A good end to a bad week

I've had better weeks. Last week was just not good. To kick the week off, on Monday I took Princess to the vet. She has had a cough for a while and it wasn't getting any better so I took her in to get some medicine. I knew going in they'd probably want to do some x-rays but I wasn't ready for what they were going to tell me. She's starting to go in to heart failure. Her heart is very enlarged and is causing her trachea to collapse. She also has fluid in her lungs. All of which is the reason for the cough. They gave me 2 different kinds of medicine for her which seems to be helping a little. She still has the cough but it's not near as bad. They told me the medicine has been known to prolong their life for an extra year or two but sometimes it doesn't at all. I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope I can hang on to her a while longer. That news had me nice and depressed for a few days. I know they don't live forever, but still. Knowing that doesn't make it hurt any less.

3 days after that we got a call and found out Mike's grandmother has lung cancer and it's already made it's way in to her lymph nodes. She has an appt. with an oncologist on Tuesday so I'll be waiting to hear what they have to say. I wish I could do something for her.

I feel like I was sulking all week. Luckily I had Saturday to look forward to. My friend Laura from Richmond came in to town and I picked her up early yesterday morning for a fun day out. We went to Washington to the DAR Museum to see the needlework samplers they had on exhibit. My 2 favorites were both Quaker samplers. One of which was stitched in 1798. I believe it said the girl that stitched it was 11. They did an excellent job of preserving that piece. Most of the samplers were stitched before the Civil War which I find extremely fascinating. Nearly all of the pieces were stitched by girls aged 9 to around 14, most being on the younger side. We really enjoyed looking at all of the pretty pieces. After we left the museum we took a nice walk down to the Vietnam War Memorial, then around the Lincoln Memorial, back around the World War II Memorial, around the Washington Monument, and then back to the car. It was a perfect day to go. The weather was beautiful and I think most of the tourists went home :). We got in and got a parking spot quickly and got out quickly as well. After we left we headed to Alexandria. We ate lunch at a nice little taco place and then headed over to In Stitches to do some shopping and drooling. We had a really really great day and I'll be looking forward to our next outing. It was a really nice way to end a cruddy week. I really needed to get away.

Mike's leaving on Tuesday to work in Alabama for a few days so I'll be spending this last week before school starts hanging out with the kids.

I did receive a really great package in the mail last week. I participated in a scavenger hunt exchange in my group and my goodies arrived. We were all to choose 7 words and then our partner was to send 1 item for each word we chose. Here's a pick of the goodies that Marilynne sent me. My words were:

1. Pineapple

2. Crab

3. Poppy

4. Ghost

5. Bird
6. Baking

7. Handkerchief

I think I've mentioned several times that there's a place called Central Park in Fredericksburg where I do a lot of my shopping. There's an Outback Steakhouse in there and there's a really large pond behind it that's always filled with tons of ducks and geese. Before my bad week started I took the kids with a loaf of bread so they could feed them. They had so much fun that I took them back a couple of days after that so Mike could see them too. I got a lot of really great pics so will end my post for today with some nice goose and duck pictures for ya. They had the best time and those animals are fearless. It was during our excursion that I found out that some geese are psycho and mean ones hiss.