Here We Go Again!!!

In 24 hours, between Wed. and Thur., Dec. 17 & 18th we got dumped on. Approx. 2 feet of snow. A new record for Spokane. The only saving grace was that is was powder -- light and fluffy -- but piled high. Below is the 6am path that Arn made so the dog could get out.
Early morning Arn decided to venture out to fill the bird feeders.

Heightwise, this is as much snow as we had all last year. Our backyard and side drifts are as deep from one storm as the many we had all last season.

"Nannook of the North" (Steve in disguise) decided to help with the clearing project. Gooooooo Steve!

Here we have "Snowblowing 101" Come to the great Inland Northwest for classes beginning immediately.

Steve caught on right away and the two boys finished the job in record time (compared to our previous years of shoveling).

UPDATE ON SARA

Thanks to everyone for all the thoughts and prayers. Sara is healing, but it will be a slow process. She's trying very hard to behave herself and not do too much. The Dr. was discouraging telling her she probably won't be 100% for a year, but only time will tell. Please keep the prayers coming as we know God can work all things for His good.

This will be my last blog until after Christmas so we wish a safe, joyous, blessed, and truly meaningful Christ's birthday to all. Merry Christmas blessings.

Just for Giggles

Daaaahhhhhhh! My name is Steven and I shovel snow in less than 10 degree weather in shorts!! As you probably guessed, he didn't stay out very long. Just long enough to make one swipe for the dog to walk down. However, it's all covered up again by now. Thx for the try Steven.
This phesant found he had a much better view atop the squirrel/bird feeder. He was beautiful.

Soooor Is Coooooooold!

Dad and Skeets are ready for a walk. The temp right now is 5 degrees with a wind chill of -17 degrees. They weren't out very long.
The latest battle we're having with Nita is her claim that she has lived (not just grown up, but lived!) in snow country and can go out in a skirt and open toed shoes. We've talked and argued until we are blue in the face. However, she's not going out without at least boots on. She truly has no idea of the potential danger involved with weather like this. She believes that her years in Ohio as a child quialifies her as a snow and cold weather expert. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

First "real" Snow '08

The prediction for Dec. 12-14 was for Spokane to get 6-12". Spokane got a dusting and Deer Park got the 6" (of course). This is our back deck early Fri evening.
Skeets first venture out this season. She loves it.

Arn was ready to crank up the "machine." It did great and did it fast!

Sor is purdy, ma.

Emergency blog for prayers

Good morning everyone. Sara (our daughter-in-law) had emergency back surgery last night. Unfortunately, she slipped on ice and fell on her butt on Sat. and the pain in her legs just kept getting worse. She went to the emergency, then the dr. and when things started going seriously numb Thur. morn they did an emergency MRI and sent her immediately to the best hospital and called in the best surgeon and by 5:30 last night she was in surgery.

Seems she had a huge ruptured disc. I did not know that when this rupture presses on nerves and other stuff it does actual damage and they were unsure how much of the numbness would go away or how much muscle use would come back.

This morning she is feeling pretty good, she can walk and has numbness only in places on both feet. We're praising God that she has come thru so good so far -- but more prayers are needed for her complete recovery (Drs. say she won't have 100% recovery), that she heals quickly, and that she is patient and follows orders.

She can't lift anything heavier than a coffee cup for 2 wks. and then she can lift up to a milk carton in weight. They want her walking 2miles by 6 weeks. She'll have to have some rehab too.

This was all so sudden we're still kinda shocky. We have the kids for the weekend and then we'll see how to arrange care and help.

All the prayers will be greatly appreciated. Thx. and blessings to all you too.

The Great Cookie Deco

December 6th was the great cookie deco-off. We deco'd about a hundred sugar cookies (at least it seemed like that many). Left to right: Bryson, Kevin, Diane, Arnie, Steve, mom (Nita), Rylee, Marc and Cody. Sara is taking the pic, but she helped deco some really pretty and tasty treats too.
Here are some of the artists hard at work.

Taa-daa! The final projects. We were all winners cuz they were entirely too edible and we are still enjoying them.

Turkey Day 08

The new family mug shot -- left to right: Sara, Marc, mom (Nita), Diane, Cody, Arnie, Bryson, Rylee, Kevin and Steve. Yeah -- we're all togethere this year.
Great picture of Marc and Kevin.

Ever think you need an extra set of hands? Marc got lucky and found one.

The inevitable kiddy tables

Yummmmm, yummmmm. Sara's a great cook and everything was wonderful.

More Tricks than Treats

As promised on the pumpkin blog -- here are the trick-or-treat pics.
The kids got to pick what they wanted to be so here is Rylee as a monkey and Coderman as Darth Vader
The monkey eats!!!

Now we rested at some friends -- collecting candy is hard work . . .

Sewing 101

Well, here's the scenario. Steve has very short legs (ha, ha, hee, hee) and he had seven pairs of dress pants professionally shortened (in Georgia). To put it politely -- whoever did them didn't know what they were doing and all the pants were too long -- so long he was walking on them in the back. Believe it or not, Steve asked me to hem one pair, showing him how to do it and he would hem the rest!!! He wanted to learn how to sew. Soooooo -- with the borrowed sewing machine from our daughter-in-law, Sara (thank you), we started the project.

Here is Steve practicing on some scrap material. You go, Steve . . .
And, as you can see, he's actually sewing on the pants themselves. Great job, Steve

The Puzzlers

Here we have mom (Nita) and Arnie working on a 550 piece puzzle with tiny little pieces. This will be the third one this size they have done. Arn has just discovered that he kinda likes the challenge of puzzles. I'm going to have to buy some more and after the first of the year we are considering everyone working on a 1000 piece one. Wish us luck.

Halloween Cookie Bake

Lucky us!!! We got to have Rylee for two nights this weekend and we had fuuuuuuuun.
Here's great-grandma and Rylee pulling apart the pumpkin cookies to bake. Grandma is lazy and we do the easy bake (no mix) cookies.
Rylee loves to decorate cookies. She loves strawberry (pink) icing and she used all kinds of colored sprinkles. Yuuuum.

The final product!!! Great piles of cookies and we sure did have fun. Thanks Rylee for a great time. And they were delicious.

Oooooey, Gooooey, Spoooky Pumpkins

The day started out bright and sunny. We all met at 1pm and headed off to the famous, local pumpkin patch. We didn't get very far when all the traffic backed up and came to a dead stop. There must have been a mob scene at the pumpkin patch -- soooooo after sitting unpatiently for several minutes we decided to head to the local "market" pumpkin patch. Then the fun began at grandma's. Remember -- you can click on a pic to blow it up if you want to see it bigger.

Here's the ooey, gooey -- but squishy, wishy fun!
Everyone's busy -- we see Rylee, Sara, Cody, Steve and Bryson.
And here's grandma helping by eating peanuts -- again! See her new shirt?

The table is too crowded for "great" artistic work, so Arn took the counter for carving his creation.

Rylee carved her pumpkin, but gets a little help from dad on the tricky eyeballs.

Sara is carvin' the "adult" pumpkin. See final display below.

Rylee and her creation.

Cody and the alien -- cool dude!

Bryson with the scull and cross bones (a very complicated design) -- looks much better all lit up. Great job, Bry.

Taa-Daa!!! The artistic masterpiece. Great delicate work Arn (and the beer helped steady his hand, I'm sure).

Steve did a fantastic job with spooky cat heads. There are a total of three on this creation.

Post-carving party. We always know how to gather and have a good time.

The gallery!!! The end carving is a very sick pumpkin cuz he drank too much. What can I say???

Ooooooooooooh, awwwwwwwwwww -- how pretty. Good job to everyone.

Nita's Latest

Mom had her follow-up appt. with the neurologist last week. This was to get the results of her MRI and blood work. The blood work was to determine if there was "anything else" wrong and there was not.

What you are looking at below is a graph of her hippocampus area of the brain. We actually saw the xray pictures. Normally the hippo shows up as yellow spots at the base of both sides of the brain -- however, on mom's pictures you could just barely make out a touch of yellow if you squinted real hard.

On the graph you can see where "normal" brain activity would fall -- even allowing for some dimishment for age -- average, above and below. The dot at the very bottom you can see is where mom's brain activity (memory area) falls -- almost off the chart. If you click on the chart it will enlarge it, but I think you can still get the idea even if you don't blow it up. The doctor added that it's where he would expect to find the results of someone 130+ yrs old. For the doctor -- this left no doubt as to her prognosis of Alzheimer's disease.
There's nothing left to do except to monitor her progress and keep her as active as possible for as long as possible. She takes her pills, but they've never been proven to do much good. She still does her puzzles, goes to day care, eats really good, and we just started attending weekly Bible study -- she just sits and listens. She appears to be walking even slower and many times her memory is down to 1-2 minutes or sometimes seconds. We'll continue to keep everyone updated.

What-A-Face!

How's this for a dusty mug!!! Guess who's sanding drywall/joint compound in the garage? He's almost finished all the walls and then will have to paint. It looks great and will be a lot warmer this winter. What a face!!!! -- but the rest of his body was even worse!

40th Anniv Mug Shots

Ok, ok . . . we're old, old, old!!! We've been married foooooooooooooooorty years. Wanted to take a nice long leisurely cruise -- but not with mom, so that will have to wait for another year.

We ended up going to a very nice restaurant in downtown Spokane called Anthony's at the Falls. All the tables over-look the Spokane River Falls. The river is really, really low, but the falls were still pretty. It was a wonderful dinner and evening out.

Thanks to our son Steve who had the evening off and stayed home and had pizza with mom so we could go out. He took these pics with the back-drop of trees from our backyard.

Mom's, Grandma's. Great-grandma's, Nita's update

Just some quick info to update you on medical info. August 18th Mom went to the neurologist. He's 99% sure she has Alzheimer (there's no absolute diagnosis while alive), but he's running tests to rule out anything else it might be. She had more blood work done and an MRI, which can show the deterioration of the brain and how far it's progressed.

We go back to the neurologist on Sep 11th for the results. Even with a diagnosis of Alz -- she's still relatively early in the disease. She might drive us crazy with all the questions and her attitude sometimes, but (thank God) there is still so much she can still do.

She now takes Aricept and Neumenda. The neurologist said (speaking as a scientist) he's never seen any of these drugs actually do any good. But as a relative he knows he would try everything possible. So as long as the drugs do no harm -- we are giving them to her.

Cousin Janet's Visit

Since Cousin Janet (from Livermore, CA) didn't get a chance to see her Aunt before she moved to the great northwest -- she, Janet, decided to pay us a short 50 hour visit last weekend. It was fast and fun. Friday we had lunch and then we just hung around the house.
Saturday we visited the Harley store so Janet could buy hubby Lloyd the obligatory Tshirt and then (as you can see from above pic) the whole fam was together for dinner on the back deck. Steve had to work so he's not with us and Sara (Marc's wife) took the pic.
On Sunday after church we had lunch at Olive garden downtown and then walked around Riverfront park before we had to take her to the airport. Mom and Janet are standing in front of the Spokane River and Falls and also in front of the restaurant (Anthony's at the Falls) where Arnie and Diane will have dinner tonight (Friday, 29th) for the anniversary.