Dec. 28, 2009

What a wonderful week of Christmas activities. Dec. 19 started the week and Dec. 27 ended the week. The girls had an amazing time opening presents, seeing Santa, making a cake for Jesus’ birthday, and of course playing with all their cousins and new toys.

Overall we had five Christmas get togethers and all of them were fabulous!

Dec. 19, Christmas at Uncle Don & Aunt Joyce’s house. Santa came and brought a gift for each of the kids. The little girls got “strawberry shortcake” and “blueberry muffin” dolls and Ally got a Strawberry Shortcake car toy. Ally actually sat on Santa’s lap and told him she wanted a pony for Christmas. The little girls were not too sure about Santa and kept their distance until he left. We also make gingerbread houses with the kids and they all LOVED that, plus they all loved eating the candy.Dec. 20, Christmas at my mom & Bob’s with Paul & Amy. The evening was filled with fun and the girls enjoyed their second round of presents.Dec. 24, Christmas Eve at my mom & Bob’s with Pat, Rob, & Dynl Crow. LOTS OF FOOD! After dinner we hung out for a little bit, visited the “Woodstra’s/Briggs’/VanderWoude’s” and then battled the weather to church. The service was great and the girls loved the singing. They even made friends with the grandma in front of us and the little girl across the aisle, and even the lady in the back of the church was dancing with them.Dec. 25, Christmas at our house with Jerry’s mom & Ken, and my mom & Bob. The girls woke up excited to see ALL the presents under the tree and their stockings filled with stuff from Santa. Ally’s favorite presents were the American Girl (Bitty Baby) clothes and all the Strawberry Shortcake stuff.Dec. 26, Christmas with Jerry’s dad & Joyce, grandma, and sister Arlene & Marshall & little Marshall. The kids just ran around and played all evening and loved opening the last presents of the season.

This year we started a new tradition of making a cake for Jesus, since Dec. 25 is his birthday. The girls all helped add the ingredients, stir, and decorate. The cake turned out pretty cute and the girls are enjoying eating it. We all sang happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas day and Lauren & Olivia blew out the candle on the cake. They thought that was pretty cool. A successful week of fun events and now a week of trying to recuperate, relax, and enjoy each other’s company.

Yesterday we had eight tickets to the Griffins game, so we asked Arlene & Marshall to come with us. It was a good time. It was little Marshall’s first game and he LOVED it. The kids were all screaming, laughing, and enjoying themselves the whole time. Olivia was trying to take pictures of the “hockey boys”. She kept saying “look at me hockey boys”. It was pretty funny, since she was serious and she really wanted them to look at her so she could take a picture of them. She also made her way to the big screen, and so did Lauren for a second. It’s always good to get out and have something different to do. This was our second “hockey boy game” (as the girls would say) and we all had a blast.

Dec. 17, 2009

I guess time flies even when times are rough. The last time I wrote was Ally’s birthday on Sept. 29, but it seems that that day was also the day my last grandparent, Grandpa Baragar, passed away. This was a difficult time for me because it brought back feelings of when my dad passed away, nearly 5 years ago now. As with any death, we all made it through, but sadness will linger forever.

The day that we buried my grandpa, Oct. 6, my mom was going through emergency eye surgery. About 5 weeks prior to her surgery she was leaving work and her right eye (her “good” eye) seemed blurry and like she was looking through a spider web. Luckily for her she has an eye surgeon whom she sees on a pretty regular basis because in 2003 her left eye had a detached retina (which in all actuality, she is legally blind in her left eye anyway). So she called her surgeon after cautiously driving home and she was told to come in right away. That night she had emergency laser eye surgery because a blood vessel had broke and her lens had cracked. The eye was supposed to heal on its own after the laser surgery, but never did which lead to the eye surgery on Oct. 6. The surgery went well, but was more intense than expected and after about 6 weeks the surgeon was not happy with the result and the eye was starting to tear away from the retina, so on Nov. 24, two days before Thanksgiving mom was back in surgery for the same procedure and had to start all over again. So we’re playing another waiting game, but we’re all hopeful this one worked and as soon as the gas bubble that was inserted into her eye dissolves, we hope, she will have 20/20 vision in that eye (which has never happened to her).

All the while these events were going on, my sister-in-law Amy was going through quite a bit of abdominal pain and had been to see many different doctors and had many different tests done. As it turns out she needed her gall bladder removed because it wasn’t functioning at all. The week of Thanksgiving she was in the ER twice and finally on the second visit she refused to leave until they removed it. Two days after Thanksgiving she was gall bladder-less and she is recovering perfectly.

That bring us to me and my issue. Last week I went to the doctor for a problem or what we thought might be a problem, but it turns out it’s probably not…so I won’t even get into that. But while I was at the doctor I had him check out a spot on my forehead that I had been watching for the past few months, just out of curiosity. He looked at it under a microscope and thought he better remove it. He called it a "non-healing skin lesion". When I was leaving, I set up an appointment to go back on Tuesday of this week to have it removed. As it turns out it is basal cell carcinoma, which is a form of skin cancer. The good news is I won’t die from it and it’s the best cancer to have if you ever have cancer. So my next step is to see a dermatologist to have more of the lesion removed and hopefully be done with the whole “cancer” word forever.

So as you can see there has been many unpleasant things happening since the last time I posted, but the good news is Christmas is next week and the new year is upon us and I hope 2010 will bring many happy memories for our family and yours!