Picture Project

I have decided to get ALL of our pictures onto the computer so I can save them on an external hard drive (or maybe backed up online). So I'm slowly getting about a bazillion pictures scanned in. It's been fun to see some of these old pictures, and some of them are just downright scary so I'll spare you from those (for the most part). The idea is that if I post a few of the ones I'm doing on here, hopefully I'll stay motivated to keep up with this project. We didn't have a digital camera until 1999 or 2000, so it's going to take me .... well, FOREVER. But at least it's fun.

This picture is for you James Stock. I told you I'd been fishing before.


Love this picture of Dave.

And this one.

Senior pictures.

Original hair color and eyebrows. I think we'd agree all that salon time and money has been well spent. You're welcome.

Some of Dave's mission pictures. You would NOT believe how many pictures I have of him flexing. Some of the flexing is more subtle (i.e., holding on to handlebars of a bike) but it is there nonetheless. I'll have to ease you into those ones slowly ...


Preaching to the corn. Not to worry, each and every one of Dave's mission ties has been properly disposed of ... never to be seen or heard from again.

This is my favorite of his mission pictures. Outside the Chicago temple. Love it.

Dating pictures. We were one of those couples who had to hurry and go out and take a bunch of pictures just to have enough for our wedding video ... hence the cheesiness of the pictures.

I can if I want.

September 14, 1996. Got engaged on Ensign Peak at sunset. It was beautiful.

Dancing at Melanie and Jason's wedding. They got married six weeks before we did. Sometimes Melanie and I like to do things together .... we're just like that.

Hanging out in Teasdale when we were engaged.

Again with the cheesiness. This was right before we left for the one and only concert we've ever been to together. Blackhawk and Wynonna. Seriously??? It was a free concert.


The summer after we got married, we went to California with my family and took a day trip down to Tijuana. Dave just HAD to have this Indiana Jones hat. Really? He wore it about five times before he left it in the back window of his car and it shrunk in the heat and was too small to be worn by a human. How do I let him talk me into these things?


Making out with Indiana Jones on the beach. How romantic.

Our first trip to Disneyland! I had to do some convincing to help Dave understand that Disneyland was going to be a part of our life. He didn't understand for a while ... but he's definitely got the idea now. I LOVE that place. Our kids LOVE it. And Dave loves it when we're happy .... so he's a good sport.

The top of Mount Timpanogos. PROOF that I've been to the top (and that was even the second time). We slid down the glacier on the way back. Not sure I'll ever do that hike again ... don't tell Dave. It was beautiful up there though.

Really?!!

For those of you under the impression that Dave is the patient and tolerant one in this relationship .... I present to you "Exhibit A." A life size (6'2") pieced-together, newsprint, taped-to-my-front-entry-wall, scares-me-every-time-I-walk-around-the corner cutout of Jimmer Fredette. Really?!!

This one is for you Marion

After a little hiatus, and some peer pressure, I'm ready to get back to work on this blog. I guess I just haven't been in the mood to blog. Is there such a thing as being too grouchy to blog? For me, probably.

Anyway, I just went visiting teaching, and we were talking about Family History and Temple Work, but also about the importance of leaving a history for our posterity. And let's be honest .... I'm never going to keep a journal, and I definitely didn't keep "baby books" for my kids. Don't even get me started on scrapbooking. I just don't have it in me. So ... one of these days I'll print this blog up and my kids will have some record of their lives. In order for me to do that .... I need to keep up on it. So Marion and I will hold each other accountable on our blogging ... so far she's kicking my trash. But I'm pretty competitive, so watch out girl!

First things first, my foot is just about better. I had to wear this ugly contraption for a month:


Better than a cast but clearly worse than no large clumsy object attached to my foot at all. But, I'm all about compromise, so I wore it. He said it was a "walking" boot, so I spent a lot of time on my couch simply NOT walking. No walking = no walking boot. This is how my brain works. I got to stop wearing it a month ago (imagine my excitement) and now I'm just supposed to wear flat shoes for a while. WHAT?!! Talk about cramping my style. I HATE flats. Heels are my FAVORITE and I miss them. I got me some stylin flat boots that only teenagers and trendy people look cute in. Ugh. Not a good look for me. I'm just trying to adjust to my life in flats. You'd be surprised how much it's affecting me. I know ... very dramatic. My friends and my young women have been nice enough to compliment my new look. Well thanks guys, but don't get used to it. I'm now allowed to wear slight heels (no more than 2 inches) and ride my bike (stationary only) and run (a little) but still no basketball. Lame. I've been waiting six years for this stake to get a basketball program running, and now that they are, I can't play. I know ... feel sorry for me.

We had a great Christmas. It was a pain in the neck being on crutches and not being able to drive. I was lucky enough to injure my right foot. REAL SMART. I can barely reach the pedals in my car with my right foot thanks to my short legs. Left-footed driving did not go well. Right foot was too painful. Anyway, what can you do? We really tried to simplify as much as possible with our holiday stuff and just let go of things that didn't need to be done, and for the most part, we were successful. I did a lot of online shopping. No problem there.

This is the picture I made them take on Christmas Eve:

This is how they really felt:

We've still got one Santa believer hanging on .... love that.

As you can see, I didn't get too many pictures on Christmas. This is pretty much it. Not sure where we're going to put all of that stuff ...

We celebrated our 14th Anniversary in December. I ran across a few pictures the other day from the summer we met .... 1996.

This was taken on the steps of the Manti temple. I think this is the last time I was there (not the temple, just the Manti temple)... somehow that doesn't seem that long ago, but our thinness and Dave's hair says that is was forever ago.

You're welcome for intervening on behalf of Dave's fashion ... not sure who was in charge before, but WOW.
I'll have to dig through our old pictures and see if I can find some more pictures that are blog worthy. Wish me luck.

We've had a busy couple of months. Same as always. Work, basketball, school, our callings, Jimmer Fredette, scouts, and HAVING FUN keep us going, going, going. We've had a lot of fun with friends and family. We're surrounded by amazing people, and we love it. Honestly when we moved here, we didn't think we'd be here this long. Frankly, we moved here because we could afford it. Melanie and Jason had been out here for years and really liked it and said it was a great place to raise kids. Recently a work opportunity arose for Dave that would have taken us to another state and greatly impacted our situation financially. It was actually several states away, and we did stop and think about it. But for us, for right now, we know we're supposed to be here, and we're happy to be here. We've lived in a lot of different places, but we've never ever in our lives experienced the kind of friendship and love that we have from our friends here. It's a truly amazing feeling to be surrounded by people who care and serve and love each other like they do here. The friends we've made aren't the kind of people you know for a while and then slowly lose touch with. They're the kind of people we don't ever want to be without. We feel so loved and so blessed. And ... it seriously ROCKS having my sister and her family a half-mile away. Do you even understand the CONVENIENCE and AWESOMENESS of this??? Ask me and I'll tell you. It's the best.

Anyway ...thanks to my super talented friend, Michelle, I no longer HATE the north wall in my great room. Some texture and paint was all it needed. The room looks so different, and so much better! Love it. Thanks Michelle! She's slowly helping me overcome my fear of home improvement projects and Martha Stewart-ness in general. She's got her work cut out for her I tell ya. Now I just need to repaint the rest of my house ...

Quit Your Whining

This is the "before" picture with Dr. Scott. Not bad. Still smiling. I should have waited until he was all in his scrubs and goofy doctor hat to take the picture. He looks perfectly reasonable in this picture, and I look well .... yeah. Go ahead and just FORGET making any comments about how I look, and keep in mind I'm still wearing a hard cast and I have violent tendencies.

This is right before I told Scott that I wanted a RED cast, and he and Dave started hyperventilating. Scott reminded me that I'd still be in the cast for the BYU/Utah game and asked if I would please reconsider. We debated all the way into the operating room, and as you can see, when I'm unconscious, I apparently don't get to choose the color of my cast. Just kidding, I "repented" (as Dave called it) and switched the cast color to COUGAR BLUE right before the anesthesiologist came at me with the oxygen mask.

There is an "after" picture, but you will NOT be seeing that. Nope. Sorry. Thanks for asking. Let's just say I don't handle anesthesia very well. I have an ANGRY almost violent reaction when coming out of it and just feel SO rotten. Apparently this time I was being quite loud and my vocabulary got away from me a bit. Dave and the poor nurse did their best to get a handle on the situation. I seriously felt just so YUCK. Ugh. Hate that feeling. HATE IT.

So the good news is the surgery went well. The bad news is, my ankle was a bit more screwed up that we had anticipated going in. According to Scott, my torn peroneus brevis tendon that is supposed to be about the width of his pinky finger was discovered to be the width of his first two fingers during surgery. He called it hypertrophy. It was working too hard to stabilize my ankle and was huge and swollen and all torn up. So, it took quite a bit of "cleaning up." Ooops. I guess I should have got it checked out before. I admit ... I was WRONG. Cherish this moment people.

I've learned a valuable lesson from all of this. It never hurts to get things checked out. If it turns out to be fine and you wasted time and a co-pay .... OH WELL! In my defense, this past year and a half especially, I was SO unbelievably tired of doctors, x-rays, offices, co-pays, lab work, tests, procedures, surgeries, insurance hassles, drugs, needles, outdated magazines in waiting rooms, writing out checks, pharmacies, blah, blah, blah .... I couldn't stand the thought of anything being truly wrong with my ankle or even the possibility of having to get it fixed and being in my bed all drugged out and sick and bored AGAIN!

But thanks to a fantastic Relief Society lesson last Sunday, I need to quit the stinking crying and belly aching and just be GRATEFUL. I'm so glad that the technology and expertise to fix my ankle exists. I'm grateful for my friend/doctor and his willingness to fork out insane amounts of time and $$$ to go to school and learn how to do this stuff. I'm grateful we have insurance and fixing my ankle was even an option.

I'm grateful for our friends and family and ward members who have watched over our family so much this year. I'm grateful for the basket of fun things to entertain me and treats to eat that my friend brought over. I'm grateful for met deductibles and satisfied out-of-pocket maximums, and in that way, I'm grateful for timing. I'm grateful for the yummy meals and treats and running errands done on our behalf. I'm grateful for online shopping and that happy little knock on the door from the FedEx guy. I'm grateful my friend came over and helped me figure out a way to take the medications that would stop the ridiculous vomiting.



I'm grateful we still got to go to St. George for Thanksgiving (where it was SLIGHTLY warmer than here), and I even still got to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving thanks to my mom and sisters pushing me around in a wheelchair (not an easy task apparently .... or maybe they are extra wimpy). I'm grateful for people driving me around and being patient with my being slow. I'm grateful for all the hours and hours of watching T.J. and walking him to and from school. I'm grateful for the patience and resilience of my kids and husband. I'm grateful for my amazing counselors, secretary, and advisors who have once again stepped up and gone the extra mile when I just couldn't do it. I'm grateful for my feet that carry me around and help me take care of my family and give me the freedom I have clearly come to take completely for granted. I'm really excited to have BOTH of them back in working order.



So, the "one to three weeks in a hard cast" I was promised turned into "three to four weeks" and I'm really really hoping to get the cast off this coming Wednesday at my appointment. However, I've smacked my foot pretty good a few times, and I'm sure as heck glad there was a hard cast on there. I slipped in a restroom on a wet floor about an hour after the surgery and slammed it down pretty hard. Wow. Pain. Then on the way home, I passed out in my garage (after I had already passed out in the car) and smacked it again when I fell. At that point, Dave literally threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and delivered me to my bed. Don't think I wasn't conscious enough to hear the horrible straining/grunting sound he made when he lifted me and my dead weight from the garage floor. Nice job hon.

The night before my surgery, Michelle and Paula took me out to a movie ... which was a PERFECT stress reliever and apparently my last night out on the town for a while. Paula made me a sign (see below) to safety pin to my shirt. Maybe I should have been wearing my sign. Ugh.



Then just the other night, I slipped on some black ice and smacked it again, and a parking lot of people (i.e., Dave's co-workers) got to hear my "words" of frustration/pain. Anyway, thank goodness for the cast. It's almost like Scott knew how clumsy and accident-prone I am. Weird.

I've officially stopped using the crutches ... as of today. The reasoning being that my arms/hands now hurt worse than my foot. So bye bye crutches. Also, I've walked around in the cast enough that it's cracked on the bottom, so I can bend my foot better and walk without too much trouble ... as long as I go slow. Shhh ... don't tell Dr. Scott. He said I could put weight on it, so hopefully this is what he meant. It still feels better to stay off it and it definitely aches in the evening and at night but nothing I can't live with. So if all goes well, next Wednesday I'll get the cast off and trade it in for a lovely walking boot. One that can be REMOVED to sleep/shower. Yeah for me.

After three weeks in that contraption, it's off to physical therapy for me. Lucky for me, I have access to several good physical therapists and one very accommodating and handsome physical therapist assistant who has agreed to do my therapy at home on the couch. I'm actually not looking forward to the therapy. Dave has way too much fun inflicting pain ... not sure I'm ready to be his next victim ... I mean patient. We'll see how that goes. I guess I have a month to gear up for it. I'll keep you posted. I've got to get busy if I'm going to be on my bike by April ... and I AM going to be on my bike by April. It's happening people.

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

Don't mind my super nerdy technical anatomy photo above. I'm just illustrating the source of my FRUSTRATION which is also the source of my current grouchiness (which is more than my usual grouchiness by quite a bit). Apparently when I crashed on my road bike last July (and by that I mean the July of 2009), I sustained a 6-7 centimeter longitudinal tear in my peroneus brevis tendon in my ankle. I also sustained a tear of the calcaneofibular ligament (see figure below). As it turns out, the walking, running, weight lifting, softball, wearing heels, elliptical, basketball, hiking, biking, driving, volleyball, and shopping I've been doing since then have NOT exactly helped the situation.


Seems to me that most sprains go away, so I assumed that this one would ... I guess I was also assuming it was a sprain. My bad. When I crashed on my bike, I wasn't even going that fast, but my shoe didn't come unclipped from my bike pedal, so my ankle did get wrenched a bit as the bike came out from underneath me. I still road almost 30 miles that day and played softball that night. It was swollen and hurt, but I have a handy-dandy ankle brace that I've pulled out multiple times over the years. Rest it a bit, wear a brace to exercise, ice it ... that's the cure - right? I guess not. As you recall, I've already been off my feet for a great length of time this year, and we were hoping it would completely heal during that time, but as soon as I started exercising again, it started swelling and hurting again. So after I rolled it last month playing basketball, Dave put his foot down (a bit of a rare occurence), and off to the foot doctor I went.

He did some x-rays and eventually an MRI, and found the two tears, which are not getting better, which will not heal themselves, and which require surgery to repair. WHAT IN THE WORLD?!!!! I've seriously had ENOUGH with the surgeries, enough down time, enough medicine, enough of my room, ENOUGH!!! Don't even get me started on crutches and casts and walking boots. UGH! I'm so grouchy. Okay, moving on. I am grateful that I can get this fixed so it will stop hurting and stop swelling and also so I can walk when I'm older and of course so my leg stays attached to my foot via my ankle. That is of the utmost importance to me.


So here's where the funny part comes in. This picture above is from high school. I don't recall why we got these pictures taken. Seems weird now ... seems like it felt weird then. Maybe somebody had a free sitting fee or something. That's me in the middle with the long dark hair ... just in case you were wondering. This is a group of friends I hung out with in high school and after that. They are some of the most amazing people I've ever known. We were all really close and spent a lot of time together. I keep in touch with some of them now, and occasionally we get together and catch up with our families.

So, the guy sitting next to me is Scott Rogers, or more fittingly, Dr. Scott Rogers, DPM, and he'll be doing the surgery on my ankle. Can you say WEIRD?!! I just can't get over the fact that I'll be unconscious, and HE will have a scalpel. Think about the people you hung out with in high school ... now think about them doing surgery on YOU! It's a weird feeling. And since when am I old enough to have my peers be doctors anyway? When did that happen exactly? Anyway, I'm glad its someone I can trust, and someone I know cares, but still .... you heard me, weird.

So the big day is Thursday. Off it for a week, cast for three weeks (crutches ... yuck), and then a walking boot for three more. Wonder if it will go with any of my cute winter boots with the 4 inch heels on the other foot? Blech. That's it people ... I'm done venting now. Time to think about more things I'm grateful for.

Other Fun Stuff

Maybe I've got more time than I thought ... since you'll notice this is my SECOND blog post in one week. We went with Melanie and the boys to the zoo during our fall break. We haven't been to the zoo for a REALLY long time. Most people are familiar with my unconditional dislike of animals, but the kids love it, so what do you do? If you're me, you go to the zoo, you brave the crowds, you smell all the fun and exciting zoo smells, and you have a great day watching your kids get excited about all the animals. They seriously love it.

The best part of the whole excursion was (I forgot to get a picture of this) neither Melanie and I brought any kind of STROLLER or BAG into the zoo. WHAT?!! Basically, there were no fruit snacks or goldfish, drinks, binkies, bottles, burp rags, diapers, wipes, tissues, blankets, jackets, extra clothes, blah, blah, blah, and you know what .... IT WAS AWESOME!!! My phone and debit card were in my pocket, we stopped at drinking fountains for water, and when we arrived at the point of starvation we enjoyed a nice nutritious lunch of nachos and Root Beer. I'm not kidding you people ... it was seriously liberating.







Back in October, we participated in the 5K Cake Walk fundraiser for President Hughes. The above people were the brave runners/walkers. I helped with registration for the runners, and then moved to my station at the cupcake table. This was the boys and London's first 5K. Good job guys!

Back in October, we went down to Ephraim to visit our friends the Bolli's who moved down there earlier this year. We stopped by FAT JACKS for dinner before heading up Ephraim Canyon. Does everyone know how happy FAT JACKS makes me??? I went to Snow College in Ephraim and survived on Fat Sticks (the best cheesy breadsticks EVER) and Diet Coke for two years. I know ... it's a miracle.
This picture scares me a little.
That's better.
It was beautiful up Ephraim Canyon where the cabin was.
The guys just HAD to catch the score on the BYU-is-getting-killed-by-UTAH-STATE game and then a few plays on said game. Ugh. That screen is like 3 inches wide. Seriously??? Then they went out and played capture the flag in the forrest in the dark, and no one was killed or even seriously maimed. I know ... they're crazy. We didn't even bother trying to stop them. They were just having way too much fun.
We stayed up till 4:00 in the morning playing games and having a GREAT time. Unfortunately, Dave and I could only sleep for three hours before getting up to race back to Eagle Mountain for a football game ... but it was WORTH it. I can sleep when I'm dead ... right?
Halloween is serious business around this house. It's my VERY least favorite holiday (and yes people, that includes Columbus Day), but it's fun to watch the kids get into it and have fun. Dave is INSANE about Halloween. He loves it ALL. Gee, I wonder who the kids get it from ...
London in the school Halloween parade. My control-freak self resisted the urge to run out there and fix her hair, but she told me later she was glad I didn't because pirates have messy hair. She also told me she hadn't brushed her teeth all day because pirates have dirty teeth. NASTY.
T.J. rocked the parade as BUZZ LIGHTYEAR. Seriously, I have no idea how many times one of my kids has been Buzz for Halloween, but it's a lot. He LOVED being in his first parade ... just look at that smile.
Good thing for the boys' football uniforms ... what a PERFECT costume! Heaven knows I paid ENOUGH money for those uniforms ... I was REALLY glad to get some extra use out of them. Don't ask about Jackson's wig. I didn't.