Valentine's Day

Well I know it was awhile ago, but I just wanted to post about what a great Valentine's Day we had. I have to admit that I had never really been with anyone (unless you count "going out" in Jr. High) on Valentine's Day before. My parents lots of times would get me candy or a stuffed animal on Valentine's Day, especially my mom and especially when I got older, and I always try to send my mom candy or flowers or something. So this year was a little bit different for me. :) That morning when I got out of the shower there was a gerbera daisy in a vase with a balloon tied to it waiting for me. We both then went to work for the day and about 9 or 10 am I got a phone call from the volunteers desk in the main lobby at the hospital that I had some flowers there waiting for me. So I went down to get them and this is what I found:

They were beautiful and I loved them! Especially the pink vase. I know flowers just die eventually but I love getting them. Everyone at work kept telling me that I have a keeper for a husband and of course I couldn't help but agree.

That night when Chris got home he had ANOTHER flower for me, this time a red rose. I told him "No more!" but he still had one other thing up his sleeve....
He got me these 12 in x 12 in storage containers for me to keep all my scrapbook paper and craft stuff in. I had a big long flat plastic container that I had been using, but it was getting too small and way too messy in there. I thought it was really sweet of him to think of something like this. I told him he got me way too much though.

For my present for Chris I put together this little basket with sayings that went with everything inside. For instance, the movie Taken said "You have "taken" my heart." Mt. Dew said, "I love everything you 'dew.'" I know it's a little cheesy, but I thought it was fun.

Then I also made him this candy gram. I saw it on Pinterest (of course) and altered it a little to fit more candy that he likes. Anyone who knows Chris knows that he does not eat a lot of sweets. I think he still has half of this candy left, so that's why candy could not be his only present. haha (p.s. I also have to note that I stayed pretty close to the price range that we set to spend on each other, my husband did not do as well!)
For dinner we ended up going and picking up some food and bringing it home and watching a movie. Neither of us had to work the next day so we got to stay up late and enjoy being with each other. It was such a great day and I am so lucky to have such a wonderful Valentine!

I had seen this idea on Pinterest as well, so a couple days later we had French Bread pizza with the pepporoni cut into little hearts. It was really cute and just something fun. :)
Hope everyone else had a great Valentine's Day as well!

Feeling Crafty

Well I realize it has been far too long since I have posted anything...We have been very busy. But now I have so many blog posts in my head it's a little overwhelming to think about getting it all done. Here's to me never getting that far behind again!-haha. Well first I just have say that I have been sucked in by Pinterest, and what perfect timing now that I have my own Cricut Cutter. I can craft till my heart's content. I love it. I have found lots of fun things to make on Pinterest, and I am always looking for an excuse to make a cute card. Here are just some pics of things I have made:

Birthday card for my nephew Porter...they will probably all get similar looking cards this year, I love this cartridge that I used! haha

I made this for a little boy in Chris' Primary class who is moving.

Thank You card I made for my visiting teacher awhile ago when I was sick and she brought us dinner.
Card I made for a little girl in my primary class (who is sister to the boy in Chris' class)

I made this yesterday-thanks to my husband for cutting wood and drilling the holes for me!

Here is a card I made for a girl at work who we had a little shower for.
Here is a little banner for a decoration for the shower.
Happy Birtthday card for Chris' mom
Another Happy Birthday card-I'm kind of hooked on making cards like this, but I need to come up with some other ideas too.
This a Valentine's Day wreath that I saw on pinterest here: http://www.sheskindacrafty.com/2011/01/valentine-ribbon-wreath.html

It was kind of a lot of work and if didn't already have a ton of the ribbon, I wouldn't have done it because I didn't want to spend a lot. I bought the wreath form at JoAnn's for $2.50 (after a 50% coupon), which I thought was a little much, but have since learned you can use those long swim noodles from the dollar store or a piece of foam tubing from Home Dopot or Lowe's for cheap so I will have to try that next time. Anyway, I thought it turned out way cute!

I have these HOME blocks that I made around Christmas time, and my husband had the idea that I should put something on the back that could be used for another holiday, so this is what I came up. Made the letters with my Cricut of couse, I love it!
Home blocks my mom's ward made in Relief Society last year and she had some kits leftover so she gave me one.
They also made these Joy blocks in my mom's Relief Society. I am going to put something on the back of these sometime as well. My sister suggested USA which I think would be fun!
We made these Christmas Countdown blocks in my ward for a Super Saturday. Mine turned out a bit wrinkly, but I am getting much better at modge podging wrinkle free!
My sister actually sent me the link to this blog with this wreath, which I copied and made. I was super fun and easy and a great place to put our Christmas cards from all the wonderful people out there who cared enough to send us one!
Well that shows a little bit of what I've been up to lately. I am also working on sewing a quilt right now-I've had the material for 2 years now. It's finally all cut out (thanks a TON to my mom), and I am excited to get sewing on it! Chris always asks me where I learned to make stuff like this, and my answer is always "from my momma!" For several years when I was growing up my mom was what was then called "Homemaking Leader" in our ward, and she put together a huge project or craft every month which I always helped her with. Sometimes she would even sit down with me and let me make whatever they were making. She taught me 4H and how to paint and sew and cook. I am so thankful for her and everything she taught me!

Christmas and New Years

Well we had a great first Christmas and New Year's together. I of course could not choose just a couple pics to post so there are a lot, but because of that I will try to keep the writing to a minimum. Here are some of the things we did together during the Holidays:

Decorated our first tree together (black Friday Christmas tree, dollar store tree skirt, and borrowed decorations from my mom). :)

Received LOTS of treats from family and friends!
Hung our stockings by the fireplace with care...
Won a free Willow Tree Nativity from Hallmark!
Got lots of Christmas cards (we actually ended up with lots more that this by the end!)
Watched the Boise State game in the whatever bowl they played in (I'm not the one who is into football, as you can tell) but I did sport BSU gear which I never thought I would do. My pj's even say Boise State. It's true. Look close.
Made lots of treats with Chris' mom and sisters and sisters-in-law!
...and a Gingerbread House with his niece and nephews
which they loved helping with!
Listened to Chris read the Christmas story at his Aunt's house on Christmas Eve
While the kids acted it out (imagine these two pics in reverse order. )
Opened presents Christmas morning at my mom's with my brother Brock and his little family there all the way from Wyoming!
Watched my mom be soo excited about her new compute!
and Chris be so excited about his new pillow! (everyone knows how much I love my pillow...well Chris decided he kind of likes it too, so I got him one. Mostly so I don't ever have to share. j/k!) and don't worry, that's not all I got him. He picked himself out a great tool set from Lowe's.
And I opened a new Cricut Cutter! I was totally surprised and spoiled! Chris remembered me mentioning it a time or two that it would be fun to have, and he logged that away in that amazing husband memory of his! I think I'll keep him. (pics to come of my wonderful Cricut and crafting projects!)
Some of us got a little upset when it wasn't our turn to open a present...poor Halli.
We opened presents the day after Christmas at my Dad's.
And the day after that at my mom's...who gave Chris and I the "game invented on the seat of a tractor." The Farming Game, one of our favorites. If you ever want to have a night of being $500,000 in debt and upset that you can't harvest your cherries, and your cows all died, let us know. :)
We got new Hoodies as well
The night before New Year's Eve we spent with a BUNCH of my aunts, uncles, cousins, etc together playing games and such.
We had a grand ole' time.
New Year's Eve we spent at Chris' dad's with some of his siblings and played a fun card game that we had never played, but I think I will be teaching to my family. I forgot to load the pic of us raising our glasses in a toast. :( You can find it on facebook.

New Year's Day we had dinner at Chris' mom's. All in all we had a blast with our families and with each other. I would say it was a wonderful end to a wonderful year together and we can't wait for many more to come!

Up on the Housetop

A week before Christmas my sister called me up and asked me if I would be interested in playing a duet on the piano with my 10 year old nephew Kade at his piano recital. She said he was really nervous and didn't want to do it with his teacher because, he said, "she messed him up." She gave him the idea to ask me and he got really excited. My sister said that the teacher likes the students to do it with other people anyway.

We were already planning on going to dinner at their house and then to the recital that night, so I told her I would try, but I wasn't making any promises. I was pretty nervous because I was never any good at duets, plus I always found reading the music for the teacher's part confusing. The song was Up on the Housetop. First I played with it by myself for a few minutes, and I was actually able to figure it out. When I thought I got the hang of it I tried it with Kade and he told me I was too slow and that he would rather do it with his teacher. :( I was actually fine with that and felt if I did it we'd mess up and embarrass ourselves anyway. So we ate dinner, but then after dinner I decided to try it out again. I practiced it faster for a few minutes and then asked Kade if he wanted to try again. We actually sounded pretty good and after a few tries we got to where we could actually end at the same time and it was pretty fun. Kade changed his mind and wanted to do it with me. :) Here is the end result...we get a little off in the middle, but it's not bad for throwing it together right before the recital! Thanks Kade for letting me do that with you. I had fun!

p.s. please don't judge my bad posture. :)

Answers......finally

On December 1st I had an appointment in Salt Lake for a sigmoidoscopy. Last time we were there we scheduled it for December 14, but the nurse practitioner told me (and told Chris to make me) to call her if I got worse before then. I got really bad a couple weeks before that and ended up in the ER. I have been feeling pretty crummy and not sleeping well. The idea was that hopefully I WOULD get worse, and we could do the scope then when it was bad, so that hopefully it would show something. So after a million phone calls we finally got the appointment on the 1st. We went down Wednesday night (the 30th) to Salt Lake and saw the lights on Temple Square. Chris had never been before and it had been a long time since I had been so we thought that would be fun. We left right after work and got there around 9:00. We walked around for awhile and this is just a small part of what we saw.

The lights and Nativities were amazing and we had fun just walking around together. We stayed in a hotel in downtown SL just a few blocks from the Temple.
The next morning we had to be at the hospital at 10:15. We got there and "checked in" and then waited to register. When we registered I had them change my last name. After that we went down to endoscopy and "checked in" again, and waited some more. Finally we went into a little room and I answered a bunch of questions that I'm sure they should have already known (allergies, current medications, etc, etc, etc). I changed into this lovely gown and got an IV started and we waited again. We watched the news about the horrible wind storms happening in Utah while we waited. After about 15 minutes they came and got me. Chris went to the cafeteria to get some food since he was starving. Since I couldn't eat that morning, he didn't eat. :) When I got back there, everyone was pretty confused because my name on my bracelet was different than the name on the board. Finally one of the nurses told me why they were confused and I explained that I just got married and changed my name in the system when I registered. They hooked oxygen and all kinds of monitors up. The doctor (who I had never met before) came in and talked to me for a minute. She was really nice and I liked her right away. The nursed asked me where we went on our honeymoon. I told them the Bahamas, and one of them who was giving me medication to put me to sleep, told me to just go back to the Bahamas. I laughed and that is the last thing I remember.

When I woke up 20 minutes later the first thing I asked for was Chris. They went and got him and he came back right away. I just wanted my Chris. :) I was freezing cold and he made sure I got a warm blanket. I was a little groggy but awake enough to listen and know what was going on. The dr came after a few minutes and told us what she found. She said that my pouch looked good except for a large ulcer and a small ulcer in it. Up above the pouch, in the small intestine she found more ulcers. She told us that to her, it looked like Crohn's disease. We knew this was a possibility but it was a little weird that she was actually saying it. I have been tested for it before and it has been negative. Anyway, she told us she took some biopsies that would tell us for sure, and she wanted me to stop by the lab and get blood drawn before we left to help confirm it. She also said I have something called cuffitis. I have heard of it, and I think even Dr. Smith has mentioned it, but I never really understood what it was or how they knew you had it. She explained that when they remove the colon, they have to leave a tiny part (like a centimeter or two) to connect everything to the rectum. That is called the cuff and it can technically still have ulcerative colitis, and get inflamed and cause all the same wonderful symptoms that you had before. Makes sense.

After I was a little more awake we got to go. We went to the lab and waited some more. After I was done, I was STARVING so we went to the cafeteria so I could get some food. I ate a big piece of pizza and a slice of cheesecake. Chris was so proud of me. :) I have lost about 10# in the last 2 months, so he gets really happy when I want to eat. :) By the time we left it was a little after 1:00, so altogether we were only there about 3 hours. We drove straight home-well Chris drove and I slept most of the way. He said he saw 6 semi trucks tipped over on the side of the road, and several more just parked on the side of the freeway because of the wind. Crazy. We stopped and saw my mom for just a few minutes and were home by 5:30 or so. It was a long day.

The dr had said that it would take about a week for the biopsies to come back and that they would call me when they got the results. So I waited a week and when I didn't here anything last Thursday, I called and left a message Friday morning. Keisa Lynch, the NP called me back about an hour later. She said that the dr thought that someone had already called me, so she apologized. She told me that it is fore sure Crohn's disease. I wasn't too surprised. For a long time it was my greatest fear that I would find out that I really had Crohn's, but now it is just relieving to know what is wrong. For so long I've been told it's just pouchitis, but then they would say my pouch looks fine. I'm sure that some of the times that has been the problem, but I think back in February when I was in the hospital, it was Crohn's disease further up where they couldn't see, because that's where my pain was. Anyway, I asked the NP if she thought that it had been Crohn's all along, and she said unfortunately, yes. She said that it gets misdiagnosed a lot, but that the testing for it has improved a lot over the last 5 years. She said that it is a bummer that I have already had surgery and had my colon removed, but I almost think I would have had to do that even if they knew. The surgeon told my mom that I had one diseased colon and that it never would have gotten better.

The NP told me that the dr wants me to start a medication called Cimvia. It is a shot that I would give myself once a month. It does the same thing as Remicade (the medication in an IV), but she said this would be better because Remicade is not good to take if you want to have kids. The Cimvia should also help the Rheaumatoid Arthritis, which I have also been having a lot of trouble with the last couple weeks since it has gotten colder. I'm excited to start it and I think it will help. I have been talking with drs for the past 5 years about starting something like Remicade, but at the time surgery felt like the thing to do. This group of medications is more successful for Crohn's than it is for UC, so I didn't want to try it, and then after a couple months find out it wasn't helping me and go through another school year like the last 2 that I had had. I just wanted to take care of business. :) She also told me to let her know if I lose any more weight. She was not very happy to find out that I have lost more weight since the last time she saw me. I know how important it is to gain some weight, or at least not to lose anymore (I am a dietitian) but it has been a big challenge lately. I think once I start to feel better though, I will be able to start gaining weight.

Well I really feel like we are on the right track now. I am feeling much more optimistic and I think we can get things under control now. I am so thankful for my wonderful husband. He takes such good care of me. Also so thankful for the prayers and fasting of our family. I have wonderful people in my life and much to be grateful for.

Well sorry for the marathon post but there is an update. Mostly for myself since I am terrible at keeping a journal. I like to go back and read how I was feeling at certain times, so everyone who reads this gets to too. :)

Thanksgiving

Well I know this is way late but I just wanted to post a bit about our Thanksgiving. We spent the night before Thanksgiving at my sister's house since my mom and little brother were here. These pics below are of everyone relaxing. As you can see, Kelsi is getting the shaft. :)

We spent Thanksgiving at Chris' mom's with his siblings. Everything tasted so good and we had a fun time. We played a couple good games of Catch Phrase. Chris worked the day after Thanksgiving, but I did a little bit of Black Friday shopping with my mom and sister during the day. (I did not get up early though, I don't do that). :) That afternoon we went to Chris' Dad's house and had dinner. Again, everything was very good and we had a good time. Saturday morning we had a big breakfast at Chris' mom's. It was delicious and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it as much or more than the Thanksgiving meals. Then later we went to Burley to my mom's. She figured we were probably sick of turkey, so she made chili and cinnamon rolls, (my FAVORITE). We had to speak in church the next day so we also spent a lot of our time there preparing our talks......well, I did. Chris spent most of the time watching the BSU game. :) The next day we spoke and we were very glad when it was over. We spoke on gratitude. My mom came and watched and went to church with us, and Chris' dad and stepmom listened as well. We weren't sure we needed such a big audience, but it was nice to have the support I guess. That afternoon we went to Chris' mom's again and had pizza. All in all it was a fun weekend filled with wonderful food and family.