The zoo!!

On Friday I joined a few folks on their trip to the zoo. It was great fun and I really do have about a zillion pictures, but I'll only share 27 of them. :) Here are glimpses of our day, along with the people that I went with and a couple of short videos of a little girl that was THRILLED to be on a carousel ride!! :o)

First off, we'll start with the people...

This is Amelia, Heidi, Candy & Blaire, posing with the elephant. Okay...it's a fake elephant. Just in case you were concerned.
This is Kate's Mom, Wendy, along with her grandkids, Fischer & Hazen (of whom belong to Kate). I just thought that this was SUCH a cute picture!! I forget where they were going, but they were sure eager to go with Grandma!! :)

Beautiful baby Blaire...She is just SO precious! We love her lots!! :)

Here are the womenfolk of our group who were at the zoo (minus me, of course, since I'm taking the picture). There's Heidi and Amelia in the front and then Nora, Kristy and Candy in the back. The two menfolk of the group did NOT want to go on the zoo's train ride with us, so they kept the two little babies and hung out in the shade somewhere. Their loss!! ;)

Aaron and Amelia. I believe that if Amelia had to choose, this may just have been the highlight of her day!

Now on to the animals...some of the pictures are dark or have bright spots on them because of the flash, but I tried to choose the best of what I had. ALL of the pictures should be set up so that if you click on them once, they will enlarge and you can see them better. That may help with some of the darker ones.

The seal showing off his special talents.

Polar bear

Of course, this baby giraffe moved his head as soon as I had taken the picture, but just prior to that, his entire head was stuffed into the tree. They must have a feeding hold there or something. It was kind of cute!

Camels

Buffalo

Peacock

Zebras

Some type of African animal that I can't remember its name

Elephant

The elephant decided it needed a bath, so it was showing us how she washed herself. This was mid-explosion of the water. :)

This hippo was SO funny! It was hideously hot out on Friday and so everyone, animals included, were doing all kinds of things to just stay cool. This guy just stayed submerged like this. Every once in awhile, he'd bring his nose up and get some air, but for the most part he'd keep as much as he could underwater. I think that we all wished we could have done that, too! It. Was. Hot.

Rhino

Silverback gorilla (I think that's what he was called...hence, the silver on his back in the second picture)

Tired gorilla...okay, I have no idea what his actual name is. :)

If you look closely, this monkey thing had a baby or two on her back. It was adorable!

Penguins

Elephant

Cheetah

Lions

As I already mentioned, I think that Amelia's favorite part of the day was the carousel ride that her daddy took her on. Here's proof of that! :)

Even though it was really hot out, we all had a fun day and I'm SO glad that I went! I've been wanting to go for a few years now, but it's never worked out. I couldn't have planned a better day at the zoo!

A peek at where I was today!! :)

Can you guess where I was? :)

Beautiful Kate

I don't usually link to things like this, but little Kate's family put up a post yesterday of what recent tests have told them and it just broke my heart. If you're a praying person, just pray for this little family. Of course, none of us know God's will for their lives, but let's pray for strength and love for them in whatever they will face in the days ahead.

Here is the CaringBridge website if you want to keep checking in on Kate's progress: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mcraekate/journal The family puts prayer requests in their posts every day, so you can pray specifically for them, if you'd like, or just pray whatever. This will not be an easy journey for this family and it will be rough for this little girl. Just keep them close in heart and thought.

Here is the update from yesterday of Kate's test results: Well, we spoke with Kate's neurosurgeon today and looked at her scans. Let's just say we had to take some time alone afterwards, without Kate seeing us cry. It felt debilitating. A large concern continues to be the location of the tumor, it is very dangerous. The arteries supplying blood to the left half of her brain are entangled in the tumor. Another large concern is the tumor is spread down into the hypothalmus. (this is not a new thing) This would be completely untreatable by surgery. And finally they have a rating system to see how malignant and aggressive (how many cancer cells quickly reproduce) the tumor is. Kate's number was extremely high. Depressingly so. I sobbed for about a good hour, and Aaron a good portion of that. Kate's only option right now is chemo, which we will be starting tomorrow. The one thing with a highly aggressive brain tumor is that we have to get every single cell. One cell left could reproduce. We are clinging tightly to God right now. Knowing nothing is too hard, nothing too big. So we continue to pray incessantly that He would heal Kate, every last cell, her right arm, her right foot, her speech, everything that the tumor has taken. We are praying that God would redeem every single thing. Please continue to pray with us. Thankfully our emotions don't dictate the ability of God. We still trust that God is in control, no matter how desperate our emotions feel. Please pray for Kate's protection tomorrow as she starts chemo. Protection from all of the damaging side effects. Protection for her fragile spirit. Protection from any outside infections. Thank you for helping to shoulder this enormous burden.

A Strange Happening + An awesome sunset

Two people informed me this weekend that it was high time I posted another blog update! After the comments were said to me (both in the same day, mind you), I went home and proceeded to browse through some blogs, some of which haven't been updated since early 2009. So, take that, you two. :)

Anyway, my friend, Monique, came over for awhile tonight and as we were visiting, a knock came to the door. I looked through my trusty peep-hole and saw that it was a younger gentleman. When I opened the door, he introduced himself (I think) and said, "Do you use kleenex in your house?" I said, "Um, yes." He said, "Well, here...let me give this to you as a thank you for helping me out with a few questions," and then he proceeded to hand me a travel pack of kleenex. I was thinking, "What in the world?!?" Then he said, "Just wait a minute while I go get another pack for you," and he turned and left. I figured that he made this comment because he noticed that I had a friend visiting, so we both waited to see what he was up to. Monique was watching out the patio door while I was waiting by the front door. As he went by, she said, "He's coming with a big box!!!" So, I opened the door and let me tell you, this was no ordinary box of kleenex that he went to get. No, sirree! It was a big 'ol black box that contained a vacuum cleaner. No joke. He said, "Here, let me just set this up right in your living room and show you how it works," and he proceeded to start coming into the door. I said, "Um, no. I'm not at all interested in whatever it is that you have." He said, "But it will just take a minute and you'll really like it!" I said, "What is it even?" He spouted out some name and then tried to come in again. I said, "No, thank you." He said, "But I get paid $20 an hour just to show you how it works." I said, "No, thank you." He said, "It will just take a minute and it's really simple," and he tried to come in again. So, I stepped in front of him and said, rather sternly, I might add, "NO. THANK. YOU." And do you know what he said? "Could I have my kleenex back, then, to use with another customer?" Sure, bud. Good luck with your career. Weird, huh?

Moving on...a little while later, Monique left to go home and shortly after leaving she called and said, "You have to go outside and look at the sunset! It looks just like a fire!" So I went out and looked and she was right! It was awesome!! Here are a few pictures of it (make sure to click ONCE on the picture to enlarge it so that you can get the full effect!).

Looking down the street
This was looking the other way down the street, at the reflection of it on the hills.

Another view down the street

This one was taken behind my apartment complex, as I was standing in the parking lot.

Wasn't it just beautiful!? I sure thought so!! :o)

Friends & Good Visits

I spent some time last night with some good friends of mine from Bible study and it was wonderful! It's just wonderful when you have people in your life that encourage you and just plain 'ol make you feel good. Being with these folks last night was refreshing and the experience just made me feel like I'm not a hermit and I'm not as anti-social as I think I can be and I'm not really wanting to just "hideout" from life. You see, sometimes after quite a bit of time without social contact, it's easy for me to get to feeling that way and to almost convince myself that it's what I want! Honestly, I think that for me, there definitely needs to be a balance. I do need some quiet time and time by myself, but I also need to be around people once in awhile, too, enjoying some fellowship. Someone recently made the comment to a group of us that, "We need people." Their point was that the majority of us can't be reclusive and "hermit-like" but that we do eventually need contact with people because it's a natural part of our existence as humans. So, maybe this extra "tiredness" that I've been experiencing is really just a product of too little of social contact. Maybe I need to work more on finding that balance for myself between social time with friends and quiet time at home and maybe I would find that I'm not so tired anymore and that I'm not experiencing harder days than most anymore, either. It's all interesting to think about, isn't it? So...here's to good visits with friends and family!! :o)

I'm tired

I think that I'm in a phase of my life where I just need to sleep and sleep and sleep. It's horrid!! Now, don't get me wrong because I love to sleep, but what's horrid is that since about 9 AM this morning, all I've wanted to do was go and take a nice fat nap, but I can't!! Why? Because I'm at work, silly!! So, endure, I must.

I'm often tired because I do have a little bit of iron deficiency/anemia going on and I expect some tiredness, but of late, it's been worse (and the whole anemic/iron deficient issue is getting better). I've noticed the change since the end of June, though. Since convention time, really. Hmmm...maybe my body is protesting my time at convention because those are days of REST, both mentally, physically and spiritually! Not only was I able to get a lot of "spiritual food," but I was able to get quite a bit of sleep and rest. Now that I'm back at work, though, I don't get those daily two or three naps and that's kind of rough.

The only other thing that I can contribute this abnormal tiredness to would be food. I've been assessing what I'm eating and I think that I may be untintentionally having more sugar than normal. You see, I've been really tired, so I've been swinging through Starbucks a little more than I normally do, so I wonder if instead of getting the caffeine fix that I'm aiming for, I'm really experiencing more of a regular sugar crash. THAT could very well be.

One other thing that I think is contributing is lack of sleep. I honestly don't know how you mothers out there can do what you do...to regularly be short on sleep because of your children. I really don't know if I could physically hack the role of motherhood because I think that I would be one of those mothers who would be SO incredibly exhausted that they'd do something like set the baby carrier on the top of the car and then drive away without having PUT it in the car!! I have always required a lot of sleep and ever since my cancer surgery in 2003, it seems like it's been worse. If I get anything LESS than 8 hours of sleep, I'm just plumb worn out!! The best situation for me is a good, solid 9-10 hours of sleep on a daily basis. Wow, I know!!!

So here I am on Wednesday and I've spent the majority of the morning wondering how long of a nap that I'm going to take when I go home for lunch. It's kind of a sad state of existence when you stop and really think about it. For those of you who CAN function on small amounts of sleep, appreciate it. Not everyone can do that and people like me who can't, admire YOU for all you're able to still do with such small amounts of sleep.

That being said, I'm now going to head home for a short nap over lunch. I might just fall asleep at my desk this afternoon if I don't!!

Importance

What's important to you? I just got back from a weekend at another convention and this has been on my mind. What's important to me? I've enjoyed thinking about those things. Here's my list thus far...

• my spiritual beliefs


• family


• friends


• rest


• quietness


• laughter


• simplicity


• honesty