14 years ago today.....

We got married!

Now this isn't quite how I envisioned spending my 14 year anniversary in the hospital with his parents, but that's OK. We will just celebrate a little later. I had planned on doing a post today that included pics from the day we got married but that too will have to be postponned for a later day when we get home from the hospital.

A quick update on Chris's dad.....today hasn't been a good day and yesterday we had hope of no surgery but now its looking like surgery. They have been running tests and x-rays all day and by this evening a definite decision will be made as to the surgery and our next steps.

So it looks like we will be spending not only our anniversary here, but also New Year's Eve which is also my mother-in-laws birthday and New Years Day and who knows how much longer after that. So I will say that we will have a big celebration when we finally get home. I will update tomorrow with his status. Until then please say a prayer for him and please say a prayer for our patience and understanding.

Before I end this let me say, 14 years ago today was the best day of my life and I hope we have many many more years of happiness together. I love you babe!

Blessings to all!

Belated Merry Christmas.......Please say a prayer!

Merry Christmas a little late to each and every one of you. I hope you were on Santa's good list and I hope you enjoyed celebrating Jesus Birthday as much as myself and my family. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and most of Christmas day, but we ended up in the emergency room Christmas day around 6:00pm with my father-in-law. He was having tremendous abdominal pain and nausea and when we got home from my Aunts house, we decided he should go to the hospital because all 5 of the heart attacks he has had have started with stomach pain and nausea. When we got to the hospital his blood pressure was 268/118. Luckily there was no signs of heart trouble or a heart attack. So they did a CT scan of his entire torso and determined that he has a blockage in his small intestine/bowl and at 10pm Christmas night he was admitted to the hospital. So here we sit hoping for some answers as to if and when he will have surgery. Right now he has a tube up his nose, down his throat and into his stomach and he is in lots of pain still. He is getting morphine and nausea medicine and today they inserted a PIC line because they are having lots of trouble drawing blood due to the all of his blood thinners he is on for his heart and since he is getting dehydrated due to not being allowed to eat or drink since being admitted. Hopefully sometime this evening or first thing tomorrow a decision will be made on surgery. He has 3 Dr's working with him including his heart Dr to determine the best plan of action. Of course since he has had triple bypass, valve replacement, he has 5 stints, he has a pacemaker and he has had both carotid arteries surgically opened working hand in hand with the heart Dr is very important to make sure there aren't any complications with his heart if and when they do surgery. It is looking like he will be having surgery because they haven't seen any improvement yet. Please keep him in your prayers and I will post an update when there are any changes.

Thanks and God Bless each and every one of you. Once we get him recovered and we are back home and back to normal I will post some pics from Christmas including pics of the puppies in their Christmas dress......they were so darn cute!

Blessings to you all!

Are you ready for Christmas??

shopping done - check
wrapping done - check
grocery shopping done - check
maid coming tomorrow - Thank Goodness!
still have my brain in tact - check but sometimes questionable!

We were behind schedule with Christmas, but after this weekend we knocked it all out. All that's left is the cooking. And then finally enjoying our family and friends as we celebrate Jesus' Birthday! Its my favorite time of year! So are you ready to celebrate?

Can't wait for Christmas Eve.....we go to church with our parents and then to dinner at a great Chinese restaurant and then to look at Christmas Lights....that's my favorite part.

Until next time....God Bless each and everyone of you!

Finally some of our new pictures!

The above are s0me of the pics we had done the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Believe it or not we have a disk with 248 great pictures on it. Picking our favorites has been very difficult but these are some of them. We plan to do this again in about 6 months when it will be 1 year after surgery. Its so strange to have lots of pics to choose from that we both like and we are both happy with the way we look.

Until next time Blessings to you all!

Friday = Snow + Allergic Reaction

Can you believe it snowed in South Texas???? And not only did it snow we had some stick and it snowed for about 6 hours! Crazy just plain crazy!

The girls didn't think it was as fun as mommy and daddy....their little feet were freezing!

After playing in the snow we came in and snuggled with a fire in the fireplace and a cup of hot cocoa! Yum!

So you can see from the pictures that we had snow in South Texas which was crazy enough but on top of that and in the snow we had to get me to the Dr Fri morning because I was having a crazy allergic reaction that after 24 hours of Benadryl was continuing to spread and I was about to scratch my skin off of my body. I had these tiny bumps that started on the right shoulder on Wed, then on Thurs while at work I started itching like crazy so I put some Benadryl cream on my shoulder while at work. When I got home on Thurs evening and changed I noticed the same thing on my left shoulder. So I put on more Benadryl. Then about 8pm Thurs night my back and was starting to itch. Chris looked at my back and it had spread. So I took Benadryl by mouth after calling my mom and took an oatmeal bath however the oatmeal bath was a mistake. I got out and itched worse than before and really thought I would scratch my skin completely off. At this point I hoped that by Friday morning all would be good. That was not the case. On Fri morning it had all over my back, my legs and my chest. I told Chris, I know you don't want to get out in this weather (I worked from home because our office closed due to weather) but I have to go to the Dr. So we were there when he opened. Turns out I had an allergic reaction to the dye in a new shirt. So I looked at the Dr and said you are telling me I am allergic to my clothes! We all laughed. You see I always wash new clothes before wearing because I am so sensitive to dyes, perfumes, and everything else. Well apparently, I never washed one of the new shirts I had bought a few weeks ago and I wore it to work on Wed not even realizing I hadn't washed it. Well turns out there is something in the dye that I am very allergic to. So the Dr gave me some medicine and sent me home and said be glad it is so cold because if it was hot you would itch twice as bad. With that I told him about the oatmeal bath and he said that was the worst thing I could do. The type of rash I had spreads and gets worse when exposed to heat and especially hot water. So he told me no hot showers or baths until Monday morning! So here I am wishing like crazy I could take a hot bath but not wanting too at he same time because my itching is diminishing.

So seriously snow and an allergic reaction to you clothes all in one day in South Texas. Doesn't get much crazier than that, but I will say the snow was great while it lasted. Let me rephrase it was great for one day while I was snuggled up in the house. I live in South Texas for a reason......I hate the cold!

Until next time when I promise to post the pics from the photographer from a week ago, blessings to all! For a quick sneak peek, I have updated our profile pic on here to one of our new pics. Take a look!

God Bless you all!

Can you believe its been 6 months????

So today was our 6 month appointments and we got the best reactions ever. First let me cover the details then I will explain the reactions. Both of us checked out great and he said we were progressing perfectly. Then we went for our lab work. Surprisingly enough they got me on the first stick and then they proceeded to drain half my blood out of my body.....12 vials to be exact. My arm is killing me as I type but that always happens when I have blood drawn. Chris on the other hand got stuck 3 times before they got his 12 vials of blood drawn. Poor thing he wasn't very happy but to be honest I think the first person that tried and stuck him twice was the person that prepares the labs not usually draws the blood. After she stuck him once in each arm and got nothing she called someone else in and this lady was great and got him one two three. Now lets back up real quick to our reactions at the Dr. When our nurse called us back we had our backs to the door and when we got up she said oh my I didn't even recognize you. As we walked down the hall to the weigh in area she was calling out to everyone in the office and everyone was floored and so excited for us. We got so many compliments I think when it was time to leave we sorta floated out of the office. Then we got to the weigh in area and around the corner came Tameka. (You might remember she is the one who worked with us for almost 6 months to get our insurance approval.) Well she came around the corner and her mouth dropped and she gave both of us big hugs and had tears running down her face. She then grabbed both of our hands and said, "I always thought you were a good looking couple, but now you both are absolutely gorgeous!" We were blown away by her reaction and she sat and talked with us for a while and we got a chance to catch up. Then we proceeded to the exam room. By now we were causing quite a disturbance in the halls and Dr. Davis on his way to another exam room said I can't wait I have to stop and see what all the commotion with the Nord's is about and with that he threw the door open and literally stopped right in his tracks with the biggest smile on his face I have ever seen. He then went and said Garth Garth you have to come here and see the Nords. (Garth Davis is his son and partner during surgery.....they are known to us and all their patients as big D and little D or the Doctors' Davis.) Dr Garth was equally impressed and smiled from ear to ear. We had our exams and he kept looking at the picture in our files of our very first visit with him prior to the 6 month diet and the surgery and he kept shaking his head and saying you look like completely different people. Dr Davis then said wait don't move and with that he went to his office and got his camera and took pics of the both of us. He gave us our lab orders and we were off to the lab. As our nurse escorted us to the lab area she said I just want you to know that very few people get that reaction from Big D and he rarely takes pics of patients until 1 year after surgery so you should feel special. Before we left we also told Dr Davis about our picture session over the weekend and he said "I better be getting a picture because I need to put you in the hall of fame!" As you can imagine we are on cloud nine today and feeling very confident in ourselves. And aside from that we feel better than we have felt in years. Oops I almost forgot our weigh in statistics......Chris is down to 282 lbs which is 97 lbs lost and I am down to 196 lbs which is 107 lbs lost. How insane is that!

So that's the latest on our quests to be thin! I promise over the weekend to post some of the pics we had done over the weekend. One quick request.....please say a prayer for our friends A & B. They have had some complications like those they had when they were pregnant with the twins but so far everything is going OK. She is on bed rest and will be having a small surgery in the next few weeks to try to keep this baby in place as long as possible. Please pray for a pregnancy that goes to full term and a healthy little one at the end. Also say a quick prayer for our friends M & J who just gave birth yesterday to a beautiful little girl Paige. Until next time, God Bless each and everyone of you.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The stockings are hung waiting for Santa to fill!

The below pictures are of my Coca Cola Christmas Village. This year the Village has grown so much we had to break it up into 3 separate towns.
The town of Santa Claus from a distance...

The town of Santa Claus closer up...

The town of Frolicking Frosty...

The town of Red Rudolph...

Our beautiful tree with the lights on...

Our beautiful tree with lots of lights in the dark. I so enjoyed another year of unwrapping each ornament and remembering who gave them to me. I just love this time of year. Of course as always we had a mishap with the tree. Luckily for the first time in 5 years I didn't run out of lights...(it makes now sense because we have had the same tree for 5 years) but this year over half way thruputting on all the ornaments, 1/2 the tree went dark. After the mishap last year, I put two cords up the middle of the tree and thought I had split the lights evenly between the cords, but apparently not. I had blown the fuse on one cord so I carefully moved a few strands of lights to the other cord and Chris changed the fuse out and we were in business.

We got up early Friday morning to get the outside decorated.

Not a whole lot to report on our weight loss except we are still losing and moving along great. We are both feeling better than we have felt in years. On Thursday we go back to Dr. Davis for our 6 month checkup and this is the appt that they will draw the 12 vials of blood and check to make sure all is good. I am not looking forward to this at all and I hope they don't torture us too badly. I promise to update after the Dr. Also on Sat we had some wonderful pictures taken at Herman Park by a friend of mine and very soon I will be posting some of these pics.

Until then, may God Bless each and every one of you during this most beautifully joyous season!