Merry Christmas

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I hope that you are able to have Christmas with family and loved ones.

Blizzard

Well, our first snow storm of the season was a doozy! Instead of it just being a snow storm, it was a blizzard. The system that starting dropping snow yesterday morning still continues as I am typing. It has dropped approximately 15 inches of snow on the ground with approximately 3 foot drifts in front of our garage. The system is winding down and they say that the wind should stop blowing sometime after dark with sub zero temperatures to follow.

Schools let out 90 minutes early yesterday and canceled classes altogether today. After getting home yesterday, the temperatures were still warm enough that the kids and I were able to go outside and have a snowball fight.


Today, however, the temperature and wind chill are too cold to allow the kids to go outside and play, much to their disappointment. They can't wait to get outside and tromp through the drifts in our back yard.

The Polar Express

This morning, several local businesses along with our local movie theater teamed up for a special showing of movie The Polar Express. Admission was free with the donation of a new or gently used winter coat or other winter item. I decided to take David and Benjamin to the movie (Isabel was at the Science Center for the First Lego League competition).

Both David and Benjamin enjoyed watching the movie even though they had seen it a couple of times before. Benjamin did a wonderful job and only had to leave the theater twice to use the bathroom.

After the movie, Santa was waiting for all of the kids that came. David chose to get his picture taken with Santa (to be posted later) but Benjamin did not want to.

Tornadoes

I made changes to blog again, including adding pictures of tornadoes. I have always been fascinated with tornadoes and love to watch Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel.

My husband and I also hope, that one day, we will be able to go on vacation with a storm/tornado chasing group. This may sound like a strange way, for some, to spend a vacation but it is a dream of ours. A dream that we hope will become reality some day.

What a Week

This week has not been the best of weeks for me. Monday night around 11:00 I woke up very suddenly feeling the urge to get sick and had some pain in my upper right abdomen. Fortunately, I did not and was able to get back to sleep. I went to work on Tuesday, still not feeling the best, but since I didn't have a fever or wasn't vomiting, I didn't stay home. Wednesday morning I woke up feeling even worse. I was very nauseous and the pain continued. Despite the fact that I really wanted to stay home, I had an extremely important meeting with my supervisor and went to work. I managed to make it through the day, then came home and crashed. I chose to stay home yesterday.

This whole time, I was thinking that I had the stomach flu considering the fact that one of the students that I worked with on Monday came down with the stomach flu on Tuesday. But, the more I thought about things, the more I realized that stomach flu didn't make much sense considering that the pain I was experiencing was in my upper right abdomen and not the lower section. Then it dawned on me that it could be my gallbladder. I had experienced similar symptoms this summer and the doctor was thinking gallbladder but the pain went away before it was determined if it indeed was the gallbladder was the culprit and the doctor and I opted to wait and see if the pain came back.

I went to the doctor yesterday and the she felt the same way. Today, I had an ultrasound to see what is going on. The lab tech mentioned that he didn't see any gallstones, which is a good thing, but did not mention if anything else abnormal showed on the ultrasound. I will have to wait until Tuesday before I get the full report.

I am starting to feel somewhat better. The nausea is gone, for now and the pain is manageable. I am so glad that the nausea is gone as it makes eating easier. However, I am somewhat scared to eat for fear that it will bring back a full blown attack. I am really watching what I eat and eating small portions.