The Good Old Days

I was just browsing through our picture file trying to find the most recent pictures that tyler downloaded last night thinking maybe I should update this blog when I came across this picture. I don't think I have ever seen this picture! I just couldn't resist. They look so YOUNG! Where has the time gone? I can't help but remeber this time when I was at home 24/7 with three little ones and NO CAR. I thought my life would NEVER change. I thought I was always going to live in a 2 bedroom townhouse and never have a car and always be what seemed like a single parent. Tyler would leave at 6 am and not come home till 10pm. He worked full time and went to school full time. I had to make my schedule around everyone elses schedule if I needed to take the kids to the dr.(which was quite often) or just run errands. I thought life was so difficult and hard. And yes it was. Just a different kind of hard than what we are living today. Even though I delt with the struggles of never having a break and being surrounded by children 24/7, I really do wish at times that I could go back to then. I hadn't gotten sick yet, my kids still adored only me, no talking back, no setting preteen rules, etc.... I hadn't started to really worry what my kids were going to face in the social world yet. This was when the most expensive christmas gift was a blue ball with white stars, or a huge candy bar. Now it's ipods and cell phones. It is weird to think that I am at a stage in my life when I want the same things for christmas that my kids do. I remeber when we bought ellie her ipod shuffle for her 8th birthday thinking " I am buying my 8 year old an ipod when I don't even have one!"

Oh my life was so simple back then.....only if I had realized it. Yes I have the days to myself mostly now. I can go as I please now. No more being tugged in all different ways. No more washing dirty little hand prints off of the walls. Now it is, "Mom so and so hurt my feelings at school today." and " So and so doesn't want to be my friend anymore." and "Why can't I have a cell phone.....all my friends do." and "Why can't I stay out till midnight and have a late night. All my friends do." (what the heck! My curfue was midnight when I was in highschool...not junior high. Oh how the times have changed. I am thinking right now that I wish I could turn back time and relive those tiring young motherhood days. I hate to say I took them for granted. Don't get me wrong I am enjoying having a whole different kind of relationship with my kids now but I really hate worrying about the real world stuff now.

Mom or a Doctor?

Tyler and I always try to encourage the kids to do thier best in school and other activities that they are doing. I always ask them what they want to be and Ellie always says "artist, of course." Maggee wants to be a mom (yes the best job in the world). Philip actually talks alot about being a marine biologist. My sister heather keeps begging me to let him come to florida in the summer and do some camps down there. Now on to Lucy. The other day we had this conversation.........

me: So what do you want to be when you grow up Lucy?
Lucy: I want to be a dr.
me: You will be a good Dr. but do you want to be a mom too? Even though you have kids you can still be anything you want to be!
Lucy: mmmm no. No kids. Just want to be a dr.

So there you have it. No kids for Lucy. Ellie and maggee always talk about how they can't wait to be moms. Lucy likes her dolls and imaginary friends but when ever I bring up having kids she always tells me " I already told you I am not having kids!"

I really just wanted to record this so that when she is grown up and a mom and maybe even a dr. I can show her how she said she would NEVER have kids and have a good laugh with her.

Freedom!

Ok so I guess I shouldn't say FREEDOM. I am a little sad for summer to be over but I am ready for some of the chaos to calm down. I do hate being tied to a schedule for the morings but I am ready for the craziness that summer brings to settle down.

I thought it would be fun to show a picture of the kids a few years ago to show how big my babies are getting (Philip would be embarrassed to know I was calling him my baby). Not sure why Maggee wasn't in this picture. Probably because she wasn't going to school yet. This was when we were living with Karol. I think Ellie was only going to kindergarten and Philip was going to second grade.

(philip's looks never really change)

And now my babies are BIG. I love this picture because it shows all of them. All three kids excited to go and Lucy in the back ground pouting as usual. In Lucy's mind she should ALWAYS be able to do what the other kids are doing.

I thought Tyler was going to start crying when he came home from back to school night last night and said he couldn't believe that Philip was done with elementry school. It is a weird thought to think I have a sixth grader, a fourth grader, and a second grader. Philip was nervous and we told him it is ok to be nervous but that he will be alright.

Philip's bus actually doesn't come till 8:31 (tyler is very annoyed if you say 8:30). The girls get on the bus at 8:04. I must admit that I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders as soon as Philip's bus drove away. It has been a very QUIET day and......my house is STILL clean! Don't get me wrong, I am very sad my kiddos are growing up but I am also excited for them to go to school and be with their friends and for the adventures they will have this year. I think my breakdown will really happen next year when the last one leaves the nest! Until then, I am enjoying my ME time and LUCY time!

Yummmmmm....

The best thing about this surgery has been all of the great food my ward has brought into my home. These were soooo good. I was soo sad when they were all gone. Definitely one of my new favorites!

Thanks to EVERYONE who has been helping us out. You will never know how much it has ment!

Just my thoughts

So here it is the end of August and I am STILL down from the surgery. I thought I would give a quick update as to our happenings lately. Sorry no pics so I hope this isn't too boring. Life has been TOUGH this last little while but I am hoping that I am turning a corner. This surgery has been VERY PAINFUL and a lot HARDER than I expected to recover from. Don't get me wrong I am still glad I did it. I think I have learned more about this disease I have since the surgery then I did before the surgery. I have found a website called dailystrength.org. I joined the pseudo tumor cerebri chat group and it has been sooo therapeutic for me. I log on everyday and read people's posts and love realizing that I am NOT crazy. There are other people out there that understand what I am going through. This group introduced me to another website, ihrfoundation.org. This website answers every question I have almost ever had. I am sure I bore Tyler to death cause I always have to tell him some exciting thing I have just read and he does listen but not with quite as much excitement as I have. My dr. at the moran eye center has also sent me a flyer about a group of people (from here in utah) that get together every year and are able to meet and talk about their experiences with this disease. It is a hard life dealing with chronic pain. It takes such a toll on your body.

The kids are all getting ready to start school. I FINALLY convinced tyler that I could handle going to provo with him so I could help out with school shopping. I wasn't quite sure about letting tyler pick all of Ellie's and Maggee's school things out. They probably would have come home with football and basketball clothes. We also went to dinner and a movie with some friends that night and for the first time in over a month I almost felt like a normal person. The kids are sooo excited for school to start. It has been a LONG summer. I have loved having them home but it will be nice to get back into the schedule of things.

My body is TIRED . I am ready for this whole thing to be OVER!! The walls of my bedroom are getting quite lonely. It is also very frustrating to wake up with extreme pain in my side and every little movement makes me want to cry. I am reassured by my neurosurgeon that this is normal. Apparently they don't suture the tube and drain into place so it is floating around in there. So at time it hits nerves and organs that causes a lot of pain and discomfort. My dr. says that my body should build up scar tissue to hold it in place. How long does scar tissue take to form anyways? I feel like I have given it plenty of time. I also get worn out ALL THE TIME. Who knew walking around Costco would be SOOO much work! I am also getting very horrible heat flashes since the surgery. I am also told that that is normal. My body needs to adjust to a foreign object inside of it. Good news is that I have not had one fever since the surgery which is a good sign that my body won't reject the shunt...knock on wood. It is very frustrating to feel really good one moment and then the very next..VERY HORRIBLE!

One last thing I need to write down before I forget. Tyler and the girls and I were watching So You Think You Can Dance. I LOVE this show. Anyway, Lucy always dances around the tv room while we are watching. During one of the routines Lucy is doing her usually moves and then stops right infront of the tv and pulls a Michael Jackson move. Yes the crotch grabbing one. AND she did it PERFECTLY! I turned to tyler and said, "Did she just do what I think she did?" We were laughing sooo hard. Tyler has been showing the kids a lot of Michael Jackson moves and videos. Gotta love this girl. Hopefully I can get her into some dance classes this year. She is also starting preschool. Yes my BABY is going to preschool! Life is moving on even though I am STILL stuck in this bed of mine.

Pseudotumor Cerebri

This is a post that I have been wanting to do for quite some time. Mainly because this is supposed to be a journal about my family. I want my kids to read this sometime and be able to understand why thier mom was the way she was. Also, alot of people that I run into always have the question "what is it you really have?" So I thought maybe I should do a post all about Pseudotumor Cerebri (PTC) or Benign Intracranial Hypertension (BIH). I completely understand if this post sounds way boring to some of you so feel free to skip. I mainly just want of record of what I have been dealing with for the past five years now.

My battle with this disease began when I was four months pregnant with Lucy. I was diagnosed with a viral meningitis. It was really scary and was hospitalized for it. The pregnancy was very difficult. The dr.s all assured me that Lucy would be ok and life would go back to normal as soon as I would give birth to her, but that I would be alot more susceptible to headaches. After I delivered Lucy I still suffered from extreme headaches but I thought it to be normal and didn't check back with my neurologist like I was supposed to.

Our life moved on and we sold our Hamlet townhome and we moved in with Karol. A few weeks after living with her I had a horrible headache and could not function. I was scared that I had gotten meningitis again. Tyler took me to the hospital and they did a spinal tap. Good news was that it was not meningitis but that I had Pseudotumor Cerebri. By the name of it it makes it sound like I have a tumor in my brain. There is actually no tumor. A phantom tumor is what a lot of dr.s call it. The minengies in my brain were not functioning properly. Your body is constantly procuding spinal fluid and the minengies around your brain secrete it. Mine were not secreting it properly so therefore fluid would build up around my brain and put pressure on it making my brain think that it had a tumor. So my body would act as if I had a tumor. Mainly I had alot of nausea and a lot of swishing sounds in my ears. The only way to relieve it fast was to have a spinal tap. Spinal taps, oddly enough, became my best friend. It was the only thing that kept my head from hurting. The hard thing about spinal taps is you have to be flat after them. As of today I have had around 13 or more spinal taps. The blessing in disguise was us moving in with Karol. Not really a blessing for her though. She had to take care of my family because I couldn't. To this day, I really believe that one of the reasons I was ment to marry tyler was because I needed to have the mother-in-law that I have. She kept our little family together.

I worked with a neurologist for quite some time and was started on medication. After a while he decided he could not help me and referred me to Dr. Digre up at the Moran Eye Center at the U of U. To this day she is still treating me along with a neurosurgeon Dr. Richard Schmidt. Dr. Digre tried me on every medication possible to treat this disease. All the while I am dealing with headaches every single day. Waking up with a headache and going to bed with a headache becomes a very hard life to deal with. I mainly felt bad for my kids. I just didn't have it in me to take them and do the fun stuff a mom should do. Luckily I was blessed with wonderful kids who are very understanding and patient. And with wonderful family and friends who help me with my kids. I am truely a product of family and friends helping me raise my kids. I honestly have not raised my kids.

Here I am five years later and still dealing with all the same issues. It has been a very frustrating last few years. Tyler and I decided to have a surgery to try and help me out. There are two different shunts that they can use to try and relieve this pressure in my head. The first is a VP shunt that is actually placed in the head with a tube that goes down the neck and end in either the heart area or the stomach area. Which ever the surgeon decides is best. The second shunt is an LP shunt. This shunt is placed in the spine with a tube that wraps around the waiste and end with a drain in the stomach are. Tyler and I decided to start with the LP shunt.

This is as close as a picture I could find to show what it looks like. I had the surgerly done on July 27. Today is August 14. and I am still down because of the surgery. I have had some headache relief. The last few days I have been feeling some tightness in my head and so I am to stay down hoping that the shunt will unclog itself. There are many things that can go wrong with this shunt. It can cause Chiari (where the brain is sucked down the spine), it can cause many infections, or it can just simply malfunction or pop out of the vertibret that it is in. We are hoping that none of this happens to me. This surgery has been a lot more difficult to heal from than I had expected but I am hoping that it will all be worth it. If I do have to many problems with this shunt, then we will try the one in my head. Strangely enough, I almost wonder if I would rather have the one in my head. I don't think I would feel it as much as I feel this one. It is very uncomfortabel moving with it. I can feel the tube around my waist, which makes it difficult to get in a comfortable position to sleep in at night. But then I always think, "Would I rather be uncomfortable or would I rather have part of my head shaved?" Tyler thinks I am crazy that I am most worried about getting my head shaved with the other shunt, but a girl needs to worry about her hair!

I am very glad I got the shunt because it has given me headache free days, and I forgot what that was like. It is very frustrating to still be down but I know it won't be forever. So far I think the shunt is a success. Anyone out there that has this disease.....I highly recomment this procedure.

Poor Ellie.....It is her 9th bday today and I am down. Tyler is having to be quite the Mr. Mom. He is making her birthday dinner tonight and is doing her friend bday party tomorrow. I feel like I have missed out on so much with my kids. All Lucy knows is me being this way. Ellie and Philip keep asking me if I am ever going to get better and that really breaks my heart. They remember before I got pregnant with Lucy and all the things I would do with them. The kids today think Tyler is the only one who can have fun with them. I am soooo greatful to have such a wonderful husband who will take over the whole household. I am not trying to be cheesy by saying this about tyler. I honestly don't know who else I could have married who would have taken over this family the way he has. He literally works his more than full time job and takes care of the household and kids. He is teaching Philip quite the cooking skills. I am proud to be apart of this family!

The birds and the bees :)

WARNING the content of this post contains "the birds and the bees" information. Please be advised ( I will try to keep the language at rated G level) as you read on........

The fourth of July this year will definitely be one that I will always remember. This is the year that my little boy "officially" grew up! Tyler and I have been debating lately whether or not it was time to have THE talk with him. Last year was the year they held the maturation (sp?) class for the fifth graders. Philip was gladly relieved when we were on our way to Olivia's graduation down in Cedar City on the day it was held. In fact, Philip never told us or gave us the letter about the class. We found out later from someone else that it had taken place.

Tyler and I kind of came up with an agreement that he would talk to Philip about things and I would talk to the girls. Which I did think was a little unfair since he only had to do the talk once and I will have to do it THREE times. However......I helped out this time so I think Tyler should return the favor when it comes time.

Now let me say that this was not something that we had planned on doing this holiday....something that just happened. AND I must say that I was very pleased to see how clueless philip actually was. I thought for sure that him and his friends had had talks about what they think IT really is. Which they have, but really didn't know.

My sister Darci came up with her boys on friday to spend the day, do a little boating on my dad's new boat, eat, play games, and just spend time as a family. My parents went up to The Sound of Music play in Miday (my dad was being honored as an artist and the architect of the legacy bridge in Miday......love ya dad!) so Tyler, Darci, Philip, and Colton and I were sitting at the table talking about random things (alone...no grandparents around). To be honest I am actually not sure how the subject even came up. But at some point, Colton stated that he knew what IT was. I asked him what he thinks it is (honstestly thinking that he would say kissing and laying in bed together) and he point blankley told me. I looked over at Philip and his mouth dropped to the table. Tyler and I looked at each other and thought "well......now we have some explaining to do!" So the next half hour to forty five minutes were full of explanations and questions from both boys.

I will admit that the conversation went over a lot more smoothly than I had imagined it to. I was terrified to have this kind of a talk with my child. I watched Oprah one day and it was on what was an appropriate age to talk to your kids about the birds and the bees was and how to have the conversation. There was a little girl on there at about the age of 10 and her mom and Oprah told her all about it. She took it so well and so maturly. I remember talking to tyler about it and saying how Philip is 11 so...according to Oprah we were a year behind. Both of us just kept putting it off. Now that the conversation is over , I am glad we had it. Philip was embarrassed while we were talking and got very red during some of the conversation.....but I know that he will come to us now when he has questions. I also think he was more comfortable having the conversation with Colton. I am so glad that Philip learned it from us. I always want my kids to feel comfortable to come and ask us questions and now I think Philip is.

So....one down, now three more to go. That shouldln't be awhile cause according to Tyler our girls won't be allowed to say hi to a boy till they are 21!!!