Christmas with the Diamonds

I'm not feeling very loquacious today and definitely not very entertaining...so this post is mostly just pictures. You probably prefer that anyway.

Here it is - the annual Diamond family Christmas photo:

Micaela, Cerys, Sydney
Me, Lane, Amy, Mom, Matt, Aden Kyle
Brett, Chris, Dad, Pat, Anne, Kevin, Rachel

We went back to Illinois two days before Christmas. The night we got there we were treated to snow! Yippee for a white Christmas!

It snowed all night and all day. On Christmas Eve, Anne and I made this adorably lopsided fella:

Amy got her Christmas wish - to be done with cancer treatments. Yay! She's starting to grow some gray/blonde/orange hair. She's looking really good!

The Christmas Eve tradition of my high school girls meeting for breakfast was supposed to be just me and Maysoun this year, but Elizabeth surprised us by coming back to Springfield early enough to join us. Laura stood us up and went to Colorado with her husband. Boo.

Happy Birthday, Amy!

On my 40th birthday, I plan on doing something amazing - something like zorbing in New Zealand or flirting with hot Aussie guys on the beaches of Australia. On my sister Amy's 40th birthday, she is doing something amazing, too. She is fighting cancer, dealing with chemotherapy and doing it all with a positive attitude! Happy Birthday Amy!!

Before the chemo started, Amy cut her hair short in hopes that when it started falling out, it wouldn't be quite so icky.

Despite the short-haired efforts, hair-loss was still pretty icky... especially when her son, while at a birthday party at California Pizza Kitchen, grabbed a clump of it right off her head to show off to the people at the party! After that, she gave in and asked Anne to shave her head. She debutted the cancer-chic look at the Twilight Town Trek.

And here is the best reason for her fight...2 lovely children who love their mama!

To keep you all in the loop as to how she's coping, I am copying in her latest email update. She's due for another one soon since this one is already 3 weeks old (hint, hint Amy!).

Well, hello to all.... Since my 3rd round of chemo was on Thursday July 1st and it is now July 7th, I bet you can figure out I didn't have the greatest reaction with my latest chemotherapy. The nausea is still an everyday battle-the patch I wear on my arm is helping, but it's worse than morning sickness, and now the fatigue has set in. My normal fast paced walk is now just a slow crawl- I actually had to have Aden hold my hand to keep my pace up while at the mall looking for big girl beds for Cerys!

For 4 days I slept probably 18 hours a day- which to many of you hard working people sounds like heaven- but for me, it caused my back to slip out and now I can't walk standing straight up! So I'm BALD, BENT over at the waist and shuffling my feet to walk- I look like a 90 year old man!!! I've been to the chiropractor (keep adding up those medical bills!) the past 3 days in a row, but the back is in alignment. Now i'm just dealing with muscle spasms from being in bed so much....gee, the days that I dreamed of staying in bed for the whole day are no longer - I miss being me.

I did take my kids to the pool- because they were really wanting mommy time (Cerys) and Aden wanted to play with the boys. Even though I kept my bald head covered and was sitting in the full shade with only my legs in the water, I had some British man come up to me and ask me about my cancer treatment, and why with my port and the patch, was I not covered up due to the hypersensitivity issues of the chemotherapy? He also asked me if the man playing with Aden and the other boys was my husband (i wonder now if he was hitting on me-naahhh) which it wasn't, Lane was working. I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but instead I told him sometimes I have to be a mom first and put the cancer treatments on the back burner.

I only have one more treatment of the nauseous cocktail of cytoxin and adrinomy (spelling is now gone)....that will be on the 17th. On the 29th, I"ll start the taxol chemo treatment of which the side effects include muscle and bone pain, neuropathy (numbness) of fingers and toes and metal like tastes/food. I just hope the nausea really does subside....

Hope you all had fun on the 4th of July- our kids really liked setting off fireworks with Lane and hanging out with the grandparents. I was just so thankful for their help and some awesome Omaha steakburgers from the Hawkins and Mabb families!!! You guys rock!

I am starting to wear my wig a little more- just realized I don't have a picture of me in it yet- I'll add that next time! Love you all- sorry to bitch and moan about me- so please email or call and inform me and distract me with fun things (or even bad things) from your lives to keep me sane!

love again- amy

Keep fighting, Amy. We all love you!! And happy birthday!

St. Louis Twilight Town Treks

When Christy and I first talked about doing an urban adventure race gig, it was a given that we'd bring the race to St. Louis. My sister, Amy, lives in St. Louis. For a few years I've been telling her that we should do one of the races together. She was interested...but none of the races go to St. Louis! Wtf? So, MY race definitely would! And...it did!

From the very start of Twilight Town Treks, St. Louis was hoppin'. The minute I put our website up, we were getting hits from St. Louis. The only marketing we did was to post the race on various race calendars in our markets. Immediately, St. Louis made up 1/2 of our total webhits every day. We had teams register there before any teams registered here in Phoenix! And we KNOW people in Phoenix!! It was crazy.

I expected St. Louis would be great, and I was not at all surprised that the race was SO SUPER FUN!!

We had 38 teams register and 7 teams sign up at the event - a perfect amount of teams! The weather was really, really hot and really, really humid. There was a thunderstorm threatening at 5:30 when registration started. Luckily, it blew over and the weather behaved for the duration of the race. I was worried about my volunteers being out there in the rain all night. Rain is fun for racers, but not so much for people who have to stand out in it for 4 hours!

Let's talk about the race volunteers. Do these people look familiar to you? Yep, pretty much my whole family came to St. Louis to help! Pat flew in the day after we got there. Anne and my parents drove down from Springfield and Amy, of course, lives there. It was like a slumber party at her house that night! How cute does Amy look with her newly bald head? What a trooper she is...she had chemo on Thursday and on Saturday night she's staffing a checkpoint on my race for me. My family rocks!

And some more sisters:
Yes, I was in a sorority and these are my sorority sisters. The girl on the left is my college roommate, Jill. The girl on the right is Kristen, a friend of Jill's and a DG who came around after I slacked out of the sorority. Luckily Jill forgave me for being a DG flake and we've remained friends for 15 years! These girls are awesome!

More great friends:
There is Christy...and who's that in the background? It's our friend, Wayne, who flew in from Phoenix to take a mini-vacation and help us with the race. So nice!

I am so lucky to have such great friends and family. Without them I know that the St. Louis race would not have been the HUGE success it was. And, a HUGE success it was!! All the racers were enthusiastic about being there. They all had a ton of fun on the race, despite the 95 degree, 95 percent humidity that night. It was so hot and sweaty that at the puzzle challenge, we actually had to pull one of the puzzles out of use because the pieces were so soggy from people's sweat that they were losing their shape. Ew. :)

Pat keeping the sweaty puzzlers in line:
The Animal Protective Association was our charity recipient for the race and working with them was just as awesome as everything else in St. Louis. They were so eager to be a part of everything. They scoped out their location, they brought out their tent (but were asked to take it down by the park people), they even tried to bring their RV out for a better visual, but the parking was too difficult. I love them! The dogs they brought were Cooper and Lula. Lula is the black one. They were both sweet but Lula stole my heart. She did eventually get adopted, but sadly not by one of my racers. Last I checked Cooper was still waiting for a home (breaks my heart!!).

After the race, most of the racers stuck around the bar all night, talking about the race and making friends. It was incredible how good the mood was! Almost all of the teams told us how much fun they had and promised they'd be back next year. The facebook postings from the racers that night and the next day were all positive. One of my favorites: "This ranks up there as the funnest thing we have done as a couple." Some teams were even talking about road-tripping to Las Vegas to do our race there. I would love that! These people were so much fun! I can't wait to go back there again next year.

Boobies!!

Nice title, huh? Did I get your attention?

Sadly this is a serious post about boobies.

Did you know that 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer in their lifetimes? Let's assume these four women will NOT get breast cancer.
So the odds would make it such that that one of these four women will get breast cancer:Me, my sisters and my mom round out the statistical group of 8 women. And yep, you've guessed it. One of us has breast cancer. I know your first thought is that it's me and now you are feeling all guilty for cursing me for not updating my blog for the last month. It's not me, so please feel free to continue cursing me all you'd like.

My sister Amy, one year older than me, not even 4o years old, went in for a mammogram when she found out that a mom-friend of hers was diagnosed with breast cancer. She figured she'd be one of the 7 women breathing a sigh of relief. No such luck. She was shocked to find out that she, too, had breast cancer. Some other lucky 8th woman out there is now counting her blessings.

Who is the one lady in your statistical group of 8 that will be diagnosed next? Maybe it's your sister. Maybe it's you. But we'll never know unless we go get that mammogram, too! So, ladies, this is your call to action. Are you the 1 in your 8? Find out now so you have time to fight it!!

Amy's cancer is super-duper fast growing. There are a bunch of technical words I could throw at you to describe it, but I don't understand them all just yet so I'm going with what I know. "Super-duper fast growing" is an accurate description.

But thanks to that random mammogram, it was caught early. There were positive results from some genetic test she took, so Amy's boobies got to stay, but her hair and her health will be suffering. Treatment started immediately, first with a lumpectomy and lymph node removal. You can see the bandages in this picture. I'm guessing this hat will get a lot of use covering up her bald head this summer. :)
Her chemo starts tomorrow and 4 months after that awfulness, she gets to do radiation, too! Doesn't that sound like fun?? But as her husband says, it sure beats the alternative.

The timing worked out that post-surgery and pre-chemo, Amy didn't have to cancel her trip to come out to Arizona with my mom and Anne to visit me. Or more accurately to eat our way through the city.

Breakfast buffet at the resort:
Dinner at the patio at Bloom (mmmm, yummy!)

Picnicking at the Queen Creek Olive Oil Mill.
More outdoor dining at the Old Town Tortilla Factory:
Pretty much, we only brought out the camera at dinner time. Well, there are a series of photos documenting our various ailments (Amy's lymph node removal, Anne's bunion surgery, Mom's knee surgery and my pretty new Harry Potter scar) but I won't be sharing those pictures. I'm sure both you and my family thank me.

If I'm not too lazy, I'll share with you more about their trip, including our visit to Cosanti. But for now, just remember...No smoking animals! And no unaccompanied children running or climbing visitors after dark!
Oh, and go get a mammogram, ok?

All the Diamonds...Little and Big

Here is our annual Christmas photo for 2009.

Bottom Row: Kyle (Brett's kid), Aden (Amy's kid), Matt (Brett's kid), Micaela (Brett's kid), Cerys (Amy's kid), Rachel (Anne's step-kid), Sydney (Brett's kid)
Middle Row: Amy, Lane (Amy's husband), me, Pat, Kevin (Anne's husband), Mom
Back Row: Dad, Chris (Brett's wife), Brett, Anne

Christmas at the Diamond house is always a huge commotion. Too much going on at once. Pat took about 50 of these pictures and there are only two static images throughout all the photos... the Christmas tree and me. All of the activity and noise is overwhelming, so I do my best not to add to it. I'm sure when I was a kid, I was the cause of most of the noise and commotion, so I'm trying to atone now. :)



It wouldn't be Christmas without the annual silly Diamond photo (Brett, Chris and Dad being uncharacteristically dull):

Inaugural Male Diamond Christmas Cookie Making Contest

This year marked the start of what will hopefully become an annual tradition for the Diamond family Christmas: The Male Diamond Christmas Cookie Making Contest. Wow, this event might need a new title. That one is a little unwieldy, I'd say. But it explains the event exactly: all the males in the Diamond family made cookies for a Christmas evening taste-off. My mother took pity on poor Pat and didn't want to make him schlep cookies all the way across the country, so Pat was named the judge.

Personally, I think, that as a connoisseur of cookies (mmmm.... cookies!!), I should be the judge (duh!) and Pat should have to bake like everybody else. How difficult would it be for him to put a ziploc baggie of cookies in his luggage? It might be hard for him (...er...me) to make it all the way to Springfield without eating all the cookies before arrival, but the schlepping would not be a problem. Besides, once you give Pat such power like a judgeship, it goes right to his head. He made everyone address him as "Your Honor" for the rest of the vacation. (I actually made that part up, but it is something he would do if he had thought of it.)

Anyway...Pat was the judge and the other men made the cookies.

Judge Pat:
The entrants:
Starting at center top: 1. Sugar, submitted by Kevin. 2. White Chocolate Chip Something-or-Other that was supposed to be more Other than Something, submitted by my dad. 3. Chocolate Mint Brownie Sandwich Cookie, submitted by Lane. 4. Ginger Snap, submitted by my dad. 5. Chocolate Chip, submitted by Kevin.

Yes, Kevin had two entries. It's not too hard to make two kinds of cookie when all you do is buy the rolls of pre-made dough and put them in the oven. Or, maybe it is that hard when you ruin two of Anne's air-bake baking sheets by putting them in water after baking. Oops.

Yes, my dad also had two entries. After spending over $37.00 (!) on supplies, you'd better hope he made more than one kind of cookie. Too bad neither of them were very edible.

Brett almost had an entry, but it would have been cheating anyway, as he was going to let Chris make the dough and he was just going to bake them. Slacker!

Pat was a very diplomatic judge. He discussed the merits of taste and form of each of the cookies. He awarded first place in the chocolate chip division to Kevin, second place to my dad. First place in the ginger snap division went to my dad. First place in the sandwich cookie division (do you see where this is going?) went to Lane. First place in the sugar cookie division went to Kevin. Pat did lose some credibility when he picked up the sugar cookie and asked us, "This is a sugar cookie, right?"

After awarding all the Best of Breeds, it was time to award Best In Show. After some deliberation, he announced the winner:

Lane and his Chocolate Mint Brownie Sandwich Cookie took the prize!

Congratulations, Lane!

Next year I hope that Brett enters and that my dad stays away from the ginger snap recipes!

And that wraps up all the Christmas posts. Hopefully now I will continue the unprecedented productivity and move onto some 2010 stuff! I know you're dying to hear about my New Year's Resolutions!

The Cost of a White Christmas

I got snow for Christmas this year!

If I had been in Chicago, I would have had A LOT more snow, but this was good enough for me to classify as a White Christmas.

"Shoveling" snow:
Even though we didn’t get the joy of Chicago’s snowstorm in Springfield, I felt the effects of their whopper of a snowstorm. We were supposed to fly out of Springfield on the day after Christmas (Saturday) at 2:15 pm, then connect in O’Hare to Phoenix. At 11:00 am, all flights were scheduled to go on time. At 12:30 pm, all flights were canceled due to the weather. I called American Airlines and the soonest they could get us on a flight was Tuesday!! Pat was all for staying in Illinois for three more days, but I missed my puppies and I wanted to go home.

I went online and Southwest still had tickets available for their evening flight out of St. Louis that day. Amy and Lane hadn’t left to go home yet, so I was able to buy the tickets ($417 each!) and hitch a ride to the St. Louis airport with them. On our drive to St. Louis, it snowstormed for most of the way:
The crappy thing about all this was that I spent many, many hours looking for the best flight prices to get home for Christmas this year. I checked every airline in and out of Springfield, St. Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis. I checked one ways and roundtrips, airline websites and cheap ticket websites, even checked a travel agent via my new brother-in-law. We ended up with US Airways to STL on the outbound and American out of Springfield on the return for a total of $525 per person. Yikes! Then the stinkin’ snowstorm ruined all of my hard work! American is refunding our return flight, but we still paid extra to get home on Southwest, making our roundtrip cost $635! What a waste of time looking for a “deal”.

Sisters

The set is complete:

Anne's Wedding

Wedding day started out with pictures. After days and days of rain, Springfield finally had a sunny day...Yippee!! The leaves were just starting to turn colors and the park was beautiful! Most of the group shots were taken on this bridge. The girls - Amy, me, Anne and Anne's best friend from college, Heather:Closeup:
Anne with the boys - Jon (Kevin's friend from college), Kevin, Anne, Terry (Kevin's friend since grade school) and Gerald (Kevin's stepdad):
Kevin and the girls:
It was a nice sunny day, but don't be fooled. It was FREEZING! This is a more accurate depiction of the day:

Eventually we were so cold that we couldn't even take our wraps off for the pictures anymore. (Speaking of wraps... aren't they cute? And they match perfectly! Amy and I found them at TJ Maxx that morning.)
Anne and Pat:

Finally I get to see my cute brother, Brett! Here he is with his cute wife and family:

The venue all finished and ready to go:
They use this building as a day care during the day! Weird.

Somehow I managed to take no pictures of the buffet or the food (I know! I always take pictures of the food!!) but I never would miss a picture of a cake! Mmmm, cake:

Eventually we were able to corral the whole Diamond clan for a group shot. Too bad the settings on my dad's camera were off, thus a blurry shot of the whole Diamond clan (with the tall spouses on the ends):

The ceremony:The kiss:
The food:
(seriously why don't I have a picture of the food? It was really yummy and the buffet was so pretty!)

The cake-cutting. (Mmmm, cake!):

Pat made a new BFF at the wedding. Kevin's college friend, Jon, is a hockey player and a youth hockey coach. He's a Blues fan but he lives in Kansas City so he doesn't get to see NHL games much. He and Pat talked hockey all night. Until they talked phones - we all have the same phone:

The final event of the night - clean up time! Bride and Maid of Honor tearing down the bar:

It was a beautiful wedding! Everything went perfectly, all the guests had a good time and Anne and Kevin were radiant. Congratulations, guys!