These photos from Mother’s Day 2008 shows the magnolia tree we planted for her in the front yard.
Wow, we all look quite a bit different even just 3 years ago.
is it big enough?
Mr. Photo-Genic
Mom may kill me for posting photos from the time when she tried having long hair! It’s Mother’s Day, but I hope someone will stand up for me!
I return to my weed eating….oh no! Shorts and rubber boots?
This evening we went to the Six Flag amusement park here in St. Louis! The last time I’d been there I was Noah’s age, so Noah especially had a great time riding about 4 roller coasters he’d never ridden before. His new favorite roller coaster is the Boss which is in the top 5 of the best wooden roller coasters in the United States.
The Joker…a swinging ship ride.
The Boss with two 150 foot drops, top speed of 66mph and length of over 5000 feet.
Big Smiles We all rode (excluding Mom, who we could not induce to join us) a new ride called American Thunder. It’s pretty much just a shrunk-down version of the Boss which is why we were hoping Mom would ride.
Kate purchased passes for this year, so we’re looking forward to coming back throughout the summer.
Benjamin is probably the least photo genic of us boys, but we’ve found that he’s always got a broad smile on his face when he’s posing with a trophy.
Benjamin got up at 4am this morning (and a lot of other mornings) to go turkey hunting on 500 acres a friend owns near the Mississippi river. He’s heard gobblers and even saw some turkeys, but they wouldn’t come into shooting range of the shotgun.
Mom did find how and where the water came into the house. After a few days of dry weather we quite literally saw water seeping from the bottom of the foundation and out through the patio. Obviously the water had poured over the gutters. It then shot towards the foundation wall, where it seeped through a hole in the patio and then created water pressure under the foundation and made it crack.
On Thursday we went to a great Cardinals baseball game at Busch stadium. It was one of the most perfect games I have ever been to; the weather was very delightful, the game was very close until the 8th inning and if we won it would tie up our series with the Marlins to 2-2. Not to mention how great it was to be sitting behind home plate!
I really like the views from the stadium. We could see the…
…Gateway Arch…
…and the Old Missouri State Capitol from our seats.
Pujols’ .240 batting Average
39,000 Fans
The Cardinals manager, LaRussa, substituting a new pitcher.
After the game
As you’ll see in this video, the game was very close until the 8th inning when we tied the score 3-3. Burkman made a 3 run homer that made us win the game 6-3.
We’ve decided that’d we’d like to do some gardening this year, so we’ve begun to prepare for planting this week. Now that it’s stopped raining and we’ve gotten the water in the basement under control we’ve been able to get a few things done.
Stacking wood
I am planting a few grape plants for this year, but I’ll also be trying to rejuvenate our old, very-neglected, grape vines. I keep on kidding that at the end of the year I’ll have some “Vintage 2011” in the cellar. Noah wants me to see me barefoot stomping on grapes…
I had to dig out a few holes for the new posts.
Of course, we also had to plant the un-productive flowers for looks.
Okay, maybe it’s worth it!
Kate awoke early Friday morning with a pain in her kidney. The pain wasn’t intolerable (about a “4” on a scale from 1 to 10), so she got ready and began the drive to her office. She texted and told us that the pain was starting to get worse and that she might start driving for the hospital; a few minutes later she let us that she had gone into the ER.
A CT scan showed that there was a kidney stone in the ureter, but that it wasn’t obstructive. It was approx. 5mm which is a little bit more than the size of a BB. Because of its large size I began saying she had a kidney boulder.
By the way, this is her third kidney stone and she’s never been able to pass one of the stones in the past. The doctor said that there was only a 20% chance that she’d be able to pass it.
At the ER
The urologist couldn’t really do anything over the weekend, but give her pain medicine, so they gave Kate the choice of leaving the hospital and then coming back next week to have the kidney stone busted up through lithotripsy. Well, who wants to spend the weekend in a hospital? They gave her some more pain medicine through her IV and gave her prescription for Vikodin.
After picking up the meds we went to our Civil War dance lesson, but only the three us boys danced; by the time that we left Kate was in a lot of pain (7-8) and while we drove to the hospital her pain went to a 10. After signing in at the ER her pain went back down to a 4 and it was a good thing too, because it was an hour before we got a room. After being in the room for more than half an hour nobody had come into the room and her pain went back up to a 10. We buzzed for help, but I’m sure it was close to 20 minutes before they got a nurse into the room and administer her meds.
Kate stayed in the ER for a few hours early Saturday morning before she was moved to a hospital room. On Saturday they put her on Dilauded for pain, but it made her vomit for most of the day.
Bad IV job
The picture to the left shows how poorly one of the nurses put in an IV. The blood soaked through a bath towel, a blanket, a sheet and the fitted sheet. It had even taken her 20 minutes to do.
Kate was switched to Perocet and she didn’t feel nauseous from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon when she was dismissed from the hospital with pain medication.
Leaving the Hospital
She took Percocet for pain on Monday and she had the lithotripsy surgery done early Tuesday morning. Other than the general anesthesia, the surgery wasn’t bad and they used subsonic waves to bust up the stone.
Recovering from anesthesia
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