Lets Get Physical...Physical!

I'd like to say we've been inspired by the endless NFL commercials telling us to exercise 60 minutes a day but we seem to have that taken care of on our own. Even with taking a break from soccer, the kids and grown ups have found ourselves keeping pretty active.

Every Saturday morning, Siena has her dance class. I actually rememered a camera this time. Class starts with ballet where she is learning the terminology and basic positions. Then its time for tap. I don't know what happens there although a lot of noise is generated. With her Scandinavian mother, I'm not going to be much help for her in this endeavour other than to cheer her on!

At what is called "freeze dance", mommies, daddies, and siblings are invited in to watch the girls. They basically get to do their own dancing and they're supposed to freeze when the music stops. They usually freeze after being reminded to freeze but its very cute regardless.

Siena is 2nd from right with some of her fellow classmates getting ready to start freeze dance.

They're getting going now. They like having props like the purple wands to dance with.
There's my tiny dancer!

After dance, we head home, get some lunch, then its off to Mason's basketball. His basketball starts with a practice and then there's the weekly game. They even have to run some sprints to warm up. Mason's the cutie in the back with blue shorts. He's one of the younger players on his team.

Mason made a lot of improvements in basketball in just one week. He seems to learn pretty fast. He's the blue shorts and red wristbands in the center.

They even attempt defense on occasion. The wrist bands are so they know who to guard.

I tried to get in as many workout classes as I could this week since my busy, 10K reporting weeks are coming up starting next week. That doesn't leave me time to do my lunchtime workouts and I'm relegated to trying to get a couple runs in on the weekend. I ran 4 miles after we got home from basketball in that spirit. Also because I signed up to run the 8K in the Shamrock Run in another week and a half.

Luis is doing PT on his sore calf (see the purple leg picture from several months ago) and its getting better. He walks about every other day in addition to therapy and takes the kids for a walk every Sunday. Today the weather was nice and they walked down to the boat ramp and fed the ducks.

Now we're off to Red Robin for some dinner!

Saturday Business

Do I still have any blog readers after last week? If you thought that was bad, at least I didn't include pictures.

This week was a little more typical. Work, school, American Idol.

Saturdays have turned into our busy days of late. Luis is taking a class at PSU on Saturday mornings. While he's at class, Mason and I take Siena to her dancing class. She LOVES her dancing class. Its half ballet, half tap. She listens well to her teacher (who Mason insists is her coach) and pays attention.

After dance, we hurried home, ate some lunch, got Mason changed, and hurried along to Mason's first basketball practice and game. He had never played basketball before so he had to try to learn how to dribble and shoot. Those things will come. After almost 2 years of playing soccer though, come game time he gets in the mix and is pretty tenatious. Once he learns the basic skills, he should do well. Course, being 5, he has no interest in practicing at home. That will come later.

The battery in our camera was nonfunctional during these first 2 events so pictures will have to wait until next week.

After basketball, we came home for another quick clothes change and headed to Pietro's for Giada's 2nd birthday party.

Giada seemed a bit unsure of what to make of all of the sights and sounds of Pietro's but in all seemed to have a good time.
Siena found a new favorite game - this one which involves smashing cockroaches with a hammer. She kept disappearing and I would find her here.
After Pietros, we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory. Cousin Craig and family was in town and a bunch of Kinney's came together to see them for the couple days they were in town. Since there were 16 of us, we were seated in the Trolley. Pretty cool.

Siena enjoyed some good mac and cheese with Papa Ron to go with the pizza she ate at Pietro's 2 hours earlier.

Here's the big gang in the trolley.

There was even a balloon animal man that came around and made the kids some special animals - Siena got an Ariel mermaid and Mason an elephant.

Here's Siena again with her Ariel. She wanted to sleep with her until we pointed out that she may roll over on top of Ariel and pop her. She wisely set Ariel on her dresser.

It was good seeing cousin Craig, albeit briefly. And I'm still waiting for those ice cream toppings Craig.

Today (Sunday) we pretty much stayed home and watched football. The kids were a little worn out from yesterday, especially Mason, who had more 1-2-3 counts and time outs than usual. That generally is only a problem with him when he's tired. Another busy week looms ahead though.

A Pain in the Ass

Aside from Mason returning to school after Christmas break and Siena starting dance lessons, my rear end has garnered the majority of the attention over the last week. I was wholly prepared to completely ignore it for blogging purposes until discovering that numerous family members have had this same affliction but have remained completely silent about the whole endeavour. Well, since grace and tact aren't much my style anyway and I'm still on narcotics, why not share the gory details of my week with all of the internet.

Be forewarned, this week's blog will fall under the category of TMI.

It all started last Saturday when I woke up in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in my nether-regions. I hadn't felt anything like it and it was none too pleasant.

Sunday, it was still there. Sitting hurt. Standing hurt. It throbbed in all positions. Finally by mid-afternoon I asked Luis to go to the store and invest in some Preparation-H. He kindly informed me that we had some. Well, when I went to apply said P-H, I felt a giant bump. Now, I don't go poking around there too often but I knew enough to know that wasn't supposed to be there.

After having Luis confirm that there was something there that shouldn't be, I hit the internet. Research led me to believe it to be an abscess. As luck would have it, I had an appointment already scheduled for the next day with my doctor, Dr. J, for some annual female fun.

While in the waiting room for the doctor, I had the honor of hearing a Russian lady, who had arrived 20 minutes late for her appointment, argue vehemently with the receptionist that her clock was wrong and then threaten to have her fired and replaced. Nothing like a display by a crazy lady to get you in the mood for a check up.

So, feet in stirups, Dr. J announced that "You don't have an abscess. That, my dear, is a hemorrhoid!" "HEMORRHOID!?!" I replied, "Don't only old people get hemorrhoids?!?" Apparently not. She then informed me that she can't treat hemorrhoids in her office. I would have to go see another doctor the next day.

For anyone as uninformed of this affliction as I was a week ago, a hemorrhoid is defined as swelling and inflammation of veins in the rectum and anus. External hemorrhoids are prone to thrombosis: if the vein ruptures and/or a blood clot develops, the hemorrhoid becomes a thrombosed hemorrhoid. This is what happened to me. Sounds lovely, doesn't it.

PWCL has been experiencing some financial concerns of late necessitating a number of extra meetings. I had a task force meeting after my appointment Monday night. Even though my rear end was in agony, I decided to go both because I thought it might allow me a chance to focus on something else and also because it would be too embarassing to have to explain the reason for missing the meeting.

Enter doctor #2, Dr. G.

I'm pretty sure nothing in life can prepare you for having your first meeting with someone involve them examining your rear end. That's what happened 5 minutes into my initial meeting with Dr. G though. I knew that all hopes of dignity were gone the minute I felt this lump so it doesn't much matter. He confirmed the hemorrhoid diagnosis (apparently it was painfully obvious) and, like Dr. J informed me that "we can't handle that here in the office - we'll have to schedule you in the OR for later today".

This was not how I had my week planned. For added fun, I had to send vague emails to my manager explaining my continued absence from work.

So, Tuesday evening, I went back to the OR and had Dr. G cut it off. I'm pretty sure those were my exact words going in..."cut it off". And cut it off he did.

I was feeling great several hours after the amputation of my hemorrhoid. Then a few hour later, the pain set it. Aside from short, intermittent stints, I didn't sleep for the next 2 days. I shoved ice down my pants and sat on a donut (until the donut popped). Percocet helped little the first 48 hours. I now know what misery was.

I killed time trying to distract myself watching Sex and the City and Band of Brothers. Time well spent.

Further good news came on Thursday when Dr. J sent me an email informing me that "PAP is good but you have a yeast infection". Well, why not.

As of today, the rear is feeling better but I'm still fighting the fatigue. I'm ready to go to bed at about 4 PM every afternoon. Work next week should be a lot of fun.

2010 - Brought to you by the Cruzes

In the proud vein of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve countdown...this week we're counting down:

10) Tuesday's weather report: Morning fog with rain shower's in the afternoon. Tuesday's reality, afternoon snow. A lot of it. It only took me 2.5 hours to get home. Many others in the area weren't that lucky. While I saw it as a nuisance keeping me from the homestead, the kids LOVED it! They were sad to see it go the next day. I wasn't so sad. Photo courtesy of Oregonlive...I wasn't up to taking pictures from traffic.

9) Thursday - New Years eve. We got together as in years past with our friends the DeCiccos. Our kids happily spent the night with Yaya and Papa Ron. Chris and Sharon's daughter was in Southern Oregon with their grandparents as well. That meant we had an adult night out to dinner at Rogue!
8) The remainder of New Years eve was spent at Chris and Sharon's playing games. Since we're all such party animals (me in particular), making it to midnight was a stuggle. As soon as the clock struck 12, we shelved the game of Trivial Pursuit we were in the middle of and headed out. I was actually winning for the first time ever too.

7) Friday. Ducks. Rose Bowl! I gathered my glass of Cherry Coke, dressed myself and the kids in our Oregon jerseys, munched on Almond Roca, and watched the Ducks lose to Ohio State. It wasn't a horrible game, OSU just played better. My teams never seem to win.

6) Saturday afternoon, the kids had a soccer game. Highlights of the kids soccer career are here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nos_Q6d4vg Don't worry, this one's less than 30 seconds. Luis did a good job putting it together if I do say so.

5) Saturday night Luis and I watched Muriel's Wedding. We had never seen it. Liked the movie, LOVED all the ABBA music!

4) Also watched the Blazers who inexplicably seem to be continuing to win besides all of the injuries. Now their PG is in the hospital with pneumonia. Seriously?!?

3) Taking a page from the Blazers book, I took out my toe last night on Siena's door. Granted, the picture isn't great (you try taking a decent picture of your toe) but doesn't the little toe bear a vague resemblance to a cherry? Hurts like hell!

2) We all went to visit Grandma Bessie this afternoon. It was a nice visit.

1) Enjoy this movie Luis put together. I loved it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzMXBum2C7k