A Nice Day For A Drive

Les felt much better when he woke up Sunday morning - yay!! I went and picked him up from a truck stop in Laurel and then we went to breakfast. We came home, picked up Ollie (who was nursing a wicked migraine) and went for a drive. We drove out to Ironwood which is a housing subdivision on the outskirts of Billings. There are HUGE, gorgeous houses up there and Ollie wanted to snap a few pics to send to her family back home. We really enjoyed driving around the entire subdivision, judging...ahem...I mean critiquing the homes and the landscaping. I cannot for the life of me figure out what all those people do for a living out here to own such fabulous homes, and I would love to know if I could get one of those jobs!!! We had so much fun that we decided to drive around and look at other neighborhoods to see what gems we could find. We found this cool place off RimRock Drive (sorry, taken through a dirty and cracked windshield - don't ask):

We thought it was super cool that they built this house around these MASSIVE boulders instead of dynamiting them into gravel. Can you think of a more secure place to have your deck? Very cool and extremely unique!

Well, Sissy's BBQ didn't turn out quite the way she had planned, but a great time was had by all. My aunt & uncle and cousins from the Seattle area were not able to come, Les wasn't there, but all the kids and grandkids showed up! Here are some pictures of my wonderful, fabulous and gorgeous family; please to enjoy.

My nephew Jeremy and his wife Erika

VICTORY!!

Kieran, monkey boy with popcicle lips

Sweet Kaya, always smiling!!

Poor Kyrell, played himself into a coma

My niece Alisha with youngest daughter, Taelynn

My nephew-in-law, Brock

Our precious Hannah

My niece, Reanna

Little Alex

Our sweet Emily

Brock's new toy - a custom made $14,000 electric guitar

Zac's new toy!

Oh Uncle Zac, take me for a ride!!

Stone VS Shock Waves

I am scheduled to have shock wave lithotripsy on Tuesday the 11th. The doctor says that my stone is definitely lodged in the beginning of the ureter; he showed me the stone on the x-ray and it is definitely a big bugger. I believe he described it as "impressive". Neat. I am going to play a trick on my Mom - after I have the procedure done, I'm going to get a rock out of the parking lot at work and send it to her. She just got this book on painting rocks...I think you can see where I am going with this. The doctor thought it was a great idea!

There are a couple different kinds of lithotripsy; the one I am having involves using shock waves that are directed at the stone that break it up into smaller pieces. He is going to insert a stint into my ureter (fun!) so that it will be a little wider and hopefully the pieces will pass along nicely. I will follow up a few weeks later for x-rays to see if all the pieces are out and then he will remove the stint. He said that I should recover just fine, but will probably feel like someone kicked the heck out of my kidney and that I may even have bruising on my skin.

I was telling Ollie that I must have been thinking about the procedure before I fell asleep the other night because I had a funny little dream about it. I dreamed that I walked into the operating room and was very impressed by all the modern technology and fancy equipment that they were going to use on me. They put me under, and then the doctor asked, "Is she out? Cool!" Then he and the nurses grabbed baseball bats and started whacking the heck out of my side! And they didn't use the more modern aluminum bats either; oooooh, no, they were totally old school and used the wooden Louisville Sluggers on me. I woke up laughing my head off.

Well, Les will be dropping by tomorrow morning; he is a long haul truck driver and always stops in Billings when he is on his way through. Sometimes he only has time to take me to breakfast or dinner, and sometimes he will spend the night or a few days. He doesn't have to be in Spokane until Tuesday, so he's going to spend the day and the night here with Ollie and me. He isn't feeling very well; it seems that he either has food poisoning or a stomach flu - let's just say if he could figure out how to swallow some plaster of Paris to plug off a certain orifice, he would be much happier. Poor Les!

Les in Red Lodge April 2007