The Weekend in Review

Hello Blogland. I hope you all had a great weekend!

Football-wise, mine was great! Both my Longhorns and my Texans won this weekend...WOOT!

I made my standing "UT Football Season Cookies" and other assorted goodies on Friday for my friend's tailgate party, but I totally forgot to take pictures...again. Sorry about that. Truthfully though, you've all seen my longhorn game day cookies many times before, so even though I do different ones on different occasions, you have pretty much seen them all.

On Saturday, Ben and the boys had a Trial's Motorcycle competition. They were here in town for a change, so the little kids and I were able to go out and watch them. Ben and Benji got off to a slow start, and finished 3rd and 6th in their respective classes, but Jon had a great run and won 1st place for his class. :)

Generally, Jon has at least one really good wreck during a weekend competition. He didn't have any this weekend, but he did manage to fall out of a tree...sigh. He was finished with his run and wanted to get up in this tree to watch the other competitors from a better angle, and the branch gave way as he tried to swing up onto it. He was still in full riding gear, including his helmet (thank you Jesus!), so he escaped with a decent road rash on his back and some bruising, but nothing major. I think he'd be safer staying on his motorcycle! How often do you hear a mother say that? :)

Other than that it was a pretty quiet weekend at the Casa de KidsandCakes. I've got some sort of ear issue going on, and planned to go see the doctor about it this morning, but woke up feeling much better, so I decided to give it one more day and see how it is tomorrow. All the pain is gone, but it still keeps closing up on me and it makes it hard to hear anything. Not to mention that it makes my own voice sound so loud in my head, that I've been talking very quietly. The kids keep having to ask me to repeat myself which is really frustrating!

This week promises to be another busy one. My niece is getting married on Saturday, and I'm making the groom's cake for the wedding. There is also another Longhorn home game this weekend, so I should be making the cookies and things again, but I'm going to have to see how my week is going before I agree to that with the wedding and rehearsal dinner also on my plate.

I got a comment on my Facebook from a friend who tried the Vidalia Onion Casserole. She used the original recipe rather than my version, but she did a mixture of different cheeses. She said, "It Was To Die For!" :) She put it on ribeye steak....yumm!!! I'd love to hear if anyone else has tried it and how you used it. So leave me a comment and let me know if you do try it.

I think that's about it for my weekend. How about you? Did you do anything fun this weekend? Did your favorite football team win? Leave a comment and let me know!

It's Better Than No Title at All...

I thought I'd stop by and give you all a bit of an update...just for fun! :)

Okay, so first I guess I need to explain what the surgeries were for and what they were supposed to do.

The first one was a laser cystoscopy--which means that the dr. goes into the kidney with a camera and a laser and blasts any stones that he finds blocking the kidney.
This was done in both of my kidneys.

However, the dr. said that there were too many stones both in the kidney filters and deep in the kidney tissue as well....sigh. So he decided to do an experiment and do an extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy--which means that they send shockwaves through a bag of silicon into the kidney to break up stones in there. It is usually done on just one stone, and it has to be precisely aimed at that stone over and over until it is broken up into pieces small enough to pass. Since I didn't have just one stone, the idea was to try to break up as many of them as possible to clear out my filters and help my kidneys to work a bit better and relieve some of the pain and hopefully the nausea.

I was hoping that they would be able to clear the kidney of all those little suckers completely, but apparently there were just too many. They are only allowed to give you 2500 shocks per procedure, and apparently that wasn't enough. And since there is the possibility that the shockwaves could also cause damage to the kidney, I won't be able to have it done again anytime soon. My doctor, however, told me yesterday that while there are still a bunch of calcifications in my kidneys, they were able to get out more than he had expected them to get. :)

Today and tomorrow I am having a kidney function test to determine how well my kidneys are functioning. I will continue to have those tests on a regular basis and will repeat the above surgeries as needed, and as often as can be tolerated I suppose, to try to preserve my kidney function.

And that's where we are right now. :)

Now it seems that every time I've posted about something that is medically wrong with me, my friend Kelli posts something even worse! So, in order to help out my buddy, who insists on "one-upping" me all the time, I think I'll just start feeling better and post happy things for awhile! :) (And I won't even mention the mammogram or the bone density tests I had yesterday!)

For a minute there, I thought I was back!

Well, I posted twice since my kidney surgery in June, and I thought I was going to be back to regular posting, but then the sickness hit again, and I was just getting through the days again...sigh.

So, last Friday, I had a different type of procedure done on my right kidney to see if it would help me out any. The jury is still out on whether or not it did the trick, but at least the recovery has been better. I just feel bruised on that side--like someone beat me up. But I've only had one really bad day of nausea and fatigue with it, so for that I'm extremely grateful!

I'll have an x-ray here in a day or two, and then I'll meet with my doctor to see whether or not this last procedure did what he hoped it would. If it did, then we might do it on the other side sometime this year (while my medical deductible has been met!), and then hopefully, I'll be good to go for awhile at least.

Thanks for all the prayers, and I hope to get back to blogging and reading blogs soon! I miss visiting you all more than I miss coming here to write! :)

I Have No Title Ideas....

***Update: I wanted to stop in and let you all know that my surgery will be this Thursday at 8:00am...ugh! I know I'll be miserable for awhile when it's all done, but I'm looking forward to feeling better soon!***

I just wanted to stop in and explain to you all why it is that I'm not here...this time. :)

As you recall, I mentioned that I do have some kidney stones, and the doctor told me that he would remove them when they started causing problems. Well, they are now causing problems....sigh. I'll be calling the doctor this week to try to set up the surgery, and of course, I'll update you all when that happens, but in the meantime, when I'm not feeling too sick to get out of bed, I have lots of things to do around here. When I'm sick, things get out of control, so when I'm feeling better, I have to spend my time catching up! When I'm stone-free and have reclaimed my house, and my kids' schoolwork, I'll be back.

In the meantime...I did manage to make a couple of cakes that were already scheduled before the sickness started.

This one was for a First Communion...duh!
And this one was for a high school graduation. It was supposed to represent all the things that he really enjoys...reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, writing with an old fashioned pen and ink, and on the paper is a favorite Tolkien quote. The ink and pen are chocolate, and the books are chocolate cake and fondant. The paper is rice paper...so the entire thing was edible. This was one of the most fun cakes I've gotten to do so far.
Okay, that's it for now. I'll be in and out with updates over the next few weeks, and then hopefully I'll be all better and back to my normal bloggy self! :)
And this

Well Howdy Ya'll!

I guess by now you've all figured out that I've been on a little bloggy break. It wasn't intentional, and I didn't feel like I needed a break from the blog, or the computer. I just had a LOT of things to get done here at the house and with the kids' schoolwork. As you know, I had been feeling pretty lousy for awhile and things were just getting farther and farther behind...

No, I'm not all caught up yet, but I am doing much better health-wise, and I'm starting to make a little progress on my lists, so I hope to be back to more regular blog-writing and reading soon! I think I've missed reading all of your blogs more than I've missed writing my own!

I just stopped in today to let you all know that I'm feeling much better (I'll give all the details about that in a future post), and I'll be back soon. I'm still updating my Twitter every now and then, so if you want to follow me on Twitter, just click the link in my sidebar. And if you are Twittering too, please let me know so I can be following you too!

Thanks for still checking in with me and I'll be back soon!

The Big Day!

This is the big day...

My sister and I are on our way to Dallas to get the results of my kidney function tests, and hopefully a plan of action that will make my life a bit easier! :)

And then we're going to see INKHEART! I'm so excited!

So, I'll be back tomorrow with an update for you, as well as a review of the movie!

Have a great Wednesday everyone!