Mardi Gras Gradutation

On June 11, 2009 my brother and sister-in-law (Mario and Karlee Scalzo (twins)) graduated from high school. To celebrate the occasion we opened up our house to a Mardi Gras celebration. It ended up being one of the best parties ever and I truly believe everyone had a great time. Friends donate a bunch of the decorations, we had beads and masks. Our friend Jon loaned us his touch screen Jukebox, which played all night long. Many of the friends and family brought wonderful food and our boys did awesome BBQ for everyone. The party started at 4:00pm and lasted well into the night. There was close to 100 people who came through the house that day. We had people paying pool, jumping on the trampoline, hot tubing, and running trains, oh yes and of course dancing throwing beads and a pinata! What a great time and a great reason to celebrate.

We are so proud of Mario and Karlee and hope them only the best as they both head off to college at the end of the summer. Mario is staying local which we are so happy about! Karlee is headed down south which we are so sad about, but she will have a great time down there, so we are happy for her!!

We love you both and please enjoy the scrapbook!
As always you can view all the pictures taken that day by: clicking here

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Just Dance

Why Matt and were off in Nashville, the kids had their first dance recital. Thanks to all the grandparents and Aunts and Uncles, both kids made it to dress rehearsals and 2 performance all in one day! They definitely deserve a shout out!! According to those involved the kids did great and the pictures are fabulous. I am still waiting to see the dances, I have not yet be over to the studio to pick up a DVD of the show!

As normal my dad posted some pictures on a web site: click here

And I put together a little smile box scrapbook!!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Busy, Busy, Busy

What a bad blogger I have been. I apologize! Matt and I got home from the CMA music festival and we hit the ground running; catching up on mom's doctor appointments, summer time activities for the kids, and we also had a huge graduation party to get ready. The graduation party was a huge success in my mind but I will blog about the latter. For now I would like to post a little update on Lynn.

-Second surgery was a success the margins are now the right size and the tissue they took showed no cancer.

-she met with her oncologist and he stage her cancer at 3A. Basically because of the amount to lymph's that were affected.

-the next course of treatment is a 96 day round of chemotherapy. Again this is due in part because of the lymph's, the chemo targets the whole body and will get any free radicals hanging around.

-after chemo she will then do a round of radiation and then be done. I am not sure for the exact days of radiation but do know it is a short period then the chemo.

-lymph edema, we have learned a lot on this subject. Mom's arm was starting to show a little swelling so one of the doctors sent her to a special lymph edema place where they are giving her daily massages for two weeks to help improve circulation. Part of these treatments includes wrapping the whole arm to maintain pressure. So mom is currently walking around with one arm mummified! It looks like she broke her arm.

There has definitely been a lot to learn and I feel like we have not even
touched the tip when it comes to information. But my mom has such a great team of doctors and French hospital has a great cancer wellness center that has helped my mom and us all navigate this new world.

What all this means: With this course of action they except a full recovery and a estimate a small chance of recurrence. Yeah. Oh and they also did a PET scan last week which showed there was no sign of cancer anywhere! Another big yeah. We are probably still about 2wks out from start chemo (from our calculations) but will hopefully (fingers crossed) have a more definite start time tomorrow as my mom has another appointment with the oncologist.

That is all that is fit to print on my mom. Besides a few (OK a lot) of doctors appointments it just feels like a normal summer around. The weather is beautiful; we go to the gym and workout, take the kids to summer activities and get into our normal bouts of trouble when the two of us are left home alone all day! Now you can wait with baited breath to hear more on the CMA's and the graduation party!

A little taste of Nashville

Well Matt and I have been in Nashville for 3 days now and WOW, I love it here!! It has been a blast minus the part where I was sick with the stomach flu for the first day!! When we get back I will write a whole post on the trip but for now we are enjoying a little air conditioning before the evening concerts start so I thought I would upload a couple pictures. (As always I leave must of the picture taking up to the others so these are my own random snapshots and I have to wait and steal theirs!)

Dancing to Jason Aldean at the Wildhorse at an after hours party!



Debbie and I sporting our Jason Aldean Shirts in support of Breast Cancer


YEEHAW the ZAC BROWN BAND!

Embarrassing But True

My son, Matteo, is a silent man. Unlike his sister who was talking in 2-3word sentences by this age, he barely utters simple words like, dada, doggie, and makes animal, car and train noises. Don't get me wrong the child understands everything and we communicate fine, he just doesn't do it verbally yet.

Then it happened the first big word popped out of his mouth yesterday. Was it truck? Train? Serafina? Sam? Drink? Sandwhich? More? Was it a normal first word of a baby?

Of course not, this is my child, my thrid born who has a mind of his own. He looked and Nana and I as we were getting in the car and said..

"Starbucks"

3 days and counting...

until....my husband and I get in a plane to Nashville to live in country music heaven for 4 days at:



Excitement doesn't begin to explain what I am feeling at the moment. I just check the website and here is the current line up:

• Dierks Bentley
• Brooks & Dunn
• Julianne Hough
• Reba McEntire
• Brad Paisley
• Rascal Flatts
• Darius Rucker
• Jason Aldean
• Rodney Atkins
• Luke Bryan
• Lady Antebellum
• Little Big Town
• Jake Owen
• Zac Brown Band

• Trace Adkins
• Jamey Johnson
• Martina McBride
• Josh Turner
• Lee Ann Womack
• Wynonna
  

• Jack Ingram
• Miranda Lambert
• Montgomery Gentry
• John Rich
• Taylor Swift
• Kenny Chesney

Honestly I am not sure when we will sleep. My friend Debbie, who went two years ago said it was a blast and it is my understanding with our tickets we get to choose 4 singers to meet with and get their autographs etc. YEAH...for this country loving girlie!! So when you don't see blog updates for awhile that is why.

Also that is why there hasn't been blog updates as often lately. Getting ready to leave town and prepare to leave 3 kids with random family members takes some time and planning, but hopefully be well worth it. I have never left the 3 for this long!

Small Victory

For multiple reasons we don't post much on the adoption/guardianship of our eldest son Sam but today was a big day and very exciting day. After a very long 4 months and 4 long days in court the judge at 4:30 this afternoon terminated Sam's natural mothers rights!! Though these proceedings have been going on for 4 months this has been an on going issue for years now and finally we all see the light at the end of the tunnel..we could not be happier for our little boy and the life that lays ahead of him. We Love You Sam!!