Painting is....

ALMOST complete.....we had a small problem and couldn't finish the master bedroom (the room Keith and I were painting!).

I will blog tomorrow and tell you all the wonderful story....it's currently 10:49pm and I am super exhausted, physically and mentally. Plus I have to work about 10 hours tomorrow so I need to get to bed. Stay tuned for pictures of the two completed bedrooms (thanks to Katie, Mom and Dad!!) and a complete run-down of our exciting day.

Update

I am super exhausted from an absolute crazy day at work. Our football camp starts tomorrow (there are two separate one-day camps tomorrow and then we have a 4-day camp that runs Sunday-Wednesday). Thankfully once this is over, the "slow" period in the office begins - the coaches all go on vacation for a month and things get a lot quieter! Now don't get me wrong, I am super excited about football season starting (only 70 days until opening day!!). But I will definitely enjoy some down time in the month of July where we can clean up from the 2007-08 season and look forward to the 2008-09 season! Let me tell you...next Thursday cannot come quick enough!

I was lucky enough to get tomorrow off. I will basically be working 12 hour days on Sunday-Wednesday but tomorrow is PAINTING DAY! Woohoo! My parents and my sister Katie are meeting Keith and I at OUR NEW HOUSE tomorrow morning at 9am. We closed on the house yesterday and we are finally real true homeowners! Scary!!

We have picked out the colors that we are going to paint the bedrooms (that's all we are painting right now) - blue for the master, green for the guest, and yellow for the third bedroom (which we are hoping will become a nursery someday). I am really excited to paint tomorrow and I know that we are going to have a good time. I am taking my camera and my video camera so I'll be sure to post some pictures in the next few days.

Another thing that has happened is Keith's mom's chemo treatment. She had her next scheduled treatment yesterday and she seems to be doing very well. Keith talked to her both last night and then again today and she isn't having any signs of bad side effects. We hope and pray that this will continue and hopefully that nastyness she had last time was just a virus! Also, good news - her cancer markers went down from 14 to 11. She told Keith that she was disappointed because she wanted it to go down more, but the doctor told her that even if it had stayed the same, as long as it is not going up...that is great! So, praise the Lord on that one!!

Other than that, not much else to report. Between craziness at work and purging, organizing and packing most evenings, we have been pretty busy. We both have to work on Sunday so that is a day that we won't get much house stuff done. Right now our current house looks like a disaster zone - boxes (some empty, some full) and stuff everywhere. We are running out of room to put boxes as we fill them up, but now that we actually own the new house and have a key, we can start slowly moving things to it. I am counting down the days until July 3rd when we get to actually spend the night in our very first house! It's going to be a long two weeks but I am sure we'll survive.

Two years ago today....

...our brother-in-law Daniel was taken from us and brought home to the Lord. That day will forever live in my memory. My sister Karen posted a tribute to Daniel, along with the video slideshow that was shown at his memorial service. Click HERE to see it.

Daniel, we love you and miss you SO much! We look forward to seeing you again someday!

Final Walk-Through

We had our final walk-through in the house last night and everything seems to be on track! If all continues to go well, we will be closing on Thursday morning and will be painting on Saturday!

There was an annoying thing that came up at our walk-through but we have been promised by the seller that it will get fixed before Thursday. The issue is that the seller left a bunch of junk in the crawl space and in the garage. I was surprised that they had left so much behind - pieces of rug, scrap wood, a dresser mirror, an old tv, a really old flag, two side tables, and a few other random things. Why they thought we would want this stuff, I am not sure. Fortunately, our agent spoke to their agent and they are supposed to be removing the stuff tomorrow. Let's hope its all gone on Thursday!

I'm really excited about all of this and I will post pictures of the painting project on Saturday!

What's been going on?

I haven't had much time lately to post but I wanted to give an update on what's been going on in our lives over the past week.

Thank you to all of you that have inquired about Keith's mom. She was released from the hospital on Tuesday and seems to be doing pretty well thus far. Keith talks to her every day just to check in and see how she is feeling. Thankfully the diarrhea has subsided and she is feeling physically good. Keith is a bit concerned about her mental and emotional well-being, as she continues to talk about the bad news that the Oncologist gave her last week (I don't think I specifically said in my last post, but this doctor told her that the cancer IS in her bones, that she has Stage IV cancer and that there isn't really anything that can be done but to make her "comfortable". He also told her that she has 12-32 months to live). She told us last week, and then told Keith again last night, that she believes what this doctor said is true and she thinks her regular Oncologist is hiding things. We have all advised her to seek another opinion if she has her doubts, but at this point, she hasn't decided to do that. She is scheduled to have her next chemo treatment on Tuesday so we are all anxiously waiting to see how her body responds. She had blood drawn recently and we are hoping that her cancer markers are still going down. I will post an update next week after her treatment and let everyone know how she is doing. Thank you, again, for your continued thoughts and prayers.

Keith and I are now 6 days away from being home owners!!! I cannot believe it is coming this fast, but I am really excited about this new stage in our lives! We have a lot of work to do before we actually take residence in this house on July 3rd, but it's all going well so far. We started going through closets and drawers last night and our guest bedroom is now the staging area for all of our "crap". We filled two huge garbage bags full of stuff that we feel we no longer need. We have a huge pile of "gently worn" clothes that are going to go to Goodwill or the Veterans and we also have a pile of things that my co-worker Dot is going to sell in her yard sale at the end of the month. It is amazing to me how much unnecessary stuff that we have, especially since we only moved into our current house a little over a year ago. I sometimes think that clothes and other miscellaneous stuff multiplies once it gets into a closet or a drawer (oh, and I also think clothes shrink after awhile too....ha ha!)

The other big thing we need to do before we actually move our stuff into the new house is to paint. The good thing is that we close next Thursday and we don't actually move in for two weeks after that so we have time to get it like we want before all of the furniture arrives. Fortunately, the house isn't huge so we don't have that much to paint - just the three bedrooms and maybe the dining room. We can hold off on the dining room for now (I would like to paint it the same color as the living room is currently, but I don't know if the previous owners are leaving any paint behind). The bedrooms are more of a necessity because once the furniture gets in them, we don't want to have to move it all to paint! Thankfully, my parents and my sister, Katie (& maybe Shaun) are available to help us. We are going to have a full day of painting on Saturday, June 21st. If anyone wants to join us, you are more than welcome!! Of course that means Keith and I have to get all the necessary supplies before then - including making the final determination on the colors. While we were in Wal-Mart in PA last week, we went to the paint section and got some color swatches that we both liked. I think it's important to pick out a color that we like, but I also feel like you will never really know what it's going to look like until you get it on the wall.

All in all, I am really excited to be moving into this new house, although I have realized that buying a house is a lot of work! Once we get everything settled - the closing, the painting, the utilities all transferred, our stuff all moved - then I will be much happier!

Hanging out in the hospital

For the past 4 days, Keith and I have been spending the majority of our time at the hospital. Of course, this isn't our first time doing this (in May 2007 and again this past April, we spent time sitting in my mother-in-law's hospital room) and now I feel like we know this hospital pretty well! Lucky for us, the hospital is one block from Marge's apartment, so we are able to walk back and forth every day. There are also a few restaurants and shops within walking distance, so we don't have to drive too far.

So, why is she is in the hospital? Well, it all started two weeks ago when Marge had her chemo treatment. As I had previously posted, she was having nausea and diarrhea the night she had her chemo treatment and she was not wanting to or able to eat. Her sister, Kay, talked to her on Saturday and she was really worried because of how weak she sounded. She and her husband decided to go to visit her and they found her to be very dehydrated and very weak. They took her to the ER and they pumped her full of fluids. The doctors in the ER told her that she needed to keep eating and especially drinking so that she didn't dehydrate again.

Unfortunately, from that point forward, every time she ate or drank anything - even the smallest amount - she would immediately have diarrhea. (Actually, she may have had this problem since Tuesday night.) So, basically she refused to eat and drink anything and was extremely weak. Kay was really worried so she made an appointment with the Oncologist for Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, her regular oncologist was at a conference, so they met with another doctor. This doctor told them some very unsettling things - opposite of what her regular doctor told her - so she and Kay were really upset. Because of this, they made a follow up appt with her regular oncologist to get some questions answered. We found out about this appt on Tuesday night around 7pm and we decided to head to PA early Wednesday morning (we left Cville at 4am) to get to the appt at 9:30am.

The meeting with the Oncologist went really well and he told answered some questions for us. He said that the other doctor was not familiar enough with Marge's case and that some of the information he gave her was not correct. He also told us that he thought the diarrhea was being caused by some sort of bacteria or virus. We asked if it could be caused by the chemo and he said that he didn't think so, but it could be. He said he wanted to rule out any sort of bacterial infection first. He said he would like to admit her to the hospital and get fluids in her and also monitor her input and output.

So......here we are......4 days later......and.......she is still in the hospital.....she still has diarrhea and is basically not able to keep anything in. And, we are all wondering what the heck is causing it. The nurse told us yesterday that tests on her stool came back and there is no bacterial infection. But, when Keith called her Oncologist yesterday, he said that all of the test results hadn't come back yet and so he wasn't sure what the cause was. UUGGHH!! It's all very frustrating and here we sit!

Tomorrow is Marge's birthday so unfortunately she will be spending it in the hospital! We were hoping that we would be able to do something fun, but it appears that we will be hanging out here. Please continue to pray for Marge and everyone involved. And, please pray that they will find out the cause of her diarrhea SOON.

Weekend fun....

I realize this is a little late, but I just haven't had the time to post until now (I'll blog about what's been going on in the next post!). I wanted to be sure to post about my fun weekend last weekend since we enjoyed time with our nephew Pierce and I spent a good day with my friend Dee.

On Saturday morning, Katie brought Pierce over to spend the day and night with us. We had him on Saturday while Katie was at work for a few hours and Shaun was helping at their church. Before lunch on Saturday, Pierce and I went to our community pool for a little while. I assumed that he would only want to go into the baby pool, but after a few minutes of splashing around in the little pool, he was ready to go to the big pool. At one point, he pointed to the bog pool and said "water". I said, "We are already in the water", but he wasn't satisfied with that. So, we moved to the big pool where he enjoyed walking up and down the steps and jumping in. He certainly wasn't afraid of the water one bit and he even went under one time. I was teaching him to float on his back and he did a great job. He even put his head back, which I know from my days of teaching swim lessons, a lot of kids don't like to do. I am confident that he will be swimming around the pool in no time!!

Here are some pictures from our time at the pool:

Pierce in the baby pool
He was having fun splashing the water
He got his front side and face wet when he slipped in the baby pool, but he wasn't upset at all.
Doing a back float
Pierce and Aunt Kirsten - we had fun!!!

After the pool outing, we went home and had lunch and Pierce took a (very short) nap. Katie and Shaun left to go to Maryland for her friend's wedding and Pierce and I went to the playground. We had fun playing on the swings and slide. He loves being outside and is so easy-going and fun to be with. After our time at the playground, we had dinner, Pierce had a bath, we read stories and he went to bed. On Sunday, Katie came to pick him up around 9am to take him to church. I was glad that Katie and Shaun were able to get some "alone time" and attend the wedding without worrying about Pierce. And, we were able to spend some quality fun time with him. I told Katie she can drop him off anytime she needs a break. Luckily (for both of us), when we move into our house next month, we'll be MUCH closer and hopefully we'll be able to spend even more time together.

On Sunday, I drove to Northern VA and visited with my good friend Dee. She is going through some rough times these days so I was happy to be a distraction and spend some time catching up with her. We gabbed and gabbed for hours while we ate at a great Chinese restaurant, laid in the semi-sun at the pool, and hung out at her house. It was so good to see her and catch up on the happenings of our lives. She is hoping to move back to Richmond in the next few months, if she can get her townhouse sold. I can't promise that I will be able to see her any more often since we don't get to Richmond nearly as much, but I am glad that she will be closer!