Sunday events

Cookie baking
Went to my parent's house to bake cookies with Mom and Marissa (and Jason). We made 7 kinds, 7! Jason requested frosted sugar cookies and wanted to do the frosting, so we let him.

Zander: Are you going to work, mom?
Me: No, to grandma Karen's house.
Zander: Who else is going to be there?
Me: Just me, Gma Karen and Auntie 'Rissa.
Zander: Oh, it's just for girls, then.
Me: Yep (I better not tell him that Uncle Jason was there!)

Dinner
Girls dinner at Big Bowl with Tara and Stacy. Love catching up with friends (and yummy food too)!

I'm taking the day off work tomorrow to do x-mas shopping. I'll probably hit Rosedale and a few other places.

Christmas early?!

Today I received the KOTM (kit of the month) I ordered. I'm so excited to use them!

Game back on...maybe

The pediatric surgeon talked with the primary physician who said she definitely felt a hernia, so the pediatric surgeon left us a message that he wants to go ahead with the surgery, but wants to talk to us first. He's not available until next week, so we'll find out more next week. I'd like to know if we can "watch and wait". I'd hate to put Mason through surgery that he doesn't need. I want to find out if there's any negative repercussions with waiting and watching.

False alarm - no double hernia

Today was Mason's appointment with the pediatric surgeon. He couldn't find any signs of a hernia - that was originally diagnosed by Mason's regular doctor. He was very thorough. He said that a hernia would usually be the size of a golf ball - very obvious. This wasn't the case for Mason, and after the exam, he still didn't think Mason has a double hernia. The surgeon does want to talk with Mason's regular that diagnosed it to gets her thoughts. The surgeon said that 25% of the time, a hernia doesn't show itself at random times.... so he wants to talk with her to see how she came to her diagnosis. At Mason's check-up on Monday, she showed us what she thought to be the hernias and this was similar to how things looked today with the surgeon.... so I'm pretty sure there is no hernia. Whew! A sigh of relief after we heard the good news from the surgeon.

Mason update

Monday 12/3 was Mason's 9-month check-up. It started out well. Mason is meeting all his developmental milestones. He's still on the small side (18 lbs, 4 oz), but acceptable. Then, his doc did a physical exam...and found that he has a double hernia and needs surgery to repair it! :( This is quite common on Mana's side of the family. Mana and his dad had a single hernia. Mana's brother had a double hernia and all of Mana's uncles had hernias. Just a bad gene I guess. So far, Zander has lucked out. So, the next step is to meet with a pediatric surgeon. We're doing that Thursday afternoon. The surgeon will assess how soon the surgery needs to be scheduled (which will be at Children's Hospital in St. Paul) and we'll go from there. Poor little guy! Here's a few pictures from this weekend. He's climbing up onto everything!!

Cousin pics

Trying to get a decent picture of 4 kids - ages 3.5, 3, 13.5 months and 9 months....now that's crazy!!

Saturday events

Medtronic Holiday Party

Well, Mana's predictions were correct (not that I doubted him)... not a successful visit with Santa. All week, we've been talking to Zander about what he's going to ask Santa for x-mas - cars. Very simple...cars. We basically got right into the Santa line (since we arrived 20 minutes before it ended - which is a story that's not worth telling). Anyhow, we were escorted into the Santa #1 line (they had 3 Santas!), where we saw the family in front of us finishing up with their pictures. Right then, I felt Zander grab onto my leg. I looked down and his lip began to quiver. I had pretty much lost all hope of the visit we talked about with Zander. Sure enough, when it was our turn, we walked towards Santa and Zander started screaming. (Did I mention that Mason is just observing everything going on - no crying whatsoever). So, the photographer suggested we do a "family" picture. So, that's how it all went down. All 4 of us in the Santa photo.
After the formal photo, we grabbed our treat bags and munched on them for about 5 minutes before seeing the mime from MarketFest and getting kicked out. Quick, but painful ordeal.



Archiver's Scrap Mania

As mentioned in a previous post, I attended Archiver's "Scrap Mania" with my friend from work, Nikole. It's basically a night (5-11pm) to scrap all you want and use all the tools onsite. It's $15 which includes dinner, a page layout to do (or take with you) and a make-and-take which was a snowman tag. It was cute, but too glittery... I'll be finding glitter everywhere for days!
In my preparation for the "mania" (as the "avids" would say), I was apparently very optimistic. I packed supplies for 3 projects. I almost finished one of those projects. If I do this again (which I would like to do) , now I know how much I can realistically get done. Tonight, I put the finishing touches on the pumpkin patch album I worked on. I bought the album kit (SEI) at the scrapbook convention this summer and I think it works really well with these photos.