A Whole Lot of Help From Family and Friends

Though EZ has made wonderful progress in his recovery post-transplant, he is still limited in what he can do because of the damage to his sacrum. Standing in one place, standing on his feet too long, bending, twisting, carrying heavy loads, and sitting vertically are still painful problems. Enter...his best man at our wedding almost 36 years ago...Van Mitchell, and one of Nick's best friends, Eric Sabo. Van traveled to Raleigh last week, from Florida, for the sole purpose of helping Ernie for two solid days...and help he did! Eric happened to be passing through, yet stayed an extra day, jumping in to help out as well!

And just how did they help you might ask?
1. Van raked our entire front yard (almost an acre!) making piles of sticks and leaves.
2. He and Eric then proceeded to help Ernie and Nick completely empty out the attic, shed and crawl space at my mother's house.
3. They loaded the items into a trailer, and unloaded them into our basement.
4. They collected numerous mounds of sticks and leaves from our front yard and deposited them in our debris pile.
5. Van helped Ernie with a new set-up for our water filtering system, cutting, routing and mounting a custom designed wooden shelf to house our new unit.
6. He vacuumed Ernie's workshop.
7. He helped Ernie hang a very heavy antique mirror.
8. He risked life and limb to clmib up a long ladder to our roof, where he repaired some of our shingles.
9. He then headed back to the front yard to trim all our hedges and weed the front beds...IN THE RAIN!

I can't believe I didn't take a single picture of Ernie, Van, Eric and Nick in action. Maybe they were working so fast it was all a blur! I did snap these of Van and Debby holding Samantha, and some of the foods we made for our celebratory dinner for all the hard work!

Ribeyes

Twice baked potatoes

Apple dumplings

Many, many thanks to Van, Eric and Nick for all the hard work. We love you and really do appreciate it!

On a little side note, the previous night we all had a good laugh with these:

Bring back memories for anyone? Here Mom, Deb and I are having a little fun pretending with our "candy cigarettes"...totally out of character, and we do realize smoking is nothing to joke about! (I am not, and never was a smoker)