Russian Christmas 2010

Hello to all,

We celebrated Russian Christmas yesterday and had a very pleasant surprise. My niece, Jolin, who I have not seen for 25 plus years came over to celebrate…that was a celebration!

Left to right (back):  Mom, brother George, Jimmy, Niece Tonya, Brian, JOLIN (surprise).
Front row:  Sister-in-law Sherry, Sheridan and Jordan (Jimmy's daughters), Niece Tricia, Nicole, Sandra (in back of Julie) and Ken.

Another new addition to our family is our new (used) RV. Some of the campgrounds that we go to will not let you stay there if your RV is older than ten years and ours is fifteen years old. We have been looking for the past couple of years and finally found one that is a 2008 and has only 1600 miles on it. It has never been used – so essentially we are getting a brand new rig. We will be driving it down on Wednesday to Naples to visit Dixie and Rea to do a ‘shake-down’ before we head to TX.

The weather here has been chilly – in the 20’s and 30’s – not normal for here. They are promising the weather will be getting better in the latter part of the week.

Ken & I are slowly getting better, but it is a slow process.

That’s all the news for now.

julie

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

January 3, 2010

Welcome to twenty-ten or two thousand ten…which ever you choose – happy New Year and may it be a safe and happy one.

We began our trip in between snow storms. Left on Tuesday morning and I was not feeling all that “perky”.   By Wednesday, my temp had gotten up to 103 and kept fluctuating between that and normal.  New year’s day Ken had decided that I must be out of my mind (not to want to get better) so he took me to the hospital in Spartanburg, SC at 2:15 p.m. (Happy New Year’s day – what a way to start).  We were at the hospital until 12:30 a.m. of the next day where I spent an extreme amount of time in an uncomfortable wheel chair that had metal bars on my seat, Ken’s seat wasn’t any more comfortable. They masked me (might have been the coughing I was doing) and hooked me up to oxygen…and then we waited til 6:00 p.m. before we got into the emergency room and saw a doctor (we were sitting in triage waiting room first). Then the gurney they had me on was worse than the wheel chair…Ken’s chair was also worse.  I felt like we were in the torture room.  After all was said and done I ended up with a steroid shot, a breathing treatment and a diagnosis of asthmatic bronchitis.  Ken had already had it diagnosed himself, they only confirmed it.  But, I have never encountered such a poor system of emergency handling.  Even the doctor was surprised we had waited so long.  It seemed that since the medical clinics were closed, the people were using the emergency room as the medical clinic.  One young woman came in after us (about 3 hours) in excruciating pain – she acted as though she had kidney stones – I told Ken I would willingly give her my spot just to get some of the happy juice to get her out of pain. We both know how that feels.  So I am taking more steroids to get rid of this gunk.  I have almost lost my voice – I’m now more squeaky thank perky.  I received a call from the hospital and they told me if I wasn't feeling better in two days I was to find another medical clinic or hospital.  If I don't feel better - I WILL GO and not wait.

The cold weather has been following us down here – we have had temperatures of down to the teens at night and in the 20’s-30’s during the day. But, Erie is a lot worse off – snow, snow, and more snow – and COLD!

While in Spartanburg, SC we visited a good friend of ours, Ellen and her son Andrew.  Ellen and I used to do meeting and party planning together when I worked in TX.  We caught up and had our annual get together at Carrabba's (one of our favorite eaterys).

We are on our way to Bradenton, FL to spend Russian Christmas with the family on the weekend.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Julie & Ken