Merry Christmas

From our house to yours! (Be patient...)

Mish Mosh

Hmmm....

Alyssa with baby

Little cutie patootie

Macy and her mommy

Not sure what to say! Turkey Day Game (Northampton 41, Catasauqua 7)

Sarah and Alyssa

Alyssa's Christmas tree in her dorm

Yuck

Whoosh!

Well, that week just flew right by! One minute she was here and the next she was gone! Alyssa's week home is over already....as I write this she is back in State College. It seems like she just got here-it's just not fair!

Our nephew and his wife who live in State College were here in the Lehigh Valley to spend the holiday with his parents (Fernando and Martha, who have been mentioned here before). They were kind enough to offer to take Alyssa back with them. Unfortunately, they opted to go back today, so she went back a day earlier than she needed to, but fortunately, they didn't pick yesterday or first thing this morning....it coulda' been worse! She gets to spend the night at their house tonight, though, since the dorms don't open until 10 am tomorrow morning.

The nice part is that she'll be home in less than a month for Christmas break (or is it called Winter break now?!?!?), I can handle that! At this point, I believe we'll be picking her up on Wednesday, 12/18 and then she's home until Sunday, 1/13.

I think the next several weeks will fly by for her...I'm sure she's gonna be very busy with the end of the semester and studying for finals....there won't be time for having fun!

Beware

As I was surfing the net this evening, I came across an article regarding the fat in certain subs from Quiznos. I found it extremely difficult to believe that their veggie sub had 75 grams of fat and the tuna melt had 175 grams of fat!

I was sure that must not be accurate...I was ready to search on my trusted Truth or Fiction site...LOL! I went to their web site, and indeed, both of those subs, if ordered as large, with cheese and dressing, do really have that many grams of fat!!! That's nuts!

Go to the site and check it out....you have to click on nutrition information at the bottom of the main page, it then allows you to look at each sub....you have to click on small, medium or large and also click whether you want cheese and dressing or not.

Since You Asked

I received a comment from Sue asking what Nephron News meant. I decided to take the opportunity to use this as a little teaching session!! I have thirteen years under my belt as a dialysis nurse, and through that process, learned a lot about kidneys and their function (or lack thereof....).

I felt the title Nephron News was catchy and also fitting for me. Working in a nephrology and hypertension office for the past eight years has allowed me to see both ends of kidney disease. In the office we see patients with chronic kidney disease (before dialysis) and are attempting to delay the progression of their disease. On the other end, having worked in the dialysis unit at the local hospital, I had the opportunity to meet the patients who had progressed to end stage kidney disease and required dialysis.

Once a patient progresses onto end stage renal disease, there are three replacement therapies available to them: hemodialysis (in-center or home), peritoneal dialysis or renal transplant.

The majority of patients choose hemodialysis at an outpatient center. This requires them sitting in a lounge chair for four hours at a time, three times per week. Some centers have nocturnal dialysis; the patients sleep at the center overnight in beds and dialyze for approximately eight hours three times per week. This provides better filtration and the patients claim they feel better with more hours per week of dialysis.

Transplant is not a cure, it is merely a replacement therapy. It is not a piece of cake, by any means. Patients are on anti-rejection medications, which increases their chance of illness and cancers. They must have frequent blood work and be monitored very closely. We have approximately 130 patients in our office who have received kidney transplants...most from deceased donors, some living related and even a few living non-related donors. Some of our patients have had their same kidney transplant since the 1980's.

I hope I didn't bore you with my little inservice, but YOU asked....LOL!!

Burned

A number of years ago, I forwarded one of those mass emails to a friend. He then forwarded it to hundreds of people only to find out after the fact, that it was total fiction. As a result of that incident, I learned of a terrific web site called Truth or Fiction which will verify the story as, yep...you guessed it....truth or fiction! I have used this resource repeatedly to help me determine if an email I've received is accurate or not. You may want to save this site in your favorites. I've stopped emails right in their tracks when I've realized it was totally false.

Neat

I received a comment from Steph about the neat lighting in a previous post; I really like how this one turned out, too!

More Animal Pics

Just hangin' out

Sassy, too

Adam and Alyssa are in the basement playing "Guitar Hero" on PS2. Macy is watching her mom wanting to be with her!

Our Pets

Macy, being cute, as usual

Frodo and Sassy, getting along for once

Oops, where did that one come from?!?!?

FINALLY

My vacation officially starts.....

(Oh, yeah, and Alyssa comes home today, too....)

ONE DAY

Countdown to....finally....

TWO DAYS

Countdown to ecstasy....

THREE DAYS

Countdown to bliss....

FOUR DAYS

Countdown to exuberance....

Excited!

Alyssa told me today she is sooo excited to room with Sarah next year. She says they get along so well. I am so glad she's found someone up there to be besties with. I remember my days in nursing school and becoming best friends with Monica. We had such good times! I hope Alyssa and Sarah have that opportunity, too!

Go Fish

Kurt and I got dinner tonite on our way to pick up Adam at the boy scout camp he was at today. We've eaten at the Covered Bridge Inn before, but I believe the last time we were there was before kids! It has changed ownership several times since then. We didn't quite know what to expect, but decided to give it a shot.

There was a wide variety on the menu, although it seemed fairly expensive for being out in the boonies! We both chose entrees from the daily specials. Kurt order pork tenderloins in a brandy apple cream sauce ($17.95) and I picked a crusted scored flounder with a chilean sweet chili sauce ($18.95). I debated between that and the crabcakes, but was afraid I might find shells in the crabcakes, and that totally turns me off from the first shell I find. Since I had just had crabcakes at the Blue on Tuesday night at the Renal Biopsy dinner, I decided to try the flounder.

Entrees came with a nice tossed salad, potato (I chose baked...and let me tell you...it was HUGE!), and vegetable of the day (sauteed fresh zucchini, squash, broccoli, carrots). Imagine my surprise when my plate came with a whole flounder on it...tail and all! Fortunately, they had cut the head off...I may have had issues if there were eyes looking at me!!

Now, this was NOT what I was expecting! I was kinda figuring it was gonna be a filet of flounder. I was totally disappointed...I don't do whole fish any more! I took a bite, and proceeded to pull about ten bones out of my mouth. And I was worried about a few shells in the crabcake...HA! Idiot!

Kurt was just staring at me...probably thinking, 'Thank God I didn't order that!!' I stopped and took stock of everything. All of a sudden it hit me...I needed to filet the fish off the backbone...maybe then it would be ok. I told Kurt my plan, and he agreed that was probably what was needed. I proceeded to eat the one side of the fish, turned it over, and ate the other side and didn't end up with another bone!

Looking back, it was very well prepared, the crust on the fish was delicious and the sauce was both sweet and spicy. It was quite tasty; thank goodness I didn't get any more bones, or I would have never finished it.

Most of the entrees came with some type of sauce on them...I said to Kurt I wondered if the chef is some Food Network 'wannabe', but hasn't quite made it into the limelight! It just seemed odd to have these fancy entrees at this bar/restaurant out in the boondocks!

Watching and Waiting

This little girl is watching and waiting patiently for her mommy to come home. I keep telling her she'll be home any day now....she doesn't quite understand....

Beautiful

What?!?!!?

What goes on at those Disciplemaker bible studies, anyway!?!?!?!? No captions required...

Neat

We were visiting Kurt's brother this evening and I was showing my blog to our nephew in third grade, only to hear his brother who is in sixth grade tell me that he reads my blog almost every night!!

So here's a big hello to Kieran!! Thanks for reading....now you have to learn how to comment!!