the 3 brothers had more male bonding time, and went out to their hunting land to practice shooting. They were all pumped to play with Russ's new "toy." So they did that for awhile while my sister-in-law K and I hung out, then we all met up for dinner. Pretty noneventful. (I'm trying to be short and sweet where the updates are concerned...lol)

So all in all, it's been great that all 3 brothers have gotten to spend time together. Hopefully everyone can act civil and (gasp!) even become closer. We'll see. As Russ says, "If you go into it with low expectations, you won't be disappointed." I'm not holding my breath for some miracle to happen, but all this is a start.

So there are my holiday updates. Russ's brother in in town until Thursday morning, and I think they will be staying with us for a few days (they've been staying with his mom so far), so I'll try to update when I can. It's just been busy busy busy since Christmas Eve. If for some reason I don't get to update before New Year's Eve, I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL New Year! Be safe, whatever you end up doing for New Year's Eve!!

Next post will have pictures, I promise :-) Just have to get them into a slideshow since there are so many.

More sad news :-(

Another prayer request... :-( I found all this out about 7:30pm tonight.

Our friends' daughter J had to go back to the hospital tonight... she's started to have severe headaches and so her parents took her to Childrens Hospital in Pittsburgh. The doctor did some tests on her and discovered she has a spinal fluid leak which is causing the headaches. I guess this happens in about 10% of post-op patients who had the same surgery she did.

Little J had to go back into surgery tonight to drain the fluid... that was around 9pm. Russ and our friend Brandon went up there to be with our friends... I'd have loved to go up and see her, but Aly was due to go to bed at 8pm :-( So Russ is still there now... he just called about an hour ago and said that the surgery went well... she just has tubes and drains galore coming out of her. And what ELSE is sad is that she'll more than likely be in the hospital for a week, the doctor said. Which means she'll be celebrating Christmas in a hospital bed :-(

What I don't understand is that she was doing SO WELL yesterday. J's little brother turned 1 on the 16th, and our friends had a little birthday party at their house yesterday for him. I gave J a hug and asked her how she was feeling and she smiled and said "good." I asked if she was having any pain and she shook her head no. She was loving playing with all the kids, and was playing dress-up in all her princess dresses with the other girls. It's crazy how things can do a total 180 in such a short period of time.

If you could please say a prayer for her speedy recovery I'd really appreciate it! Also for my dad too... he's been having sciatic nerve and back problems, so the doctor sent him for an X-ray and found out that he has a lot of degeneration (break-down of bone)/arthritis in his joints and back. He's been walking around with a little limp due to all the pain. He goes tomorrow for an MRI, and I'm just hoping he won't be needing back surgery. His side of the family all seems to have these problems... his brothers and sisters and my grandparents. He's stubborn though and said he's not having surgery unless he ABSOLUTELY has to. So we'll see. For now, I'll be hoping and praying for GOOD THINGS and lots of healing....

We'll probably be going to Pittsburgh tomorrow to see Little J, so I'll update when I can. Have a good night :-)

The past few days... (Ok, so I couldn't think of a better title)

Just a quick update on the past few days...nothing very exciting to talk about, but that's just my life!

Yesterday Russ and I went over our friends' house (the ones whose little daughter J had surgery) and took them dinner. We were SUPPOSED to get alot of snow the night before, and so I wasn't sure I'd make it to the grocery store to buy food to cook, so I ended up ordering food to-go from a local Italian restaurant. And of course, we got NO snow. Oh well... I didn't have to cook, so that was nice :-)

J is doing better, thank God! I took a gift over for her... I got her a cute little puppy that sings "Jesus Loves Me" when you squeeze its paw, and a set of pj's with minnie mouse on them. (She loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.) She was laying around alot, but did come out in the dining room to have dinner with us. She's still in a decent amount of pain, but is taking alternating doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. Evidentally the narcotics she'd been prescribed were doing more harm than good, so she didn't want to take them anymore. Her incision is healing pretty well too.. the doc ended up having to shave a 1" strip down the middle of her head to her neck to make the incision, but when her hair is down you can hardly tell. She's a trooper I tell ya. It won't be long til she's back to her energetic little self.

It was nice to spend time with our friends, just hanging out and relaxing. We even split a bottle of wine too, with dinner... the first time I'd drank any alcohol in awhile! I had a few glasses, but it just tasted so GOOD! It was an amish wine called "Roadhouse Red" from Breitenbach Winery in Ohio. Click *here* to check out their website. The wines are FANTASTIC... especially their Frost Fire and First Crush....and strawberry...and peach....and.... LOL. Ok, it's ALL good. I highly recommend it. I always visit there when my cousin and I go out to Sugarcreek to do some shopping. We love going out there to visit all the little country craft stores since we're all into that.

But anyway... I got off track there.

Now to today... I went to a Christmas program at the school a few of my nieces go to. It was so cute. I think the kids all ranged in age from 3-5, and it was ADORABLE. Some kids would forget their lines and look at the teacher in front and say, "What NOW?" and one little girl paused in between lines, so the audience started clapping, thinking she was finished. She goes, "I'm not done," then finished what she was saying. LOL It was too cute. One of my nieces has some lungs on her... you could hear her and one other girl plain as day.

Alyson LOVED the program. I was hoping she wouldn't be fussy, so I came prepared with her sippy cup and lots of crackers, which of course she finished it all. My mother-in-law and her husband took turns holding Alyson, and Aly would stand up on their laps. We were cracking up because whenever the audience clapped, Aly would get a huge grin on her face and start clapping her hands too. I can't wait until she's in school programs... she'll probably be hilarious. She'll be the little girl up on stage looking at the audience and saying, "I'm not DONE." LOL

So after the program we drove around for a little bit looking at Christmas lights. One neighborhood had houses COVERED in lights... it was like each house was competing with the next. One had music playing and everything. It made me think... what happens if you live in a neighborhood like that and you want to decorate but not THAT MUCH? I'd feel obligated to have to make my house look like the Griswold Family Christmas as well, wouldn't you?! That would suck if you only want to put a few things up... you'd be all out of place. But anyway... I wonder about stupid things like that. Oh... and another thing we saw was a house where the people decorated their car in the driveway!!! That's a first for me. Now I have truly seen it all. The guy (I'm assuming it's a guy that thought of this) had those string lights (the ones in the plastic tube, like you can wrap around tree trunks and stuff) strung on the bottom of his car and around all 4 tires. It was uh, cooooool. Yeah. The most annoying things I saw though (and this is, and always HAS been,my pet peeve every holiday season) are the people who string a bunch of lights together, and one random string blinks while the others stay on. Please don't do this. Like if you decorate your bushes and one string in the middle of the bush is blinking and the rest aren't. The people RIGHT next to us have that problem ALL OVER THEIR YARD, and I get to see it EVERYDAY. And they do it EVERY YEAR. lol

So there's the past few oh-so-exciting days in a nutshell. Tomorrow I need to go to Walmart...I need both groceries AND a few more toys. I don't feel like running to fifty different places. It's bad enough it's supposed to be raining all day tomorrow and I'll have to drag Alyson out in it.

More (hopefully exciting) updates soon. Possibly dealing with that HOUSE!! (But I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.)

But I want it, I want it, I want it!!!! haha

Some of you who have been reading my blog for awhile might remember me talking about a house we wanted to buy during the summer time... the house is AWESOME, it's 4 bedroom 2.5 bath and is 2800 square feet, on over an acre of land, and is in a great neighborhood. Not to mention it's only 2 years old. If we got it, we would be living about 2 minutes away from the land Russ bought a few months ago. (He bought 10 acres of land for his business... he plans on putting a big building up in the spring and moving his office, equipment and everything out there.)

So we've talked with our realtor on and off about this house. We DID put an offer on it back in June, but the owner didn't take it. His way of thinking was basically, "I want this amount for the house and I'm not taking a penny less." So that was a big let-down. Russ just told me to be patient, because it's not like we HAVE to move, and we're not in any hurry.

So a few months ago, the guy dropped the price by $20,000, but is still not budging on the amount he wants for the house. The amount he lowered it to is the EXACT amount he wants, and no less. So we're back to THAT situation...the waiting game.

Fast forward to last night. Russ came home from a meeting with his banker, and had a big grin on his face. He said, "I think I'm gonna call J (our realtor) about that house... interest rates are down and my banker said I'll have no problem being financed for any amount." So I got ALL EXCITED again. Russ was planning on putting a higher offer than our previous one, but was only willing to go about $15,000 higher at the MOST. So he talked to our realtor, and J said that the owner had just been given an offer for only $9,000 LESS than his asking price, and he rejected THAT!! So evidentally this guy is in no hurry to sell his house. Either that, or his asking price is making him take a big loss already. So who knows. So I got all excited for nothing.... again. Russ and I just both REALLY want this house, but the guy is asking way too much for it, and it truly isn't considered "finished." The people were only in the house for a year and the guy got transferred for his job, so they had to hurry up and pack everything up to move. So there's NO deck on the back, and the LONG driveay is still gravel, which isn't allowed in the city limits. I just don't understand how they couldn't put a deck on the back of the house!! The french doors in the kitchen just have a piece of wood over them so they can't open, because it's a 2-story drop down to the grass. (And these people had little kids too!!)

Russ said that the driveway will be about $15,000 to do, and the deck (the one WE want) will be about $10,000. So with all those upgrades which the house needs, the owners asking price just isn't reasonable. So all we can do is wait some more. Our realtor said, "Well, the next people you'll probably be dealing with is the bank." (Meaning the owner will probably let the house get repo'd before he takes a loss on it... so evidentally J knows a little more than he's telling us.)

I just keep praying that we eventually get our dream house :-) At least we're not FORCED to move and we're content where we're at right now. I just know that once we have another baby, this house is gonna get real small real quick!

Well, I'm off to give Aly her bath and put her down for a nap. Have a great day :-)

Update and Walmarting

Just a little update on my previous post about our friends' daughter J. The surgery went well, though her first night post-op was rough. She was in a ton of pain and had to lay flat for 24 hours. (Which I'm sure is hard for a 3 year-old!) Yesterday was alot better for her, and today she sat up a few times and was looking out the window at the snow... and she's also off IV pain meds and onto pills only. So things are getting better day by day. Thanks so much for your prayers!!

Today my mom and I took Alyson out to run some errands. I picked up Aly's pictures from Sears (which have been in for a week but I never seemed to be able to make it to the mall...), then we went to Walmart for the last of my Christmas shopping. (My first visit to walmart during this christmas season... I try to avoid the madness of Walmart at all costs during the holidays!!) I just basically needed bags and bows and wrapping paper, but of course I ended up buying lots of things not on my list...because really, it's WALMART. I've found that I can not stick to a list when I go to walmart. I always end up buying fifty million other things.

But anyway... after walmart I brought my mom back to my house and she helped me clean up my spare bedroom. We took a lot of things from the spare bedroom, along with Aly's outgrown clothes and toys, and put them in the crawl space in Alyson's bedroom. I've been wanting to do this FOREVER, but her "big girl bed" is blocking the door to the crawl space, and I can't move it by myself to get back in there. So we did that tonight, and now Aly's room is nice and neat now without her jumperoo (which she hasn't used in 8 or 9 months)and other outgrown stuff sitting out. She's all ready to pack her new Christmas toys in her room! Oh, and when I was in the crawl space, I discovered all kinds of wedding gifts I had completely forgotten about. I found a whole pots and pans set, vases, photo albums, a waffle iron, a coffee grinder, a bar glass set, a casserole dish set, candle holders, and all kinds of other fun stuff. It was like Christmas came early, only with already-received wedding gifts. Or something like that. lol

So that's about it for now. Just wanted to update real quick, mostly about little J. She's supposed to be home either late Monday or Tuesday, so I told our friends that we'd come visit her as soon as she's up for visitors. I'm going to take dinner over there, and I bought J a few little goodies today... a comfy pair of pj's she can relax and recover in, along with a cute little stuffed bear that sings "Jesus Loves Me"... it's too cute. I can't wait to see her and give her a big hug. I'm just so glad everything went well for her and that she seems to be recovering well.

Nighty night!