I remarried an elf on Christmas Eve

Our Christmas was extraordinarily special this year for us thanks to an unexpected surprise my sweet husband had for us to renew our wedding vows. I couldn’t help but smile when he proposed to me again on Christmas Eve, and placed my engagement ring on my finger, minutes later we reread our original wedding vows, making a few changes to them in a memorable private ceremony. It was a very special time for us both.

It's amazing moments like this that made the holidays this year even better.

We have been through so many personal trials this past year and we’re determined this year is going to be our very best in our lives and in our marriage. It was exactly what we needed, and I am so happy Eric thought of this. I don't know who cried more, him or me.

Later that night we spent Christmas Eve as Santa’s elves helping assemble toys together for our granddaughter Kyndall. I had forgotten what hard work it was in building toys that are in bazillion different pieces. We now know how to put together a Cozy Coupe car if anyone ever needs one built. It was so much fun I had to video it.



We spent a wonderful Christmas day with all three of my children, our granddaughter, my mom, step-dad, sisters and their families. This was the first time in four years that we’ve all been together for Christmas due to us living in different states 1,000 miles apart, and one son off serving in the Army. The food, family fellowship, and the laughter from playing board games were something I will cherish forever.

I am so thankful we all live in the same state now. My only regret is not being able to spend the holidays with my two stepsons and our two grandsons, Zachary and Owen who live in Pa. Hopefully next year they will visit us then and we can celebrate Christmas together.

Fast forwarding to today, so far it’s been three days into the New Year, and I can not imagine what obstacles we’re going to overcome together this year and the amazing adventures we are going to have. I just know we'll do it with God's help.

I truly believe that we’re going to get the miracle of Eric receiving a liver transplant in 2010 that we’ve been praying for. We’re holding on to our faith, and believing this is really going to happen soon.

Eric's surgeon has requested that he lose 50 lbs, and so far he’s lost over 25lbs in just a few short weeks. And I’ve lost 16lbs. (Yeah!) We’ve been going to the fitness center at our apartment complex and are working out on the treadmill when Eric was able. It feels good to get back into the habit of exercising again, and we’re both looking forward to being able to play golf again, going canoeing, and doing all the things that we’ve missed and want to learn how to do.

Yeah, 2010 is going to be our best year ever. I have faith!

The Sweetest Gift

If someone asked you, what was one of the kindest, most thoughtful things that anyone has ever done for you that you have never forgotten, what would come to your mind?

A reminder of this came to me as I was going through the contents a box of items I had stored away, I began reminiscing through the memories years ago, and a treasured reminder came back to me.

As a timid child, in the first grade my teacher was Mrs. Nicholson. She made it a point to assign each of her student's seats in the classroom alphabetically. My seat was the last one on the last row in the very back of the class, and her rule was there would be no changing of seats.

Our Art and Coloring activities time were immediately after lunch each day. Mrs. Nicholson would call us forward, row-by-row one at a time to select our crayons of choice from the large plastic gallon ice cream bucket that served as a communal crayon container. Because of the appointed seating arrangements, I was always almost the last child to choose mine.

Imagine the disappointment day after day when I selected my crayons knowing those of us who were the last in line only got the leftover broken crayons, while those who went before us always got the better ones. It hardly seemed fair to us and I felt deprived. I asked our teacher if she would consider reversing this order to let the last row go first occasionally but she held steadfast to her strict way of doing things, and wouldn't budge at my suggestion.

I soon began disliking coloring class because I never got my favorite colors, which were shades of midnight blue or navy blue. The only blue crayons I ever got lucky enough to pick out were short nubs, broken ones with the paper peeled off them. I managed to pick out the best I could of any leftovers blue ones. Blue was my favorite color back then, and still is today.

About thirty five years later I received a unexpected package and as I began to unwrap it I was surprised to find huge boxes of crayons. I thought to myself, what will I ever do with all of these crayons as my children are all older now. It was when I opened up the individual boxes the tears flooded my eyes, inside of each box revealed only blue crayons -- not another color -- only beautiful, brand new, never used perfect blue crayons with the wrappers still intact.

How my heart sang at 41 years old to receive this thoughtful gift, and read the touching letter that was enclosed.

Many years ago, I had told my fiancé about the story about me disliking to color in elementary school, and he remembered this and took it upon himself to make sure I would never have to use another ugly broken blue crayon ever again. My sweet Eric went out of his way to buy up tons of crayons and hand pick out all of the blue ones to give to me.

When I asked what he did with all of the other crayons, he laughed and replied, "I gave them to a daycare center, and apologized to them because there were no blue crayons in the boxes".


That was one of the sweetest, most romantic things anyone has ever done for me. I will cherish his kindness forever. Even today, when we take our grandson with us out to eat at restaurants and Zachary is given crayons and paper to play with while waiting for our food, Eric sometimes will reserve the pretty blue crayons just for me to save.

I can never look at another blue crayons again without remembering this precious memory of all those beautiful new blue colors my wonderful husband gave to me many years ago.

Six week hiatus is over

After six weeks of procrastinating, I have found my way back here. Sadly unavoidable situations have demanded my attention therefore my deserted blog had to be been put on a temporally hiatus.



My life as of lately has been somewhat chaotic, and filled with additional hurdles to overcome. I haven’t wanted to chronicle all of the tremendous emotions I have been experiencing, instead I chose not to write anything.

My two closest friends have been encouraging me to get back to blogging again, requesting updates, so after contemplating this I gave them my word that I would make the effort. It seemed that despite all my good intentions each day I kept finding excuses not to write anything, but I’ve promised myself I would post an entry today.

I won’t bore you with the specific details of the past few weeks suffice to say it’s been filled with multiple doctor appointments, my extended 8-day hospital stay, and numerous obstacles with the Transplant center instead I want to focus on the more positive things that have happened.


Eric and I were blessed to go to the Joyce Meyer Ministries Conference again, and we thoroughly enjoyed the messages she taught. We left with our souls refreshed, and with our faith increased. God has been so good to us.


We sang along with the Christian rock group Delirious? with lead singer Martin Smith. They were incredible. We were fortunate once again this year to get our same seats on the sixth row, and were very close to the stage. It was so exciting. I will write more about their upcoming project in another entry.

Last weekend my dearest and oldest girlfriend, Diane flew up from Mississippi to visit with us twice within two weeks. Her visits were something I desperately needed. It was wonderful spending time together talking, shopping, and laughing hysterically over old memories while making new ones. We are more like sisters than best friends, and I love her to pieces.

Adam's girlfriend Crystal flew up to PA for a week long visit, and we enjoyed having her with us. She is now busy in nursing school, and spends her days in the classroom studying.

Eric has had his up and down days, and when he felt up to it, he was busy working on his novel. I can’t wait to read his final draft, and see it finally published. It’s quite interesting.

That’s about it for us, now that our summer is winding down. So what have you been doing lately? I'd love to hear about your summer.

Battlefield of the Mind

A recent event caused me to take a step back and re-evaluate things as I had perceived them. My thoughts had been mentally distorted about a particular matter. I was negatively thinking with my emotions about a burden and wasn’t able to be open-minded.

It’s so easy to lose yourself to cynical thoughts and have poor perception about things when your life is filled with chaos, anxiety and a lot of uncertainty. Yet, as a Christian, I know that I should leave all my burdens in God’s hands. When will I ever learn God sees the big picture, and that His timing is always perfect?

It’s when I am feeling helpless in the middle of a trial and facing difficult situations that I tend to ask, "Why Lord? Why are You allowing this to happen?" God doesn’t mind me questioning, He understands my fears.

It’s fair to say I should not be worrying about the future, but rather focusing more on the present. Regardless of the situation, I have repeatedly seen God's gracious, protecting, and loving hand working in each and every circumstance I have encountered in my life. He isn’t going to change today. He remains the same, and will always be there for me, I can depend on Him. God has demonstrated to me over and over again that His way is the best way, even though I can’t always see it.

I had been praying about this particular issue when I got a gentle reminder from God revealing His truth to me, opening my eyes. He knows what is best for us, and immediately upon acknowledging His truths, I felt a shift in my attitude and my thoughts completely changed and I was able to see things clearer and felt a calming peace about my burden.

This is the times that I can tell I am growing in my spiritual walk, this reminds me that I need to be constantly re-evaluating things in my life, and I pray I never stop doing this.

1 Peter 5:7 Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

Odd things happening at home

No much to report today, other than there is never a dull moment around our home -- only a dull looking flower bed now.



We live in a suburban area that is inundated with groundhogs and Whitetail deer and it’s not uncommon to see them in walking through our yard late in the evenings year round, more especially in the wintertime.

Never have we experienced a problem with either of them until recently. I have found evidence of hoof marks inside my now flowerless flower bed. The deer have obviously visited our yard during the night and had a feast from all of my flowers as a midnight snack.



All of my beautiful stargazer lilies blooms are now gone, nibbled up, with only stems remaining. I salvaged the last few blooms and put them in a vase on my table so that we could get a little enjoyment out of them. Other foliage has been torn and my azalea blooms and buds stripped, gnawed and sampled.





The deer completely ignored the green plants that I wasn’t fond of, leaving everything appearing as if it was all shrubs and weeds now.



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Something strange happened the other night. My son Adam was over for dinner, and as he was helping me set the table with the dinnerware, he also lit a candle as he knows we sometimes enjoy having candlelight with dinner.

Within minutes the three of us were eating and sharing conversation, when unexpectedly the overhead light went out leaving us with a dim flame produced by the burning candle. Our first thoughts were that the power was going out, but then we noticed the lights over the island bar a few feet away were still on.

Within two minutes the lights came back on again. We were all intrigued by this and discussed how odd that only one set of the light fixtures in the kitchen went out and then... it happened a second time.

This time we were laughing at how eerie this was. Of all the lights in the house that were on at that particular time, the only one to go off was the one that was above our heads.

Do you ever have problems with animals in your yard, or strange things happening in your home?

My Birthday

It seems the older we get our birthdays tend to come around much quicker than when we were young children and we were looking forward to them. I feel blessed to have been given another year. I was never one who needed a big birthday party to celebrate, instead I prefer the quieter times doing things with my loved ones to make my day to feel special.

Eric has made sure that my birthday has been a fun day for me. The day started out with phone calls with birthday wishes from several family members, and friends. Later my oldest son, Adam and Eric took me out to lunch where we all stuffed ourselves, and I enjoyed a slice of delicious chocolate cake.

After returning home to open my cards and gifts of a pretty bracelet, a nice wall plaque, and two books, Eric and I spent the whole day at two places that we love to visit. The Chester waterfront is located underneath the Commodore Barry Bridge and the other is Bartram’s Covered Bridge. Coincidentally on the day we got engaged we visited both of these places, so there are lots of great memories for us at these places.







The scene of the waterfront is now changing as a new Major League Soccer stadium for both the men and women’s teams is being built on the grounds and much of the former park area and many of the trees have now been removed. The existing boat landing, short boardwalk and fishing pier and places to picnic will remain. We enjoyed strolling along the waterfront spending time on the pier watching the numerous boats go by and children playing.



Bartram’s Covered Bridge is another very special place to us for several reasons mostly because that is where Eric proposed during a romantic summer picnic. This place is hidden off the main path, and it's a picturesque setting complete with an uninterrupted creek flowing underneath the bridge that travels downstream for miles. We have spent many hours talking while having picnics and skipping rocks across the brook while making plans for our future. We love this place so much we have a photo of it above our fireplace mantel.



I think all couples have “their own special place” they like to call theirs and visit frequently. Where are some of your special places?



Doing the simplest things with those I love at memorable places make the best memories on special days for me. I am already looking forward to turning 50 next year.

Special doctors and hospitals

Do you have confidence in your health care team?

Having trust in your physicians can make all the difference in your recovery as you should be partners in your treatments especially when you have a chronic medical condition. We have been blessed with have a special team of doctors, and an excellent hospital treating Eric.

Eric had an appointment today with his main Hepatologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). His doctor gave us some much needed encouragement and some good advice for his complications from the cirrhosis. We felt her aggressive cutting edge expertise, and experience in the liver disease specialty field is without question. We left feeling more hopeful that we normally do. Perhaps it was due to her kind emotional support from a physician.

She gave Eric her approval to once again be able to add meat back into his diet, and hopefully with another change in his medication he will soon start to feel better. She is genuinely concerned about Eric’s condition, and has given us her private phone line to call her personally with updates on him whether he is experiencing a good day or a bad day. This only adds to our trust in her medical care.



We have every confidence in HUP, their staff, and the transplant team as they have an extraordinary reputation as a world-renowned clinical and research hospital. It was ranked as the # 8 Best Hospital in the United States out of thousands by U.S. News & World Report. HUP has a Level 1 Trauma Center and a fleet of 6 helicopters called PennSTAR used to transport critically injured patients to the hospital. It has 697 hospital beds and a team of 1,663 physicians on staff, in addition to being the nation’s first teaching hospital.

Eric’s doctors are located in the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. It is a state-of-the-art, 500,000 square foot facility that’s attached to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania through a glass crosswalk. This outpatient center cost $302 million to build, and is very impressive. Did I mention they even have a shopping boutique?






The professionalism shown by the staff is overwhelming. The staff is especially helpful to keep families updated on patients who are having surgery as they update the boards every 20 seconds on a television monitor of the patient’s status. It reminds me of the airport terminal boards and waiting for a loved one to arrive. It shows the patient’s pre-op status, what time their procedure began and ended, what time they were moved into the recovery room, and their destination if the patient is expected to be released to either go home or if they are to be admitted.



If you ever need an excellent hospital, we highly recommend this one, but be prepared the valet services are not cheap.