Its almost Christmas already. I copied some pictures of Siena from Face Book that Tom or Amie posted of Siena's second run in with Santa. The pictures are beautiful even if I get them in the wrong order, they tell a story we all ran to either as a child or as a parent of a child. This was Siena's second run-in with the fat guy. There is a picture in this story that is out of focus, but I am leaving it in as it is either Amie trying to convince Siena to take the long walk up to see Santa or she is being a mother calming a frightened child who tried but just couldn't find the courage to go all the way and climb up on his lap. Click on the picture to see the rest of Siena's adventure.
 

Just before Thanksgiving came Halloween. and in Amherst, Halloween is a big deal. The annual Halloween parade brings out both the young and the old. In this story I am going to try to keep the slides in order. You will be able to tell who Mason's helpers are by the stupid grins on their faces .. Click on the  picture to see more of our Mason.

2010

Its the middle of 2010 and I  apologize but this is the first entry I have placed in the Frog Pond this year.  I will slip things in ahead of this as I come to a picture or remember something i want to say. but for the time being I have 3 pictures of the grand children I want to show you. That is Siena Hesbach and Mason Lamoreaux to the left.  I expect I will have a lot more soon as we are going to drive to Boston  the first of September, to see all the relatives.

I want to be back about the 11th as the annual PATCO picnic is planned for the 12th.  You know Next year it will be 30 years since the Air Traffic controllers' strike. Some of you may not know it but I was one of those nasty men who went on strike for the safety of the flying public and the recognition of the controllers for what they did every day and night, Christmas and new years. We made the skies safe so people could get into a airplane and not have to worry about bumping into another airplane., The US government made it sound like all we wanted was money. That was only 1 point of 99 points the government would not negotiate for. And after we were all fired the government gave the controllers who stayed in a $5000 a year bonus. Funny but that was the same amount we were asking for in our contract negotiation that the government made a big stink about to the press.. Enough of my crying over spilt milk, besides the milk is spoiled by now anyway.
Lets get back to my 2 beautiful children and their families  and their gift to Diane and me of the 2 best grandchildren we could ever hope for.

I had my annual physical last month. I am going to list the findings in no particular order.

1. I am over weight and my blood sugar is dangerously close to diabetes, I will not tell you what I weigh but our home scale just says error when I walk into the bathroom. So I am on a diet. I have misplaced 12 pounds since I started.
2. I have a new goiter on my thyroid. The doctor kept on repeating " why didn't they remove the entire thyroid during the first operation" He took a biopsy of the growth today just to make sure it is not cancerous. He does not want to operate if at all possible as there is a good chance the nerve of the good vocal cord will be cut and that means no more talking. I guess I had better start learning  American Sign Language. I am not kidding. The first Goiter I had was so big the scar on my chest looks like I had a heart transplant operation. It was so big when we discovered it they told us I needed a operation either today or tomorrow,My choice. and they were not kidding. Today when I told  the doctor that we have had several deaths in my past, of relatives who died of goiters,  that the disease is a family trait. So to my family and those of you to come  "I want to warn you " watch out for a feeling of something restricting swallowing." Always be aware we have had this in our family for over a hundred years.
3. I have several compressed bones in my spinal column, causing shooting pain in my left butt cheek and some pain down the leg. Another doctor is injecting  cortisone into the spine. He says it may take up to three treatments, 3 weeks apart. I have had 1 treatment so far and I can feel an improvement.
4. When they took the Cat scan for the back pain described above they discovered a cyst on one of my kidneys. I will be getting a sonogram to look at it to see what direction they will go, after they look at it. Because of the DBS wires in my brain I am not allowed to have a MRI. A MRI picture would be much clearer.
5. My eyes are fine, except my eyelids are drooping. No Problem says the eye doctor, he can stitch them right up.
6. I am prone to ingrown toenails. No Problem just trim them more often.
7. Unlike my son in law Tom I have almost all my hair and most of it is still brown. I will admit the hairline has receded a little, but that is the benefit of  having long eyebrows, you can just comb them back when the scalp starts to shine to.  

Diane and I traveled to MA this past    . Click here to see some of the pictures we took. One day we drove down to Cape Cod to visit with Kim and Jeff and his parents. I am not reducing the pixtal size of these pictures so they will load slower, but if you want to copy any of them you should still get a good picture.
 

    I have inserted a  slide show of Mason and his butterflies. Oh yes his mother  Jennifer and his 2  grand parents  are also seen in the pictures. I put that here as I am going to try to keep every thing in order for a correct time line as best I can.  

I think I will now fill you in on the results of my medical problems I wrote about above.

1. In April I was weighed at the Cleveland Clinic at 347 pounds. It is now Sept 16th and I weigh 319. My goal is 270 by the end of the year.
2. The goiter is still there and is going to remain there, as the doctors do not want to operate as they are afraid they will cut the nerve that is controlling my right vocal cord. Since the left nerve is paralyzed, from the first goiter operation when the nerve was cut from the left cord. They took a biopsy to make sure it was not cancerous. Goiters grow slow so they are not worried that the new one will try to kill me like the first one did. I hope they are right.
3. I have 1 more injection into the spine next Friday to ease the pain .The first 2 have helped but I think they are shooting at the wrong spot. The pain starts at the middle of my left butt cheek, that's in a area called the sciatic nerve,  not in the spine.
4. The sonogram of my kidneys showed several cysts but they are small and nothing to worry about.
5. Eye doctor will wait until my eyelids droop so low that they start blocking my vision before he operates to move them up.
6. Toe nails are Toe nails. We clip them when they get long or start to in grow.
7. I will probably die with almost a full head of hair. That is probably good as I have a bunch of bumps on my scalp that are left over from the DBS Brain surgery I had in 06. My scalp would look like the rocky mountains if I were bald.

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Frog Pond Web Design

It has been requested because of the size of this web page, for all new changes a description of the change and link to that change will be located in the Frog Pond Tales

Some of you who happen upon these smattering of photos and text and music may wonder why is the Frog doing this. It may seem like a huge waste of time to some.
  But what inspired me was, one day as I was rummaging around for something I had stored in the basement, I came upon 3 boxes of photos we had stored away and forgotten. Some of the pictures were of my mother who I had not seen since 1956 when she passed away  of polio and of my father who has been gone for over 20 years. Then I thought what were going to happen when Diane and I pass. Were these pictures and our current family pictures going to be tossed in a box and later thrown out. Will the Ellis and Lamoreaux families be recycled to the trash dump, one trash pickup day in the future?
But no I thought, I will start a web page, just for the fun of it. It is very inexpensive. I will then save the web page file to a DVD. Come Christmas I will then give a copy of the Lamoreaux Family history to my children as a Christmas gift.Each year I will give them a new disk that has all the newly added photos and info on it. That would mean they would have a updated copy of our history up until my death, or I become to cranky to do this silly waste of time any longer. A DVD copy of the web page will run as if it were on line, published to the web.  Music and all. And if the computer that you are viewing the Frog Pond on is connected to the internet, if a link is refered to and it is still active the DVD will go to the link.
 I know that the computer bigwigs keep getting richer by changing the format or method of saving information. So it will be up to the future Lamoreaux family to upgrade the DVD disk to the next format when it comes along. Then they would pass it along to their family.
At least that is what I hope happens.