Happy Birthday Jackson!

A couple of weekends ago we went home for Jack's 1st birthday party.

You know the old saying, "It takes a village to raise a child"? Well, in our case it takes a big extended family to pull off a birthday party!

First, we borrowed Grandaddy's house and yard - he's got a great flat front-yard with lots of big shady trees.

My mom shopped ahead of time for all the party goodies (one of my mom's many talents definitely includes hospitality and entertaining) and helped get it all setup and then cleaned up the day of the party. Who knew that hot dogs in the crockpot could taste so good?

Aunt Nita and Uncle Ronnie brought water balloons which they self-lessly filled up for the kids all morning. They were a blast -the boys absolutely loved them!

Aunt BB came through in a pinch when we realized our "Easy Set Up" Baby Pool was collapsing in on itself and letting all the water run out. She made a last-minute trip to Wal-mart to pick us up a new one. Disaster averted!

And Grandaddy provided not just one, but two cakes (a big one for the everyone and a little one for Jack to make a mess with) as Jack's birthday present from him.

Last but not least, lots of other thanks go out to all those who helped entertain our little ones while we got ready, those who pumped up the swimming pools, etc. We could not have pulled this off without everyone's help!

My Frankenstein Impression

By popular demand...here are some pix taken a couple of days after I had my surgery. For those who didn't know I was having surgery, don't be offended, I didn't have much advance notice myself!


I have had thyroid problems for years, in fact I have had multiple thyroid issues (Graves disease, a multi-nodular goiter, questions about possible throid cancer). Always before, when the doctor checked things out with ultrasound, my cancer risk was estimated ~ 10% and since there are possible some side-effects associated with surgical removal of the thyroid gland (like damage to the nerves that control the vocal chords or damage to the glands that regulate calcium absorption in the body) the risk was never really high enough to warrant surgery.


All that changed a couple of weeks ago when I went in for a regular check-up. When the doc looked at the ultrasound he noticed that some of the nodules had grown significantly since last check and he also discovered some "micro-calcifications" in the large nodules. To make matters worse, one of the newly big solid nodules was too deep to do a needle biopsy on. All these factors combined increased my cancer risk to ~ 40%, so vocal chords be darned, "it must come out!" :).


I met with the surgeon and then stalled about a week on the surgery date in order to be healthy for Jack's first birthday party (pictures coming soon). I had to stay in the hospital one night and then came home to be VERY uncomfortable for the last week and a half of being unable to turn my head, unable to pick up anything even remotely heavy, unable to drive, unable to play with or even really hug the kids, etc. What a pain in the neck! (pun intended :)


Lots of good news to end this one though! It wasn't cancer (Thank you Lord!), my calcium absorption is still fine, and I can still talk (relief for some, horror for others ;).


Let's hope we don't have to do anything like this for a really long time!