Festival Review and Grandpa Update

Let's do the Grandpa update first. He moved out of ICU on Friday morning because he was making good progress. Later that day he regressed a bit, but today was a good day. He is on track to have an angiogram on Monday which will give the doctors a better understanding of the condition of his heart muscle. I took this photo when we went for a visit tonight.

And now a report from my trip to the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. I drove to Jenny Lake on Friday afternoon and arrived as the last rays of daylight were fading. The lake was calm, reflecting the last colors of fall.
After a restless night of sleep in a cold camp, with 2 trips to the outhouse in the middle of the night, I got up just before 6, packed up and was heading towards Corinth by 6:40. Here was the skyline just before I left camp.
Two hours of driving east and south brought me to Rhinebeck and I spent the next 5 hours walking around, looking at the wide variety of things that were for sale, all related to sheep, wool and fiber. Here are a couple of photos from the festival.

Here is a photo of me knitting on what may become the world's largest sock. The women running this activity were not sure exactly how many stitches were on all these needles, but suffice it to say, lots!

I have a couple more photos that I wanted to include from the festival but Blogger is not cooperating with uploading them, so I will include them in a future post.

I was originally planning on going back to Jenny Lake tonight and then driving home on Sunday, but I was ready to leave the festival around 2 PM so I thought I would come straight home. If I went back to camp, I would have spent 4 or 5 hours just getting the camp warmed up, so I drove home, with one stop at a Thruway rest area, for a 15 minute rest. I got home about 6:40 PM and met Jim, Maw and Jeannie at the hospital.

Terry was in town for a couple of nights in the middle of this past week. It was good to see her and have her here as decisions were being made about Grandpa's treatment. She drove home on Friday, through some snow in Pennsylvania.

Corey ran at the University of Virginia on Friday and had a decent race. He and one of his teammates were flying separately from the rest of the team and ended up having to spend Thursday night in a hotel in NYC when their flights were changed. They got to Virginia with time to spare before the race started.

Tucker is having a housewarming BBQ party at his new house tonight. Maybe he will send a photo of the festivities.

Hope all is well.

Grandpa Update

Grandpa's conditioned has stabilized, even though he is in a very fragile condition. He has now been put on a liquid diet, which is a step forward. He is still in the ICU, but that may change since he is not really using any of the high-priced equipment in his room.

Jeannie is coming into town tonight and Terry will come into town tomorrow.

Here is a photo of Grandpa's cat. They miss each other terribly. I printed out this picture and delivered it to Grandpa at the hospital and he was pleased.

Stay tuned for future updates.

Hope all is well.

Good Times, Not So Good Times

Let's start with the not so good times. Grandpa went into the hospital in the early morning hours today and has been diagnosed as having had a heart attack and he has pneumonia. Grandma called us at 6:40 AM (and phone calls at that hour are rarely good news) to tell us that Grandpa was in the Intensive Care Unit at Unity Hospital. We went right over and found Grandma resting in Grandpa's room. Grandpa has been medicated so he sleeps all the time and has lots of tubes going into his body. He will be kept in this medicated state for a day or so, while he is being treated for the pneumonia and more tests are being run. We will go back and visit later this afternoon. Stay tuned for updates.

Our good times started on Friday night when some of my colleagues and their spouses came over for a night of Rock Band fun. And fun is what we had! We did lots of Beatles songs and then moved on to the regular Rock Band songs that feature lot of different bands. We rocked out for 3.5 hours and had lots of laughs. Here is one of many photos and movies that were taken that night.

Saturday I got up early to make a grape pie to take to Corey. This is the first pie from this year's grapes. Did I tell you that my 43 pounds of grapes made 26 pie fillings?! Jim and I left for Syracuse at 9:45 and arrived at Corey's apartment about 11:30 AM. We had to wait a few minutes until he got home from practice. After he took a quick shower we walked to the Dome for the SU vs. West Virginia football game.
Unfortunately the SU team didn't bring their "A" game and West Virginia had a fairly easy time beating the Orange. We left at halftime and drove a short ways south to the Lafayette Apple Festival. It was a beautiful day to do this activity and we enjoyed walking around the festival. There had been quite a bit of rain in this area in the past few days and we had to tip-toe around the mud, but that was OK. There were lots of craft vendors and we walked around to see many of the vendors but that was definitely not Jim's or Corey's thing! We did buy Corey some fudge, apple cider and apples before heading back to SU. The fall foliage was lovely along our drive there and back. Here are some photos from the festival.

After some wild ping-pong games at Corey's apartment (not the usual game that college kids play with ping-pong balls!), we picked up 2 of Corey's friends and went to dinner at a pasta restuarant in the Armory Square area of Syracuse.

Our meals were delicious, well worth the hour-plus wait we had to endure! We got back to Rochester about 10:15 PM.

This morning I picked some empire apples at Green Acres.

These 2 pecks of perfect apples will last me for a month or so. You know what they say about an apple a day!

Time to go sew up the underarm seams on my Rhinebeck sweater and then sew on 6 buttons!

Keep Grandpa in your thoughts and prayers as he recovers from his medical issues.

Hope all is well.