The Sick and Afflicted/Why I'm Not Such a Big Fan of REAL Salt Lake Today!

The fun continues:

Greg took a turn for the worst yesterday and ended up spending a lovely evening in the hospital. After much testing, they determined it is still just the same intestinal infection, but it's nasty and making him very sick. He wanted to come home, so they let him come early this morning with the understanding that he must stay hydrated and has to keep his medication down. If he can't do those two things, then we'll be back and he'll be admitted to the hospital. He is going to have a very rough couple of days as the antibiotics work to fight the infection. We're praying this round of antibiotics work, because the only other medication option would cost us somewhere between $1000-2000 (out of pocket). YIKES!!!

THE GOOD NEWS:
--He was able to get a bit of rest last night and is feeling slightly better this morning.
--I've been trying to get him into a specialist for a few weeks now and the earliest appointment I could get was for August 11. The doctor from the hospital pulled a few strings and I called this morning and they will now be able to see him on Tuesday. Amazing how that appointment just happened to open right up, huh? :)
--We are still waiting for our new well pump and still have no water. This hasn't been such a bad thing, because we've been forced to stay with my parents. Considering the fact that my leg is still broken and I'm hobbling along, a little extra help with the rugrats has been very much appreciated.

WHY I'M TICKED OFF:
Greg and I have a good buddy who works at our neighbor's dairy farm. He is from Peru and has been away from his family and living in the USA for about 2.5 years. Everything the kid owns fits into a few garbage sacks, but he is the happiest and nicest guy you'll ever meet. He has one love in the world: SOCCER (or futbol) depending on which language you speak. His birthday was last week, and Greg and I told him we had a big surprise for him on Saturday, July 31. We bought tickets and were planning on taking him to SLC to show him the sites and attend a REAL Salt Lake soccer game. Considering Greg's current condition and the doctor's instructions, we're going to have to reschedule. It was going to be a stretch for me to go with my broken leg, but we thought we could do it, but there's no way Greg can go now. I called the REAL ticket office this morning and explained the situation and asked if we could just switch our tickets to a later game. I really didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal, but the guy told me no. I even asked to speak to a manager and said we had a doctor's note, but they wouldn't help me and more or less just said "there's nothing they could do" and "better luck next time." FOR THE LOVE! I would completely understand if it was a concert or a one-time event, but I'm still not understanding why it is so IMPOSSIBLE for them to switch our tickets to a later game. ARGH!

So, if anybody wants 3 tickets to the REAL game tomorrow night, let me know. They're about $20 each, or I'll probably just give them to you at whatever price you want to pay. It's better than nothing, right? Every penny counts, especially when we might be paying $2000 for an antibiotic next week!!!

I'm done venting now and feel much better. Have a good day!

Off to a Good Start...

Today has all the makings of a fantastic day.

To start things out, our well pump quit working sometime last night. Translation = No water. On a normal day, this would be an inconvenience. On a day when Greg is barfing his guts out, it's a disaster.

Oh, and the ONLY thing Garrett has wanted to do this morning is have a bath.

Good times.

What a Week!

We don't do anything small around here. Because having Greg, Garrett and Abby sick all of last week wasn't enough fun, I decided to take a tumble down the stairs last Sunday morning (while holding Garrett) and break my leg/ankle. Awesome, I know. Luckily, Garrett wasn't injured and I have been able to wear a boot instead of a cast and can walk on it as long as I can tolerate the pain. I'm feeling very blessed that I'm able to get around enough to at least take care of my family. I should make a full recovery in 6-8 weeks and am grateful to already have one week and 2 days over with!

Much thanks to our wonderful family and friends who have been so great to help us--especially my mom who has pretty much put her life on hold to cater to my every need.

Sleeping in Garrett's big boy bed is going just splendid. Here's how we found him one night after he had been "in bed" and "asleep" for an hour or so. I know this is a battle worth fighting, but some nights I wonder...

We enjoyed a wonderful Pioneer Day weekend! Greg's family spent the weekend with us and they were able to experience the town celebration in all of its splendor. I don't think any of them will ever be the same again.

Mal Pal and I started our Saturday bright and early by participating in the Dam Run. (By "participating" I mean that Mal ran the race with my friend Karlie while I cheered them on at the finish line.)


Next, we headed "downtown" for the annual "parade." Garrett has his game face on and is ready to roll. Bring on the candy!

The town's most eligible bachelor, Deese, has been the official flagbearer of the parade (via horseback) for as long as I can remember.

Garrett was much more interested in the sirens and horses than the treats. Lucky for him, Uncle Eric was there to teach him the fine art of gathering parade candy. He ended up with a nice loot.

Miss Abby enjoyed the parade with Aunt Chelsea.

Somehow my Aunt Claudia ended up on this "float" honoring the town firefighters who had worked for Thiokol. My grandpa, Claude Petersen, was listed on the first car. Go Butch!

We were fortunate to have our good friends, the Standing family, join us for the day. Matt, Parker, Aaron, and Mal partied it up big time.

The foursome pictured above joined a volleyball team with our friends, Karlie and Braden and their cousin Andy, and competed in the annual "beach" volleyball tournament. They were awesome and totally smoked their first match, but were unfortunate enough to meet the infamous Benson Family a few rounds later. (The Bensons are kind of like the Lakers. They have a dynasty of sorts going and win the tournament every year. It's kind of just a formality to let everybody play and think they actually have a chance of winning.)

Garrett loved just playing on the swings with his number one man.

And of course, he was able to coerce Pops into a "sip." After all, it was a hot day!

Shake, shake, shake--shake it Mal Pal!!!

Unfortunately, Garrett's little hips didn't swing quite like Aunt Mal's, but he sure tried.

"The kids" (meaning anybody under the age of 25) headed down to the river bridge for a little jumping to cool off. The youngest jumper of all was cute little Meg, who is only 9 or 10. What a brave gal! Due to my crippled status, I was forced to watch from the sidelines as photographer/motherly influence. Bummer. Don't worry, I'll be jumping next year! (Although we'll have to raise the age limit a bit.)

Check out Matt's form!

Go Aaron!

We finished the day with horse rides and a delightful dutch oven dinner and homemade ice cream, compliments of Bishop Standing and Wild Willy. Cute Meg said it best while we were eating, "I'm going to remember this day for as long as I live--in a good way!"

Greg and I topped off the weekend by speaking in Church on Sunday. Of course, I totally overdid it with my leg over the weekend and could barely move yesterday, but such is life. At least we were having fun, right?

For your viewing pleasure...

Cute Karlie and Mal Pal dashing for the finish!

Oh yeah, and while I'm at it I might as well add that Greg and I spent the day at the hospital getting tests run to figure out why he keeps getting sick. (He has been sick since the beginning of June and it's getting old.) We've been in and out of our family doctor's office about a billion times in the past few weeks. After his fever spiked at 105 degrees last night, they sent us to the hospital today to get some tests run in an effort to figure out what is going on and get him functioning again. Approximately 17 hours and 3.5 million dollars later, they determined he has an infection in his intestines called clostridium difficile. He is on medication that should fix the problem, but the doctor told us he will probably be good and sick for a few more days. Fabulous.

It's kind of like the blind leading the blind around here--a broken-legged wife and a sick husband trying to care for a wild two year old and his very cute, but sometimes whiny, little sister.

It could be worse. I could be like the lady (who couldn't have been much older than 45) who checked her husband in after us at the hospital today and said, "We've got to figure out what's wrong with him. I've already buried two husbands and don't want to lose another one." YIKES!

Life is good.

And I'm going to bed.

Adios!

Celebrate, Remember, Fight Back!

...That's what we were doing last weekend at the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. This was our 8th year participating in the Relay and it just keeps getting better every year. Our awesome team earned $7070 to donate to the fight against cancer and the local newspaper even published a feature story about our family and team. (You can read the story and see the pictures at https://secure.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8972648e586070b96e97.)

(I stole the link for the newspaper story and some of these pictures from my Kami's blog. The rest came from Chelsea.)

Abby-Cakes and Grandpa Sparky

Garrett spent a good share of the day Saturday playing with this roping dummy.

Our bucket drawing tables--we found some amazing and very generous sponsors and made almost $1000 just from our auction. YEEHAW!!!



Garrett and Kami
Kyle and Abby

Yours truly, Jan (cousin), Suz (mi madre), Karen (friend)--Jan and Karen are both cancer survivors!

And so it begins...24 hours of fun!

The World's Greatest Relay Team--that would be us!

The Luminaries--we decorate them for those who have lost the battle with cancer and they light the track at night.

A pretty good-lookin' bunch if I can say so myself! I have to think that Grandpa Claude and Grandma Vone are proud of us for choosing to make something good come from losing both of them to cancer.

Oh what could have been...a perfect picture, if only Garrett would have looked at the blasted camera! Oh well.

Now there's a good one!

Uncle Brett and the little troopers!

Aunt Claudia and Uncle Bruce (They are my dad's sister and brother and Bruce is a cancer survivor.)

Garrett pulled his little wagon all over the place and picked up a few treasures along the way. I heard a few comments about the "cute little redhead pulling the wagon." That's my boy!

Speaking of cute little redheads...

And that should just about do it for tonight. MUCHO THANKS to everybody who donated to our Relay team--love ya!!!

P.S. Start saving your money--I'll definitely be hitting you up again next year for a donation. :)

For Mike...

This post is dedicated to my dear brother-in-law. I figure updating our blog is the least I can do for free medical advice. Here goes...

We've been having a busy and fun summer--hence the lack of blogging. I told my sister the other day, "I can either live my life, or I can blog about it, but I can't do both." I'm sure most people can relate.

We started the summer off with a bang by attending Matt's graduation. High school graduations are always a joy and bring back so many memories. My big 10 year reunion is coming up this year, so let's just say the nostalgia was in full bloom on this particular day. Enjoy the lovely pic of Matt with his two nieces (and Cathy).

"But you'd look sweet upon the seat of a tricycle built for THREE..."

I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E!

MERRY CHRISTMAS IN JUNE!!! We had a difficult time deciding what to get my parents for Christmas this year. They've been wanting a sprinkling system for several years now and aren't getting any younger (haha), so my siblings and our spouses told them we would provide all of the labor for it if they would buy the parts. They took us up on the offer and after a few days of sweat and tears, their Christmas present was complete. (For the record, we all decided it would be much easier to just buy them sweaters next year.)

Grandpa Willy (Greg's dad) showed up to see his grandkids and got stuck helping. He was such a good sport and kept telling us, "This is fun. I love stuff like this." My mom said, "I feel bad that he got stuck working here, but I'm sure glad he is. I think he actually knows what he's doing out there."

Brian was too busy working to look at the camera.

Garrett enjoys any opportunity he can get for a "popso." Luckily, the Otter Pops were being passed around in abundance on this particular day, so Little G was a happy man.

My Uncle Ric also chose a really crappy day to come and visit on his way home from Casper's. Lucky for us, he stayed and worked for awhile and provided us with Cascos. What a guy!

Chels represented the womenfolk of the family when it came to doing manual labor. Em and I were busy chasing kids and providing nourishment for the fearless workers.

Self-portrait of Miss Brooklyn.

Garrett was too busy "helping" to have a nap that day. I finally made him come in and have a bath. He was out for the count before he even hit the chair.

Uncle Eric brought this darling little dress back for Abby Baby from New York. I love her little face in this pic.

Miss Abby is officially a mover and a shaker. She rolls all over the place these days and gets herself into some pretty interesting predicaments because of it. One of her favorite places to chill is under the coffee table.

Apparently Greg finally got through to Abby and has been successful in teaching her to rip off her headband and bow. She did this one all on her own.

My darling friend, Lisa, gave Abby this little outfit and I had to take a picture of her because it was just too cute! Oh how I love dressing this little gal!

I loved the way she had her little feet resting up on the bar while she played with the toys.

I didn't post anything on Father's Day, but I did at least get a picture of Greg with the kids. Not the greatest pic, but it will do. These two kiddos sure love their daddy!

Garrett loves his hat and now has to put it on himself, which means he occasionally looks like a gangster. Awesome.

Garrett has been sleeping in his big boy bed these days. He is currently obsessed with tractors, so we gave him a toy tractor for sleeping in his bed all by himself the first night. He loves it and it goes with us about everywhere we go.

The transition from crib to bed is going okay. He's getting more used to it all the time, but we still have our rough nights. It's taking him longer to go to sleep and sometimes he wakes up in the night, so he was pretty tired the first week or so and fell asleep in some pretty interesting places.

Garrett decided to help Abby put her headband on one day. This picture doesn't really do it justice, but it was pretty funny.

We enjoyed attending a lovely fireworks display at the park by Greg's parents' house. I thought Garrett would love the fireworks and Abby wouldn't be such a fan, but it was a complete reversal. It wasn't so much that Garrett didn't like the fireworks, but he happened to notice the playground and slide at the park and wasn't very happy with just sitting on a blanket with a new park to explore.

Abby, on the other hand, was content to sit on Grandma's lap and enjoy the show!

Greg and I enjoyed being able to sit back and watch the show while everybody else took care of our kids. (Such a flattering angle, I know.)

Abby enjoyed her first Oreo cookie with a little help from her father. Garrett was only 3 months old when Greg let him eat a Twix bar, so I'm feeling pretty good that Abby made it all the way to 5 months before Greg introduced her to one of the finer things in life.

We enjoyed a delightful Fourth of July weekend at my family's cabin in Bear Lake. Garrett and Abby were dressed for the occasion and just oozed patriotism!

Not such a fan of the hat, but isn't she just precious?

This picture doesn't really do it justice, but my friend Karen gave Abby the cutest little swimsuit. She didn't actually make it into the water this day, but at least she looked good!

The kids loved playing in the water!

The G-Man doing some wading in the kiddie pool.

Emmy and Brookie.

Garrett loved the waterslide at the pool. My cute cousins were so sweet to help him with it.

And that will do it for now! More summer fun to come...