Busy, Busy, Busy and a giveaway, too!

 We've been busy here the last couple weeks. On the 10th, we had several families over for Epiphany and I don't have any pictures from that... sorry! McKenzie or Mr. Daniel - would you email some of the pictures to me, pleeeaaassseeee. On the 17th, we had our first overnight visitors since August of 2005! 'J' made a new friend and 'C' and 'B' loved playing baseball with Mr. Norm and Mrs. Sally! I think we might have talked their ears off :)...

I've also been working on another project. Last October, I was reading a food blog and noticed a link to a giveaway for baby shoes. I visited the site and entered several of the giveaways there. I actually won something, too. It was a cute, but extremely expensive baby blanket!!! I've been entering other giveaways since then and started another blog to blog about giveaways (and earn extra entries :*)). I really wanted to host giveaways myself. But after thinking about it for a long time, I decided that I wasn't going to try and get people to sponsor giveaways on my blog. A day or two later, I got an email from a company asking if I wanted to review their product and host a giveaway. So... tomorrow morning, I am posting my first giveaway. A natural shielding lotion and I am really impressed with it. I'd like to invite you to come and enter the giveaway too.

A week ago, 'J''s surgeon called Momma and told her we could start putting his ostomy output into in mucous fistula, which is the other end of his colon. I'm excited that we have made it this far and I'm not looking forward to doing this next phase. The surgeon told Momma to contact a nurse practitioner to see about supplies. Momma talked to Mrs. Brenda, the NP, this week and Mrs. Brenda told her that she can set us up with a special pump and catheter to run the output in overnight... This is going to be interesting! 'J' appears to be doing better with the saline and kefir flushes now and I'm glad for that. Flushing him can be a problem and it takes a long time. I'm always glad when he falls asleep during flushing, because that makes it go easier for both of us.

Momma asked me to take over dinner meals this week and I've been finding it easier to come up with meals that all of us can eat. If any of you have suggestions for meals, I'd love to hear them. Tonight we had Daddy's Egg Bake! I used mozzarella I made today and ricotta from the last batch of mozzarella I froze. It was pretty good, but needed something else to help the texture. I think the ricotta made it 'grainy'! I've got an idea for tomorrow's dinner, but need to finalize it :)...

Got a few things to check on and finish, so I'll say g'nite!

~Hannah