Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my darling niece Mikayla! So hard to imagine that she's fourteen already! I remember where exactly I was this morning fourteen years ago. The night before I'd worked a shift at the residential facility where I worked until 9:00pm. It was a Friday night. My older sister had gone into labor already and I desperately wanted to get to the hospital to see my sister and to be there when my very first niece made her grand entrance to this world. One glitch in my plans, though. My little sister was at a teen dance at the old dance hall across the street from our house. I went in to get her, but she wouldn't come with me. I fought long and hard, I begged, I pleaded, I may have even cried, but to no avail. She refused to come out early. She made me wait until that darned dance was over before she'd come with me. What a little pain in the butt she was!

It was a long night for all of us, as Mikayla delayed her grand entrance until 5:54 am. She was born at 6 minutes to 6am on the 26th in 1994, 6 years before the year 2000. Not quite a classic story, but one I remember none the less!

Funny how she's getting older but I'm not . . .

We had an absolute blast tonight at Action City. We played hard for 2 hours, then went to Walmart and played around. My youngest niece had $10.00 to spend and within 45 minutes she went from a dress for her dog to a Hannah Montana poster to a lint roller, finally settling on a fashion magazine and skittles. No rhyme or reason that I could see.

I talked to an old friend tonight. Two weeks ago they took their seven year old daughter to the doctor. After doing some labs but finding nothing, they finally ran her liver enzymes (they'd ran them a few months ago and they were elevated but went back down closer to normal soon after). They ran and reran them and called them at home, telling them to get little Baylee back to the hospital immediately. They started at their local hospital, but were quickly transferred to a children's hospital in Portland where they do liver transplants. They determined that Baylee was in liver failure and her liver is dying and not regenerating itself. At some point they were life flighted down to Stanford hospital in California. Throw in a reaction to a medication and pneumonia and their two weeks are a roller coaster. They put her at the top of the transplant list, but when a liver became available, her pneumonia made the surgery impossible. Today was a good day for them. Baylee was awake for the whole day and seemed much more upbeat today. Her numbers have begun to come down and her mom is really wondering if God has a miracle for Baylee. I cannot imagine having a child go through this. Baylee's brother and sister are waiting at home with family.

I must confess that with all of the fun that we had earlier, go karts, laser tag, bumper cars, bowling, etc, that my personal highlight occurred on the way home in the car. While flipping through the stations we heard Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer. To my nearly fourteen year old niece's dismay, my sister and I continued belting out the lyrics at the top of our lungs, long past her tolerance for our singing ability! It was a pretty strange moment, for sure! I loved it!

I'll go now, as we're watching Shrek the third (yikes! it's 1:35 am!) and getting ready for bed.

A night full of memories and fun!

A

Ahh, the weekend!

I really can't remember ever being quite so excited for, or in need of, a break. A mere long weekend, but hey, I won't complain (here, out loud!). I have Friday and Monday off, a four day weekend! Yippee! The kids have been going a little crazy! As have the staff! We've only had one snow day since Christmas break. The kids have had one or two early releases, but not enough to keep us all sane!

I'm going to Action City(where the fun never stops!) tomorrow night with some friends from church. I'm taking my nieces, 14 and 11. Strangely, my sister wants to come, too. I hope that it will be fun for all. Anyone want to place bets on if she comes or not? Sorry to be so cynical, but we'll see, won't we?

Dad got home on Monday and is doing okay. He's still in quite a bit of pain, though.

Conan O'Brien is on right now and his musical guest is fascinating. It's a woman who is wonderful! I can't understand her name, though. Elanen Yahee? Yes, I'm sure its not anywhere close to that! She's obviously foreign or at least her name is of foreign descent. Hmm, I'll have to do some research. Her song is on the popular music channels, and is quite unique! Yael Naim? Jeepers, no wonder I can't understand her name, it's one I've never heard before! Her performance was amazing, and quite fun. She looked like she was having fun and made direct eye contact and a smile! This is the song she was singing, but she apparently sings a wide variety of songs, like this one, or this one or even this one!! After doing a little research, I was right about the foreign part, she is an Israeli, born in Paris. (her website is here).

I'm off to bed . . .


Love,
A

Updates.

My dad is still in the hospital. They're keeping him on bed rest and feeding him what ever he wants. It's like room service, except blander! Hopefully they'll let him out tomorrow. It takes a while for his blood to get to the proper thin-ness. He'll have to give himself shots twice a day for a while, and then he'll switch to the pill version. Yuck. He's also giving up smoking . . . again. My mom won't even consider it AT. ALL. It's almost impossible for him to quit and stay quit with her smoking like a chimney. She's pretty selfish about it, too.

I am still enjoying my new car. Very fun to drive! I'll break 16,000 tomorrow.

It's a four day week this week, the first of two four day weeks, in fact! I have Friday and next Monday off for Easter and a cheap spring break! I hope that this week flies by. Sometimes it is the short weeks that hit you the hardest! The kids get really wound up . . . it is after all the first day we'll have had off since Christmas except one snow day!

Have a fantastic week!
Amanda

Sad . . .

This story happened about 45 or 50 minutes from my house in a St. Paul/Minneapolis suburb, on a stretch of highway I've traveled on many a time. Perhaps you've heard about it? A woman slowed or stopped her car for some reason in the middle of 3 lanes of traffic. A semi-truck rear-ended her. Her four year old baby girl went into cardiac arrest, but one of the first, or maybe the first, person on the scene was a heart surgeon. It seemed to be a happy ending when he was able to do CPR and resuscitate her and she was rushed to the hospital. The happy ending turned out to be merely a fortunate delay, though, as the girl died today. I haven't heard why she slowed down, but I can't imagine that she'll ever be able to fully recover from this . . .

Here is the link from one of the local TV stations, KSTP.

Family . . .

My dad is in the hospital tonight. He went in for a check up about 2 or 3 weeks post knee surgery. He's been in pretty significant pain since well before the surgery, but it's not healing as quickly as he'd hoped. He dropped Mom and his cousin Mary off at Walmart and drove over to the hospital. The plan was that the ladies would fill their carts and finish their shopping in time for Dad to pick them up at the door. Great plan, eh? Unless they find a blood clot and choose instead to admit him immediately, and NO he is not able to just go pick them up first! Mom doesn't have a cell phone, and Mary's new one didn't have service, or wasn't on, or she just didn't hear it! (A whole other topic- people who have cells but never answer them! Or leave them at home or in the car, etc!)

Somehow it came to pass that one of the NURSES would go over to Walmart and pick them up. She'd never met them and they didn't know she was coming instead of Dad, but it seemed to work out. They were paged to the customer service desk and promptly left carts FULL of stuff to meet this stranger at the door. She pulls up and looks at them and from the details my dad has given recognizes them and says their names. They get in her car and she brings them back to the hospital. Two thoughts: either she was just really nice, or they were worried about Dad enough that they could spare a nurse to get them there quickly. Not sure which, but I hope it "just worked out" that way.

I'm going to pick up my mom in the morning and head over. It's a great thing that they caught it when they did. It's apparently in the main artery in his leg and if it had broken loose has a quick, direct route to his heart. Not good at all. He thinks that he might even get out tomorrow, if he can learn to give himself shots twice a day. I think it may take more than one day to get him comfortable with that. He would then get his blood checked regularly and would switch to pills for maintenance when it's at the desired level. Can I just say what a nightmare it would be if something happened to him? A fierce battle would ensue to prevent a certain family member from draining my mom dry- and it would not be pretty! Mom is hardly partial or capable of being partial where her granddaughters are involved. (Sigh) Can I just pray that when they go they go together? Now, hopefully not for many years, as they are only 58 and 59, but both smoke more than a forest fire(a chimney didn't seem appropriate!). But then that would bring about a whole other battle! But enough about my family's dirty secrets!

Good news of the day: I got my contract renewal for next year today!

Other bummer news: Looks like my trip to England in June may not happen. It looks like it simply isn't going to work out with finances and time on both sides of the ocean!

Have a fantastic weekend everyone!

Amanda

Ichabod . . .

Ichabod, the glory has departed . . . well the air freshener has departed, anyway. I've moved it to my new car (actually I just bought a new fresh one!). The "fresh linen" smell has moved with me to my new car! I've moved the essentials now, bought a new holder for my CDs for my new CD player, bought a new bag with which to carry my junk to and from work(it WILL all fit in this bag, no excuses to leave stuff in the car!). I rushed the the credit union yesterday after work (a different branch than the one I met with Saturday!) and then to pick up my mom and then to pick up my car! I spent the weekend contemplating the purchase of a Ford Focus, and once I made the decision on Monday morning, I really wanted to get it as soon as possible. Bless his heart for lending me his car, but my dad smokes like a chimney and his car smelled like an ashtray! Besides the fact that the car has nearly 200,000 miles on it. I'm a bit anxious to see how fuel efficient or fuel inefficient my new car is. If it's less than I hoped, I have the next 5 or 6 years to regret it!

It is a beautiful (no, thank you, I did not say pretty!) car, and is very fun to drive! I loved jamming out to my favorite CDs and listening to Elisabeth Elliot teach on an mp3 on the way home! And of course, I hope I tire of the remote locking and unlocking soon, as even I'll get annoyed with the short little honk when I hit the lock button twice! I'm quite sure I'll never tire of being able to unlock all of my doors at once before I reach the car, instead of trying to juggle all of my stuff and then pitch it all across the front seat only to drag it all back across getting out of my car at work! Could you all remind me of these features next month when I'm trying to budget around my new car payment? Thanks!

Amanda