Christmas 2008

Enjoy some pictures from our Christmas celebrations!

Christmas Eve with my Dad and Angela

Kisses from Gracie's great-great-grandmother

Okay, she got this dress, and would NOT stop trying to put it on her head... it was so funny!

Christmas morning

She wanted to help us put her new piano together

Sing-a-ling-in'!

At Nana's for Christmas breakfast!

Rocking horse!

Sara's Surgery

I had a fibroadenoma removed from my left breast on December 19th. I discovered it five years ago and in 2004 had two different ultrasounds taken six months apart to look at the growth pattern. I consulted with Dr. Leach of the Breast Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center in October 2004 after my second ultrasound and she advised me to either get it taken out right then so that I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore, or to just monitor it, as it wasn't growing enough to really worry about. I was only 19 at the time, and was pretty reluctant to have any kind of surgery (I never have before) so I opted to just monitor the mass on my own. Over the following three years I never noticed anything unusual with it. While I was pregnant, I noticed that it became significantly larger, and told my doctor, who said that was normal during pregnancy and breastfeeding and to follow up and have it checked again six months after I finished breastfeeding, since it would most likely return to its normal size by then. Well.... it never got smaller. In November I actually started having pain, so I went to my new doctor, Dr. Van Dell (he's awesome) and he ordered an ultrasound to check the size. The mass had more than doubled in size since 2004. He referred me to Dr. Scott McDearmont, a surgeon in Lewisville. Dr. McDearmont was very cool and to the point. He told me that he needed to test the mass, and that could be achieved by a needle biopsy or surgical removal of the entire thing. If the needle biopsy test results showed anything abnormal, I would have to have it removed anyway, and there was almost no difference in cost between the two, so I opted for the surgery.

It was scheduled for 7am on Friday, December 19th at Baylor Surgicare of Lewisville (coincidentally located about two hundred yards from my work). We had to be there at 6am (ugh). We got there, filled out a couple of forms, then I was taken back to be prepped. I changed into the ugly gown and hopped up on the bed (gurney?), at which point I got three huge, soft, really warm blankets piled on me because I was freezing. That was the best part of the whole thing. =) I met my nurse and then my anesthesiologist, who were both very nice and calming. I thought I'd be freaking out by that point but I was surprisingly okay. The only real worry I had was about a drug called Versed that they commonly give surgery patients anout a half-hour before their procedure to "calm them down". It is an amnesia drug, and you are able to follow directions and be alert and have conversations yet you never remember any of it later. I did not like the sound of that. I am one of those few people who may not like something, but I want to know every single thing about it. I wanted to be awake all the way to the operating room, look around, meet everyone in there, and still remember it all the next day. So I discussed this with my anesthesiologist, who very nicely allowed me to let me explain how I felt and then compromised with me. He was going to give it to me anyway, because apparently it helps the effectiveness of the anesthesia during the actual procedure, but he would wait until the moment they were ready to roll me into the OR to add it to my IV. It takes about five minutes to take effect, which would give me time to see everything in the OR that I wanted. I agreed, and then Dr. McDearmont came in to explain the details of the procedure (I made him tell me everything). I got to visit with David for a bit (and got another awesome hot blanket) and then it was time! The Versed was added to my IV right as the nurse unlocked the brakes on my bed and started rolling me away. I was pushed through a couple of doors and then into the OR, where I saw my doctor, and saw everything around me, and then I remember looking at huge lights above me and commenting that they were exactly like what you see on TV. My nurse laughed, and then my anesthesiologist told me to breathe deeply from this mask... one breath... another.... and then I woke up in recovery. It was great. Dr. McDearmont went to talk to David after my surgery and said that it took less than thirty minutes and the mass was completely removed. While it ended up being bigger than he expected, it had the appearance and characteristics of a harmless fibroadenoma, but he would know for sure when the results were in from the lab in a week. I was kept in Recovery for another five minutes after I woke up (I was only in there about 20 minutes total) and then brought to the Discharge room, where I got dressed and met up with David. I was alert but still a little fuzzy around the edges so the discharge nurse talked to David for me about everything. He signed something, got my pain prescription and other instructions, and then went to get the car. The nurse wheeled me to the door and I got right into the car. The car's clock said 8:24am. Talk about in and out!

I had a rough recovery at home. I was feeling fine when we got home Friday morning, and slept a lot of that day and night, only needing to take two of my Darvocet the whole day. Saturday I woke up and felt GREAT! I took one Darvocet mid-day, and that was it. I was up and moving around a little, played with Gracie some, and had a really good day! Then that night I started getting a little nauseated, but figured it was the Darvocet (I was told to eat with it). The next day I felt awful. I was sick and very weak all day. I thought it was the Darvocet, so I stopped taking it and just took Tylenol for the mild incision pain. I ended up being sick all through Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I called Dr. McDearmont and he and his nurse were pretty convinced I must have picked up a small stomach bug, because neither Darvocet nor any of the drugs or anesthesia I had during my surgery would cause such long-lasting stomach discomfort. So I just kept up my fluids as best as I could, but I was unable to eat more than one piece of bread each day. Christmas Eve (Wednesday) was the first day I woke up feeling better, which was good because we had a big family day planned. I got really tired really fast, though, probably because of not eating well. Christmas morning I woke up feeling good again, and actually hungry for once. We had breakfast with my mom and I ate a lot... and kept it down! I still got very tired that evening, but the next day (Friday) I woke up feeling great. So it took me an entire week to recover from whatever was wrong with me. I still think I had a reaction of some sort to one or more of the drugs I was given, but I guess we'll never know.

Dr. McDearmont called me the Tuesday after my surgery and let me know that the lab test results came back great. It was a benign fibroadenoma. No cancer or anything serious. And now that it's out I don't have anything to worry about! yay! =)

So that was my first experience with surgery. Okay, I had tubes put in my ears when I was an infant, but I don't remember it at all so I wouldn't count it as an "experience". I'm happy that I was able to stay calm and trust the doctors and nurses to do a good job, very pleased that the anesthesiologist worked with me on my concerns about the Versed, and surprised at how quickly I was in and out. A good experience. Thank you to everyone who kept me in their prayers, whether you knew the whole story or not. I appreciate it, and am very grateful!

Party time!!!

Gracie's party was held at her Aunt Myka's house in Corinth. We decorated in purple and pink, and had lots of treats! I'll let the pictures tell the story (these were taken by my mom, I'll add more as I get them from the other wonderful party photographers!):

Treat table! I made vanilla and chocolate cake balls instead of a big cake... it was a lot of work, so I don't think I'll make them again for awhile! Gracie's small cake was strawberry.

Gracie's friends decorating their balloons with stickers!

My beautiful darling birthday girl

With her Nana

Tasting the cake...

Had two handfuls at a time!

Starting into her presents...

I love this picture: Gracie in the middle of all her presents and her friends!

Playing with her friend Logan on her two new scooter toys!

Me with one of my best friends Ashley and her husband Bennie

Gracie's 1st Birthday!

Today is her birthday! I am so excited! She had a great day opening a few presents this morning and then visiting with Papa and Nana Janet tonight (they won't be able to make her party tomorrow). Enjoy some pictures!

Opening her kitchen from Grammy

This is Monster, a 150lb Rottweiler. He's a huge teddy bear and Gracie loves him!

The Ranch

Today we went out to the ranch (it was my first time to go, and Gracie hadn't been since this summer). Gracie had such a fun time meeting all the animals and walking all over the yard with Grammy and Mommy while Daddy and PeePaw went shooting. Here are some pictures of her fun day!

This is Gracie's new car seat! We're supposed to wait until her first birthday, but she is just way too big for her old one and was getting very bored looking at the back window all the time! She loves her new forward-facing seat!

Longshot Ranch

Sister, the ranch dog

Mo the Arabian horse, and Penelope and baby donkey

Lucy Running around the yard

Meeting the baby bull

GRACIE'S WALKING!!!!!

She has been "cruising the walls", using the walls for support as she walks around the room. She also has perfected standing up straight by herself with no support, even drinking her juice and playing with toys while she's standing, without losing her balance. In the last week, she's been taking a couple of steps away from whatever she is holding onto, but then dropping to her knees to crawl the rest of the way. The last two days she has actually attempted up to four steps toward something before she drops and crawls, which was very exciting. Well TODAY, just like any other afternoon, I am at her school to pick her up and when I walked through the door to her classroom, she is standing up holding onto the wall, about 20 feet directly across the room from me. She sees me walk through the door, smiles a huge smile, and then takes a couple of steps away from the wall. I pause inside the door, waiting for her to drop down and crawl the rest of the way to me as she usually does.... but she WALKS ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM INTO MY ARMS! My jaw dropped; I was amazed! I scooped her up and kissed her all over, and she just giggled non-stop. She was so proud of herself! Her teachers said she had been taking several steps at a time all day, but they wanted me to see it for myself and be surprised (they're so cool). I got her home and set her down and she walked all over the place. We clapped and cheered her whenever she did; now she claps at herself while she's walking! Haha it's so cute. I'm pretty sure we wore her out; she's passed out like a rock now, hehe.

I wasn't expecting how this would make me feel. I knew I would be proud and excited, but I didn't realize how strong those emotions would be. I remember how my heart swelled up so fast the very first moment I saw her face when she was born, and hadn't expected to feel that again so soon. Well, when she launched herself into my arms today, the feeling was pretty close! It's such a huge separation from BABY to LITTLE GIRL. She grew up right in front of my eyes today, and my heart swelled up again with that overwhelming pride and joy. She is truly my greatest happiness. But now I no longer have a little bitty baby... we need to get to work on fixing that. (;-P)

I did take a bunch of video clips of her walking tonight, but I can't figure out how to get them off of this video camera we have. I will post them here when I am able to get them.

So yay for walking! It's amazing how she took to it so quickly. I remember her crawling pretty much overnight, too. Gracie's just full of surprises! Now we just have to get her more shoes! =)

Gracie's new toy, standing up, walking, and spaghetti!!!

Today we took it pretty easy, as we drove to Abilene and back yesterday for my grandfather's funeral. We cleaned up the house a bit and realized that Gracie has outgrown a lot of her toys. So we went to lunch at McDonald's together (she loves the chicken nugget happy meals!) and then went to Babies R Us. We found a shopping cart toy for her to push around (it's not a walker, as she can't put all her weight on it) and got her Lil People collection started with a school bus toy. When we got home and put her toys together she started pushing that cart around and literally squealed with delight! She's been standing on her own more and more confidentally over the last week, and taking a lot of steps, but this just got her feet going so fast! She even figured out pretty quickly how to back it up and turn it around when it got stuck against a wall. She's so smart. =) She crawled that bus around the living room, but kept coming back to the cart. It came with toy food and things to match shapes, and it sings and counts, too! She absolutely loves it and it's so cute! Then for dinner we had one of her favorite meals: spaghetti! Enjoy some pictures of her having fun with her new toys, standing, and "hoovering" her spaghetti! =)

Prayers please

My grandfather Gerald passed away this afternoon. He was my stepmother Angela's dad, and a wonderful, gentle, godly man. Funeral arrangements are being made tomorrow, so I am as yet unaware of specific dates and times, but we are now tentatively planning to head to Abilene on Friday afternoon and return Saturday evening.

Please pray for us and for my family as we head through this difficult time. Thank you, and love to you all.

I wish Obama wasn't black.

I have strong opinions. Those of you who know me well are very aware of this, as I don't hesitate to say what I feel. You've heard me talk about it, read my pointed emails, even seen the quotes in my email signature. Now, I am not fond of forcing my opinions on someone who is in disagreement with me, and try to never do that, however I do try my hardest to make that person see my reasoning behind my choice of opinion. I want them to fully comprehend what I feel is the common sense behind my choice. It is very important to me to do that. That said, please do not take offense to the thoughts that I'm about to present on the election results.

I'm utterly disappointed. Big surprise. My emotions are a whirlwind right now: I want to cry, yell, and denounce anyone I know that voted for a Democrat, but at the same time I'm desperate to find SOMETHING positive about it, anything at all. Here are the three positive things I've come up with so far:

1) He's not President until January 20th, 2009. Whoopee.
2) John Cornyn won his race for the Senate. Thank you, God. I really really like him, and I'm glad he'll be in DC fighting for us.
3) California passed the ban on same-sex marriages. I know a lot of gay people, and they're wonderful, nice, awesome human beings but man, I can't in my right mind condone something that is so against what I believe in. Marriage is between a man and a woman, period. When the law comes into play with that, it makes me mad, so I'm glad to see that the ruling in May allowing the marriages has been overturned by the people of California. Way to go.

Unfortunately, the negatives are far outweighing the positives at the moment. In addition to Obama being elected President, and Democrats taking control of everything else (*shudder*), here is a soup of sad proposals that were passed last night:

1) Colorado voted against specifying life beginning at conception. Abortion supporters successfully made everyone think that this would affect some forms of birth control, and while it would, how can that justify taking a life?
2) South Dakota voted against a ban on all abortions except in cases of rape, incest and serious health threat to the mother. Just sad to me.
3) Washington joined Oregon in offering terminally ill patients the option of physician-assisted suicide. I want to know how this was worded on the ballot that would not make this sound so morally wrong to a voter. They call it the "Die with Dignity" Law. Wow, I don't see anything dignified about taking my own life. I don't think it's my decision to make. There is a reason that suicide is wrong, whether you're depressed or just terminally ill, it's wrong. I hope Washington and Oregon physicians aren't forced to offer this option, that they can make their own moral decision to grant their patient this option or not. I can see this being horribly abused by families of these patients. I hope that life insurance policies won't grant anything to families of patients who exercise this option.
4) The cherry on top is Massachusetts decriminalizing marijuana possession under one ounce. Really? Okay, an ounce is an ounce, but do you really think that is the only ounce that has ever been in possession? This just baffles me as to why one ounce is any different from a pound of the stuff. It's a drug. What's next, cocaine? Heroin? Just... wow.

The country in which I get to raise my daughter for the next four years is not looking very appealing. Thank God I'm in Texas, where we're mostly Republicans with common sense (just need to stay out of the city centers). I feel like I'm going to have the taste of vomit in my mouth for a very long time. I just can't understand how the following stands by Obama appealed to anyone. I can't understand the common sense behind them; I don't think there is any:

1) "Share the wealth": Levy very high taxes on anyone making a lot of money, and "share" it with the middle and lower class. How does this help anyone? Tim works his butt off in high school to get into a good college, works his butt off there to learn as much as he can and graduate with a technical or bachelor's degree, then kicks off his career in the corporate world or in an inherited business or even starts his own business. He works his butt off there to move up and build and puts in hours of time and sweat and just plain hard work and determination to finally reach a point where he is making a great amount of money to keep him and his family comfortable. A well-deserved earning. His high school classmate Tom, meanwhile, is having trouble finding a job after he decided to drop out of college or not even go at all. He sits on his couch watching TV, playing video games while his girlfriend takes care of their child, maybe he even has a part-time job somewhere. They get to a point where they can't make ends meet, but they don't really want to get out there and work multiple jobs, go back to school, work themselves up to a greater amount of income, don't really want to work, period, so they apply for government assistance. The government says, "Sure, you know, Tim over here is making a ton of money, we'll just take some from him and hand it over to you." HOW IS THAT FAIRNESS? Obama is mis-using the word "equality" to make this appeal to the lower and middle class. This isn't India, we aren't stuck in these classes forever. I know that I didn't finish college, that David and I got married and had a kid too early, that neither one of us makes the money we want to, but when things get tight financially I certainly don't look to someone else to give me handouts. I know I have the ability to go back to school, to get a better job. I can make more money! But now, why should I throw my hard work and determination into increasing my income when I know that I could reach a certain point that it would just be taken away again and given to the lazy person who didn't put forth the extra effort? Why should I provide for them? This share the wealth thing is just about making lazy people lazier, and taking motivation away from the hard-worker. It's very very sad to me that people actually think this is a good idea. This is just the way of the Democrat, though. Ugh.

You know what? I'm done here. There are a TON more reasons why I didn't vote for Obama, but they are just a lot of common sense, and I associate with some pretty intelligent people, so I'm sure that if you disagree with something, I do too.

My final thought is how sad and disappointing this is for our country. The question I want to face to the majority of Obama voters is this: Would you have voted for him if he wasn't black? Or if both candidates were black, would you have voted for him, being forced to compare the issues? I'm just crushed that the main reason you hear all over TV as to why these people voted Obama is that they want to see the first black president. I don't care what he looks like, I care about the issues. I did my research. If he had been the Republican and McCain the Democrat, I would have voted for him. But he wasn't. He was the Democrat, with radical ideas and full of ever-changing opinions. Unstable stances on issues, pushing the wrong ideas for our country, issues that I just flat didn't agree with. The issues between the two candidates were incredibly different. I just wish he wasn't black. I believe that would have saved America from this downfall.

We have our first black president. I could care less.

No infection yet...

Well Gracie finished off her antibiotic Saturday, and so far no sign of her ear infection(s) returning! I can tell she still might have some fluid in there, and she does pull at her left ear occasionally when it's hurting her, but she's still eating and sleeping well. I am still going to get her into the doctor sometime this week to check it out. We've been giving her the nosespray every day so hopefully that's helping to gradually ease the pressure. We will see what happens!

Sunday, plus a Gracie update

So we set our clocks back last night before we went to bed and let Gracie stay up late, but we were still hit hard this morning by the time change. Gracie usually wakes up about 6:30 every single morning, regardless of how late she was up the night before, so when she happily started chatting away this morning and we saw 5:30 on the clock, we knew it would be a sleepy day!
We tried to take it easy and catch up with little catnaps throughout the day, but Gracie played good and hard! Here are some pictures of her being her ornery self!

Kisses to wake up Daddy from his nap!

Now for an update! Gracie is doing something new every day.... she climbs up and down onto everything, gives kisses! (she comes at you open-mouth, but it's precious and its obvious that she wants a kiss), is now pretty clear with her "Mommy"s and "Daddy"s, dances to any music she hears, claps (which is so cute), stands up all by herself and even takes steps without holding onto anything! Not full-blown walking yet, but she was doing it more and more just this weekend so I'm sure she'll take off on her own very soon! She loves to lay her head down on soft blankets and dogs (haha), and is pretty much done eating baby food. She eats all kinds of food with her hands, and especially loves pancakes (no syrup or butter, of course)! She even had her first McDonald's food today, a chicken nugget kids meal with apples and she ate it all! She is down to only 3 bottles a day: wake-up, afternoon nap, and night-night bottle. She has so many expressions that she makes with those big brown eyes, and her giggles are absolutely infectious. We can't get enough of them!