PHRASE OF THE WEEK

I decided I would start a PHRASE OF THE WEEK post. Every week I'll post a phrase that Shaun and I use, That comes up during the week.
Shaun and I have a lot of jokes and phrases we use. We seem to always be coming up with new words or phrases.
This week are new phrase is "Mommy Crush." Shaun came up with this one. He says that Max has a Mommy crush. I LOVE IT!! I think it's so cute.
I love that Max has a Mommy Crush. It makes me feel appreciated. :) I love that he gets so excited to see me and wants to be with me. MOMMY CRUSH!! Too funny!! It also seems to work out because I have a baby crush. :)

A service project

This is a picture of my beautiful niece Elle. She was born with a cleft palate. The poor thing has been through a lot in her short life. She has a lot of surgeries ahead of her.

48 hours after she was born she had to have a sleep study done. My sister in law Amy went home to shower and get some much needed rest. When she came back to the hospital (Primary children's medical center in Utah) She found the nurses had bathed baby Elle and put this cute blue bow on her head.

Upon asking about the bow she found out that the bows are donated by a family who was grieving the loss of their little one. This really touched me as it did my sister in law Amy. That little bow had a lot of meaning behind it. She made a request on her blog to help make and donate the bows to the hospital.

I'm all over doing this. If you would like to get together and make the bows with me. I would love that! Especially, because I'm not the best bow maker. :) I could use some help.

I want to come up with an idea for little baby boys too! I'm going to be brain storming. Give me any ideas if you have some. That's my new goal.

You could do this for a church activity or with your family. Then send them to:

Primary Children's Medical Center

Attention: Marie Hendrikson

Salt Lake City, UT 84158-0249

Or you could add some special touches to your own local children's hospital. I love the idea. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling! Let's honor that grieving family and all grieving families who have children born with complications. :)

Even when I had Max and he had to be taken from my room and stay in the nursery because of his jaundice. It broke my heart! It was really emotional for me. I wanted my baby to stay with me. I can't even imagine the pain or heartache some people have to go through with their little precious angels.

Who has some ribbon? Let's get started!

Revenge of the Gallbladder

When I was pregnant with Max. I would get pains in my upper stomach below the breast. Sometimes it would radiate into my back, Or the left side. I thought it was because Max was always kicking me in that area.
After I had Max I continued to have pain. Sometimes I would wake up at night and be in a lot of pain. I really needed to go to the doctor and never did. Sometimes, us moms never seem to take care of ourselves. Please go to the doctor if you're having these kinds pains. Or you could have the terrible experience I had.
Monday night, November 9th at about 10:00pm I started having the most excruciating pain. I couldn't even breath. It was terrible! I told Shaun he needed to take me to the emergency room. You think if your going to be taken to the emergency in this much pain that your going to be helped.
I was wrong! I think I lost faith a little bit in humanity that night. It was an awful experience. Where is the CARE in Health care? They could see I was in so much pain and it was like they were robots. Programed to ask you the questions and then put you to the side until someone can get a moment to see you. I could barely answer the questions. The pain was so INTENSE! The nurse just stared at her computer and said in a rude tone, " I can't hear you." ARE YOU SERIOUS!! The people at the front desk, The nurse, The doctor, All of them thought it was my gallbladder. It still took forever to get the care I needed. Shaun got very heated a couple of times with them. It was awful!! He could see I was in so much pain and no one seemed to CARE.
It took forever for them to finally give me something for the pain. (Morphine and Toradol)
I realize they are dealing with a lot and see a lot of horrible things. I'm still a human bean. We cannot become so desensitized that we lose all compassion.
Even after they did the ultrasound and saw that it was my Gallbladder. They stuck me back in a waiting room, heavily drugged and extremely exhausted. To sit and wait in a chair. NO BED.
They finally gave me a bed to lie down in. Then I had to wait some more. We finally got to go home with a diagnosis of Gallstones. They gave me a prescription for pain meds and told me to follow up with a surgeon to have my gallbladder taken out. We got home at 4:00am.
I just want to forget the whole ordeal. It really was a HORRIBLE experience. The system needs work! AND government wants to take over Health Care? BAD IDEA!!! It would be even worse.
Thank you to Lindsey, Our neighbor, For taking care of Max for the night.
When we called the surgeon. She couldn't see us until next Tuesday. She would be in surgery all week. I ended up calling the doctors office Thursday because the area was still having pain even with the pain medications. The doctor said she would see me in between surgery. Her office called me when she was done with surgery. We hustled down to meet her before she had to go back into surgery. I was so THANKFUL for doctor Butler.
She said the stones were probably blocking the way of the bile and it's really inflamed. She said she would see if she could schedule to take it out the next day! When she got back to the hospital she would look up my ultrasound and give me a call if she could take my Gallbladder out.
She called us back and we were scheduled for surgery at 11:00am the next day! We needed to be at the hospital at 9:00am. I'm so thankful we were able to schedule the surgery so soon. I needed to get back to normal and take care of Max. No more revenge of the Gallbladder.
When I came out of surgery I felt really good. I felt better then I've ever felt coming out of surgery. I've been recovering. Thanks to pain meds. Which I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with. I'm now fine with out them. I hate recovering. I'm not a patient person about it.
I love feeling back to normal.

***When I was in the emergency room in the worst pain. A guy comes in and wants to have his cast taken off his leg. He travels around and it was time for it to be taken off. That's part of the problem! You don't go to the emergency room for something as stupid as that!! I was beyond annoyed about it!***

The BIGGEST loser

I'm the BIGGEST loser! I hope. Why would I possibly want to be the BIGGEST loser? Because I'm in a competition with some friends to see who can lose the most weight.
This is the push I need to get myself healthier and in shape. There is 7 of us in the competition. We started the competition Monday, November 9th. We weighed in on a wii fit and will continue to weigh in each week on Monday. The competition will last 13 weeks. It's based on the % of weight losed.
I'm so excited to get going! Because of my Gallbladder I haven't been able to get out and work out. The first week I lost 3.3 pounds. Awesome! Tomorrow we weigh in and I'm afraid I didn't do so well because I was down from the surgery. I'm so excited to get into a work out routine tomorrow! It's going to be hard through the holidays. I love the sweets! My middle name should be Chocolate. Wish me luck!!

Oh Yeah Ladies!

Let me just set the tone for you. Imagine Ferris Buellers day off. The song with the Ferrari scene. "Oh Yeah.........Beautiful............chick-a, chick-a."

For Halloween Shaun was not just any 80's dude. He was his brother Thom in the 80's. Thom had a really RAD mullet. Looked just like this.

80's Thom with future Thom

Future Thom taking it back to the future.

Mom, Can I have one??

Let's take this for a ride.

The witch

Woo hoo Witchy women.

HALLOWEEN FUN

MoNsTeR Cupcakes

These were really fun to make! Thanks Amy for the fun idea. You can get creative and make your own with whatever candy you think would make a great monster face.

My little Trick or Treater

Chocolate GHOST suckers

You can use Almond Bark or white chocolate chips. All you do is melt the chocolate. Add some vegetable oil to the chocolate so you can spread the chocolate easier.

Spoon out a ghost shape onto parchment paper. Add sucker stick, Then cover with more chocolate so it holds better. Make some eyes. I used red hots. Put in the fridge until hard.

PUMPKIN time

Cleaning out the guts





I carved a detail into the pumpkin. It looked really cool in the dark. I couldn't get a good picture with my flash on my camera. It was the first time I had done a design. Their really fun to do. I recommend that you get the really good carving tools. Not the crap cheap ones.

Pumpkin seeds

I roasted the pumpkin seeds in the oven. I just coated them with olive oil and salt. Shaun and I enjoyed them. Does anyone know of a good way to separate the seeds from the guts? That is a pain. I put all the guts and seeds in the sink with very cold water. The seeds are supposed to float to the top so you can scoop them up better. They did float to the top, But so did a lot of the guts. It took a long time to pick out the seeds.




Halloween block party

We had a Halloween block party at our house. We started at 8:00pm. We had soup, snacks, treats, and fun SPOOKY music. Thanks to all that participated! It was a fun Halloween/October.