O Canada

This bit of news is pretty exciting...
I just noticed it's from almost a year ago (!) - I've been avoiding PH research lately, it had to take a back seat to all the big stuff and all the little stuff like blogging, Harry Potter and sudoku. Leg-shaving, hair-doing and contact-wearing all fell by the wayside too, more evidence of how much my husband must really love me!

55

We've got a deal set to sell our house in Laramie... it's under contract!!!! hope hope hope hope
K finished IOE yesterday and had a fun day today, he got to take R to the sports complex for Turf for Tots. LittleK had a blast at kindergarten, watching a movie and having a teddy-bear picnic. T's class was treated to a special pizza lunch because their wind-up turtle won a wind-up turtle race during the school assembly.
School sounds pretty tough these days, No Turtles or Teddy Bears Left Behind.

I had a great day because my echocardiogram this morning showed a huge decrease in my estimated pulmonary artery pressure. In May, it was in the 70's, back in Laramie at its worst it was about 130, and today it measured about 55 mmHg. 55!! Normal is 15 to 30 I think. My pulmonary function tests and six-minute-walk went well too, mostly because the respiratory therapist cracks me up. Next week I go in for some lab tests and a CT of my lungs, we'll see how active the autoimmune stuff is and if there's any recent lung damage. Then I wait two weeks to hear the doctors describe the results, even though I always get a printout of the CT/echo/lab results from medical records and figure it out for myself first.
Time to put this great day to rest and listen to the upstairs party for a while before I get to sleep. Thanks for stopping by to read.
Goodnight!

Look!

Here's Abe's Bemidji Pioneer article:
J.W. Smith sells bracelets to benefit student with leukemia
Michelle Ruckdaschel Bemidji Pioneer
Published Wednesday, October 17, 2007

At the beginning of this year, Abe Fagerstrom, who was diagnosed with leukemia at age 2, completed more than three years of chemotherapy.

But six months later, the first-grader at J.W. Smith Elementary School relapsed and is back in a Twin Cities hospital undergoing treatments.

While Abe is away, J.W. Smith is offering its support by selling blue-and-white bracelets marked with the words “Abe is an All Star!” to benefit the 6-year-old and his family. Blue and white are the school’s colors and J.W. Smith is the “Home of the All-Stars.”

Abe Fagerstrom, 6, of Bemidji, smiles from his hospital bed for a photo taken in August.

“This is just catching like wildfire,” said first-grade teacher Hallie Baldwin, who would be Abe’s teacher this year upon his return to school.

“We ordered 1,000 (bracelets), and we just received our second shipment of 1,000,” said kindergarten teacher Nancy Aitken, who had Abe in her classroom last year.

The bracelets are available for purchase at J.W. Smith and the other schools in the Bemidji School District, as well as at the Early Childhood Family Education office in Bemidji and local businesses. The minimum donation requested for a bracelet is $2.

J.W. Smith began selling the bracelets about a month ago after a daughter of one of its PTO presidents, Annie Laituri, heard from a friend about a bracelet fundraiser for a child who was sick in Minneapolis.

Baldwin said the fundraiser for Abe, which has raised about $1,600 so far, has been a wonderful expression of support for the Fagerstroms.

“It’s a real encouragement for the family and for him,” she said.

Abe’s parents, Al and Kelly Fagerstrom, split their time between their home in Bemidji and Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, where Abe is undergoing treatments.

“One of us is usually in the Cities with Abe,” Kelly Fagerstrom said. “He does come home for, sometimes, three or four days here or there.”

She said Abe will have about two-and-a-half more years of chemotherapy. She noted that he is starting to feel the effects of the treatments — he gets sick and lacks energy.

“And it’s hard for him not to be in school with all his friends,” Kelly Fagerstrom said.

But, she said, Abe has a positive attitude.

“He’s still a happy little 6-year-old boy,” said Kelly Fagerstrom, adding that the bracelet sales mean a lot to Abe. “He thinks it’s so cool.”

This isn’t the first time J.W. Smith has surrounded the Fagerstroms with support.

When Abe was diagnosed four years ago, the school held a benefit for him and his family. At the time, his brother Isaac was a first-grader at J.W. Smith. Now, Isaac is a fifth-grader and Ben, the youngest brother, is in kindergarten.

“We cannot say enough good things about J.W. Smith,” said Kelly Fagerstrom, adding that the whole community has been very supportive. “That just helps us so much.”

And the support continues.

“In every hallway in the school, there’s a picture of Abe,” Baldwin said.

Also, J.W. Smith staff members and parents are planning a spaghetti dinner benefit for Abe and his family set for 4-7 p.m. Nov. 18 at St. Philip’s Church. A bake sale and raffle will be included.

Meanwhile, Abe’s fellow students are posting messages on his CaringBridge Web site and writing him letters as well as buying bracelets.

“It doesn’t make any difference what we do in the school, the children just want to help,” Baldwin said.

To read a journal about Abe or leave him a note, visit his CaringBridge Web site at caringbridge.org/mn/abe.

We miss you guys. Hopefully for one of the upcoming holidays we can all be together and hear all of Uncle Brian's new (whatever) jokes.

A favorite

Originally uploaded by 5eskimos

Here's a photo we took at the Alaska Railroad depot on their big Family Day this past spring. It's one of K's favorites because misterguy looks alot like K's Grandpa John...

thump, stomp, puff, poo

Despite all the elapsed time and distractions, my brain is slowly recalling what life was like about, uh, ten or twelve or fifteen years ago when I lived in apartments and had a solid class-schedule of my own (not of someone related to me under the age of 9)... It's the upstairs people. For certain there's a guy in his twenties with shaggy hair and zit scars who somehow seems to have a hottie girlfriend with long dark hair and two fiercely yippy dogs. His car is the standard-issue dirty little black sedan with duct tape holding up the front fenders, parked next to my standard-issue no-frills green mamavan. There may have been another roommate in mid-August when we moved here but he loaded his weight-set and backpacks into his big red no-muffler-having truck weeks ago.
I knew what we were in for on the first night, when the kids and I tried getting to sleep despite the steady love-thumping directly above their bedroom. Since then there's been a drunk-vs-drunk knock-down drag-out butt-whoopin', glass bottles dropped three stories to the parking lot, loud music whenever and serious stomp-walking.
So now I'm the bitchy old mom with ugly clothes and no makeup, glaring at people in the parking lot, yelling out the window at the jerks from the next building smoking upwind of my windows. That's me.
Speaking of, after the chain-smoking lady downstairs moved in a couple of weeks ago, Dawn at the rental office slowly and kindly said that yes, smoking is allowed in all apartments (her eyes were saying you moron you live in a cheap [though deceptively respectable in appearance] apartment in Wasilla where everyone smokes and parties and has yippy dogs they drive around in monster trucks).
The real winner though in all this World of Apartment Wonders - something that I didn't see all those ten, twelve, whatever years ago- was the chunk of pet doo-doo I found in one of the coin-op washing machines tonight, obviously separated from its two partners on the floor of the laundry room. Wonders never cease.

photos, finally

So here are all the photos I've had tucked away in the camera. Not all, but enough to show what we've been up to... I couldn't get the caption thing figured out so here's the run-down:
We soaked in the hot tub and had a great picnic at Gramma & Grampy's Tolsona cabin,
watched some Wasilla High School football,
ate some pudding at nap time,
floated Wasilla Lake in the kayaks,
rode ponies at the Alaska State Fair,
had a great first day of school,
enjoyed the big family barbecue with aunties, uncles and cousins,
whooped it up at one of G/G's fiddle dances,
sculpted mud at Point Woronzof,
and had a blast at the Bear Paw Festival.
The four smiling women are (back L-R) Aunt Wanda and Auntie Roseanne, and (front L-R) Auntie Sharon and my Mom!


On the left, I was suckin' up the O2 in Laramie in December 2006...
On the right, I was feeling the effects of all the changes we'd made by July 2007!