Prayers Needed

Today was a pretty crappy day with bad news coming from every direction. Please keep the following people in your thoughts and prayers:

1. My mother-in-law Marge....she had a full body scan and a mammogram done yesterday and today to determine if she has cancer and if so, where it is located. She was supposed to get the results on Monday but the oncologist's nurse called and rescheduled it for Thursday (in two days). Of course, this doesn't sound good!! Please also pray for Keith - with him being an only child, this all falls on him with not many people to help him. It's a lot to take on, but he is trying to be strong.

2. My friend Holly Smith and her family....Holly's dad, Hubie Register, died yesterday. He was 67 years old. He died of cancer that came on very suddenly. I did not know Hubie very well but the times I did spend with him, I could tell he was a very genuine and caring person. He was very outgoing and had a great sense of humor. He and Holly were very close and I am extremely sad for my good friend.

3. Wyatt Pickwell.....he is the 10 month old son of Jeremy & Jennifer who are friends of my sister Karen. (Jeremy sang in her wedding, for those of you who were there.) According to what Karen knows, little Wyatt was med-flighted to a hospital in Fairfax, VA yesterday because he was having seizures. Apparently, the doctors were able to get the seizures under control but he is going to remain in the hospital for observation and testing so they can find out what is causing the seizures. Wyatt is a very cute and special child and his parents are wonderful people. I hope that he is going to be alright.

Gardening

As long as I can remember, my mom has been an excellent gardener and landscaper. When we lived in our house in NY, she loved to mow the acre of land that we lived on and the gardens in the front of our house were always beautiful. These days, the lawn and gardens at their house in Mechanicsville, VA could truly be featured in a popular magazine like Better Homes & Gardens!

I do believe that I have learned a lot from my wonderful mother over the years. Unfortunately, I do not believe that I inherited her green thumb! I have always had a hard time keeping house plants alive, much less the ones that grow outside. I think the main problem is that I forget to water them and of course, with no water, they die.

I do love the season of Spring and I love the beautiful colored flowers that are around this time of year. And, the townhouse that we are currently renting has two flower beds in the front that could really use some color. So...this past Sunday, I ventured to Lowe's in search of some flowers that were easy to plant and easy to take care of. I didn't want to spend too much money, seeing that we are only renting this place - and we are hoping to be moving into a new house sometime soon.

I ended up getting a few different kinds of plants - marigolds, carnations, wave petunias, and another orange-colored flowering plant that I can't remember the name of. I also got two big bags of mulch in the hopes that it would help the flowerbeds look nicer.

Keith took some pictures of me in the "planting process" and I took some pictures of the finished product. Of course, the flowers are not in bloom yet so they don't look at nice as I am hoping they are going to look once they fully bloom. The one problem is that I thought I had bought a lot of flowers but once I got them in the ground, they really seemed to be spread out. Hopefully they will grow pretty big so that it doesn't look so barren. Hey, at this point if any of them survive I will be happy.

WW Update

By some miracle, I weighed in 1.6 lbs less tonight, for a total of 15.6 lbs lost. I was not very good this past week so I don't know exactly how I ended up losing weight.

We'll see how this next week goes. Right now, I am just trying to take one day at a time.

The Best Concert I've Ever Seen

I am a little late in posting about this, but with all that has been going on, I didn't want to forget to tell you all about it.

On Thursday, April 10th (after a very few hours of sleep the night before due to Sierra's arrival), Katie and I went to see Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban in concert at the John Paul Jones arena here in Charlottesville. JPJ, as it is often called by us locals, is located just across the street from my office building. I have attended two other concerts there and quite a few UVA basketball games and other events. Katie, however, had never been and this was going to be her first time. I think she would agree when I say that this was an awesome introduction to the arena and what it has to offer!

The concert tickets were a present from my wonderful husband to me for Christmas. He had to work late that night (and isn't a big fan of country music anyway), so I asked Katie if she wanted to go. She was so excited and was happy to be my "date".

The concert was - as I said in the title of this post - the BEST concert I have ever seen! Carrie Underwood (of American Idol fame) opened and sang for about 45 minutes. Her voice is amazingly strong and beautiful. Hearing here perform live was a real treat! Then, Keith Urban performed for an astounding 2 hours!! Katie and I were really enjoying it but also trying to stay awake since we hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.

Keith Urban's performance was better than anyone I have ever seen. He interacted with the crowd very well - even calling three teenage girls up on stage in the beginning (they had a sign that read "3 Teens want a Hug from Keith Urban"). He had them come down onto the stage from the top of the lower level and he talked to them and gave them all a hug. It was really sweet. Later in the night, he signed a girl's cast and he also went into the crowd during one of his songs. After he was done singing that particular song, he autographed his guitar and gave it to a guy in the audience. Unfortunately, Katie and I were sitting in the upper level so we didn't get too close to him. In my opinion, he acted like this was the only concert he has ever done and his energy level and enthusiasm were incredible. It was astonishing to hear the number of recognizable "hit songs" that he sang. He is truly an incredibly gifted and talented artist!

These pictures certainly don't show you the awesomeness of the concert, but here are a few that I snapped during the event:

Me and Katie during at the concert. Don't we look just a bit tired?!?!

This is Carrie Underwood on stage. We were pretty far back, but her vocals were amazing!

Here is Keith Urban on stage. The video set-up that he had was awesome.
The videos of him on the screen behind him were so huge and clear!

Weight Watchers Update

I missed my WW meeting last Monday night because we were in Pennsylvania. So when I went to weigh in tonight it had been 2 weeks since I had last weighed in. My last weigh in was a huge loss (4 lbs) and tonight I basically gained all of that weight back (3.4 lb gain!). I am not surprised at all by this though. While we were "on the road" for Sierra's arrival and Marge's surgery, I was not at all good with my eating - and of course, I didn't exercise one bit! So.....I'm back on track starting NOW.....going to eat better foods, going to eat less than I have been eating lately and definitely going to work out at the gym at least 3 times this week! We'll see what the scale says next week at this time.......

Is there Cancer?

That is the question we are asking about Keith's mom, Marge. Keith talked to her yesterday after she had been to see her oncologist. They gave her results from a blood test that she had done a week ago (before her recent surgery). Unfortunately, the news was not good. Or at least it doesn't sound good!

Her blood level count that can show if cancer is present was up! It was 23 a month ago and now it is 31. What does that mean? Well, we are not really sure to be honest. The doctor has told her in the past that this rise in her blood level count could mean that there is cancer somewhere in her body or it could mean nothing - just a residual count from the colon cancer she had removed last year.

So...what now? Well the doctor has scheduled her to have a full body scan and a mammogram done on April 28th & 29th. I was under the impression that they had ruled out breast cancer (because that is what Marge told us), but apparently since they have ordered her to have a mammogram, that is not necessarily the case.

She has been told that she will receive the results of the tests on May 5th. To me, that seems like a long time to wait to find out if she has cancer or not, but I guess the doctors know what they are doing. At least, we hope!

Keith has been very matter-of-fact about all of this in the past, but yesterday he admitted that he is scared and worried about his mom and what all of this might mean. I am trying to be supportive without sounding "preachy". And, we can both only hope that it's a false alarm and that there really isn't any major medical problem.

I ask you all for continued prayers for both Marge and Keith. We are praying for God's mercy and grace through all of this and hoping that good news will be forthcoming soon!

We are home

We are back in sunny VA. We drove back yesterday - left Marge's house around 4pm and got to our house around 9:30pm. We made a stop in Winchester, VA to get some dinner and all in all it was an uneventful ride home.

Marge was released from the hospital around noon yesterday. She was sent home with a few instructions such as no heavy lifting, don't get her bandages wet, eat a full liquid diet for a few days (that means things like pudding, soup, oatmeal, etc.) She was also given a prescription for pain killers (which she didn't want us to get filled because she said that she was going to need it but when Keith talked to her this morning she thanked him for getting it because she ended up using it last night when she felt some pain).

We were debating whether or not we should stay over one more night just to make sure she was ok, but then we decided to leave. We really weren't doing anything for her and we thought maybe she would "relax" a little and rest more if we were gone. She and Keith sometimes butt heads because he is trying to help her and she is resisting the help. I felt like maybe it would be better if we left since she was insistent that she didn't need our help.

Like I said, Keith talked to her this morning and she seems to be doing ok. She did have some pain last night so she took the pain meds and she said that she slept good for the most part. I know she was probably just happy to be home and in her own bed (I know Keith and I were thankful for that after spending 3 nights separated - me on the couch and him on the floor!)

Marge has a follow-up appointment tomorrow morning with her oncologist to get the results of a blood test that she had last Friday. Hopefully he will tell her that her "cancer blood levels" have gone down and are not continuing to go up. We are unsure what the next step is if the levels are still going up, but I am sure that more tests will be involved.

Thank you for your continued prayers.