Construction Update

I don't have much time but I feel bad when I don't keep everyone updated.  The house is almost done!  All the electrical and plumbing are finished.  We finally have running water!  Hooray!  We started the moving in process yesterday.  Only 2 Suburban loads by me, and a truck load by Adam and Mark (Thank Mark!) but it was still a start.  I am hoping to get lots more done today.  I feel like I need a giant shot of adrenaline to get it all done and make this final push.  (It would be SOOO nice if I could just wiggle my nose and wish it all from one house to other like on "I Dream of Jeannie"....sigh)  I will try to take some pictures before we head to Portland since I will have lots of time to sit and find something to do.  Then I can make a virtual tour for all of you.  Wouldn't that be cool??  Adam isn't complaining about how he feels but he will tell me when I ask that he's not feeling great.  Mostly he just tells me he has "brain pain".  I know surgery isn't going to feel great but I am guessing he'll feel so much relief after having that pressure removed, at least I hope so!  Our ward asked everyone to fast for him this Sunday so if anyone would like to join in, we could certainly use your faith and prayers.  Thank you to everyone who is STILL sacrificing so much time and energy to help us, especially my mother in law.  She has been so great at helping with the kids, helping us stay fed, and giving us a few minutes of normalcy.  Also, a huge thank you to the local businesses who have given us checks to help with expenses.  I cried so hard I lost a contact when I opened my mail the other day.  You are angels.  I can't believe the blessing of living in a small town.  The best people in the world live here.

Portland - Take 1

Let me just start by saying that I am exhausted. We were gone for 48 hours and spent roughly half of them driving.

- We rented a car to go, hoping for something more economical than my lovely Suburban. We ended up with a Nissan Rogue. It got 26 miles to the gallon. I guess not everyone's idea of 'economy car' is the same. (It was still better than the 'burb I suppose but I have gotten up to 24 mpg with it so only a slight trade up in my opinion.) We left Fairfield shortly after 5 a.m. on Thursday morning.

-You know we got an early start on the day when Adam saw the first sign for the $50,000 Silver Dollar Bar and asked if I wanted to stop there for lunch so I could walk around for a while, then looked at the clock and realized it was just after 10 a.m. so lunch might not be appropriate yet. :)

-Scariest bathroom award goes to the Flying J at the junction of US-395 and Highway 26 in Eastern Washington. After we got back in the car, Adam said "Are we on an Indian Reservation and don't know it????"

-I may or may not have had to pee every 100 miles. Traveling with a pregnant woman is possibly worse than with a child.

-The tree farm west of Umatilla is awesome.

-The Umatilla Army Depot is perplexing. It goes on for miles.

-Hydroelectric dams on the Columbia make dams in Montana look pathetic.

-The Columbia River Gorge = breathtaking.

-Arriving in Portland at 5:15 p.m. on a Thursday = not awesome rush hour traffic. Staying in a hotel right in downtown Portland = you get out of it really soon.

-Downtown Portland is a maze of one way streets. If you're really lucky, the gps will constantly tell you to turn the wrong way down them, making you 15 minutes late for your appointment with the neurosurgeon.

-Visiting the Portland Temple and OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) is a great way to spend your morning. OMSI sounds really grown-up. OMSI really is more kid oriented. It should come with a warning label.

-Being seen at the clinic attached to a medical school means you will be seen by 15 people during your visit there. Our medical student was awkward. Her resident was down to business. The 'real' neurosurgeon was fantastic - said he had been waiting for Adam. (Nice to know he's not just a name on the paper but maybe I should be concerned that he made that much of an impression?) We also saw a nurse and the surgery scheduler then got sent down to the pre-operative medicine clinic where we saw a CNA, had bloodwork done, and then met with a nurse practitioner who explained everything about the surgery and surgical prep we needed to do. In all, I think we were at the clinic for 2.5 hours.

-Surgery is scheduled for the 26th. They said the prognosis is very good and that where the tumor is they won't even have to touch the brain.

-The drive home was relatively uneventful. I drove through a good chunk of Washington, all of Idaho and into Montana while Adam slept. I listened to 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen which kept me thoroughly entertained and bored Adam to sleep.

-We finally got home at 5 a.m. Now I get to rest up to do it again in two weeks.

Cause we weren't busy enough already....

Some of you know by now that Adam has been having some health problems. Several weeks ago he started complaining about bad pain in his ear and a headache so he went to the doctor, they diagnosed an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics. A couple days later the pain was so bad that he couldn't sleep and then his tongue started going numb. He went to the ER one night after a call-in and they told him that they weren't sure but that they thought it was the onset of Bell's Palsy. (Which I, for the record, thought was crap because Bell's Palsy is really rapid onset and causes facial paralysis, and he didn't have any problems except his tongue.) They prescribed the stuff for Bell's Palsy but told him not to fill them, just follow up with his regular doctor. So, off we went the next day to see his regular MD. He looked at Adam and had him do all these motor control tests, which he passed, and said that he didn't think it was Bell's Palsy but that the ear infection could be pushing on his nerve so he told him to take a steroid for 5 days to reduce the swelling and see how it went. Adam did feel better for the few days he was on the steroid but as soon as he stopped taking it, the headache came back while the tongue numbness never went away. The following Monday I woke up at 5 a.m. because the bed was shaking and looked over to see Adam having a seizure. It lasted for a minute or so and then immediately after, he woke up and asked me why I looked so upset. When I told him he'd just had a seizure, he informed me that I was full of crap and that it was just a bad dream. He left to work on the house later that morning and when I got to his mom's house, I went to talk to his sister Jodie, who is a nurse, about what I had seen that morning. She confirmed my suspicion that it was a seizure and then we all pretty much proceeded to freak out from there. Jodie's husband Mike and a man from church came out to give Adam a priesthood blessing. In it, Adam was told that he was given this trial to help him remember that he didn't have to do it all on his own, that he needed to remember to rely on his friends and family and also on Heavenly Father, that he also needed to trust the medical professionals, and in the end was promised that through his faith he would be made whole. (Adam says it's the first blessing he's ever had where he felt like the Lord was chewing him out.) We left afterward and went to see his regular MD, who sent us immediately to the ER where we sat for 6 hours. We were lucky enough to go during an afternoon when there were two serious head-on collisions so we were relatively low priority. He finally had a CT scan, which the doctor said was clear of brain tumors or bleeding on the brain and that we could go but that Adam needed to follow up with a neurologist because they still couldn't explain why he'd had the seizure. He went the neurologist two days later and and an EEG and MRI were ordered, one the next week and one the week after that. (FYI, sitting in the MRI waiting room for 45 minutes with 3 kids is enough to drive anyone mad.) A week ago, which was the afternoon after the MRI, the neurologist called Adam with his results. He has a benign brain tumor. It is small and not life threatening but that it needs to come out before it does any more damage but we probably have about 30 days. Also, that the neurosurgeons here won't do the surgery so we need to go to Portland or Seattle. When Adam came to tell me, I was painting cabinets in the garage and I could see that he was upset (totally unlike him for those that don't know him). When he told me, we both cried. I had a million questions that he couldn't answer so he called the neurologist back and they scheduled us an appointment for Monday, August 29th to answer any questions. (Adam's nurse sisters are not impressed that the doctor just called us with that news and left it at that. Didn't tell us location, what kind of tumor or anything.) Then I told him that we needed to go tell his mother. After that we basically knew that our life had to move into fast forward because we needed to finish the house and close on the loan before he had surgery. It has been a miracle. Last Tuesday the drywall crew was texturing. Today it has been primed and painted. 3/4 of the flooring is in. All cabinets are in. Probably 2/3 of the trim is done. All the windows are cased. 90% of the doors are hung. Some light fixtures are in. The trench for the water line is dug. Septic will be finished today or tomorrow. The fireplace has been tiled. It is astonishing to see the sacrifices people are making for us. All of Adam's family that is local has basically lived out there working. My parents, sister and brother and their spouses and kids were here all weekend. Our friends have spent countless hours. People have brought in meals, helped clean my little rental house, and done all my laundry. Some friends of my sister came all the way from Billings for the weekend when they heard the news, even though they had only met me once. They knew there was a need so they came. The biggest miracle of it is that the husband does floors for a living and they showed up exactly when we needed someone to help install a bunch of flooring. We feel so blessed. We had our Q & A with the neurologist yesterday. While he couldn't answer a lot of our questions, because they were about the surgery, he did let us know that it is a trigeminal schwannoma, meaning that it's a tumor of the covering on the nerve that controls Adam's tongue. The nerve has been damaged so he may always have the problems with his tongue. It is also very uncommon so that's why they are sending us to Portland. There is a surgeon there that specializes in tumors in this area of the brain and he does about 400 of them a year. We have to be in Portland next week for our inital consult and then we will schedule the surgery. I feel like he's going to be in very good hands. And we are lucky that is minimally invasive as far as brain surgery goes and that the recovery time is not long. Thanks to everyone who is doing so much for us and I will try to keep you posted!

The stork?

So expecting another little one is fodder for a lot of conversations with my kids. They are finally at an age where they realize that babies don't just magically show up (dang it...) so they've been asking lots of questions. On the way home last night, Paige asked how in the world the baby comes out your butt. I tried not to laugh and then gently explained that they don't come out of your butt. Well, then they wanted to know how it worked so I gave them a very brief but honest explanation of labor and delivery. Sarah piped up from the back and told me that her tummy is fat but it doesn't have a baby in it. Porter told me that he has to grow up and find a girl so he can get married and have babies. Paige chimed in that that is just how it works... you grow up, find someone to marry, and then a couple years later you are pregnant. Porter then responded that his wife would have to have the baby because boys can't. Paige replied, "No, boys can't have babies.....That's just unnatural!!"

Oh they crack me up!

Construction Update

I don't really have any pictures to show you, because honestly, wiring doesn't make a house look that different. There is insulation now and that is super exciting. It's already so much cooler in the house and only the walls are insulated. I can't wait to see how awesome it is once the attic is insulated too! The sheetrockers start Monday. I'm so excited!!!! It's going to look like a real house!! They expect it to take them 3 days to hang all the sheetrock and 5-6 days to mud, tape and texture.

My latest dilemma is picking out a paint color. I am discovering that it is a lot harder to pick a paint color when the room basically doesn't exist. How in the world am I supposed to figure out how to coordinate everything when it's not there? (If you have suggestions, I am willing to listen. The floors will be brown (country pine vinyl plank), the cabinets are Rustic Alder in a toffee colored stain with chocolate glaze, and the countertops/wood stove base will be tile that is mostly a medium gray with veins of white and occasional splotches of a rust color. Oh, and the trim and doors are knotty alder too.) I am leaning toward something light because I don't want the room to be oppressive.

I am hoping to go buy the laundry/mud room cabinets on Monday so that my friends and I can paint, distress, and stain them while the sheetrockers are working. Once the sheetrockers are done, then it becomes my responsibility to do all the painting. (Wish me luck...)

Adam has been having some health problems lately. We know it's nothing life threatening now, but still nothing conclusive. He has a couple more tests in the next weeks so any extra prayers would be really appreciated. I think it's mostly from lack of sleep and tons of stress. When I asked him if he was feeling more stressed than usual, his response was "No. It's totally normal to be on-call all the time, not sleeping, building a house, and providing for a wife and four kids."

So do you remember the story about the little boy who was throwing the star fish back in the ocean? And the man came along and asked him why he was doing it, because he couldn't save all of them. The little boy replied, "It mattered to that one." I have been thinking about that this week. We had a meeting (the YW presidency) with the Bishopric last Sunday. The YW president was sharing a concern she had about taking an inactive girl to a huge bi-stake activity this coming weekend. We had a general concern about taking her to something so large with so many people in another town and trying to keep track of her. The bishop's response was this: For his son, whether or not he went to the activity was no big deal. He was going to be at church on Sunday no matter what. One activity wasn't going to make or break his testimony. But, with this girl, this activity may be just what she needs to have a good experience and start a foundation of a testimony. It would be worth whatever sacrifice that we might need to make to help that girl. Because it matters to that one. He is a very wise man.

On a parting note, something funny. My kids have been on a roll lately. They were picking up DVDs the other day, when one of them grabbed Pinnochio. One of the older kids said, "Oh, this movie is so funny!" Then Sarah piped up and said "That whale is NOT funny!!!!" :)

Kid Funnies

While watching the 1967 Spiderman on Netflix:
Porter: Mom, see that guy, he's a villain. Know what's a villain?
Me: Yep, a bad guy.
Porter: Yep, a guy who doesn't listen to Jesus.

While 'reading' a Care Bears picture book:
Sarah: Mom, what bears eat?
Me: Love
Sarah: NO, SHERBERT!!!!!

While showing me a dead bug:
Sarah: Where's the bugga's mommy??
Me: I don't know. Where's your mama?
Sarah: Right dere (there with a d as she points to me)
Me: Are you sure?
Sarah: Positoony!

While loading up in the car, Sarah buckled her two baby dolls in the seat next to her, then proceeded to have the following conversation:
Sarah, as the baby doll: Thank you mommy.
Sarah, as the mommy: You're welcome honey.
Sarah, as the doll: I love you mommy.
Sarah, as the mommy: I love you too honey. (Kisses doll's forehead)

The one with the lobster

I have to admit that I am not the world's biggest "Friends" fan, though I did watch some back in the day. I am really just not one who gets obsessive about TV shows (unless it's a great season of Dancing with the Stars.... and even then it's usually watching on Hulu when I get around to it).

Back when I was in college, though, "Friends" was the thing. My roommates used to watch the re-runs that came on nightly after the evening news. (I wonder now if it was a way a living vicariously through the characters because our apartment had particularly sorry dating lives.... ) I always found it hilarious that each episode of Friends is titled "The one where....(fill in the blank) " because that's exactly how people talk about TV episodes.

My favorite episode of "Friends" happens to be the one with the lobster. I'm not exactly sure that's the official episode name and I don't remember the complete plot, even. It's my favorite because one of my roommates loved it so so so much. At one point in the episode, Phoebe is discussing with Ross or Rachel why the two of them can't ever seem to stay apart, and Phoebe in her ever-quirky way explains about lobsters mating for life and then says that they can't stay apart because "He's her lobster." This one roommate would quote that all the time and make little lobster claws out of her hands, join them together, and then motion like they were walking away together, claw in claw. Hilarious.

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing. I just remembered it this morning and felt compelled to share. :)