10,000

I've had this blog for about 3 months and by this time tomorrow I will have over 10,000 page views. I doubt that is very many in the world of blogs, but to me that seems like a lot. It definitely exceeds the expectations I had when I started all of this and all I can say is thank you. Thank you for taking the time to follow my (our) journey, thank you for caring, thank you for your time, or simply, thank you.

This weekend turned out to not be what I expected on many levels, but that seems to be my life lately. As Geoff mentioned I really didn't feel well Friday and even early Saturday.

This weekend was the annual Halloween party at Hound Huddle, the doggy daycare our pups go to (aka our pups' other family...Hound Huddle has been amazingly supportive of our pups and us and we don't know what we would do without them). I'm going to admit that this is one of my favorite events of the year because it is a celebration of one of my favorite holidays and we get to take our kids and pups in costume. We usually try to come up with some crazy family theme. A few years ago we did a Harry Potter theme. Geoff was Harry, I was Ginny Weasley (of course), E was Dobby, the house elf, Esther was Fluffy, the three-headed dog, and Jeffy (the greatest dog ever) was Hedwig, the owl. Last year we did an angry birds theme.

Geoff and I usually have a lot of fun planning and making our costumes and it's kind of our thing. It's our we don't go out and party anymore, adult/family thing. This year I came up with an idea that was lower key. We both thought it was funny and we were excited about it, but we knew we didn't have the energy to put into anything elaborate. This was the perfect idea. I planned to make the costume accessories that we needed Friday night, but instead I crashed. I hoped to make them Saturday morning, but I still just couldn't do it. The party was from 11-1 and we made it for the last 15 minutes.

We realized it was basically stupid to go by that point, but we just couldn't skip it all together. Our dogs didn't care that they didn't have costumes, they still ran around like nuts. The kids didn't care, either. E is always excited about any excuse to get to go to doggy daycare. They have climbing kid toys for the dogs outside and he gets to go inside and outside at will. We had to bribe him with M&M's to get him to leave. Ella wasn't quite as invested, but she enjoyed watching the dogs and she totally capitalized on the M&M's when she realized what E was getting (it doesn't take much).

After the party we took the pups back home and headed back up to Madison to check out some non-big box stores for flooring and bathroom renovations. Many of the bathroom stores had closed at 1 on Saturday which we found to be frustrating. Then we went to one of the big flooring stores and the person that came to help us obviously had no interest in "helping us." He gave us a few tile samples and sent us on our way. We wanted to ask questions about carpet vs. laminate floors for the living room, but he was long gone. So we left.

We went to the kitchen and bath store next door to peek and found the complete opposite. The person that helped us there asked us if it was ok with us if she showed our kids the play area and even put in a "m-o-v-i-e." It's not that we didn't see through what she was doing, but we appreciated it. She worked up an entire bathroom for us and sent us home with sample cupboards, tiles, counters, etc. She is also coming tomorrow to measure everything and give us an estimate. She'll be here a few hours after the adjuster is here. She was the surprise highlight of our weekend. She was so nice and helpful. Eventually we told her that I have cancer and she almost started crying. She shared with us that her daughter has cancer too, not the same kind, but she also has a little girl that is a few months younger than Ella. She also had to wean her daughter because of the cancer and there were a lot of other similarities. The bathroom mess has been overwhelming, but we know who has our business for fixing it and we feel confident that we will be taken care of.

The other highlight of our weekend was having Geoff's mom and grandmother come for a few hours today. Geoff's mom leaves to go home to Abu Dhabi in a few days, and Geoff's grandmother hasn't been to our house since well before Ella was born. They were only in Madison for a few hours, but it was enough time to get brunch and then gut pumpkins. We carved one while they were here and sent that one home with Grandma (we decided she needed a pumpkin and we wanted to share).

These really were the highlights of the weekend for us. Everything else just didn't seem to work out quite the way we needed it to. E didn't want to go to Sunday school today. We were late enough for the kids swimming lessons that we decided it wasn't worth it. I didn't finish as much homework as I needed to/wanted to. E seems like he isn't really feeling well again and I definitely am not. None of this was major, but it left us feeling like our weekend wasn't the productive weekend we had planned or that we feel pressured to have right now.

Did I mention that I received the pre-approval letter for my tentative surgery? Seeing it in writing made it seem more official and less tentative. We're still hoping and praying...

Cancer chain quote of the day:

"I like to tell everyone that God is not "putting" me through this --but He is "bringing" me through it."