dennisjudd.com

I think about a month back, we decided to use our tax return to purchase an upright freezer to “upgrade” from our chest type freezer. Not only were we filling the chest freezer up (damn you Costco) but it was also proving to be a nightmare to find anything in it that wasn’t directly on top or within eye sight.
Of course that’s not really important….the main point here is that when the new freezer was delivered (yay ABT and free delivery in chicago land) I asked the guys to leave behind the box it came in.
I might now know jack about babies but I know that it is required to have at least one giant cardboard box fort in your life. So today’s post is dedicated to the evolution of Fort Judd, or as it is now called “The Ball Pit of Judd”. I was going to originally call it the “Pit of stinky diapers used for time outs” but Jen vetoed that idea pretty quickly.
Here it is early on….

And here it is after some structural modifications to prevent the sagging…

Yes, Amelia has backed me into it while I was trying to eat lunch one day
And here it is in it’s current configuration. I added plastic reinforcements to the top and sides and taped up the front to made a ledge to hold the balls in…

At this rate I think the darn box is going to be around longer than some of our furniture. Maybe there’s an idea here….disposible cardboard furniture…to bad IKEA has already filled that market. (I kid…I kid)

So about two weeks ago today Jen woke up some pretty bad stomache pains. She sucked it up during the day but as night approached the pain got worse and worse. The pain got so bad that after the kids went to bed she actually drover herself to the ER.
The result of all that was she had gallstones and was going to need surgery to remove her gallbladder. With the kids, school and work going on you can imagine the chaos this threw us into. Jen ended up going to the doctor on Monday and having the surgery on Tuesday. Meanwhile Jen’s sister Heather flew in from CA on short notice and I picked her up from the airport on Tuesday morning and drove directly to the hospital (kids in tow….thankfully I had forgotten we have a portable DVD player for the car so that helped). Heather stayed with Jen during the surgery while I took the kids home for lunch/nap and Jen was home by 5pm that night.
Turns out the removal of a gallbladder is now handled laprascopically which means it’s considered day surgery and your in and out in one day (if everything goes well). She really couldn’t move very well for the first day, and of course having 4 hold poked in you and an organ removed can make you sore for awhile. So really since then to now we’ve just been all about getting by and trying to let her recover. Fortunately for me I could take the first week off work, and having her sister here has let me keep up on school work (although she leaves tomorrow).
That’s pretty much the jist of it….lots going on and really the focus is on taking care of Jen and the family because honestly if anything happens to her these kids are screwed.

i’m hoping to post tomorrow with updates. lots going on.