Life as a Lewis

Brian and Rory celebrated her birthday by taking a father/daughter camping trip. From what I hear, she didn't stop talking the entire time although she did do a lot of entertaining herself with a whole pile of seashells . . . she just didn't stop talking even while entertaining herself. Sounds just like her. And I guess camping is alot of work (I wouldn't know) because my kids always sleep on the way home. Hence, the tired face. This is the first birthday for either of my kids that did not involve any grandparents, but we had Uncle Michael, Aunt Liz, and Addison to help us celebrate. The only thing on Rory's birthday list was a DS; and she made sure to remind us of this pretty much every day since her last birthday (Camden got one for his 7th birthday, and she was not going to let us forget it). Waiting patiently to open presents. She would like everyone to notice how long her hair is getting. Tackling Camden in excitement once she opened the DS...

I am not exactly sure when this happened, but my petite, sassy baby girl has turned into a still-petite and still-sassy big girl of 7. I mean, seriously, when did this happen? Just a few snippets to give you insight on this girl of ours. She has recently been cuddling up to me on the couch, pulling her arm through mine, and telling me, "I just want to give you a little comfort, mama." I apparently have a habit of deep sighing at the end of a long day or when I'm tired. Rory will hug me and say, "I'm so sorry you had such a horrible day, mama" when I sigh. Since most of the time I didn't have a horrible day or even realize I sighed, this makes me feel very guilty. She has now lost 6 teeth total, 4 of which are still gone, and 3 right in a row on top. This means she has serious trouble eating right now, but don't tell her that! Four missing teeth didn't stop her from biting Camden last night in retaliation for him trying to b...

Flowers from Brian on my appointment day. My phone rings for the second day in a row after regular operating hours, and I have to say I'm impressed by the patient care. Even more impressed by my CA125 number of 14.3 - ties my lowest number ever, and you can just see the relief washing over all of us at the supper table. I don't have another doctor's appointment scheduled until January 14. Also a record! Woohoo!!!! Camden and Rory are out of school the rest of the week, which works out well since that cough Camden has had for the last 4-5 weeks finally made me feel guilty enough to take him to see the doctor this morning. Guess what? It's pneumonia again. Oh, when will I learn. Our Thursday afternoon schedule is very easy: we're all taking it easy. All except Brian, whose school is not dismissed, but the rest of us are kinda doing a whole lot of nothing.

Vanderbilt's standard operating procedure is to have blood work one hour prior to appointment so that the results will be available during your meeting with the doctor. Due to a lab error, my results were not ready. Nor were they ready when the hard-working nurse called me at 6:20 last night, but I'm impressed with the phone call to let me know. While I'm waiting for CA125 results, I ran across these 2 things this morning that made me laugh out loud. 1. I'm Not Sassy, I'm Suzanne from the Momastery blog. Because, hello-my-feelings-about-summer! 2. This sketch by Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon about hashtags. Love it because I find hashtags way more trouble than they're worth. (please feel free ignore the very last sentence in the sketch which includes a bleeped out cuss word) Man, these kids are cute.  Full disclosure: they're not this happy together this week. These happy faces were all for the camera.

Well, our rite of passage was completely canceled by rain. I was clearly making my weather prediction for good weather based on the sunshine outside my window when I blogged and not on the official weather forecast. We decided to introduce the kids to Scrabble, and let's just say it was an exercise in patience for the adults. With the exception of Friday night's rain, the weather this weekend was perfection: 75 and sunny with cool mornings and evenings mixed in. If it were up to me, we would have fall weather year round. There's something so motivational about the brisk mornings mixed with the sun filtering through the trees. It makes me want to open up the windows and get right to work. Sunday we took the kids to a local park that has mountain biking trails. Or if you don't have bikes, you can call them walking trails. :) We took the short one-mile route, but are definitely going to go back for the longer routes. (photography note: the lighting was super...

We've lived in this house for nearly a year and I still don't have the living room fully decorated, but now that I have some pillows made (in fabric I bought 9 months ago, but we won't talk about that), it's getting closer. I still want to find a few burlap fabrics to make it not quite so girly feeling, but I'm loving all the colors. My mom (who made the pillows) thought my taste level was a little questionable when I asked her to combine these 2 fabrics, but I kind of love the bright green and retro, grandma-ish vintage feel. Tonight we're experiencing a first: both kids have a baseball game on the same night so we're starting the activities off at 5:15 and will probably be at the ballpark until 9:30ish. I'm actually kind of excited about it because a double header feels like a rite of passage. Not to mention, the weather should be good and it's the start of a weekend! I think this is the first of 5 double headers in the ...

My plans for today included cleaning up around here because, let's face it, after being gone all day every day this week, the house has gone downhill fast. Unfortunately, I'm wearing this stupid temporary monitor and it falls off every time I bend over . . . which kind of happens alot when you're cleaning up, so I'm going to take it as a good excuse to spend some time in front of the computer reading blogs or scrapping today. There are 5 of these electrodes attached to me, and this monitor has a super long cord. You can imagine how well I slept last night. Fun times! My breast MRI yesterday came back completely clear, which I knew that it would. But still a relief! Now if I can just get the same news next week from my oncologist. On a lighter note, anyone else update their phone/ipad to the new IOS7? I updated my phone this morning (after needing to clear off most of my photos so there would be space), and it is WEIRD! I do not handle change well. :) ...

I feel like I need to lead off with an explanation as to why approximately 99% of my pictures take place in this chair in our living room. (1) it's got great light here in the afternoon/early evening and (2) it's where Camden and Rory end up sitting - together - when we're all here. Hence, all the pictures from one spot. And when they're smiling like this, it's kind of hard to put the camera away just because I have dozens of pictures from this same spot. Yesterday was a long, long day. Parts of it were good like a pedicure (hello, teal toes for September), a much-needed Trader Joe's trip, and lunch with Tina and Kathy at Thistle Stop Cafe . Others not so fun: doctor's appointments and bloodwork. I'm not quite ready to give more details about that yet but today is more bloodwork, a MRI and back to yesterday's doctor to be fitted for a temporary heart monitor. Don't worry - pretty sure everything is A-Okay. I was so wor...

I don't know if it was the early dismissal from school on Friday or the fall-like weather we had this weekend, but the kids seemed to have called a truce among themselves and played for hours on end each day. It was kind of fantastic. She lost yet another tooth. Here's hoping these start growing in before she loses any more. I sent the kids out to pick tomatoes. If you have a garden of your own, I'm pretty sure I should feel mortified to show you this overgrown mess. We're eating tomatoes at nearly every meal these days. Even eating them non-stop, we've had more go to waste than we've eaten. They moved on to the trampoline. To have sword fights with plastic baseball bats. No need to use the trampoline for actual jumping. Michael, Liz and Addison came over for supper Saturday night, and while I think Addison has experienced bubbles before, she certainly enjoyed them with her cousins. ...