2016 and more to come

Its been many years since I updated this. So here goes.  To just recap on things:
We are now a family of 4. 2 year old Ryan, almost 8 year old Katie and myself and Shannon and our new addition Dewey the cat. We also changed our residence and live in Livermore California now. My Dad is doing fantastic in Nashville, though we try to get him out of there. My mom is in Mississippi and doing well, tried to get her out of there. Bobby is in between Tennessee and California.
For about 8 years I was keeping up the totsite and it seems to not be around really. So I am going to try to rename this and keep up on the kids and whats going on with us.

Update to my dad

We set up a site to go here for further info.
www.caringbridge.org/visit/bobbrodie

March 8th for my Dad

Here is my brothers facebook post from last night:

Sorry I'm bored!! So today's update,much better day for Dad considering.He got out of bed,took 2 steps and sat in the chair for about 2 hours.They took him off the morphine and now the pain meds are through the IV.His ECHO test looked good and back on ice pellets and small sips of water.He had a tube in his stomache that drained out all the bad stuff(acid) and that came out early am.No vomiting today! They will start the feeding tube again in the am and hope he handles it well,he has had no food in a week.The catheter came out today and the first time he got up to pee he about passed out on me and his heart rate jumped to 145,scared the shit out of me,I got him back in bed and called the nurse.Then i noticed they took out the oxygen tube and I put it back in and he came back,he said thats exactally how he felt before the crash,hmmm!He got to pee on his own this evening,very good!His neighbor Richard sat with him for over 4 hours,very nice.This evening Jade came up to visit for a little while after work(thanks babe).And I found his mailbox key in his car today after tearing out the dash of the totaled car!Today was a good day!!!

He also spent an hour or so tearing apart the car looking for the mailbox key and he found it. He was very excited about that and my Dad, Bobby even called me to tell me. My Dad told him to go get him his mail. Oh and you can go ahead and send mail to my Dads address since they can get it now.
Bobby is doing very well with dealing with the medical part of this, enough that he says he should go to medical school. I can see him as a nurse, or something just not sure what.

So I do know that the catheter is out. The orthopedic surgeon said he will be fine to play golf. Apparently you dont use your right arm as much as left, which I did not know. The insurance did total his car. I will post a picture of it when I have it.

As for today, I dont know how it went. I spoke to Bobby this morning around 8 and have not had an update since then. I will post more as I have it. Feel free to call me or Bobby or even try my Dad on his cell phone. He is in good spirits usually and just very tired.

I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers!! It all helps to get through all of this. It will be a long road for recovery but every bit of positive is a good thing.

A little Update

I am back home in California. I can not begin to express how hard it was to leave my Dad in Intensive care and return here. I am in tears thinking about it. Right now, I have a little update. He is now in "step down" of intensive care. They are trying to get his system working. The Doctor put it as his anatomy was reconstructed. So they are trying to get the bowels working again. The good news is that yesterday he pooped 3 times. Mind you he has a coloscopy bag due all the reconstruction. He will have this bag for probably about 4 months. However, Yay for poop!!! That is a great sign. This morning he had a set back and threw up again. So I understand he they were taking it easy with him and now need to let him rest. So things are not progressing as well and hoped. It is going to be a difficult long recovery and a rollercoaster ride with a lot of ups and downs. It is so hard being here and not there.

My dad update

I have not updated this in a long time. However, this is a great place to post some info rather than Facebook post. It's too much for a FB post.
So for a recap on all on what happened and what is going on. My dad was in a solo car accident. He had not felt well while diving home from the grocery store, nauseous. He pulled over and it passed so he only had a block or few blocks to go and continued on again as he felt better. According to witness behind him and him remembering everything about the accident, he then drifted a little then he thinks he blacked out. He woke up crashed into tree. (amazing he is alive) He remembers all of this part. He says he woke up to the car, with a smashed windshield, hood squished up, his arm bloody and hanging and fingers "mangled". He remembers a very bumpy ride to the hospital (says it had bad shocks) and yelling at the driver to take it easy he was in pain. He remembers being in the ER and X-rays and cutting off his clothes. So, he obviously has no head injuries, that is a fantastic sign. Due to the lower seat belt and air bag, which saved his life, here is what happened. (sort of, what I can recap) Dad has 10 broken ribs on one side and 2 on the other. (remember this is off the top of my head and my not be accurate)His left arm is very bruised and has a gash on his arm that is deep and got stitched up. The right arm is a bad break. He remembers it just hanging there. It sounds like it basically broke in half and it came though the skin. He's fingers on that hand are broken, "mangled" is the word Dad used to describe it. He has a plate in that arm and a very heavy cast. The lower part of the seat belt did some internal injuries. He has had 2surgeries. He had major blood loss due to some internal bleeding. There are a bunch of other things I can type up but this gives you the mist of it. No leg, feet or knee problems. These days are really critical in seeing what the recovery is and such. They are now at the point of getting him up 3times a day and sitting in a chair. If you were to speak with him, you would think nothing is wrong and he broke his arm. When you see him he looks good. He is in good spirits but in some pain. First thing he said to Bobby when he came out of sedation was "where are my teeth?" it is just amazing how much detail he remembers. In a way that is great since thereis no head injury. However that is awful to have to remember.
So feel free to touch base for updates.

Breast Cancer Awareness

I wanted to share a post from my Mom's cousin Nancy on her blog:

http://nancyhartleysartadventures.blogspot.com/

Our weekend trip and the garden

My mom came to visit on July 7th for a few weeks. Over the first weekend, since Shannon had one weekend left of no school, we took a weekend trip. Just Shannon and I and it was not a Friday night but SAturday until Sunday night. Destination being Lassen Volcanic National Park. Neither of us had ever been there and it was a long drive from here, probably about 5-6 hours I believe. We drove to La Porte to stay at the cabin over night. That would have been a 3 1/2 hour drive since there was no traffic. However, after we left, as we were only 12 miles from home, we ran over what looked like a cardboard box that flew out of a truck in front of us. Well it was a wooden dresser drawer. So we pulled over (stop #1) to check out that and see if there was any damage. No problems we could see at the time so continue on. Stop #2 was to get gas. Stop number 3 was to get lunch. As we drove out of Vacaville we could hear something flapping under the car again so next stop was the VW dealership we had just passed (stop #4). Fortunately it was some screws missing causing the splash gaurd thing to flap, the fixed it, did not charge and off we went. Next stop (#5) was in Yuba City area to get groceries. Then once we hit La Porte, we stopped in at the general store and deli to get snacks and up to the cabin we went. This is probably the longest trip I have done to get to the cabin. I believe it took about 6 hours.
The weather was perfect up at Little Grass where the cabin is. We bbq'ed dinner and relaxed. Something we did not do last trip was relax. Between Shannon working on the deck repair the entire 4 days we were there and me running around with Katie, it was not relaxing. Next morning we drove down the La Porte Quincy road to Quincy,(saw lots of chipmunks while driving) had breakfast and then drove towards Lassen. This was a beautiful drive. Something that is not normal for me was I did not take many pictures due to camera issues.
Lassen was beautiful and interesting. Snow was still there and Highway we took, 89 I think, was just cleared a few days prior of snow and opened. Yes snow and this was July 10th weekend.
We saw so many interesting things and here are the pictures.

We could hear this stream/falls rushing from the road, it looks small but it was loud enough for me to hear, so we hiked up to find it.










This is actually a frozen lake which was cool to see!



This is where we put out the blanket and had lunch.

Yes that is a live bear and I am glad we were in the car when we saw it.

We also saw deer and what may have been a Bald Eagle.
We finished off the trip by driving home via Redding (109 degrees out) and all the way home to Dublin by about 8:30 that Sunday night. Fast trip!
It was a long drive but Shannon and I had a great little road trip get away! Hope to do it again. Thanks Mom for taking care of Katie. (pictures of Grandma Sue and Katie will be on the totsite)

Garden as of today, August 1st.
I am super excited about the garden. We have our first tomatoe,
some beautiful Dahlia's)
and sweet peas did ok and were pretty while they lasted. The other exciting thing is we have broccoli and 3 PUMPKINS!!!
As you see the broccoli is tiny but the pumpkins are so exciting to me.

Wait I forgot to mention the ooddles of tomatoes, and we dont even like them that much, maybe to make salsa or pasta sauce if we dare.

I am reading the information on what to do to keep these little pumpkins alive and growing and I will try to do a weekly picture update. Its so funny how excited I am about the pumpkins. Now I want to get a Halloween costume for Katie and do a Halloween party. (what a great idea