Party People

I love a party. Especially when I get to go and hang out with my family. This weekend Meg and I (and pretty much all my other sisters), threw my sister, Kelli, a baby shower. She's pregnant with her first baby and it's a little girl.
The party was a blast. We had good food, good games, and great company. I don't think it can get any better than that. (though next time I'll need to remember how rigorous prep can be.)
Meg was our investor, truly every party should have an investor as great as Meg. She was there when we needed her and was willing to back us up with whatever we needed.
My older sister, Kim, took care of the side dishes (veggies and fruit), drink, and thank you cards. I think I liked her drink the most though. She made it especially for Kelli, though Kelli wasn't aware of it before...well, you know. =) It was called 'Safe Sex on the Beach'. Personally, I would have thrown in some Sprite or something, but I like fizzy drinks.
My younger sister, Jamie, took care of the chicken salad sandwiches even though she wasn't able to attend the party. They were really good. I even stole a few of the leftovers because I love chicken salad sandwiches.
Kristy, another sister (I know some of you are wondering how many I have. 5, that's how many.), made sure we had cute balloons, flowers, and decorations. I thought they turned out really great. Maybe in a few days the white flowers will finish absorbing the food coloring. lol. Thank goodness they didn't absorb the pink. (I don't like pink.)
Kaylene and I though had the craziest, best job ever though, I think. Kaylene is the chef in the family. If there is something fancy and delicious looking, I'm pretty sure she either has the recipe or will find it so she can make it. We debated for weeks on what to make for dessert (mostly because we kept finding things that looked delicious. I have a weakness for delicious looking food.) But we kept coming back to the chocolate covered cheesecake. That's pretty much when the madness took over. I then brought up the idea of making a few different flavors. We finally narrowed it down to three flavors: original, raspberry, and blackberry. They took a while to make, but I thought they were delicious. A bit tedious to had dip the cheesecake though (especially since we tripled the recipe). We dipped cheesecake for almost 3 hours. Seriously, delicious, but next time we will make one pan and worry about flavors for one batch only. (They turned out really good though. I think raspberry was the best.)
All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good party. Even if we are a bit loud. (Okay, we're pretty much just loud.)

Fielding on the other hand got to try out a D&D party (dungeons and dragons). He said had a lot of fun. And though it is a weird game (or so I've heard), I'm sure it had more to do with the fact that the people he hung out with were a lot of fun. We'll see how it goes the next time around.

hmmm...surgery for you today

Fielding woke up on Cinco de Mayo with a stomach ache about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. And me, being the sympathetic wife I am, asked what was wrong. He said his stomach was hurting really bad on the right hand side. I told him I thought that was the appendicitis side and asked him if there was anything I could do for him. I told him that if he was still hurting in the morning we would go in to the doctor's office. Until then, I had to get back to sleep because I had work that day. 6 o'clock rolls around and I wake up to the sound of dry heaving. (never a good sound. I'm always afraid I'll have something gross to clean up.) I holler out of the room and ask if Fielding is okay. He says he is, but that his stomach is still hurting and he wants to go see the doctor. So I get out of bed, get dressed, call the doctor's office (they don't open until 7.), and finish preparing the stuff I'm supposed to take to my work party. Call the doctor's office again and set up an appointment. Call my boss to let him know I'll be in late, and drop off the party stuff.
Once we're at the hospital, they run Fielding through all of the basic check-in. Our doctor comes in and the first words out of her mouth are 'oh, it's never a good sign when they're hunched over like that'. She checks his back from any pain. None there. She then picked up his foot and hit the heel of it with her hand. Well that certainly got a reaction. Who would have thought hitting the bottom of the foot would be a medical technique. Next thing I know they're calling an ambulance, putting an iv in him for fluids, and telling him he gets to go into emergency surgery.
Seriously!?! Not exactly what I had planned for the day and not really something I was too keen on dealing with. (I'm not a fan of hospitals or needles. They freak me out.) I can't tell you how ... I can't think of the word, but it's definitely not something I'll ever forget. Not to mention my doctor's advice, if you're going to follow the ambulance don't get freaked out if they flip the lights and sirens. (No problem. I didn't plan on following that closely anyhow. That wouldn't help my mentality.)
The next tasks were letting work know I wouldn't be in for a couple of days, finding out what I needed to do for insurance stuff, notifying his parent's, and not freaking out.
You'd think that when you go in for emergency surgery it would happen really quickly, but since Fielding wasn't too bad there was a lot of waiting and clearance that happened before he went in for surgery. Two hours to confirm the diagnosis with a doctor and a surgeon, another hour in pre op., and another hour or two in actual surgery and recovery.
Luckily, everything went really well and there were no additional problems. There were a few things I learned though. My husband doesn't like the initial feel of morphine. He isn't crazy weird like most people on drugs, but he does talk a lot. He also makes the funniest smiling face when told to smile post op. (He blames it on how dry his lips were.) The great part was how awesome University Hospital was. They did a great job and took care of a lot of the basic so I didn't have to. (I have to give Fielding's parents kudos for sitting there from about 11 in the morning until about 4 in the afternoon.) Oh, I also learned I don't like waiting around in a hospital. There are definitely a million other things I could fill the time with.
So far Fielding is recovery really well. He was up the night of the surgery and has been getting better since. He has now been cleared to mow the lawn so hopefully the city will leave us alone. Outside of that he still has to wait another 4-6 weeks before he's considered fully recovered.

Hooray for insurance and fast recoveries! I guess that will teach me to think my life is boring.

Life is life is life

I can't believe it has been so long since I had something to say. (okay, let's face it I don't think that will ever really happen.) My life has just been crazy with vacation, school, and work.
In March, Fielding and I went to Las Vegas with our friends, Mandi and Jason. It was great fun to get out and not have to worry about going to work for a few days. Though in the long run, Fielding and I learned that Vegas just isn't for us. Except for the delicious buffet at the Rio and the roller coaster at the New Yorker.
School was a mad dash. I completed two courses I had taken I's in last fall. Luckily, I got an A in my Ancient Russian History class and I'm still waiting to hear on the other one. Hopefully it will go well and I can work on finishing up the rest of my classes. If I do well and ever get around to passing that blasted Math class, I'll be graduating in 3 semesters. I just can't believe how close I'm getting. Hooray!
Fielding on the other hand looked at his transcript and realized that he is about a semester or two away from graduating with his Associates in a few different areas. He's then thinking about pharmacology up at the U. I'm excited for him and hope he gets to those classes. At least he has finished the dumb math class I'm stuck on.
Outside of that my life has been pretty full of work. Most of the time that means I'm in the office, but I got the chance to go out on a senior portrait photo shoot. It was a lot of fun and I was shocked at how different Chelsie looked from one shot to the next. Luckily, a lot of the pictures turned out really cool, even with the harsh sunlight.

Hopefully Kaylene and I will be lucky enough to get some good pictures with Kelli too.