our past few days

i'm not sure how to behave when i don't have a couple weeks (or couple months) to catch up on. this will probably be a shortie. or at least a shortie compared to my usual because except for sarah beth's surgery, things have been pretty much status quo around here. all of the regular school, church, scouting activities plus all the things that come along with those. just a couple of pics to share from that stuff...

max is still playing upward basketball. only a couple more games left, which makes him a little sad. he loves it!

this is the new mascot for upward. yeah...we don't get it either.

i've kept updates going about sarah b so not much new at this moment. i do have to document the surgery day though, and our waiting room activities. surgery was tentatively scheduled for between 5 and 7 pm. i spent part of the morning at the hospital with sarah b, kate, jan, elisabeth and corey, and mark's sister and niece. sarah beth looked cute as a button - go figure..who looks so cute on the morning of brain surgery?? she did! all decked out in green and chocky brown. left there and met greg for lunch. while we were eating jan texted and said sb was getting her central line at 12:30 and surgery had been moved to 4pm....so off i went to gather up my boys from school, ran home to gather up some things to keep us occupied and to the hospital we went. we did get to pop in and see her in the holding area, which was really good for the boys. well..for us too. never hurts to get in one last little look and kiss her head one more time! the rest of the evening was spent in the lobby with our creasy family, jan, the blacks and a steady flow of precious friends, some deciding to stay and camp out with us. this is appalachia, you know. family shows up for everything and we STAY. and, as is typical, this kind of turned into a little party. partly because of nerves i'd imagine. partly because we all just love each other and had the whole evening to be together. uncle dale learned how to text...several of us sent him texts (blake and luke especially enjoyed that) which was fine with him til he learned he'd have to pay extra for that. he and jan also gave us a little fashion show with the snuggie thing jan had. i couldn't believe anyone actually would buy one of those but she thought it was great. i think dale did too because he wore it for awhile. gloria and jackie came to get max for basketball practice which he was glad about/we were grateful for/they enjoyed tremendously! (what would we do without our church family?) laptops were in use all over the place, taking advantage of the free wi-fi. keeps teenagers (and moms) from getting bored and/or restless.

without a doubt the most interesting part of the waiting was taken up with blanket production. no kidding. kate has had fabric for over a year to make one of those fleecie fringie blankies for jeremy. jan told her to bring it and we'd make it while we waited for sarah b....so she did. oh my goodness. jan hauled out the fabric and announced it was blankie-making time. i'm wondering where in the world we're going to do this, because we needed a place to lay it out flat and cut and tie. well, we did that. and we did that in the main lobby of the hospital. oh my. couldn't even believe it, but looking back i'm not sure why i was surprised. =) we got it all done with various helpers and lots of onlookers, most of whom were looking at us like maybe this was an episode of candid camera. i tried to recruit a couple of folks who came over to make conversation but they were having none of it. i told kate/jan/elisabeth this was pure west virginia. our girl's in there having brain surgery and we're out in the lobby on the floor making a blanket. during part of our cutting/tying moments, jan whispered to me "it did what i wanted it to..." - making that blanket got kathleen's mind off of sarah b for just a bit. even saw some smiles on her face and heard a few laughs! good girl, jan marie...

sarah's surgery was over a good while before we expected it to be. dr.weinsweig came out and gave us her good report...we cried and hugged and praised the Lord for His goodness (still doing that)...moved all the furniture back...volunteered to run the sweeper (that's WV for "vacuum")...and then we took our tired boys and our tired selves home to find our beds. long and emotional day. but God is (among so many other things ) good and God is faithful. we are blessed.