Happy Birthday to Me

Last Saturday was my birthday. (I have no idea how old I am in this picture) Anyway Chris made sure I had a great day. We went to breakfast with the girls, we went shopping, I went to get my hair cut, and then he took me to dinner. I had a great day.

Here we are singing Happy Birthday

Here I am making a wish..what did I wish for...just one nice picture with all my kids. That isn't so hard is it.

This is me asking T, "Please come and get in this picture."

One of the many takes, that didn't quite take!

"Please kids how hard is it for me to get one good picture?!"

I LOVE Am in this picture. She has just about had it.

Why is it that these kind of pictures are the only ones that the kids will cooperate in?

Well one child loves me I guess! :)

All my dearest friends here got together last week to celebrate my and Suzy's birthday. I love that I get to celebrate with her every year. We had a nice breakfast here and I got so many thoughtful things. Beautiful sunflowers (that are still blooming), warm knee high and thigh high socks (needed here), thank you cards (I am going to need them in the coming months) fancy shampoo and conditioner (that I love) a book called "these is my words" (I am LOVING it), I got bookmarks (that are so fun), a beautiful candle, lotions and bath oils, and waterproof mascara with a card that read"to keep you looking beautiful, no matter how many tears you may shed this year" Ironically this is the only gift that I cried over. I love my friends.

My little Witch

Here is my baby all dressed up for a fun photo shoot with her mom...her favorite thing. (mine, not hers) She looked darling and she was actually excited about me taking her pictures. That is until we went outside and it was cold. She wanted to go in and I begged and pleaded "please let me take just one picture" This is all I got!

Trunk or Treating

We went to the ward Trunk or Treating on Wednesday and the kids had a great time. T is dressed up as someone who has no style he said. Those are my boots.

C just grabbed a bunch of random stuff out of the box and was happy (so were we)

Here is E and one of her best friends in the world Bea!. I bought the girls costumes last year after Halloween at Target for around $2.oo. This year when they said what are we going to be for Halloween I brought up the costumes I had bought and said here is what you get to chose from. Thankfully they all found one they liked.

My beautiful Angel!

We didn't check Am's costume before we left...um..WOW! It is a good thing her blue underwear matched the blue snowflakes on the front of the dress. It was too cold to go outside so we all just picked a room and the kids went from room to room. It was a great night! We have the best ward with the best friends. We are very lucky!

Pumpkin Walk

As far back as I can remember my grandparents have done a pumpkin walk. They decided that teenagers needed to have something to do on Halloween to keep them out of trouble. They would get leftover, unwanted pumpkins from farmers fields and then two weeks before Halloween we would all carve pumpkins. They would send home a pumpkin with all the kids in their preschool to carve and bring back. Wards would come with their youth to carve. Anyone and everyone was welcome to help carve the pumpkins. The pumpkins were always on display the night before Halloween and Halloween night. At first all the pumpkins would be lit using candles and we would dress up, walk around with candles of our own and keep them lit. I am not sure when, but finally the figured out it would be easier to string Christmas lights in them. They did this every year until my grandpa Chester died 12 years ago. My little brother took it on after that for a few years. I am not exactly sure how the Pumpkin Walk ended up over in Syracuse, Utah (the neighboring city of my grandparents) I know my older sister Melinda was on the Arts Council and when they found out my grandma wasn't going to do it anymore the council didn't want this tradition to die. It was such a fun part of Halloween for everyone. They (the city) took it on, with my sister heading the operation. All the carving is still done at my grandmas school and all my family is still very much involved in this. It has continued to grow and now the city has farms that grow pumpkins for them (no more second hand unwanted pumpkins) and this year over 9ooo people walked through in three days to see over 1000 pumpkins that were on display! I get homesick every Halloween because I know what I am missing. This was and is one of my favorite family traditions. My grandpa loved doing art on his pumpkins. He designed and made his own tools and always carved the most amazing pumpkins. My family and a few family friends would do the same. I wish I had more pictures to show, but these two are by far the best ones I have seen. My younger brother Sheldon carved these (probably using my grandpas tools) They were the first pumpkins that the people saw when entering the pumpkin walk. Very fitting because my grandma sat at the beginning of the pumpkin walk with a clicker, counting every person that came through. The are AMAZING and look exactly like my grandparents.
For more pictures go to my mom's blog

Why is he smiling?

We just got off the phone with Dr. Miller. His final report from the pathologist came back BENIGN! If you don't believe in miracles, now you have reason to and PROOF! Heavenly Father DOES hear and answer our prayers! He has Juvenile Angiofibroma, which is still very serious, but not life threatening. He will have surgery, 6 weeks of daily radiation, and an 8 week recovery. These tumors do tend to come back. I am sure not every person would be happy with this diagnosis, but after being through what we have just been through...I'll take this.

We can't thank you enough for your prayers and love you have shown us. We really felt uplifted by it all. Thank you for your kind words to him he LOVED reading all the comments. He is still going to need your prayers, faith and LOVE. He has been blessed with a strong testimony and he has felt the spirit so many times during all of this. We have a hard road ahead. He is very nervous about surgery because he knows how painful his biopsy was. The team of doctors will meet on Wednesday to discuss his case and we meet with Dr. Miller on Thursday or Friday to discuss the next step.

What can I possibly say?

What do I say? Where do I begin. This past week has been a blur. I must say right now that I intend to use my blog as my journal and to keep family updated so you will be hearing a lot about T. We took him in for another biopsy yesterday and he was in there for three hours. Dr. Miller (our ENT) did what is called a frozen section, which means that she took a piece of the growth and sent it over to the lab, they would look at it and see if she got enough live cells for them to work with...it took her three times so that is why he was out for so long. Dr. Miller came out to say that he was doing great, but it was indeed malignant. My heart stopped and my life as I am use to it was gone. They think it is T Cell Lymphoma, but we will find more out today (hopefully) We stayed over night in the hospital. He had an MRI done first thing this morning and now we are home. We are waiting for the pathologist report which will tell us the kind and what stage we are at.

I just want you to know how much we appreciate your kind words and prayers. T really does love reading the comments and seeing how many people love and care about him. Please leave him a message even if you don't know him well or if you have never left a comment before. He needs all the LOVE and encouragement and HOPE that he can get. We will make it through this. I know that Heavenly Father loves us and hears us. How thankful I am to have the gospel in my life. I can't imagine going through this with out it.

Richard G. Scott said (about trials), "The Lord gives you experience that stimulate growth, understanding, and compassion which polish you for your everlasting benefit. To get you from where you are to where He wants you to be requires a lot of stretching, and that generally entails discomfort and pain."

more T

I am working on getting some fun pictures up here, but I wanted to share a few more of T. Here is a look at his face...see how puffy his cheek is? That is the tumor and see how it is pushing up on his eye? Hopefully today we will have answers and we can start acting and not just waiting waiting waiting.....

I love this one. He is trying to nap in recovery.

He really liked looking at all the comments left by people we love and seeing that they are all praying for HIM! He said "wow everyone said they are praying for me." SO thank you to all of you for your thoughts and prayers. Like I said hopefully today we will know what needs to be done to get him better.

Something to blog about

T has had trouble breathing out of his left nostril for about 6 months. We have been to the doctor a few times and nothing was working. We finally got into the ENT on Tuesday. She said he had an odd looking polyp in his nose and they were going to have to do a biopsy. Wednesday we went in for a CT scan. It showed not a polyp but a growth and a big one at that. We had a biopsy done today and he did GREAT! Our doctor was very kind when talking with us after the surgery. She wasn't sure what it was, but the biopsy has a rush on it so we should find out Monday or Tuesday what we are looking at. If it is what they thought it might be before the surgery then it is a non-cancerous tumor, but there were also some signs today that aren't consistent with what they are thinking. She asked is we were people of faith and we told her yes. She asked if she could pray with us. She took our hands and we stood in a circle and she said a very nice prayer. Who knows what the next few weeks will bring, but we are feeling ok. When we first found out about this one of my dearest friends (in trying to make me feel better) said "think of this as just something to blog about and you will get to take lots of pictures." Thus the title to my post! Please keep T in your prayers. He is going to need them.

The one race when time doesn't matter

The reason we went to NYC was to run the Tunnel to Towers 5k race. Honestly this was one of the coolest things I have ever done. We had a police escort through the tunnel on our shuttle bus and when we were let off and made it to the start of the race this is what we saw. There were about 15,000 runners/walkers. They had Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" blasting. Before the beginning of the race there was a little video about why this race was started. On September 11, 2001 off duty firefighter Steven Siller was in Brooklyn when the towers were hit. He was going to play golf, but turned his truck around. The Brooklyn Battery tunnel was closed so he got out of his truck put his gear on (70 lbs of it I believe) and ran through the tunnel. He had 5 kids! You can read about it by clicking the link on his name. So this race was to retrace his footsteps. During the video we figured out that the guy who told us that this was the one race when time doesn't matter was his brother.

Here is a group of army men and women in full fatigues and packs on their backs ready to run. There were fire fighters from London there. There were some running in their gear, helmets and all. The National Anthem was sung which was very emotional and we were off...10 minutes after the race started.

That's right...there were so many people there it took us 10 minutes just to get to the starting line. April let us run with her camera and I am so glad we did.

Anna did a sprint to get in front of these guys and ran backward while taking this picture.(she is cool like that) They were chanting all through the tunnel which was pretty cool. The tunnel it's self is 1.7 miles long and it was HOT HOT HOT!!! It was a lot harder then I thought it was going to be.

Coming out of the tunnel you are greeted by fresh cool air and firefighters all dressed up in their nice suits holding American flags and they each have a banner with a picture of one of the firefighters who died that day...all 343 of them. It was an AMAZING sight.

They cheered you on as you ran by...giving out high fives...kind words of encouragement.
It really was awesome.

As we came around the bend our cheerleaders Seleta and April were there. Do you see me with my hands up and the Statue of Liberty behind me.

I had a great time (once I got out of that tunnel...did I mention that it was HOT in there?)

Here we are Nicole, Amy, Anna and me
I will do this again next year and every year after...as long as I have great friends to run it with me AND if my super cool nice husband watches the kids for me. :)

Saturday, Day 2- NYC

Saturday we went to check into the race, get our numbers and timing chips. We were talking about how we didn't want to come in the same number as our numbers. This guy was standing there and he said to us "this is one race when time doesn't matter."

I have to confess, I got a little emotional checking in. (shocker I know)

World Trade Center Site

We spent that day on Canal Street. My favorite street in the world. When I am there I lose all sense of judgment and do things I would normally never do, talk to strangers, go into dark alleys (or elevators), go places with people I don't know...
I only bought me one purse and one scarf. I thought I did pretty good.

We were so tired and our feet and legs hurt. I was wondering if I would even run the race the next day. We went back to the apartment and I fell asleep at 7:30 and only woke up to take out my bed. It was great!

David and Lanah-Day 1- NYC

Friday September 26th I headed to NYC with 5 girlfriends to run the Tunnel to Towers 5k race (more on that later) We got into the city about 4:30 by the help of Seleta as Navigator and Anna as driver. It was quite the experience. You can read about some of the funny things on April's blog. Anyway I called my friend David,(who was my Senior Prom date) he was painting his house, but dropped his brush to come into the city with his BEAUTIFUL new daughter Lanah. It was SO great to chat and catch up. He took me to dinner and I think that was the only time I put Lanah down. She is just too darling and such a good happy baby. David and Lanah
honestly have you seen a more beautiful baby! What a great night. Thanks David!