Father In Law Update

So my Father In Law's stomach ache turned out to be colon cancer. They found a hole in his colon. They did an emergency surgery to patch it up & found the cancer. The hole in his colon led to a major infection because everything was leaking from his colon into his stomach. He's been in the ICU since last week but he's fighting the infection pretty well & they think he'll be out of the ICU within a day or two.

We haven't told him about the cancer yet since he's not 100% out of the woods on the infection. We also don't know the extent of the cancer yet. There's a chance that the cancer started somewhere else & metastasized into the colon. We just don't know how bad it is yet.

It's definitely a cruel twist of fate that this happened one day before he was finally going to be admitted to the Veteran's Home. If he had already been there, we would know that he'd be taken care of. Now we need to figure out where he's going to go once he gets out of the hospital. We made the decision to move his stuff out of the assisted living home because they can't provide the level of care he needs now. He'll need a full time nurse, so he'll need to be in a nursing home. So we're frantically trying to figure that out right now. We can't afford anything, and he certainly can't, so we're hoping Medicaid or Medi-Cal will cover it.

All of his things are currently in my dining room because we have nowhere else to put them. That's just one of the things adding to my stress. I had what I can only figure was my first migraine last night. I had to go to bed at 7pm because I couldn't even see because my head hurt so badly. I just keeping hoping I can make it through all of this stress in my life.

Could Things Get Any Worse?

This has been the week from hell, and today has been particularly bad. It all started on Monday with two pieces of good news. How does good news lead to a week from hell, you ask? I'd love to explain.

Good News 1: Our tenant has finally moved out of the condo. With only two days before the sheriff came out to evict her, we found out she finally moved out. After having her live there rent free for almost 6 months, it is a HUGE relief! Almost $1K in legal fees, but we finally got her out. This however, has created TONS of stress for us because she left the place a huge mess. We need to catalog & then clear out the crap she left behind, which is mostly all junk. Then we have to re-carpet, replace the cabinets that she burned in a kitchen fire, patch a few holes in walls, paint & clean the entire place. Then we can finally rent it out & start getting some money for it.

Good News 2: After applying over a year ago, we got word late Monday afternoon that my Father In Law has gotten into the Veteran's Home. It is a beautiful place & he will be well taken care of. It's good news. Except, his admittance date is tomorrow. As in less than 3 days from when they told us. That left us with a few days to pack everything up & get him ready to be up there by 8am tomorrow morning.

So I'm overwhelmed. Still not a huge deal, I'll get through it. Edward took today & tomorrow off from work to take care of these things. I have my budget due at work, so I'm a bit overwhelmed working on that as well. Still, I should be able to get through it all.

Oh, except that yesterday I found out that the reason that my right breast has been hurting is because I have mastitis. I hadn't had any flu-like symptoms, but it was hurting so badly that the doctor already started me on antibiotics. So we went to bed last night feeling overwhelmed, but still feeling like we can manage it.

Until... the day from hell started at 3AM with a call from my FIL assisted living home saying that he has severe stomach pain & they think they should bring him into the emergency room. Edward decided to hold off until the morning & they got him into the doctor first thing this morning. It's been a long day, but right now they are getting some sort of scan because they think it's an infection. I'm not sure what this means in terms of him getting in to the VA home tomorrow. Even if he can still go, I'm not sure how we'll get him packed up tonight since Edward was supposed to have him all ready to go this afternoon before his 6pm meeting tonight. But since he's at the hospital with him right now, there is no packing going on.

Oh, and you know how the little things can eat away at you? Well they certainly have today. Why don't I just list them for you so you have an idea of what I'm going through today:

-Side effect of my medicine for the mastitis, stomach issues. My stomach started hurting this morning.
-Then the flu-like symptoms kicked in & now I feel shaky & acky & very cold.
-On my way out this morning, Edward switched the car seats into his pick up since he wanted to load the van up with his dad's stuff. When I got in the pick up, no gas. Got late to the babysitter since I had to pick up gas.
-Got to the babysitter at the same time as the guy installing her new counter tops & had to turn the huge truck around twice in order to park cause the guy didn't know where he wanted to park.
-Lost the check I had just written to the babysitter as I tried to shuffle the girls down the street since I couldn't park right in front of the daycare like I normally do. (At least I did find the check!)
-Got to work to discover my Internet not working. Took an extra 45 minutes to get my computer started this morning, which took time out of working on my budget.
-Decided that after all of this, I deserved a Reese's peanut butter cup. But of course, when I went to get it out of the vending machine, it got stuck.

At this point, I'm really thinking that today is not my day & I should just go home, shut off the lights, and forget about life. Oh, except that I have two kids to take care of.

Back & Busy

I apologize profusely to all of my loyal followers who may occasionally check in here or follow me. I was planning on getting better on the whole blogging thing, not worse! We had a lovely trip to Virginia. The flights went well, the girls behaved, I loved visiting with so much family all at once. As always, I ended up being pretty homesick for awhile afterwords. Since we got back last week I've just been running around like crazy. Halloween stuff, baby showers, lunches with good friends. It never ends. I've been working more this week as well to make up for my time off in Virginia. I feel like I haven't had much quality time with my girls or my husband. Maybe after Halloween things will slow down a bit?

I haven't even uploaded our pictures from the trip to computer yet. Maybe someday soon I'll do that. Maybe someday soon I'll find my checkbook that I lost. Maybe someday I'll actually find a moment to return my library books. Seriously, I was handling this "mom of two" thing really well until recently, and now I just feel completely & utterly overwhelmed. Besides my checkbook, I've also lost a Starbucks gift card that had $20 on it and an entire file of mortgage information. All of these items just seemed to *poof* disappear from my house. I'm not kidding you, I have looked everywhere for them. I used to be one of the most organized people you will ever meet, and now I'm the exact opposite of that. I feel a bit like I'm losing my mind.

Off to dress the kids & get to work now. I'm tired of being busy.

Off to Virginia

I still have an incredible amount of things to do, but we're leaving the house at 4am on Wednesday morning for a week in Virginia. We decided to get Alexa baptised there. My cousin & her husband are two of the most wonderful people I know. They took me in when I first graduated from college & let me live with them for 6 months while I tried to get a job & figure out my life. At the time, there two girls were the same age that my girls are now. It couldn't have been easy for them, but they helped me through a hard time in my life & I am where I am today because of them.

We've asked them to be Alexa's Godparents. My cousin's husband was just ordained as a minister, so he is going to baptize Alexa in his new church in Fredricksburg. We are so excited. My parents are driving down from NY & my little sister is flying up from FL. My aunt & uncle will already be there visiting my cousin's family, so they will be there. Even my uncle from North Carolina is going to come up for it. I'm very excited to have so many family meeting us there.

We're not too sure what we're going to do while we're there, but we hope to find some fun, kid friendly touristy things to do. I've been to DC a few times growing up & we're thinking it's not going to be super interesting for the girls, so we're still trying to come up with some fun activities. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Bring on the 30's!

If the rest of the 30's go the way my 30th birthday went, I'm ready for some great years ahead of me! I should have posted about this awhile ago, but September has just been a crazy month.

My birthday started out great & just kept getting better! Both of my college roommates were in town because another one of our college friends got married in SF that weekend. Alisa has two kids the same ages as my kids. She stayed in the south bay with her husband's family. Caron flew out the night before my birthday to spend a few days with me.

The morning of my birthday Caron & I dropped Ava off at my friend's house & Caron, Alexa & I headed up to the Napa Valley to meet Alisa & her family for an afternoon of wine tasting. It was the perfect afternoon with a perfect picnic lunch.


We got back just in time for my wonderful husband to come home with these beautiful flowers for me.
Then we all quickly got ready, got the girls settled in with a babysitter for the evening and took off for my birthday dinner at my favorite pizza place. We had a fairly large group of 20 people show up. I felt so loved. I was shocked at the amount of gifts that I got. Two of my best friends from my mom's group gave me granny panties & denture cream to welcome me into "old age." They also gave me a fancy shmancy crock pot that I've been drooling over. Yep, I'm definitely 30 now!

After dinner, most of the mom's group took off, but the rest of us went out to a bar in Walnut Creek. Our friend Aaron was also in town for the wedding, so he took the train out from the city & Alisa left her kiddos with her husband & came out as well. It was a reunion of college friends, along with friends from different parts of my life.

I wasn't to thrilled with the fact that the second we got to the bar each group of my friends started in with their "remember when Liz got drunk" stories. It was quite funny, especially since I'm not really a huge drinker.

The Cornell Crew

We got home around 2am. I haven't been out that late since long before I had Ava. It was such an amazing start to the next decade!

Golden Gate Bridge

A friend of mine from my mom's group recently started her own photography business & we decided to try out a session with her. A bit more expensive than your average Sears or Penney's photo shoot, but you just can't get this personal at one of those places. Plus, since she's just starting out, she's giving us all the pictures to keep & do what we want with.

She did one shoot last month and we got some cute shots of the girls, but we didn't really get any great family shots so she suggested that we head to Baker Beach in the city & try to get some shots with the Golden Gate in the background. It ended up being a bit of a foggy morning, but hey, SF is a foggy city! I took a quick peak at the pictures she took on the drive home and these are really just a sampling of some great shots. I'm probably going to use some of them in our Christmas cards this year. I could not be happier with how these turned out... don't you agree?

There's a Purple Croc in the Apple Pie

From the first moment I got pregnant with Ava, I started losing brain cells & got what I refer to as "the mom brain." It's only gotten worse since. I do dumb things. I'm a very intelligent person but you would not know it since I've become a mom.

For instance, there was that time a few days before Alexa was born that I somehow managed to hit the front end of my car, while backing up, into the fire hydrant next to my driveway. That "mom brain" moment cost us $1,000 deductable & a higher insurance premium.

My latest mom brain moment you ask? Can you see where this is going by the title?

The other day we had plans to go out to dinner with some friends, so I took advantage of not having to cook for ourselves & spent the day making a meal for my friend who just had her third child. I also had a lot of granny smith apples, so I made two apple pies. All day in the kitchen cooking & baking.

When Edward got home from work, I had him choose the apple pie that he thought looked nicest to give away. The other we couldn't wait to try ourselves after dinner. So he's rushing me out the door because we had to go drop the food off to my friend, then run another errand before dinner.

I go to the van & stick the meal for my friend on the floor underneath Ava's carseat & put the apple pie on top of that. I had a moment where I decided I should not keep the apple pie where it was. However, just as I was about to move it, Edward handed Alexa to me & said he needed to run in the house for one more thing. So I walk around to put Alexa into her carseat & without thinking, without moving the apple pie, I tell Ava to go climb into her carseat.

Just as she steps into the van, I remember. Just in time to see my pie get a nice big purple croc smushed right into it. Yum!

I thought quickly & I ran inside & swapped out pies. My friend was thrilled to get dinner & dessert & I managed to save one slice of pie for Edward & I to share that didn't get any purple croc time. It was delicious.