April 30, 2008

New Bow Model

So I've been making some hair bows lately and as I knew Lance wouldn't try them out for me I had to find another model. What do you think?! :) I think he looks pretty! Contrary to what Lance may try and tell you, he thought it was funny too. Although I'd never let Ace wear them for to long for fear he might suddenly realize there's something on his head and start to attack my precious bows.

April 26, 2008

Grandma Beverly Glade Wessman

I found out one of my sweet grandma's passed away this morning. She recently turned 84 years old. She's been gone mentally most of the time for over a year now since she's had dementia/Alzheimer's (I can't remember if it was ever actually diagnosed as Alzheimer's). She was such a sweet and loving lady. The one picture is shortly after we were engaged (Dec 2005) and we stopped by to give grandma the good news. She was still with it then although having trouble remembering everything. She was so excited for us. She said we were such a sweet couple and that she could tell Lance was a special guy. I was so glad that she was able to make it to our wedding since she was having a harder time getting around. Our wedding was one of the last family things she was able to go to (I think she made it to a couple of my other cousins wedding's that year). I loved going to their house when I was little and spending time with her and grandpa. I remember baking pie crusts and cookies with her and helping set the tables for our big family Thanksgiving dinners. We loved playing dress-ups and I still remember my favorite yellow dress that I always liked to wear. Our special breakfast at their house was always buttermilk pancakes. Yummy! They still never taste as good as when grandma and grandpa made them. She loved to share stories and always managed to share her testimony at the same time. She's was such an example to me of a Christ like lady. In all her cards and letters to me and my siblings she always shared her love for us as well as for the gospel. I'm sure her letters to the rest of the family were also filled with the same sentiments. I could always see what a huge and important part of her life the gospel was. She had a quite and sweet way of encouraging us to do what was right and make good choices. She loved music and would often ask me to go down in her basement and play the piano for her. I admit I wasn't always thrilled to go do it and take time away from doing whatever it was I was doing, but she'd convince me to do it anyways. I remember sometimes wondering in my young mind why she wanted me to do it since I was sure she really couldn't hear that well and probably didn't even know what I was playing. I realized later that that didn't really matter so much. She still loved to hear me play. And when she started getting sicker and forgetting who we all were I really wished I had played for hours and hours for her when she had asked me to play a few songs for her. She would have loved that. It's been kind of an interseting experience since I've almost expected and in a way wanted her to go many times over the past year. I guess since her mind has been gone, she just wasn't really grandma anymore and it was like she was already gone, it was just her body and occasional random toughts that remained. It was hard seeing my beloved sweet grandma like that. I'm glad that grandma is finally able to go and join her sweetheart and live with him for the eternities. My grandpa died over 4 years ago and she has missed him a lot. I'm so grateful for the knowledge that I have that families can be together forever. What a blessing it is to know that!! Her example will stay with me always and I'll look forward to sharing her stories and life with my own children. I love you grandma!!!

April 25, 2008

So....disreagard previous post, I guess

So today when Lance was doing all the dishes by hand, the dishwasher mysteriously decided to work again (after he was pretty much all done of course). So I guess it just didn't like the dishes we had in there or something. It was really strange. It's nice to have a working dishwasher. We'll see how long it lasts this time....

April 22, 2008

The Joys of Homeownership

So our house has been good until a couple days ago. There was only one appliance that was not new, the dishwasher, and guess what decided all of a sudden to just not work. It's very frustrating!!! I think it must be fried or something cause I tried turning it on Sunday night and it wouldn't do anything. It worked just fine and dandy a few days before. So we now have to figure out what do we do?! Just get a new one? Or have a repair person come on the off chance that it's something simple and cheap to fix (yea right!)? I found myself missing one thing about our renting days, when these types of occurrences weren't our problem! We could just call the landlord and he'd have it fixed. So until we decide what we want to do we'll just have to wash them the old fashioned way! I'm apologizing now for anyone who comes over because I guarantee we will have a pile of dished in the kitchen. I hate washing dishes!!

April 14, 2008

Arthritis......or no arthritis?

So as many of you know, I was diagnosed with arthritis back in high school. I haven't had any symptoms now for years. I went to a new rheumatologist a few weeks ago and he differed in opinion to the one I had been seeing in IF before we got married. He is thinking that my lupus arthritis is not "true" lupus but rather is minocycline induced lupus (a medication I was on at the time I was first diagnosed for my acne). There has been some research to show that minocycline has weird and rare adverse affects such as causing/mimicking the same symptom as lupus but the symptoms resolve when the minocycline is stopped. I remember back in high school my mom and determatologist both wondered about the minocycline being the culprit but I guess that doctor didn't believe it or something. Even though he didn't believe that's what my arthritis symptoms were from, my determatologist switched me to a different medication for my acne. (Big thanks to her now!!) So my new rheumatologist did a bunch of lab work and said it all looked fine. So we decided to stop the plaquenil (the med I've been on since I was diagnosed with lupus arthritis) and see how it goes. Meaning, if I don't have any symptoms when the medication wears out of my body I just had minocycline induced lupus. If symptoms do reappear then I just have a very strange case of lupus (because usually there are more systems affected by it than just the joints, like with me). We're hoping the former is the case! It would be great to not have to buy meds for it any more or pay higher insurance premiums! So right now we just have to wait and see what happens. But the rheumatologist said he doesn't need to see me anymore unless I start having problems. It will be strange (but good) only seeing a doctor for my annual check-ups since I've been going to a specialist for so long now.

Last Weekend

Besides Ace's basketball there were other things we did this past conference weekend at my parent's house. My brother Tim and Katie were there with little Kalyn. It was so fun to get to spend time with them and more time with Kalyn. She's getting so big already! Kalyn got some pictures taken while they were there and the turned out very cute! We also saw my friend Lacey and Jeff and their boy Eric. They'll be moving to Oregon so it'll be the last time we see them in a while. I'm going to miss seeing Lacey sooo much! We've been best friends since high school. I just realized typing this out that I forgot to get a picture of Lacey and me. Stink! Well hopefully we'll get to stop and see them when we go to the Oregon coast later this summer. I will admit I'll have to read the conference edition of the Ensign when it comes out because it was a struggle for me to stay awake for them all. I don't know if I was just exhausted from work the week before or what. Either way I really did try to stay awake and feel impressed that I caught as many of them as I did. We also picked up the dinning table of mine (was my great-grandma's) that's been in my parents basement since I got it back in junior high or something. We're so excited to have a dinning area with enough room for it. We have a matching table and chairs now, YEAH!! We're slowly working on getting the whole house that way. :) It was a great weekend for all. We enjoyed family, friends, and conference. Ace enjoyed playing with my sister's dog D-Loc.

April 13, 2008

Ace's new toy

Here's another Ace video. He has a new fun toy thanks to my dad. We were up at their house last weekend and he loved pushing the basketball around. It's a really old basketball from when I was a little kid that's been sitting outside on the side of the house for years. Since Ace liked it so much "grandpa dave" gave it to Ace. He'll play with it for an hour just pushing it all around the backyard. It's funny to watch. After he's done playing he looks something like this...