Random Update

Things have been fairly status quo around here.

Marilyn
Marilyn is still in the hospital, and will be for several more weeks, up to a month. She is in a regular room, and continues to improve in teeny baby steps. She is eating solid food (if Jello is considered a solid) and has had her feeding tube removed. She can carry on conversations, although she is extremely weak and tires very, very easily. I spoke to her on the phone once, and was shocked at how frail she sounded. She did ask how baby and I were doing, and conveyed how miserable she is right now. She was tired out after about 2 minutes of conversation, but at least I got to talk to her, and I'm anxiously awaiting the next phone call. Now we're praying she will be well enough to come to the reception in April. All my uncles, their wives, kids and grandkids are planning on coming. It will be the first time we've all been together since mom died in '01.

House Stuff
We are feverishly working on the house. We are trying to clean out and organize our storage room and turn it back into a reasonably working room again. Eventually it will be a den/guest room. For purposes of the wedding, and the guests we have staying, we are just trying to get it functional. We bought five bookcases and are installing them as wall-to-wall bookshelves to store various items. When that is done we'll be able to finish cleaning and organizing - and hopefully end up with enough room for an air mattress for the time being.

We've done a minimal amount in the nursery. I cleaned out a couple of random boxes of books that were being stored in there, organized the office bookshelves and found everything a home. Mostly we've made a bigger mess than we managed to clean in there, though :)

Dan's been working on organizing his dozens of boxes of "misc electronics" into some sort of order. He's sorted through and got rid of quite a bit. The rest has been organized into small, clear plastic tubs and labeled so we can actually find stuff when it's needed.

That's about it for now. Baby is doing fine, and I'm starting to look pregnant rather than just fat. :) Dogs are fine - I made them beds for the living room and they bicker over who gets what bed. One bed is bigger and one bed sits in the sunshine during the day. Crazy critters. The cats are cats - they spend all day sleeping on the softest, sunniest spot they can find.