Vacation Highlights

We just returned from a week-long camping trip with hubby's family. We try to a make a trip every year with his parents and his sisters' families. We have found a fabulous location right on a lake, with spacious sites and great playgrounds. The kids have a great time together; and despite my less -than -enthusiastic feelings toward camping, it was relaxing and nice to visit with his family. Here is a picture of his sisters - the natural, camping look, and still looking great!

The oldest boy cousins. (My two spent the week in their own tent, which was great fun for them, and nice for us to have a little extra space in the camper.)

The youngest two - only 5 days difference in age!

All of the cousins, except the oldest two girls. Wish that I had thought to put Oma and Opa in the picture. As you can imagine, with so many cousins, so close in age, they had a blast!

Now back to real life - 3 loads of laundry down, 4 more to go!

I Asked For New Paint!

We painted our living room ten years ago, so I figured that it was fair to ask for new paint. I even planned to do a significant amount of the work myself, since it is summertime. I should have known better. Hubby cannot paint a room until he has addressed all of the related issues. In the case of the living room, it was an entryway issue. Our 4'x4' entryway failed to adequately house our family's shoes, so they leaked into the living room. Here was the problem - mind you, at least 5 pair of shoes are missing from the picture, and some shoes are stored in bedrooms. Yes, we had a BIG problem. So, what does hubby do? Why add on to the house, of course! (This was last week, prior to the heart issues.)

So here is my new shoe closet - AWESOME!Yep, but still no paint, and clearly we need new baseboards. Since he was forced to rest for a WHOLE day when he returned home from the hospital, he set CoCo to work pulling off the old ones. Living vicariously? Oh yeah, he also may decide to take out a foot of wall between the computer room and living room because "it would look way better!" Gotta love him! :-)

He's Home!

I just want to update that Hubby's heart converted to normal rhythm moments just as the nurse arrived with a wheelchair to pick him up for "shock treatment" (Hubby's wording). He is still maintaining proper rhythm, though his rate and blood pressure are a little low. He is happy to be home, though nervous about a recurrence. He will be on medication for at least a couple of weeks until he meets with the cardiologist again. Right now, all of his heart test results and enzyme levels are normal, so they can see no obvious reason for his AF.
We have appreciated the prayers, phone calls, emails and visits. Thanks to Mimi for taking such great care of the kids. Thanks to Oma, Opa and sisters who stayed with us today at the hospital. I wish that I could respond individually to each one of you, but our household needs to settle down a bit. The kids are so happy to have daddy back home. The boys are currently piled on the couch with him, playing cards. SS is "KaPa sitting" to make sure he doesn't get up too fast or do too much.

Prayer Request

Hubby awoke during the night with a racing, irregular heartbeat. Lucky for us, Mimi is staying with us and with her cardio-nursing background, shuffled us right out the door to the ER. He is having atrial fibrillations and is still at the hospital. The doctor gave him medications during the day in hopes that they would jump his heart to return to a normal rhythm. Though the medications helped slow his heart rate, his heart is still fibrillating (quivering) rather than doing full pumps. Though this is fairly common and rarely life threatening, the greatest concern at this point is blood clots. He is being given injections to prevent clotting and is scheduled for a procedure tomorrow to shock his heart back into rhythm and also to send a scope down his esophagus to look at his heart. Our prayers are that his heart will jump back into rhythm without the procedure and that there will be no clotting complications. Please pray with us.

CoCo Competitions

CoCo decided to participate in our church-sponsored sports camp again this year. He likes sports of all kinds and finds it an extra perk that he and his buddies can capture frogs during their down time. This is a picture of our crew at the track meet, an event on Tuesday. It started at 1, and in typical fashion, I was running approximately 5 minutes late. As I am herding everyone into the van after arguing with Neil-te about footwear (no hiking boots!), grabbing the camera and a piece of toast, putting the dog away ...the garage door wouldn't close. I moved the bike that was obstructing the way, slammed the door to the house, jumped into the van to happily find that KiKi was already strapped. Then I proceeded to put my non-existent keys into the ignition. UGH! Though I tried every possible means of entry into our house, I was finally forced to call hubby to get him to come home so that I could get my keys out of the house. Feeling great pangs of guilt at interrupting his work day, I was relieved to hear him say, "Well, at least you have your cell phone!" During all of this drama, CoCo was at the track meet, already competing. By the time we arrived, he had completed his event. Bigger UGH! At least we got a couple of pictures of him.


CoCo with his cousin. Yes, I did notice that CoCo is masking his great disappointment with his cheese grin. Guilt... guilt... guilt.

Today was his swim meet. We arrived EARLY - even saw warm ups! :-) CoCo got 2nd place in his race and was happy to see us in the bleachers. I got many genuine, cheesy grins and felt like a good mom!