Shawna's 37th Birthday!!

It’s Shawna’s birthday! Or should we say it’s Shawna’s birthday week! She loves her birthday, and celebrates it all week long. We usually go on vacation during her birthday, so it was a little different this year; what should we do? How could we celebrate such a wonderful, momentous event?

How about a party? (Seems original enough – No one had ever done a birthday party before, right?) However, Sterling and Shawna’s friends have big ideas. We were able to “reserve” the patio at a local restaurant, and invited a few of our friends. We had 35 people celebrate with us – it was a fun time. (The food wasn’t great, but the friends were.)

After dinner, we went to the Gallup’s house for cake and ice cream. We celebrated Grammom and Grandpa’s 45th wedding anniversary, and Grammom read a poem she’d written. Then we sang “Happy Birthday” to Shawna (who turned bright red and starting crying – yeah, success!)
Happy Birthday beautiful!

Remodeling the Bathroom...Beautiful

When we bought the house, the standard option was for wall-to-wall carpeting, including the bathrooms. Shawna didn’t want carpeting in there, but it cost more to have tile instead of carpeting. So, we reasoned that we could use carpeting for a few years, let it get “worn out,” and then replace the carpet with tile (since we’d have to pay for it at some time.) Well, that time has come, at least for the first bathroom…

The project itself isn’t too difficult – but it’s all the “sub-projects” that take so much time. We had to rip off the old tile, which meant completely replacing the drywall around the shower before we could even begin. Same with the carpet, toilet, sink, you name it. With every step, we had to paint or touch up areas that were covered by the old fixings. We replaced our crappy toilet (lol, sorry, that’s a stinky pun) with one that’ll consistently flush the product.

So, although the workers’ (Sterling’s) estimate was only for a week, he had to leave on a trip before he could finish, and the bathroom had to wait for his return. Portions of the project were fun (and Shawna bought him a nice wet-tile cutter)! However, the minutia of the grout, sealant, caulking, painting, baseboards, plumbing, etc got to be a bit old. He enlisted Tyler, Kenzie and Bryson to help with some of the chores. The end result looks pretty good, but it’ll be some time until he starts on the next bathroom!

Bubble Boy...Not so Funny

Tiny bubbles…Tiny bubbles, in my brain, make me sad, make me lame… literally. Sterling had an incident while flying in January. He was doing one of his “routine” test flights in the F-15 and had a rapid depressurization up high. This is a fairly common occurrence, and he descended and landed immediately. He was on the aircraft oxygen and felt fine. However, about 45 minutes after landing he started getting a tingling sensation on the skin down his left arm and down his back, so he went to the flight doctor. They gave him 100% oxygen again and he felt better. Sterling thought, “Thanks guys, I feel fine,” but he was wrong. They immediately transferred him to the Macon hospital and into a dive chamber for 5 – 6 hours to dissolve any remaining nitrogen bubbles back into the blood.

The next day he had to go see a Neurologist to get cleared to fly again. Sterling was thinking it’d just be a “rubber stamp” and back to the skies. Wrong again! The doc said his left eye was acting goofy, and ordered an MRI to check for a stroke and/or brain damage since the symptoms were isolated to his left side… This got everyone spun up, Sterling included. The flight doc was on the phone with the Air Force experts in Texas, Shawna flew down that same day, and Sterling wondered if he’d just had his last flight in the F-15.

Well, we’re happy to report that everything is ok. There was no evidence of a stroke (although based on the symptoms, the neurologist said he probably had a very minor one). There also wasn’t any brain damage (no more than usual at least). Sterling had get some more tests done, and he had to wait a month for the experts in TX to clear him to fly, but he’s back in the saddle!