Jenny and Girls

My friends little girls are friends with my little niece and we have had a lot of fun being able to spend time with them. Since I have been down in SLC I haven't been able to see them at church and I just found out that they have one more Sunday here in my ward before they move. I'm going to miss them a lot. Her two little girls have so much personality and they remembered me over the Christmas brake. Here's their story.

Your little girls are so cute. To make it more realistic you need to tell them that they now can not walk on their foot and they need to sleep with the boot on.

IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME

It has been great to be able to be here with my parents and my mom has been the BEST to help take care of me. But I'm feeling homesick. Since last Friday I have been sleeping on my parents sofa while Paul is up in Logan working. He has been putting in long 10 hour days to try and get a set done that he is working on. Where I need so much help to do anything it was better for me to stay with my mom so that she could help me throughout the day. Paul was going to try and come down this past weekend but with the weather as of late, he was not able to make it down, we decided it would be better if he did not try to go through the canyon. They have been working really hard on the project so that hopefully they won't need to work on it after Christmas so that will be nice to have Paul to myself for a bit before school starts, we have a lot of cleaning that needs to happen and I can't do it since I'm on crutches. I've had some long days here too. Since those two crashes last weekend were I landed on my foot my mom won't take me out with her to run errands, she is a good mom - she worries about me falling, so I'm stuck here at the house. Paul said that he is going to try and make it down either tonight or tomorrow morning depending on what the canyon looks like when he gets done at work. I am so excited to see him even though we have not quite figured out the sleeping arrangements. I have to sleep on the sofa that is a little more stiff, it helps to keep my foot propped up, the softer one is too uncomfortable to sleep on with the boot. We'll see what ends up happening.
I'm just excited to see him again.

A Sigh of Releaf

There is a national exam that a group of girls and I have been studying for to become LEED AP's. The powers that be are changing the exam and the last we heard December 31st was the last day to take it for the way that we had been studying. With the exam as it is right now we would only have to take one exam and be done but with the changes it would be two exams and cost a lot more money to take it. Unfortunately I was not able to study the last two weeks with the group because I had to be in SLC for my surgery, then from the drugs I haven't been able to focus enough to study. I heard that the three other girls all passed so that gives me some hope. This morning I was all set to sign up and take the exam on the 31st but noticed that there were dates open for January and February so I called the USGBC and they told me that the exam was extended until March 31st. OH SWEET RELEAF. Not that I want to wait three months to take the exam but I will be able to wait until I don't need the crutches. This will also give me a couple of weeks to catch-up on the study time that I missed and feel pretty prepared for it.

Let it Snow

It has hardly felt like the Christmas or Winter season with there not being much snow, even the temperatures have been warmer then usual. Now with all this wonderful snow that has been coming down these last couple of days it is really beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Ever since Bailly was born I have always taken her out to build snowmen, make snow angels and push her around on the sleds. Well this year I won't be able to take her out, I cannot put any weight on my ankle yet and I'm not supposed to get it wet until the stitches come out. Uncle Paul is going to have to pick up the slack but I'm sure he won't mind. Bailly and Gabe love Uncle Paul, he's like a big kid and enjoys playing around with them. I guess I'll have to wait until next year to be able to go play in the snow, as for right now I'll just watch it fall from the sofa in my parents living room.

The Day After

Here is the story of me at the hospital. It is quite a story so bare with me.

I had to be at the hospital at 8:30 A.M. so I was thinking we would be one of the early ones and there wouldn't be a whole lot of time for the Dr. to be running behind. The thing I did not account for was all the STUFF that needs to happen first before they actually put you on the table. The thing I am most happy about is that the surgery was early enough that Paul was able to come with me before he needed to go help set up for his brothers wedding. The staff were all very nice and made it not so intimidating to be there. I have only had surgery twice before and while I was still knocked out for those all they had to do was prop my mouth open and take what they wanted; teeth or tonsils. This was the first time I was going in to have something cut open and fixed so it was a bit nerve wracking for me.

Anyways, when all the paper work was done and they called us back to put on the little nighty, the nurse sat with us and made sure everything was done and tested all my vitals. Then there was an incident when I was trying to give them a sample to make sure I was NOT pregnant but I am choosing to leave that out (Sorry for the typo, I'm on a lot of medication). When I got back the CRNA (assistant to the anesthesiologist) had to ask me all about my history again to make sure the Anesthesiologist could put me under and not hurt me. The nurse and the CRNA asked Paul what exactly I did to be able to tare my tendon like I did. On his way out the CRNA said that he was going to have to try that rubber band thing cause it sounded like a lot of fun. Really, it is so much fun, until you get hurt and if you are anything like me, once I get hurt on something I do not go back. Everyone says that when you fall you should get back up and try-try again. When I fall, I choose to just walk away, it hurt going down and I do not want to relive it.

Well I finally got on the table and Paul got to go get breakfast. Dr. Edwards was introducing me to everyone, it was like a little reunion, they were all so friendly. While I was laying there on the table they put about 5 warm blankets on me, oh I loved it. Then I remember them cleaning my foot, chattering a little, then I was out. My worst fear was to wake up during the surgery, I have watched too many Dateline shows and others about the stories of people waking up on the table but not being able to let the Dr.'s know because they were so heavily sedated so they got to feel the whole thing. Unfortunately I woke up during the surgery. To keep myself from freaking out I just started talking and someone would answer every once in a while. My first question was "Why am I awake?" They told me something that calmed me down but I still kept mumbling into the oxygen mask to keep myself calm. At one point I heard my Dr. say something along the lines of "Wow, that's not supposed to be like that. We'll have to fix that too." Then I start mumbling like crazy trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Dr. Edwards told me they just found another little whole that they could not see on the MRI but that she would explain it to me when I woke up a little more after the surgery. At one point I remember raising my hand because I could not get any ones attention and no one had answered me back in awhile. They said that was when they gave me more drugs to try and calm me back down because I was talking too much.

As they were wrapping up my foot I was coming out of the anesthesia enough to tell them the boot they were trying to put on me was pushing on the wrong spot. Then I had to slide over to the gurney and it took me about three tries because I would only scoot over about 6 inches at a time. Since I was mostly awake by the time I was taken to the post-op, I was only there for about 20-30 minutes. Long enough to be able to sit up on my own and have the Nurse go over some post-op instructions. As you can tell from the picture, just because I say I was mostly awake and coherent does not mean my eyes would open up. Paul was pretty disappointed because I told him about some of the stuff I did when I was coming out of anesthesia for my first two surgeries but that did not happen this time.

I've decided that if I stay up with my pill schedule then I should be able to get through this with feeling little to no pain from the surgery. The hard part is now I am on crutches and can not balance very well knowing that if I start to fall over I better hope there is a chair behind me because I cannot use my left foot to balance me.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me and e-mail or called. It means the world to me.

My Surgery

First I would like to say "Thanks" to all my family that have called showing concern. I had no idea that so many people kept up with our little blog.

I finally have all the details on my surgery and thought I would post it to let everyone know. I go in tomorrow (12th) at 8:30. The surgery should only take about an hour from the time they put me on the table and when I come out from being under. As she was telling me about the surgery and telling us everything that was going to be done it actually sounds pretty interesting. Then she asked if I wanted to be awake for it and watch, NO thank you. Either knock me out with the gas or take me out with a 2x4. There is no way I want to be awake for that. They are going to sew up the tare in my tendon then wrap it to keep it tight. Of course the Dr. had to go over everything that could go wrong, how comforting. She said that in the past five years that she has been doing this surgery this particular way that everyone has said the pain in their ankles has gone and no one has had to come in to repair anything that has gone wrong. Paul will be coming with me to the surgery, where they have valet parking. I have asked him to bring the camera so that we can be sure to record this event. I'm sure that we'll get some really great pictures as I'm trying to come out of the anesthesiology.

The next four weeks I will have to keep my foot elevated and keep weight off of it. I plan on studying for an exam I want to take and doing a bunch of genealogy. We met a lady who is third cousins with Paul and she told me that she would love to sit down with me and go over the Family History. I am so excited to learn more, we have met three of Paul's third cousins and one of them is in our Church ward. It will be so interesting to see what stories they have. The exam is so that I can be a LEED AP. It's not something that I have to do but something that a group of friends at school have decided to do. It will be nice to add that to our name on resumes and GREEN is the way the industry is going, and in this economy it is great to have as much behind you as possible when going out to look for a job.

Reflections of Christ

I don't know how many of you have seen commercials or books for the Photography Exhibit Reflections of Christ. A friend sent me a link to it and I thought it was wonderful. The book is as Deseret Book and to hear about why and how this photographer did all this was amazing. Right now I am finishing up homework or would expound more. Enjoy the video.

Brandy & Jake

Brandy asked me for help in putting together her wedding invitations and I was so excited to do that for her. We put together a rough layout for them the night I was down for the Twilight movie. After that I took them and fixed them up a bit cause the first ones were put together really fast. I had a lot of fun working on them and I was so glad that Brandy asked me to. Here is the final product. Let me know what you think.

Cereal

Paul made an observation this past weekend about my family. He says that we are all mad crazy in love with cold cereal. I would have to agree. He does not even like milk so he has no idea what he is missing out on. Paul said in one morning he noticed one brother have 3 bowls of cereal and me and another brother have 2 bowls. If I could afford all the milk I would eat cold cereal for every meal. As a matter of fact in the MTC they have cold cereal available for every meal and I believe there were a couple of days that I did eat it for every meal. The days are gone when I can eat whatever I want and not worry about having it stay with me.