update again

Hi there friends.
I just want to give a quick update on things here. Randal had a dr. appointment today with our regular doc. He was very pleased with Randal's progress! He was more than pleased actually...He showed us the letter from the neurologist. It said that Randal's improvement is amazing! Our dr. said that he was sooo happy to see how well he was doing. He told us that he had expected that Randal would be using a walker for the rest of his life at best and in a wheelchair more likely than not!! Wow! I was surprised. I had kinda gotten those vibes from reading between the lines when talking with the different doctors over the last couple of months but wasn't really sure if that was just me or not. Apparently it wasn't! We are SO thankful for this!! God is so good to us and a Keeper of His Word! Randal is just using his walker now if we are walking for a bit of a distance, such as shopping or something like that, mostly for balance. His legs tire fairly easily and start to cramp up if he walks for too long. He's been having some symptoms similar to those he had before the surgery so please pray that things don't get back to the place they were again. That's why we went to the dr. today, but he didn't seem at all concerned about it. Randal has an appointment next week with the neurosurgeon though so we'll just talk to him about these symptoms at that point. I think I'd feel more at ease if the specialist was the one to tell us this.
My mil seems to be doing quite well. She has bounced back from her surgery pretty quickly. She is doing much better than we had expected! She looked really bad last week when she came out of the hospital! But now she's perked right up..so thanks for praying for her. I hope that she stays like that now for a LONG time!
you all have a Super Duper New Year!!! :D
Heather

Our Christmas

Well here it is...two days past Christmas already!! I can't believe how fast time flies...it's kinda sad to see the Christmas holidays pass so quickly.
Like I mentioned in previous posts, we stayed home this year and didn't have any family around...which for many of you would be normal but not for us! But anyway...our Christmas day turned out very nicely. We had some friends over for the day. We made dinner together...two turkeys!! We both had tons left over. It's kinda funny how alike our families are. Most of the time when we have company over I forget to make dessert. So this time I made sure I picked up a pumpkin and apple pie on Christmas Eve. I chuckled to myself when I told Louise that I had picked up a couple pies for dessert because she had a similar reaction to what mine would have been...oh yeah--dessert!?! I think we all enjoyed the day. We ate dinner fairly early..if I remember right! We played a game of charades altogether. There were enough of us to make 3 teams. It was alot of fun. These friends are about as close to family as we could ever get. After dinner, Randal headed up to the hospital to visit his mom. While he was gone Louise knitted, Steve napped for an hour or two on the lazy boy(sounds like family,hey?!), the girls made cookies, some of the kids played nintendo, some played on the computer and some of the others just played. (we have 8 kids between us.) All in all it was a relaxing, enjoyable day. I really enjoyed the wonderful family atmosphere. I hope you all had a great Christmas.

We wish you a

MERRY CHRISTMAS

And a happy New Year!

DONE!!

I finished my Christmas shopping!! I shopped for all four kids in two evenings...about 4 hours! I did it with wish lists in hand and the cash in my pocket! The best way to avoid over shopping! If you don't have a debit card in your pocket to fall back on this really helps you stay within budget when you see something that you "know they would love" but is way over budget! It's not as fun but it is a good way to keep yourself(myself) from overspending. Anyway...now we just need to wrap it all up. I told Randal that I did the hunting and gathering of the gifts and now it's time for him to do the wrapping of the gifts. :D I'm sure we'll do it together.
I'd like to do a little bit of baking since we'll be staying home. I usually do a little bit to take with us but not alot because we (my siblings) all bring something with us when we all get together. We will definitely miss everyone this year...and Auntie Shanda and Uncle Craig's deep fried crispy turkey! And then there are all those yummy goodies that Auntie Shanda makes....she's always trying new things and we get to enjoy them!! Great Grandma's tarts...Auntie Tracie's tarts....okay okay...enough....I'm starting to drool. I think maybe tomorrow I'll make some butter tarts!! Well have a great Sunday....the last before Christmas! I can hardly believe that it's the 22nd of December! The year has flown by!
Happy Sunday!!
:) Heather

Grandma's surgery.

I just wanted to let you know that Grandma's surgery seems to have been successful. I don't really know any details yet. Thanks again for praying ladies! And I'm off to finish my Christmas shopping! I started last night and took a fair chunk out of it! Have a great Friday!!

Please pray for Grandma.

Randal's mom is going in for a major surgery tomorrow(Dec 20th). Please pray that the Lord will have those dr.s hands in His while they are doing the surgery. We don't know the time yet.
Thanks so much!

Here's Grandma.

Christmas -scroll for pictures

Okay...I'll start off on a light note. I think we caught the culprit in the kitchen. I came out to the kitchen yesterday morning and found a mouse in the mousetrap in front of the dishwasher....the bad part---it was alive and caught by the back foot in the trap! I went in and woke up Randal to get rid of the dead mouse for me. {I just realized after 2 days that I typed "DEAD" mouse..it wasn't dead, it was alive...that's why I was getting him to come get rid of it!!!} He used gloves so it couldn't reach around and bite him. Janelle heard me wake up Randal and came out to see the critter. She trailed Randal into the washroom, as he carried the mouse to the toilet....hmmm not a good thing...she cried loudly as the silly mouse swam round and round and round......oh dear....she cried for quite some time. We sat on the couch for quite awhile as I explained the downside of having mice in the house....I think it eventually sunk in when I told her that a boy died in our town from having a mouse in his room that carried the Hantavirus. So I'm hoping that this was the ONLY mouse. It was not the kind of mouse that carries that virus, thank the Lord for that!
Onto other news not so light. My mother in law has been back in the hospital for the last week. As you may have read previously, she had surgery about a month ago to clean out blood clots in her legs. She has now had 16 surgeries on her legs for this reason! The dr decided to do some tests to see why the legs keep clotting up. He's decided that the legs are in bad enough shape that they need to be amputated, but she doesn't want to do this so he's come up with a couple of options for more artery bypasses. She has alot of artificial arteries in her lower abdomen/legs. He's decided to go with the less risky of the two options, which is grafting into the main artery that goes down the arm. Then he'll run a line down her right side under the skin, to her bypass in the lower abdomen. The objective is to increase blood pressure to her legs so that the clots will hopefully stop happening. I guess part of the reason that she keeps clotting up is that the blood flow is too light to her legs. So we're really hoping that this will do the trick.
If you can believe this....I haven't started Christmas shopping yet!!! I'm in a bit of a panic now. I get payed on the 20th...and that cheque is dedicated to Christmas. I popped into Walmart today and the lineups were insane!!! I was thinking that I could just go and get my shopping done in one day....hmmmm I sure hope this works out.
We were supposed to be going away for Christmas this year....We go to my family's Christmas get together every 2 years....so I'm quite saddened that we can't go this year with my mil in hospital. I guess we could go really but I just can't see leaving her here all alone for Christmas.
Nonetheless we will miss seeing everyone. It doesn't happen often that we see everyone at once anymore. Our kids are getting older now and starting to have jobs. Family get togethers are difficult to coordinate with so many new schedules to add to the mix! Anyway...You all have a super awesome Christmas!! Hug your loved ones! :D
Love Heather

This was taken on the drive up to visit Grandma at the hospital today.





Missy having dinner with Grandma at said hospital.



Close up of our Christmas tree. It looks like we'll be postponing our Christmas trip so I decided to get the tree decorated since we'll be here! It looks really pretty but the camera is very old and takes terrible pictures with the flash....everything looks awful. I'll have to try it out in daylight to see if it works better.

more....



a weird picture of the tree....I tried to take it without the flash but the shutter stays open for a long time and apparently I moved!