Adventures Of My Life
Ashley and Shane added a new member to the family today. She rescued a little dog to help keep Apollo entertained. She picked him up from the Licking County Animal Shelter. She named him Thor and he is very active and friendly. He thinks everyone is his friend and he and Apollo get along very well.
Thor after being picked up from the Licking County Animal Shelter
I have been having sciatica issues since the beginning of November. I have went to the doctor several time. We have tried stretching exercises and anti-inflammatory prescription medications. I finally had an X-Ray that revealed some spurs protruding from my spine, so my doctor approved an MRI. The MRI showed spurs resulting from a ruptured disc on L4-L5 along with heavy arthritis and narrowing of the spinal column. From that we made an appointment to see a neurosurgeon, which is now scheduled for February 1st. They may recommend surgery or still recommend that I try a nerve blocker. I just want to get me fixed so I can function again and start exercising again.
We made our annual pilgrimage up to Kalamazoo to visit family for Christmas. It was a very nice visit with both sides of the family and for the first time since I can remember there were no arguments over conflicts on where we were supposed to be and when.
It was very warm this year and there no chance of white Christmas as the temps varied from low 40’s to upper 50’s while we were visiting.
Jonny started his Junior of high school today. According to Nikki he was pretty happy to watch the bus drive by and walk out to the car and drive himself to school for the first time.
Stephanie turns 19 today. Nikki and I took her, Marcus and Ashley out shopping and to dinner at FlipSide for hamburgers yesterday. We also picked up an office chair for her room for her birthday as well. We also ordered her a backpack a couple of days ago, but that won’t be delivered until next week.
Happy Birthday Stephanie!!
Stephanie is preparing for her Sophomore year at OSU and is moving in with Ashley today into the apartment. She has been preparing her room for several weekends now patching, painting slowly moving things in and hanging things on the wall. Her and Nikki moved her bed today and the last of the things she needed. Ashley and Stephanie have assembled her bed and Shane was able to help Ashley and Stephanie carry the mattress upstairs to the bedroom and she is spending her first night as a renter in the apartment!
Jonny went to the Ohio BMV this morning and passed his driver’s exam. He said it was very easy and didn’t have any issues at all passing it. He got his license and says he took a good picture, but for some reason he won’t show it to me!
Stephanie volunteered to foster kittens from the Licking Country Humane Society. She was asked to take 4 kittens for a week or two to get them up to a proper weight for their age before they can be adopted.
The dogs find the kittens very entertaining and follow them around and try to keep track of all of them. The dogs are very good with them, but still need to be supervised with them. Not because they want to do them any harm, but they tend to get excited when the kittens are very active and can’t stand still and have almost stepped on them a couple of times because they are not paying attention.
Jonny participated in another big Track and Field Invitational this weekend. He ran in the 800 Meter Run and the 4×400 Relay at the 16th Annual Wayne Invitational held at Huber Heights High School just outside of Dayton.
Jonny ran in the 3rd of 4th heats that were run from slowest seeds to fastest seeds. He ended up 19th out of the 57 participants in the event with a new Personal Best time of 2:00.12. He got trapped on the inside lane and was unable to get to the outside to make his move as early as he wanted. To give you an idea of the competition at this meet, out of the top 50 runners in the 800 Meter in the state of Ohio, 16 were from this single meet. Jonny is rated 54th in the state for Division I, 69th overall in the state. When you filter out upperclassmen, Jonny is rated 9th in the state for the 800 Meter run. Here is the video I took at the meet of the 800 meter run.
The boys didn’t fair so well in the 4×400. Most of the other schools use sprinters who ran earlier in the meet as opposed to Granville, who runs mostly distance runners who just finished other races within the hour. The team didn’t get their best time in the event with a time of 3:39.57. Jonny finished the 400 meters in a respectable 54.8.
Ohio State University is on spring break this week. I picked up Apollo and Mozzie Wednesday after work and brought them home for Nikki and I to look after while Ashley and Shane headed to Kalahari in Sandusky. They left Thursday morning and had a good time at the indoor water park. According to Ashley, Friday there was a convention at Kalahari with a bunch of youngsters dressed in full make-up like the television show toddlers and tiaras for a cheer leading convention. They spent two nights there and were going to spend most of the day Saturday, but they said it was very crowded and decided to head home in the early afternoon. We kept the pets another night before bringing them back to their apartment.