Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Happy Birthday to me!

Well, today is my 31st birthday and it was pretty quiet. Jeff made breakfast for me, which was nice. I had an appointment in the afternoon at MD Anderson, so we left around lunchtime to head that way. My doctor was over an hour late, which was kind of annoying, but what are you going to do. He said that the xray I took today looked good, nothing new growing there, the tumor they took out in December was the same kind of cancer I had before, which was epitheloid spindle cell sarcoma, and the margins were clear. I don't have to see him anymore unless I have new tumors that need removing, so hopefully that means never. But who knows. Then Jeff and I went out to a very nice steak restaurant called Perry's and had a wonderful dinner. We didn't bring the camera, but I did get a picture taken of me when we got home. All in all, it was a great birthday.

Monday, January 12, 2009

What's been happening...

Well, we sure have been busy these last few weeks. I'll try to give a brief synopsis of what we have been doing and then get to the pictures.

Jeff was working the week of Christmas, so we spent a quiet week at home and just spent Christmas with the two of us. It was nice. The Saturday after Christmas, we packed up the car and the dogs and headed to Fredericksburg for Jeff's brother's wedding. The wedding was simple, yet very nice. All the family and close friends were there and it was nice to see and visit with everyone. Carrie's husband Chris actually made it in time for the wedding also. He was on his 2 week R&R and it was great to see him. (He left yesterday to go back to Afghanistan and will be done with his tour in June). We stayed in Fredericksburg for another week. We went to some wineries and watched TONS of college football. Good times! New Year's Eve was a quiet one at the house. Me, Jeff and his mom were the only ones awake at midnight. We celebrated by watching the ball drop and then popped some poppers and went to bed. On Friday the 2nd, Jeff and I packed up most of our things and headed to Canyon Lake to the Hill Country Resort for a little Anniversary getaway. The resort is near San Marcos and the best outlet mall in the country, so on Saturday we shopped till we dropped. On Sunday, I wasn't feeling too well, so we lounged around in the condo till about mid-afternoon. We had some stores that we wanted to go to, but hadn't gotten around to on Saturday, so I put my game face on and toughed it out to shop some more. :) We headed to Gruene, Texas and ate at the Gristmill restaurant for dinner. It was very nice. The famous Gruene Hall is literally next door, so we popped in and watched a local band play for a few minutes, then headed back to the condo. Bright and early Monday morning, we, well really Jeff, packed the car with all our loot and waited for his dad to meet us with the dogs and the new painting his dad made for us to go over our fireplace (which is huge). Between the two of them, we got everything in the car and headed back to the house.
We had just enough time to unpack the car when my aunt and uncle arrived. Unfortunately, my aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer and is now being treated at MD Anderson. So she had tests and appointments at MD all week, so I was able to go with her to a few of them and show her around a bit. My cousin, her son, went to NASA with his scout troop on Friday night and so they had an extended stay here and all got the VIP tour at NASA on Saturday. They left bright and early on Sunday morning. Sunday night was the start of my birthday week so we celebrated with some friends at one of our favorite restaurants in Kemah. The food was very yummy and we could barely choke down the birthday cheesecake we had for dessert. It was tough, but we did it! Anyway, that about sums up the last few weeks. Tomorrow is my birthday and I get to celebrate by going to MD Anderson for a check up with my surgeon. Yee haw am I excited to do that! NOT! But Jeff and I plan to go out and celebrate that night so I am looking forward to that. I will update tomorrow on what the surgeon says. I feel really good, but don't want to push anything. I'll probably try to go back to work next week. Anyway, now on to the pictures:


http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffery.mauldin/December2008?feat=directlink

I'm experiencing some technical difficulties with the pictures. If you want to cut and paste the link above to get the pictures, you can, if not, here is the slideshow. (You can click on the first picture and it will bring up a better slideshow.)