This is a picture of my friend Ryan Hess and his family. He was my best friend as a little kid. He was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in June of this year and is the sole-provider for his family. He is on an aggressive chemo regiman that is preventing him from working, and he may not be able to return to work for at least the next 4-6 months, maybe longer. He is rapidly running out of paid leave, leaving no income for his family. If you are a federal employee click here to see how you can help:

http://teamryanhess.blogspot.com/2009/06/please-help-ryan.html

The Big-5

On March 6th, my little Jayni celebrated her 5th birthday! She's officially gettin' old.

We celebrated right after lunch, opening some awesome presents and eating cake! Thank you to all of you who called and/or sent her a gift.

Anyway, back to turning 5. Jayni still loves her Barbies, and I decided to chuck the store-bought cake idea and made her a Barbie cake. Yes, siree! It took quite a while but was fun to do. Grandma Clark helped with her "dress", thank heavens!

Here are some pics:

Just Chillin'

While Nate has been on "bedrest" these past 2 weeks, he's managed to find ways to stay semi-occupied. Jayni has taken advantage of his short-term handicap and helped herself to perfecting her styling skills. Afterall, if it can be done with her hair, it can be done with his!

Playing some wii....

Addicted to his cold-therapy...but not his hydrocodone!

Scoping out the new digs for the scars that will be moving in soon....

What a Pain!

The shoulder, that is...just to clarify.

Nate went in for shoulder surgery today. After about 2 years of graduated pain we finally decided to have it checked out, and my only advice to you all is this: Don't wait! I don't think his shoulder would have been so messed up had we gone to the doctor much earlier....

We spent the morning cleaning up and getting the kids packed up to go spend the day at Ashley's house. Ashley is one of Jayni's favorite friends, and her mom was a life saver! In exchange for taking the kids for the day, we took Ashley's older sister to school on the way to the surgical center. Not exactly an even trade, but we do what we can! :) We'll make it up to them.



Here's Jayni waiting so impatiently for the moment she can go to Ashley's. She was dancin' around all morning singing about spending the day at the Merrills.



....in the meantime, Nate tried to calm his jitters by watching an episode of "Spiderman" with Aleks. He was a bit touchy this morning, and really didn't want to admit to being nervous. Plus he was starving. Nothing makes a person hungrier faster than being told he can't eat anything!



Ahhh...the drugs. The moment I walked into Nate's recovery room there was not a doubt that he was "feelin' good". If it's possible, he was a bit crazier than normal and his sense of humor was very much intact. Then the nausea hit. A quick shot in the leg fixed that and a little while later we were off.

This is the smile he mustered for the camera. I can't wait until tomorrow, when hopefully he will start remembering things. I feel like a broken record!

Here are the facts:

Nate had surgery at 1pm until about 2:15-ish. Dr. Johnston came out for a quick visit to let me know things went really well. Then he got this grim, half-apologetic look on his face and told me that Nate is way too young to have that much damage in his shoulder.

The Damage: He had a torn labrum (called a SLAP tear) that went from top to bottom, which was worse than what they estimated from the MRI. But it's fixed! There was also damage to his rotator cuff that Dr. Johnston said might call for a formal repair. But alas, it was only torn about 20%; he also cut off part of bone (can't remember what it's called--acromion, maybe?) that curved down and was an active participant in the ruin of the tendon. Anyway, long story short, the labrum has been repaired and the rotator cuff should repair itself now that it's not being poked at. :)

What's next? A sling for 4 weeks, PT for about 5-6 months.

I guess there won't be any golfing for a while....

Pretty Princess (Bridal Show Pictures *Finally*)

Fashion Diva

Jayni is so excited to announce her first modeling gig!

'Tis the season for bridal/wedding shows. Nate had one last weekend and another this weekend, then another one in February. MW has a great relationship with the folks at David's Bridal--they help sell our tuxes, and we help sell their dresses. Since the two go hand-in-hand, they supply the clothing for the fashion shows at the bridal shows. Well, Jayni was asked to be one of the models for David's Bridal! She probably won't be in the fashion show portion, however she will be a fixture for the entire day. She even has someone who will do her hair and makeup!

She is on cloud 9, as you can imagine. Today we took her in to pick out a dress and get it fitted, and I think she would have stayed the rest of the day if we would have let her. She was so cute, quietly drifting from one dress to another, trying to decide which one had the most sparklies. We narrowed it down to a pretty little dress that will match her daddy's tux. He is wearing "watermelon", so she has a matching sash.

We'll add some more pictures after Saturday!

This was Jayni's first pick. It was beautiful!

Here's the winner with the watermelon sash. Can't see very well, but there are all sorts of glittery, sparkly things on the tulle skirt, which equals perfection in Jayni's opinion.

Reverse Chronology of Christmas in Pictures

Christmas Time (was) Here

Happy Christmas!

We had a great time this year, spending our holiday with our dear cousins: Tommy, Sierra and Josh. Determined not to be bored and to have a great time, we pow-wowed about a week before Christmas to plan. It took us all night because the boys were a little rebellious and goofy, but fortunately Sierra and I know how to take charge of our men! So here's what we did (and didn't do):

Three days before Christmas, Sierra and I tackled the task of shopping for our Christmas dinner items in one of the busiest stores ever...Walmart!! It was absolutely insane, but we made it out of there in record time!

Sierra and I started cooking early in the morning on Christmas Eve--we decided to have our big dinner that night instead of Christmas night. We had a humongous turkey that took forever to cook, but it was sooooo worth it. Things went very well until I burned the yams, which I've never done before! So sad because it's my favorite part of the meal.... However, everything else was delicious and we had a great time with lots of laughs at dinner.

Oh! I forgot. We came up with a fun little possibly-new-tradition idea. During our planning meeting we were split in half over whether or not to open a gift on Christmas Eve. In the Jorgensen family it's tradition. In Sierra's and my family it's not. So we compromised and came up with a super-fun activity. We drew names right before dinner and kept that name a secret. Then we piled into our van and went to Walmart, each of us with five dollars. The goal: dash into the store and find a $5 gift for the person whose name you drew as fast as you can. It was a total blast! We opened our gifts after dinner, and you'd be amazed at the awesome things you can get for only $5!!

Okay, so anyway, after dinner we all gathered at our house, where everyone slept to elimnate "commuting" for Christmas morning. The kids were up bright and early as usual, so we started opening presents right around 6-ish. The kids were so excited! (not to mention the adults)

We had a yummy breakfast of Aebelskivers (a super-tasty Jorgensen tradition) and Ziploc omlets (also very tasty and so simple!). Then came the laziness.... We watched a couple movies, ate our weight in treats and snacks, napped a little bit...you get the idea! We were supposed to make sugar cookies to take to a few of our friends, but discovered the day before that none of them would be around. So we decided enough of the laziness! Let's go play in the snow! We did and we had a blast!!

So even though we were stranded for the Holidays, we ended up having a great time, mostly because Tommy, Sierra and Josh were stranded too. It was so nice to have some family to celebrate with. We are so lucky to have them close by!