winter-ish weather

Well, it’s happening again. Winter-ish weather has finally struck Arkansas, and the natives are rather freaked. Cornerstone has canceled all youth events for the evening, and Pastor Eddie even canceled Sawyer’s French horn lesson (considering Sawyer didn’t have a lesson last week because of Roger’s wrist surgery, it will be interesting to see how well Sawyer does with his mini recital next Wednesday).

I don’t blame people for not wanting to be out on the roads here when the semi winter-like weather hits. Arkansas certainly isn’t equipped to handle snow and/or ice on the roads. It makes me chuckle though when the weather reports start calling for a tiny little bit of snow ~ any amount of snow causes the locals to run to the grocery store to stock up on food, and Home Depot and Lowe’s sell out of generators.

I guess growing up in Montana skewed my view a bit. There were times when I would wake up to go to school and realize I couldn’t see my car parked outside ~ it was buried under all of the snow that had fallen overnight. And believe me, it was hard to miss my first car (we didn’t call it "The Pumpkin" for nothing ~ we probably should have called it "the orange traffic cone" because that’s the color it was).

Thankfully we have no plans that require us to leave our house for the next day or two. The roads will probably be terrible, and since we are in the south, you can bet that most of the people who do venture out probably shouldn’t be driving on the snowy/icy roads. Driving in wintry conditions truly is a learned skill, and since the average winter here only contains a scant few days of wintry conditions, the people here just don’t have the chance to develop those skills.

I can hear the "snow" hitting the skylights in my office/craft room as I type this. I have a feeling that when I take Jake out for his morning romp it’ll be an icy winter-like scene. I hope the cows who roam the field behind my house have bedded down in the barn tonight!

new look

Yep ~ new look, same old blog.

roger’s surgery

Roger’s surgery yesterday went well. He has been sleeping most of the time since then ~ he seems to wake up about half an hour before he’s supposed to take the next dose of Vicodin. He’ll eat something small, take the pill, and be out again within 10 minutes! Weenie. I take Vicodin almost every day, and it doesn’t effect me that way. LOL Of course, I’ve built up quite a tolerance to it ~ I know that makes a huge difference.

God has been very gracious in helping me to feel well for the past two days. I know there are a LOT of people out there praying for me and with me that I’ll be able to do what needs to be done while Roger’s "out of action." I appreciate your prayers ~ for the past 2 days I’ve felt fairly well, had more energy than I have in quite a while, and my pain level has dropped significantly. The weather report calls for mostly sunny with highs in the 50’s for the next day or two, then it’s supposed to get colder and rainy. I’m finding that when the temperature drops here, accompanied with moisture (rain, snow, sleet, more humidity), my pain level increases significantly. So, if the weather cooperates, I should feel ok for at least a couple more days.

Roger’s hand is encased in a splint with lots of cotton surrounded by an ace bandage. The splint allows him to move his fingers, but his thumb is immobile. The doctor didn’t have to do anything to the cartilage in Roger’s wrist, but he did have to fix the tendon that runs up the side of the wrist to the thumb. Roger has a severe case of tendinitis, which has caused the significant amount of pain and weakness he has experienced since breaking his elbow. The doc said he disconnected the tendon, made the pathway of the tendon through the bone larger, the reconnected the tendon. Roger will have several (if not many) months of physical therapy in order to regain full use of his hand and thumb. He has to go back to see the surgeon in 2 weeks, and after that he’ll probably begin physical therapy. The doctor has recommended that Roger not go back to work for a month, so he should be able to get plenty of rest and work on getting that hand back to working properly.

rainy day

It has been a long, lovely, rainy day. Roger and I slept until about 9am, then really didn’t do much after that! Roger did some sorting and preparing in order to do all the filing that we always let pile up; I worked a little on the nutrition section of my someday-to-actually-be-finished/long-awaited cookbook. Oh, Roger did the laundry, too (lucky me ~ I have a husband who does the laundry because he hates doing it slightly less than I do!).

Patrick is home from school for an extended weekend. He and Sawyer went on a choir retreat yesterday ~ they’ll be home this afternoon around 4:00. Our church’s youth choir is planning a trip to Baylor University in February for the annual YouthCue Festival. The kids are really looking forward to it.

After working on my cookbook a bit, I took a nap. Well, at least I tried to take a nap. My brain wouldn’t stop thinking about all of the things I need to include in my cookbook, so I’m not sure I ever really actually went to sleep.

Roger has gone to pick up the boys from the retreat; I think I’ll go take a nice, long, warm shower (since it’s after 3pm and I haven’t bothered to do that yet today). It’s a rainy day, and I’m feeling quite lazy!

i finally got it

I have finally managed to contract the cold my husband and older son have been passing back and forth. Roger has had this thing in one form or another for about 4 weeks ~ the cough and chest congestion just won’t seem to go away. I started taking Zicam yesterday when I felt like I might be getting sick, and I’ve continued taking it every 3 hours as per the directions. I’m also slamming the vitamin C and hot tea. Rebecca swears by the Zicam ~ I hope she’s right!

speaking of the retreat….

Patrick is planning on attending the youth choir retreat this weekend (the same one Sawyer’s going on). The youth choir will be practicing for the YouthCue Festival to be held this February at Baylor University (Waco, Texas). Patrick will have a harder time with all of the songs and the performances because he isn’t able to attend choir practices on Monday evenings, but Pastor Eddie has a solution for that problem. He makes CDs of all the different songs and parts ~ Patrick will get his CDs this weekend and be able to take them back to school with him. Then he’ll be able to practice the songs. Hopefully Pastor Eddie won’t throw in too many "dance moves" or complicated clapping routines ~ if he does, Patrick may have a hard time faking it through and looking like he knows what he’s doing!

sawyer’s camera

Sawyer was finally able to get that digital camera he has had his eye on. He saved up all of his birthday and Christmas money, and also used the money in an account one of his grandmothers had set up for him. It’s a nice little camera ~ a Canon Powershot S3 or something to that effect. He’s having a great time taking pictures around the house and yard. The youth choir is going on a retreat this weekend, and he’s so excited about taking the camera with him. He convinced Roger to give him "an advance" on his allowance so he can buy a better memory card. It will be fun to see what kind of pictures Sawyer’s able to get with the new camera this weekend.