A Day With Nola

I spent today with the cutest two year old, my baby cousin Nola.  I went over to the Macleod household around 8 o'clock this morning and watched Nola until 6 tonight. Kevin & Jen were off to Calgary for a fetal assesment.. (see previous post )

The appointment went pretty well for them, They got good news of the baby is surrounded by plenty of amniotic fluid although the heart rate is still quite low (in the bottom two chambers that is), they also learned they are having a baby.. GIRL! :) Another sweet, precious, adorbale baby girl! I'm so excited for them!

Nola & I spent the day hanging out watching Treehouse, doing puzzles, and playing with all her other fascinating toys in her brand new playroom :)

Being silly crashing into pillows.

Crappy bathroom pics, cause we can :)

She loves this horse! It was actually mine when I was her age, It's been well used in our family!

Thinking Positive

This past week has been very stressful, depressing and sleepless, however it's starting to look like light really is at the end of the tunnel.

Opa is recovering amazingly well from the mass heart-attack, pneumonia, bladder infection AND blood infection. All of his infections are gone and he's getting better each and every day now. He's still quite weak and is working at gaining his strength back. He's still struggling with walking, it's a huge effort for him to walk a few feet to the door of his hospital room and back to his bed. But, hopefully his strength will return with time and he will be able to come home soon. He's trying and that's what matters. He needs lots of rest and is getting the treatment he needs where he is. Opa has Alzheimer's and that is making it difficult for his doctors and nurses to treat him. He may say he is in pain one minute, and the next he says he isn't. Thankfully his nurses and doctors are so understanding and are really great working with him! Sadly, he doesn't remember when family has been up to the hospital to visit him and desperately calls his nurse and asks her where we are. It's heart-breaking to see him be as sick as he was, so weak and disoriented. I am SO thankful and amazed he's getting so much better and is recovering so wonderfully. I love him with all of my heart and cannot wait for him to be recovered enough to go home. ~~~I love you Opa, Stay strong. <3 ~~~

Although Opa is getting better and stronger, a new tiny un-born family member is facing some life-threatening medical issues. My cousin and her husband are just over 5 months pregnant with their second child. My cousin has a rare disease called Lupus, it effects all different parts of her body and can cause a lot of strange things to happen and is life-threatening if it isn't taken care of properly. Her last pregnancy was great! She felt pretty darn good and there was no issues with the lupus. However, this time it's a whole other story. Lupus can cause problems with pregnancy and the un-born child.

Last week Jen and her husband went to their ultrasound appointment hoping to find out the gender of their baby, but all too quickly the gender didn't matter anymore... the tech said the baby's heart rate was 58, so a doctor checked it and heard 121 and told them not to panic. Over the next couple of days it was discovered that their baby has a heart issue caused by the lupus. Basically it killed the natural pacemaker in the bottom 2 chambers of the heart. So the tech heard the bottom two chambers and the doctor heard the top two. If the baby's bottom 2 chambers drop below 55 Jen may lose the baby. The doctors said it was a 1 in 4 million chance the baby would develop this condition, but it's happened. The baby will be delivered at 32 weeks by c-section and under-go surgery to have a pacemaker put in.

It's a long road ahead, but I know together, as a family we will all be there for eachother and help eachother out! Maybe they can't do it alone, but we as a family CAN and WILL get through this!

This Can't Be Happening.

A few days back my Opa (Grandpa) took a fall while getting into bed, his senior home phoned the paramedics and they helped him get back into bed. Nothing was broken, he wasn't bleeding, or in any pain. All was well.. until thenext morning. He woke up like usual, but something was much different. He physically was not able to get out of bed. He could not move his legs. So the EMTS were called back.. and my stubborn Oma (Grandma) refused that they take him to the hospital as my Aunt would be there within the hour to take them to a doctors appointment. The doctor diagnosed him with having a severe bladder infection. We all found this quite odd as his fever was high, he physically could not walk and was very shaky. But okay, illnesses effect seniors in strange ways.

Well, as of yesterday (Tuesday) Opa was much worse. He had a very congested chest, watching him move was like watching something in slow motion. It literally took him two minutes to move his arm from his waist to his face, and he was still shaky, feverish and so weak the man could hardly hold his head up. So last night the ambulance was called again. This time the paramedics were terrible! They didn't want to take him and wanted to give everyone attitude about the long wait at the hospital, etc. Family demanded he be taken to the hospital.

At this point tests are still being completed but he's been diagnosed with a blood stream infection and pneumonia. We're still waiting for heart tests and some other serious of tests to be completed before we'll be able to fully understand what is going on. He's still in emergency so no one other than his wife and children are allowed into the room to visit. He will likely stay in Emerg. until all of the tests are done. I hope he's able to be put into an actual room soon so I can go be with him.. even for a short while just to see how he is and be there for support.

It's been a very rough week and I hope it gets better soon. I need Opa to feel better and be able to come home from the hospital. It's so hard and stressful I don't even know what to do with myself. I'm angry at the first doctor for not testing far enough to find out what was really wrong. All in all... my heart hurts.

Certificate of Excellence

Last week I sent one of my school instructors an e-mail about how my courses are going, what I'm liking and doing well at as well as what I'm struggling with. I completed a course almost two months ago and passed the final exam with an exceptionally high mark, the instructor told me I would be recieving a gold certification in Workplace Safety for doing so well in the course and on the final exam. That was about five weeks ago....

Then yesterday this showed up!

Took them long enough to send it, but I'm glad it's finally here! :) Success!

Welcome Winter

Red Deer woke up to snow on Friday morning, for some people this is exciting and for others it's quite depressing. Of course those who are into winter sports don't genereally complain about the snow and cold, where as those who like the heat and being outside in shorts and a tank top aren't overly happy when the snow hits the ground and the furnace kicks in.

I don't enjoy winter much myself, I like the summer heat. I hate being cold and driving in poor weather conditions. Although I dislike winter so much, I choose to make the best of it. I think this is where a lot of people go wrong, they choose to be depressed and negative about the snow. Even though I can't go outside and soak up the sun I find things to do that make the winter more enjoyable. One of my favorite things to do is turn on the fire place and curl up with a good book and a cup of tea. It's relaxing and cozy, the perfect way to spend an evening after a long day at work or school. I also do quite a bit of baking in the winter - the warmth and fantastic smell of cookies baking in the oven is delightful! When it gets closer to christmas I keep myself busy making a bunch of crafts, decorating the house, setting up the tree, purchasing and wrapping gifts for loved ones.

I don't find winter to be that bad as long as I keep myself busy, it makes the day go by faster and keeps me happy! If I'm bored the days drag on and I find myself feeling depressed, I'd much rather prevent those feelings from happening. Negativity only brings us down and makes life harder, life is an adventure that should be appreciated and cherished each day, it's up to us to make the best of our adventure. :)

New Laptop!

Yesterday I decided it was finally time to purchase a new laptop. My now old one was in perfect working condition, runs like it's now however, the mouse button fell in. It still works, you just have to pick it back out once in a while so it can be pressed again. It was getting rather annoying! Other than the mouse the only other thing you could consider wrong with the old Toshiba is the hinges (I think that's the best way to describe it) were getting lazy and the screen would fall forward once in a while. If I had fixed those two issues it would be like new!

It was quite the experience Laptop Shopping in Red Deer. Everywhere I went was out of everything I liked, or their service was complete crap. First I went to best buy, they were out of the one I had wanted but the sales associate was awesome! He answered all of my questions and showed me computers they had that were almost identical to the one I had wanted originally. I couldn't decide what to do,so I stopped by Future Shop and Staples. Both the sales associates at both stores were awful! Neither of them answered any questions or provided any useful information, I left in a cranky mood.

My next stop on my journey was to good ol' Wal-Mart. I'd checked out their website earlier in the day and found a Toshiba Quad Core, 2.3ghz and 4gb of ram on sale for 398.00. (It has many other features, I just don't feel like typing them all!). The guy at Best Buy also recommended this particular computer to me. He said it was better then most of the ones he had available.  So I decided the Toshiba from Wal-Mart was the one I wanted. Of course... BOTH Wal-Mart's in Red Deer were sold out. (They probably only had one to start with). Thankfully, the Sylvan Lake store had one left and put it on hold for me. I went straight there and picked it up!

My adventure to get a new laptop took over 3 hours. I think the lesson learned here is: Don't try to buy anything in Red Deer because no one will have it!

I've been using my new laptop since yesterday evening,and I'm in love with it! It's a little smaller than my old laptop which I'm actually really loving! It's a lot lighter and easier to move about. It's super fast and I'm loving the Windows 7 operating system! :) I think I made the right decision and can't wait to see how it does once I start doing a ton of school stuff on it. :)

The Horrifying Results!

Last night my brother and a few of his friends were getting together for Halloween. He asked if someone could back comb his hair and give him a bit of make-up. I had my best friend Monika over and we definitely got him good! His hair was back combed and had a crazy amount of hairspray in it, If you lit a match I'm sure it would have been engulfed in flames. He was a complete whimp when it was time to get his make-up done. He wouldn't sit still and kept scrunching up his face - men are such babies!

He was a complete stud after his make-over.



This Halloween was the best one in a long time! Monika came over for dinner and we made homemade pizza and wings. We didn't have a lot of Trick Or Treaters, only about 30 or so, but that's a record compared to other years when we only had 10. We went on an adventure to Tim Hortons and some Asian guy was taking pictures of us, we went for a random drive and were jamming out to some sweet tunes and yelling at people. I'm sure everyone thought we were drunk, but we were completely sober and just having some clean fun! :)  Monika also prank called a few of her other friends and asked them if they wanted to play a game. Most said no, and others hung up!

It was a night of fun, and I'd do it all over again next year! Even though we didn't dress-up we had a total blast and it'll likely become a tradition for us. :)