loving the warm weather

The temperature here in Ohio reached 65 degrees yesterday!!! YAHOO! Now if it only lasts until the weekend so I can get some things done outside, I would appreciate it. Today it rained, which was a bit of a downer since I was off work.

My knee is hardly swollen anymore. The skin on my kneecap has scared up and gotten kind of crusty and gross.  Don't worry - I'm not going to post a picture that you cannot help but look at even if it's gross. (I wasn't going to post a picture, but I am going to below since it looks better than when I typed most of this post out) I am pretty sure the bleeding under my kneecap has stopped, and our friend who has a doctorate in physical therapy looked at my knee and said that it was healing well. After working all day, it get stiff at night, but otherwise I'm good as new. I cannot work out yet, and that is quite bothersome to me. I haven't gained weight (thankfully), but it's amazing how fast those muscles turn to jiggle! My stomach and upper arms seem so much flabbier than they were before the surgery. I think I'm going to have to get back into a little weightlifting and crunches because I'll be a hot mess by the time I'm allowed to work out in almost three weeks.

Please pray for me because work is rough for me right now. It looks like I could be laid off this summer because there might not be money to pay me, which I really do need to show up for work every day. I'm not going to lie, it's difficult to "psych yourself up" to go to a place where you feel like you are putting in a ton of effort all for naught. It's just difficult for me to keep a positive attitude, and we all know how important a positive attitude is :)

I'm not concerned about me and Damon financially if I lose my job because I'll receive 5 months severance and my vacation time paid out. We also save a significant portion of my salary as it is, so that severance could carry us through a year without us making changes into our current lifestyle. I'm also not going to lie - the thought of having a summer off is exciting to me. I have worked constantly since turning sixteen, so to have a little time off in the summer would be great. You'll be able to find Wes and I at the pool or the park pretty much every day.

Or maybe you'll find Wesley at home cleaning the floor with a wipe as he lies on the stairs with one of his socks on his hand. We'll see.

As I swiftly change subjects...we went to the Newport Aquarium last weekend. Here are a few pictures.

the outside of the aquarium

the excitement is written all over his face

Can you tell that getting a decent picture of Wesley is getting impossible?

beautiful jellyfish

more jellyfish

I cut Wesley out of this picture because his face was all blurry and it was a decent picture of Damon and me.

I just think this picture is funny because none of us have our eyes open.

We ate lunch here and Damon LOVED it!! Me...not so much. It's all sauerkraut and various pork sausages. I did have a good Kentucky hot brown though.

It takes a lot of concentration to color.

"Wicked," Staci's knee, adoption tax credit and some rambling

This last week has been fairly uneventful, but I have to post because my Grandma sent me a nice email about how much she and my Grandpa like to read the blog :) Saturday night Damon and I went to dinner and then to see "Wicked" the Broadway musical. Growing up I loved "Wizard of Oz," so it was exciting to see what happened between the two witches before Dorothy came into the picture. I also enjoyed going out to eat at a restaurant where there aren't a lot of small children running around and I was able to eat my meal when it was warm!

When Damon and I went out Saturday, my mother-in-law stayed at our house with Wesley. She hasn't watched Wes for more than a few hours and has never had to feed him a meal. Now this could have disaster written all over it, but I figured that one night would be fine. I explained to her that Wes was going to say he wasn't hungry, cough and generally try to avoid getting food in his mouth through creating distractions. Damon called his mother at intermission of the show to see how it was going. She told Damon that "Wes has never tried me like he did tonight when I was trying to feed him." I had to laugh because my first thought was "then you've never fed him before." I would go out on a limb and say that it is IMPOSSIBLE to feed Wesley without him at least throwing out a few distractions, even if it is food that he generally likes.

I went back to the orthopedic doctor on Friday. The doctor said that I still have some bleeding under my kneecap; I have to watch that and call if it looks like its getting worse or not getting better. The doctor said that the bleeding isn't "normal" and that has caused the most of the swelling, but he wasn't overly concerned about it. I think it sounds like a big deal, but I got a degree in Financial Services, not Medicine, so I'm probably not the one to make the call. Apparently if I had taken it easy for longer than a few days some of the swelling might not be so bad, but it hasn't caused any additional damage to my knee.

I wondered what the weird red mark at the bottom of my kneecap was - now I know! Here's a picture of my knee taken Saturday. (I've been working on getting off the tape marks. Who would have thought they'd be so hard to get off?! I've used rubbing alcohol)

And here's what it looks like today (no improvement as far as I can see)

I finished our tax return this week. Really I should say that I started and finished our taxes this week because it only took an hour or so. We still had a lot of adoption tax credit carryover from last year, so it was actually fun to do them. I cannot tell you how great it is to not pay any federal tax all last year and only a couple thousand this year!! If Congress gets rid of the adoption tax credit, then I think it would really hurt families because after you put out so much money, it's nice to get some of it back (even if it's 18 months after the finalization of the adoption). Guess we better get started on #2 so we keep being able to use that credit...

I don't really have anything more to add, so thanks for reading!
Staci