Last weekend was the BP-MS150.  Day 1 was cancelled as previously reported.  We spent Saturday waiting around for instructions and then carting a team to Schulenburg where they were staying.  After that, Jack and I took a side trip to Waelder to see M&S’s new place out in the middle of nowhere!  lol  Sorry, M… it really is!

Day 2 was interesting, fun, stressful and everything you can imagine!  If you’re reading this and you rode in that ride, I’m going to say the same thing I said inside the van to other cyclists… We try REALLY hard not to hit you guys, but some of you are just nuts and make it really difficult!  I mean, riding on the wrong side of the yellow line?  C’mon people!!  Anyway, I didn’t hit anyone, and I only got yelled at by one cyclist and one DPS officer!  A good day!  lol  The coolest part of the day was after the last rest stop.  At that point, if they’ve made it that far, they’re making it to the finish.  Well we picked up one very emotional lady who was devastated when her bike had a catastrophic failure.  She’d worked so hard, and this was her first 150.  Well Jack and I broke all the rules and a couple of barricades and got her to the finish line where she was able to walk her broken bike across the finish line!  THAT was a very cool feeling!

The Monday after the MS150 was Cyclists in Suits day.  A lobbying day at the Texas Capitol for bike safety laws.  We visited the House and Senate chambers, then went off to visit our lawmakers.  I had appointments scheduled with both our Senator and our Representative.  Our Senator didn’t bother to show up that day.  I still have issues with that, and the fact that he didn’t show up for the vote on the bike legislation, but that’s another issue for another day.  Our Representative however… his office was awesome, and he even came off the House floor to meet us and hear what we had to say.  I was TOTALLY impressed with him!

We came back home, and I was in super solder mode to get a bulk custom order done by Friday for an event.  In the midst of that we had the Rest Stop captain training for the DFW Sam’s Club MS150, which is this next weekend!  It’s already here believe it or not!!

Jack and I both had doctor appointments this week.  He’s lost about 60 pounds as a result of his surgery, which is fantastic!!  I’m so proud of him!  He rode in the Muenster Metric Century bike ride this weekend.  He did the 65k route, which is about 40 miles.  And he’s been riding to work everyday when the weather or wind isn’t nasty.  He’s my studmuffin cyclist! :o)

Friday we had a bit of a scare.  I was letting the dogs out when Angel stumbled, fell and then had a seizure.  We took her to the veterinarian, who did bloodwork and reported that she has autoimmune hemoglobin anemia.  Basically her body is attacking her red blood cells.  We’re starting her on some steroids this week, which will compromise her immune system, which means no more dog park for her.  I’m going to call the vet and see if it’s ok to still take Spaz, or do we have to worry that he’ll bring something home.  He’d be devastated if he couldn’t go to the park anymore!

So it’s been pretty eventful around here.  We’re getting ready for the Sam’s Club MS150 this weekend… Jack is a HAM operator in a SAG van again… I’m helping with rest stops on Day 1, and captaining a rest stop on Day 2 (If you want to come help… I need the help!  Sunday from 8am until around 2:30 pm… you get a shirt, and I’m really desperate!!).  I’ve got to do some charms for that, and we have the last committee meeting this week.  Plus I’ve got a couple of events that I’m working on, so it’s going to be a busy, busy week!!

I’ll post some photos soon!

~Heather

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Last weekend was the celebration of my grandfather’s 97th birthday.  I made him a cake that looked like his cowboy hat that he wears to church every Sunday.  I’ll post a photo soon.  Most of our extended family came up for it, so it was a great time of visiting and catching up with everyone!

This past weekend Jack rode in the Tour of Dallas bike ride.  20 miles!  I’m so proud of him!  I’ll post photos later once I get them off the camera.  I was supposed to ride too, but had some mechanical issues.  Instead I was his personal SAG vehicle. :o)

Later that day we took the dogs to the off-leash dog park (which is becoming a daily thing), and since I didn’t ride that morning I decided to walk them to the park!  It’s 2.05 miles… gulp!  Cool thing though, I bought the Nike+ sensor thing that you can put in your tennis shoes and it feeds information about your walk to you iPod.  I don’t have the Nike shoes, but there’s all kinds of ways to use it with other shoes too.  When I plug my iPod into the computer it uploads my walk/run information and keeps track of it online.  Cool, huh?  Even cooler is the little avatar thing that I can put on my blog so that YOU can see how far/fast/etc. I’ve walked/ran and keep me accountable!  Right now she’s on the right sidebar, down towards the bottom.  Check her out, my mini me is pretty rockin’!

This month is going to be super, super ACTIVE!!  Next weekend is Easter and we’ve got family egg hunts, and more.  The next weekend we travel to Houston and Austin to drive a SAG van in the BP MS 150 bike ride.  Monday, April 20th we’ll also be in Austin for the Cyclists in Suits lobbying day at the Capital.  Then there’s a soldering class I’m helping out with.  Then the next weekend (the first weekend in May) is the Sam’s Club MS 150 in Dallas/Fort Worth where Jack is HAM’ing, and I’m helping with the rest stops!  Whew!  So basically, if you don’t see me, don’t get responses to emails, etc. during the month of April, don’t send out a search party just yet!  lol

Today, I’m chilling out at Panera Bread, taking advantage of their free wi-fi while waiting to go to my doctor’s appointment, then heading to the office after that.  Also working on a new website for Jack, but more on that later.

Lots of stuff for “later!”  So I’ll definitely be posting again real soon!
~Heather

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We had lunch today with my parents… my dad had LapBand surgery about 2 years ago… and they had much advice for us.  I had seen my dad go through it, but there was so much that I didn’t see that I learned about today.  Oh gracious!  But we can do this!  Jack is uber excited and anxious to get it done.  Me, I’m cautiously optomistic.  But that’s us!  lol

This week is crazy!  I’m visiting a bunch of different venues to try to nail down a place for our annual company banquet, we’re delivering lots of coinage to the MS Society from our coin drive at work (it’s MS Awareness Week, by the way!), and Jack has his pre-op appointment at the hospital, plus a bonus appointment with his plastic surgeon to take a last look at his leg before surgery.

Tonight we had dinner at a great mexican place for a friend’s 30th birthday (happy “getting older” Grant!).  We gave him nicely wrapped Geritol and Hemmroid cream!  lol

I took the plunge and signed up for Twitter this week.  It’s interesting.  I just wish I could merge Facebook, Twitter and my blog all in one place!  Then I’d actually be able to keep up! :o)  So if you’re interested, I’m at twitter.com/jackandheather.  I’m still learning though!

Ok, time to head to bed, start another week, another month (can you believe it’s March already?!?!), and get on with it!

~Heather

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Other than trying to make a baby, I’ve been swamped with custom charm orders (see http://sweet-and-charming.blogspot.com).  Luckily I’m finishing up the last of my outstanding orders tonight.  The rest of the week I’ll be working on a cake for a party on Saturday.  It’s going to be a challenge, and I can’t wait to show you pictures… if it turns out ok!!  lol

So that’s my quick update.  I’m fully expecting the next couple of weeks to be crazy! My last craft show of the year is Saturday,  and my custom order deadline is the 19th, so maybe it will calm down after that!!  Maybe!

~Heather

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Here’s a few shots from the game… me and Jack, my guys (Jack, my dad and my brother), and a panorama of the game.

The panorama shot is actually four shots merged together (which is why you see players at both ends of the court! lol). If you have any version of Photoshop, go to File -> Automate -> Photomerge and Photoshop will automagically merge together photos that have common pieces. So it will put your panoramas together for you! Cool, huh? Now you can never say you didn’t learn anything from this blog! lol

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Here it is, the birthday cake for six people, and yes, that is over 240 candles on the cake!! I’ll try to post another picture with them all lit!

EDIT: Here’s the photo of the lit candles…. well as many as we could get lit before we started getting scared that we’d burn the restaurant down! And we had lots of tables around us watching us carefully! lol  Jack started lighting one side, and the candles were so close together that they began lighting each other, which is why there’s a big flame on one end!  And we didn’t have a lighter so we were doing this all with matches… YIKES!  We fore-went the “Happy Birthday” song and just went straight for blowing out the candles!  Whew… if you ever think that covering a cake with candles is a good idea because it will be funny to see them all lit… think again!  Or have a fire extinguisher ready!!!

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Saturday was the Advanced Soldering class taught by the fabulous Heather Ales.  Afterwards we hung out at her house for workshop time.  I got quite a few charms done.  I’m hoping to get some up on Etsy sometime this week.

Today I spent most of the day finishing up a freelance graphic design project.  This thing has been an absolute BEAR!!  I swear I’ve been working on it for a month!  But it is DONE!!  Woo hoo!!

And now, we start another week…
Yes, I have another cake class this week.  We’re going to learn about fondant!
An intermediate soldering class on Saturday.
Then Saturday night we have a family birthday dinner… all the adults in our immediate family have birthdays in October or December (except Jack, whose birthday was at the tail end of September).  So we are celebrating them all with one dinner… which I’ll make the cake for, of course!  lol
As far as the week is concerned, lots of work stuff getting me stressed out, and I need to get focused on scanning my grandmother’s photos so I can take them back to her at Thanksgiving!

Whew!  It’s gonna be a week, people!  lol
~Heather

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Yes, we’ve been following the saga of Michael Phelps.  Believe it or not, Jack was a competitive swimmer in high school, so he’s been watching it closely.  And of course no race is complete without his post-race analysis!  lol

Speaking of Jack, everything is looking good with his leg right now.  The doctors expect this latest treatment to give him 75%-80% coverage of the remaining open wound.  Most likely they will try another round of this treatment once it’s done to get complete coverage, so it’s looking good.  A lot of people have asked why Jack still has an open wound almost 3 years after the accident.  No, he’s not diabetic.  He lost 2 out of the 3 arteries in his leg, so the blood flow is extremely compromised.  And the open portion is in the back, where you have lower blood flow anyway.  Add to that the scar tissue that fights the progress of skin growth and you’ve just got everything working against growth. 

On my end of things…. I went and saw the fertility specialist on Thursday and things went well.  Everything looks good.  Even though it’s late in my cycle, we’re still going to do the drugs and see if we can make something happen this month.  So I’m scheduled to go in on Friday of this week for a sonogram to see if things are cooking.  If they are, then probably next week (the last week in August), we’ll look at doing intrauterine insemination (IUI).  So we’ll see what happens.  Keep us in your prayers… if it’s meant to be, it will be!

~Heather

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Three years ago I saw a fertility specialist, Thursday I’ll see him again.  So we’re back to where we started from and are taking the step forward that we tried to take back then.  I actually have another appointment in September with a different fertility specialist too, so we’ll see which one I prefer and who we’ll be taking these steps with.

I don’t know how many people even read this blog anymore, but if you do, please keep us in your prayers.  It’s an unpredictable emotional roller coaster, so maybe you should pray more for Jack!  lol

~Heather

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Fantastic news at the doctor this week… he recently changed my meds and they are now working properly!  Yay! Hence the 15lb weight loss in the past month!  Double YAY!! It’s nice to feel healthier.

Did Christmas with the family this evening before everyone heads off in their own directions. Presents, lights, singing, and good Mexican food.  That’s what Christmas is all about folks!

Other than that, we’ve just been busy, busy, busy.  Jack’s off to California for work stuff in a week or so (we just found out yesterday!), and I’m super busy at work with tradeshows, websites, brochures, and all that other fun stuff.

Happy Holidays!
~Heather

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