We had a White Christmas!

Can you believe it?

The first one Dallas has had since 1926. My first one EVER.

We are going to be moving in two days. Happy New Year, everyone! See you in 2010.

A Visit with Santa

Katie was not amused, although she did keep whispering things in my ear that she wanted me to tell him.


This is Santa's face when Grace told him she wants a Wii.

This is Santa telling them that Wii's are verrrry expensive, and we'll just have to wait and see about that. He's looking to me for some sort of confirmation, but I have adamantly told the children they are not getting one this year.

(Except, they are getting one this year. They have been verrrrry good, and mom feels very sorry for them right now. I hope they are surprised.)

2009, I will not miss you.

Y'all, this year has sucked. It really has. However, in an effort to rise above my self-pity of late, I will now share with you some photos of the not-so-sucky times of 2009. Both of them.

Let's see, there was bluebonnet frolicking... this just makes me teary-eyed about leaving Texas...


then we went to swimming a lot I guess...

And oh, yes, Big Bend National Park. Okay, fine, there were three fun times. But THAT'S IT.

Okay, I had fun driving through the tunnel at Big Bend. Whatever.

Oh, and I have a new niece, so FINE, 2009, YOU HAD SOME GOOD STUFF. YOU WIN.

I don't know why this photo is so small, and I won't be able to take my own photographs of this sweet sweet baby until 2010. Gahhh, I'm ready for this year to be over.

Bad news and good news and bad news and good

I have had SUCH an emotional week. I didn't post about it, but on Thursday we went to the nephrologist and just got some really bad news. I mentioned that on the MRI the tumor did not look malignant, but what I didn't know was that the MRI also found a large number of small cysts that hadn't been seen on the other scans. She feels that I have polycystic kidney disease, but she said she wasn't going to diagnose me 'officially' because once that term is written in my chart, I will be uninsurable. Given my already precarious insurance situation, I am grateful for this. She wants to do another scan in February and re-evaluate at that time.

I actually did write a lengthy post about how I was feeling about this devastating (possible) diagnosis, but I deleted it and gave myself a few days to get a handle on my emotions. It's a really bad disease. Very VERY bad. Incurable except for a transplant bad. And the statistics say that IF I have it, I've likely passed it on to 50% of my children. So 1.5 kids. It's bad. But it's not 100% definite at this point, so I'm not going to waste any (more) time grieving over it until it is.

So, to the good news. Today I went to the urology oncologist at UT Southwestern, the guy I had been waiting 3 weeks to see. He is an expert on kidney cancers, and performs nephrectomies all the time, so I hear. He was not impressed at all with my tumor. He said that it did not look cancerous, and that he would not recommend having surgery at this time. He wants to re-evaluate it in March and see if things have changed.

So, YAY! Thank God. It amazes me that two different doctors looked at the same scan and came up with such drastically different recommendations. My first urologist actually told me that she wouldn't wait more than a month before removing it, and this guy today said it would be a mistake to take it out at all right now. He said if it is cancer, that there's really no risk in waiting a few months because it is so small and very slow-growing. The bigger risk would be to remove my kidney and reduce my kidney function significantly when I have so many other problems to contend with. So the lesson is, kids, always get a second opinion.

Also, a lot of people have been asking how I'm feeling. I feel like a wrung out dish towel emotionally, but physically I have been doing okay. I have mild to moderate pain in my kidneys almost every day, but it is easily controlled with Tylenol. This may be due to a kidney stone in my left kidney, which could pass soon or not at all, or it may be related to the cysts, which means I'd better get used to it. My last blood tests showed an improvement in kidney function, and I took some more tests on Friday but haven't gotten the results yet.

There's just a little bit more bad news that came today just a few hours after the doctor appointment. I haven't written much about it on the blog because it is quite personal (like this isn't), but my husband was laid off from his job last April. He has been doing contract work and he is great at it, and God has provided marvelously for all of our needs, but really we need a (steady) full time job with decent health insurance, especially in light of the last few months. There was a job in this area that we thought would work out perfectly, and today we found out that it is just not going to happen any time soon. We close on our house in 3 weeks, and it looks like we are going to spend some time at my parents' lake house in Georgia to regroup and wait to see what happens next. It's an adventure...she said half-heartedly.

Now to the final good news of the day to bring our roller coaster to an end: My parents are coming here for Christmas!! They just told me tonight, and I actually cried when I got off the phone because I am just so happy about it and so completely emotionally exhausted from this crazy crazy day. There are just some times in your life when you need to see your Mama and Daddy, and this is definitely one of them.

Plus the door handles on BOTH sides of my van broke off this week and I'm hoping my dad can fix them for me. BOTH door handles. The second one broke off in my hand yesterday and all I could do was laugh. So typical of the way this year has been going.

A Suprise Snow

It never snows here. The weather forecasters said it wouldn't snow here. They said we wouldn't even have a frost.

They were wrong.

It only lasted about 2 hours, but it was fun.

In the back yard, we even had snowflakes shaped like basketballs. And one pogo stick.