Happy Belated Paczki day!

I love paczkis and I haven't had one in years. So this year I indulged myself and bought my two favorite flavors, raspberry and cream cheese. I thuroughly enjoyed making myself fat while eating about 5 over the last two days. I know that's pretty bad, but sometimes you just have to live a little. These were the first paczkis for Jaxson. He wasn't as thrilled as me. In fact, he started to eat one, thought it was too messy, asked for a fork to finish with and then ended up not finishing anyway because it was getting all over his clothes. He's such a weird kid. He usually doesn't care about being messy.

My Recent Physical Condition

There are a few of you who don't know, but recently I have had some crazy awful symptoms. Painful headaches, numbness, whirring in my ears, and the most recent is some crazy visual impairments. I've been seeing doctors and optomotrists. My optomotrist is the only one that has taken me seriously and after my second visit finally referred me to a neurologist. That is where I went today and I got some answers.
I have Pseudotumor Cerebri (PTC). Basically I have the same symptoms as someone with a brain tumor, but without the tumor. Cool huh?
Within the first 5 minutes of describing my symptoms, the neurologist stopped me and then HE started describing my symptoms. It was weird but very reassuring. But since nothing is 100% without a few tests, I have some that need to be done ASAP.
Including: MRI, MRV, and if the MRI is clean then I need to have a spinal tap. Of course I hope the MRI is clean, but I don't really want a spinal tap...but it comes with the territory I guess I'll endure it.
He said that it was caused by the 2 acne medicines I was on-a topical cream and a pill. So I have been ordered off those, and I've been put on another pill that is going to decrease pressure on my brain. They (there were 2 residents in the appt. as well) told me that if for sure it is PTC, that the prognosis is really good and that most people respond really well to treatment. They said after I go off the bad medicine and start taking the new pill, it could be as little as a week to a few weeks until I am almost or completely better.
So please pray for me (or continue to pray for me) for everything to go well and that nothing is beyond repair. And that my body will respond to the medication and will go back to relatively if not completely back to normal..

An Exciting New Trick!

Let's hope this one progresses fast...we are awfully tired of having to carry his 25lb body everywhere.

We have heat! and Jaxson is 4!

Bro. Douglas from the Howell ward, the guy who fixed the electical stuff, came and fixed the furnace today and installed a new hot water heater. The furnace is working great. He couldn't try the heater though because there is a iron filter on the water pump that brings the water in from the well and it's missing a part. Without that part the water just flows all over the floor when you turn it on. So we have to find the missing part and replace it so we can turn the water on and try the water heater. I just hope that there are no other leaks in any other water pipes (I'm counting on leaks, but hoping I'm wrong!). I have become addicted to the DIY network, especially the program they have called Sweat Equity. It's hard to watch them do all these cool things with their spaces and not want to do the same for mine. I'm just trying to take their ideas and adapt them to our house. It's so fun adding sweat equity to our home. It's going to be so great when we're finished. I'm going to try to go to the house tomorrow to check on the furnace and I'll try to take some more updated pictures to post.

Jaxson was so excited for his birthday. He's been asking if it's his birthday everyday, several times a day, for a couple of weeks now. He wanted me to make him a red car cake. I tried my best, but the frosting didn't turn out as red as I had hoped. He was also anxious to get out of his "baby" car seat and into Makayla's booster seat. She has been using one with a back on it that we have given to Jaxson now (he's such a big boy) and we have a booster with out a back for her to use until she is 8 (that's the Michigan law now). To make matters worse, Charlie put Jaxson in the front seat, in his new booster, on his birthday. Now Jaxson thinks he gets to ride there all the time and continues to ask me to let him. I have to keep telling him it was just for his birthday and he isn't going to be able to sit in the front very much. He doesn't seem to hear me though because he keeps on asking :). It's so much nicer to get him in and out of the car now that he's in a booster. What freedom I have now.

Happy Birthday, Jaxson

Happy Birthday, sweetie. You sure are growing up quick! Sorry I was a bit late on this. We're getting ready to drive to Syracuse for the weekend and things are crazy town here.

We are officially, officially new home owners

On Friday, our realtor emailed us to let us know that she had received the closing papers from the seller. See the seller didn't come to our closing and also didn't provide us with the signed deed at closing. We had to "close in escrow" which means we signed all our closing papers and then had to send them off to the seller to be evaluated and signed before they would send the deed. But our mortgage company wouldn't release the money to them until they sent the deed. So the mortgage was held in an escrow account until that happened, thus it was called "closing in escrow." Our realtor said that this kind of situation is happening more and more with foreclosure homes. Now we have all the necessary paperwork signed by both parties and we are the official owners. That means I go tomorrow to file our homestead exemption paperwork with the township for our property taxes.

We have begun the long process of working on the house too. The electrician came and fixed all the electrical work last week. He couldn't get the furnace going but thinks we can just buy new parts for it to fix it and not have to buy a whole new unit. That will have us about $1000. Kurt and Heather came to help begin the demo portion of the work. They came on Saturday and we were actually able to get a lot accomplished. We stripped most of the wall paper in the house. There is still that ugly floral wallpaper in the dining room left but that's about it. We also had the kids tear down some drop ceiling tiles out of all the bedrooms upstairs. They thought that was fun. We bagged it all up and took it out to the garage. There was some junk in the basement we got moved into the garage. Then today Charlie and I went back and he took out the cabinets in the kitchen and I squeegeed what was left of the water in the basement to the sump pump. We were glad Charlie took down the cabinets because we found some mold behind some of them that are located under the upstairs bathroom. That means something up there had been leaking so we will need to figure out where from. It's a good thing we were planning on pretty much gutting the upstairs bathroom anyway. We have our start, there is still a long way to go, but we've started. We hope to be able to have it all finished by the end of April. That just means Charlie will start to go over there everyday after work once wrestling is finished. I was looking forward to having him home earlier, but it looks like I'll have to wait a little longer for that (although, it's definitely worth the wait to have our house finished).

Thanks Kurt and Heather for coming to help us this weekend. You really were a big help. And it was fun to hang out with you. We'll have to do it again sometime. I hope Harvey had fun with his Grandma and Grandpa up north.

Happy Birthday, Alexis

Happy Birthday, Alexis!

Only one short year from now you'll be a teenager. Enjoy your last 'tween year. It was great to hang out with you this weekend. Hope your parents go for the deep purple in your bedroom.

Deanna's baby

Did you all get the pictures of Deanna's baby? I think Dad sent them on to you. It's a good thing that Dad told me that was Rodney sitting next to her on the bed, or I would've thought it was a girl. Anyway, yea for Deanna!

Stroller Strides

I am now an official member of Stroller Strides, a national exercise program for moms with kids in strollers. It sounds weird, I was doubtful at first, but I get an incredible workout! We push the kids in our strollers for the cardio portion (some run, some walk) and stop at different "stations" to do various arm, leg, ab, and balance exercises. We just line the kids up in their strollers and they watch us do our silly moves. We use resistance bands for most of the strength training, which I love from my days of Slim in 6. Thus far, I HAVE BEEN EXTREMELY SORE, but it has been great. Today we did killer squats, and I'm already anticipating the lovely feeling of knowing you did something worthwhile tomorrow.

It is kind of expensive, but with our tax returns coming soon and my sanity on the line, this has come at a good time. I've felt trapped inside, and have needed to get involved in something that pushes me, but doesn't do any high-impact stuff. There are plenty of modifications they show us for all the pregnant ladies. The other nice benefit has been the social network of other mothers that has opened up to me. Now I am making friends outside of church! Here is their website, if you're interested. http://www.strollerstrides.com/

We are home owners again!

We were finally able to close on our house on Friday, after so much frustration and work. It will pay off though. It was such a nice birthday present. To top it off, Mom and Dad took Charlie and I out to dinner and it was great. I had a really good time (thanks, Mom and Dad!). So our first step to fixing the house is to get the skunk out of the basement and then the electrician is coming tomorrow to restring the electric in the basement so we can have power to check the furnace and for power tools and such. We went this weekend to tarp the one part of the roof that was so bad that it started to leak into the house. Yes, we had to do some of it yesterday and break the Sabbath, but Charlie is so busy during the days of the week that we wouldn't have been able to finish it any other way. We are happy it's done now because we have rain in the forcast this week. The roof will have to wait until next month to be fixed. We just didn't want anymore water in the house while we wait. We can't move in until all the work it finished, per our rehab loan rules, so we plan to go as fast as we can. It looks like we will have until April to stay where we are. The redemption period will be up on March 8th and then we will have 30 days after that to be out. We are hoping to get that 30 days extended, but we aren't holding our breath. The realtor who will be listing the house once the redemption period is finished told me that the bank who owns the house doesn't usually let people stay in the house once the redemption period is over. We can't officially ask for permission until the redemption period is over, so we will know more by March. Either way, I'd like to have the work on our new house finished by the first of April just to be on the safe side. We are all pretty excited. I had to pick the kids up from school on Friday so we could make it to the closing on time. We told the kids that I had to pick them up so we could go get my birthday present. So when I picked them up Makayla said to me, "So are you going to see what we get for you?" Because it's suppose to be a surprise, right? I told her that I had to. She asked why they couldn't wrap it so I wouldn't see. I told her that the present was too big to wrap. She said that that was impossible and I replied that the present was as big as a house. She said that was impossible. So I told her it was a house and she got the biggest smile on her face and exclaimed, "We got the house!" Our kids have been waiting for forever to buy that house. In fact, Jaxson said almost everyday to me, "I want to buy the big house." And I'd have to reply that we were trying to. Yesterday as we were leaving, after we had tarped the roof, he started to whine that he wanted to buy the house and we tried to explain to him that we had finally. But I think it's just been so long that we haven't been able to that he just doesn't understand that that has changed now. Yeah for us! Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts on our behalf. We know it helped.

Happy Birthday, Merrit

Happy Birthday, big boy. Hope you have a great day.

Birthday Dinner

Dad and I took Hillary and Charlie out to dinner for their birthdays on Friday night. We ended up at a very nice restaurant and had a table by the fire, so the atmosphere was great. As we were eating there was a group of four couples who were all in their sixties, I would guess, who were at a table not far from us. All through their meal, the men at that table would break into singing barbershop quartet songs. It was so fun to listen to them. As we were leaving, Hillary went over and told them how much she had enjoyed their music and thanked them for making her meal so nice. Then Charlie told them it was her birthday, so they sang Happy Birthday to her in barbershop harmony. It made the evening very special. We were very happy that we ended up at that restaurant at that particular time!

One Day, Two Sentences

This morning Harvey said his first two sentences. He had finished the peaches he was having with breakfast and he said, "Momma, more of these." I was excited but thought it could be a fluke. Then after breakfast when I was getting him dressed he picked up his pants and said, "Pants! These are mine." So basically he's a genius as well as good looking. Watch out world, here comes Harvey.

Happy Birthday Noah

Even though Noah can't read, I just want to wish him a happy birthday and tell Kari that I didn't forget it, I just forgot to get him something and send it in time. Buy him a book and let me know how much it is and I'll send you a check. Anyway, Noah, don't eat too much cake!

Request

I am asking if any of you might have pictures of Merrit and/or Makayla from 2004 to 2006. This might seem like a weird request, but I'll explain. I make a quilt for each of my kids for their baptism. On these quilts I put iron-on pictures of their family and friends and of them through the years of them growing up. I began Merrit's but couldn't finish because all our pictures were packed away. So I got them out the other day to finish Merrit's quilt and begin Makayla's and realized that our photo albums end at the beginning of 2004 and the pictures I have on my computer start at about 2006, and I really don't even have many from 2006. I can't recall when we first got our digital camera and so I don't know what time frame I would've started to have pictures on the computer. My only conclusions for why I am missing almost 2 years of pictures is that either I have those pictures packed somewhere else waiting to be put into photo albums (which I hope it the case so badly) or they were on the computer and when Charlie purged it right before Christmas of 2006 those pictures were erased (which I hope, so badly, is not the case). Either way, I would like to have pictures from this time frame for Merrit's and Makayla's quilts and it doesn't look like I'll be able to unless I get them from somewhere else; thus my request. I hope you can help me out. Please just email me whatever you have.
Thanks!

Amusing Harvey Story

I called and checked in with our day care provider yesterday and she told me an amusing story I thought I'd share. Harvey approached the little boy closest to his age today and tried to get him to play. This little boy doesn't particularly like Harvey because my son will always take his toys and run away as fast as he can. So when he wouldn't play, Harvey tried a new approach and stuck his finger in the little boys mouth. Of course he chomped down and wouldn't let up until our day care providers pried his mouth open. Harvey cried and cried. Hopefully he's learned not only to not put his fingers in his friends' mouths but that it also hurts when he bites people. With being the youngest toddler, Harvey definitely thinks he is a much bigger boy than he is which makes life a challenge. When do you guys think it is appropriate to start time outs? Right now we just make Harvey sit down for 15 to 30 seconds when he's done something wrong. We praise him like crazy when he does good things but he's a whirlwind of energy and exploration.

Here's some pictures of Harvey we had taken Up North at Thanksgiving time.

a celebration

I am half way through this pregnancy! 20 weeks! It's crazy, the time has flown by this time. I think it's because I don't think about it as much, I just have more distractions (ahem, ahem...Addie). I feel great, although I'm still pretty tired much of the time. My little baby is as big as a banana! And so, to celebrate this achievement, I have included very attractive pictures of each of my siblings in this post.

On Sunday our downstairs neighbors were robbed. The sad part is that we were home and heard a loud bang from downstairs (the burglars breaking down their door) but thought it was probably one of their three kids being loud again. I feel awful. We could have called someone and didn't. I won't make that mistake again. Fortunately, all they had taken was an Xbox and some video games/movies. This apartment complex seems to be going downhill. There have been several robberies in the last two months and several of our friends are thinking of moving out. I still feel pretty safe here, although Jason and I will probably (although not too seriously) look here and there to see if there is anywhere else we'd rather be. If we move, though, we would have to pay a $1200 cancellation of lease fee, and it would almost be impossible to stay in our ward. Our ward boundaries just don't include many apartment complexes. It's pretty unlikely that we'll move, but I'm somewhat open to the idea. We'll see.

Jason has bursitis in his right elbow. I wrote about it a few days ago on our own blog. It is making it nearly impossible for him to do simple tasks such as CHANGE DIAPERS (the most frustrating for me as I've had to change EVERY diaper for a week now!), tie his ties for church and school, take out his contacts, put deoderant on, etc. I've had to step up being a good wife (although it hasn't been without complaint, I will have to work on that). He's going back to the doctor today so we'll see how he's progressing. It's affecting his schoolwork because he can't participate well in his labs. It's sort of hard to do an eye exam or fit someone with contacts when you can't move your dominant arm. We're praying for him to recover quickly! This will be his third visit, and the doctor didn't charge us for the second, so there have been some minor miracles. While we're grateful for those, we really just need his arm to heal! Your prayers, as always, are certainly appreciated.

February Geneology

Dad and I were talking yesterday about all the birthdays coming up in February and I remembered that there are others that are related to us who also have birthdays in February and I thought you might be interested to see who they are. These are the ones you might know, there are others I didn't put down.

LaRee Hill, Donna Lander, Dad, Sue Hutchinson, Hillary, Charlie, Merrit, Alexis, Jaxson, Ella Lindsay (my mother's youngest sister), Ashlee Hill (Loren's daughter), Kevin Hill (Reed's son) and Kyle and Phillip Scott (Sue's sons).

A little bit of trivia for you.

Cute pictures

Today's fingerpainting adventure, she absolutely loved it! And, as always, she loved her bath afterwards.


Cheesy Grins!


Just a sweet girl!

Health Myths

Hi everyone! I recently read some interesting health myth debunking articles and thought I'd share.

I'll do a brief rundown of the results for the impatient, but here are the actual articles if you want to read them: article one, article two.

Myths debunked in article one:

• Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Basically they traced this back to a recommendation for 2.5 liters of water per day, but that most of that will come from the food you're eating.


• We use only 10% of our brains. Evidence doesn't support this at all.


• Hair and fingernails grow after death. Really it's just the skin drying and shrinking back that make them seem like they're still growing.


• Shaving causes hair to grow back faster, stronger, or coarser. Shaved hair has sharper edges that haven't been "weathered," so it appears courser. It hasn't been lightened by the sun like existing hair, so although it is darker, that isn't an effect of shaving.


• Reading in dim light ruins eyesight. It can produce temporary effects like headache and eye strain, but permanent damage is not likely.


• Eating turkey makes you especially drowsy. Turkey doesn't contain a particularly high amount of tryptophan, and pork and cheese actually have more by weight. The drowsiness after big holiday meals is likely because of eating so much food, period.


• Cellphones create dangerous interference around medical equipment. Studies show an extremely low rate of interference, and even then only at very close distances (under 3 feet).

Myths debunked in article two:

• Sugar causes hyperactivity in children. Studies don't support it. It's just a psychological effect, self-perpetuated by the myth. Parents know the kids ate some sugary stuff, and so they perceive the kids as being more hyper.


• Suicides increase over the holidays. George Bailey notwithstanding, there actually seems to be a slight decrease.


• Poinsettias are toxic. This was a big one for me, because I have often warned people of poinsettia toxicity in the past. No evidence for it at all. One less thing to worry about, I guess.


• 40-45% of body heat is lost through the head. The myth probably arose from inaccurate conclusions of an old study. There's nothing special about the head in terms of heat loss. Heat loss is proportional to the unconvered area no matter what part of the body. Speaking from personal experience, though, being bald makes hats a necessity in winter.


• Eating at night makes you fat. Time of day doesn't matter. It's all about the number of calories consumed versus expended.

Okay, there you go. Now we've all learned something today.