Jay's Dad

Jay got a call from his brother last night telling him that their dad had gone to the ER again. He has a history of heart problems and recently had a procedure done. Long story short, he has a staph infection in his aorta. Yikes. He had major surgery today - they cleaned out the nasty infection, replaced a valve, put a graft in his aorta - I hope I got all that right. The surgery took about 7 hours; Jay called just a few minutes ago to let me know that his dad made it out of surgery and would remain intubated until tomorrow. They expect him to be in the ICU for the rest of the week. Jay was able to stay up there all day to make sure his dad came out of it okay. I know he had been super worried. Up until now, all his dad's problems had been fixable. With this recent crisis, I guess we all wondered...how much longer can they keep patching him up? Well, I guess at least once more. PTL.

Cookie Bee

Liv and I stayed after church today to help work the Cookie Bee. We take cookies, bag them and tie hand written notes to them and deliver them to different people in the community. We have done them mostly to teachers but today we did Firefighters and Policemen. It is part of our Outreach Ministry and is meant to encourage these people that work at helping us in the community. I am going to ride with Wendy tomorrow and help her deliver these snacks. It should be fun!

I was proud of Olivia. She worked hard stuffing cookies and doing some general running around and cleaning up. I'm glad she got a good taste of serving and being a part of this wonderful ministry.

Oh, by the way, Christy asked me to head up her crafts for VBS and also asked Liv to help with the singing on stage. Wow! Big jobs for both of us. She also asked if either Jay or I could chaperone Alex's age group at church camp this summer. It's going to be a busy summer!

Fridays

I love Fridays. It's the last day of the week - a work day for me. Everyone is in "casual mode", we can often play games in my Friday classes. The day has so much potential to it and you have the entire weekend in front of you. Ahhhh....I love it.

Yesterday, I brought Allie home with me to play with Mary. They played pretty well (I was able to watch my story!) and then we headed to the playground. There we were joined by the Nobletts so I had company and the kids had a great time. We met Allie's parents for dinner and to give her back to them. I was happy to see that Terri and Patrick (and my Chase) joined us at Dan Thai. There were 13 of us for the meal and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I love last minute get togethers like that.

This morning we met my dad for breakfast at the Waffle House. I haven't had WH in forever so it was a welcomed treat. The kids love it - chocolate chip waffles, bacon, hash browns...it's all good! Afterwards, we went to Snellville to go shoe shopping. My dad was so generous and bought shoes for Alex, Olivia, and for myself. We all got sneakers, and I got a pair of cool sandals. They are black and have a wedge heel. And they are nice enough I could wear them to church - which I probably will tomorrow, if it's not too cold.

Mary's 1:30 game was rained out. We had just gotten comfortable when we saw lightening. They automatically call the game for 15 minutes to see if there is more lightening. Well, there was and we just called it a day and went home. Mary went next door and the rest of us relaxed at home. Actually, I did laundry and watched Bobby Flay's Throwdown. Love that show!

Tonight we met the Turner's for dinner at Chili's. I had the Triple Dipper because I had a craving for wings. Good. It's always good to get out with friends, even for the second night in a row. Tomorrow is the Cookie Bee at church, so Liv and I will be staying late for that, while Jay and the other two go home.

Sunday afternoons are the worst. The dread...the waiting for Monday...it's like the witching hour all day long....only five more days until Friday!

Christmas Pictures

My friend Laura just sent me over a couple of pictures of Mary dressed as an angel in her Christmas program last year. It is now the end of March...but I am still so grateful to have these pictures. I was sitting too far away to get any good shots (and I still had my crappy camera) so we didn't have any pictures of that night. The fact that Mary's teachers got her to wear a costume and actually get on stage was a miracle to us! Of course, this was the year she sang in the Living Tree too. Here's my baby girl....

Check out my Slide Show!

I tried to post this slideshow within the body of the previous post but couldn't do it.

Wednesday

Mary's school had Picture Day. This is such a funny subject in our house because Mary is infamous for not wanting to pose for pictures. She has gotten better about it when it's me with the camera, but she will absolutely NOT smile for the camera when it's a professional photographer. Which is why we have no portraits of her since she was a year old. And, she is not smiling in that one, but at least she cooperated. We did have a church picture made last summer and she did smile then, but it came at great cost. So, yesterday, May May and I went shopping. I totally bribed her with a new dress, new shoes, new hairbows...all so that she would promise to smile. She looked absolutely adorable this morning.

When I picked her up, Mrs. Allison told me that she did not smile for her class picture but she did smile for the cap and gown pic. I had forgotten that she was going to have a cap and gown pic! How cute! I loved Alex's pic when he "graduated" preschool. Can't wait to see Mary's.

This afternoon we went to the park with McKennah. The girls played in the dirt a lot. This would explain Mary's feet and dirty fingernails tonight! When Jay got home, we headed out to have dinner with Hannah and her family to celebrate her 7th birthday. There's nothing like going to the buffet and stuffing yourself! Ugh. That's it for birthdays for a while. Thank goodness. Mary's is in July and we will NOT be going to the buffet!

Just finished...

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."


I just finished this book this morning. I loved, loved, loved it. The author also wrote The Kite Runner - which was also excellent. This book is also about life in Afghanistan in the 80's until now but it is not a spinoff of the other book. Last night I couldn't put it down! It was one of the best reads I've had in a long time. Okay, it was the best since the last two books I have read! I'm on a winning streak here - what will the next book be?