Major Catch Up Time

Yikes, I have an entire month to catch up on. Sorry about the delay in posting, I’ve been busy, which is ironic seeing how I really can’t go anywhere. Thanksgiving was great. My two sisters and their family came into town. Like I’ve always said, being with family makes everything wonderful. We celebrated my oldest niece's 5th birthday on the 29th too. I can't believe how much shannon has grown up! After everyone left, I became Santa’s helper by researching present ideas, wrapping, decorating, making Christmas cards, etc(we didn’t really start preparing early). Christmas was fun again. Having everyone around, especially my nieces and nephew makes the house more entertaining! It’s amazing how much they’ve grown over the past couple months. Several friends from college came back home, so it was also wondeful to "have some plans" and be able to get out of the house to visit with them. Too bad I haven't really taken any pictures...love pictures, but not really excited to take them due to the steroid face (aka cheeks that look like I have a hambuger bun attached on each side). My dose is slowly being lowered, so hopefully they'll go down someday. I Right after Christmas, my mom, dad and I head off on the 28th for my appointment at St. Jude. Each month that I go, it generally takes about 4 days. It’s a ½ day to travel, 2 days of appointments, and ½ day to travel home. Everything is still going well, but the immune suppressants are suppressing everything in my bone marrow. Thus, I’m not really progressing too much. My doctor lowered the dose, so that should help out a little, although I will still progress slowly. After we returned home from my appointment, I had a week to finish a class(I finally took my exam for my nursing class from when I left college to go to St. Jude). Yippee, now I don’t have that class to worry about! At the same time, I started my winter semester online class. So, that week was busy with studying and reading chapter after chapter for my new class. We also recieved our first snow... at most 1 1/2 inches, but hey, that's pretty good for us! The following week(this past week) my mom and I headed back to Memphis for 2 reasons-I had another doctor's appointment andmy sister, Melanie, had a baby girl! Taylor Susan Pitcher was born on Saturday Jan. 7th. We’ve been here helping out, but mainly entertaining my niece, Aubrey. Taylor is an angel! She sleeps, eats, and looks around. Aubrey is doing well adjusting to having a little sister. All the attention she’s getting from Gigi(my mom) and I has helped as well. I’m going to miss these girls when I leave...but don’t worry I have an appointment at St. Jude on Feb 11th, so I’ll be back soon!

While visiting, I had to take a pathophysiology test. Here I am double tasking. I give props to those who have children while still in school. I only had this one class to read and study. Wow, I can't imagine having a full load and taking care of kids/the house etc.