Auto Accidents, Quarantining, Cavities, Meetings, California, Concerts, Tours, Snow, Raw Pig Ears, Caroling

Another two weeks has come and gone.  Here’s what we have been up to.  Sarah and I got to have a mother/daughter date.  However, it was to the dentist so both of us could get a cavity filled.  Not the funnest thing in the world, but at least it got done and won’t be a problem in the future.  They called me back first.  Then it was Sarah’s turn:

We were both pretty numb for a few hours afterward.  Sarah had a really hard time in band since she couldn’t even feel where her flute was on her chin.  Her band teacher thought it was pretty hilarious.  

I, unfortunately, had to go back the next day since my filling was raised just a bit too high and I couldn’t close my bottom and top teeth together without the filling stopping that.  They had shave some more of my new filling off and now it is doing great.  

Matthew had a visit with his psychiatrist just for a 6 month check up and medication management.  Over the last 6 months his psychiatrist has been weaning Matthew off of his respiridone medication.  It was causing his prolactin level to be really high.  Between that and his behaviors getting better she wanted to wean him off of that medication.  Matthew has tolerated the weaning well, however, he has lost 30 pounds since his last visit 6 months ago.  I am not too concerned since he gained 30 pounds when he first moved into his group home a year ago.  He just lost all the weight he had gained in the last year.  Now if he keeps losing weight I will be more concerned, but as for now he is doing well.  Since he has lost so much weight none of his clothes fit him so guess what he is getting for Christmas--haha!!  He also got to go and see Santa Clause earlier this month. He was so excited!!

He also had a meeting with the state representative of his DSPD case.  It is a new format they have decided to go with so she wanted to meet with Matthew, Aaron, me, his group home management, and his services coordinator.  Thankfully, it was over Zoom.  That way Aaron didn’t have to miss work.  I, however, did have to go pick Matthew up from his school at the end of the day so he could join in the meeting, too.  Going forward they hope to have Matthew set up with a job within the next year.  Matthew is getting pretty excited to get a job so that’s a good thing.

Sophie has mastered the art of looking pitiful.  Anytime someone is not sitting with her giving her pets, she will stare at you like this until it is remedied.  She is especially pitiful when you are eating something and not sharing.  What a crazy dog!

One Christmas present came early this year--our family blog books.  We had 2020 part 1 and part 2 printed as well as 2021 part 1 printed up.  It is always fun to go back and see everything that has gone on in our family during the last year and a half:

Daniel got the chance to go to California to run in the Footlocker race.  This is the same Footlocker race Josh go too attend 3 times.  Josh and Daniel didn’t get to go last year due to Covid so Daniel was really looking forward to going this year.  They left after a late parent meeting Thursday night and drove through the night.  I wanted to make sure Daniel was okay so he sent me this picture:

They made it to Walnut, California the next morning which was Friday.  They looked/walked over the race course.  After that the whole Cross Country team then went to the beach.  They had a bit of a delay in getting to the beach since their bus got in not only one, but two car accidents on a California freeway on the way to the beach.  DOH!!  Luckily, they were pretty minor so after a two hour delay they finally made it.  Daniel had a lot of fun:

They spent that night in Walnut, California.  The next morning they got up early and ran the race.  That evening they drove to Mesquite, Nevada to spend the night.  They made it home the next afternoon.  It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun.

I had my last CNA Clinical Instructor shift for this semester the morning after Daniel left for California. I am still working my CNS immunization job, but the CNA job is done for this semester.  Anyway,  since I was up so early (4:30 am) I got to track their driving and see where he was at and when he made it to California Friday morning.  That last CNA shift seemed so LONG!!  It didn’t help that I had to wear a face shield and a mask the whole day.  It was a little claustrophobic.  

Daniel, unfortunately, caught Aaron’s man cold.  However, Daniel was complaining that his throat hurt really bad.  I just wanted to rule out Strep throat so I took him in to get tested.  They only had a very late night appointment available so I took it.  Thankfully, Daniel came back negative for Strep, but since he had really swollen lymph nodes in his neck and a cough the doctor decided to give him some corticosteroids to help him get some relief. They gave him a dose in the office.  Let me just say ‘roid rage is a real thing!  Steroids have a side effect of moodiness/mood swings.  When Daniel was a baby/toddler since he had asthma pretty bad he received corticosteroids almost every time he got sick to try and open his airway since he was so wheezy.  Those steroid doses always made him crusty/moody.  They were the worst.  Anyway, it has been nice since Daniel has gotten older that his asthma has improved so much that he hasn’t needed any steroids for years.  However, we got to revisit memory lane when he did get the steroids this past week because we got to remember how moody they make him.  Ugh!!  It was so fun (not really).  Glad they are now out of his system and he feels A LOT better!  

Sarah had a band concert last week.  It was fun to see and hear her play.  Here she is on the front row with her flute:

Sarah said it was a lot easier to play when she didn’t have a numb mouth/chin--haha!

The night of Sarah’s concert Daniel had a combined oldest YM/YW class activity where they got to visit the Conference Center in Salt Lake for an in depth tour.  He got to see some really cool things and had a great time with all the other kids.  Here’s a few pictures of their night:

He got to sit in the actual choir seats, too:

Last week we got notified that Noah was in close contact to a positive Covid case.  Since he is still in the process of being vaccinated (only has one more dose left to get) he had to be quarantined.  He ended up staying home from school Thursday and Friday and was my buddy.  We got notified so late about his exposure that his quarantine time was up by Monday.  Anyway, Noah made his own fun in those two days.  He found some amazon shipping boxes and made him a cardboard box suit to see if he could go sledding in the snow in our yard.  Here’s what he looked like:

It didn’t work as well as he hoped for, but at least he had fun trying it out.  It did snow and got cold last week.  Daniel took a picture outside of his classroom at the high school to show off the snowflakes and icicles:

We are glad it warmed up somewhat because we didn’t get outside to shovel right away and since our house is north facing it meant our driveway turned into a sheet of ice.  Thankfully, through some procrastination and warmer weather it has finally mostly melted off our driveway.  Phew!  That’s one of the downfalls of having a north facing house--if you don’t shovel right away, you have an ice sheet for however long it is until it warms up enough to melt.  Sometimes that can take a few weeks to months which is not fun.  Oh well, we lucked out this time.  Hopefully, we will be more on the ball next snowfall.

Daniel had a band concert last week.  The high school combined the different choirs, bands and orchestra into one massive concert then charged everyone to come and watch.  This bothers me a bit.  I am all for fundraising and things, but I feel like charging for tickets to come and see your child perform is not okay.  Since the families already have to pay the school fees, the band fees, buy a suit/outfit to perform in, and supplies for the instruments I do not think it is okay to then charge to come and see them play.  Anyway, I will get off my soap box and say the concert was great.  Here’s Daniel’s band while they played their portion:

The conductor is leading, but happens to be pointing right at Daniel in this picture.  She wasn’t pointing at Daniel in real life, but just happened to be in this picture if that makes sense.  Daniel still is playing the baritone saxophone.  

Since it was such a massive concert they had two different performances to accommodate everyone that evening.  Aaron and I went to the earlier performance and got to visit with Daniel a few minutes before the second performance started.

We love memes in our family.  I found this one and sent it to Aaron because it was funny:

Josh had an eventful week.  His zone got to attend the Chicago temple.  He said it was great.  Here are some of the pictures he took while he was there:

His zone--Josh is the super tall one on the back row:

Josh’s companion, Elder Pena, is 5’7” so there is quite the height difference between them:

You can’t take pictures and not have some goofy ones thrown in, right?!

This past week Josh got to try out a raw pickled pig's ear.  He poured hot sauce on it before he ate it.

He is getting up the nerve to try it out:

He was not a fan it seems--haha!  He said it was crunchy and it was the texture that he had issues with--gross!

He also got to try out a pig hoof.  He said it tasted and had the consistency of meat jello.  Gross.  He did have some other excitement, too.  He and his companion got into a car accident on the Chicago freeway during rush hour.  Thankfully, Josh was not driving and no one got hurt.  Some guy didn’t check his blind spot before he changed lanes and ran into them.  He dented up the driver’s side door, but then the guy drove off and left the scene of the accident.  Luckily, no one was hurt.  They called the older mission couple and got directions of what to do next.  They will be dropping off their car to get it fixed next week.  I guess the driver’s side door makes a horrible creaking/grinding noise when it opens or closes, and there are deep scratches down the side of the car, but no other damage.  I guess if you are trying to see the bright side--in Josh’s vast car accident experiences that resulted in totally two different cars before he went on his mission it helped him so he didn’t get too freaked out when they were in the accident and kind of knew what to do.  However, he likes to scare us and titled his weekly email ‘Elder Mancil Got Into ANOTHER CAR CRASH?’ because he knew it would get an instant reaction from me and it did--the punk!!  Glad it they were okay.  Too bad it ended up being a hit and run, though.  Boo!

We order a lot from Amazon.  I have found out that if you chose a later shipping day a lot of the times you can get a digital credit that you can build up.  Since we had done a lot of Christmas shopping from Amazon, I had built up enough credits to buy a book.  We do occasionally watch the series ‘Bob’s Burgers’.   It is a cartoon, but pretty funny.  It is about a guy that runs a hamburger restaurant and every episode they have a burger of the day written on a chalkboard in the background of the show which is usually a pun.  Someone has compiled all the Burger of the Day puns and actually made recipes for them and put it together in a cookbook called ’The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book’.  I bought it for Aaron using my free digital credits and sent the Kindle version to him.  Aaron tried out one of the recipes from the cookbook this past Sunday.  It was called the Poblano Picasso burger and it ended up being pretty good.  Here’s what it looked like:

Here was the recipe:

The family seemed to like it since Aaron made 14 hamburger patties and we had absolutely no leftovers. 

This past Sunday Noah had a special Temple Prep class put on by the primary for all the kids going into the YW/YM program in January.  I can’t believe Noah is that old!! He will be passing the sacrament in a few weeks and that just seems crazy to me!!  I am sad I won’t have anymore kids in primary, though.  I got to give a little spiel at that meeting for the YW, too.  We are only have 4 new girls coming in to our class so our class will be really small next year!!

Later that evening we went out driving to see some Christmas lights.  This house a few miles away from us didn’t disappoint:

Noah has been doing orchestra at the elementary school this year.  He got to go ‘caroling’ with his orchestra class of about 20 kids to the whole elementary school today.  Aaron and I got to see him play which was pretty cool.  Here he is before they started playing:

Jingle Bells never sounded so good!