Play, Dr. Visits, Valentine’s Day, Surprised, Braces Redo, Sweetheart Dance, Sign Language Class, Exciting

Another few weeks have come and gone.  It is going by so fast!!

Last week Noah’s elementary school had a ‘Young Musician’s Day’ for the upper grades.  Noah surprised me and signed up.  He played two different songs on the piano in front of everyone.  It was only for the students so I didn’t get to see, but I am proud he had courage enough to sign up and play.

Sophie was getting pretty mangy so I finally got her an appointment to get groomed.  Our old groomer moved away so we actually have to drive to the new groomer instead of just walk a few houses down.  Sophie is not a fan of car rides.  In face after she has gone on a car ride and we let her out of her kennel she gets a nervous bowel--if you know what I mean.  Before I went to take her to the groomer I asked Daniel to take her outside to potty.  He stayed outside with her for a good 10 minutes and she refused to do anything.  However, when I took her to the groomer as soon as I had her outside the car she pooped everywhere on the sidewalk in front of the groomers.  It was embarrassing.  I had Sarah with me, but she was too busy laughing to help me try and clean it up.  Gross!  Good thing we still love her (Sarah AND Sophie) otherwise I might have left them both at the groomers!!  Sophie did look really good when I picked her up after her groom, though.

 Last week I had a Covid booster clinic at the University of Utah for the football team.  It was pretty cool! We set up on the top floor of their newer practice facility surrounded by all their football awards.  This was my view from my table:

I even got to meet Kyle Whittingham the coach.  Although I didn’t get a picture with him, our clerk got a baseball hat signed by him.  He was a really nice guy!  

I have been doing quite a few clinics down at the University of Utah.  They had stated that all their students must by fully vaccinated with their booster shot in order to register for classes.  Needless to say our student clinics have been busy.  At one clinic we had a photographer from the news come and take different pictures.  One stock photo they took and used in a news story was of my hand holding a Pfizer vial.  Wahoo!  I am famous--haha! 

I don’t mind going to the UofU to do the clinics, but it does make me a bit nervous since the back of my car, or Aaron’s daily driver, has BYU magnets on it.  I usually drive the Camry instead of the van to Salt lake and that is usually the car Aaron drives but it is better on gas so we switch it up.  Luckily, nothing has happened, yet despite the BYU magnets on the back--haha!  I don’t think Aaron would be happy if I took them off, though.

I have done a few Covid clinics at the CNS office in Salt Lake, too.  Most of those are pretty routine, but I did get an interesting reaction last week.  I had a poor 6 year old boy who was getting his first Covid shot and was terrified.  The clinic wasn’t busy so we took our time.  He finally let me give him his shot and was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t as bad as he thought it was going to be.  He then asked if he could hug me which surprised me, but I was totally okay with it.  He was really sweet.  

Last Saturday we went out to lunch and a play with G&G T.  We had lunch at Red Robin then went to see The Phantom of the Opera spoof at The Desert Star Playhouse in Salt Lake.  It was a lot of fun.

Last Monday morning Sarah was supposed to have an in person Liver Clinic appointment.  Unfortunately, she caught a nasty cold over the weekend.  I didn’t want to bring her to Primary Children’s being sick so I called as soon as they opened Monday to see if I could reschedule the appointment.  Amazingly enough they were able to switch the in person appointment to an online appointment.  He looked over her labs and talked with us for a bit.  Sarah, as long as she takes her Ursodiol twice a day, she seems to do okay.  They do want to redo labs in a few months since being sick would affect the current results.  They also want to do another Fibroscan of her liver in August to see if there have been any changes. We met with Dr. Jensen and he was really nice.  He has a daughter who is also in 8th grade and is an avid reader.  Sarah gave him all kinds of different book series for her to read. Sarah could talk about books all day--haha!  I really liked him.  It was really nice I didn’t need drive down there for the appointment, too!!  

The other day I went to get the mail.  As I walked down our front stairs this bird jumped right out in front of me.  I jumped because it was so random it scared me.  It let me get close enough to get a good picture and watch it for a minute before it flew away.  It was kind of cool.  I am glad it was me and not Aaron, though.  It probably would have given him a heart attack--haha!

Valentine’s Day was Monday.  Noah had his very last school Valentine’s party.  That makes me sad.  His teacher bought a white paper bag for each of her students to decorate.  This is how Noah decorated his bag:

He came home with lots of candy and said he had a fun party.  That was the last time I will have to buy Valentine candy for anyone’s school class.  I had a take a few minutes to be sad since he is growing up so fast!

G&G T also brought the kids some Valentine goodies.  The kids loved them.  Josh got sent some on his mission and Matthew got his when he came over Sunday.  But here are the rest of the kids enjoying their goodie bags:

The kids all got a frosted heart cookie from Aaron and I for their Valentine’s Day.  Not too fancy, but just to let them know we were thinking of them.  I wasn’t fast enough to get a good picture of the cookie--just a partial remnant of one--haha!

Aaron and I always say we aren’t doing Valentine’s presents, but he doesn’t listen.  This year my gifts were random, but very thoughtful.  He gave Sarah and me some pretty flowers:

He then got me two packages of frozen corn on the cob.  I absolutely LOVE corn on the cob.  This was my dinner for Valentine’s day:

The reason why this was such a thoughtful present was because I had an appointment to get braces put on my teeth for the next day and won’t be able to eat corn on the cob for two years.  I have been wanting braces for at least 5 plus years.  I had braces when I was a teenager, but shortly after I got married my retainer broke and I never got a replacement.  My teeth shifted and I have not liked the way they have looked since.  We changed dental insurances 5 years ago to an insurance that covered adult braces, but our flex spending account money has always gone to something else in our family instead my braces such as hospital stays, surgeries, various medical visits, etc. So my braces kept getting put on hold.  Aaron completely surprised me Christmas morning.  He had gone earlier in December to our kids’ orthodontist’s office and set up a consultation appointment for me in the first week of January.  He had them stop all notifications, visit reminders, etc. so it would be a complete surprise for me when I opened that envelope Christmas morning.  He really did surprise me!!  I had my consultation appointment the first week of January, but they had to get prior authorization before they could start braces.  They got that approval last week and I had my braces appointment Tuesday morning.  Here’s my before:

They even had my name on their ‘Braces’ board when I got to the office:

Here’s the after:

I feel like a complete nerd again having braces, but it will be worth it.  I had forgotten how sore your teeth get with braces--ouch!!  Luckily, I have to wear a mask at work and church so I can keep my new found nerdiness a secret for a bit longer--haha!  I was touched by Aaron’s thoughtfulness!  I have also discovered that ibuprofen and smoothies are my new best friends at least for the next few days.

This past Saturday Daniel and a group of friends got together and decided to go to the Sweetheart’s Dance together.  They wore onesies for fun.  Daniel came up the stairs wearing his and I wanted to take a picture.  Daniel was not amused as you can see by his face.

I told him he couldn’t go unless I got a smiling picture.  Amazing how that works--haha!

They went to the mall that afternoon and then out to dinner.  Next they went to the dance and then to someone’s house afterward to watch a movie.  I told him to take pictures at the dance, but he didn’t so these are the only pictures I got.  He had a lot of fun with his friends and I am glad he got a chance to go.

Speaking of Daniel, his group of friends have been watching scary movies lately.  However, the other night I was awakened by the shower downstairs at 3 am.  I was worried and went to check on Daniel to see if he was okay.  I whispered his name from the top of the stairs  because I didn’t want to wake anyone else up and he completely freaked out because he had been watching scary movies--haha!  He was only half awake and had a realistic dream that he was late for work and needed to shower ASAP.  He thought it was 7 am and didn’t realize it was actually 3 am.  Once he had showered he went back to bed, but it took him a long time to fall back asleep.  He struggled getting up at 7 am when he actually needed to.

This past Sunday was the Super Bowl.  We had the Einzinger family over for party.  All of us brought random food and it was delicious.  It was fun to have them all here and watch the Super Bowl and all the commercials together. I didn’t get any pictures, but it was a fun afternoon/evening.

Sarah has been mentioning an interest in learning sign language.  I found a free online class and signed us to take it together.  It is offered through Oklahoma State University.  They post the class online for a week and you have that whole week to watch it and take the quiz at the end.  We watched our first class Tuesday evening.  Noah watched it along with us.  It was pretty cool.  It will be interesting to see how much we will know by the end of the semester.

I found this meme and it totally fits Aaron and me--haha!  That chair is a good resting spot for clothes that I don’t really want to hang up right then.

We have been watching the Olympics in the evenings.  Our kids don’t seem to enjoy watching them, but Aaron and I still enjoy seeing them.  However, the other night we seemed to be exhausted.  We sat down to watch them, but Sarah ended up taking this picture about an hour later--haha! Everyone was asleep even  Sophie.  Things are pretty exciting at our house as you can see--haha!

Josh got his first transfer this week.  He is now in Arlington Heights/Palatine.  I am okay with that because I googled it and it looks a bit safer than Waukegan which is where he came from.  He got a new companion, too.  

Josh has been struggling with sleepiness during the day.  The doctor he saw in Chicago wanted to adjust his seizure meds to help.  I was completely NOT on board with that until we had discussed it with Josh’s pediatric neurologist who has seen him for 17 years.  He has been on the same dose for over 3 years and I did not want to change anything since he has been sensitive to such changes in the past. So this week I have had to make a few calls to Primary Children’s for some questions on Josh’s behalf.  I am so glad we put a Power of Attorney document in place before he left otherwise this would have been an even bigger problem.  Anyway, I think things will be settled now, but it has been a frustrating week dealing with being on eternal hold then hung up on accidentally and trying to work with medical assistants who don’t want to help.  Anyway, I think things are okay for now, but he is still waiting on results from some bloodwork to decide what to do next.  I found this quote this week.  It was something I needed to hear.