You know you're too busy when...

I like to pride myself on my multi-tasking abilites, but sometimes I get a little carried away.

Maybe you're too busy when you're driving with your 9-year-old and he sincerely asks, "Is there a class to learn to drive with your knees?"

January Birthdays

With a family this big it seems like there's always a birthday lurking around the next corner. This month we celebrated Hannah and Ben and Dorothy's birthdays.

David and Ben drove out to Boston to go to lunch with Hannah and do a little shopping for their birthdays. After an Indian lunch, they stopped by Cheescake Factory and picked up Birthday Cheesecake.

Dorothy's birthday is this coming week, but they left for a cruise last Friday, so we took her to dinner at her favorite sushi restaurant on Thursday to celebrate her birthday. David called ahead and planned a little Birthday surprise for her. Whe needs birthday cake when you can have Birthday Sushi?

Isn't that hilarious? When David called the restaurant to make arrangements, they said, "Nobody's asked us to do that before", but they promised to do their best. (In case your wondering, the words were made out of spicy shrimp chopped up, formed, and cooked to set the letters. They tasted great!)

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Night Skiing and Boarding

Trip # 1 was David and Hannah hitting the slopes.

Trip #2 David, Chris, Parker, McKay, Bryson, and our Grandson John. This was McKay's first try at snowboarding. He picked it up really fast.

David giving McKay lessons.

Parker

John

For your viewing enjoyment, I have include a couple of video snippets.

Trip #3 David, Chris, Parker, McKay, and Bryson on $10 night at Jiminy Peak.

Bryson, watch out for that tree!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and everything in between

We had a Christmas Party the Saturday before Christmas at our house with friends and neighbors. We live in a more rural area, so people don't get out to meet their neighbors often. We introduced the neighbors on one side of our house to the neighbors on the other side. They've lived here longer than we have! I'm used to knowing all my neighbors, so I find it really weird that they didn't know each other at least by sight.

David's brother Jon also came to stay with us since he had a cold and Walt was coming home, so he couldn't stay up at the farm.

Christmas Eve we had David's kids over for brunch, Gingerbread houses and dinner.
Shhhh...they're concentrating.

Can you believe I wasn't up until 1 am wrapping presents on Christmas Eve? I always seem to do that. I just like to see what I have for the kids all at once before wrapping it so I make sure I don't get them too much or too little. This usually means I do most of my wrapping Christmas Eve. Which I did, but Hannah and Bryson helped and I got started earlier in the evening, so I wasn't up so late.

Christmas day was more low key. McKay got the sword he wanted, Parker got a new calculator and new scriptures, Bryson got software to put his compositions on sheet music and a box for putting his pokemon cards in (along with plenty of other things).

Several of the Young Women from the Ward came over for a Book of Mormon reading marathon. 28 hours reading with a 2 1/2 hour break for sleeping. It took me days to recover, but they loved it!

Saturday was Nathan's birthday party. On the menu: Lobster, baked potatoes, and corn.


We spent New Year's Eve with Nathan, Rachel, and Rachel's family, Jon, Julianna (Joyce's step-daughter) and Juliana's friend Brianna from Walt and Alice's ward. We had lots of snacks then a tense game of Phase 10 which ended minutes after midnight. The kids played games and watched movies downstairs. Juliana and Brianna stayed up and watched a movie after we sent everyone else to bed.

When everyone finally woke up on New Year's Day we went tubing.

McKay

Bryson

Jon Chris David
Brianna and Julianna

McKay, David, Chris, Bryson, Julianna, Brianna, and Jon. (Parker isn't much into tubing)

Happy New Year!

He'll Be Home For Christmas

That's right, Walt's getting out tomorrow. His white blood cell count was 3.8 today and he's packing his bags. He's very excited. Now Alice is going to be on duty around the clock. It's so much better at home, though.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

We got dumped on this weekend. Bryson was trying to make his way through the snow and look how deep it was!Just kidding. He was on his knees in the picture. But is was still really deep. Almost 18 inches at our house!

This picture gives a little more realistic perspective on how deep the snow is. That's our picnic table in the backyard.

So of course we had to take advantage of it. Tubing at the High School!

David

Bryson

Chris (Me)

McKay

Nathan and Rachel arrived home from Arizona between snow storms on Saturday and joined us for tubing last night.

My little (ha,ha 6 foot tall) sister, Jaime, came to visit Tuesday from Arizona. As she put it, "It's cheaper for me to fly out and buy your Christmas presents than it is for me to ship them." She works for one of the airlines, so it's really true. Plus we get to hang out together and go shopping. The only problem was that neither of us likes to shop. So we finally kicked ourselves out of the house around 11 to face the stores. We were done (fed up with shopping and got what we needed) by 2 and that included a stop for lunch. The rest of the day was spent as "Candy Fest 2008". We made lots of my Grandma Spykerman's candy recipes. Carmels, fudge, mints, candied pecans, etc. We had a great time! That night she wrapped the presents and asked if she really had to wrap mine. Of course she did. Watching her try to wrap it was as much fun as getting it! Check it out.

Aren't sisters great!?!

Worth the wait...

Good news! Walt's white blood cell count is finally coming back up. During Chemo, the count was around 0.2 to 0.3. On Thursday, day 21, the count was 0.4. We were guardedly optimistic. Friday was 0.5 and today 0.8. We can now confidently say his counts are going up. Yea! Normal range is 4.3 t0 10.8 if my I have my units correct. Once it starts to come back it usually comes back pretty quickly. It's not clear whether he'll be home for Christmas, but we're hoping.

And there was light...

We were without power from late Thursday night until Saturday evening. What a refreshing sight when we came home from the Ward (church) Christmas Party last night and our Christmas lights were on.

The freezing rain caused trees down all over the area leaving tens of thousands without power for more than 24 hours and many still without power. The branches in the picture above fell ON the van and did remarkably little damage. All the schools were closed Friday and the boys had the worst snow day ever because there was no power (no movies, tv, computer, video games, etc.), the house was down to 60 degrees, and we wouldn't let them go outside at all because we didn't want to open and close the doors unnecessarily and lose heat to the house. They occupied themselves most of the day playing Monopoly by candle light and then cleaning the house to soften up the parents so we would take them to a movie. It worked and David took to boys out to a nice warm movie theater and dinner while I want in to be with Walt at the hospital.

Saturday as the temperature reached 50 degrees in the house, we decided we better start trying to put some heat in the house because it could be days before the power was restored. We rigged up our car, which has a spectacular heater, to the house to blow some hot air in. Check it out.

Amazing what a little dryer vent and duct tape can do. We also set up a camp stove on the back porch for cooking and warmed water to put in the house to put more heat in the house (and for hot chocolate).

We got the house up a couple of degrees before leaving for warm showers at the YMCA and the Ward Christmas Party.

Freezing rain storms can be quite beautiful and a menace at the same time.

We were planning to decorate the Christmas tree downstairs by head lamp when he got home from the party, but the power was on. We were all a little disappointed, so we turned off the lights and did it anyway.

Day 12 Post Chemo- Walt's doing great!

Walt has been looking great the past couple of days. This time around with Chemo he hasn't even lost his hair. He's very happy about that. His color is good, his spirits are up, he is doing more walking than he did the last round in the hospital. All around he has been very blessed (again).

The bone marrow biopsy results are back and everything looks good with the exception of some fibrous material found in the sample. The doctor thinks it's nothing to worry about and it could be scarring from a past injury to his bone in that localized spot. They did not find leukemic cells. Yea!

Over the weekend he got the cardiologists all excited with episodes of a soaring heart rate, but everything seems to be fine now. They have been monitoring his heart around the clock for several days, now, and seem to be satisfied that he is not in any danger. He also got to meet one of the hospital's pulmonologists when they discovered fluid collecting in his chest cavity that was limiting his lung capacity. They drained off 1 liter of the fluid and sent some of it off for testing. They said it looked good; it didn't appear to be infected. We don't have the results from the tests, yet.

Despite some possible scares over the weekend which both turned out fine, the doctor thinks his blood count will be coming back by the end of this week and a few days later they'll have to kick him out of the hospital because he's doing so well. The doctor says the middle of next week is possible. I think the end of next week or the beginning of the following week is more realistic based on how long it took for his counts to come back last time. The magic day for us is day 17 post chemo. That's when they came back last time. Pray for no infections or other serious complications and we'll have him home well before Christmas!

David's back in town and fulfilling his Dad-tucking-in responsibilities most nights this week.

A good day for Walt

I didn't get to stop by and see Walt today, but I talked to Alice and it sounds like Walt had a good day today. By the time she got there in the morning, he was sitting up in the chair in his room and ready to take a walk. For those that have been on walks with him, you'll know that making it to the windows and back is sometimes a big deal. Not today. He walked to the windows, out to the waiting room, and back to his room without stopping! Wow! He was all cleaned up and ready for the day around 9am (usually he's just begun his struggle to eat breakfast by this time, luckily right now he's on a mostly liquid diet, so drinking his nutrition isn't as big of a deal).

Part of his motivation for getting all ready early today was because he had a bone marrow biopsy scheduled and he didn't know when they were going to come to take him for it. They didn't do the biopsy until the afternoon while Jen was there. He hates having this done, but I think he was probably excited to get the results from it. We won't have the results for a day or two. This should give us some early indication how effective the treatment was. The person taking the biopsy gave an initial indication that the sample looked like it should, so we're hoping all will be as good as we've been praying for.

We have had several people from work go in and visit with him this week and they seem to energize him more than the family does. Around us he can be tired, comfortable, and stubborn, but around them he is energized and animated. I know he likes to stay in the loop with what his scientists are doing, so it makes him feel better when they come visit him.

David is in China, again, right now wrapping up a business deal. He left on Tuesday and will be back Friday night. What kind of crazy person plans a trip like that?