Wakeboarding in PA!

At the beginning of July, I went on vacation with a group of friends who also happen to be my coworkers. Our joint vacation planning started one day while sitting in our cubes...I was just about to go to PA (or just got back...can't remember) and my cubemate, Cory, and I started talking about all the awesome Amish/PA food in the area where I visited (my friends live about 20 minutes from the town Cory grew up in). My other cubemate, Pooja, decided that she wanted to try Amish food...and then Cory mentioned that he and his wife were going to PA in the summer for vacation and we should all come up and go wakeboarding at his dad's place on the river.

So our wakeboarding in PA trip was born.

We all had such a blast on the river and doing some touristy sightseeing in a small town nearby, Lititz.

Apparently Lititz was voted "America's Coolest Small Town." It was pretty cool...

The theme of our Litiz day was food: old-school candy, pretzel, wine, beer, chocolate, and then finishing up with a stop at my favorite Amish restaurant, Katie's Kitchen, in Strausburg for cheeseburger soup and apple dumplings. We definitely need the time on the water to work all of that food off! :)

There was a ton of laughter...face plants in the water as Cory and his friend Tim showed amazing patience and teaching skills as we all tried to wakeboard. Wakeboarding is like water-skiing except with one board...kinda like snowboarding on water while being pulled by a boat. After being uber impressed with  Cory and Tim's somersaults and flips, we all struggled just to stand up for a few seconds at time, it's waaay harder than it looks! Lisa, Purav, and Erin rocked it and were able to stand and be pulled for a long time!

I.loved.it.

I wasn't able to get fully "up"...I preferred the "crouching" position ;-) and only lasted seconds before crashing (spectacularly at times...on my head), but I did get out of the water, which the guys were saying is the hardest part. I really enjoy water sports and there are some wakeboarding parks in the Houston area...we've all been talking about going there to get better at it. I really want to standup for a bit :)

The River Gang :)

It was such a fun trip!

New art for the New Year

I figured a gray, drizzly, cold New Year's Day was just perfect for working on two new art projects for the dining room.

The first was inspired from something I saw on Pinterest. The person had put all the coins she had collected during her travels into a photo frame. I've collected quite a few coins from my travels and rather than storing them in various jars,  I decided to hot glue mine onto a 5 X 5 inch canvas.

I cut some brown cardstock to 5 X 5, hot glued it to the canvas, and then hot glued some ribbon I had on hand around the edge to dress it up. After coming up with a design for the coins (the coins are from Lativa, Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, and Italy), I just hot glued those and voila! Art.

The second piece is comprised of pieces of terra cotta tiles I collected while on the beach in Cinque Terre. Same thing here - leaving the canvas bare, I glued a ribbon trim, came up with a design for the pieces, and hot glued those in place. 

I had already removed two black and white canvases from the dining room wall to make room for that oil painting you see in the bottom left corner...it's done by a local artist in Cinque Terre and it's of the town (Riomaggiore) that we stayed in.

Now every time I look at this wall, I will be reminded of the awesome travel adventures I have had thus far.

Christmas decorations put away for another year and new art up on the walls. Good start to the new year :).

Ciao! and travel adventures

Amazingly, I was able to travel to Italy last week. I had several "is this really happening? Pinch me please" moments during the trip. Three months ago I would have never imagined I would physically be able to do the trip, I wouldn't have fathomed traveling thousands of miles away from the safety net of my home, my doctors, and American medicine had provided over the past four months. I'm so glad the Lord brought this opportunity into my path and then allowed me to go...and to have fun! :)


My most favorite memory from the trip was waking up early to catch a train to another town in Cinque Terre, a string of five towns on the eastern coast of Italy, on Thanksgiving morning. The town was quiet except for a few folks headed out to work. We stopped for coffee and croissants (I munched on a protein bar - so glad I brought those!), watched the locals sip coffee at the counter standing up, watching the news that was on in the corner television, laughing, greeting each other, glancing over at the four tourists seated at a small table, and then heading out for a days work. As we walked along the coast, I told my friends that it was too bad the trails that linked the towns together were closed, because I had seen an amazing picture of a man carved in stone, holding up a house, that was along the trails and I had really wanted to see that in person. As we walked down onto the beach, I yelled...because there, at the end of the beach, was the stone man holding up his house. Unexpected blessing.

The stone man in Monterosso, Cinque Terre

Up close of the stone man

Dawn over the Mediterranean

We spent the next hour or so walking along the beach, I learned how to skip rocks on the water, the Mediterranean  no less!, and I collected broken pieces of terra cotta tiles that were strewn on the beach to someday glue onto canvas and display in my house. It was a beautiful morning.

Our trip took us from Milan to Florence to Cinque Terre to Venice and then back to Milan. Traveling from town to town was easy with our Eurail passes and I was very thankful that the guys had Italy apps on their phones with maps of the cities so we were able to find all the museums, bridges, and churches we wanted to explore (and find our way back to where we were sleeping that night!). We got to see the David, works painted by Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Donatello (actually, I don't think I saw Donatello's but it was in a church that we went in, I just never saw it :) ), amazing architecture, streets teeming with history in their cobblestones, got lost in Venice, and I probably quoted my favorite traveling buddy, Rick Steves, about a bagillion times, and all in all, made the most out of our seven days there.

The Duomo in Milan

The Duomo in Florence

Painted ceiling of the Florence Duomo

My friends and I headed out to explore Florence (we walked for about 13 hours on this day :) )

Bridge view in Florence

Galileo's tomb (if you haven't read "Galileo's Daughter," you should)

My favorite of the Cinque Terre towns, Manarola

In Vernazza - Cinque Terre

After an afternoon train to Venice, we celebrated Thanksgiving with a traditional...Italian meal :)

Oh the streets of Venice - we got lost so many times!

Part of St. Mark's Square in Venice

Venice near sunset

So there's a story to the above picture. I almost ended up in the Mediterranean trying to take it. I was walking towards the edge of the canal to get the shot and looking in my viewfinder of my camera as I did so...I KNOW I would not have walked into the water, I was aware of where the edge was, however, I was not aware of the puddle of water, on marble, right under both of my feet and when I hit it, BOTH feet shot out from under me...I heard a bunch of gasps behind me, somehow landed on my feet with a bit of a stumble, took my shot, turned around and saw a group of old Italian men grinning and shaking their heads at me. I assured them I wasn't planning on taking a swim and rejoined my friends, who had missed the whole thing and were wondering why I was cracking up. :)

Gelato :) I ate a lot of this. A lot. 

Yes, I will admit that I wish my stomach would have behaved a bit better, and I wish I would have been able to eat the food there (alas, gluten!), and I wish Italy sold Mountain Dew Code Red :), but I was blessed with friends who were patient and didn't make me feel bad when I asked to sit down to rest, or made multiple pit stops, or had them looking for a restaurant that had risotto or vegetable soup (the two meals that were definitely gluten free and that my stomach was tolerating). But all those wishes made for some good prayer time with the Lord as I had to work on my attitude. No, I didn't feel like I wanted to, but He still sustained me and allowed me to laugh and to drink delicious Italian coffee and to see amazing sights...and to add a bucketful of good memories to my life. I think I ended up appreciating the trip more than I would have if I had been feeling 100% and for that, I am thankful.

A lot of medical stuff and then some fun stuff

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I’ve really been in matinenance mode for the past several weeks. I’m going to provide a pretty lengthy update, so feel free to skim (however, make sure to read the last couple of paragraphs for an exciting development!), but I’ve had enough questions asked that I figured it was time for an update.

The good news is that the pain meds and the stomach meds are doing a decent job of controlling the pain – most of my days are pretty good, a few of my days are more on the uncomfortable side where I just want to chill in bed and rest, thankfully the intensity of those days is less than it used to be. I think that is because my insides are slowly starting to heal from all the erosion and stuff that has been going on. It turns out that the stomach med I am taking (the one that controls acid) is actually working – I know this because I ran out about two weeks ago and since there were some communication issues between my pharmacy, my insurance, and my GI doctor, I got to experience being off of the meds for almost two weeks, during which my pain levels increased, so the med is definitely helping my controlling my acid production.

My other stomach issue, the paralysis, is currently untreated. It’s a long story but because I wasn’t convinced that my GI doctor’s next plan of attack was the right way to go, we experimented by ceasing the stomach contracting med to determine where the pain was coming from, the paralysis or something else. After four days of no stomach contracting meds, I was to report back to my doc. I did and am still awaiting further instructions. While I’m pretty frustrated with my GI doc right now, at least this almost four week span of no stomach contracting meds has shown that the paralysis isn’t causing the more intense pain, just the nausea-stomach-full uncomfortableness I experience when I eat.

 Almost in parallel, my rheumo doc and I have been conducting our own experiments. Six weeks ago, during a routine visit, he asked me if it wasn’t for the GI issues, how would I be feeling? I told him I think I would be feeling better, I wasn’t noticing any joint pain, I didn’t have fatigue (besides that from the heavier pain meds), and no fevers. Considering that I am on a ridiculous amount of medication right now, and if the Benlysta is working, there is no need to be so medicated, so we decided to reduce two of my immunosuppressive meds. About two weeks into the “experiement”, my joint pain started coming back, as well as the fevers and fatigue. I put up with it for about two weeks until it started interfering with my sleep and then I cried “uncle” and called in to tweak the meds. We decided to increase one of the meds back to the initial dose but keep the other the same. The joint pain got a little better, but my fevers continued – I was spiking a fever between 99-100 several times a day, and we all know how fevers make you feel.

This past week, after dealing with the non-communicating GI doc, unsuccessfully trying to get into two different new GI docs for a second opinion, and having a rough pain and fever day, I had another appointment with the rheumo doc. He walked in and said “how are you feeling?” and my response was “generally, things are better, but today is bad” and he said “yeah, you’re looking pretty puny”. Gee, thanks doc.

I relayed to him all the GI drama and he stormed out of the room and returned a few minutes later with his arms full of my stomach med samples. Thanks to him, I now have two months worth of my meds, saving me a LOT of money and hopefully a lot of pain. He then stormed out again, proceeded to call one of the other GI docs who I had tried to get into see and arranged a placeholder appointment for me, all I had to do was call in and give them my info.

 I sat there, stunned, almost ready to cry, reminded that there are doctors out there that really care about their patients and have their best interests in mind and I was reminded of the hinds feet that He is growing through this sometimes frustrating process: “He made my feet like the feet of the deer and set me secure on the heights" (2 Samuel 22:34, similarly Habakkuk 3:19). I had been grumbling about the inattentiveness of my doctors and not reminding myself of how my God is providing for me, even when I can’t see how things are going to work out.

Since my lupus symptoms are unstable right now with the almost constant fevers and joint pain, we’ve had to increase my immunosuppressive meds again. Surprisingly, I am not that disappointed about this. I think I am getting more used to this being my “normal” state and I found myself being less bummed and bitter about having to ingest more medication. I’m thankful to the Lord for how He is changing my attitude and making me more adaptable and accepting of things. Again, proof of the lessons that He is teaching me as those deer feet are growing (um, if all this deer feet stuff is weirding you out, check out my blog post on it, it might make a little more sense...or not...shrug...but I am most happy to answer any questions about it!).

But the incredibly great news, which will probably seem surprising after reading all this medical stuff, is that my rheumo doc actually cleared me to take a spontaneous trip to Italy next month with some friends (yeah, you read that right, Italy :) ). So many doors have opened to make this trip possible and I am really excited to do something I absolutely love to do – travel to and explore new places with great company. I’m taking my usual pharmacy with me :) as well as some additions my rheumo doc is sending along just in case. He is also putting together a folder with a summary of my medical history in case I need to seek medical attention while over there. And I am purchasing special travel medical insurance too. Of course, if something healthish changes between now and then, I will be wise and cancel the trip, but I am hoping and praying that this will all work out.

I am thrilled that I can actually contemplate going overseas right now. Even with the joint pain and fevers, I’m so much better than I was a couple of months ago, the meds are working well, and the friends I am traveling with know my issues and potential limitations and will be looking after me. I love how God’s plan has these unexpected blessings – I never would have thought of a trip, but He did. I was too disillusioned with my GI doctor to see the blessing of my rheumo doc, but He reminded me. What a gracious God I have who patiently redirects my attention back to His grace and mercy, rather than my own grumpiness and lack of faith.

Eruption at Volcanoes National Park

Did that get your attention (were you thinking - lava, fire, Melissa had to run for her life, what!?) :) ? No, it wasn't a volcanic eruption, but rather an eruption of memories during the hike my friend Erin and I did at Volcanoes National Park.

First off, I was so thrilled to go to this park. I've been fascinated with volcanoes since I was about 10 years old when I watched a documentary on the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. I've read books on the Mount St. Helen's eruption and Krakatoa. I think I seriously could consider being a volcanologist as a second career choice - that's how interesting I find volcanoes.

Anyhow, Erin and I started our trek by doing a 4 mile hike across one of the inactive craters. I enjoy hiking and was so thankful for the new pain medication that was tempering my joint pain sufficiently to where I could do this hike (it was a very low key hike, no crazy steep grades or climbing or anything like that - three doses of the pain meds throughout the day kept me fairly comfy).

When we stopped to eat lunch, I pulled out the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had made, bit into it, and my eyes flooded with tears. All at once, I remembered my grandparents and how they taught me about hiking. (Most of you will remember that I lost my Grandpa and Grandma last year suddenly, within a week of each other, and I was with my Grandma when she died. And that I had a great relationship with them. I'm still working through the emotions of how much I miss writing to them, getting their letters, and catching up over coffee when I visit Arizona).

My Grandma knew a TON about Arizona plants and wildlife and because she also took several classes in archaeology and participated in digs, she knew a lot about history, geology, etc. So hikes were actually teaching sessions for us grandkids. We learned the names of plants, types of rocks, what plants you could eat, hiking etiquette, the dos and don'ts of going to the bathroom on the trails, drink lots of water and eat oranges, etc. And we always had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and drank water out of repurposed syrup bottles (gotta love the Depression generation, they reuse EVERYTHING!). So when I bit into that sandwich, an image of a syrup water bottle popped up...and then every single memory I have of them on all the hikes we took as kids and into my adulthood literally flooded my mind and I couldn't see the crater in front of me anymore, only them. And I sat there, sniffling into my sandwich and trying not to burst out sobbing as I was again struck by how much I miss them. 

For the remainder of the hike, I found myself praying and thanking God for the relationship I had with my grandparents, for what they taught me, and actually glad that I missed them - because that means I loved them, and they loved me, and we had a relationship - and I am so very thankful to be able say that.

Volcanoes National Park was my favorite part about my vacation. God used it to heal me a bit more over the loss of my grandparents - what an unexpected blessing!

So thank you Lord, for the opportunity to remember my grandparents in such a good way on my trip and to allow my heart to heal a bit more.

Nephew time!

I took another trip to see my sister and her family in Boise. We had a great time (as usual)! Carter is starting to talk a lot, but I still had a bit of trouble figuring out what he was trying to say. For instance "coo-pitt" means "too big"...took me about 50 times watching him trying to cram a Hot Wheels car into a little house with him yelling "Coo-pitt! Coo-pitt!!" before I was like, "Ohhh!" Lightbulb :). (He also insisted on calling me "Nana" (um, yeah, not a Grandma, kid!) - which my sister found hilarious and I did not. After about a day, he finally got around to calling me Sissa. Whew.

After I arrived back in Houston, I got a phone call from him and he said "Sissa, I yuv yew TOO much". Awwww :)

Carter also likes trucks and tractors. However, any type of construction-related vehicle is a tractor to him, much to the frustration of John Michael, who knows ALL the proper names.

Sample of a conversation while we were running errands:

C: "Tractor!"
JM: "No, that's a digger Carter"
C: "Tractor!"
JM: "No, DIGGER."
C: "Tractorrrrrrrr!!!"
JM" DIIIIIIIIIGGER!!!!"
C: "Tractor"
JM: "Carter, we are not going to have this conversation right now".

Monica and I were cracking up at John Michael's last statement (she says that to him quite a bit - he might have a bit of an argumentative streak in him ;-) )

Sporting Sissa's glasses :) I can't believe this kid is almost 5!

It has become a John Michael-Sissa tradition to make faces while in the car. John Michael decides which face we are going to make and Sissa takes the picture

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Not sure what I am going to do if Monica and John ever get rid of this chair! It's fun to use it for our Photo-with-Sissa op each time I visit.

It was indescribably sweet to sit down on the couch and in less than 10 seconds, have both boys snuggled up against my sides (or arguing over who got to sit in my lap), John Michael insisting on holding my hand as we grocery shopped (and also insisting on "walking on" Sissa's feet - you know, where you stand the kiddo on your feet and they walk "big" steps?), and Carter randomly dropping whatever he was playing with to throw himself around my knees and give me a hug (or if I was sitting, hug-tackle me). I love those boys. SO SO SO much. I won't get to see them until March, when we will be celebrating my Grandma's 90th birthday, so I am glad I had a longer trip this time. Good times.

San Francisco - Final post - Boats and crab

I also really like boats...I've read a lot of books that take place on clippers and schooners and stuff like that and love the history behind these beauties. We took a tour of this schooner that was in service for 50 years! From sailing around South America to England, to Australia for lumber shipping, and to Alaska for a salmon cannery, this boat has some great history and once again I was blown away by the excellence of the displays, information, and videos. National Parks Service rocks!

The schooner, Balclutha


View from Balclutha


Oh, it's NOT naptime?


A mockup of supplies in the middeck hold thingy place (yeah...that's nautical terminology for you...)


I'm a natural, dontcha think? :)

I was told I couldn't come to San Francisco and not partake in a Dungeness Crab dinner...so who am I to argue with San Franciscan expectations?

Dinner: before


Dinner: After

It was so incredibly tasty! And we wrapped up dinner by swinging by Ghirardelli's again, where I got a caramel-sea salt hot chocolate...and then preceded to enter a sugar -I never-want-to-eat-chocolate-again-coma after drinking only HALF of a SMALL size. I never thought I would be bested by chocolate ::hangs head::

As you can see, it was a FUN trip and I really enjoyed the city. Hope I get a chance to visit again and see more of the sites/museums/theaters.

San Francisco - Part 3, Aquarium, Fisherman's Wharf, GHIRARDELLI'S!!!!

We pretty much spent part of every day somewhere on the Wharf, but here are some actual pictures...

Tima's sister, Katrina, her aunt, and her mom excited for the Aquarium


Beautiful jellyfish



More jellyfish...totally unrelated to the jellyfish in the aquarium, I recently ate a raw jellyfish as part of a scavenger hunt "Survivor-esque" gross food eating challenge. It was...different.


Fisherman's Wharf


Lunch from the walkabouts...2/3 meals per day were seafood. Pretty sure I've hit my mercury limits for the year :). SOOO worth it.


Source of my shrimp cocktail


Seriously folks, this was the highlight of the trip for me. I LOVE GHIRARDELLI CHOCOLATE. Especially their dark chocolate peppermint bark that comes out during the holidays (hint hint to anyone reading this blog who sees me around the holidays...just sayin')


I think this picture is missing something...shouldn't there be an Oompa-Loompa standing around stirring?