sad

Hey girls, I'm sorry to write a sad post today. But I wanted to let you all know that my grandma passed away this morning. I really appreciate all of your prayers and thoughts over the past few months. Your support has been a blessing. I'm going to be heading back to Ohio in a couple days for the funeral and stuff. We'll be there for the whole month of February then because we're going on the cruise with Kim and Adam (yay!). Anyways, grandma slipped into a coma last night and just stopped breathing this morning. It was very peaceful and painless (which is what we were praying for). Obviously, I'm having a rough time, but I'm also relieved because she's been so uncomfortable the past few weeks. I'm just picturing her completely restored and whole in heaven with Christ. Thanks again for your prayers. We could use a few more to get us through these next several days. Love you girls!

Julie

Thanks!

Hey Ladies!
It has been a long time since I have posted on here, but there has been a lot going on. Not that business is an excuse not to communicate with my favorite girls, but you know what I mean. :)
The biggest thing going on right now is that my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer last week and had a major surgery to get the cancer out. It was a tumor the size of a medium apple. They also removed her ovaries ( her uterus was gone from cervical cancer before) and the lymph nodes around the area. The only bad thing that happened is that they found some spots on her liver so they are getting the results from that back today - i'm actually waiting for my mom to call as i write this. The prognosis is good, though, even though she may have to do chemo for a while. SO! Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers, for those of you who knew about this. It all happened very quickly, but Mom is doing well and recovering from the surgery very well.
Since that makes it a total of two weekends in eight that I've been in Chicago, I am really looking forward to this weekend and being home for a change! Shawn is up visiting this weekend, too, so that should be pretty cool. It will be nice to just spend some time with him when there's nothing major going on.
I can't think of too much else right at the moment, although, I know there's much more to tell. I will hopefully talk to each of you again sometime soon! I love you girls! And again, thanks for all the prayers!

Nude swimming!!!????

Jenn! I have to tell you that I have a newfound respect for you that you went to a nude beach and actually participated! I don't think I could do that. I just would be too nervous. I'm impressed. I'm so glad you guys had a great time. Angie, I haven't really heard about your honeymoon yet, but I hope it was fabulous. Your wedding was so much fun and it was great to see you all again. My stomach hurt for a couple days from laughing so hard. It was a good time. Steph, I've been praying for you and your family. You're always in my thoughts. Never hesitate to call if you need anything at all. Nothing much new happening here. We've been back in Tulsa for a couple of weeks now. My brother, Daniel, started ORU this semester. He likes most of it but has the same complaints we all did. However... he doesn't have much to complain about since they completely dropped dress code!!!! Yeah, they can wear jeans and sweats now. Can you believe it? How many times did we all slip and slide across the prayer tower on ice in our dresses? Or bite it down the GC steps in a skirt and high heels? Even when we could wear dress slacks, it still sucked a little bit. Oh well, it was a change that needed to happen. Who knows... maybe curfew will be the next to go. (Yeah right). Anyways, it's been nice having Dan around. I've just been getting stuff done around the house this month and hanging with Seth. We'll be heading back to Ohio in February to go on our cruise with Kim and Adam! Yay! Although I'm still kind of on edge because my grandmother could pass awy at any time. I have to be ready to go back to Ohio earlier if needed. I really cannot believe that she is still holding on. I feel like I'm trapped in a warp zone where my whole life and all of my family is just caught on hold while we deal with grandma. Nobody can make any plans or go anywhere or even really deal with things emotionally yet. We're just waiting. It's crazy. Enough of that. Seth is all over the place. He got like $300 worth of awesome toys at Christmas from everyone and all he wants to play with is my cupboards and the carbon monoxide detector. He always continues to try to crawl under the couch (there's only a 5 inch gap between the floor and the couch) so he gets stuck all day long underneath furniture. My whole day is spent chasing him around or rescuing him from something. The only toy he plays with is his $5 peek a block set. I should have just got him a cardboard box. He also enjoys eating dog food. He has learned the word "no" as well as mommy's "mean" voice. He stops in his tracks on the way to Wyatt's dish when he hears me say "no" and looks at me with big tears in his eyes as if to say "you're not the loving mother I know." It's all very heartbreaking. But not as heartbreaking as having to dig a chunk of dog food out of his throat because he's choking. He started to make a new face last night. I have attached it to this post. We learned that he does not enjoy lasagna. This was his response. We laughed at it so hard though that now he does this face all the time. Even when he likes things. So I think he's just discovering what he can do with his face. Anyways, I love you girls and miss you.

Yah mon

Hey ladies,
Missing you all and wishing we could all get together next weekend again! We returned from our lovely honeymoon this weekend. We had a fabulous time laying on the beach, drinking lots of rum, reading books, more rum, and doing all sorts of water sports... scuba diving (chris only), snorkling, kayaking, glass bottom boat, catamaran cruises, climbing the Dunns River Falls (my personal favorite), drinking rum, and we even visited the nude island just off the coast of our resort. My mother gasped when I told her that yes, her reserved daughter went au natural in Jamaica. We even sat naked in the swim-up bar and held conversation with a group of nude people. I just felt so free!! no sunburn! Anyway, we both had a great time. I can't remember a time in my life when I've been so relaxed.
Hope you are all doing well. Steph, I'm praying for your family. wish i could see you now and be with you. keep me posted k? angie, so glad you had fun on your honeymoon. It looks like a really nice place! I'm in the process of uploading all the pictures from the wedding and our trip to kodakgallery so everyone look for an email soon to see the pics. love you girls!
Jen

Get your kicks in 2006

Since I've checked this about a hundred times so far today thinking "someone needs to write something!" ... I figured I'd go ahead.
Happy 2006, everyone! I just want to say how great it was to see you girls over the holidays (we missed you, Jamie!). It's always so amazing to me how we can all just sort of pick up where we left off last time. I truly believe we have something special in our little group. I hope all of you know how much you mean to me.
And Angie, I'm sure you won't be reading this any time soon (hope you had fun in Mexico!) but the wedding was truly gorgeous. It was so you and so classy. The whole weekend was such a huge whirlwind of fun. I'm so glad we were able to be there.
Our trip back home wasn't quite as much fun - because of huge delays in Chicago and all of United's computers being down, we ended up not being able to make connections with Adam's mom in Denver ... so our little dog is still at the in-laws. We're kind of sad without her. But we are flying Adam's mom in next weekend to get her back (and to visit with my mother-in-law, of course).
So it's back to the real world then, I guess, for most of us. I'm still working on the Web project, and probably will be until the end of time. There are just so many little things we have to pull together before we can launch! But we are planning on launching the end of the month. They did mention the possibility of hiring me on full-time, as the woman I'm working for no longer has an assistant. But there may be a few speedbumps in the road on that one, so it's still pretty up in the air.
Hope you all are well and happy. Love you girls!