Christmas and Fish

This Christmas was my first away from my family in New Jersey. Each year, somehow we’ve managed to fly or drive for a few crazy days. This year, we decided to take a week in January instead.
Charles parents drove down for New Years and stayed a few weeks visiting with friends. We went with them to the new aquarium downtown. It has been a long time since I’ve been to an aquarium, but this place is wonderful. There is an entire two story wall where you can peer into the open ocean and watch the whale-sharks and scores of different fish swim past. It was a great place for pictures, but I found myself fascinated with the interaction of people’s silhouettes and the fish. This last picture is Charles photographing a hammer-head shark, who swam straight at him and then turned at the glass and swam on- how great is that!?

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Season 5- The Addiction Continues...if you really want to test our friendship, go ahead, call me on Monday nights at 9PM, but don't take it personally if I don't answer...there's a national crisis in our living room.

Nana

I have a special relationship with my Nana. Until I was 8 years old, my parents and I lived downstairs from my Mother’s parents, Nana and Poppy. Peter, my brother, was Poppy’s little boy and I was Nana’s little girl, always getting to sip her coffee, or chew a piece of gum when I went to visit. At special meals, it didn’t matter where I sat, as long as Nana was next to me. As I’ve grown, my love has only grown stronger towards her. Grandparents are given to grandchildren to demonstrate unconditional love, and maybe grandchildren are given to grandparents for the same reason. I can only hope.

Last June, I had a few days off from work, and I jumped at the opportunity to fly home and visit my family. Peter’s wife Heather was pregnant and I decided I didn’t want to miss her whole pregnancy. I made plans with Heather to drive down to south Jersey and surprise my Nana and go to the shore for the day. It was so wonderful to see the delight on her face when she opened the door and saw me. She said she thought at first it was just wishful thinking. We had a wonderful day on the beach and Nana even held my reflector as I photographed Heather. I always love visiting my Nana, but I believe that God prompted that trip, not only to visit Heather, but because my Nana fell very ill just a month later, and the next time I saw her she was in intensive care on life support.

I won’t recount the full story, but my grandmother contracted pneumonia on a trip to Alaska in early August. Somehow the pneumonia went undetected for several weeks, until another doctor took over her care. (She now refers to him as “the doctor who saved my life”) But, by this time, her lungs were only at 30% capacity, and she ended up on a ventilator, with a staff infection and internal bleeding from a bronchial scope. I flew up to be with her and had a special time writing to her and even reading my book aloud to her while she was unconscious. Somehow, beyond all hope, she started to recover. She had lost her voice because of the tubes down her throat and her muscles had atrophied, so she has had several months of recovery and rehab. She is determined that she will be golfing in the spring, which she says is a silly reason to want to recover, but I think it’s wonderful.

Charles and I are flying home this Friday and I am looking forward to seeing my grandmother out of the hospital for the first time in 6 months. She is so precious to me.

Our House

Where do I start? I feel like to bring this blog up to the present, I at least want to touch on a few main events from this past year. Late December 2004, Charles and I purchased and moved into our home in Marietta. It looked great from the outside, but inside there was a lot of work to be done. The people who lived here before us were smokers, and the ceilings and walls were tar-stained and smelly. The carpet upstairs was as old as the house (20 yrs) and also quite smelly.
I think on Charles' first trip to the house he pulled out all of the carpet. Fast forward 5 months: Until May we slept in our downstairs living room because we were scraping popcorn ceiling, painting and laying floor on our second floor. Do not be deceived by the pictures of just Charles in work- garb, I too layed floor, finished ceilings and painted. Apparently, in my work gear, I didn't inspire Charles to pick up the camera.
Now, a year later, we have finished laying the floor, but still need to lay the threshold pieces, caulk the moldings and repair the stairs, before heading downstairs to start the destruction/reconstruction process down there. At least in the downstairs, the floor is finished.

Here is our house at Christmas. My in-laws drove down and surprised me with this rug from my Dad because it didn't fit in his new house. (It was originally my Nana's sister's rug) And our Christmas tree, with Bear, my in-laws poodle, sitting obediently in front.