Giving Thanks for the time we have

The past few weeks have been rough for us.

We learned on Friday, November 20th that Rudee is dying. It all started the day before when I noticed how distended and uncomfortable his stomach looked. I thought bloat (maybe he ate Jeanie's AND his food?) so I took him to the emergency vet right away. (Bloat is like colic in horses, the stomach fills with gas and then twists, and can be fatal if not caught early) BTW - if you live in Vancouver, stay away from a certain vet named after a certain patron saint of animals. Just fair warning. After being told that it was NOT bloat, and the vet trying to tell me that he knew it all along, that it is just gas, and he (the vet) was amazing because once he diagnosed bloat without the stomach even having turned yet......(Yes, seriously, he was bragging to me about his diagnosing skills.....somewhat ironic) I was charged $155 bucks and told to give him Mylanta.

Friday morning rolled around, and after 3 rounds of Mylanta, Rudee's tummy was just as big and uncomfortable. He couldn't lay comfortably. By this point, I knew that if it was bloat, we were going to have to go in to surgery to get it fixed. So thankfully I have a wonderful staff at school who saw how worried I was and told me to go home and get him to a vet. Ryan was able to leave work and we drove Rudee bear out to OUR vet in Washougal. After spending MORE than 5 seconds with Rudee (I love our vet) the vet was able to hear some problems in the area of his lungs and heart. The whole time this as been going on, Rudee has been showing various kinds of twitching. We told her about that, but I'm not sure it registered until they tried to get him up on the xray table and he started loosing muscle control in his legs and face. Scary stuff.

After the xray machine fiasco, they let us hang out in the room until they processed the film of his stomach and lungs. The vet walked back in the room and sighed. That is NEVER a good sign. She showed us the xray of his stomach area. She showed us the grey part, and said that it was fluid, NOT gaseous and that it was hard to get the two mixed up. The reason there was so much fluid was revealed by the next xray. She put up the xray of his lungs and all we could see was black. She then explained that the entire mass was cancer. The fluid making his stomach distended was from the cancer cells. There were several more minutes of questions, but it all boiled down to the fact that we only had weeks left with our bear dog.

After a somber ride home and some (a lot of) tears, we decided to make however much time Rudee had left amazing. And that is what we have been doing the last few weeks. He has been getting treats every day, car rides, walks, scraps from the table, and pretty much anything a puppy could want. That first weekend we were able to have some friends over to take pictures of us with him, and some of those are below. We also were able to take him to the beach on the Oregon Coast. Both he and Jeanie LOVE the beach, so it seemed like something nice we could do. The good news so far is that the meds we were given to help him really have helped. His stomach area is no longer distended, he seems happy to see us again, and is eating just fine. Lets hope this keeps up for as long as possible.

As far as Thanksgiving goes, we spent a quiet day at home, cleaning and watching movies while the Prime rib cooked.



Our Thanksgiving dinner. And yes mom, that bowl of olives started the evening full. I know now why you always waited as long as we would let you before putting out the relish dish.

I think we have been giving thanks for every day we have with Rudee this past week, and will continue to do so for as long as possible. This is one year when I hope Thanksgiving will last long after Christmas!! A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all of you reading this, and wishing you a very Merry Christmas Season! We love you!



The above pictures were taken by our wonderful friend Amanda. Thank you!



These are some I took. Rudee does this thing we call "frog dog" and he hadn't been doing it very much, we think because his stomach felt uncomfortable, but then he did it for us! And I had to take a picture. :)



Rudee and Ryan on the beach. :)



It was a beautiful evening to be at the beach, and all of us were grateful for it!

Celebrate good times

This was a fun week!

It started out with a day off, which always makes for a good week. Wednesday I got to sleep in, and then lounge around all day! Happy Veteran's Day! Poor Ryan had one rough week though. 5 days in a row of night shifts. Ugh! At least that means he has Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off this week.

Thursday I roped Ryan in to coming to help out with Basketball practice after school, because my fellow coach was out sick. I think his exact words were "How do you do it?". As a treat, we went out to Old Chicago for dinner to use one of our birthday free pizzas. Black olive and massive amounts of cheese? YES PLEASE!!!

Friday brought with it the normal amount of panic in the morning (I am running a students-read-the-announcements-on-friday thing at school, and forgot to find students the day before. Whoops!) but then turned out to be an ok day. Ryan got off work early and had the house picked up when I got home, so all I had to do was unload groceries and cook! Thanks hun!

We had friends over for diner, a couple that we met when Brighid and I worked together for summer camp. It was a fun filled evening, and they were nice enough to bring over some pictures they had taken of us on our honeymoon! We owe them BIG time! Here are a few examples:










The last one is probably my favorite, but I also love the one of Rudee :)
Thank you so much Brighid and Travis, you two are awesome!

Saturday when Ryan got home from school, we headed out to the Restaurant at the Historic Reserve for dinner. Everything was delicious, and we even got desert on them for it being our birthdays! Yum! Thanks to Mom and Dad for helping us go out for a lovely evening!

After dinner we decided to go see a movie, but the movie didn't start for about an hour and a half, so we parked it at a Barnes and Noble and got some coffee to read with. It was lovely to just sit and relax and sip coffee. We saw "The Hangover" and I almost walked out in the first 5 minutes. Anyone who has seen it will know why. Anyone who hasn't, you might want to get there a little late.....

Overall, we have had a great weekend and wonderful birthdays. Thank you to everyone for the kind words, cards and gifts! We are looking in to plane tickets for July, so hopefully we will see everyone then! Lots of love and hugs to everyone!

Creatures in the night

We got to go to a sporting event!
For as long as we have been out here, we have not been to a sporting event out here. Finally, this week we were able to! One of my 4th grade students had the honor of singing the Star Spangled Banner and the Canadian National Anthem at the Portland Winterhawks game, so we went to cheer her on. The Winterhawks are Portland's Hockey team. I have never been to a hockey game before, so it was an interesting experience. And here I thought football was violent. The whole point of the game seemed to be throwing each other in to the walls. Ouch!



After the game we went to Deshutes Brewery. They have a brew called "The Abyss" that they only brew once a year. Last time they brewed it, they sold out in less than 2 weeks. This batch came out on Tuesday, so we decided to go in and try it out. We had a ginger/berry cobler and the beer, and it was delicious. The beer was an imperial stout, so we could only drink one each, but seeing as it is 11% abv, that is probably a good thing.

On our way home, we were about to pull in to our driveway when Ryan stopped short and turned his brights on. There was a full grown DEER in our neighbor's front yard! (We can only hope it stomped the cat, but thats another story.) After following it as stealthily as we could (ha) we discovered that there were actually 2 deer! We think they got lost and just wandered up the hill. Seeing as we're pretty far away from any big stretch of forrest, we were a little worried, so we
stayed with them for a little bit. It was dark and rainy, so we didn't get any good pictures, but the best ones we got are below.



The rest of our week passed by quickly and uneventfully. Thursday Ryan had the day off work, but spent the day mostly studying. We got tamales from a wonderful mom at school and enjoyed those friday night after Ryan got off of work, then Saturday consisted of class and work for Ryan, and me sitting in a chair working on importing cds while listening to a Pacific NW "Thunderstorm". I say "Thunderstorm" because there was one or two claps of thunder, and no lightning. Oh the northwest. :)

Today we are both home together for a while (YAY!) and we will be doing much of the same, studying and importing CDs. This week should bring some fun though, with a day off on Wednesday for Veterans day, then our joint birthdays at the end of the week. We will update asap, but as we both have ALL next weekend off from work, it may not be until Monday. Enjoy your week everyone, and hug a veteran if you see one.

Love and miss you all!

On Weddings, the flu and Halloween

And fortunately, these things (so far) happen separately.

Thankfully, Ryan had a blast at home for Adam and Kendras wedding. I hear they even got some early snow! Congratulations to the lovely Newlyweds, and we both wish you many many years of happiness! There are a bunch of pictures up on facebook if you look at Adam, Kendra, Ryan or Laura's profile pages. What a gorgeous wedding.

After Ryan got back everything seemed to be getting back to normal, when WHAM Ryan caught a cold and Nikki got slapped with the flu. Both of us were laid up for most of the weekend. Then when Nikki was finally on the mend, Ryan came down with the same flu. Poor guy. It wasn't looking like he was going to be able to go to work so we got to make a trip to the free clinic. It was an interesting experience, and we left feeling very humbled by all that we have access to. We have been worrying about how to pay for dinners out while people there didn't have a roof over their heads or a way to keep warm at night. Makes you very grateful for what you have.

After both of us got to feeling better, it has pretty much been life as usual for the past week. Class is still going well for Ryan. He seems to be enjoying learning about emergency medicine, and is looking forward to continuing his education through becoming a Paramedic.

Nikki enjoyed teaching her students some of the G rated moves to Thriller. It was amazing that even 6 year olds could recognize the opening sound effects. "This is Michael Jackson! He made a song called Beat it!" Oh, first graders, you do make me laugh.

For Halloween we got to spend some time with our friends the Rondstadts, and finally got to meet Amandas parents. Great night with great people. Here are some pictures of our Halloween costumes for ya!



Nikki was a mad scientist, and Ryan went as "A man who doesn't make a fool out of himself", therefore there is no picture of him. :) On the right is our lovely hostess Amanda, with her mother. Both amazing ladies.

Ok, so hopefully there will not be as much of a break between now and the next post. Good news for those financially minded people - We should have almost all our debt (and definitely all of our credit cards) gone before the end of the year! HOORAY!!!

We both love you all!!