Future Missionary

Drama

Well I guess it's been over a week since the drama so I better update it. 

So there I was..... it was middle of the night best as I could guess. I need to roll over to get more comfortable, yet as I tried, I was paralyzed with pain in the base of my neck and unable to make the desired position change. I laid there in the dark with only Charlotte to reach to for help. Obviously that wasn't going to get me very far. Brian had slipped out in the night to sleep with another woman, or little girl.... Isabelle. She called for him in the night and he quickly ran to her side which left me alone, or as mentioned before, with one little one at my side. My eyes started to adjust to the light and I barely lifted my head enough to see the clock read 5:00. As I pondered my situation, all kinds of thoughts ran through my head-
 " Maybe I have cancer in my neck and am going to die?"
 " I can't get out of the bed, what if Brian has to call an ambulance to get me on a stretcher and to the hospital?"
 " What if it's a herniated disk and I am paralyzed to a wheel chair for the rest of my life? Will my kids take care of me?"

I started tiring of the drama I was creating for myself and started making a plan. I figured if I took some Ibuprofen I'd be able to let it kick in, get out of bed and still make our trip down to Salt Lake, so I did what any strong woman would do.... I yelled for Brian, in a quiet manner of course, as to not waken the children. That would have only made matters worse. I tried again.... no response. I tried again, this time I gave him a little more time to wake up and realize that yes, I was indeed yelling to him in the middle of the night. Finally, I gave up and beat on the wall. Okay, it wasn't a beat, more like a desperate rapping as best as I could since raising my arm also caused me great pain. At last, he awoke and came to my call. I explained the dire situation and asked him what I should do.
    Of course he had no idea. I'm sure he didn't even really know what was going on, so I asked him to get me some drugs, some heavy Ibuprofen. I took it and eagerly awaited a great change which I was sure was going to happen and yet, as 40 minutes passed, my situation remained the same. Now at a complete loss as to what to do, I called on Brian to help me up. A few failed attempts due to pain I then realized he would have to hold my head for me and I would try again. This was not an easy task. As I walked, he was walking backwards holding my head up for me. Deciding it was a bad idea, I got back in the bed and waited until the morning chaos subsided and then we tried to figure out what to do. I knew it wasn't a muscle issue from sleeping on it bad, it was a pain I had never felt before. We called a chiropractor and he wasn't in and then we were trying to figure out the best decision financially. Chiropractor's aren't covered, but then going to a doctor and getting xrays and whatnot add up and we have to hit our deductible first, so it wasn't a toss up and we decided to try the instacare.
   A neighbor was nice enough to offer to watch all our kids while we went in. I had to hold my head while we walked in there and I'm sure people were thinking that was pretty funny looking. It was.... I saw it. So we met with the doctor, he gave me a shot which I figured wasn't going to do anything since it was basically just a large dose of Ibuprofen and that hadn't worked yet. Then they wanted to get xrays. The gal was having me do all kinds of angles and then she wanted one where I tipped my head backwards and I told her that was going to be pretty hard to do since that's what caused the most pain. I did it once and she said we had to do it again and after that second time I got this immediate rush that I was going to throw up. I told her and she grabbed a trash can. Then I thought I was going to fall over. I was so dizzy and hot and as I was sitting there I just got so weak and nearly fell over. They were starting to get a little worried and so Brian just lifted me up and put me on the table because they were afraid I was going to fall over. Of course all of this was killing my neck. They got me on the table, called in the doctor and then all of the sudden, aside from being extremely hot, my hands started getting really stiff and tightening in contorted positions. I was telling them and having them pull my fingers apart to try and relieve the tightness. Then my chin and throat started getting tight and I was starting to freak out that maybe I wasn't going to be able to breathe. The doctor was at a loss at what was going on, so they called an ambulance and rushed me over to the hospital. I was freaking out 'cause the doctor didn't know what was going on, so then my thoughts of dying were flooding in again with no calming words from him. Idiot. And let me just say that an ambulance ride is so uncomfortable!!! Well, for someone with neck pain or if they had anything broken. It was so rough and bumpy. I would have rather Brian took me in his car! So already long story shortened, I got to the hospital and they were concerned about my heart rate. It was around 39 BPM  for about an hour, so I had an EKG and some blood work done and they finally just gave me some medicine to get it pumping faster. It didn't work on round one, but after round 2 it did. I was nervous about having it wondering if I was going to have some sort of other reaction. After several hours there was still nothing done about my neck. They figure I had something called a vasovagal attack        happen when I tilted my head back. They were thinking it was most likely a pinched nerve although it didn't have all the signs of one, but that was the best they could do without an MRI or CAT scan, so we left no better off and actually worse off from all the expenses we just incurred. OH well. All is good for the most part. I'm feeling better and Brian was great doing everything for 4 days and letting me recover. So now we just have all the wonderful bills to look forward to!

5 months old

We took the 5 month old pictures and I really wanted a naked bum one. However, we waited almost too long. Most of the pictures were of her getting ready to crawl or sit on her side or roll over. She did NOT want to sit still, but I think we got a few. Good thing we didn't wait to do this 'til next month! Love this nugget!

Picture Sunday

Results of late night and 7:00 A.M. meeting:

Results of no tv or computer on Sunday:


                                                                      The Bride

The Happy Couple

                                                The Guests

                                                       
                                                                      The Sealer 

Afterwards I finally got some pictures of Elizabeth in her baptism dress (thanks to WeeMama for putting in the sleeves). Such a beautiful girl! She let me take pictures until satisfied, okay, not really, until she said her mouth hurt too much. Love this girl!



The Big Man is 4!

Well yesterday was Coop's 4th birthday. We started off the morning with a haircut. Definitely not fun for him. This was his before picture, which actually, I think his hair looks good, but it won't stay. I gel it and it's all crazy in like 10 minutes. I could have trimmed the sides and kept it long, but I love me a boy or man with a new clean short haircut. Well, only one man. :)

See..... so much better right? Well, of course after the haircut we had to take his 4 year old pictures. Again, not very fun for him, but he endured it well and with a sometimes semi smile. It took some work. For lunch we met up with Brian and took him to play at Chick-fil-A. That he enjoyed. We were there for about and hour and his favorite thing was getting the fruit punch. I hardly ever buy soda pop, so he was really excited to get some.

We bought a the Megamind movie at Sam's club with some of his birthday money from Grandma and GranChud, so we came home and he watched that. He told me he wanted pancakes for breakfast, but he didn't eat any and I'm thinking he thought pancakes were his birthday cake. His cake was super easy for me this year. He wanted Batman and so I went for easy. I'm sure I could have gone more elaborate, but no time or patience for it right now.

After dinner we played some BINGO and the kids really had fun with that. I was trying to make it more of a birthday party for Cooper, but BINGO was as far as we got and he seemed pleased enough. Then we opened his presents, watched his birthday video and then had cake. All in all I think it was a good day for him. We went to bed and read his new Superhero Squad book. He was pretty interested in all the heroes and that was fun to see. Here are a few more from our "photoshoot". Isn't he so handsome?!

Yikes!

This girl wants to crawl! She was rolling over at 3 months and 1 week. She may be crawling before she hits 5 months. Time to keep the floors clean already?!!! Great!

I hate February!!!

I know... it's not a very uplifting title, but I do hate February! It's cold, dreary, and just blah. I'm sick of being inside, I need a vacation somewhere warm and sunny, but looks like that ain't gonna happen, so we're stuck trying to entertain ourselves. At least there were 2 sunny warm days in a row! The girls wanted to paint their faces so I gave them the paint and told them to have at it. Caroline painted Elizabeth a rainbow princess

and Elizabeth painted Caroline an ice cream sundae. I thought it was pretty funny. They only kept them on for less than an hour this time, but it entertained for about 20 minutes.

Bella wanted a heart. That was easy enough.

I told her to make a happy face and this is what I got. I love it! I wish it would have been in focus. So cute.

I tried to think of something to do with Caroline so we made a felt headband. She loved it and so did Liz,

so the next day she asked if she could have 2 friends (a rare occasion) come over and all make their own. They seemed to have fun doing that.

Today, President's Day, we got out and went sledding. We haven't done much outdoor play this year. I'd love to send them outside, but we just can't seem to make that a happy place, so we haven't done much. It was fun to do today for a little bit.

These 2 could have stayed longer, but the little ones were done.

I got Charlotte all bundled up and she ended up falling asleep before we got in the car, so she stayed in there and ended up sleeping 3 hours. That doesn't happen too often, and funny enough, when it does, she's usually bundled up in her car seat.

After that, we started a paint project which we don't have pictures for yet. Watch for those to come! And there ya have February in a nutshell!

Great to be 8!

We had a great weekend this past weekend. Elizabeth was baptized on Saturday, February5th, by Brian. The day started out with a trip to some wedding shops to find the perfect dress for my sister Caroline. We were not disappointed as we walked away with several possibilities. However, we are shopping again this weekend, so no purchases were made. After a few hours of that we rushed home to eat lunch and get ready for the baptism.

Here are a few pictures before the baptism with Brian and Elizabeth is their jumpers.

We had all my family here but missed having any of Brian's here. Elizabeth was baptized by Brian and confirmed by Bri, Papa John, Uncle Paul, (soon to be Uncle) Jayde, Brother Oliver and some other guy I don't even know. :) Her session she was baptized with 2 other girls, Brynlee and Olivia, from her school class. I was surprised to see their school teacher there. Not something that I think normally happens.

It was such a wonderful experience and a spiritual one too. We are so proud of Elizabeth and she looked so beautiful. What a sweet daughter we were blessed with! So crazy that she's already old enough to be baptized but so wonderful too. 

 I've been having fun taking pictures of Charlotte lately, trying to get a good smile and just having fun with it. Today she turned 4 months old. She's so much fun. She started rolling over at just after 3 months. She's pretty strong. I'm pretty sure she's teething too 'cause she is slobbery and always trying to gnaw on her hands or someone's face! Love this nugget!

Also need to mention that Caroline lost her first top tooth. It is so funny! She was thrilled about it and now we don't have to worry that she's going to swallow it! One more tooth down!

Elizabeth snagged this picture. We're going to have to work on camera to person distance. Caroline's face isn't that odd looking. :)

Superhero to the rescue!

Last week a friend gave us a bunch of her boys dress ups. Cooper was in heaven. He actually doesn't even really have any "dress ups", so he was so excited.

and so was Bella.....

                                                   and so were Elizabeth and Caroline.

It was so funny to see the girls getting into all the boys dress ups too. They played for hours switching them back and forth. Cooper wanted to sleep in the Spiderman one. The next morning he woke up, walked to the mirror and flexed. I was laughing at this oh so comical sight! And this one is just because I thought Bella looked so pretty.