Part of my New Year's resolutions was to blog more frequently at this site. I planned to do this Sunday afternoon, but this weekend, I succumbed to a pretty nasty cold that I've had for a week. I'd done a lot of blogging on my genealogy blog, AnceStories, on Saturday, and Sunday my kids clamored to use the computers; Missy needed the laptop for a school project and Matt wanted to play some Runescape on the desktop as he had not been on at all on Saturday, having a friend over to hang out with. Between feeling exhausted and the computers not being available, I had to delay my writing for a day.
New Year's Day we finally got together with my brother-in-law's family to do "Christmas." Between the awful weather, family members' work schedules, and his visiting daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughters being very sick with bronchitis, we kept having to change our get together date. As it turns out, we never got to see Norm's niece and her family before they had to return to Illinois. Hopefully, they'll be back in the spring. Anyway, we had a nice dinner at my brother-in-law's, then opened our gifts from each other. Everyone seemed to enjoy the calendars I'd created, and one gift we received and especially liked was a printed book of my brother-in-law's photography.
Saturday the 3rd, I attended the annual luncheon of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society, held at the Spokane Club. After being served our delicious meal (my choice was cedar planked king salmon with a fruit sauce, wild rice, and steamed broccoli in cheddar, along with a teapot of Earl Grey tea), we listened to a fascinating presentation by Ian Chambers, Professor of History, University of Idaho on "Pirates of the Caribbean: Why Pirates Matter to History." Despite the weather, there was a pretty good turnout, and I'm sure no one was disappointed in either the food or the presentation!
This last week was an odd one. We were supposed to return to school on January 5th, but the weather and many unshoveled sidewalks made dangerous conditions for children walking to school. Instead, we started on Tuesday, but many parents were up in arms, as the snow (75+ inches) had begun to melt, and roofs of commercial and residential buildings all over the county had been collapsing; 60-something, at last count. School closed again Wednesday and Thursday, and reopened Friday.
I saw my surgeon for my post-op exam on Tuesday, which was about five minutes long. I'll see his assistant in March. All is going well, which was confirmed by my latest session with my physical therapist, who continues to be pleased with my progress. Each week, I'm given new range-of-motion exercises, and now I'm doing resistance moves to improve strength. I'm supposed to progress to resistance bands and maybe half-pound weights next.
Over the weekend, as I said, I got bogged down with this cold. It just made me feel exhausted every time I exerted myself in the least way. I was worried I would have to take a sick day off work today, but I woke up feeling all right. Matt now has a bad cough, so I'll give him some cough syrup before bed.
Speaking of Matt, he had his 15th birthday on Thursday. His favorite gift, he says, was getting the day off of school. I felt bad, because we didn't really have anything special planned for him; Norm had to work and the roads were not that great, so I wasn't comfortable taking Matt out to do things. He wasn't giving me any ideas; said he didn't want a big fuss, plus I know he doesn't like cake. I felt better when he called me after school on Friday and asked if a friend could spend the night. Of course, I agreed, and since I was out getting grocery-shopping right after work, I picked up his favorite chips and dip and some soda, Scrubs (2nd season) on DVD, and a couple of pizzas from Little Caesar's to kind of make a "party" of it for him and his friend.
Saturday, we heard some sad news. Ann Hoke, a former co-worker of Norm's that had worked with him at Telect and Logan, had passed away on Friday. She had requested that Norm be a pallbearer. Her daughter-in-law called us to let us know about it all. She had been ill for years, so it wasn't a shock, but still, Norm was fairly upset. The upside of it was, he connected by phone with a couple of former co-workers that he hadn't seen in years. We still haven't heard when (or if) the funeral will be.
That's a wrap up of the first week and a half of 2009!
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