Oh, the news...

Lets start with the good stuff.

We had a baby!  Nicole (Nikki) was born on Oct 4th.  She was 7lb 9oz and 19 1/2 inches long.  She was cute! (but we're not biased at all...)  :)  When I get time I'll put up some pictures, but now is not that time...


Mark and I got to go on our various (and separate) vacations less than a week later!  Mark and the kids went with his family down to south eastern Utah on a camping trip.  His family goes down there almost every year during Fall Break, but the idea of going with a newborn did not seem overly fun for me.  Mark and the kids had a blast!  There was a huge storm the first night, and somehow the bedding in Mark & the kid's tent got all wet (it seems Mark forgot to make sure the bottom part of the door was all the way closed - he blames the kids though, so don't tell him he should have checked :) ), so the second night they went to a hotel while all the bedding went in a dryer.  Mark slept until he had to be woken up in time for check out - I think they wore him out!  There were several walks, a mile hike (at a leisurely pace) and much fun overall.  It was good for him to get all that physical activity!

I went down to CA to my mother's house for a Girls Baking Retreat with my cousins!  It was so much fun to visit and catch up with cousins I live just a few miles away from but somehow never manage to see!  We had good food, good laughs, good talks, and all around good times!  I'm looking forward to doing it again next year!


Now for the less than good stuff.

I got back on Monday morning in time to go with Mark to his doctor's appointment.  The first thing I noticed after not seeing Mark for a few days was his crooked smile and his weak hug.  It was 6 in the morning though, so I chalked it up to his being tired and awake for no good reason that early in the morning.

On the way to his appointment, I noticed that he was limping more than he had been before.  I assumed it was because he had been more active physically over the weekend than he had been in months...  I mentioned it to the doctor and he told me to keep an eye on it and let him know if anything changed over the next week.  His blood counts were too low to do chemo this week, he got to take a week off of chemo.  The plan was to check his blood counts again next week and see if the numbers were up enough then to start the next round.

On Tuesday I heard that Mark had been driving erratically to church on Sunday, so I decided to take him on a test drive just to see where he was at, and if he was safe enough to get himself to an activity he was planning on going to alone later that day.  As we were getting ready to head out the door, Mark sat on the couch saying he was dizzy.  After waiting for a few minutes for him to get better, he sent me off to go run errands by myself.  I left him home with his mom (who has been staying with us since the baby was born) and the kids, and ran to the post office and the library.

I got a call while I was in line at the post office: "Hurry home, Mark can't talk."

I'll put the rest in another post.  I'm too tired to think/type straight right now...