11!

The twins are 11 already! My how the years fly by! They are fifth graders now. They are both killing it at school. They’ve both taken up the cello this year. She’s still into dance and started at a new dance school last summer. She’s trying out for the school musical this year. He is still into soccer as his sport of choice but is also getting interested in basketball. We had fun watching the World Cup. He’s also really into history and gaming. They both like to join clubs at school.

They are getting so tall and grown up. I don’t think I was nearly this grown up at their age. We had some fun trips this year. NYC to visit my sister as always and then summer back to NY and coastal New England. We are headed to Mexico for NYE and early January. I haven’t been in years and it's the first time for the kids and DH. Yay for new countries!

I just published a post I wrote earlier this year about getting another colonoscopy. I did this partly because I now have an old friend (we started our first jobs out of college on the same day, and later became roommates in Chicago) who is fighting stage three colon cancer at 45. She has a son the twins' age and has been having an unusually hard time with her treatment (surgery, chemo, radiation, etc.). She lives in Canada, but spent the first two plus years of the pandemic semi-stuck in Bali, where she obviously wasn't getting good care, as she had symptoms and nobody did a colonoscopy for years. It makes me angry for her.

And on the cancer front, because that's always a running theme, we lost my uncle Gary earlier this month to lung cancer. His wife, Laura, died of recurrent breast cancer back in 2013, and now their two kids are orphans in their 30s. He's the third of my father's siblings, and first of the four to pass away.

Taking Care

Written in early 2022…

Well I survived colonscopy #3 (in five years) recently with a clean bill of health. Man those preps suck.  This is the new routine since I found out several years ago that I carry a genetic marker that gives me a higher risk of colon cancer, which killed my maternal grandmother, though not until she was 94. With the threat of Covid (and worse yet, long Covid) hanging over someone who has already dealt with long mono for over half my life (especially since they just found that EBV is one of the top drivers of getting long Covid, FML), I'm trying to take better care of myself. 

I treated myself to a food sensitivity test recently and boy were the results a surprise. My top problem foods include coffee, almond, and vanilla (weird), but also cow's milk, pineapple, and orange, so the breakfast routine got a bit of an overhaul. If you haven't tried organic oat milk, which I hadn't, it is amazing. It's also cheap at Costco. Score! I never really liked drinking milk, except in coffee, but I'm a cereal girl, so it's kind of part of the deal. Thank goodness I can still have other dairy products, like cheese and yogurt. Let's not get crazy, I am from Wisconsin. I had to give up caffeine many years ago since it makes me feel like I'm having a heart attack, but man I like the taste of coffee. Trying to make a go with decaf earl grey...

Since the whole family was finally fully vaxxed before Christmas (yay!), we decided to take advantage of the extra long break to get out of dodge. A new year's snow storm almost set us back, but we all got on a plane for the first time in two years and went to Florida to get some sun and be able to eat and be outside. We were very lucky and the weather was perfect, though as someone who spent some summers in Florida growing up, I know it's not always the case. I honestly have no idea how/why anyone lives there year round. Unlike everyone we know, we managed not to catch Covid (double yay!!)