Friday, December 29, 2006

Merry Christmas!

Well, the holidays are nearly over. I've so enjoyed my week off work! I have to go back on the second, but I've been off all week and it's been so great spending so much time with Nicky. We had a great Christmas with him! Lots of pictures have been uploaded to the Nicky's Photos link.

My mom's getting better. She's had some wound complications, and she and Liz are handling it very well. They have a nurse coming in to show them how to take care of the additional wound care that is now required.

Tom's dad is in the hospital now while they try to figure out why he can't breathe. We're not sure if it's related to his surgery or not. They're looking at his lungs and his heart right now to figure out where the problem lies.

Tom's mom is doing really well after her eye surgery. She had it on 12/22 and already it looks so much better. If only everyone had Tom's nursing care! She's been able to be with us since Christmas, maybe being around Nicky has curative effects. ;)I wouldn't doubt it!

My dad came by on Christmas day and actually spent the night! It's the longest, most quality visit we've had for several years and I really enjoyed it. Nicky got to spend a lot of time with his Granddaddy and Grandmother from GA. I have a video of Dad and Gwen with Nicky uploaded, and a few photos too. Gwen took some more photos of all of us, and she'll send them to me. I'll be sure to get some up on here.

I think that's the majority of what's going on here. Oh, and I moved around my bedroom! It's so much nicer this way. I still have to get around to taking a new video tour of the house. Maybe I'll just have to do it before it's all clean and decorated. Otherwise I might never get to it!

Friday, December 22, 2006

We got the Pathology back!

AND it's good news! Mom's cancer was only Stage 1B! That means that there will probably be no need for any further treatment! I'm so happy! With my Mom healthy and Nicky here I really don't need anything else to have a wonderful Christmas!

Other than that there really isn't much going on here. We have cancelled our cell phones because they're just way too darn expensive. The penalty for cancelling early is $200 per line, but that's still way cheaper than continuing to pay them until the contract runs out next fall. We've ordered Internet phone service through our cable company and it's only $16.77 a month. Over a $150.00 savings each month! Well worth it! That will be hooked up on 1/3/07 so until then we only have email for communication. We'll be checking it several times a day!

I'm home for the holidays now until 1/2/07! YAY more time with Nicky! Being away from him while I was down south for 5 days was hard and I think I still have a Nicky-snuggle deficit to work off. Hope he doesn't get sick of kisses and hugs!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannuka, and Happy New Year everyone! May your holidays be as blessed as mine!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Finally, last week is OVER

Actually looking back, everything turned out fine. But man, I do NOT want a repeat of last week!

The three parties at work all went great! Two of them were holiday parties and there are photos up online here: http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/pio/2006_hol_parties.pdf

That's me in the first picture with my friend Margeaux. (Hint: she's a little bit slimmer than I am. LOL!) You can see the decorations we did and everyone having a good time and lots of food! The Evening party just had a few tables of finger foods and chairs, while the daytime potluck had a lot of food in a buffet and several tables for sitting down to eat.

The party I coordinated but did not attend on Friday went well too. There are a few photos from that also but here's the one of the table pre-party: http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/pio/staff/food.jpg
I think it looks great!

AND last, but definitely MOST is that my mom made it through the surgery! We won't know everything until the pathology is back, but the doctors say the surgery went well and they didn't "see" any cancer outside of the female organs they removed. Hopefully they got it all. We should know more soon. She's already at home recuperating, although she is still in a lot of pain. My sister's work is being awesome and letting her take this week off to take care of mom, so I came home on Tuesday. Nicky was so happy to see me! And I was just loving holding him all evening!

Anyway, that's about it. I'll have to get more pics up soon so that my mom has LOTS to look at!

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

One heck of a stressful week

Whew! I don't usually write about anyone other than Nicky, Tom and I on here, and I rarely if ever mention work, but I have to share this with somebody! So heck, why not share with everyone...

So this week I'm helping set up three office parties (one of which went VERY nicely last night) and my mom is going into surgery on Friday morning. Not sure how much extra stress I can pack into this week!

Two of the parties are Holiday parties for the libraries where I work. We have about 350 employees, so there is a committee appointed to put on the parties. We have a pretty small budget, too small to cater anything, so we did a LOT of prep work and decorating ourselves. I think it really went well for the evening party we did last night. We have a daytime potluck tomorrow and hopefully that will go off without a hitch. We had decided last year (I was on the committee then too) to do two parties to try to please everyone. Some had complained in prior years of having a party during work hours, and some complained that they wouldn't want one outside of work hours. LOL! You probably CAN'T please everyone, but we are sure trying! So our compromise last year and this one was to have an evening party with fingerfoods and champagne punch for just staff where they could bring a guest. Then we have a sit down potluck (we supply the main meats) during lunchtime two days later. Any leftovers from the evening party are used then, and it really seemed to go well last year. Hopefully it will go well this time.

Then our department has several folks who were unfortunately missed (darn PeopleSoft!) when the employee recognition ceremony took place last month. This was a ceremony to recognize folks with a certain number of years of service to the University. For some reason 6 people in my department were left out. 4 of them have more than 20 years with the university! I think that is really something to honor! Most people don't stay with one job for more than 5 years nowadays, so I think anything over that is really special! We have a tiny bit of money to do a departmental celebration and I'm in charge of that. That party is Friday. Well luckily my coworkers are really willing to help out, and so I've gotten a menu together and preordered the food, we'll go shopping tomorrow and then my coworkers will actually do the setup and cleanup Friday.

All that should be stress enough (considering that I still have my 'real' job to do too). But on top of that the most concerning thing, and the thing I appreciate everyone's prayers and good thoughts for is that my mom is going in for surgery on Friday morning. So I'll be leaving Friday morning around 4am in hopes that I'll get to be there and see her before her surgery. She's a pretty private person, and I'm sure she won't be too thrilled for me to put all this on here, so I'll try to be circumspect. But heck I just am one of those sharing people. She was diagnosed with endometrial cancer about a month ago and then we found out that even though all paps have come back normal, the cancer has spread to her cervix too. That means it's at least stage 2 cancer. We won't know anything for sure about the stage or what kinds of additional treament is needed until after the surgery. So keep those prayers and good vibes coming!

Whew. I feel better getting some of that out! Now, go over and look at the new photos and movies I put up. ;)

Saturday, December 02, 2006

A few new photos

My mom sent the camera charger to me in the mail! YAY! Thanks Mom!

So I've already taken a picture of the tree. It's in the new December folder along with a picture of Nicky right before bedtime.

While I was at it, Tom's mom brought her camera for me to see what pictures she had and I found some I hadn't seen before. I added a few to July and November that you'll just have to see.



Next plans are to do a new and improved "tour" of the house and to get some holiday pictures in front of the tree. I'm trying like mad to get some photo cards to send out this year. I just need the photos!