Christmas Baking

On Saturday, December 21st, we got together to do our annual Christmas baking. Mom, Jessie, Ava, Milo, Allie, Allie's friend Sarah, Leslie, my sister in law Kathy and myself had a great day. Lots of cookies were made and decorated (even ate a few too)! Everyone brought their own containers to take cookies home. We made peanut blossoms, peanut butter tarts, cut-out cookies, toffee, peppermint bark, welsh cookies, dipped pretzels and oreo's and other ones too! Hopefully next year we can get Lyn and her girls and Lisa to join us!!

Terry's Better!

I never did update everyone on how Terry's surgery went, so I better get to it!


We had to be in Rochester on Thursday, Oct. 23rd for Terry's pre-op tests. Mom went along with us so I would have someone keeping me company while Terry was in the hospital. The pre-op tests went fine so when they were finished we got to explore Rochester a little bit. After dinner it was back to the hotel and to bed early. Terry had to be at the hospital at 5:45 the next morning.

We got Terry checked in, we were taken upstairs to a room and the process began. He had all the final tests done and then we waited for them to take Terry down to surgery. We were told that he would go to Radiology first to have the stone removed from his kidney, then into surgery to have the Uterer repaired. It was suppose to be a couple hour process. They came and got Terry so Mom and I were shown to the waiting room. I was shown how the information board worked so I could track where Terry was in the process (waiting to go into surgery, in surgery, recovery and back to his room). His information never changed......his was always in the "waiting to go into surgery" stage which Mom and I didn't understand. After a couple of hours someone came and got us and said Terry was on his way back to his room, which we REALLY didn't understand. Why hadn't he gone into surgery? I asked the nurses in his room some questions and they didn't know why he hadn't gone into surgery. All they knew was that he was brought back to his room and he wasn't scheduled for anymore procedures that day. I was quite confused and Terry was too out of it to know what was going on. It was frustrating not knowing why he hadn't had the surgery done which was why we were there in the first place. We were told we had to wait until the Dr. did his rounds after surgery's were finished to find out what was going on. Very frustrating. Finally, after 6 that evening, we got some answers to our questions. The Dr. said that when the stone was removed from Terry's kidney, the Radiologist flushed the Uterer and found that it was NOT collapsing, no sign of the scar tissue we were told was there and that the tube looked healthy and fine. They figured the stone was the problem the entire time. With the stone removed, they determined that further surgery wasn't needed. Great news......the only problem I had with entire process was that we had to wait until evening to find out all that information. All in all....the news was good, recovery time would be much less and Terry had very little pain. He had a drain tube placed in his kidney and that was removed the next day. They placed a small drain bag over the incision and told me I could take it off in a couple days when the incision had stopped draining. Terry was released later that day. He was in the hospital for 1 day!! Not too bad and he's been feeling great since then. No problems and we hope that it stays that way.

When he was released from the hospital we drove to Lisa's house in Hastings and stayed there for the night. We thought breaking up the drive home would make it a little easier for Terry to handle. Lisa and her family were nice enough to put up with us for another day and we appreciate their hospitality very much! The next day we drove home, through some early season snow, finally we were able to relax and take the results all in. Terry was off of work for two weeks, no lifting anything over 10lbs and was suppose to take it easy! You know how well that sits with somone that is used to being able to do things as he wanted to! He had to remeber that he couldn't pick up Ava, etc because of his restrictions.

It was actually a nice time to have the proceedure done as Lia was home for 3 weeks for a visit. Lia had come home to see her new little nephew, Milo.....and the rest of us too! It was nice having everyone together for a couple weeks and Terry actually got to enjoy the time and not have to go to work!!

So, Terry is feeling good and not too much worse for the wear! We all hope it stays that way too!

Our Mayo Trip

As most of you know, Terry had an appointment at the Mayo Clinic on Wednesday, Sept. 17th. Terry, Mom and I drove to Lisa's house in Hastings on Monday Sept. 15th. We spent the night there and on Tuesday Ter and I left for Rochester. We had to be at the Clinic at 6:30 am on Wed. Mayo is a very impressive place. After his check in, he had some blood work done and then on to the Dr. appt. We met with a Dr. Chow. Very nice and straight forward. He talked to Terry about the kind of surgery Terry wanted, looked at his scars from previous surgeries and then discussed the options. After all was said and done he informed us he was sorry but someone had made a mistake and scheduled Terry to see the WRONG Dr. as he DID NOT do the surgery we were sent there to see about. It has been a very frustrating road thus far thanks mostly to Duluth's mistakes!! Dr. Chow set up an appt. for Terry with the Dr. he needed to see. That appt wouldn't take place until the following Tues. So after some discussion between Terry and I, Mom and Lisa, we decided to stay at Lisa and Brian's house over the weekend until Terry's appt. on Tues.

On Tuesday, Sept. 23rd. we headed back to Rochester for his next appt. We met with Dr. Gettman and discussed Terry's surgery. They have decided that they will go in through Terry's flank, on the left side, and use a scope to get to the damaged part of the ureter (the tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder), cut out the bad part, insert a stent and let the tube heal around the stent. After a period of time for healing the stent will be removed. This surgery is much less invasive than his other option, so his recovery time should be much shorter, they think 2-3 weeks if all goes well. Now we are waiting to hear from Mayo as to when the surgery will be. They asked us when we would like to have the surgery done and we said the sooner the better since Jessie is getting close to delivering our next Grandchild (Grandson?)! So hopefully in the next week or two we will have all of this traveling & surgery behind us!

I took a few pictures of some beautiful glass sculptures hanging at the Mayo. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

I want to thank Lisa and her family for letting us invade their house for a week and a half. It was alot of fun to spend the time with all of them. Hopefully we didn't wear out our welcome!! I also want to thank Mom for letting us use her car.......better gas mileage than our truck.......and I hope she enjoyed the trip to Hastings and the visit with Lisa's family also!

When we have more information on the surgery, etc. I will be sure to pass it along.

Just Cuz Jam

Ken rocking out!
So, how was that??!!
Helping the band belt out a tune.
Ken and Joyce
Ken playing for his fans!

Roseanna Venzke

Ken and Mom.....SMILE!!!

Jonny "Rocker"!!

Enjoying the evening festivities.

Les, Brian, Kathy and Terry in the foreground and some of Joyce's family in the other group .

Ken running the archery event.

Mom, Kathy and Les watching the shooting.

Josh and his girlfriend Steph take their turns at shooting clay's.

Laurie shooting as Jon and Joyce watch.

Josh is running the thrower while Joyce shoots clay's.

Jon shooting clay's.

Jon helping Brian shoot clay's.

On Friday, August 8th Mom, Brian, Terry, Ter's brother Les and his wife Kathy and myself headed over to Almora, Mn. to stay at Jon and Joyce's farm. On August 9th they had their Just Cuz Jam up the road at their neighbor's place, Ken and Roseanna Venzke's. Just Cuz Jam was a fund raiser for Hunt of a Lifetime, which provides hunts for terminally ill children. I must say, they were all very well organized and had different things planned as part of the fundraiser. They had a clay target shoot, men's and women's catagories, an archery course set up, sold raffle tickets for a ton of great prizes, sold hats, can coozies and t-shirts. There was a lot of food provided through out the day and Ken, along with some friends and family, played music for us that evening. It was a beautiful day, wonderful evening and lots of fun was had by all. I hear they raised alot of money for the kids, which was the goal, so all in all it was tons of fun!! The following pictures were taken through out the day. Hope you enjoy them!

The "Terry Episode"

Poor Terry! Once again the 4th turned out to get the better of him. Terry and I had traveled down to Finlayson for the 4th Festivities with plans on staying with Les and Kathy at their lake place. We got to Finlayson Friday afternoon, around 2 and Terry got to visit with some of his cousins, friends, etc. We headed out to the lake for some cocktails, rest and relaxation. Les grilled up some burgers and afterwards Terry went for his 4 mile walk. By 8 o'clock that evening Terry started feeling crappy. Upset stomach that just got worse and worse. He slept very little and felt a bit better on Sat. am. There was a family pot-luck planned for 3 pm at Les and Kathy's and I think Terry wanted to see some of the relatives. He visited a little bit but you could tell he felt terrible. At about 4 or so I asked if he wanted to head home and he said yes. I told some of the relatives I was taking him to the emergency room. We left about 4:45 and arrived St. Mary's in Duluth about 6. Long story short at 1 am they finally admitted him to the hospital with what they thought was a bowel blockage. Sunday, no tests.....IV's and pain meds. Monday pretty much the same with a little bit of discussion on what tests they MIGHT do. No CT scan as he's allergic to the dye, no x-ray as they no longer believed it was a blockage and now the pain had radiated from his stomach area to his left kidney. It was finally decided to do a renal scan. It showed a problem with the left kidney. Tuesday they did a Lasik (sp) wash-out. They put some radiated liquid into his system. then watched to see how well the kidneys drained. Right kidney was fine, left wasn't so great. It was determined by the Urologist that Wed. am they would put a stent in to help with the flow out of the kidney. This is a temporay solution. It seemed to work and Terry was released from the hospital Thursday afternoon. He had been on a clear liquid diet from Sun. am until Wed. night when he finally got "real" food to see how he handled it. It seem to go down fine. He hasn't had the stomach pain again and the kidney is tender but getting better. He still tires easily and thinks he can do more than he should be......that's a stubborn German for you!! All in all. it was a scary few days but getting better now. He is looking at surgery on this kidney in the future but doesn't really know when yet. He goes back to meet with the Urologist on the 15th to discuss his options. I will let you know what those options may be and what the final decision is. Thanks to everyone for their support...it's greatly appreciated!

My little flower girl

Ava spent part of the day today with Grandma and Papa. We played and colored (Papa is getting better at staying in the lines!), watched Cinderella, played outside on her swing and then she helped water Grandma's flowers. We took a few pictures of her in the wild flowers in our field. What a cutie!!

Oops!! Our hotel in Boston was the Custom House.......I wrote Coach House for some silly reason. Sorry for the confusion. Either way, it was a very nice place to rest our weary bones!

Our hotel, The Coach House, Cheers and some of the "gang"!

Fanueil Hall, Paul Revere's home, Old North Church, the Freedom Trail, the Granary Cemetary, site of the Boston Massacre, Fenway Park, our hotel-Marriott's Coach House and much, much more!