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!