Analise and Sophia fell asleep fairly early last night. Melissa fell asleep next to Sophia while I slept on the couch next to Ana. At about 2am, I went up to bed and Melissa slept next to Ana. If we could just get Ana to want to sleep in her room again, we might have a normal sleeping arrangement… hopefully soon… im hoping this is just a ‘phase’….
Gotta run back to a conference call. Have a good day and God Bless!
Analise had a fairly uneventful chemo treatment on Friday. Her sleeping schedule is still all over the place, but she’s eating well and behaving like a typical 2yr old….
Saturday, we brought the family to Rainforest Cafe. Ran into an old college classmate, Maui and his wife. We all went out to celebrate a belated birthday for me and for my sister and Jun meet us out. Analise, Sophia, Ella, Gigi, and Shawn had a nice time looking at all the animal-tronics in the restaurant. It’s so funny to see the kids kids sort of not know how to react to all the special effects.
We brought the kids to the Disney store and Analise soon let us know she was due for a nap. That was the longest walk from Sears to our parking spot outside of JCPenney’s.
Last night, my best friend Jon invited me out for a belated birthday dinner. We were going to grab some chinese, but he ‘realized’ that the restaurant was going to close. Little did I know, he was just trying to get me to Morgan’s in Mokena where my other boyz were waiting to join us for some dinner, drinks and to shoot pool. Thank you to Richie, Gil, Ted, Marc, Rob, and Craig for coming out to hang. It’s been a long time to get all these guys out. We don’t do it enough and hope we can try to do this again soon. For Bill, Mike, and Erwin, we’ll definitely see you guys soon.
Jon did a good job covering his tracks and getting us over to Morgan’s. I must apologize to those who made it to Bourbon Street and looking forward to see us drop by. Especially to my highschool classmate, Shannon, who was looking forward to reconnect all those who were out at Morgan’s. Shannon organized a mini-Hillcrest-Rich Central-Rich South-Southwood Jr High reunion last night. I’m sure they had a good time and regret that we did not make it out there.
Today, we must say thank you to my mother’s friends hosting the St. Nino prayer group in Frankfort today. Especially to Evelyn, who prayed over Analise. Evelyn is a brain cancer survivor, dating back to 1982. She has been blessed and has given us hope through her experience and prayers. Sophia will definitely continue to tell Analise that ‘Jesus loves you’.
Melissa and I made it out for a movie today. We saw ‘I love you, man’. It was definitely an entertaining comedy that I would recommend to anyone.
It’s late and hopefully these kids find themselves asleep shortly. They both napped well while we were at the movies, so let’s keep our fingers crossed for a good night’s sleep.
Take care and have a good work week. God Bless!
We’re at Analise’s clinic and chemo appointment. So far, Analise has put up her normal kicking and screaming just before and while her chest port is accessed. She’s ok now and receiving fluids prior to chemo being administered.
I’ll provide updates as the day goes.
Have a good day and God Bless!
Last night the kids fell asleep by 8pm at home while Melissa and I were at Michelle and Jason’s home. Melissa, Michelle, Aunt Madonna, and Jackie were working on wrapping some benefit raffle prize baskets. Meanwhile, Jason and I hung out and played nintendo wii sports with the kids.
Today I went into work and got some work done onsite. It’s always good to be onsite to see my coworkers and get face time with everyone. My teammates and I, in Downers Grove, try to come in 1 day a week to see each other and have lunch together. It’s a nice way to bond and catch up face to face. Communicating by emails and chat messages are somewhat impersonal. At least calling people give you a more personal connection vs reading a conversation on a screen.
Having worked from home for the last year has been a good experience, saved a lot in gas $$$, able to get an extra 2hrs back into my life by not driving to/from work, and being able to be with my family more. I can’t stress enough how much more discipline it takes to make sure you get up every now and again vs just glueing yourself to your chair. Time seems to fly when you’re working at home, but I try to get a workout in during lunchtime to break up my day.
Anyway, Melissa’s sister, Carrie, and her kids were over and expended a good amount of energy together. Analise and Sophia are really close to all their cousins and it’s nice to have them over. All this socialization prior to attending preschool has been good for each of them.
After work, I caught up with my friend, Rob, who owns Aquatica in Tinley Park. Ken (Melissa’s dad) and I have been going to him for a few years for all of our saltwater supplies, fish, corals, and etc. Rob has been gracious enough to buy and sell some benefit and raffle tickets for us. I always enjoy going to his store to see all the cool stuff like his shark tank. It’s about the size of a parking space and he usually has all kinds of sharks for sale. He expanded to sell freshwater fish, pond supplies, koi and etc recently.
I also caught up with 3 different buddies named Jason who’ve been kind enough to help us with the benefit. Jason R, a former coworker has been helping sell tickets for us. I visited my chiropractor, Jason Kaapke of Tinley Park Chiropractic (708-532-2226) for an adjustment and to chit chat. Lately, he’s been giving me lawn care advice, actually passing on the advice he’s received from a knowledgeable Home Depot guy. This combination of gypsum, milagorite, and Scott’s organic fertilizer revitalized his lawn. It’s actually quite cool how Jason explained it, but that combination of materials has made this lawn thicker, grow slower, and less dependent on frequent watering. In fact, I believe it’s the milagorite that helps breakdown the clay and also add more nutrients into the soil.
We currently have a service that does our fertlizing, which sounds snobby, but is actually cost effective. If I were to buy enough fertilizer to apply to our lawn for each application, we would actually be spending more money per application and doing the work ourselves. I need to discuss this system that Jason is following, i’m going to have to reconsider my options.
We also talked about grub control, but I’ll save that for a whole other blog entry.
Lastly, I called & caught up with Jason Hollendoner. We played a ton of wii boxing last night and wanted to see how he felt today. Let’s just say, that he’s a little sore today. Which is good, you wouldn’t believe what type of workout you get playing wii sports, but you can definitely break a sweat. Last night, we were both up bobbing and weaving around trying to knock the other out in wii boxing. It’s kind of cool to play but must look even funnier to watch 2 people playing.
Barring a jinx, Sophia and Analise fell asleep around 830pm. Melissa and I were watching Bangkok Dangerous until she fell asleep on the couch.
I need to drop off something to Debra tomorrow morning and I’ll be back home to work the rest of the day.
Thank you to Cory and Steve for your contributions to Analise’s benefit fund. We really appreciate your help. One of these days, I’ll have to have Melissa bring the girls up so we can all go out to lunch.
Have a good night and God Bless!
A big thank you to the donations from Kimberly Crocker and passing along info about Analise’s benefit and our website & blog to Ty Bentli on 103.5 Kiss FM. Information and our donations can be made through his blog @ http://1035kissfm.com/pages/tyblog.html …
Thank you to them and their listening community for their help.