Sunday, February 24, 2013

Smorgasbord Sunday


Smorgasbord, as defined by dictionary.com is:
1. a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.
2. an extensive array or variety
I've decided to make Sundays a smorgasbord of stuff...pictures, writing about prayer points and plans.  Just an extensive array. :)

Firstly, the hospital trip that I talked about last week and then corrected to say wasn't happening because in my mind I'd skipped a week is happening this week.  Here's what I wrote last week without the edit.
This coming week we have one big appointment:  On Wednesday I head to London for an EEG (brain wave measuring thing) EEG's are fairly routine for me and this one is to monitor how my brain is doing in light of the medication switching that is happening and to follow up on Spot.  I'm thankful it's just an EEG for now and not an MRI, since I hate MRI's.  Prayers for safe travels and no snow storms would be great. (our last appointment in the city was a snow storm nightmare)  Also pray that the EEG would show good things about my brain, since I'm rather attached to it and we really don't want any more issues popping up.
The forecast for this week is predicting 10-15cm of snow for Tuesday and 5-10cm for Wednesday with temperatures hovering right around freezing, so there is a bit of concern about weather and travel.

For all of you who prayed for my back, it is doing much better.  It only hurts occasionally and typically after I do something silly like lift feed bags on my own. Much better than last week!

We sang this beautiful song in church this morning and it really touched my heart.  Our G-d truly does hide our souls in the cleft of the rock and covers them with his hand.  Here are the lyrics:

A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord,
A wonderful Savior to me;
He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
Where rivers of pleasure I see.


    Refrain:
    He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand. 

A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord,
He taketh my burden away,
He holdeth me up and I shall not be moved,
He giveth me strength as my day. 

With numberless blessings each moment He crowns,
And filled with His fullness divine,
I sing in my rapture, oh, glory to God!
For such a Redeemer as mine. 

When clothed with His brightness transported I rise
To meet Him in clouds of the sky,
His perfect salvation, His wonderful love,
I’ll shout with the millions on high. 

And a cute picture of a sleeping baby to close this Smorgasbord Sunday out:


  • He's so angelic looking when he's asleep...

    Friday, February 22, 2013

    Photo Friday

    This week's photo Friday features pictures from family fun day at Camp Shalom on Monday.  We were there with some alpacas as part of the petting zoo.
    This little cutie got to "ride" one of the alpacas.  Riding alpacas is not recommended, but for really little children we sometimes make exceptions.

    The crias spilled the grain we had brought along so Cailigh got a snack. 




    David was super proud of his calf walking experience.  The calf wasn't so sure about it. 


    Tuesday, February 19, 2013

    Up in Arms

    I don't get super frustrated very often. At least not at strangers.  (Little brothers are a other story!)  But these last few days have had me super frustrated...and this time at strangers.
    *Rant beginning*
    On Sunday morning mom got an e-mail from alpaca farmer in Wisconsin stating that their barn and house had burnt down and that the male owner had also recently lost his hand.  Our first instinct was suspicion as we didn't want to believe it was true...both a house and barn fire and the loss of a hand?  We hoped it wasn't true. We e-mailed the farm and confirmed that it had actually happened.
    Being unable to actually take animals (we don't have quarantine facilities so we can't do cross border livestock purchasing) I did what I could to help.  I posted the e-mail and the confirmation that I had gotten from the farm on a couple of alpaca groups on facebook to alert people in the area to the tragedy and see if something could be done to help these folks out.
    I was met with great skepticism.  People thought it was a scam. Apparently these alpaca owners had engaged in some less than scrupulous business practices in the past and people thought they were doing so again. Once I knew that I understood the skepticism.  By Monday morning a news story had been published by a local news site, confirming everything we already knew.  People still cried that it was a scam.  They criticized the owners for sending out e-mails asking for help when they should have been looking out for the welfare of their animals.  They criticized the owners for being gone from the farm(!) so soon after the male owner had lost his hand.  They criticized the owners for wanting to sell their animals instead of giving them away to good homes. They criticized the owners for having two tons of feed in their barn for a herd of 110 alpacas (we get a ton at at time for 60 animals...their farm is even more rural that ours.  Two tons for 110 doesn't seem that unreasonable to me).
    It made me angry.  I put myself in their situation.  If, by some freak accident, we lost both our house and our outbuildings/barns, leaving us with now more than half our herd (this is the situation these owners found themselves in), we would want to sell what we had, not just give them away.  We would want to sell so that we had something to get us back on our feet rather than give away what little we had. Perhaps we would want temporary homes or at least shelters and food and water, but we would want to sell what we had left in order to get back on our feet.
    People are still crying foul and want to see the alpacas given away and not sold so that these owners cannot get back into the business. Right now, I don't think that should be the main concern.  What happened to people having human compassion and wanting to help out other human beings?  Forget about whether or not they should get back into the business.  They've just lost everything.
    I wish we lived in a world where people were honest and caring and provided for the needs of others without second guessing motives.  I wish was possible on this side of heaven.
    Done rant.

    Sunday, February 17, 2013

    Smorgasbord Sunday

    Smorgasbord, as defined by dictionary.com is:
    1. a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.
    2. an extensive array or variety
    I've decided to make Sundays a smorgasbord of stuff...pictures, writing about prayer points and plans.  Just an extensive array. :)



    I get the honor of hanging out with the cute, cheeky little boy a couple times a week. I get to play with him while his mama gets some work done around the house.  In the first two photos you can see that he had blueberries with his supper and was very blue.  We fixed that at bath time. 

    This last was pretty low key without any major appointments.  The only real surprise was that I threw my back out mid week and could hardly move.  A trip to the doctor for some muscle relaxants and a trip to the pharmacy for the strongest pain killers you can get without a prescription and I got fixed up.  Today I actually haven't needed my painkillers or muscle relaxants and all.  Though I'm thinking I might take some tonight just to keep it from seizing up at night again. Prayers that my back would stay limber and not seize up would be great.
    This coming week we have one big appointment:  On Wednesday I head to London for an EEG (brain wave measuring thing) EEG's are fairly routine for me and this one is to monitor how my brain is doing in light of the medication switching that is happening and to follow up on Spot.  I'm thankful it's just an EEG for now and not an MRI, since I hate MRI's.  Prayers for safe travels and no snow storms would be great. (our last appointment in the city was a snow storm nightmare)  Also pray that the EEG would show good things about my brain, since I'm rather attached to it and we really don't want any more issues popping up. *EDIT* This appointment isn't until next week.  I fail at schedule keeping sometimes. The appointment is the 27th, which is not this coming Thursday.  But you can always start praying early. *END EDIT*
    I got a fish tank for my birthday in January and we had 4 fish in it.  3 goldfish and 1 loach.  One of the goldfish and the loach died this week.  It was very sad.  We got a test kit and checked water quality and learned that there was too many nitrites and nitrates in the water (and just about everything else was wrong too...except pH and ammonia). So now we are working to balance everything else.  The two goldfish in the tank seem to be pretty much indestructible. 
    It was super cold this morning when we got up, so we had a wonderful hoar-frost.  For my non northern climate friends, a hoar frost is what occurs when fog literally freezes on to any structure it can attach to...trees, fence posts, fence wires, etc.  When the sun shines on it, it is wonderfully bright.  When the wind blows gently it starts to fall off and it looks like it is snowing.  By mid morning it is usually gone because the sun melts it.
    Frost detail on the fence wire.

    Front yard tree

    Sun coming up in the bush

    view out towards the road with the sun just starting to play over the tree tops. 

    Friday, February 15, 2013

    Photo Friday - Valentine's day

    I'm going to try and become more conscientious about blogging regularly.  One of the ways I want to do that is by having photo-Fridays...the day of he week where I post photos from the last week or some other recent event.  If I can come up with cool things to call other days of the week, I might try them out too.  Suggestions are welcome ;)
    So this week, I'm going to post about Valentines Day because I have an amazing husband.  He told me ahead of time that he was going to make me dinner and that Mom was going to help him because I doubted his cooking skills.  I shouldn't have because he made me an amazing dinner.  He also told me we were going to have guests for dinner which made me a little unhappy until I figured out who the "guests" were.

    Sweet Potato Heads!  Potatoes have played a major part in our relationship and we have 4 Mr./Mrs. Potato head figurines in our apartment, so this was very fitting.  The potatoes are baked and the vegetables are fresh. There were extra "parts" in a bowl for dipping.
    He also made me bacon covered cranberry meatloaf.  Honestly, bacon makes everything better, and it was heart shaped.  I love my husband!
    I made him heart shaped donuts with pretties on top.  The donuts were chocolate which is his favorite!

    I even wrote his name on one of them!
    All in all, it was a wonderful Valentines day and I have the bestest husband in the world (sorry mommy)



    Tuesday, February 12, 2013

    A GI-normous adventure

    *this post may be slightly graphic at times.  If you've been around preschool boys, you'll be fine*
    As some of you may know, last week I was scheduled to have an upper and lower GI series done (for the non-medically inclined that means they stuck a tube up my bum and a tube down my throat and took pictures).  I had been waiting for quite some time for this procedure - over a year since the process started (it should have been done 8 years ago, but that's a whole 'nother story) - so nothing was going to get in my way of having it done.
    As preparation I could not eat anything for 48ish hours prior to the procedure.  Since the procedure was scheduled for about noon on Friday, I had to stop eating Wednesday night.  Thursday I was still allowed clear fluids, but nothing solid. And then Thursday the "fun" started.  In order to get clear pictures, I had to be cleaned out.  Enter lots of really disgusting laxatives and many hours spent in the bathroom.  So many that we even moved my computer in there so I could work on school while I cleaned out.  By 10pm Thursday night I was no longer allowed to take anything by mouth - food, drink or meds.  Not being able to take my meds was my biggest concern.  I'd be missing two doses of my seizure meds, which generally isn't a good idea.
    By 10pm Thursday night we were also starting to grow concerned about the weather.  A storm was moving in.  A big storm.
    Friday morning dawned very stormy.  Lots of wind, snow, and ice.  The hospital where the procedure was to take place was an hour away under normal conditions.  We left about two hours prior to the time I was supposed to arrive at the hospital and took the van instead of the car because it had higher ground clearance.  We made it on time, but without much time to spare. More than a few times we didn't know where the road was, which was slightly problematic.
    We parked at the hospital and got me checked in.  Once I was checked in, David had to leave since visitors weren't allowed.  I'd left my watch with David so I had no concept of time.  I know that I changed and then read a bit until a nurse came in to start my IV.  She took one look at my hand, got a warm blanket and tucked my hand in to warm up and maybe pop a vein out for her to work with. I think at some point I drifted off to sleep.  Soon a porter came to bring me to the OR.  First she wrapped me in more warm blankets because I was still cold.  Why do hospitals have to be so cold????
    Once we got to the OR I set a new record for the doctor.  I was the first patient in 25 years that he could not get an IV started on.  He tried 3 or 4 times, then called for the anesthesiologist to come try.  He didn't have much more luck from the doctor.  Finally he sent a nurse to find a 24 gauge needle, which is what they use on babies. (big numbers mean smaller needles). Once he had the needle, he went for my foot.  I've had a lot of IVs and blood draws - nothing compares to having an IV placed in your foot!  Once the IV was placed I remember the doctor telling the nurse to give me a little extra sedation because they'd already put me through so much.  Then I don't remember anything.
    The next thing I remember is waking up in recovery and being given something to drink.  Then the nurses called David to come get me and I waited for him to bring the car around.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Finally I texted him.  His response (and I quote) "I'm standing out in the cold of the hospital parking lot looking for someone with jumper cables..."
    Thus continued our adventure.  No jumper cables could be found.  We got mom's CAA number and tried to call them.  We couldn't get through.  We found a phone book and called a towing service to come jump the car.  They showed up in good time, considering that the storm was still raging and the roads hadn't been cleared.  They tried to jump the car.  No go.  The starter was dead.  I was still stuck in the hospital since I couldn't go anywhere until a car was waiting for me at the front entrance.  Our van was being towed and David was going with it.
    Enter wonderful family friends.  A quick phone call and a handsome man came to our rescue, picking me up from the hospital, picking David up from the shop and taking me to Wendy's to get something to eat.  Then we went back to his house.  But before we got there...
    We got stuck in the street before his house.  He trudged through the snow to get his cute little snow blower and blow a path out while David drove.  Safely inside we made a decision that we were not going anywhere that night anymore.  The snow was still falling and word from home was that things were still nasty.  An air mattress became our bed and we bunked down with friends for the night.
    The next morning the sun was shining and we headed for home, our GI-normous adventure completed.  I don't need another one like that for quite some time!