The Latest

On New Year’s Day Brigid turned three years old. It’s hard to believe that she’s already three. It seems like she was born yesterday and now here she is calling Rachel her baby sister. Brigid is very much an individual. She’s quiet but every now and then will surprise you—and she has a very good memory! The other day I took Mary and Brigid with me to the supermarket. On our way out we’re walking up the row of cars and there was an SUV on the other side of the row coming slowly towards us. As it passes us, Brigid, wearing her little red sunglasses shouts, “Hey! We’re walking here!” Needless to say I wanted to dig a hole and jump into it.

As I mentioned in the last post, we’ve had a barrage of visitors this Christmas season. After Alice and her crew left, the next day we welcomed Elizabeth and my nieces Emily and Annie and their dog, Tucker. Now, this Friday we are going to have my aunt (mom’s sister), my cousin and his little daughter come and stay with us for a couple of days. I’ve been very blessed to have my family visit, and I’m looking forward to this weekend. As always, pictures will be posted in the photo gallery.

Unfortunately these last few weeks have also brought their share of sicknesses here. We’ve had pink eye, ear infections, and more ear infections, coughs, colds and the like. I think Ken is the last one fighting illness right now—he caught Brigid’s pink eye—other than that, I think we are pretty much all on the mend, thanks be to God.

School started here on Monday. I think the big ones were happy to get back to business. I haven’t received a single complaint from any one of them. I think this semester we are going to go on more field trips. There are all kinds of museums in Atlanta that I think the children would love to visit. If anyone has any field trip ideas, feel free to leave me a comment! :-)

Here is the latest Mom update. We have been to several doctors and after a lot of deliberation; Mom has decided to go with a bilateral mastectomy. The surgery will probably be done within the next two weeks so please keep Mom in your prayers. The radiation oncologist told us that while they can crop the area to be irradiated pretty close, a small part of Mom’s lung and a small part of her heart would be exposed to radiation. Mom just wasn’t comfortable with that and since she doesn’t ever want to go through this again, she decided to get the bilateral mastectomy. I will post when we have a date for the surgery.

Well, that’s all the latest. I put more pictures in the photo gallery but you’ll have to go to page 2 to see them all. Oh, and did I mention the Ponds got a new little boxer puppy? You can see her in the photo gallery too!

Ave Maria!
C.