Fibromyalgia Walk

The National Fibromyalgia Association 5 Mile Walk was in Logan in early May.

I didn't think I would be able to walk all 5 miles, so I signed us up to help instead.

We helped pass out shirts and lunches. But in the meantime, during the walk, they didn't need our help for much. So, we walked for a little bit before coming back to help again. Emma, Laura, and Becca walked about three miles. Tyler walked about four of the miles. Andrew and Lee walked all five miles!

 (just too cute to not include)

Walk to CURE FM stands for Campaign for Understanding, Research, and Education of Fibromyalgia.

Next year, I'll spread the word about the walk before hand, so you can sign up to walk with us. My goal is to walk all 5 miles! They only had about fifty people participate this year. This walk is still new enough that they don't have a large support base, yet.

Mom, Mother, Mama

I got some cute pictures and poems for Mother's Day.

This watercolor is from Tyler. The poem on the back says:

Becca

Lover of people, foods, and books

Who enjoys parks, games, and helping

Who fears spiders, snakes, and lions

Born in the United States

Who wants to travel to Hawaii

Mom

Love, Tyler Crookston

 This one is from Andrew. The poem reads:

My Mom

By Andrew Crookston

My mom has brown eyes. I call her "mom".

She looks good and she smells like flowers.

Her hair is straight and brown and her hands are hot.

She helps me work on my books.

She likes to fold laundry.

We like to play monopoly together.

She is special because she smells good.

My mom makes me feel happy.

She loves me because I love her.

I love her because she is cute.

Happy Mother's Day 2011!

I also got a coupon from Andrew that is "good for one day of not talking about jet packs". When he gave it to me, he said I couldn't use it that day because he already talked about them.

I got cards from Emma and Laura too, but they destroyed them before I could take pictures.

Dandelions as Flowers

While I support his choice to attack the yard dandelions, I do need to make it clear that Lee did all the work. My way of taking care of dandelions is by taking pictures of them with kids.

Really, I was doing "Prize Patrol" for the fundraiser at Woodruff Elementary School while Lee was doing the yard work. So he really should get all the credit.

P.S. We also bought a kill-the-dandelions-and-not-the lawn-spray, so all of his hard work won't go to waste.

These pictures were taken in our old backyard two years ago. May 2009

Dandelions Beware

I had the day off from work and had a whole list of things to do. One of them was yard work. I had only planned mowing the lawn and calling it good enough, but then I started digging and pulling up dandelions before I started mowing. The problem was that I had started and couldn't leave the rest of the lawn. I had no idea that we had so many in our yard. Four hours, a sunburn, and a full trash can later our yard is almost dandelion free...I noticed a couple that I had missed when I started mowing. I didn't get any of the other things that I really wanted to get done. Maybe I'll get to those later.

May the 4th be with you!!

Andrew loves Star Wars!! And jet packs! (That might be an understatement!)

We even made a jet pack for his show and teach day at school. He gave three clues hoping that his class would not be able to guess what he brought. His clues were: 1. My family helped me make it. 2. It looks like it has fire on it. (Well at least that is what the balloons on the bottom are supposed to look like.) 3. I can use it in any sentence. (In his Kindergarten class they have a word of the day and a book where they write a sentence with that word in it. He can always make jet pack fit into a sentence with the word of the day. Mrs. Kelly said he has even got other kids writing about jet packs too.) His class loved it!
Just in case you didn't know in Star Wars Jango Fett, Boba Fett, some clones, and some droids have jet packs.

His first show and teach was his Pine Wood derby car. It also looks like a jet pack, he drew the plan himself.

One day he asked me if he could paint. I said he could and got out the watercolor paints for him. Later when I came back into the room, I thought my answer to "Can I paint?" should be, "Yes, you can! Not only will I allow you to paint, but you can do a great job."

Here We Go Again!

Emma had an appointment on Friday with her ENT. He scheduled her for surgery for this morning. We farmed out the other kids (thanks everybody!) and got to Ogden just before 8am. She had her fourth set of tubes put in her ears. According to the doctor we are "frequent fliers" there. Emma's response to the question,  "how are you?" was cute, she said, "Awesome!" She did great and is doing well. Today we kept her happy until it was her turn by taking pictures. Here are a few of them.

 Getting her bracelet with her name on it and her new stuffed Surgical Center animal, a monkey.

 She answered her pain scale with a picture of a smiley face. Then she drew one. And added a tongue.

 She stayed in her pajamas all day, because she thought that was special.

 She was being silly in the wagon and at the end of the hall the anesthesiologist asked her how old she was as she disappeared around the corner without even realizing it, because she was deep in conversation. The doctor later told us that when she got into the surgical room, she got out of the wagon and climbed up on the the table without being told to. She knows the drill!

Waiting in the recovery room for the anesthesia to wear off. The Motrin had also kicked in. (And mom packed some cool things in her bag.)

We saw it coming. She is involved in two different speech programs and had been doing great. Lately she has been signing way more. Sign was her communication for long enough that it is still often present during daily life. It is still helpful to decipher between words that sound similar (and the more we use sign, the more Laura picks up too). But I'm talking about way more. Like not hardly talking and trying to get away with only signing! The amount of signing she is doing is a huge indicator to me of how her ears are doing.

About two months ago, she had a tympanogram test done, it "draws a picture" of the pressure in the ear canal. It normally should look like a mountain. Unless tubes are in place, then it should flat line because there is no pressure. This particular time the test did make a small peak, which told me she had grown out her tubes and so I scheduled an appointment for her ears to be cleaned. A few weeks later when the ear doctor (the E part of ENT) cleaned out all the wax and old tubes he said he wanted a hearing test done again. By then she was plenty upset (and Laura's ears were cleaned out that same visit, and she was done being there too), so we scheduled to come back the next week. For that visit the tympanograms were a little lower and the hearing test done in the sound booth was way below normal range. Neither ear was good, but the right ear was worse than the left. When the doctor checked her ears she had another infection. That day the doctor gave her the strongest antibiotic she has ever been on (and she has been on more than her fair share). Another two weeks later we did a follow up tympanogram to find the left ear low and the right ear with a flat line- without tubes in that is not a good thing. The speech program she is in at USU has their grad students do this tympanogram test each semester for the experience. I got it approved to do this follow up at the University, so we didn't have to go down to Ogden. So, the grad student is thinking she is doing the test wrong and keeps retrying it. She eventually went and got one of the Audiologist professors and he did it a few times too. Then he asked me about her history and after hearing a very abbreviated version of what she has been through, he accepted the flat line as a true result of so much fluid that the ear drum can't move to send back a pressure reading (no movement also means no hearing). Now, because of this test, I know the medicine didn't clear out the fluid in her ear, so I scheduled another appointment with the ENT, which takes us to last Friday.
Today he cleaned out all the yucky liquid from the infection and old scabs from the healing process of the third tubes. He really hopes this could be her last set. (If not the next set takes two separate surgeries.)
 
She was already more talkative and happy today! We went to visit Lee's grandpa tonight. She still had her pajamas on, so I asked her to tell great grandpa about where she went. She told him about going to Baby Animal days for her class field trip two weeks ago. She wasn't really phased by the surgery.

Moab Mountain Biking Trip

Last week during the kids' spring break. Me and Arik went to Moab to break in my Christmas Present, which was a practically brand new Cannondale mountain bike. I say practically brand new, because I got it from KSL, the guy bought it new and rode it 12 times around the block and sold it for less than half of what he paid for it. So, while Becca and the kids were sick and having to deal with snow, I was camping and riding in Moab. It was a blast.

Arik and I got down to Moab Wednesday afternoon, set up camp at King's Bottom Campsite along Kane Creek Road and headed for the Moab Brand trails. We started with the Bar M, then did the Bar B Loop, the Rockin' A, Circle O, and finished on the Bar M for a total of 12.5 miles. I fell on the Bar B, Arik was in front and I was following too close and then I couldn't unclip my shoes from the pedals. One of the hazards of having clip-less pedals, I didn't get hurt too badly, just bruised my knee. This was the first ride of the season for both of us. Well, a few weeks ago I went on a ride around Logan with John and Ricky, but this was the first to go off-roading.




Thursday, we headed to the Klondike Bluffs Trail Head, we did a single track Baby Steps. Don't let the name fool you it was about 14 miles long, with lots of climbing and a couple technical spots, with a good section of downhill. It was really fun. Klondike Bluffs and Baby steps share a portion of the trail. Arik really wanted some pictures of the dinosaur tracks for his girls. I told him that it was a ways up there, but let's do it. So we headed up Klondike Bluffs trail. After we got to the tracks, I suggested that since we were so close to the top, which we really weren't, we should head to the end of the trail. Then we hiked into the Arches National Park. It was windy. By the time we were finished for the day, we did 22.75 miles.




















Friday, we decided to go with something easy. We tackled Poison Spider Mesa. Maybe if you were in a jeep, it would have been easy. It was steep, and rocky, with lengthy sand traps that sucked the life out of our legs just pushing our bikes through. It was strenuous to say the least. It probably didn't help that the night before we didn't sleep much due to the howling wind, beating our tent all night long. It sounded like a jet engine coming down the canyon and when it hit the tent, the tent would flatten and slap our heads a bunch of times before the next gust would hit. And I admit it, I was tired from the previous rides, but we had fun and made it all the way to the edge and back. We didn't do the Portal Trail, which heads down the cliff side of the mesa. It was still very windy and we were playing it safe, but Arik did try to ride down a sand dune. We rode 15.5 miles.




















Saturday, we packed up our camp and headed home, with a short stop at Bartlett Wash around 4 miles round trip. Still windy, several times I was blown over by unexpected cross winds. I saw this sign that I had to take a picture of for Andrew. If you haven't guessed he loves Star Wars. Overall it was awesome and I'm glad that Arik and I could go to Moab. When I got home Saturday evening, Tyler just about burst into tears, because spring break was over and he didn't get to do anything fun with everyone getting sick with the flu and then all the snow. It wasn't the week off that he wanted. I felt real sorry for him and gave him a hug.


Becca made us shirts for our ride. It's a cool tradition for some of the big group rides that I go on. Here's this years edition. We ironed it on to forest green t-shirts. Thanks, Becca.