A Wild Wonderful Week

We have had a wild week (I haven't slept more than two nights in a row in any one place in a week!). As a result I am pretty sick, cold stuff. The girls seem to weather it fine and had a great time.

We went up to visit Ken's brother Lloyd's, of course to see the cousins and all, but also to escape the week before finals. It really helps Ken if he doesn't have to make the choice between studying and family, so he can just study. They had a big surprise planned for the girls...an overnight at Great Wolf Lodge. It's a big hotel with an indoor waterpark, a giant arcade, a teen room with movies and karaoke, a craft room, and a cool interactive game where you get a wand and run all over the hotel finding things like on a scavenger hunt. It was great fun and we ran up hundreds of stairs...to the water slides, from the first floor to the fifth floor playing the interactive game. I have never gotten so much exercise on vacation!

We came back to their house for a night and a half, we had to leave at 5:30 am to get to Portland for Cierra's first Feis (Irish Dance Competition) that took place on Saturday and Sunday. It was her first time dancing in front of a judge, but she did extremely well. She competed against girls who were more advanced than she was but she took 2nd place in her Reel, 1st place in her Light Jig, 3rd place in her Single Jig, and 1st place in her Two Hand Reel so she will be moving up a level and will learn harder dances. We are really proud of her hard work and she is thrilled to have done so well.

We talked to some extremely talented dancers in the practice room while we were there and asked how much they practiced. They have two, two-hour lessons per week and practice from one to two hours a week. Needless to say we aren't there yet!!

Aspen had a great time swimming in the pool...she's not really an Irish Dance fan. It's not the dancing so much as the music I believe, but she was a trooper and watched Cierra and her friends compete.

On Saturday after the competition ended for the day we went out to Ethiopian food. It was a great experience! No silverware!! You just tear off little pieces of a big flatish pancake and dig into the piles of food which are served on more pancakes. It was really delicious and has motivated me to look up recipes on the web to try and cook it at home...one of the spice mixes is called Alisha, so of course I love it!

No Tumor?

This is very late news and some have heard through the grapevine already that the blood test for a tumor indicator came back totally negative this time!! We are greatly relieved. They still see something on the MRI, but the blood work says it's not there.

We will still have another MRI and a repeat of the blood work in August to keep an eye on things.