DTales

So, now that’s it’s been more than 5 months since my last post, here goes…

I’m going to mostly talk about last week, since it was full of happenings, and since I can still remember it. Working backwards: I’m almost completely full-time working at Jerry’s company for the time being. They are an employee down, so I’ve been attempting to fill in the slack. Today I actually worked at my “normal” location and had a great early Thanksgiving Friday feast. Mmm, thanksgiving food. Nothing else much exciting this week work-wise. Mostly just enjoying the shorter, joint commute with Jerry all the other days.

Last weekend was spent in MetroHealth hospital in Cleveland. Jerry’s brother Paul was riding his bike home from work, and got hit by a minivan. Much thanks to God, he’ll be OK, but he’ll have a long recovery. Many broken ribs, two punctured lungs, one shattered shoulderblade and many scrapes and bruises will take awhile to heal. He was in the hospital for six days, and will be in pain for months. But the important thing is that he is OK, and should recover well. Keep him in your prayers! His friends have set up a paypal account for people to help him out, but I don’t have the info for that yet. He won’t be able to work for awhile, especially since carrying heavy photography equipment is pretty much out for awhile. It sounds like he will still be getting paid, which is a huge blessing.

Rewinding a little further, back past Wednesday when we got the call about Paul. Monday we got an email I’d been waiting on for a long time. Jerry and I have been officially approved to adopt! A couple people know, but we’ve been mostly staying to ourselves that this was even in the works. We thought it’d be fun to wait and announce that we were parents, but I’m busting at the seams and just can’t wait any longer. To answer all your first questions: we are adopting domestically through the foster care system, up to age four, and up to two siblings. We have no idea how long it will be, we could get a call next week, or it could take six months.

So, that pretty much sums up most of the excitement of the last few months. I can’t really think of anything else important. Oh, we did get our first joint patent from our previous job! We are officially Inventors now.

Just a quick hello, and a note that my comments appear to be slightly under construction still.

Had a great time at my cousin’s wedding in Virginia last weekend, and hope to have pics from that and from my sister’s graduation up sometime.

T-7 for Gamefest!

So, I’m just one of those people who only updates their blog every two months. We’ve been busy as always.

This past weekend we went up to Chicago to see my family, especially to see my sister Kyla graduate from high school. I’m so proud of her! She graduated from a small private school, so her graduating class was only 34 people. They were able to stretch the ceremony out by only calling one name at a time, letting that person walk across the platform, get the diploma, have their tassel switched, hug a couple teachers, and walk down the steps before the next name was called. Afterwards they had a tasty reception, with bruchetta (sp?), shrimp, huge chocolate covered strawberries, the whole shindig.

It was also really good to see my grandma again, she was in town for graduation. It’ll be a great month for visiting family, since in about 6 weeks I’ll have seen my dad’s parents twice, my mom’s mom, my cousins who I haven’t seen since 8th grade, and of course my family. I’ll see my cousins on Saturday at one’s wedding. My dad and I are flying out to VA together for it, but the rest of my family won’t be able to come.

In other news, we have a pretty full house. We have two friends staying with us, my friend from forever, Beth, and a friend from Rose, Josh. Makes for fun times, and a little less sleep than we need. Although I can’t blame them for my current state of haziness, that’s from the storms last night. We didn’t get blown away by tornados yet, but our entire street was flooded this morning. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it out to work tomorrow, we’re supposed to get more rain tonight I think.

We are looking forward to having an even fuller house in a couple weeks with Gamefest. It’s the weekend of the 21st, so if you are interested and haven’t heard yet, let me know and I’ll give you the details.

That’s about it for tonight. I’m off to get some more sleep.

PS, now that dave has done all kinds of work updating the blog stuff, I might have to make the blog more decorated. We’ll see.

Ok, there’s so much more going on that I should be posting about, like Jerry finishing his test so no more studying, painting our kitchen, fun visits with family, weddings, etc.

I don’t have time though, so instead I’m going to post this awesome youtube about cats and engineers. Maybe someday we’ll make our own video, since we have some awesome cats, too!

Happy Spring!

Just for fun, here is a family portrait from last summer, right after Jerry’s sister Laura got married.

From left to right:
Jerry’s dad, Laura’s husband Andrew, Jerry’s mom, Laura, me, Jerry, Jerry’s Aunt Nancy, and Uncle Fred.

Here’s another one from last summer. It is almost my whole family, Michael was off at summer camp, so he’s missing.

Here’s a new post, better late than never…

Jerry and I had a great time two weekends ago celebrating our fifth anniversary. We went down to his parents’ cabin in Brown County, where we got about 10-12″ of snow. We got down there on Friday afternoon, and with some help from his parents (and one bruised knee), got our car pushed the rest of the way up the very steep driveway. There was only about 3-4″ of snow at that point, which was a very good thing. After that, there would have been no way to make it all the way up the driveway, and we would have had to carry all our stuff.

We had a great dinner that night of filet, and had fun playing games with his family. Saturday we woke up in time for the pancakes his mom cooked. Then we hiked around their property and some neighboring land, and took some great pictures of the snow. We made a tiny snowman, and saw a few types of animal tracks.

We had talked and dreamed of going up to Alaska for our anniversary, since that’s where we went on our honeymoon. There is an ice sculpture competition held every year with judging beginning about the time of our anniversary, so someday we really want to go and see that. This year, though, we got a great snowy experience right here, and the price was certainly right!

Happy fifth anniversary, my love, and hopes for many, many more to come.

To see more pictures, click on the extended entry!

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And hoping for a happier new year. I’m so glad 2007 is over. There were a lot of good things, but it ended on a very sad note. Jerry’s grandma passed away the morning of New Years Eve. We got the call about 3am, then we slept a little more, then sadly packed everything up to come back home. We were already planning to leave that day, so we didn’t lose any time with my family, but it was so sad anyway. We had the clearest traffic ever on the way home, and got to Jerry’s parents’ by about 2:30. They were at the funeral home, but Laura and Andrew were there. We basically just all clung together all week. Jerry and I stayed there, and just ran home Tuesday morning to check on the cats and get clothes for the memorial service. We stayed at his parents Tuesday night, too, and Paul and Dana were in that night also. New Years eve Monday night was very subdued, we just watched TV and then counted down with his parents. Hard to say happy new year when your grandma/mom just died.

My mom and my grandma came down for the memorial service Wednesday night, which was really good. We all hung out afterwards with Jerry’s family and watched an old 8mm film of when Joy was only about 8 or 9. Not much before her dad passed away.

In all, it was a week of remembering a long life and reminiscing about good times with family and friends. Bon nuit, Genevieve Sager. You are well loved, and we look forward to seeing you again someday in heaven.

As much as I complain about no holidays all spring, summer, and fall, I do like having 11 days off for Christmas with only using two vacation days.

Jerry and I had a great time visiting our families for Christmas and post-Christmas. Lots of relaxation, starting with presents Christmas eve, and then a relaxing morning, Christmas day, heading to his parents’ for lunch. We visited his grandma, then went down to the cabin for a couple days. It was so nice to just hang out, play games, crochet. Laura got a great start off on crocheting, and I finished another pair of baby booties. We came back Wednesday night, and then Thursday morning we went to see the Roman sculpture exhibit from the Louvre. Thursday night we got to see Ryan and Angel up in Kokomo, and Mike and Theresa as well. Mikey and Todd and Andy were there too, but we get to see them all the time…

That night we stayed in Rochester so Jerry could go to his orthodontist appt. Hooray for rubber bands (NOT). Then we drove from there to Chicago and spent the weekend with my family. That was very relaxing, and fun to see my grandma there too. We didn’t do a lick of work on the house, which was nice for a change. Took the whole family plus Jerry’s cousin to Maggiano’s for lunch on Sunday. (Is it still called lunch if you eat from 1:30 pm to 5pm?)

We got to eat another extended lunch/dinner at Maggiano’s this weekend, happy tummy!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and had lots of yummy food and yummy leftovers. We had a great time visiting my family up in Chicago, and got to see some of my high school friends. Is it weird that my two oldest and best friends both have the same name as me?

We had a very thankful thanksgiving, especially with some of the crazy happenings of that whole week. In spite of a very rough start to the week, all of Jerry’s family is doing OK. Monday night his dad thought he was having a mild heart attack, so his mom and dad went to the hospital Tuesday morning. He got lots of pokes and prods and testing, and everything came back fine, so he got home Wednesday afternoon.

In the middle of all that, Tuesday night the nursing home called and said that Jerry’s grandma fell and broke her hip. A huge thanks there was that Jerry’s sister was literally getting off the plane from Colorado right then, so she was able to be with Jerry’s mom, since dad was in the hospital. Jerry’s mom and Laura spent all night at the emergency room with Grandma. Right after they got home Wednesday morning, Jerry’s mom and Laura got another call, this time from the alarm company for Jerry’s dad’s company. They said that something had tripped the alarm, so Joy and Laura had to deal with that.

After the real (not ER) doctor saw grandma’s xrays, he’s pretty sure her hip is not broken. We were able to see her Wednesday night, and talked with her yesterday morning. She is doing well, and was her cheerful self on the phone. (Even talking on the phone means it’s a really good day for her).

Jerry’s dad is back home, and all of his tests came back great, so he is in good shape. Grandma is still in the hospital, but recovering fairly well. They think she might have injured her ankle, but we don’t know for sure. She is supposed to go back to the nursing home this week, we think.

I’m still here, although I’ve been quiet. We’ve had a good couple weekends with not much planned going on, which has been great. Our weekdays have stayed super-busy though. The last two Saturdays have been spent getting a lot done around the house. I’ve done lots of cleaning to catch up from the last couple months, even some more deep-cleaning things like filing, etc. Jerry worked on leaves last Saturday, but not so much this past weekend. Turns out 4 hours of running a leaf-blower will pull your neck WAY out of whack. Jerry spent Sunday pretty much unable to move, which was pretty much horrible for him. He’s mostly recovered now I think. This past weekend he worked a bunch on cleaning the garage, and now it looks awesome! I can park my car inside and everything!

I can’t believe how little is left of this year. Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK! I’m definitely looking forward to visiting my family, I haven’t seen them since Sept, for a couple hours, and before that I think it was the first week in August? Way way way too long. We’re looking forward to the nice long weekend. It’ll be good to see Jerry’s sister and her hubby, too, even though we’ll only see them for a little, since we’ll be up at my family’s most of the weekend.

That’s about it for now, told you our life was pretty boring =)