Quick Update

So, I wish I had exciting news to post, but unfortunately, Christmas was a bit hectic for us this year. Not in the best way... Christmas Eve was great and we spent it with my immediate family. My brother and his wife hosted a delicious dinner and we had a great time talking and watching the boys play with all their new toys. Baby Emily was soooo cute in her little Christmas dress (I'll post pics later)! Even Baby Allison made quite a haul. Unfortunately, I had been getting a sneaking suspicious that my gut was taking a bit of a downturn. And low and behold, on Christmas Day, it struck like gangbusters. I tried everything I could think of for some relief, but to no avail. I sent Matt on his own to celebrate with his family, but it was barely 5pm before I was saying uncle. I called my folks since they are closer than Matt and went back to St. John's... Matt met us up there and by 11pm I was admitted again.

The first few days were really rough, so I apologize if the horn didn't get blown as it did last time. I did start feeling a bit better by Sunday, however, they wanted to keep me long enough to transition me from clear liquids to solid food and from IV steroids to oral. So, I was released last night and am now doing my best to get caught up. We hope that everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year's Eve and we will see you soon!

Welcome Baby Emily!!!

What's the best Christmas gift you can get?? A new baby, of course!! Well, my brother and his family were blessed this week with the arrival of Emily Elaine Emerson at 12:31am on December 11th. She's a beautiful little girl weighing in at 7lbs 4oz and measuring 20in. Jenn went in for her induction at about 2pm on Wednesday and a mere 10 hours later, there was baby Emily! Both Drew and Jack were very excited to meet their little sister. She's a very happy and healthy little baby and I look forward to taking advantage of my unemployment to spend lots of time with her... (I'll post some better pics later... The batteries in my camera always die at the most inopportune times!)

Decking the Halls, Home Improvement, and Date Night...

Well, I can't say my weekdays have been very eventful (mostly job hunting and Law & Order re-runs), but we sure have been busy during the weekends! The day after Thanksgiving, we went over to Matt's parent's house to meet Matt's step aunt and uncle for lunch as they were passing through town on their way to New Mexico. Grandma had hitched a ride down for the holiday festivities, so afterwards, we brought Grandma back to our house for dinner and had a great time catching up. On Saturday, we put up our tree and most of the decorations. It was pretty exhausting work, but the house looks really great. Then on Sunday, we celebrated Thanksgiving- Round 2 with Dan and Grandma over at Matt's parent's house. Mmmmm.... turkey.

I wish I could say this weekend was as productive for me, but Matt got a jump by asking Ian to come over and help reframe the plumbing stack enclosure. They removed all the yucky moldy wood and replaced it with fresh. Later, Katie came over and helped me prepare dinner and dessert- homemade pizza and fruit salsa... Yummy!! Matt still needs to finish covering the enclosure with luan, but he should be able to get that knocked out this week. Unfortunately, he will have a little more free time since his hours were cut at Vitran. All the "part-timers" were cut from 40 hours to 30 hours. The good news is that my application for unemployment has been approved and I should be receiving a payout this week and I also have an interview this week, too. I don't have too much info on the job, but I'm not ruling anything out. With all this additional stress, we decided that a date night was definitely in order. So, last night we used a gift certificate to go out for sushi and then drove around downtown looking at Christmas lights and other sights.