update on my nephew

I will just share part of the email my sister sent this morning.

Cole is still hanging tough. He started taking pain pills in addition to the morphine yesterday to relieve some of the pain. He is still extremely stiff and sore and his foot continues to bleed out. His color is looking better and he no longer is running a fever, which is a relief. He will be having surgery tomorrow and they will cut into the wound on his foot and clean it up and repair anything that needs repairing, if they can close it they will but they are not sure yet. I don't know the time of the surgery but we should find out this morning when the doctor comes to visit. Probably will have at least a day or two in the hospital after that and then once he is released he will be treated in Grapevine by Dr xxxx who is not only a personal family friend, but an excellent doctor. The timeline for recovery appears to be the same(3 months), but knowing Cole he will work extra hard to speed that up, he already has asked when he can get back in the gym. Thank you for all the prayers and comfort you have shared with us.

Me again
He is in a hospital in Dallas which is about an hour drive from where most of us live which is why she is referring to where he is going to get his after surgery treatment. He is in Baylor which is considered one of the best trauma hospitals in the area and is a large teaching hospital affiliated with Southwestern Medical School. However, it has been tough on his parents who have been taking turns spending the night with him so one of them could be home with their 14 yr old at night and one of them can make sure Cole is being taken care of. I went by this afternoon and I was struck with how much he looks like his dad. When I mentioned it, they both asked at the same time. "Is that a good thing?" Made me laugh and I was glad to see their sense of humor again. It has been a tough couple of days. I thank you for your prayers and well wishes, too. I firmly believe in the power of prayer and appreciate you sharing it with my family.

Karen's engagement pics

Karen asked me to take some pics of her and Joe to use as their engagement pictures. They have a friend taking pictures at the wedding for gratis and did not want to impose her for these, too. I was very excited to be asked. My mother has a very pretty backyard so we went there on Sunday evening about 7. I was hoping to not only take advantage of the evening light but it's been over 100 degrees here every day for two weeks. It was still in the high 90s but there was a nice breeze blowing and lots of shade so we were comfortable. I still have a hard time believing this beautiful woman is my baby girl.

Some fun stuff I'm going to do with you

Starting Monday of next week, I am going to have a photo color challenge every day for a week with random drawings each day for those who participate. I will post the challenge every morning (hopefully) before I go to work and I hope to come home each day to lots of fun links to look at. I will number each comment in the order they are left and use the random number generator to choose the winner the next day by 4 pm. Get your batteries charged up and tell your friends. I hope this will be lots of fun for everyone.

I've been busy

Apparently, I am an orange

You Are an Orange

You have a zest for life, especially for anything colorful, wild, or dramatic. You have a unique take on the world, and you're not afraid to be a little funky. You are a bit reserved toward people who don't know you well. You have a thick skin, which can protect you from anything that goes wrong in your life. Once someone does get to know you, they totally get and appreciate you. Your friends see you as a bright person with a refreshing take on life.

What Type of Fruit Are You?

update

Thanks for the prayers. The gash was on his lower leg and they have sewn it up. The impact to his heel imploded it and caused internal damage and it started swelling. They are draining it and hope that the drain will lessen the swelling and surgery can be avoided. He apparently was hit in the shoulder, too, which is extremely painful today but not broken, just bruised. He will be in the hospital for several more days and probably not able to use the foot for about 3 months.

just got home from the hospital

My 22 yr old nephew (my sister's son) was in a work accident this afternoon. He was hit from behind by a 400 lb steel beam. Fortunately, his dad was working with him and shoved him out of the way of a full force hit. He has a gash on his foot/ankle to the bone and ligament and tendon damage and possibly some fractures. It was a miracle that he wasn't killed or crushed. They are waiting for an orthopedic surgeon to come out of surgery to evaluate him for surgery. The swelling is at the dangerous level. I was there for about six hours sitting with whoever was in the waiting room while the other one was in the room with Cole. My brother and his wife have taken over for me. Please pray that the damage to his foot can be fixed. The trauma doctor was talking about whether the tissue was viable or not, whatever that means. Poor boy is in horrible pain and his dad is just miserable with blaming himself.

New Sketch at Creatively Yours

See the sketch here.

Fitting day

Karen has lost 25 pounds since we bought her dress in January so her dress was a bit large. Joe's mother and grandmother went with us for the fitting. Seth sure did think his mommy looked pretty, too.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Not real sure about this. What do you think?

Fishy pedicure

Basic Grey Gallery

Yay! Basic Grey has chosen another one of my layouts to appear in their gallery. They took the one I call pursuit of the perfect self portrait. Here is the link to all three they have accepted.

world's fastest page!

Put this together in just a few minutes. Everything in 4 inch squares. Inked the edges, even the pictures. Slapped it down. Added the lines around the edges. Done!

Rak winners

I assigned each of the 7 of you who commented on my style post with a number in the order you posted. I plugged 7 into my random number generator twice and got 6 the first time and 3 the second. That makes my two winners Kimmie and Mel. Email me your addresses to dettaowens@texasearch.com. Be sure to let me see the pages you do with these. I used one on the page below to hold part of my title.

A new page

Just for fun!

Time for a Rak!

I found this article on line. I think I am mostly a classic scrapper with some shabby chic thrown in. Honestly, I actually saw a little of myself in all of the descriptions. What I do know for sure is that I am most often drawn to the clean and classic pages with great photography in the magazines and in galleries.

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/Dummies ... -2671.html

Tell me about your style and I will choose 2 people on Saturday to win a small assortment of Maya Road Office Sheer Scallop cards. I just got these this past week as an add on with my monthly kit and I guess I accidently ordered two of them. I'm feeling generous and thought I'd share them with my bloggy friends.

I am a really big cry baby

On Saturday, Karen and I attended a wedding at our church. The wedding coordinator (who happens to be my mother! LOL) suggested we come and watch to get ideas on music and readings and how things are done. I have been to other weddings in the past because I am a lector and have been occasionally asked to read for couples who do not have anyone to do it for them. I wanted Karen to hear our pastor sing The Nuptial Blessing. After hearing it, she agreed to include it. It is sooo pretty. But, here is what happened that makes me wonder just how hard it is going to be for me to get through Karen's wedding without losing it. When this bride and her father walked up to the door to make their entrance, I started crying. My throat tightened up and the world got blurry from all the tears in my eyes. I do not know these people. I have never met them and I am crying at this girl's wedding! Of course, it didn't help that this poor Dad had tears streaming down his face, too. If I am a basket case at a stranger's wedding, how am I going to handle seeing Karen on Curtis' arm on her wedding day. I am going to invest in some waterproof mascara, for sure.

Quote for Today

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain

Vote for my friend!

My friend, Theresa Tyree is one of the top 20 finalists at Paper Crafts Gallery Idol Contest. The finalists were chosen from 100s of contestants. Please go here and vote for her Patriotic Card. She is listed as Anak0407. I voted for her!

Second week of Olympics of Scrap at Scrapbook Playground

This week's challenge was to use three different rub ons from three different manufacturers and 4 wallet size photos. I used these pictures from my baby sisters' birthday in January. Theresa and Mary are twins. Mary (on the left side of the photo) is also mother to twin girls that she named Theresa and Mary. Actually, they are named Theresa Bernadette (that's my name!) and Mary Kathryn after the four sisters in my family. I thought these pictures were fun. It became a tradition in our family to have a surprise party for each of us when we turned 40. I was first and I was really surprised. Naturally, as the years went by and each of the 7 of us turned 40, the surprise factor was dropped by the wayside although we really tried to not let the birthday person know when the party actually was hoping that we could catch them unaware. By this time, we didn't bother since we had to coordinate getting both of them there. The rub ons I used are from KI Memories (the words and flowers), Fancy Pants, (the border) and Creative Imaginations. (the circles)

A couple of pages I did this week

I did both of these for the Scrap Olympics at Scrapbook Playground. It is 8 weeks long and you are welcome to come join us. It is perfectly okay to jump in any time. There are sure to be some fun challenges and plenty of ways to get bonus points. There will be some voting for favorite layouts each week so it should be very fun. The top one was for the torch ceremony where we had to do something involving candles either on the layout or in the pictures. The second one was to dig into digital by having at least two digital elements. I added a digital tag to the focal photo and stretched it across the bottom of the picture, decreased its opacity to make the picture dark in that spot but still able to see what is behind it. I added a digital title. I printed the pictures as one collage but decided to cut them apart to add the white borders and I computer journaled. The journaling is partially from the answer I got printed in the April CK In Your Own Words column about what spring means to me.

And the rockets red glare from my front yard...

These photos were taken while standing in my front yard. I am fortunate enough to live just a few blocks from the city park where our annual fireworks show is held. I set up the tripod and just kept pressing the button. I took about a hundred pictures and deleted most of them. These are a few of the better ones.