what a month!

Today is the first day I've had in a few weeks to actually sit down and...do nothing. Only I chose to be really productive. My house is cleaned and I'm feelin' good. Now I'll try to play catch-up. We've had quite the month!

At the end of January, as I mentioned, my step-dad suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. According to statistics, it's basically a miracle he is alive. But alive he is and he's doing well. He has all of his fine and gross motor skills back and has done well on all of the physical and occupational therapy tests. He was also told he has the upper body strength of a 22 year old. Watch out! When he was still in the ICU, I called my mom to get a daily update and she just fell apart on the phone. I felt so helpless being so far away and decided I needed to fly out to give her a hug. Yes, you read that correctly: I needed to fly to Utah to give my mom a hug. :) And so I did. I flew in Friday night - just after Leah's neurology appointment (more on that later). Richard had been released from the hospital earlier that day, so it was perfect timing.

I cooked, cleaned and shoveled the driveway...and gave my mom a hug.

I also got to play with these cuties.I came downstairs to play with the two of them and Arianne spotted these empty picture frames. Without missing a beat, she said, "Look! I'm a picture!!"And while I was on the plane enroute to SLC, we had a new little addition join our family!! Meet Mackenzie Elizabeth Marshall. Can't wait to meet her in April.

Richard went back to church...
...and work...

...read all about what had happened to him over the past two weeks...
His daughter Jenny also got each of hid kids/step-kids to make a spread in this cool book that she gave to him on Monday night. It turned out really neat!I think my favorite comment of the trip was from a conversation between Arianne and Richard:

Arianne: "You have a walking stick?"
Richard: "Yah. It's neat, huh?"
Arianne: "That means you're going to die soon."

Richard busted up laughing so hard. Gotta love kids. :)

It was a great trip. Exhausting, yes. And I think I only ventured outside of the house to go to the grocery store on Saturday and then to shovel on Monday. But I'm SO glad I went. Thanks to Ryan and my darling friends for taking care of Leah with such short notice.