Strike!!!!!

This last weekend we went bowling with Steven and Chelsie. It was a lot of fun. By the time I got my camera out, I had had enough bowling so there are not any pics of me. How sad. ha ha.

Here is Chelsie. I never got any of her doing her "strike" dance. :)

I only got pics of Eric after he had a disappointing turn, I guess. ha ha. I think they are pretty funny though!

I think if you look closely or if you click and make the pic bigger, you can see the ONE pin left standing. How tragic. :)

Nice form babe!!

This is Steven's "signature" move.

Thanks for a fun night guys!! We need to do it more often. Chelsie, feel free to "steal" these off my blog or I can email them to you if you want. :)

Madame Butterfly

Saturday was another one of my ballets and this one was Madame Butterfly. I have to say that it is my favorite one so far. I didn't know the story until yesterday and it is a pretty sad, depressing one but the ballet was so beautiful and wonderful! I was a little disappointed because origianlly the dancer that was supposed to play Butterfly is a beautiful Aisian girl but for some reason it was not her last night. Oh well. Also, they had some weird (weird is an understatement) opening ballet called Gong. It was an abstract ballet. Very strange. You could tell the dancers were very talented but I was not a fan of the overall performance of Gong. It was still a great night!

We went to a store called Bukos (I think that is how you spell it!) and it is like a giant Ross or TJ Maxx with TONS of stuff. Great deals! Too bad March is their last month but all during March everything will be an extra 50% off. So if you have never been, you should go. It is kinda messy and junky feeling inside but there are some great finds!

We always have a good time when we go to the ballets. Suzy has some pretty funny friends. We usually ride down with her friend Lissa and she is a crack up! I feel a little out of place since I am only 24 but they are all so nice and keep me laughing!! Here is a pic (yes, I actually have picture in a post!) of me and Suzy during intermission. We only have one more ballet :( Depending on how much they cost, I want to look into getting season tickets to the theater!

My oh my!!!

I just found out that baby Gracie is in sugery RIGHT NOW getting a NEW heart!!!!! Keep her in her prayers. The heart is in and is beating but they still have a ways to go. She was put on the transplant list less than a week ago so this is truly a miracle. But we already knew this baby was a miracle. I am so happy right now!! Thanks to all of you who have thought about her and prayed for her. Keep it up. They are working!!!!

GERD

In case you have no clue what this means, it stands for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. . Anyways, I have it. I have had it since I was about 18 I believe. I diagnosed myself after having EXTREME chest pain, not being able to lay done flat, ever, and having a hard time breathing. This went on for a while and finally it got bad enough that my parents were really concerned and sent me to a heart specialist. I had an echocardiogram done and a couple other procedures where they monitored my heart. Through this I learned that my heart, liver and other vital organs were A-Okay. That is good news but then what the heck is causing this horrible pain and discomfort????

I was reading a newspaper article one day about Acid Reflux and thought, that sounds like me! I called my normal family doctor and went in. He told me I was basically right but that I had GERD. From what I understand the difference is with acid reflux, it is just an occasional thing where GERD is more than twice a week, in my case, daily. So I was put on Protonix. It helped right away and I was so happy! Since then, I have been on I think, 3 different medications. One would get too expensive, my insurance wouldn't cover it anymore or I would be on it too long and it wouldn't work for my body any longer. Most recently, I have been on Prilosec. I have heard that it is not good to stay on it for a long period of time so I called my Dr. and asked what else we could do. The solution? Go back on one I used to take and take it until it starts to not work as well and then go back to Prilosec for several months and then keep switching back and forth. Sound like a pain? I thought so.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I started doing some research online for natural remedies. I don't really want to have to be on meds forever. I learned a few things to try. Drink Apple Cider Vinegar 4 times daily, take Papaya Enzymes, drink pickle juice, chew sugar free gum after eating and several more. I went to my local GNC store and bought some special apple cider vinegar and also papaya enzymes. I took a swig of the vinegar shortly after I got it and wanted to cry! ha ha. It was horrible. It made my eyes water and burned the whole way down, The papya enzymes are chewable pills that I am supposed to take like 3, 3 times daily. I HATE chewable pills but am willing to give it a try.

You are probably wondering why I am writing this massive post to tell you about my issues, but there is a purpose. I started these new options and so far today I have not had to take any of my meds. This is huge because normally if I missed a dose I was miserable within a short amount of time. So I am optomistic that it will work.

Now for the purpose, I am hoping that someone that reads this will either have the same problem as me or knows someone that has/does. I am open to any and all suggestions that anyone has to help me. I try to stay away from foods I know will make it worse, like fried foods, pop, chocolate, tomatos and tomato based foods, spicy foods, etc. I have heard that doing some of these natural remedies things can actually almost totally eliminate GERDS. This would be wonderful since the only other option I have heard of is surgery. So any help, info or anything would be greatly appreciated! Or if you are in the same boat I am wondering what to do next, leave a comment and maybe we can help each other. I did just find this website on my friend's blog (thanks Kiesha!) and you can actually choose different health issues you are concerned about and it will give you recipes to help! It is http://recipes.runnersworld.com/

I have a couple other health issues that I am trying to take care of naturally and without prescriptions but I think focusing on one at a time for now will be best. Thanks for reading yet another one of my long, boring and pictureless posts! :)

Love is in the air!

So I know I am just a little slow but I did want to talk about my Valentine's Day. It started out a little hectic with Eric's truck not wanting to start and so we had to go buy a new battery but it went much better after that!

Let me first say that Eric HATES Valentine's Day. It is sad but true. I on the other hand love it. I guess you could say I am a hopeless romantic. I don't think gifts are necessary so we don't usually exchange anything but I think it is important to be together and snuggle and be extra lovey :) I told Eric that I just wanted to do something just me and him and that I didn't care what it was. He surprised me a couple days before and said we were going to Ogden and he was taking me to a Thai restaurant that I had never been too. It was a pretty snowy, yucky day and I got worried that we wouldn't be able to go. We decided to brave it and it really was not that bad driving.

I LOVE going on drives just me and him because we talk the whole time and I just love it. We went to the restaurant first and it was so yummy! I had only had Thai food once before at my cousins wedding. I will NEVER eat fried tofu again after that however. Or any kind of tofu. :) Anyways, the restaurant was just a nice, little place run by the family. We got tons of food and it was delish! When we left Eric said what do you want to do now? I thought for a minute and asked if we could go to Target and his response was "Anything you want". So we went to Target and he was so great to just walk with me and let me look and browse at anything I wanted. His response that night was always "If you want, whatever you want....." I loved it! We stopped at Sonic on the way home to get drinks and then finished the night watching Nights of Rodanthe. It was an okay movie but sad and I don't really like sad :(

It was such a fun night. I love spending time with him and we always have so much fun. He cracks me up and I love it. I will just start laughing at him and looks at me and says "What is so funny?" ha ha. He is so good to me. The next day when we were driving he told me that when the time comes and he stands before God and is asked if he did everything in his power to make his wife happy, he wants to be able to answer with a strong Yes! Oh I just love him!! Of course we are not perfect but it is fun to try to be and to always try to make our marriage better. Thanks for making me SO happy honey! I can only hope that I make him feel as happy and loved as he makes me! I love you!

Hope you guys all had a fun day as well. From reading other blogs it looks like there was a lot of love in the air :)

Please, please!

Hey everyone, I am asking for everyone's help. I know I have mentioned Gracie on my blog before but she needs our help more than ever right now. I know you don't know her but it doesn't matter. She is in very critical condition right now up at Primary Children's. Please say a prayer for her and her family now and as many times as you can. I have been following her story since birth and feel so much love for this baby and her family. I know that may sound silly. Please visit her blog, leave an encourging message for her family. They read them all and have said many times how much they help them to get through. You can click here. If you have time you can go clear back and read about her from the beginning. It really is an amazing story. Thanks in advance for your help guys. The power of prayer really is an awesome thing and has the ability to work miracles! Please pray for her heart on this "heart" day :) Please share this with anyone else who can share there prayers with this special baby girl. Thanks so much!

And now the moment you have all been waiting for!!

***UPDATE: This title only pertains to those of you that read my previous post......No, I am not making any big announcements at this time. :) ***


Okay, not really. But let this be a lesson to you all. ALWAYS line the bottom of your oven with foil!!!! I am serious here. Why you may ask? (Or if you are smarter than me you probably already know this and have foil in your oven as we speak.) Let me explain. Feb 2nd was Eric's moms 50th birthday. I decided that we should have a party for her on the 1st. I knew how much she loves German Chocolate cake and instead of buying one, I wanted to make it for her completely from scratch. I found a yummy recipe and went to work. The batter was delish! I could have drank it. Okay that is kind of gross but it was seriously so good. I prepared my 2 round cake pans and poured the batter into them. Then I proceeded to put them in the oven.

I was getting other things ready for everyone to come over when Eric asks "Why does it smell like burnt toast?" Hmmm....why does it smell like burnt toast? This is when I noticed the smoke billowing out of my oven.

These pics don't really do it justice. My kitchen was FILLED with smoke. Good thing I was not too worried about my house to run and grab my camera to document huh?

Then I opened my oven and this is the pretty picture I saw......


You will notice foil in these 2 pictures. I had the brilliant idea to hurry and slide some under there so it didn't get worse. Apparantly all this does is cause more smoke since the charred on cake batter has absolutely no air. Bad idea. I realized this almost instantly when the some more than doubled. You are laughing aren't you? It's fine, it is pretty funny to me now. So I removed my half baked cakes, proceeded to open almost every door and window in the main area of the house and fanned my little heart out. I thought I was going to cough up a lung and wondered if I had inhaled enough smoke to cause any permant damage. Somehow mantained composure and after most of the smoke had left my house, put on my thinking cap. I quickly "cleaned" the oven as best I could, reheated it up and put the semicleaned up cake pans bake in the oven. ha ha. Miraculously I got them cooked enough but boy were they scary looking!
The cake ended up like half the size it was supposed to be, lop sided and really rough around the edges. I did the best I could and used the coconut to camouflage. The frosting was delicious as well I might add! So considering what it took to get the cake, I was some what okay with how it turned out!

You will notice a nice clump broke off. Nice. My family was very nice and most everyone took a piece and said it tasted good. I am sure they didn't want to make me cry but I appreciated their kindness! :)

Suzy and Kambree.

Kaden wishing her a happy birthday!!

We had a fun night! All of Eric's family was able to come. It took about a week to fully get the smoke smell out of my house. Unfortuanatly I learned that I had not done a good enough cleanup when I cooked dinner one night and the smell returned!! Right now my oven is soaking in oven cleaner so that I can make some yummy banana bars tomorrow!

So there you have it. My house didn't burn down, I have not noticed any signs of damage from breathing in all the smoke, and we had a happy birthday party for Suzy! Yea! All is well!

Uncle Sam, you are NOT my friend.

So my life has been pretty uneventful the last while. I have not really had anything to blog about. I know this is not very exciting either but I just wanted to express my not nice feelings that I have towards taxes. We had to pay a good chunk of money last year but we were expecting it since we sold our home before we had been there 2 years. (Dang capital gain taxes!!!) Anyways, we went last night to get our taxes done and I was not really expecting a refund. I figured it could go a couple hundred either way (refund or owing) Ha! Boy was I WAY wrong! And not in a good way. It sure was an unwelcomed surprise. Our lovely tax guy told us that having a baby would really help us out. Well thanks for the ever so helpful info! Sheesh! So I am a little bitter this morning. Oh well, not much you can do about it I guess.....

After reading my cousins blog, (who was having the same feelings as me about not having anything to blog about), I was inspired. :) She decided to go through the pics on her camera and found that she did in fact have something great to blog about. Her cute kiddos! Obviously I do not have any cute little kids, BUT, I did go through my pictures on my camera and remembered a lovely experience that I will post about in the next day or so. Let's just say that these pics make me happy and thankful that I didn't burn my house down, I didn't die of smoke inhalation, and we were able to still have a nice birthday party for Eric's mom. :) Are you intrigued?? ha ha You should be. I know you can't wait!