Just Another Day in Paradise: July 2014

Thursday, July 31, 2014

A scare and two celebrations

July 10th George got a call from his mom. Dad had gone into the hospital for what he thought was kidney stone pain. When they imaged his kidneys in the emergency department they did indeed find a couple large stones in one kidney, but also found a 5 cm mass on the other. The hospital admitted him to do further testing. Not sure what to think, George found friends to cover his shifts and drove up to Ashburn to be at the hospital with his family.

The kids and I followed the next day. They had released Dad from the hospital and he was home with the diagnosis of Stage 1 kidney cancer. The good news is that it's slow-growing and has not yet metastasized. George set Dad up with a urologist down at UVa that will do the surgery to remove the mass sometime in August.

All things considered, we were relieved with the news. We stayed for the rest of the weekend and spent time with the Glass family.

Grandmom is amazing. All the kids love her. Even with the stress of Dad's hospital stay and health concerns, she was always willing to play with the kids, talk to them, and show interest in what they are interested in.

This maniac was just happy to have the kid around.

George's mom rocked all her kids to sleep when they were babies. Every night. She's a pro--when Lily is tired, Grandmom will pick her up and start rocking. 3 minutes later, you get this:

Love it!

Bryce and Jude have a good time together. Even with the age difference they seem to get along for the most part and enjoy chasing each other around the house with nerf guns or home-made paper swords. One day we turned on the sprinkler and these three boys spent about 30 minutes running circles in the yard and laughing like crazy.

Callie and Lance spent most of their time together sharing their favorite YouTube videos and Minecrafting. They are two peas in a pod, those kids.

While we were there, we celebrated Mom and George's Birthdays.

It wouldn't be a Glass celebration without some amazing food!

Filet minion anyone?

George was on grill duty:

And then it was time for cake! This little boy was very, VERY excited about the cake.

Waiting...

Happy Birthday Mom and George!

(You can see Lance being my videographer. He did a good job!)

Reading the cards. Jen got Mom a lovely, heartfelt card...

...and George's card was, well, not so lovely but hilarious. Typical George.

Lance and Diesel:

And this peanut was an angel as usual, showing off her scooting skills and wooing everyone with her squeaks and squeals.

George and I celebrated his Birthday again with our friends the Elmers. Jayde and Britton watched the boys while the adults (and Lily) went to Bonefish Grill.

After dinner, we came back to the Elmers and had a cheesecake George specifically requested. It was the first time I had tried this recipe and it turned out very well!

Happy 31st Birthday, George Glass! I love you!

"Mom, I need swimming lessons!"

Jude has been telling me this since about January. Every time we pass a pool or the gym, he'll remind me. For the life of me I couldn't get him to understand why we couldn't do swim lessons right then, that we had to schedule the lessons and go at certain times, and our conversation always ended with him being disappointed.

I finally did scheduled him for swim lessons and for the middle two weeks in July we got to swim at Mint Springs Lake every morning, Monday through Thursday, while Jude got his swim lessons.

Charlottesville is amazing. Where else could you sign up for swim lessons and get to take them at a beautiful lake surrounded by trees and hills? Can you even imagine a prettier place?

It was the perfect way to get out of the house and entertain the kids for a couple hours each morning.

Cole thought it was great and spent most of his time just walking in chest-deep water looking for fish and trying to keep up with Lance.

Lance is a fish and spent his time swimming to the dock and back, doing dives, and trying to help Jude during the lessons.

Lance comes to this lake often with his dad and Abbey but this was my first time.

Learning to jump off the dock:

Jude was pretty nervous about this part.

Lance, not so much.

Jude preferred jumping with a float.

Lily was intrigued by the sand and spent a good amount of time digging and throwing it around.

She also thought it was food.

I've always found it funny that babies will put sand in their mouth, realize it's gross and then do it again. Like maybe the second time it would magically turn into something delicious.

George even got to come a few times! He swam out to the dock with Lance and jumped with him for a while and spent most of the time in the water with the kids. I love it when he gets to be with us during the day.

Jude is such a flirt and had these lifeguards laughing at his antics. He even invited them over to play Skylanders. I wish I had half of his self-assurance.

I don't think Jude was the only one sad when his two weeks of lessons was over. I'm seriously considering signing him up again just so we can have a reason to get out of the house and do something fun.

Paint and Fireworks

After George's parents came home from Yellowstone, I drove Allen and the kids up to Ashburn and left Jude and Cole with my mom for a couple days so George and I could get some work done on our new house. Lance hung out with his dad and Lily stayed with us.

It was fun to be with George and start putting our house together. The first item of business was painting our orange room. Our family room was this interesting burnt orange and while we both liked that it was original and unique, the paint job was terrible, so we put decided to repaint the entire room and add our own flair.

This little girl spent a lot of time practicing her scooting while George and I taped, primed, and painted.

Sweet baby! Love this thing!

We had grand plans to be totally finished with the room by the time I had to pick up the boys on the 4th, but these things always take about four times longer than you think. (Three weeks later, we finally finished--George put up crown molding and did a great job on a steep learning curve.) George headed to work and I drove up to Ashburn to spend the day with the kids. We were planning on driving back to Charlottesville in time for George to get off work around 8, but since I stayed up until 4 a.m. the night before, I was in no shape to drive, so the kids and I stayed and watched fireworks with my family.

Spending time with Grandma!