Busy, Busy!

Well, you can tell our sno-cation is over by the sad lack of blogging. Yes, we are back to real life here. This past week was the last week of basketball for both Nathan and Luke. Nathan has been playing on a jr. high team from a Christian homeschool co-op. Several friends from our other co-ops were also on the team, and Nathan has had a really fun season with them. They played in their end-of-season tournament, so they had games Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then they also played in a little tournament at a near-by Christian school on Saturday. The host school played the weakest team (and won handily) at 9:30. Then Nathan's team played another homeschool team at 10:45. Nathan's team lost to this team twice during the regular season in 2 close games, but they were able to beat this team on Wednesday in the first of their playoff games. So the other team was out for blood. It was a really fast-paced and close game, but Nathan's team lost. So then Nathan's team turned around and played the other losing team at 12:00! Even though the other team really was a weaker game, the score was closer than you might think because everyone was tired! Plus, Nathan's coach let all the non-starters play most of the game because he's a really nice guy who is not out to blow other teams away. The host team played the team that beat Nathan at 1:15--and guess what? They won by a huge margin! The other team was exhausted from the game against Nathan's team, and they didn't have many subs at all. The whole thing was a little rigged! Still, a fun day of basketball. I enjoyed visiting with several of the other moms, including one from the losing team, who we used to go to church with.

Luke had his last Upward basketball game on Saturday afternoon at 3:00. He is on a good team, coached by the dad of someone in our co-op. His team was undefeated! (Not that that matters in Upward, LOL) He definitely enjoyed all the winning, and he was a big part of his team's success. He was very faithful to practice his shots outside--at least until the hoop was surrounded by many feet of snow.

Grace has been progressing very well with her potty-training, I am pleased to announce. She has not had an accident for several days. Although she still does not like to use public toilets, she can hold it a really, really long time, so she hasn't even gone in her pull-up when we've been out. I put her in a pull-up when we went to the commissary Wednesday (we finally did have to stock up again after all our snow storms!), for all the basketball games, and for church today. Otherwise she's been in underwear. She is still resistant to pooping on the potty, but lately she was holding it in as opposed to going in her underwear. Now that obviously is not a workable long-term plan either, so I was very thrilled when she said she had to go last night and pooped on the potty with me not promting her. Hopefully this will get more comfortable for her, and we won't be dealing with big constipation issues. Those are no fun!

Another big project of the past week has been preparing for a house appraisal. We decided to try to refinance, since we locked in a great rate. Also, we got our tax assessment for our house, which was a ridiculous amount. We figured, even if our house doesn't appraise for what it needs to, then we will show our appraisal to the county, and they will have to lower our assessment! We can't lose! LOL, we really would like to refinance, so we'll see what happens. Bob got busy finishing up a bunch of these little projects around the house, and the rest of us cleaned. The dining room, in particular, was still an absolute mess from all the December new carpet/tile/paint work. It got easy to just throw every loose end thing from around the rest of the house in the dining room on top of all the stuff that never got moved back to wherever it came from, and it all looked pretty messy. When Bob talked to the appraisers last week, they said they were going to come oout next Saturday. They were running behind because of all the snow, but that didn't leave us enough time before our rate lock ran out. So then they said they would work up in Monday. But yesterday afternoon they called right after I left to go too a baby shower and said they were going to come today, Sunday, between 8:00 and 10:45!! Ack! Bob and I stayed up VERY late last night finishing up the cleaning, and for Bob, finishing up some painting. The good news is that we had small group over at our house right after church, and the house has never looked cleaner! The appraisers actually called at 7:30 this morning to say they were on their way. They arrived at 8:00, before the kids even had a chance to mess things up! Anna and Grace were still asleep, in fact. I just opened their door, and they slumbered through the whole thing, LOL. So we don't know how we did, but at least the house is clean.

One thing that put a very somber spin on this whole week was a phone call I got on Wednesday afternoon as I was taking Nathan to one of his basketball games. It was my friend Christine from church. She has 2 little girls, and back in May 2007, before the birth of her first daughter, she came over to talk about labor and delivery. Since then, we've become good friends. Her 2 daughters are about the same ages as Grace and Faith. Two weeks ago, right as the first blizzard was starting, she was in terrible abdominal pain. Another friend from church, who is an ER doctor took her to the ER while her husband stayed with the girls. It turned out that she had a large ovarian cyst, which had ruptured. She had immediate surgery, and the doctors couldn't save the ovary. She got the biopsy report on the ovarian cyst on Wednesday, and it was cancerous, so she has ovarian cancer. This was a tremendous shock to everyone, including her doctor. She has had 2 appointments with oncologists this weekend, and she is facing major abdominal surgery next week, where they move all the organs around to see exactly where if anywhere the cancer has spread, and where they want to do a complete hysterectomy. Then she will start chemo. If the cancer is an early stage, then they will give her maybe 2 weeks to recover from the surgery, although it is going to be so major that she won't be able to lift anything for 6 weeks. If it is more serious, then they will start chemo immediately, and they will do the chemo every week, instead of every 3 weeks. I just can't imagine how dreadful this is going to be. We are all praying fervently that the cancer is first stage and hasn't spread. But no matter what, she is going to feel so terrible for so long, and it is going to be so hard for her and her beautiful girls. Please pray for Christine, Jeremy, Anna, and Bethan. Life can change in such an instant.