The Fog is Definitely Lifting!

I've been so out of touch lately, but I think I'm on the rebound! First of all, thank you so much for all of the encouragement from my last post. Joey has had his final surgeries and is doing much better. He needed surgery on his right ankle and left foot, requiring a total of 28 pins, 6 plates and I don't know how many screws to reconstruct them both. In the words of the surgeon, his ankle was "pulverized." The orthopedist is predicting that it will take a year for him to be able to walk completely on his own and at that time he will most probably have a limp. But thank God he's alive! :) Thanks for your prayers.

As some of you know, my girls and I are hard core Steeler fans. And no...not the bandwagon kind...we were there for the lean years. It all started when I was younger and my dad followed the Steelers, and now they're our team too. We wear our jerseys every Sunday during football season while we watch the games. If it's an afternoon or evening game, we go to a Steeler bar that's not far from here where everyone goes absolutely nuts over every completed pass! It's a great time. When I was growing up, we had season tickets for the short time the Raiders were in Los Angeles, and of course we made a couple of the Rams home games while they were here too. But I've never seen the Steelers play live. That is until now!!! This weekend my oldest daughter and I are road-tripping it to Phoenix, AZ to watch the Steelers play the Cardinals in pre-season. I paid way too much for the tickets on eBay, but it was worth it. I CANNOT wait!! We also love baseball (in fact my daughter loves it even more then football) and the hotel I booked in Phoenix is giving us two free lower level tickets to the Diamondbacks game for Friday night, and even driving us to and from the stadium. I'm not telling my daughter about that part and she's going to be so happy about it. She also has been bugging me to get her hair highlighted and I've told her I won't pay for it and she has to save her allowance. For another surprise, I made an appointment at a ritzy hair salon down the street from our hotel for her to get it done on Friday. She is going to be in Heaven. And what great mom-daughter bonding this will be, just the two of us hanging out for a whole weekend together, doing everything we love the most. We both need it. (By the way, the younger one can't go because she's got a soccer tournament. I've never missed one before and I feel bad about missing this one, but she was so sweet aboutme going, knowing how much fun this would be for her sister and I)

I feel so lucky to be getting my 15 year old for a whole weekend all to myself. And she seems genuinely excited to be spending it with me! :)