The Christmas decorations are packed away and all the cousins are back home. Christmas break should be over except that we have snow days today and again tomorrow. Of course, the 1-3 inches that was predicted was a joke, but it was enough to make the back roads slick.
THE ROUGH START. Pauline was not feeling well last week. At first we wondered if the radiation treatments and a cold were just taking a toll on her. She was at a low ebb Thursday after her last treatment for the week, but was feeling somewhat better by Sunday (though she stayed home from church). When I took her to her radiation treatment Tuesday she was losing strength. That night she was feeling bad and Vicki took her to Skyline Medical Center.
It turns out that Pauline has pneumonia. Her condition continued to worsen through this morning when she was moved to intensive care. We were quite concerned. After seeing her this evening I am happy to report that she is no worse, and possibly a slight bit better. Her vital signs and other numbers have stabilized, and she responded to us when we were in her room. Will drove in from Georgia this afternoon.
We are encouraged at this point, but please keep Pauline in your prayers.
JONES VISIT WRAP UP. I mentioned last time the Jones family was here for a visit. They left on Saturday. We just stayed around our house and Pauline’s the whole time as it was too cold to do much else. I must say all the kids really enjoyed each other. They played games, watched movies, played the Wii, etc. They even invented a new game where each player sets up little green army men and then they take turns rolling a small ball at each other’s men. The last army with troops standing is the winner.
To touch on the ongoing Scrabble competition, this time Will lost to the middle schoolers, though he redeemed himself with a win later. They also came up with an interesting twist to the game. Now they play with a time limit on each turn. If you don’t make a word before the buzzer you lose your turn.
HEARTS. I decided now is the time to teach my kids how to play Hearts (as an intermediate step to playing Spades). One interesting twist to Hearts I recently learned is that the Jack of Diamonds can have a point value of -10. Because of this you can even have a negative score in Hearts -- which is good since the lowest score wins. Nate was tickled to death yesterday when he shot the moon and got it.
Joe
