Monday Miscellany

Life has been a whirlwind of activity over the last few days. My parents were up from Arkansas for one of my nieces weddings and stayed with us while they were here. That of course meant there were lots of card games involving grandparents and grandchildren. Throw into that some homeschooling, a self-employed woodworker with deadlines, the wedding and reception, church and all of its activities, a doctor visit, and a trip to the mechanic and you have glimpse into the past 4 days at our house. I will attempt to hit the high and low points of the past several days.
My parents came in on Thursday and left early this morning. They really do not like the cold weather, but even in spite of it we had a nice visit. The kids had worked ahead in most of their school last week so that they could have off on Friday when my parents were here.
I have a large project that I am working on that has a looming deadline along with several other projects in the queue behind the current one. On top of that I added a small project on the side that involved me working in the shop Saturday morning and being gone Sunday afternoon while I installed it.
Saturday afternoon put us in Waupun for the wedding followed by the reception in Fond Du Lac. It was good to see all of my brothers who could make it, however that was not the highlight of the day. Our whole family was quite convinced that the minister was drunk for the ceremony. No joke. His message started by talking about the moral decline of society and sex. He then moved into saying that marriage was instituted by God and followed with the next sentence where he stated that the word "wed" came from the old English word meaning "gamble". The more he spoke, the more people laughed. However, they weren't laughing because he was funny, but rather that they were shocked at what he was saying. The expressions on people's faces were indescribable. He finished the evening off by saying the prayer for the food at the reception. He started the prayer by telling a joke about a newly married bride and groom that implied overt submission of the wife and ended with the husband threatening to shoot his new wife. I've never seen a wedding quite like it.
Friday afternoon was spent at the doctors office as we had another appointment for Kim. I know that some of you who read this don't know what has been going on, so I will give you the Cliff Notes version. Starting in April of this year, Kim has been experiencing bizarre symptoms that have ranged from loss of feeling in her arms and legs to her almost being unable to walk. She had a period of about six weeks in August and September where she was almost completely confined to sitting because her legs were so weak. Towards the end of that period, she began to develop some pain in her legs that would increase with use. Her symptoms have improved recently though she still has periods of sensation lose. Her largest complaint now is the severe pain in her legs. We have seen five different Neurologists and have done virtually every test possible and don't really have a diagnosis. Her latest test was an echo of her heart. They were just checking it to rule some other things out and didn't expect there to be anything, a test of exclusion. Our appointment this past Friday was with a cardiologist to discuss the results of the echo. At the visit we found out that there appears to be a slight detachment of a leaflet in her heart that they want to investigate further. Ironically, they don't believe this is related to any of her other symptoms. So the news on that front is that she is scheduled for a TEE at the end of this month. The TEE is where they sedate her and run a tube in to get a closer look at the heart. We will keep everyone posted as to what is going on via e-mail and the blog.
Well, I need to fix lunch for the kids and get to the shop.