They say slow and steady wins the race . . . I hope this is the case for 2011. It's already been quite a year and I'm pretty much ready to skip to 2012. I am happy to announce that I had a small success today. I successfully obtained one of my goals for this year that I previously posted. I went to my final yearly/6 month medical checkup. Even though I will not have the results for another week or so, I did make appointments for eye, dental, ob/gyn and have went to all of them. I know this may seem so small to many of you, but hey I'm finding the joy in the very small things these days since 2011 seems to be one of those years!
I am also happy to report that I am working towards many of the others. I am attending Financial Peace University and working toward budgeting, paying off debt, and planning exactly where our money goes. We are also looking at planning out our vacation/family trip out to Ohio this May. We do know that we need to be there the last Sunday in May. We are thinking about leaving a little early so that we can stop off at St. Louis, enjoy a Cardinals game, maybe do a few things around that area and then make the trip the rest of the way.
I have been able to spend more time with friends this last week due to no heat in our house during the lovely Oklahoma winter weather. Thank goodness we have friends who are like family who we were able to bunk up with for the night. After 3 hours of travel to go 2 miles, Evan, Matt, and Ronnie came to "rescue" the boys and I. We had to "hike" from our house out to the road (maybe a 1/4 of a mile) and I thought I was going to die. The snow was at least to the middle of my thighs and sometimes higher. I started out carrying Maddux, but quickly had Evan carrying him and I took some of the bags instead. It took most of the ride to Jaimee and Evan's for me to recover (totally NOT joking.) Being that it was maybe 5 degrees with a wind chill of -12, it's no wonder. Regardless, that day was one of the worst (by far not THE worst) days in 2011 and was made all better by great friends. We are blessed. Hunter and Maddux had so much fun playing with all the boys. We were able to hang out with the Kelly's also which was also a treat amidst the "storms."
Aaron called out a heat repair guy and we were able to get our heater up and running last night so we slept happily in our own bed! :) Today, we had to go to Lawton for my yearly checkup and were able to go visit Aaron's parents as well. Aaron made yummy breakfast and potato soup for us today so all in all today was a better day. We have a snowball, snowman, tunnel digging snow party planned for tomorrow at 1 p.m. at our house for the neighborhood and any friends who want to come. Does that fit under the planning get-togethers goal? Uh no! We are not making this something we do monthly. I can handle the snow once a year, but that's enough.
Dad had to skip treatment on Tuesday due to the weather, but he has gone every day since. He's still handling the treatments well overall. He has some back pain/soreness here and there and he's had a little diarrhea in the mornings, but still unsure if that's just a side effect of the actual cancer (since he was doing this before treatment some) or if it's from radiation and/or chemotherapy. Dr. Pontikes (surgeon who originally found the cancer) has set him up an appointment to get his prostrate checked and he said that they will do surgery about 6 weeks after he finishes the radiation and chemotherapy (which they said would be a total of 5-6 weeks. We are in week 2 of treatments.)
Finally, thank you dear friends who have contacted me since the last blog. It was one of those days when I was super emotional. Things are a bit better, but you just caught me on a better day. LOL. :) Please continue praying. God is in control. (The little/big thing that I have to repeat to myself often.) Thanks again and I will attempt to take some pics of tomorrow's adventures to post on here. Goodnight.
