Prezzies

I have the greatest friends and family in the world.  Not only have they come over to take care of my kids and me; they've also brought and sent me a ton of stuff.

Ben's stepmom, Brenda, sent us this gorgeous afghan:

When it was delivered, it had Ben's name on it.  I texted him and asked him what it was, and he had nooo idea!  The return address was a woman we didn't recognize at all.  He told me to open it (he was really excited about it), and when I saw this gorgeous afghan, I was so worried.  Oh my gosh, some poor woman sent this to us by mistake.  She spent like a thousand hours making this for someone else.  What are we going to do?

Something helped us to solve the mystery - under the woman's name was the name of a tool company.  Ben's stepmom sells tools.  So we thought - is this linked to Brenda somehow??  Ben called Bren, and - mystery solved.  A woman she knows in the tool industry makes and sells afghans on the side, and Brenda thought it might be a nice get-well gift for me.  What a sweetheart.  The kids are obsessed with it.  We don't want them to ruin it, so it lives on our bed.

Bren knows I'm a sucker for chevron print; I should have linked this directly to her!

Ben's mom, Gloria, sent me a sweet card and $25 of cash!  She said that, instead of sending me flowers, she would just send me money.  My plan for that money is to get Ben a Christmas present. He won't give me money to buy him a Christmas present, so I'm going to get all sneaky with my get-well money. :)

This next thing is so great - a couple of days ago, at 9:30 at night, we got a knock on our door.  It was a pizza delivery woman.  We're like, "Dang it, you have the wrong house."

She's all, "Someone pre-paid this for you."

A lightbulb went off in my head.  "Wait...is it Canadian bacon and pineapple?"

She looked at the receipt.  "Yes!  Yes, it is!"

And that's when I realized.  Someone read my last blog post and ordered me a pizza!!  We looked a little more at the receipt and saw that it was my friend, Kathleen.  What a babe!  She ordered me a pizza, all the way from China!

This is Kathleen and her hubby, Nick, in Xian recently:

She's so great. She needs to get back home so we can hang out more.

In lieu of flowers, my mom planted these paperwhite bulbs for me:

Look at 'em!  They'll bloom around Christmas and be so pretty.  They don't need to be that close to any window to bloom, and that's perfect for me.  They live on my kitchen table.  It's been interesting growing potted bulbs.  The roots keep pushing against the bottom of the pot and making the bulbs themselves push up out of the soil and be exposed.  My mom says that's normal.  And I've seen lots of pictures of potted bulbs that are a bit exposed, so I'm not too alarmed about it.

And look what my sweet hubs brought home for me tonight (along with some much-needed toothpaste):

 Liles.  They smell so divine.  It smells like Hawaii in my dining room right now. :)

Thanks so much, everyone, for everything.  These things have uplifted my heart and made my recovery just a teeny bit easier.