Relief!

We are feeling so relieved and blessed to know that Ashlyn's MRI was normal - or according to Ashlyn, she has no "rotting parts" in her head, lol! We also know she does indeed have a brain, in case you were wondering :) Now that we know the abnormal EEG was not caused by anything "rotten", we can just keep a close eye on her and make sure she takes her medicine. Still kinda scary, but at least manageable. The MRI itself went well. We were kinda worried we wouldn't be able to see anything because the tech said her braces might block out the picture, but thankfully it worked! She was in there about 30 minutes, got to listen to George Strait, and almost fell asleep! I was able to stay in the room with her, so that made us both feel better I think. At first we thought we wouldn't hear the results until the next day, but our doctor was so kind as to call us that evening and share the good news. We all slept much better that night!!!

In other news, Ashlyn has started playing basketball. Tuesday they played and lost 39-12, but Ashlyn made 3 of the baskets! We later found out they were mistakenly playing a varsity team, so that actually wasn't too bad! Today they played a team more on their level and won 21-19. Ashlyn scored 3 points - she is doing so much better this year at being aggressive and taking initiative, which she needs to do being point guard.


Here is a picture I took of her before the game:

And here she is shooting a free throw:

MRI Tomorrow

Ashlyn will be having her MRI tomorrow at 11 in Fredericksburg. Praying for no surprises. I will let everyone know what we find out after her follow up appointment at 1:45pm. This is a busy week because also tomorrow, Omie B will be getting a colonoscopy and Oma Reeh will be getting an EKG and Friday my Aunt Frances is having a thyroid procedure. Saying lots of extra prayers for clean bills of health for all of these wonderful ladies!!!!!

Have to say how extremely thankful I am that we decided to become a member of the AirEvac Lifeteam. This is the helicoptor that flew Ashlyn from Mason to Austin. Since we're a member, anything that is not covered by insurance will be written off. We just joined this year because of a cousin of my mom's having a heart attack at age 36 at the school in Mason and we found out it cost $25,000 for the helicopter ride. That was a definite wake up call and I'm so very glad we acted on it.

Update on Ashlyn

Well, tomorrow is the big day, Ashlyn will be going to the neurologist. She has been doing pretty good since her seizure. She's been more tired than usual and has had headaches every day since then, though. I think she's been worrying about stuff too much. (We probably all are). We've been trying to not do as much as usual, but this weekend she had a basketball scrimmage in Coleman on Saturday and the 4-H food show on Sunday, and then it was Halloween last night and another basketball game in Wall tonight. So much for slowing down!

Anyway in the meantime, here are some pics from the last few weeks. 

Colten in boy heaven in the Camp Sol Mayer mud pit:

John and the kids mucking out the pig pen:
 

Opie and Colten with their buck they got together:
 

Ashlyn and her Shrimp with Lobster Sauce at the food show Sunday:
 

Colten and his BBQ Beef biscuits:

Colten the army guy at the fall festival:

Please pray that tomorrow goes well. I know you are, but I just have to say it. Also pray for Oma Reeh who had a small stroke this afternoon. I will send updates tomorrow night if I get a chance.


 

Stuff

Quick update so there's not as much time between posts.

Mason had their homecoming last Friday and Ashlyn requested a mum for the first time, so we abliged. I don't think she liked wearing it much though and kept looking for excueses to take it off. We went to the homecoming game and I ended up wearing it, which wasn't fun with the crazy wind! They won the homecoming game 69-0 against Johnson City, by the way. I thought they should have called the game at half time when it was 55-0!

Here is Ashlyn with her mum:



We made the trip to Austin Saturday (and Ashlyn drove all the way to Liberty Hill in the rain!) for Cole's birthday and then did some shopping before heading home. We bought some new boots for Colten and when we got home, I realized that Ashlyn & Colten's feet are the same size!!!! Which is almost as big as my huge size 10's!!!! These kids are growing way too fast!


That reminds me, we got some rain, woooohooooo!!!!! 2.6 inches or so fell overnight Saturday. It was amazing! It hasn't greened up here yet, but places that got rain previously are greening up and so pretty! I hope it starts here soon!


We finally got piggies for the stockshow yesterday. John had gone to an auction a few weeks ago, but those piggies were like gold, too expensive! Thankfully we managed to find some that were reasonable. So now we have 3 new hogs in the barn - no names yet, but they've been pretty groggy from the trip so we haven't messed with them much yet. I'll post a pic when I get one.


Ashlyn took the PSAT today and ran in her first cross country meet. She wasn't excited about either, but survived both, so she was happy :)


This weekend we will be going to the Cub Scout Rocket Academy at Camp Sol Mayer. We won't be camping this year since there's still a burn ban, and one of the highlights of camping is the campfire. Besides that we have jobs at church Sunday morning so it wouldn't work out anyway.

Looong time

Almost forgot about the blog... sorry. Not too many interesting things going on lately. It's hot & dry and we keep getting passed by when it rains all around us. However, it has been a bit cooler lately at least. In case you were wondering, this is how dry it is:

 

This is what used to be the pond by the hunting cabin that was overflowing 2 years ago, I think. Oh and that's the Jeep and John and the kids at the bottom.

Here's what the bottom looks like

And here's what most of the landscape looks like these days, and no it's not really fall yet :(

School is going well for the kids, I think they're both having to get used to harder classes this year, so it's been fun :) Ashlyn didn't make the purple team again this year, but I think she'll get to play more and get better since she didn't.

Colten is in cub scouts again and we're still in charge yay, but it's our last year as cub scouts, next year will be boy scouts. If you want to buy some popcorn from Colten to support our pack (for yourself or for the military), let me know!

I hit a deer in my new car and finally got it back after over 3 weeks at the body shop. It was the first time I had been in a car where the airbag had gone off and I hope to never have to do that again... not fun! My car still has some issues that need to be fixed, but I'm glad to have it back.

We braved the crowds and went to Oktoberfest this past weekend. During the day we took the kids and met our friends the Wolf's there. And then later we went without the kids to enjoy some beers :) It was crazy how many people were in town, but I'm sure it wasn't much different than last year!

This weekend, John is going fishing with some friends from the fire dept and the kids and I will be enjoying homecoming and Cole's birthday in Austin without him. Should be fun. Hopefully he brings home some fish, there isn't enough water around here to go fishing anymore!

Start of School

School started Monday for our Sophomore and 5th grader, can you believe it! They've had a good first few days. Ashlyn says this year will be much harder than last year and Colten's happy that his best bud Jason is finally in his class this year. Ashlyn will be practicing for Cross Country this year since her coach made it known that those who did, would be playing more basketball. I know she didn't like that, but I told her I didn't want to hear the complaints when she didn't get to play much because she didn't do cross country. Should be an interesting year!
We're pretty sure we won't be doing much fair-ing this year. It's just too hot. It'll still be in the 100's after dark probably. I can just imagine coming home dehydrated sweaty dusty gross, even more so than usual... probably won't do that this year. Also I can't imagine how hot the rides must be. Just opening the gate can burn your hand in this heat! Ugh! So ready for some not-100+ degree weather. It's soooo sad to see the trees and bushes dying from the drought. It's almost like fall around here, but not. John's trying to decide what to do with the cows. There's just nothing left for them to eat. Oh rain, please come back!

We Miss Washington!

It's just too darn hot and dry in Texas! But we managed to enjoy some nice cool dry days in Washington and now we're weanies!!! Too bad it didn't follow us back, but that's the breaks! We had a wonderful time. We hiked around Hurricane Ridgea a bit, had a snowball fight, ate grilled salmon and other yummy fresh seafood, celebrated Jill's 40th birthday, enjoyed picnic lunch at the awe-inspiring Cape Flattery, fished for salmon and caught one, visited Canada, and attended a Seattle Mariner's baseball game (a losing-streak-breaking win against the Oakland A's) in Seattle. All while not feeling any temperatures above say 75, wow!

Here's our multitude of pictures, enjoy!

https://picasaweb.google.com/dlynnb/WashingtonVacation2011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJ3Lh8C6_cTTUQ&feat=directlink

Just got back from Hurricane Ridge and lunch. Loved the views and had
snowball fights!

I noticed the picture didn't go through on my last post, so I'll just
post to Facebook from now on while we're here. Hopefully you can see
them there. I'll add pics here when we get back.

We got to Jill's at 3am Texas time and we were worn out! We had a good
flight and had a great view of the snow capped mountains as we landed
in Seattle. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, we were freezing on the ferry ride, ahhhhh!

D'Lynn

Sent from my iPhone 

Resemblance

I was scanning some old photos and couldn't help but notice quite a resemblance between Ashlyn & her (little bit younger) Omie B. Do you see it, too?

Camping

We have just returned from a great little short camping trip at the Dos Rios RV Park in Mason County with my mom & dad.  The park is pretty close to the Eckert bat cave so we planned to check it out while we were there. We had heard that the bat cave had it's maximum number of bats in the middle of July. When we went last October, there were hardly any left. It was amazing seeing all the bats and all the other critters that showed up to feast on the bats.

Other than that, there was a nice swimming hole that was pretty warm Friday evening, but was very refreshing Saturday morning after we had cloudy skies and a few sprinkles. Colten was also able to do a lot of fishing, but not too much catching. Unfortunately someone took our ice chest that had his worms in it while we were napping :(

Here are some pics from the weekend:

https://picasaweb.google.com/dlynnb/Camping?authuser=0&feat=directlink 

We are getting super excited about our trip to Washington, it's only 1 1/2 weeks away! The weather has been amazingly cool up there and we can't wait to get out of this heat and drought! I am going to try to update the blog while we we're there from my phone, so if there are some weird posts, you know why. I'm not sure how good it will do for blogging. 


We just realized that after we get back, there will only be 2 more weeks of summer left and then school starts. Another summer is flying by!!!

Mid-Summer Update

Can't believe how far behind I am on this, but it's been busy! Let me quickly catch you up:

Last weekend we celebrated Ashlyn's birthday twice! Friday night she had friends over and then Sunday we had family and friends over for fajitas. In between that we had bbq at 42 club and bbq at a friends for the 4th. Long weekend! We can't believe she's 15! John tried to get her her permit today (after we finally got the last formed signed), but when he grabbed the pile of papers he needed to bring along, her social security card fell off and so no permit yet. Maybe tomorrow. Then he gets to start teaching her how to drive, oh joy!

Here are some photos from Ashlyn's birthday parties: https://picasaweb.google.com/dlynnb/AshlynS15thBirthday?authuser=0&feat=directlink 
One funny thing, I made a 'dirt' cake for both parties and really freaked her friends out when I started digging into what looked like a potted plant after we sang happy birthday. She really thought there was something wrong with me. HAHAHAHA! Love to freak teenagers out :)

Colten went to Hermann Son's Camp a couple of weeks ago and had a great time. His favorite activities were Rocketry, Adventures in nature and Riflery. He made one good friend and asked many girls to dance at the camp dance.

I got a new car :) My old car had about 180000 miles on it and since we would be needing another vehicle eventually, we decided to keep it for Ashlyn and get me a new one. So now I am the proud owner of my very first new new car ever, a silver 2011 Chevy Equinox :)

I think that's about it on the big exciting things going on. One very sad thing is that my manager for the last 9 or so years passed away. He was only 50 years old and had pancreatic cancer. He has a 12 year old boy and a 9 year old girl. Please keep his family in your prayers. We are going to his memorial this weekend. I still can't believe he's gone. So far things are going OK with my new manager, I hope they stay that way. 


Also pray for rain! The beaver creek is no longer running across Loeffler Ln, sooooo sad!

Summer!!!!

The kids finished school last Friday and we had a nice relaxing Memorial Day weekend. We went to the Llano River 3 times, ate crawfish (and bought some live ones to put in the tanks), cooked fajitas, and each of the kids had a friend spend a night so they were very happy. Can't believe it's summer time already, but since it's here time to enjoy!

Here are the kids at the river Saturday afternoon.

Basketball Pics

I finally got the kids basketball pictures recently, so I thought I'd share them.

Academic Excellence Banquet

Ashlyn had such good grades this year that she got invited to the Academic Excellence Award Banquet for Mason high which was last night. Those invite all had 3.95 GPA's for the first 5 6-week periods of the year and they all got a plaque. I was so proud of her! If she gets this all 4 years of high school, she'll be in a drawing for a computer her senior year.

Here she is with her award:


And not to be outdone, here is Colten, with a fish he caught while we were visiting Omie & Opie A while they were camping at South Llano River State Park.

Rain!

We were very blessed this week and got 3.5 inches of rain over two days, it was wonderful! I wish everyone around here had gotten that much, but we'll take it. Everything is much greener now and I got to see the dry creek below the house with some water in it for the first time ever!

One exciting bit of news is that I'm writing this blog from home on our new high speed internet connection!!! :) Granted, I can't use it for work, but they were offering HughesNet satellite service with no installation or equipment fees (usually about $500) and with a reduced monthly rate, so we jumped on that offer. It's great to kind of be in the 21st century out here finally!

Since it's been awhile, here are some photos from the last few weeks:

Colten's field trip to the alamo:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150236036535908.358946.755340907&l=855a2036a6

RAIN!

Water in the creek:



Ashlyn driving! (scary!) She finished the online driver's ed class and will start the (parent, aka John, taught) driving part when she gets her permit after she turns 15, yikes!

Easter

Hope everyone had a nice Easter! Ours was good, we had our usual BBQ (that was actually a fish fry this year due to the burn ban) and sunrise service. Here are some pics from the weekend:

Easter 2011

Tomorrow, John & I are going with Colten on his school field trip to the Alamo, should be fun :)

The kids finished up taking taks tests this week, I think they did alright, Colten said his were easy but long!

John was supposed to go to Junction today to help with the 6000+ acre wildfire going on there, but fortunately, it was under control enough that he got to turn around in Harper. I hope they get it out soon, all these fires are nerve wrecking!

My weeks have been messed up lately and my usual Monday Austin trip has been on Tuesdays or Wednesdays lately. And next week it looks like I'll have to be there 4 days for training, yay. Please continue to pray for my manager, he's taking leave starting May 1 to focus on his health. He is fighting pancreatic cancer and has been losing a lot of weight and is sick from the chemo treatments. I really hope he is able to be cured. In the meantime, I have a different manager which is taking some getting used to since I've had the same one for the last 9 years or so.

Bluebonnets

Here is this year's bluebonnet pic of the kids, with the one bluebonnet in Omie B's yard. That's about as many as we've seen :(

Enchanted Rock

We had a great day at Enchanted Rock Friday - the weather was beautiful and there was hardly anyone there. We met the Harwell's there and the kids had a blast. John, Ashlyn, and Colten went through a cave where flashlights were necessary, but the rest of us were chicken :)

Here are the kids on our way up:


We were going to go up one of the other rocks, but John got a fire page so the rest of us went for pizza. John didn't get home until 12:30 that night all because of a guy camping and trying to cook lunch :(

Saturday Ashlyn and I had a great day shopping with my mom, Oma, Rena and aunts. It was a great girls day and we found some summer clothes for Ashlyn. She's not fond of shopping for long periods though and was ready to go after we found stuff for her. I'm going to have to get her over that!

Sunday we went to church and came home with an orphan calf to bottle feed! My parents found it (long story) and decided to give it to the kids to take care of. We named her Bluebell or Bell for short and the kids are having fun with her so far.

Cub Scouts

Our scouting year ended with the blue and gold banquet last night. John & I got everything ready for it and were ready to get it over with. Of course, Colten got of the bus with a headache, so John wasn't able to get there as early as he wanted, but thankfully Colten started to feel better and was all better by the time we ate. I was able to get everything decorated and organized mostly before he got there though. The banquet is when the boys get their patches and awards for the year and when the oldest boys cross over to boy scouts (Colten will be doing that next year). Everyone brings food and we celebrate another successful year (and now we only have one more year as leaders yay!). Colten got his Webelos badge, colors and several pins and also got an award for selling over $600 worth of popcorn.

Here's Colten getting his badge:

Here he is with the colors and pins on his shirt (under the flag) along with his badges.


This is a short week for the kids, their spring OFYP days are Thursday, Friday and Monday so they get to have a long weekend. I was hoping we might go camping at enchanted rock Thursday night, but I have a training session I have to call in to for work Friday morning so I guess we'll just try to go Friday afternoon. The kids are probably going to hang out with Omie B some, too. It's a nice break, I just wish they'd have it at the same time as Spring Break or a little further away. Oh well well take it!

Spring Break

We all had a good Spring Break - the kids had fun fishing and hiking with Omie & Opie A at Lake Corpus Christie and John and I had a nice relaxing anniversary getaway in Ruidoso. But now we're back to reality!

Here are some photos of our Ruidoso trip:

Ruidoso Trip

February

February has been pretty crazy with sickness and cold weather and fires and now it's March already! So here's a quick update. Ashlyn's finished with Basketball and is now doing off-season track. She didn't really want to be in track since she always ends up in events she doesn't like. Colten is also finished with basketball, he missed 2 games because he was sick and 1 game was canceled because of weather, so he only made it to half of the games, but he had fun. The pinewood derby was last Friday and Colten had to miss it because he had a fever. That was a particularly crazy day getting him to the doctor with John out fighting a fire and both John and I being in charge of the derby. Thank goodness for Omie B!!!! Everyone was nice enough to let Ashlyn run his car for him since he couldn't be there. He ended up getting 3rd in his age group, but not overall.

Spring Break starts tomorrow and the kids are going camping with Omie & Opie A at Lake Corpus Christie. Hope they have good weather and can do lots of fishing and maybe some beach time. John & I are going to spend a couple of days in Ruidoso for our anniversary while they're gone, so we're looking forward to that! Hopefully everyone stays well!

Ashlyn got a letter that she didn't get into the counselor-in-training program and she was pretty upset about it. It's hard to see her so disappointed, but I guess that's life! I told her she should try again next year, hopefully she will and will know better what to do.

And a bit of exciting news - we just booked our tickets to go see Jill this summer, so it's official! YAY!

On a final note, here's Colten with his pinewood derby car:

15 years!

So I guess the weather has been appropriate considering today is our 15th wedding anniversary! Can you say deja-vu? I can't believe it's been that long, but we're still going strong. Of course we wouldn't have gotten this far without the love and support of our families and friends - so thank you for being there for us all these years! As a sort of gift back to you, I had scanned in all of our wedding photos a while back - you know since we got married before the internet was so popular and before digital cameras were main stream so very long ago :) - and I uploaded them to share with you. Brings back some great memories and everyone looks so young! Time flies for sure. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did :)

Our Wedding

http://picasaweb.google.com/dlynnb/OurWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCKvRwd6-n6CYJw&feat=directlink

Colten's Birthday & Stockshows

Colten had a good 10th birthday, we invited the family for dinner and a couple of his friends to spend the night and had roast and his favorite noodles. I kinda messed up on the cake - we were going to get him a cake sized donut or long john, but I went in to order to late, so he just got a chocolate cake with two long john's.

Here he is with his friends and his cake.



As for the stock shows, yay we're done! In Kerrville, Colten got 8th with his pig and Ashlyn got sifted so no sale for us this year. Ashlyn's pig was not very cooperative and that was part of the problem. I was very glad the weather warmed up Friday for the show because it was miserable Thursday. We were never so glad to get out of the cold and start to feel our feet again!

Here are some pics from both stock shows:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=317837&id=755340907&l=04e38320f0

And Colten had his first basketball game Saturday. He didn't have much contact with the ball, but he had fun. They lost the game, but his best buddy was on the other team so he was happy for them :)

Catch Up

Hope everyone had a great holiday! I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things. We had the Mason stock show last weekend and I just now realized I'm way behind on the blog!

Anyway, we had a great Christmas and kept busy visiting and eating and visiting some more and it's all a blur now, but here are some pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=313626&id=755340907&l=81138fd0d1

As for the stock show, Ashlyn's mean pig got 2nd place and none of the others placed. Hopefully we'll have better luck at the Kerrville stock show on the 21st. I'll have pictures later. I had Mom take pics for me so I'll post them here after I get them. I was so happy we had nice weather for the show this year after last year's 9 degree insanity.

Ashlyn also had her interview for the Hermann's Sons Youth Camp Counselor-In-Training program this past weekend. She was at the Hill Top camp over night Saturday and said she had fun, so pray that she gets accepted - I think this would be really good for her! If she gets in, she'll go to camp for a week for half-price and learn about being a counselor.

Basketball is still going on until the end of February for Ashlyn and Colten will also be playing basketball starting next Saturday until the end of February for a youth league. It's going to be a busy time until we get through February!

And Colten's turning 10 on Sunday, can you believe it? Oh and I meant to post this earlier, but here is Colten as Frosty at his school Christmas play. He was awesome!




One last thing, Happy New Year everyone!