Too Young

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers on the loss of my brother-in-law. We finally found out the official cause of death last week. "Acute heart failure consistent with coronary artery disease." Remember, we are talking about a 38 year old man here. That is just unbelievable to me. They said he had high blood pressure, high cholesterol (common in the family) and that his arteries were quite clogged.

This has also put a bit of a scare into us. There is a strong history of heart problems in my husband's family. His father had his first heart attack at 35. Now he has a brother who died at 38 from heart failure. I've asked him to make an appointment with his doctor to discuss the possibility of running tests to check on his arteries. He is also overdue for a cholesterol check, because for some reason they didn't do one last year. He's already on blood pressure meds and I believe that has been under control for a while now. I'm thinking there has to be some sort of non-invasive way to check out his arteries. Maybe do a stress test on his heart or something. Anything they can do to put our minds at ease will help. He's 35 and we need him around for many many more years! My children need their Dada and I can't imagine life without my husband.

In case anyone was wondering, the family did end up getting together a couple weeks after the 'event'. There was no formal service, but my husband, his oldest brother, and my mother-in-law looked through photos together and reminisced. Our daughter got to play in the snow for the first time in her life and everyone got to meet our new son. So at least something good came out of it....

A blow to my ego.....

We have been working with my daughter on drawing. Really, she has been doing quite well, becoming quite the little artist - drawing portraits of us, herself, her cousins, grandmas, cats, etc. Today, she brought me a drawing and said,"Mama, this is you." Here is a picture of her drawing:



Does anyone else see what I see? I am quite sure it is unintentional, she is only 3 after all.... but I must say I am not feeling very thin or pretty right now!