Monday, February 22, 2010

A Full Century!

Last Saturday, Jeff, Katie, and I drove to Blackfoot, ID to celebrate my great grandpa's 100th birthday! I completely forgot to bring a camera, so my family's posts will be so much more interesting than mine.
The drive was really easy and we made it there in just over 3 hours (even with a ton of rest stops for the pregnant woman). The weather was beautiful -if incredibly cold and windy- and you could see the great potato state landscape for miles and miles. We saw lots of cows and even a sign for a potato museum. We contained our excitement and didn't stop. We did have a birthday party to get to...
We were suppose to meet cousins at McDonald's for a quick get together before the celebration, but we stopped by Subway first and brought awesome sandwiches. I won't lie, people were jealous. Jeff likes to use his pregnant wife as an excuse for things like that, but it didn't matter. No one that worked at McDonald's cared or even noticed.
The party was crowded and we met a lot of people I'm distantly related to. Great grandpa looked fantastic but really tired. I don't think he wants to do this again next year. Our mingling consisted of sitting at a table and letting family come to us. It actually worked and we got some great card games going! Overall, it was a fantastic trip and practically felt like a family reunion except for the fact that the Veronins couldn't make it.

Ki was in the hospital last week for a small fever caused by an ear infection. He's better now, although his white blood count is low. He's getting shots of neupogen which should make his bone marrow work harder to make more white blood cells. That will probably become a normal part of his treatment now. He is still in high spirits and I could even hear him yelling for water while I talked to my mom on the phone today.
They have an appointment to see a transplant specialist on Monday, and he starts his next round of chemo on Tuesday.

Tess is doing well. She's still on oxygen at night, but overall she's much happier. Tess recently got a new lawyer (know as a GAL -guardian ad litem) to act as her representative in court. The new GAL is a woman my mom has worked with before and even lives on my mom's street. My mom posted "She told me that as a GAL, it is her duty to work towards reunification of the family, but in this case she hoped that would not happen. She also told me that Tess's father had significant issues to work out (she didn't give me any specifics)." We tried not to get our hopes up, but I know everyone was crossing their fingers that this woman would help our family get Tess.
Just this week, there was a court date that my mom attended. Small children are not supposed to be in foster care for more than a year. Since Tess is 9 months old, her year mark is coming up fast and she would be adoptable at that time. Her father's lawyer was asking for an extension so he could have more time to work through his program and get Tess back. The new GAL recommended against it and the judge agreed with her. There will be a contested hearing on March 19th, but if the judge doesn't allow the extension, there is little to no chance that Tess will go back to her biological father!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Finances update!

First, for those of you interested in how we're doing personally, we're both doing very well. Cyndi enjoyed her stay with her family, but she's very glad to be home. She's got a lingering cough from the flu that we both had the last couple of weeks, but even that's gotten a lot better in the last couple of days.

Mike's taken to kicking me whenever I contact Cyndi's stomach. It's adorable.

Ki seems to be doing better and is even sleeping in his own toddler bed instead of crawling into his Mom's and Dad's bed partway through the night. He's in better spirits as you can see from these fun videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl_eHwhMOYo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXbpYcmd_WY

I had my yearly performance review, and my manager loves me and couldn't be happier with my performance. The only complaint was that I joke a little too much, and she made sure to stress that it wasn't a major complaint. While I knew that I was doing well, I didn't realize exactly how well I was doing and it was really nice to hear it from my manager who also happens to be over the entire engineering department for Omniture (our team is the only one that reports directly to her).

For those of you who are interested in our financial situation (you know who you are), we've got a quick update. For those who want just a quick summary: the Lord is merciful, even when His children aren't worthy of it, and because of that we're doing extremely well.

With the car accident in January, Cyndi quitting her job, and the travel to help with Cyndi's family, we expected to have to dip into our savings quite a bit. Instead, it turns out that our net cash flow was positive and, when we get reimbursed for the rental car by Colorado, we'll have added to our savings quite a bit.

We've redone our finances, and we're planning on leveraging some Adobe programs while tighten our belts more. For this effort, by my calculations we'll have both of our cars paid off by the end of next year and have roughly doubled our savings.

As you can see, the Lord has given us more blessings than we would have even thought to ask for much less expected to receive. In just over a year we've gone from having terrible finances to being in a position where we aren't worried at all about the future. While I've done most of the spreadsheets and calculating, Cyndi's done the vast majority of saving the money for us and managing the day to day workings of our budget. Without her hard work and willingness, we wouldn't be anywhere near where we're at now. She's amazing and I don't know where I'd be without her.

Monday, February 1, 2010

A Spider Dies, Birthday Fun, and Chemo Again

Lots to update:
Last week, my little sister Amy starred in her high school's production of Charlotte's Web. She was an amazing Charlotte. At the end of the show when Charlotte died, Mary, my mom, and I cried. My dad admitted that even he teared up a little. Ki was also distraught when Amy left the stage. As she gave her final farewell to Wilbur and disappeared, he started yelling "Amy! Amy!", trying to get her to come back.

Children loved Amy. They swarmed up on stage after the performance to meet all the characters and made it really hard to get a good shot of Amy in her costume:


Some kids even asked for her autograph. It was really cute:


When we got home, Tess and Mom were back from the hospital. Tess still needed to be on oxygen, but my mom convinced the doctors that she could be hooked up at the house and be a lot happier (also, my mom was absolutely sick of Tess's birth mom and needed to get away or go crazy). Poor Tess looks pathetic in her tubes:


But she really is much happier at home. Now we have a huge (noisy) machine that pumps oxygen through her tubes. It stays on the main floor but Tess has a 50 ft tube range, so she can still sleep in her own bed and sit at the table at meals. It's kind of fun to ask "Where's Tess?" and then check to see where the tubes lead. She's now a very easy baby to find, which is good because she's getting better at her commando crawl and loves to go places she isn't allowed.

Mom's birthday was yesterday. Happy (late) Birthday, Mom! We really celebrated on Sunday while Mary was still visiting. It was a lot of fun. We had mini banana cream pies as cake:

Mom got a lot of fun things:

But her most anticipated gift was worms. Not just any worms. They're compost worms. Apparently they're coveted for their droppings. I don't really know how it works. They now live in the storage room in a tub and eat fruits and vegetable rinds. Mom loves them, but they creep her out and she won't touch them. Here's Mary digging in the bucket for her:


Also, Ki started chemo again on Tuesday. He had a CT scan last Thursday and it turns out his tumor has shrunk 20% and the metastasized cancer has shrunk 75%! We need the metastasized stuff to go away completely before anything can be done about the tumor, but it's obvious the treatments are having an affect! He is hooked up on an IV for fluids right now and had been in pretty good spirits until tonight when he started vomiting.