Friday when we woke up I noticed Margaret was acting different.  She wouldn’t walk in a straight line, or lay on her side for a belly rub.  At the vet the doctor gave me the worse news: there is a mass on her spleen.  Our options were to 1) do nothing and only have a month with her.  2) remove the spleen and only have 2-3 months with her, or 3) remove the spleen and do chemo, giving us 9-12 months at best.  The news devastated us.  We brought her home knowing that the mass had a potential to burst at any time, thus causing her to bleed out.  We did some crying, and then some research.  It turns out that there is a slim chance that the mass may not cancer.  She has given us so much joy that we decided that even if the chance she’ll be ok is slim, we have to try anyway.  She had surgery that evening and came home the next day.  The doctor had found that the mass did in fact rupture at some point in time but had healed over.  We could have lost her unexpectedly so much sooner!   She is already feeling better…constantly rolling over for belly rubs and is loving all the spoiling.  I’m just trying to keep and calm, clears mind until Wednesday when the lab results are back confirming how long we’ll have left with her.

Just before we decided to do the surgery we had a little impromptu photo session.  Ignore the messy hair, clothing and tears.

We fed the llamas

Found my father in law Tom’s wine that won a double gold

Job became a caveman

And we found some dinosaurs

RUN!

After a foot massage…

…and cheesing for pictures…

…the boys ended the afternoon with a ride on the ferris wheel.

I’m playing around with different editing styles, so bear with me for a bit.

This one has an “I just escaped from an insane asylum” type of vibe to it, lol.

On the way up we stopped in Berkeley to visit The Bone Room.  I worked there in college and we figured the boys would get a huge kick out of it.  They had tons of fun and picked out some special lollipops…Jerah had a cricket in his and Job a meal worm.  And yes, they did eat them.

Actually we had a lot of junk food this weekend…like ice cream at fishermans wharf…

…and cotton candy by the sea lions

We also spent some time at the aquarium after winning some free tickets.

I also scanned in some shots from my 35mm camera.  The boys are funny.  They always want to see the picture after I take it. 

From our trip to the snow

On our bike ride over the weekend

Hanging around the house

This I took a long time ago with my old Argus.  The disk I got from my lab never worked, so I wasn’t able to share here…but now I can.  LOVE this image!!  Again, the scan was wonky and off, but the print of gorgeous.  I guess I really just need to figure out how to use the scanner.  Oh, and apparently that camera has light leaks. 

Grandpa Paul didn’t stand a chance!

Jerah had so much fun sledding this time.

Crashing into a tree was fun.

And he even went down the hill by himself!

And yes, we made a special stop at the store for a carrot nose.

Job, ever my muse posed for some pictures

Notice his fake  smile? *sigh*

Then he had a great idea: “lets find a geocache!”  There was one super close.

The find of the day?  Sunglasses!

And that ends the saga of our awesome day.

So last weekend we had an awesome day of biking, eating, geocaching, and exploring.  I decided to document it every step of the way.  The day before my new bike trailer finally came in the mail.  The boys are getting to big to fit in one trailer so two is a necessity.  We rode to Eppies in West Sac for a yummy diner food lunch.  I LOVE diners.  They make be happy.  And they are fun to photograph.

Job is obsessed with Aaron lately.  Wants to constantly hug and kiss and hang on him.

Food is always more fun when you share.

part II is coming up in a few hours.  Stay tuned!

Yes I know the following two are a bit out of focus.  I was too slow and they were too quick.  Just squint your eyes and look past the blur to the cute cute boys.