babybloomr

Well, I’m still in Arkansas! After dropping Charlotte off at Brookhill Camp yesterday afternoon, I realized that if I drove home to Nashville I would only be there two days before I’d have to turn right around and head back here on Friday in order to pick her up on Saturday, so staying seemed to make the most sense. Plus Madi and I are getting to have some great hang-time with Mom and Dad, so it’s all good. Except for the lack of internet. That’s SO NOT GOOD. That is sucky.

Here’s the latest news on the health front: Daddy is going to have surgery on Monday, which is the other reason I am staying in town. They will be removing the portion of his scalp that has the angiosarcoma lesions on it, then grafting skin from his thigh onto his little pink head. (So he will lose his beautiful white hair… but I’m going to call Sheri Easter and find out who made her wigs for her! I won’t go the Jake Hess route, but I think a little white hairpiece might be in order, don’t you guys?) After the surgery they are going to do a series of radiation treatments– 5 days a week for 6 weeks, which sounds crazy excessive to me, but my guess is they are not going to be zapping him with big doses, which is why it will be so drawn out. The good news is that though the surgery will not cure the cancer, it will keep the lesions from spreading down and across his face, and that when it does reoccur, they can deal with it promptly now that we have the diagnosis and know what to look for (this is a very, very rare cancer and very commonly misdiagnosed, which it was in Daddy’s case.) Also, the surgery is not going to be terribly hard on him, just about 24-48 hours in the hospital. And the radiologist said that there would not be any pain from the round of radiation they will be giving him. So I am very grateful.

I appreciate your prayers and thoughts. I’ll be checking back in and posting some pix of our Dropping Charlotte Off At Camp day– Madi was bored, so I think she took about 300 of them… But I’ll leave you with a couple of shots of this UNBELIEVABLY TINY BABY FAWN that I got to bottle-feed the other day at Mama June’s house! I fell deeply and madly in love, and now I want to kidnap one.

Later, taters!

Hey there!

We are still in Arkansas, heading home tomorrow after we drop Charlotte off at camp. Yesterday was Madi Rose’s 17th birthday, and we had a family bowling party to celebrate. None of us bowl very often, so it was a fairly level playing field, which is to say that we were all terribly out of practice with a few notable exceptions of which I was not one. It was a ridiculous amount of fun! There were about 15 of us– even Mama June drove over from Hot Springs and brought her daughter Kim who was visiting from Dallas and her son, Charlotte’s favorite cousin Danny (brother to Gorgeous Mandy and Hot Cousin Billy, who unfortunately, were not there.) If you have not gone bowling in a loooong time, I heartily recommend it. Some highlights:

Charlotte started off slow, but under the careful tutelage of her cousin Daniel she blossomed and actually made a strike at one point. Here’s a shot of her early score…

Madi was too busy rockin’ Nanno’s socks to really concentrate on her game, but she was the most enthusiastic of us all, and every frame she bowled ended with this pose, regardless of the outcome:

The Scorekeeper

Since we were in a bowling alley in Arkansas, of course we needed a baby on the floor, so we brought our own. This is my niece Leah’s baby girl, Perri Elizabeth, wearing the cutest dang bow headband made by her doting grandmother, Liz: (Hey Leah! I Photoshopped the sweet potato spit-up right off her bib! You’re welcome.)

Madi and Charlotte are obviously stunned by my flawless bowling form:

After the bowling, we went back to Mom and Dad’s for ice cream sundaes and Nertz. Since we were all cake-d out, Mama June baked Madi a birthday lemon merengue pie, which made my sweet Daddy so happy you’d have though it was his birthday! I will share more photos tomorrow, but I’ll leave you with this priceless footage of my nephew Daniel the Computer Genius who is also apparently a Bowling Genius, carefully instructing his mom Carolyn in the finer points of the sport…