It's Kristi.....

Since it's taken Mom so long to update her blog, I guess I'll do it for her. You snooze, you lose! We have been extremely busy the last couple of weeks, which is probably part of the reason that Mom hasn't had a chance to update recently. We've been fighting being sick and this past week was full of owies. Monday, Oma tried to sew her finger and had to go to the emergency room to have the tip of the needle that broke off in her finger removed. After much digging by the plastic surgeon, they were able to remove a quarter inch piece of needle from her finger. It's bruised and sore, but Oma seems to be doing quite well. Also on Monday, I decided that I forgot how to walk and ended up falling down some stairs at work. My feet somehow came out from underneath me and I landed butt first on the stairs. I am still in quite a bit of pain and think I am going to have to break down and go to the doctor. I have been putting that off since I don't think there is much they can do for me. Again on Monday, Mom had a spot removed by the dermatologist and has some stitches to be removed. We were all hurting Monday night, so I am sure you can see what dinner was like Monday night. Brian went to Kansas City this weekend, but ended up getting plagued with a horrible migraine. After stopping several times on the way home, he finally made it safely Saturday evening. Dad ended up getting some sort of bug on Saturday and spend some of the day in bed. Alayna was the only one out of us all who didn't have anything major happen. **knocking on wood** It turns out she makes a really good nurse. Alayna and I had experienced a first together in the latter part of November. We, along with Oma and Aunt Kris, went on our first train trip. It was exciting and a lot of fun. We left from Jeff City and went to St. Louis for the weekend. We stayed at the hotel connected to Union Station, so that made things much easier. Union Station wasn't as big or full as we expected it to be, so we took the day Sunday to explore St. Louis a little. We rode on the Metro all over the city and even took a side trip to the arch. We couldn't have asked for better weather to do all of this, it was absolutely gorgeous. I highly recommend doing this if you just have a weekend that you want to get away. Alayna is doing very well in kindergarten. She loves her teacher and is learning things that I don't remember touching on until first or second grade. She has a list of around 50 words such as "like", "and", "but", and so on that she has to know how to say, read, spell, and write by the end of this year. We are working with those quite a bit. She's learning to add, match, and separate in her math class. It's amazing to see her mind soak all of this in. She came home with a letter from the school nurse a while ago requesting that we have her eyes tested again, so we went this past Saturday to do that. They have to have their eyes tested before they can start kindergarten, so we had already done that in May, but the school felt there was a need to test her again. Good thing. In the past six months, her eyes have gone from a .25 to a .75 and have gained curvature. In other words, she is going to be as blind as her momma. We got her some glasses and hopefully they will be here in the next week or so. She is very excited about having to wear them, but I have a feeling that is going to wear off rather quickly. I have had a lot of ups and downs recently. Work is going good. I was told recently that there is a possibility that I am going to get a promotion, so that's been pretty exciting. School has been great this session. I took two online classes, but I made sure they were not difficult classes due to the holiday. They've both proven to be very easy to handle. I have finals this week and feel really good about both of them. Otherwise, I have been struggling a lot recently. For some reason, my emotions are all over the place. My next appointment with the oncologist is next week, so I am going to speak with her about that when I go. I don't know if it's a hormonal thing or if it's just me. I guess that's all for now. If I don't get to see or speak with you before the holiday, I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas and New Years. Lots of Love, Kristi