Temple, Metabolic/Genetic Clinic Visit, Dobby, Car Accident, Football Game, Work Trip

These past two weeks have flown by.  Sophie is a snuggler.  She loves it whenever we are home and sitting on the couch.  You can find her sitting right along side someone.  She has also been getting a bit shaggy.  Her regular groomer moved and I hadn’t found a new one, yet as you can see:

I finally tried a new one last week, but I guess I didn’t explain fully what I wanted and so she came back looking like Dobby.  Oh well, at least she is not shaggy anymore for a little while at least:

One of Matthew’s really good friends got married two weeks ago.  She invited our family to the reception.  Her mom was the kids’ piano teacher for years so they knew all of us.  Emma even mailed an invitation to Matthew’s group home so he could get his own copy.  That was really sweet.  Matthew wrote it on his calendar and called me almost every day to make sure we would be going.  The day finally came and he was so excited to see her and some friends from high school.  Matthew made sure to get a picture of him and two of his favorite people (Emma and Ashlyn) together:

Aaron got his Covid Booster shot two weeks ago and it made him sick.  He ended up having a fever and body aches for about 3-4 days.  Unfortunately, during that time we had made an appointment at the temple to do baptisms for the dead.  The only time available was at 5 am.  That is so early!!  Anyway, Aaron was too sick to go so I ended up taking Sarah and Daniel without Aaron.  It was a nice experience.  They are allowing more people in the temple so we didn’t have the whole baptistry to ourselves like we did last time, but it was still a great experience.  Daniel got to baptize Sarah and me and then the father of the family after us.  It was nice to be able to do some family names.  While we were doing the Confirmations, the temple worker doing the confirming was struggling with a name.  After a few blunders during the confirmation of that certain name, he stopped and told us that that person was with us that morning in spirit.  It was pretty cool.

After that early morning baptism appointment, I had to run and work a quick clinic in Ogden.  After the clinic was over we checked Sarah out of school and headed down to our long awaited Genetics/Metabolic Clinic appointment at Primary Children’s Hospital.  We met with the geneticist who took a very detailed family health history--including extended family.  Then the Metabolic doctor came in to speak with us aside the geneticist.  They said although Sarah has that pathogenic ABCB4 gene mutation, it is very rare and there is not much known about it.  He gave us two studies done about it, but the sample size of the studies were very small--only one person in one study and 4 people in the other study.  It is rare so there isn’t much known about it. What is known is that she has a high risk of getting Cholestatis of Pregnancy (luckily, that worry is quite a few years away) and she will need to be careful in any hormone medications she will possibly take in the future.  They did say that there definitely is another dominate trait dealing with liver disease in our family, but they can’t tell us more than that right now because they have no idea what it is.  They can just look at the manifestations and symptoms of our extended family members and see something is going on.  They actually spent almost an hour with us for that appointment explaining things so we didn’t feel like we were rushed.  I am glad we had that appointment to ease some fears, but we do have a lot more questions that no one can seem to answer right now.  The Liver Clinic in their referral made it sound like we would know a lot more about what was going on with Sarah, so it was a bit disappointing to not know a whole lot more than we did before the appointment.  So we will just continue having Sarah be followed with the Liver Clinic at Primary’s and just watch and see what happens in the future.  We did ask about Josh’s dominant pathogenic gene mutation in the gene DEPDC5 dealing with epilepsy from the genetic panel he did back in May and they were interested and would love to meet with Josh and us when Josh gets home from his mission to discuss the findings.  After the appointment we did stop by and grab some linner (late lunch early dinner) at the cafeteria.

Josh has been purchasing his winter gear the past two weeks since things are getting pretty cold in Chicago.  He is doing well and enjoying life.  He did share with us this note someone gave him a couple weeks ago while we were Facetiming on his P-day:

That was really nice to read.  We are trying to get Josh’s Christmas package put together since his Mission President has asked for everything to be there by December 6th.  That is coming up really fast so we need to get busy and get it sent!

Last Saturday we had the chance to go to a BYU football game against Idaho State.  We went early to participate in the pregame tailgating activities.  We got to see the giant potato truck:

The kids had fun doing the different activities--sitting in the big chair and throwing the footballs:

After seeing all the tailgating things to do, we went into the stadium.  We wandered over to where the players dressing room door was to see if we could see any of them as they came out to the field.  It was then one of the security people saw us, and saw Matthew’s excitement.  He let us down onto the field to watch the players warm up.  That was pretty awesome!!

Matthew was super excited to give Cosmo five:

Aaron was super excited to be on the field.  He kept pointing out who the different players were, but I still had no idea....

We got to stay on the field right up until the game started then we had to go to our seats.  Throughout the game they had different activities to keep the crowd engaged.  One of them was the dance cam.  Matthew tried his hardest to get on the dance cam, but Sarah wasn’t happy about it--haha!  He never did make it on the dance cam, but he really tried--haha!

We had a lot of fun!

Daniel has been working at Little Caesar’s Pizza.  He even got the chance to work down at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake during a Jazz game.  He did text me from work last Friday.  He said someone backed into his car in the parking lot.  DOH!!  The guy that backed into his car came in the store and felt stupid for making such a mistake.  They figured out it was Daniel’s car so he gave Daniel all his contact info.  However, when he got home and we looked at it, it just blended in to the rest of the beat up nature of that car so we didn’t pursue insurance.  It just gave it more character.  Aaron and Daniel will try hammering out the dent sometime.  Until then it just has some added character--haha!  I am just glad it didn’t break the tail lights.

Speaking of car wrecks, I got a notice through email from our car insurance company that the guy that rear ended me on the freeway two months ago is not insured--DOH!!  They said they will try to recover the funds, but they most likely won’t be able to.  That just means we are out that money to fix the Camry.  I am frustrated about it, but what can you do?!

I have insomnia.  Some nights I can sleep through the nights, but most nights I don’t.  When I can’t sleep I usually get out of bed and go to the family room so I don’t keep Aaron awake with my tossing and turning.  The other morning about 2 am I was wandering around the family room when I stepped barefoot in something really squishy.  My heart sank because I thought it was something left by Sophie....ewwww!  Sophie is usually pretty good to go potty outside, but on occasion she will have an accident.  Much to my very pleasant surprise when I looked at the bottom of my barefoot with my cell phone flashlight it was only a sticky hand toy one of the kids had gotten from Halloween.  Phew!!  Crisis averted--haha!  I will tell you that it was not a pleasant thing to step on, though!

Speaking of surprising things....a few weeks ago I had a very early morning clinic down in Utah county.  The information we were given is that the building would be locked when we got there and to call the contact person to come and let us in.  The clerk and I drove separately, so we were in different cars in the parking lot.  The clerk called me and made sure I was in the parking lot and then called the contact person.   Since it was so early in the morning everything was still dark and we were in an industrial part of town without too many people around.  Anyway, I just assumed the clerk would call me back when the contact person was there to unlock the building so I stayed in my car waiting for that call.  The whole hour and a half drive down to the clinic I listened to a true unsolved murder podcast.  I love mystery and murder stories.  Anyway, I was in the middle of a suspenseful part of the podcast when someone knocked on my car door.  I jumped out of my skin and maybe yelped a bit....it was just the clerk letting me know the contact person was at the door to let us in.  I had to laugh about it, but it scared me to death. I am sure the clerk probably thought I was crazy--but she wouldn’t have been wrong--haha! Next time I might chose to listen to something not as scary when I will be there in the dark--haha!

I have been working all over the place.  Just last week I put on over 1000 miles on the car which is crazy!!  Last week I got to work a clinic down in Elberta, Utah.  On the way home from Elberta I had to pull over to the side of the road to participate in Matthew’s IEP meeting.  I am grateful for technology!  That way Aaron could participate from work and I could participate from Elberta while Matthew and his team were in Farmington.  Matthew got to even lead his IEP meeting and discussion.  He had to be redirected a few times, but he did a good job.  I am glad his teacher gave him that opportunity.  Next year they will setting him up with a job which he is really looking forward to.

I also got to work a clinic down in Monroe, Utah.  Monroe, Utah is about 3.5 hour drive from my house.  I had that clinic on Friday and Aaron happened to have Thursday off because of Veteran’s Day.  We decided to make it into an overnight trip.  We left early morning Thursday and drove down south.  We stopped by Fremont Indian State Park and took a look around.  There were quite a few petroglyphs in the area we got to see.  

Of course we wore our all purpose hiking shoes--haha!  Not really, but the trail wasn’t to terribly rocky or steep at first so we thought flip flops would work.  No surprise they weren’t as sturdy when the trail got a bit more rough, but it’s okay.  

They also had a mock Indian Pit House you could climb down inside to check out.  

We went on a few trails.  One of which took across the bridge:

We got to see the 100 Hands Cave:

Looking at more petroglyphs across the highway:

After spending part of the morning/early afternoon at Fremont Indian State Park we drove over to Cove Fort and looked around.

Next we drove over to Red Hill Hot Springs in Monroe.  It is a random hot spring on the side of hill.  There are three different pools you can sit in.  They range in temperature.  We ended up sitting in the hottest one until some rando creepy dude came and got in the pool with us.  We left very shortly after because he was pretty crazy....but we did enjoy our time there and it was free, unlike the other hot springs that you had to pay $25 a person!!  What?!  I am too cheap for that!

Here you can see the thriving metropolis of Monroe, Utah--just kidding!  It was a super tiny town!

This is where the hot spring came out of the ground from:

We left the kids at home, but with G&G T on standby.  They were very responsible and got the trash rolled out to the curb and to piano lessons early the next morning.  Daniel even surprised me by picking up some pizza and Zeppe’s for the kids for dinner without us even asking.  That was a nice brother thing to do!! 

Friday morning I went to work doing a Covid Booster clinic at a care center for a few hours.  While I was there Aaron hung out and watched a movie on his phone.  Then we headed back home.  It was a fun overnight trip!!

When we got home Noah informed us that he had lost his very last baby tooth.  That makes me sad....but he was pretty excited about it:

Saturday morning I got to start up my second job again--CNA clinical instructing.  It was pretty brutal to set my alarm for 4:45 am--ugh!!

It was at a care center that required you to wear a face shield and a mask the whole time.  It was a long almost 9 hour shift.  However, it is nice to work with the students again.  Like my face mask?!

Noah had his very last primary program last Sunday.  That makes me super sad.  Those are always the most fun Sacrament Meetings!!  We were glad G&G T were able to come watch Noah give his last primary program part.  

Noah also got his Student Council sweatshirt and t-shirt at school.  He was so excited to show Aaron and me when we got home from Monroe:

Last Sunday it was our family’s turn for tithing settlement.  While we were waiting in the hallway one of the bishopric members saw Daniel and Sarah standing there.  He then asked them to speak in church in two weeks.  Haha!!  They weren’t too happy about it, but Aaron and I just chuckled a bit.

The fireplace wasn’t fixed after all so Aaron had to order a new part.  Daniel and Aaron worked on it together tonight.  Here’s hoping it will be fixed and stay that way!!

Sarah got her National Junior Honors Society t-shirt today at school.  

Looks good!

We still get to talk to Josh every Monday afternoon.  It is fun to see how things are going.  He is doing well with his new companion, but will be getting another new one in a week since his current one will be going home.  Again technology is great--Aaron joins in the call from work, the rest of us from home, while Josh is in Chicago.  It’s awesome!

Josh is currently trying to build up his tolerance to spicy foods.  I am a super wimp when it comes to eating spicy food--mayonnaise is too spicy for me--haha just joking!!  The other day Josh tried some super hot sauce and was dying.  His companion just laughed at him.  His companion’s brother saw the picture and photo shopped it into this:

Fun times!