September 7 , 2004

Well, the last couple of months have been exciting: some good, some not as good.

The biggest excitement was that on the evening of August 9, Haley was at Kathie's and jumped off the couch onto some cushions. She missed, hit the floor, and suffered a compound fracture in her left arm. The xrays, even from a week later, are quite vivid. (#1, #2) She first got a soft cast (here's another picture), then a purple cast, then a blue cast (after the purple one got wet at the beach). The whole thing was particularly troublesome because I was actually in New Hampshire at the time on a business trip. I got the call from Kathie and 12:30am, and was on the cell phone on and off for the next 3 hours. I checked out of my hotel and spent 4 hours sleeping on a bench at the Manchester airport while waiting on standby for a flight out. I got back around 2:30, changed my clothes, and went over to the hospital. Haley was there until about 7pm on the 9th. She came home with me, and I stayed home from work with her the next day. Val stayed home with her on the 11th, and then she was well enough to go back to day care on Thursday the 12th. Whew! Val's coworkers sent her some cute get-well flowers.

On August 27th, I went in for arthroscopic knee surgery, something called a "lateral release" to correct my misaligned left kneecap. I had the same surgery in March of 2001 and it was a great success, so I have high hopes for this. I spent a couple of days in the recliner with it bandaged, then a few more days working from home, then back to work. It's still a bit swollen, but with time and physical therapy it should be fine.

On July 23rd, Mom moved to her new place. You can see a slide show of the "before" pictures here. She's in the process of getting it all painted and fixed up, so stay tuned for "after" pictures.

Other fun events:

We're now definitely planning on starting our construction in a few weeks. We picked Matt Gomez from Allwood Construction as our contractor. We've also bought new light fixtures, put a deposit down on closet doors and a new front door, and will shortly have steps to the back part of the yard. Progress!

Guess that's about it.