Recapping this past week.

Ed,Nicole and I had originally planned to head to Illinois on Oct 2nd for my cousin's daughter's wedding on Saturday. Instead we found out on Wednesday that my mom was to have open heart surgery on Thursday morning. So I quickly packed a bag (it's a good thing Ed came a few days later because I packed all the wrong things!) and headed to Illinois Wednesday night. They kept her overnight in Dixon because of a few complications from the heart cath, so I spent that night with her in her hospital room. The surgery was delayed until Friday morning, but she was transported to Rockford to a Heart Hospital on Thursday. Surgery was Friday morning (on my birthday so I'll have no excuse to not remember the date) and she is recovering well as you can see in the picture from the previous post. We are planning to take her home this afternoon. She asked me to stay with her last night, so we are waiting for dad to arrive and to get the final discharge instructions. It has been very interesting seeing the nursing process from this side. Some are very compassionate and to others it is just a job. It has made me very thankful for the nurses that I work with and the hospital that I work for, but has also given me motivation to be purposeful in explaining things to my patients and to show compassion above all.

So on to the wedding...



Jon and Rachel signed a covenant during their wedding ceremony and had the entire wedding party sign it as well. Rachel wrote the covenant which spoke of their lasting commitment to each other and God. It was a very special part of their cermony.



The bride's father plays in "Class Act" a big band group. They performed at the reception and played a lot of fun tunes! We really enjoyed them.



At each of the tables they had these centerpieces. They were frames fastened together with transparent pictures with the candle light shining through. The pictures were of Jon and Rachel together and with their families at different stages of their lives. It was a really neat idea!



This was our fish that was also part of the centerpiece. He was a feisty little guy. Word has it that he jumped out of the bowl and was flopping around on the table. I watched for the rest of the night so I could capture it on film, but he never ventured out again. He seemed highly aggitated though. Maybe Nicole traumatized him when she was making fish faces at him!





The lovely mothers of the bride and groom.



The bride and groom themselves.



The cake was beautiful.



They had a great time smearing it all over each other's face.

Rachel and her sister Abby acted out the song "Sisters." It was pretty cute. I think Abby is going to have a hard time not having her sister at home. My girls sure did when their brothers went away to college.



"Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister."



"and Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man."

It was a fun wedding, nice to have time to visit with family and a little time away from the hospital. Jon and Rachel are honeymooning in Hawaii. I am so jealous! Hope they are having a great time.

The rest of my week has been spent at the hospital watching mom improve each day.

On a completely different note, I now have THREE followers of my blog. My own little groupies. So exciting!

Question for you - is anyone else not seeing the background image on this blog or is it just me?