Dad is finally home

Dad was finally discharged from Mayo Hospital last Friday, 3/1/13. He was so happy to get out of the hospital. He said he was so tired of someone coming in every two hours to take blood. He was becoming concerned that he wouldn't have any blood left if he didn't get out soon. :0)
He seems to be doing OK, although he is very weak and tired, but he is very content sitting in his lazy boy chair in the living room watching TV. Tamie has to help him get in and out of bed, and his appetite is improving now that he is eating good home cooking instead of hospital food. Must admit though, Mayo's food was really good.

Dad has a mass in his right lung that seems to be growing rapidly, however, he also has an infection on top of the mass that prevented Mayo from doing a biopsy to see if the mass is cancer and if so what kind. Unfortunately because they were not able to do the biopsy, dad is not able to do chemo or radiation.
Tamie is taking care of dad at home and we also have Hospice involved in his care as well. Hospice took care of mom before she died and we have nothing but praise for these nurses and doctors. We know that dad is in very good hands with Hospice, and a nurse will be coming out 3 times a week to check on dad, bath him, give him any medications above and beyond his normal medications, and do assessments on his health for the doctor assigned to dad.

Izabella turns 2 on July 15, 2013

Wow, Time is going by so fast. I can't believe how fast she is growing.

Izabella turns 1 year old July 15th

It's hard to believe that it has been a year already.  She is growing fast and getting prettier each day.

Last night in San Diego...

It's Saturday night and our last night in San Diego, so we decided to go out for a few drinks. It was so sad knowing that we had to go home, back to the 100+ heat in Phoenix.

Electricity producing windmills

At one point on our way to the coast, we ran into a section covered in electricity producing windmills. These were breath taking to see. There were thousands of them everywhere, on both sides of the highway. I have seen a section here in northern Arizona that had maybe 20 or so, but there must have been thousands...

San Diego and the beach

After the USS Midway tour, we went back to our hotel room and walked around the beach area just taking in the sights. The next morning we decided to move to the Best Western hotel that was across the parking lot from our hotel because it had a better view of the beach and the boardwalk. We spent the remainder of our time at this hotel, which turned out to be a wonderful room. It was so nice to be able to leave the arcadia door open so that we could hear the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, oh how I love that sound. We also rented bikes, which is not quite my idea of fun, since I am not that coordinated nor am I balanced. Nevertheless, we rode those bikes for about 4 hours; going from one end of the boardwalk to the other end, which we figured, was about 4 miles one way.

Here are some pictures of us enjoying the beach.

 

USS Midway tour

The next morning, we reluctantly left that beautiful room and headed to San Diego. Did I mention we made no reservations at any hotel? We were thinking we might stop for the night somewhere along the way, but ended up driving all the way to San Diego instead.

Once we got to San Diego, we got a room next to the beach, dropped our bags in the room, and headed to the USS Midway Museum. They have turned the actual ship into a museum with self-guided tours. The tour also included going up into the area where the captain commands the ship. There were many stairs and walking, we got a lot of exercise.

These photos are from the deck, and as well as from the parking lot looking at the ship. It was an awesome tour.

Our anniversary vacation

On Wednesday, July 4th, we took off to go to California to spend our anniversary and a mini vacation. We got on I-10 with no firm designation or hotel reservations, and headed to Santa Monica, CA, and then hoped on the PCH down to Venice Beach and Hermosa Beach area. We rented a room in Hermosa Beach (Beach House) which was much more than we had planned to spend, but since it was our anniversary, we splurged.   


These are the photos of our room. OMG! I did not want to leave that room. This room came fully furnished with plates, glasses, wine glasses, coffee machine and mugs, two-burner stove and microwave, and a refrigerator. It even had a sink and a gas fireplace, which we lit later on in the evening, because it got cold. We decided to go and get our drinks and snacks and sit on the porch that overlooked the beach and boardwalk.

Izabella and her new "laptop"

Izabella exhausted

As I said earlier, Tamie has been babysitting Izabella and sent this picture of Izabella asleep after an exhausting day of playing with her grandma.

Great Grandma and Izabella at lunch

Tamie is babysitting Izabella this week and had to take ggma and ggpa to the base for their medicines. Well after the base they went to have lunch and Izabella was sleeping so Tamie found a shopping cart, put Bella and her car seat in the top and ggma's oxygen machine in the basket part and she used it as a walker.

Izabella Babysitting Us

Izabella asked her mom to ask us if she could babysit us last Friday, and of course Paul and I let Izabella babysit us. It was so much fun. Last time she came to babysit us we must have been really bad b/c she cried the entire time. This time she had things for us to do and we kept busy the entire time she was here.  At 3:30 we went over to great grandma and great grandpas house to get them for dinner. Izzy's grandma was there too so we invited her too. When we got to the restaurant, Izzy's mom showed up as well as her uncle Karl. We had a great time eating and entertaining the waitress.

Here's a picture of Izzy sitting next to her great uncle Paul with his remote in her hands.

Just had to blog this even though I posted it on Facebook. You know your day is going wrong when you put your dogs in the car and when you walk around the front to get your purse out of the other side you hear "click" and the dogs are both at the window smiling. Yes, true story, I learned this at the gas station in Payson right after I took them for a walk. Fortunately Paul was in the store with his set of keys. Dogs revenge!

Has anyone noticed that I haven't kept up to date on my blog?

I've been told that that would be a resounding yes!  You would think that Paul and I have done nothing since September.  We’re not that old yet… so I will try to recap our “busy” lives.  :0)

This past Labor Day weekend was a blast

Paul and I headed up to Heber/Overgaard pulling our flat bed trailer with our quads on it and the kids (Daniel, Tiffany, Karl, Geraldine and Izzy) were in our car following us.  They were all coming up to spend the weekend with us quading, shooting, enjoying a campfire at night, etc. We got up to the property Saturday morningish and quickly dropped everything and took off to Bison Ranch to do a little tourist shopping and have a beer at the saloon.  Then went to dinner, and came back to the trailer and built a fire.  So nice...

Saturday we got up and after breakfast took off for the forest to do a little quad riding.  We left at 11:00 and didn't come back till 5:00ish.

Did I mention that Izzy was with us?  Of course didn't do any riding because she couldn't reach the shifter since she is only 7 weeks old.  So naturally, Great Aunt Nancy had to hold her every time we stopped.

Here are some photos of our weekend.

Paul finally wore me down...

A few weeks ago, Paul and I were up in Heber enjoying the nice weather, and Paul noticed a flyer that there would be an auction at the Catholic Church and what actually caught his eye is the church was auctioning off a 20ft. ski boat. We have had boats all our married life from an 18th ft. open bow to a 32 ft Uniflite tri-level boat that we kept docked at one of the local lakes. When we sold that last boat, I was so happy. Do you know what the meaning of boat is? B=break, O=out, A=another, T=thousand dollars. Insurance, gas, food, drinks, etc. was killing us in expenses, not to mention that we had to pay for the slip payment since we could not haul this boat back and forth from the lake. Anyway, sorry, I digressed. At the auction the final item was the boat. The man who was doing the auction said that boat (a 1988 boat) was starting at $4800 and they would not go any lower. That scared off most of the men who were there to bid on the boat, except my husband. After everyone was gone, he approached the auctioneer with a bid of $3,000, the auctioneer asked the Parish Priest, and like I said, he wore me down and we bought a boat.

Paul and a buddy of his went up to Heber and picked it up and took it straight down here to Phoenix and put it on one of the lakes to make sure there were no problems. It ran great. Then the following week, Paul and I took it out to another one of our lakes. It’s a great boat to go to the lake for the day, and Paul has used it every weekend since we got it. He’s a hit with some of the guys he works with since he’s taken them out to the lake.

Good news from Mom’s dr. appointment this past Wednesday

Mom, as everyone knows, has lung cancer and went through radiation treatments.  Recently the doctor had her do another PET scan to see if the cancer has been eliminated or decreased since the treatments.  Wednesday, 9/7/11, mom went to get the results and they were all good!  The spot on her lung has almost disappeared and the doctor says he doesn’t need to see her until December.  Now that’s good news!

Izabella came down to my work to take me to lunch today!

Of course, she had to bring her parents, because she doesn't have her driver's license yet.  As a matter of fact, I guess she probably should learn to crawl, walk and read first... Anyway, it was a wonderful lunch.  I, of course, never put her down, except for that minute or two so I could eat my lunch.  Finally, when we were almost done eating, Izzy woke up and looked around.  I finally got to see her eyes and they are blue!!!

Daniel is nanny for a 14 month of little doll.  I can't remember her name, but she and I hit if off.  Daniel was carrying her, and she let me hold her while we were ordering lunch.  She and I shared my salad, she loved the hard boiled eggs, in fact, she loved everything in my salad.  :-)

A few updated photos of my great niece Izabella

It must have been a tough first day...

Her little face is all red from being outside playing and look she's already skinned her knee from running. This is such a precious photo, one of many I'm sure.