Missing this

24 more days. Guess who is counting?

One of the Reasons I Love My Job

Just one of the cute little munchkins staying at Alpha House right now. She turned 6 the very next day.

My lovely friend Kate snapped this photo for me.

Summertime

Well, it's official... Kris is in CA and I am in Michigan for the summer. Kris starts his internship at UBS in just a little over a week and will be there through August. In the meantime I'll be holding down the fort in MI, working and willing the time to pass by quickly.

Whenever I feel sorry for myself I am going to just look at this photo I came across on the web, then I won't be able to do anything but smile.

I head out to SF for a 2 week visit in July in just 37 days, let the count down begin.

Umm, I think they may be related

How cute is this?

Ooh, My Tummy Hurts

Easter Sunday we decided since we had no family within a few hundred miles we would spend the day with friends who were in the same boat. We had a whole day of fun planned. A feast of a brunch, bocce ball, an amazing Easter Egg hunt with prizes & banana grams (a super fun fast version of scrabble)

We had a ton of fun and were with our friends from noon till night. Monday morning Kris woke up and said, "Ooh, my tummy hurts." I thought perhaps it was the pounds of ham & mac n cheese that he had consumed the day before. He decided to disregard his pains and headed off to his 8am team meeting.

Apparently throughout the meeting the tummy pain stayed consistent, until eventually his team convinced him to stop by the student clinic to check it out. Once at the clinic the doctors immediately sent him off to the ER because they thought he had appendicitis.

I met Kris at the ER, and after 8 hours and a lot of waiting time while listening to a drunkard coming down from getting wasted before a medical detox, at 10pm Kris was headed to the operating room for a routine appendectomy. The docs assured me that it would be a simple hour long surgery and that he would be headed home the next afternoon.

Well, 1 hour turned into 2, then 4.... and finally at 2am Kris was out of surgery. He had some complications (granulomatous appendicitis, which is very very rare) because the crazy kid was walking around for several days with a burst appendix! His body had created an abscess in order to protect his body, so the surgeons had to remove the appendix, abscess, part of the small intestine & colon! Apparently his body did a really good job of protecting itself by creating the abscess and it may have even saved his life.

He had 6 days of recovery in the hospital, and by the time he left he had been poked and pricked about a hundred times, but somehow left with all of the nursing staff smitten. Must have been his great hair!

He's home now and little by little things are getting back to normal. His follow-up appointment was today and his docs were happily surprised at how well he is healing. Just 4 more weeks until he can head back to the gym, and believe me, he is counting the days.

Although it was a little scary to have all of this happen when we are so far from home we received a ton of support from school, work & friends. One of Kris' professors even called the hospital room the morning after his surgery! It's nice to know that in the short time we've been here that we've developed our own little network of support.

Thanks for all of the well wishes & check-ins.

His & Hers

When we moved into our new apartment in Ann Arbor we were lucky enough to have lots of natural light. Two of the sources are window box sky lights that are located directly above two small closets. In these closets we have his and hers alpha storage systems where we keep some of our clothes.

On one fateful trip to IKEA we decided to each pick out a plant to put into our respective sky light shelves. We went with succulents, each a little different from the other... just like us.

Now, 7 months later, our His & Hers plants have had some time to grow and get comfortable, each in their own way.

His is very direct in his search for sunlight & sustenance.

Hers is a little all over the place, with a need to check out everything.

I think this says a lot about us.

How do we get to Canadialand?

A few weeks back ago on a Sunday Kris, Dane and I had nothing to do, so we thought, with Windsor, Canada less than an hour away, why not hop in the car to what what we could see.

We headed north on the freeway, passed Detroit, paid a toll and got to cross a bridge. Not quite the Golden Gate, huh?

We stopped at the travel center on the way in to pick up some maps

Kris & Dane were very excited to receive these information booklets. (Don't adjust your computer screens folks... they really are that pale)

We grabbed some Chinese food, headed to Caesar's Palace and watched the US lose to Canada in hockey... what else was there to do on a Sunday.

And we passed this on our way out of Canada, it must be where babies go to get their drink on, no?