Hello everyone...........

Goodness, I can't even remember the last time I blogged. My sister-in-law Heather reminded me that I need to - it's been a while.
Well, Ronnie has his last chemo treatment the day before Thanksgiving. :) We had a surprise party for him the following Saturday (The Iron Bowl). It went great. He has no clue we had been planning this. I am so thankful for everyone that helped me pull it off and for everyone that came to celebrate. We had a great time. I hope everyone else did as well!!
Ronnie will have his PET scan on December 19th. He will then find out the results on December 24th...........Christmas Eve. What a wonderful gift it would be for them to tell us that he is cancer free!! Sure is hard to wait that long though!! Everyone keep your fingers crossed!!
This Sunday Zachary, Troy, Lacy, Dalton, Logan, and Carter will all be singing in the Christmas musical at our church (Chapel Hill Baptist). They will be singing with the adult choir and they will sing at both services - 9:00 and 10:15. If anyone wants to come we will be at the 10:15 service to watch(I work in the nursery at the 9:00 service). It should be really good.

Mercedes as announced yet more cut backs. They will now be shut down from December 15 - January 20th ( I think). Thy will get paid for 1 wk in December and 1 week in January. Also, they were supossed to be returning to working 5 days a week in January instead of the 32 hours a week they have been on for a month. Now they will only be working 30 hours a week - 4 days a week , 7-1/2 hours a day..........and when they are on nights the will go in everyday at 4:15 instead of 6:15. Also, as stated before, the will still be shut down for 4 weeks in June. They will get paid for Memorial day and then they will have to use 9 of their vacation days and then will not get paid for the other 2 weeks.. Geez!! Somethings gotta give here. It is very nerve racking to say the least. Hopefully there won't be anymore "meetings" at Mercedes for a while. Sure hope the economy picks up really soon.

Well, that's about all I have for right now. Hope everyone has a great weekend. ROLL TIDE!!!!
Oh. and I am using my last 1/2 day of vacation today and Jennifer and I are going to see Twilight!! I can't wait. Just finished the 2nd book of the 4 book series. Need to go get the 3rd book - ASAP!!

What a long month this has been..............

It seems like I can't get anything done these days. My house is wreck, I am in the process if recovering the cushions on my dining room chairs(it's taking approx 1 hour per cushion!!), Thanksgiving is next week, I have family coming into town the day after Thanksgiving, I have x-mas shopping to do the day after Thanksgiving, basketball practice has already started for Zach and Troy(Zach on Tues & Fri) (Troy on Wed & Thurs), I have crazy cat that no one can seem to catch that I need to get rid of and I am still working in the nursery at church every Sunday morning. This morning I woke up with a little bit of a sore throat. I was not happy. I definetly do not have time to get sick, so I had a long talk with my self and it seems to have worked because (knock on wood) I have felt fine since I got to work!!

On to other things.........
Ronnie had a bad day Saturday. He is still on blood thinners since he had the blood clot last month. Saturday he had a nose bleed that lasted about 3 hours. We finally got it to stop. That was a little scary!! It hasn't happened again since then thank goodness!!

Zachary got his progress Friday and he got 4 A's and 1 B. Yeah! Good for him!!

That's all folks.............

Finally home............

Well, Ronnie finally went home from the hospital yesterday. He was very glad to be back at home. He will not return to work until Monday December 1st. He will have his chemo treatment that he missed today. And then he will have his last treatment on the day before Thanksgiving. He will be so glad to be done with the treatments, hopefully for good.

Back at work..............

Well, for those of you who don't know, Ronnie is in the hospital with double pneumonia. He went in Thursday night about 7:30 and is still in the hospital. He just told me that the Dr thinks he can go home tomorrow. They want him to go a full day without a fever. He is doing much better than he was this weekend. He is still on oxygen and is still taking the breathing treatments but he is breathing a lot better than before.
He was supossed to have a chemo treatment this past Friday but they held off on that. I don't know when he will make it up but his Dr. said he didn't want to wait too long to do it. We are hoping that they will do it while he's still in the hospital. But we'll have to wait and see.
It has been a very long weekend for us all. Hopefully this will be all over soon.

WOW!! Time really flies.................

So, I pulled up my blog and realized I hadn't been on here in 2 weeks!! Shame on me!!

Everything has been going well. Lee won the game we went and watched. He did great. And Claire, my niece, did great cheering the football team on. They both have grown up so much in the last few years. Hard to believe!!

Zachary and Troy had their birthday parties last Saturday. Everyone had a great time. With their birthday money they each bought a Nintendo DS and 3 games a piece. I haven't seen them since.................JK but really they are enjoying them.

Since Ronnie had his 10th treatment 2 weeks ago he has now been able to stop giving himself the shots in the stomach of the blood thinner. I know he is extremely happy about that. He will have his 11 treatment this Friday. Only one left after this one!! YEAH!!! I know he can't wait.

Well, yesterday was election day. Depending on how you voted, some of us are in mourning and some of you are celebrating. All we can do is take each day as it comes and pray for the best outcome.

Only a few weeks until Thanksgiving........I love the holidays!! And the weather is lovely!!

Hope every has a great week.........................

It's been a while...........

Well, it's been about a week since I wrote anything so I decided I should before Heather tells me I'm being lazy again!!

Troy had a blast on his 1st field trip to Critter Creek farms. I'll post the pics on snap fish when I get a chance.

The boys got their report cards last week. All pretty good considering what we went thru with Zachary the 1st 9 weeks. He had 1 A and the rest B's, so I'm not complaingin at all. We are realy working hard this grading period to bring those up to A's. Wish us luck!!

Ronnie has his 10th chemo treatment this Friday. Hopefully only 2 more after that. YEAH!! I know he is looking forward to the end...... He is still taking the medicine and shots for the blood clot. Hopefully he will know how that's doing when he goes back on Friday. He has to have another ultrasound tomorrow on another part of his body(a little more personnal so I can't tell you which one) which has been giving him some discomfort this week. So, we'll see what they say about that too. Other than the new ailments he feels pretty good this week, just in time to feel really bad again after his treatment Friday.

Friday night we are going to Elkmont, Al to watch our nephew Lee play football. He graduates this year and Friday night is senior night. I heard he was offered a scholarship to Auburn University. Way to go!! We are very proud of him.

My brother Patrick and his wife Heather have just bought a house. Congratulations!! We are really excited for you!! Can't wait to see it.

Tonight the kids at church are going out to Huntington Place to hand out candy and fliers about our fall festival at church next week. Then they are going to TCBY. The boys are excited.
Our fall festival is Next Wednesday night starting at 6:30 if anyone wants to come. It should be a lot of fun. The boys Halloween costumes should be here by Friday I think. Zachary is going to be Indian Jones and Troy is going to be a member of the SWAT team. I am also trying to plan Zach and Troy's b-day parties. They are both having them next Saturday Nov 1st at the gym at church. Troy is having an Elvis theme and Zach is having a basketball theme. Should be a grand time had by all!! :)

Zachary's b-day is tomorrow so I am going to take a b-day snack to his class in the morning. Troy's birthday is next Wednesday so I will do the same for him.

Also, my friend Terri is going thru a rough time, about to file for divorce I think, so please pray for her and her family.

I hope everyone has a great rest of the week!!!!!!!!!

ROLL TIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Long weekend ended too soon...............

Well, so much for my 4 day weekend. It went by like a flash!! But I really needed a break. I hadn't taken a vacation day since July.
Ronnie has chemo Friday. He had to go back saturday to get a shot to boost his white blood cell count. Then he has to go back today to have some blood work done They upped his medication for his blood clot Friday and so the blood work is to check and see if it's doing it's job.

Friday Troy spent the night with his cousins Emma and Brayden. He had a blast once he quit crying. He is always so excited all week long until he finally realizes it's time. But he gets over it pretty quick. He didn't want to leave when I got there to pick him up.

Sunday we went to church and once we got home we didn't leave the house again until 6:30 this morning when it was time to start my work week again...uuuggghhh!! Yesterday me, Zach and Troy spent the day cleaning the house. We got done about 3:00. I took a shower then we went outside and played some basketball. We had a good time.

Tomorrow Troy has his 1st ever field trip. We will be going to Critter creek Farms. I'm sure we'll have a great time.

Well, until the next time I have a chance to blog..................I hope everyone has a wonderful week!!

New development...............

Ronnie's leg was hurting bad all day long yesterday, so he called DR. Dubay's office. The nurse wanted him to come in and have an ultrasound done to make sure he didn't have a blood clot. Sure enough, he did. He now has to take a prescription medicine avery day and give himself a shot in the stomach everyday!! OUCH!!! They said the blood clot was in a secondary vein so they didn't think it was anything to worry about. Hopefully the medicine will take care of it.

He will have his next chemo treatment this Friday at 1:00. Three more after this one and hopefully everything will look good.

Troy had is first and last tournament game last night. So we are done with baseball.........until next spring. Just in time for basketball which is right around the corner!!

The boys are out of school Friday and monday so I have taken vacation days and will be off work also! YEAH!! Although I do have a parent/teacher conference for Troy on Friday it should only take about 30 minutes or so.

Zachary and Troy have both picked out their Halloween costumes. Troy is going to be a member of the SWAT team and Zachary is going to be Indiana Jones!! Thank goodness Halloween is on a Friday night this year.

Well, I hope everyone is having a great week. Take care.

Not much going on........

Well, it's been a while since I blogged anything........it's been relatively quiet at our house the last few weeks. But I guess I need to write something since my sister in law Heather thinks I'm slacking!! :)

Zachary is doing much better in school. Although, he will be doing ALOT of reading over the next week. He has 2 more books to read before the grading period ends on October 9th. I know he can do it if he puts his mind to it.

Troy's last regular season game is tonight. Their tournament will start on Monday. They got beat pretty bad Tuesday night but Troy did get to play 2nd base the last inning. He was much happier about that!! There is not enough action for him in the outfield for him. He really needs to have something to do.

Ronnie had his 8th chemo treatment last Friday. It went well. He felt very bad Sunday and Monday but I think he is starting to feel much better now.

Mercedes cut their hours back to 32 hours per week starting this week. They are letting employees sign up for extra work on the Friday that they are off. Ronnie didn't think he would get picked to work since they were only picking 250 people out of the whole plant but luckily he was one of the employee's picked this week. He doesn't know what he will be doing but as long as he's getting a chance to work that day I'm sure he doesn't really care what the job will be. Keep your fingers crossed that he might get picked again next week. That would really help out a lot.

Well, it is starting to be a very busy time of year for us. Zachary and Troy's birthdays are both this month, Zachary on the 23rd and Troy on the 28th. I am planning on having their birthday parties on November 1st. They both want their parties in the gym at church so they can play basketball. Works out great for me since it doesn't cost me anything ro reserve the church.
Ronnie's birthday and our 7 year anniversary are both in November. Ronnie hopefully will be done with his chemo the week before Thanksgiving. Then you have Thanksgiving and then Christmas the next month. I think I need to try to get some rest now while I can.....ha ha!!

Well, I hope everyone is having a great week so far. Only 1 more day until the weekend!! Yeah!!

Half way thru the work week..............

Well, I had my parent/teacher conference with Mrs. Weeks(Zachary's teacher) today. Overall Zachary is doing okay in school. He doesn't get in trouble much. He just doesn't want to do anything. And thank goodness it's not just him. It seems to be an epidemic this year in 5th grade. Hopefully everyone just got off to a rough start and will start realizing exactly what they need to be doing. I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway. He did score very well on his SAT so that is great news.

Ronnie has his 8th chemo treatment Friday. He will have 4 more left after that. YEAH!!! I know he is glad that he's nearing the end!!

I hope everyone has a great day!!

What is wrong with my children.............

First off let me say that Zachary's 5th grade year has turned into a nightmare!! I am at my wits end with what to do with him. He doesn't care about anything this year. He doesn't care about his grades, he doesn't care about being grounded, he doesn't care that he is in trouble everyday of the week. He won't bring his homework home. He constantly leaves his text books at school. He doesn't tell me he has tests nor does he bother to study for them. Found out at 8:00 last night that they had a science test last Friday. Apparently the class overall made such bad grades(Zach made a 68) that the teacher was kind enough to give them a make up test today. Did Zachary bother to tell anyone that? NO!! Did he bother to bring home his work to study? NO!! Did he bother to study at all? NO!! Not until I found out about it at 8:00 last night and then he had to study until 9:45 before he finally learned the 9 vocabulary words. This grading period he has to read (3) 150+pg chapter books. It took him 6 weeks to read the 1st one. He now has 17 days to read the other 2 before the grading period ends. And he acts likes it's all no big deal. When he got done studying last night and finally got in the bed. I had a long, serious discussion with him for about 20 minutes. He didn't say a word. Didn't get upset at all................until I turned his tv off!! Then he cried!!!!!!!!! What??? He didn't cry because I was getting onto him. He didn't cry because of school. He didn't cry because I told him if he didn't start taking school seriously that he wouldn't be playing basketball this year. He only cried because I turned his tv off!! What is wrong with this picture?

Then there's Troy...............Troy was the biggest goof off in his game last night I could have screamed. In the outfield dancing, playing, picking up grass, spinning around, his coach telling him to pay attention every time someone got up to bat............you name it - he did everything except play baseball. I have never been so ready for a game to be over in my life!! I told him last night (along with my discussion with Zachary) that I wasn't going to watch another game like that. There is absolutely no excuse for the way he has been acting in his games. It is childish nonsense. If he is going to play baseball then he needs to play baseball. This is not recess!! Otherwise he is just wasting our time and money.

At any rate, I think someone has taken my good, sweet boys and switched them with somebody else's kids!! I hope this behavior is just a phase - and a short lived one at that. I might have to start taking some medication!! HA HA!!!

Wow - where did summer go??????

I actually had to wear a jacket at Troy's game last night. Luckily, I had one in the trunk(I never leave home without one since I am always cold!!) But it was nice not to be sweating thru my clothes for a change.
Troy had a good game. They won. He had a single and eventually scored and then he got out at first. They are now 4-1 overall. He has 5 games left and then will have a single elimination tournament. Maybe he can bring home another championship trophy!

Ronnie hasn't felt good the last few days. I hope tomorrow is better for him.

Zachary and Troy both rec'd their 1st mid 9 weeks profress reports. Both did well. Zachary had 1 A's and 4 B's. Troy was meeting all academic standards. Good job boys!!

Tonight I can actually go home when I get off work. No ball games, no practice, no school meeting. Absolutely nothing!! Yeah!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful day!!

Ronnie's grandmother...........

The services for Ronnie's grandmother will be Saturday the 13th. Visitation will be from 12:30 - 2:00 at Miles Funeral Home in Winfield, Al. The funeral will be immediatly after visitation with burial in West Alabama Memorial Gardens in Gu-Win, Alabama.

Great, wonderful news...........

Ronnie got the results back from his PET scan today and it is great news. They said that the cancer was not completely gone but was much better than they thought it would be at this time. So, after today he will have 5 more treatments and when he has another scan after the 12th treatment, hopefully the cancer will be completely gone. We are keeping our fingers crossed. Thanks so much to everyone for prayer for our family.

A sad day.................

This morning Ronnie's grandmother, Mamie Langston, passed away. Please keep us and Ronnie's family in your thoughts and prayers.
I will post again when I find out the arrangements.

The weekend...............

Well, it was another busy weekend at The Patterson house. Saturday we watched my nephew, Dalton, play football. They are undefeated(although this was just the 1st game). We then had haircuts to get and Alabama football to watch.
Sunday we went to church then out to lunch. Troy had a birthday party that afternoon and then back to church from 5:45 - 7:00. It was the 1st night of AWANAS and it was messy game night. Although my kids were fairly clean when we left, they had a blast!!
Tonight Troy had a game at 7:30. So the week starts out just as busy as last week ended..........I could really use some me time...........I'm exhausted.

Ronnie's grandmother is still in the hospital. No real change at this time. We went and visited her Friday night but I don't think she new we were there. Hopefully things will get better soon.

Ronnie went for his PET scan this morning. This should show his progression since he's half way thru his chemo sessions. Hopefull we will get a good report. We should know something by Wednesday I would think. I will post as soon as we hear something.

Yesterday was my friend (and child care provider for 10 years)Belinda's bithday. I hope she had a great one. Me, Ronnie and the kids miss her very much. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIMI!!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!!

I hope everyone has a great day!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My boys...........

Baby me.......

This is me when I was a baby!! Wasn't I cute?

Another day closer to Friday....

Well, it was a VERY slow and boring day at work. I am very glad tomorrow is Friday.
Troy had his 2nd coach pitch game of the season. Tonight they lost 14-10 but they played well. Troy got 2 at bats. He was thrown out at first and hit a single and eventually scored a run. He played catcher in the 1st inning and center field in the 2nd and 3rd innings.

Zach has decided to take a break and not play baseball this fall, but he is playing basketball and will resume baseball in the spring.

Ronnie's grandmother was taken from the nursing home to the hospital tonight. I'm not sure what's wrong with her but will post when I hear something. Please keep her in your prayers.

Also, my friend Lajuan had a baby girl today. She weighed 6lbs 6oz. I don't know what they named her yet but I will find out soon.

And I want to wish my stepdad a HAPPY 51st BIRTHDAY today!!!!!!!

I hope everyone has a good night!!

AWANA'S at Chapel Hill Baptist Church Northport, Al

Well, I went to my first AWANA'S cub leaders meeting tonight. It was a lot of fun. This will be my 1st time to teach. I will either be with the kindergarden or 2nd grade. I will find out on Sunday. I am pretty excited. I hope I do a good job. I guess we'll find out early enough.

The King..........

Zach an Troy

Sabel xmas party 2008

My sweet boys........

I LOVE THIS PICTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Beach 2008

Playing putt-putt!! Y0u know you've gotta play putt-putt when you go on vacation!!!

Chatanooga 2008

Troy's 1st coach pitch game 09/01/08

Ronnie's Chemo

Ronnie had his 6th chemo treatment last Friday. He his half way thru - yeah!! He will go next Monday for the 2nd PET Scan to see how everything is progressing. Hopefully after that we will get some much needed good news.
As long as everything looks good on his scan his last treatment should be the Friday before Thanksgiving. There is nothing we would be more thankful of!!
He seems to feel a little worse with each treatment. Luckily he only feels really bad for about 3 days and then it subsides some.
I appreciate everyone's prayers and support for our entire family. Thanks so much. I will update again after we get the results from the scan.

It's Hump Day........

Even with the Holiday Monday this has already been a busy week. Troy has his 1st coach pitch baseball game Tuesday night. He did very well. Got a hit at every at bat. They won 18-8.

Yesterday I got a call from Zachary's school to pick him up because he was sick. I feared he had strep throat since Troy just got over it a few weeks ago.Fortunetly the strep test was negative and the Dr thinks his cough and runny nose may be allergy related.

Last night was parent night at Troy's school. It went well. Learned a lot about what Troy does during the day. I was really surprised with the amount of parents that didn't bother to show up. Maybe that's why some of these kids act like they do because their parents have other things to do besides take an interest in their schooling and what goes on in their childs life.

Tonight I will be at church for an AWANA's leaders supper. Yes, I will be teaching the preschoolers in AWANAS this year.........everyone wish me luck. This will be my first time. I hope I don't make a fool of myself.

I hope everyone has a great day and a speedy work week................

1st blog..............

Hello everyone. This is my 1st ever blog. I don't really know what to write about at this time but maybe something will come to me later in the day. I hope everyone has a great day!!