ASSORTED VARIETY OF RANDOM

1. It is 20* outside.

2. I am currently obsessed with the color turquoise.

3. My favorite jeans are no longer tight, thanks to the no carb diet and detox.

4. I plan to eat some carbs tonight.

5. I am so proud of the Texas Longhorns!

6. The Cowboys BETTER win tonight. Or else they get no love from this fan.

7. Emmy does not enjoy footsie pajamas. And she told me so at 7:00 this morning.

8. Ross enjoys playing his drums at 7:00 on Saturday morning.

9. It is best NOT to speak to Chloe until after 12:00 on Saturday afternoon. EVER.

10. I have zero desire to see Avatar.

11. Modern Family is so worth the 30 minutes of your Wednesday.

12. It takes 2 "no flushes" to clog the first floor bathroom.

13. It takes a plumber to unclog the first floor bathroom. Plungers don't work. Snakes do.

13. There was a plastic frog on the sofa today and it looked so real I made my 4 year old touch it first.

14. The GLEE soundtrack is amazing.

15. The new BUBBLE WRAP app for iphone is addictive.

16. The living room is surprisingly bare without the Christmas tree. I think I'll but something turquoise to go where it was.

HAPPY 2010!

I remember being 10 years old and thinking the 80s were really going to be something! I was right! PacMan, TI computers, Walkman, MTV and cordless phones are all 80s "inventions". Now, here it is 2010, and I am, again, certain this decade will be SOMETHING!

As I reflect on the the first decade of the 21st century, I remember very happy times!! I was the mom of a precocious 3 year old boy, who would be a big brother at the end of 2000. Our family of three lived in a 1700 sq. ft. house in Lewisvile, Texas, the first brand new ANYTHING my husband and I ever bought together! It was in a cul-de-sac with plenty of room in the back yard for a growing boy and his favorite dog!

We moved in 2001, after Chloe was born, exactly one month before 9/11. Our new house was twice as big as our old one, and was in a great neighborhood in rapidly growing Frisco, Texas. We found a great church, had a great group of friends, and a wonderful school family. In 2005, we welcomed Emmy to our family. What a sweet blessing she was (and IS!!).

We moved again in 2006 to a house closer to our school. We added a pool to the back yard and made many memories with family and friends at that house. We painted one bedroom hot pink, one lime green, and one gunmetal blue. We had friends over for dinner, Bible studies, Sunday School parties, birthday parties, block parties, and family in town. Ross played soccer, baseball, and basketball, and even gave tennis and swimming a try! Chloe was a one-sport girl: gymnastics would become her passion, and our family spent many weekends watching her compete and improve.

We vacationed with my family to Florida, Colorado, and New York. Our little nuclear family visited the Bahamas, Disneyworld, Captiva Island, and the Caymans during that decade. Emmy began school and dance. She took swimming lessons and tried gymnastics. She learned to write her name, count to 50, spell every color you can imagine, and sing the words to pretty much any song you can name. It was a decade of wonderful memories that we shared with the most important people in our lives.

I will be 40 in 2010. At the end of this decade, I will turn 50. My children will be 23, 19, and 15. My middle daughter will have completed her first semester of college, and my youngest, her first semester of high school. Ross, I predict, will be in graduate school. My husband and I will celebrate our 26th year of marriage, and, Lord willing, we WILL be living in Texas. My parents will be 73 and 74! My sister and her husband will celebrate 22 years of marriage in 2020, and their children will be 19, 17, and 15. All the while, it is my prayer that we live life together, vacation together, keep the people who are most important at the top of the priority list, and have a blast doing it all!!!

I look forward to the adventures that await during this new decade. So much can happen in ten years!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I am participating in a Christmas Card Carousel tomorrow! Here is our 2009 card. ENJOY!

Waiting, Hoping, Praying

"Your mom definitely has cancer."

These are not words one ever expects to hear, I am certain. But they are the words my dad spoke into the phone last Friday night. Panic and shock took over at the same time. I became a robot. I could not process more than that. Cancer. My mom. 62. Healthy. No "risk factors." No genetic predisposition to this disease. My first question: why? Why did this happen to her? Why did it happen now? Why am I in New Jersey and hearing this news over the phone? Why didn't I anticipate this? Why, why, why?

After recovering from the initial shock, I had questions. Is it contained? Can it be treated? Can it be cured? How do we do that? What will it take? Do I need to come down? How did she take the news? How are you, dad? Who else knows? How did this happen? The fact is, it has happened to our family. The dreaded diagnosis is a part of our new normal.

The most difficult part of the entire cancer process is the waiting. From the moment of diagnosis, days slowly pass before getting answers to those burning questions. When all you really want is a quick, easy solution, medical science needs time to analyze the data. Our wait was over Wednesday morning, a grueling 4 1/2 days since the diagnosis. Contained (thank you, God.). Low grade (thank you, God.). Transitional cell carcinoma. Taking it to the cancer board, because it is a rare cancer. Removal of left kidney may be "curative," based on the fact that it is contained. More questions. When will the surgery be? How long is recovery? What can we expect in terms of quality of life? Who will be the surgeon? When should I come? How and what do I tell my children?

More waiting. Three days passed before the date was given: Dec. 3rd. 12-3-09. The day my mom will lose her kidney to this dreaded disease. Recovery is a little difficult to pinpoint, because the procedure will be done laproscopically. Yes, you read correctly: they can take an organ out laproscopically. Amazing. Her right kidney is healthy enough to work for both. Her surgeon, Dr. L., is someone we know. Come the day before surgery. Tell the children that Nahnee will be fine, that she needs an operation to take out a part of her body that isn't working any more.

Now, we wait for surgery. It is in five days. After that, we wait for the right kidney to begin working for both. After that, we wait for the post-op pathology results. And then, we wait, and hope, and pray that this cancer is, indeed, CURED.

FALL IN FRANKLIN LAKES

I wrote this post last fall but never posted it because of technical photo difficulties. So, here you go - even though it is a million blessed degrees outside - an homage to fall!!!!

Fall in the northeast is such a beautiful time of year! And, since we don't know how long we'll be here to enjoy it, we decided to take advantage of a few of the standard fall activities here in Northern New Jersey. The first place we went was to an apple orchard in Newburgh, New York (about an hour from our house). We had never seen an orchard before, and it was amazing!

Anybody want an apple??

Here is Joe, telling the kids something about the apples they are about to pick. Note that he is in shorts and a short sleeved golf shirt, while the rest of the crew is in pants,

long sleeves & jackets!!!

Rows and rows of apple trees. They didn't quite look like the ones we drew in elementary school - kind-of small and scraggly, but it did make the apples easier to pick.

Even Emmy could reach!

And, what do we always do at the end of a successful trip anywhere when mom is around? We pose for a group picture. Smiles all around.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

School days, school days...

You can see from these pictures that 2 out of 3 Widner children are ready for the return to "normal" that is heralded by the first day of school!

One Widner child was extremely disappointed at the seeming end of her idyllic summer days.

Ross, the new 7th grader, once again put up with his mother's desire to capture these moments on film, and then post them on facebook and a blog for all the world to see!

Ever the happy child, Chloe was up, dressed, and ready for her first school day before the other 2 decided I was REALLY SERIOUS about them actually going to school.

So upset was the princess that she decided to try & karate chop her mother (AKA Servant Girl) into submission.

Eventually, even the Princess couldn't fully contain her excitment (or maybe that hint of a smile is her scheming against me), and gave me a halfway decent first day picture of all my children.

Here's hoping your first days were memorable!

JERSEY UPDATE # 3: Maybe it's okay here?

A couple weeks ago I had vertigo. Woke up at 6:00 on a Saturday morning and the world was spinning. It stopped until I turned over, and then it started again. So, a phone call to my uncle in Texas, a trip to urgent care and a few meds later, things were better. Except for the part when the doctor said “no non-essential driving for one week.” Which is fine if, say, you live in Dallas and KNOW PEOPLE who can haul your dizzy butt different places. But, if you’re in a brand new state and you’re pretty sure your neighbors are somehow mafia-connected, that is not such a good thing. To top it off, Joe had already arranged to go back to Dallas Thursday – Sunday for work (and the Cowboys preseason game).

Chloe had a gym thing at the Jersey shore on Tuesday, and thankfully my new friend Cheri offered to drive us. Her daughter, Kirsten, and Chloe are on the same gymnastics team. Another mom from school, Anne, offered to pick Ross up at our house and bring him back after we got home. She has a 7th grade son, Andrew, who is a clone of my boy, all the way down to the light sabres and Lego pieces, so that worked out VERY well. Another bonus: her daughter is a 9th grader and babysits!!! Yee-haw!

I got Ross off to his play date at Anne’s house and scurried around the kitchen making lunches for the girls & I to enjoy at the shore. Not being a native, I had no idea if they’d have food vendors or if we were talking “just a beach.” So, I packed peanut butter & jelly on white bread, Cheetos, Ruffles, fruit rollups, a couple snack sized M&Ms, some soda cans, water, juice boxes, Gogurt… the essentials for a picnic. We get in Cheri’s Volvo SUV and are on our way. Cheri and I start talking, and I find out all kinds of interesting things about her. She is one of 14 children (3 are adopted and 11 are biological siblings), her husband is the marketing director for Barnes & Noble and offices about a stone’s throw from Joe, and she’s a vegetarian who eats only organic food. I seriously thought I was going to have a panic attack as I thought about how I’d unpack my lovely processed lunches onto our beach blanket. We get to the shore and Cheri’s son gets hungry, so she pulls out organic popcorn and organic cheezits, homemade organic chocolate chip cookies, fruit, bottled water. The kid ate it ALL. Score one for the "mother of the year" right here!

The rest of our day is uneventful (except for a minor run-in with a park Ranger who thought I’d parked in a “no parking” zone) and we get home at about the time that Anne and her whole family is pulling up in the driveway with Ross. They went to a movie and she offered to bring Ross home afterwards.

I say a quick thank you and goodbye to Cheri and invite everyone else inside. Ross and his new friend, Andrew, are gone before we know it, and the rest of us decide to sit & visit. Emmy doesn’t like this plan, and decides we have 2 choices: we can play the quiet game, or we can move. Thankfully, they all thought Emmy was pretty funny. I was not amused, but I did move us into the dining room. I learn that Anne is from Atlanta, her husband, Steven, is from Pennsylvania, they used to own a music store & school there and moved here about 8 years ago when Steven got his dream job. What is that, you may ask? Nothing much, really… he’s just a tenor in the New York Metropolitan Opera!!! He also is the assistant manager of the chorus. Well, after hearing that, I am all kinds of impressed and probably make a big fool out of myself asking all kinds of questions about his job. Anne is the middle and high school choir director at our school, which makes me like her even more. I find out that her first FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL will be next Wednesday, because she kind-of inherited the job midway through the fall semester last year. We finish our visit and decide to get the boys together once more before school starts. We also make plans for the 4 adults to go out to dinner. i can tell how much I'm going to like these people right away!!! So, Tuesday was a pretty great day.

This entry is getting pretty long, so I quickly run through the rest of the goings-on here.

We started school today. Emmy's re-entry into the structure of the school day was not as smooth as I would have liked. I am hoping she rallies and has a good week. If not, we might just move on to "plan B." What's that, you ask? I'll let you know when I figure it out!!

In Texas, 90 – 100 is an “A”. In New Jersey, 93 – 100 is an “A”. That information alone was enough to cause a giant meltdown at our house tonight.

I worked recess today for 2nd – 5th grades. It seemed like a great way to get to know the kids and some of the teachers. I still think it is, but I'm not sure if I'm the right person for the job. I was whipped after my hour on the playground!

It is NEVER GOOD if a teacher, parent, or volunteer knows your child’s name after spending only 20 minutes watching him/her (and 40 other children) on the playground. His name is Jastin.

Ross is hoping he can make it to all his classes within the 4 minutes allotted between periods. The betting pool at our house says he'll probably have a tardy by end of day tomorrow.

Chloe has a blister the size of a quarter on her heel because of the cute shoes I bought her to match the first day of school outfit. She's not sure what she'll wear tomorrow, but I am thinking a bandaid will be a part of the ensemble.

There are a few things in this world I hate: unloading the dishwasher, folding the laundry, and mopping the floors all fit into that category. A new addition to that list: packing school lunches. I can't figure out why. I used to pack them in the mornings before school, but decided that I didn't like how rushed I felt. So, I started packing them at night, but I am so sleepy by the time I make the lunches that I'm throwing all kinds of junk into them. I think my kids should buy lunch EVERY DAY, but they disagree. Maybe I'll start making disgusting lunches and give them no choice!! :)

I, like the rest of America, am reading Francis Chen's book, Crazy Love. I highly recommed it, especially if you're feeling a bit "empty" in the God department. I believe it will change your perspective.

Enjoy your LONG Labor Day weekend!