Monday Monday!

OK, so back to Memphis for a brief period of time... Monday we got to spend time playing with Ana and having fun, we cooked lunch (my new favorite stuffed zucchini), and then we hopped in the car to head home.

Ana walked around the back yard with Grandma for a while 

Then she put on her new princess sunglasses and played with sidewalk chalk!

 

And then learned a little about badminton!

 

Then she hopped in the old car and drove around

 

We went inside to eat a mid-morning snack and Ana helped me make miso soup!

Then we made a funky alien headband with pipe cleaners

After that, she lint rolled Uncle Jeremy-- he was much cleaner after that!

Tennyson Lee

Congrats to my old friend Janie! Tennyson Lee was born 6/7/11 at 4:07 PM. 7 lbs, 5 ounces, 21" long

Family!!

I know I've fallen behind on my Memphis updates and I have TONS of pictures to post, but this is the most important one right now-- Valerie received word today that the MOWA letter finally reached court today which means Jeremy and I have a new niece and nephew!

Welcome to the family China and Mitike!

So WHAT happened to your leg?

With my injury in slow repair (finally), I've had a lot of folks asking what went wrong with the whole thing... here, to the best of my understanding, is a general rundown... (I claim absolutely no medical knowledge, please don't judge me...)

When I hit the floor last summer...

(via)

Was pushed out of place, so that nifty little bone that the line points to was pushed out from under the overlying bone that comes down from the knee. At the same time...

(via)

Got sent the wrong way when I hit my hip on the floor. When I went to physical therapy, they attempted to put my ankle back in place but didn't really do anything for it and at the end when I said it didn't feel quite right, they told me to just keep doing those exercises and I'd be A-OK. Note that they did NOT do anything for my hip, against my protests.

What I've come to understand from Carl (my new PT and possible wizard or some other practitioner of dark and magical arts) is that due to the position of my ankle...

(via)

and

(via)

AND

got so screwed up that my hips weren't functioning properly and my lower leg wasn't functioning properly and that caused my knee to go all wonky and give out!

So basically, we're re-strengthening my knees, re-aligning my hips, completely loosened up my hip flexors and abdominal muscles to re-train them, and did some crazy massive acupuncture on my calf (which didn't go deep enough, so now I have a huge knot next to a bundle of nerves which is KILLING me!). I'm sore, but doing a lot better now-- when I think about the fact that at this time last month I couldn't walk I'm amazed! I still have a long way to go before I can hit up Desiree's class again, but I walked all over Zoo Atlanta on Wednesday for the field trip and didn't want to die when I got home and Carl says he'll probably clear me to climb Stone Mountain next week! HOORAY FOR PROGRESS!

Sunday, that's my fun day

Sunday was actually fairly relaxing-- Jeremy went to church with his parents-- I didn't go, partly because I don't do church and partly because Marc reports their sound system/band is through the roof; almost literally! I slept in a while and then when Jeremy got back, we went over to Buffalo Wild Wings to see Suzy! I was so glad we got to see her and see how well she's doing-- back in school, living with a guy she really likes, enjoying Oxford, and having the life she deserves!

After that, we hopped on home to get ready for Valerie and Ana to arrive! As you may have noticed in an earlier post, that didn't go as planned... Chicago (their connection between Europe and Memphis) was slammed by storms and the flight from FRAORD got diverted to DTW. Of course, United managed to not record the flifo correctly (flight information) and so it showed that Valerie had landed in Chicago NOT Detroit! She doesn't have a US phone (being as she's here infrequently at best) and we saw her ORDMEM flight had been canceled, so we were very worried when we couldn't get in touch with her!

After several rounds of talking to United customer service representatives (who weren't so much with the service or the brains), we finally got one to tell us that he was fairly certain she wasn't on the plane that got to Memphis at 10 something that night. Thankfully, none of us felt like going to bed until after her potential flight had landed because sure enough, we got a call from the Memphis airport that Valerie and Ana were there! We hopped in the truck and ran up to grab them. Valerie was exhausted, and Ana in all her PK glory was wired from being trapped on a plane all day, and when we got home Ana suckered Jeremy in to sleeping in her room that night! Valerie shared a few items while unpacking for nightclothes, including some delicious smelling Ethiopian coffee! Finally, we rolled in to bed at about 1a and slept till morning!

Saturday

Saturday was also excellent-- I went shopping with Sophia and got a ton of cute stuff! OK, maybe not a TON, but a handful or two :)

The GAP outlet in Tunica is probably the best outlet I've been to-- I always manage to find something I really like at a great price. You would think the great price part would be guaranteed at an outlet, but not so mon frere! The GAP and The Children's Place were the only ones having sales, so I picked up some stuff for me and some stuff for Violet, then a couple of kitchen items we needed for back home.

Sophia and I had a blast at the shoe store where not only did we find jellies, but Sophia decided she wanted to try on the most ridiculous shoes she could find!

CLEARLY we were having a good day! I went to Target afterwards and found some shorts for Jeremy, then got my toe ran over with a shopping cart-- people are so rude! After getting it to stop bleeding, someone spit gum on it on my way to Office Max! Unbelievable.

We got home, got ready, and raced over to see Charles and Krystal-- the older kids weren't there, but we had some amazing lasagna, got to hang out with little Felix and hear about Charles's newfound place at the police academy. We ended the night by watching some Top Gear; how awesome is that?

Felix!

Jeremy teaches Felix how to play Angry Birds

Felix tries to help Jack with his sound mixing

Me and Krystal-- so glad she's back stateside!

Krystal and Charles were stationed in Japan for a while, but I'm so excited they're back in the states and I get to see Krystal now and again. It's funny, we were never entirely close at Rhodes, but I guess we just always got along really well and bonded more than either of us ever knew!

That, too

Friday I also managed to almost literally bang out a collection of blog posts-- the joys of scheduling on blogger!! I've tried to be really on top of things with the web content since that's all I really have going these days *sigh* One day someone will hire me for a party, any party, and I'll be good to go!

Check them all out at Agape Events!