The One With Thanksgiving at Our House

This year I got to host my first ever Thanksgiving!

It was insane, and a bit busy, but I loved having it at our house.

Eric cooked an amazing turkey again and we kept everything super simple with paper plates and silverware so that we could all play games afterwards instead of having to clean dishes. 

I say paper and it even makes me cringe.

I should correct that and say that we used disposable plates that were VERY nice and realistically could have been washed and re-used I was just too lazy to do it.

The kids had a lot of fun with their cousins and Eric and I had fun mingling with family.

If I had been thinking far enough ahead I would have snapped a picture of the table scape (because disposable plates or no it actually looked amazing) but I didn't.

I did, however, think far enough in advance to have my sister snap a quick picture of our family.

Love this crew!

The One With Eric's Hand

Eric has a bum hand.

Like seriously. It's bad.

It's funny because when we were dating and newly married Eric used to laugh and tell everyone how I was the insane person who was always sick and having surgeries and had all this weird medical stuff going on but now that we have been married seven years the only times I have had to go to the doctor and have surgery have been with the deliveries of our three kids, which I feel is unavoidable. 

On the other side of this Eric has cut his thumb off, been extensively tested for multiple sclerosis, had shingles, had ulcerative colitis, had shingles a second time, had shingles a third time, and last year he had surgery on a cyst in his hand. 

Who really has the medical issues I ask you? 

Last September Eric's hand surgery started off our winter of surgeries (four in four months to be exact). The doctor went in and "de-roofed" the cyst and also performed a basic carpal tunnel surgery. Eric was in terrible pain for about six weeks and not speaking too harshly here, he was essentially useless around the house for longer than that. Which was pretty tough considering this was all occurring with in the same time frame of Paxton's mouth surgery and Preslie's emergency neck surgeries. NUTS I TELL YOU. The guy couldn't even change a diaper!!

So as he's complained still over the last year about his hand still hurting, I haven't been too jazzed by the inevitable idea of another hand surgery. It took us some time to get his medical records transferred to Dr. Kloss, but once we did he went in and met with him. Dr. Kloss ordered an MRI, which sadly didn't really show him much of anything because it was a contrast MRI and they didn't put the contrast in the right spot. He then utilized the MRI images and took them to his national orthopedic council (seriously) and used Eric as a case study. After about five visits, several lidocaine shots to the hand to track fluid flow, and an MRI that they finally determined that A: Eric's cyst had grown back and B: the flexor tendon on his pointer finger had become detached. 

Great news, right?

Ready for the even better news?

Going in and removing the cyst AGAIN was going to be no problem for Dr. Kloss who is a nation wide specialist in hands that graduated from John Hopkins (seriously the guy and his accolades are insane), BUT even this physician who is on the cutting edge in his field has only ever done a surgery to reattach a flexor tendon ONCE in his entire career.

Awesome.

December 10th Eric goes in to have surgery again.

Dr. Kloss told us that while he hopes that with this surgery Eric will not have a lot of pain the surgery to reattach his tendon will most likely leave him unable to use his hand for about 12 weeks.

Yes, you heard that right 12 weeks!!!

Ahhh.

Dr. Kloss also drew us a nice picture of what the incision lines on Eric's hand will look like . . . which basically takes up his entire hand.

The One With November

After October comes November.

And November brought a lot more craziness in with it's cold weather.

Simplot started commissioning their new Idaho plant, which Eric has been hired at. So in addition to working at the Nampa Plant and shutting it down, Eric was also going to the Idaho Plant several times a week for 12 hour shifts for about a week there. In his first week splitting time between the two I think he logged about 80 hours of work. It would have been spectacular if he was paid hourly instead of salary. Oh well, at least he has a job, that is more than some can say. 

The following two weeks he worked only at the Idaho Plant getting it up and running, BUT he was working 5-6 twelve hour shifts in a row and he was pulling the night shift so he worked 4pm until 4am. Well this essentially resulted in the kids and I not seeing him for the entire two weeks because he would be sleeping (having just gotten home from work) when I got the kids up and ready for work and school, then he would be up and gone to work at 4pm before the kids and I returned from work/school. It was a little bit crazy. I am getting more used to being a pretend "single mom" for these extended periods of time. Not that I want to be a single mom and not that my week long stints of it compare in any way to those who do it permanently, but as our kids get older I am finding they are becoming easier and easier to take with me places. 

November also brought with it the end of soccer season.

It was a LONG season. 

I don't even know why since it was the same amount of games as the Spring season, but it just seemed longer. And as sad as I am to not watch Parker play soccer every weekend I am not so sad about not having to get up super early to bundle three kids up and sit by myself with two little kiddos who keep trying to run away in the freezing cold. That I will not miss. 

Parker finished out the last game by making six goals himself and getting three balls to the face . . . . but somehow no bruising, which was good! Can you say stud!!

Later in November I had a girls weekend with my lady friends back at Jenn's cabin in Garden Valley. It is always so nice to get away, even for 24 hours, and spend some time unwinding and having good old fashioned fun.

The next weekend the four of us went to the So You Think You Can Dance Tour at Taco Bell Arena. It was once again a blast to go out with friends. And although I thought I was in love with So You Think You Can Dance, no one can compare to my Georgia friend Kelsey and her obsession.

The rest of November's happenings probably deserve their own posts. Stay tuned!

The One with October

I failed.

I was doing so good there for so long with keeping the blog updated, and then it all got busy and everything went nuts!!! So I guess I'll just do a quick recap of our October for memories sake. 

The first couple weeks of October were filled with me and my friend Kelsey getting prepared for our friend Jenn's surprise 30th birthday party. It was a blast! So much fun! I'm not excited to turn 30 in the least bit but planning a party for someone who is 30 and fabulous makes it a little better. Our theme was "30 rocks . . . . Tiffany's Style". So the colors were Tiffany blue, silver, and white. We spent a good amount of time putting together invitations with a Tiffany's theme. 

We made a ton of treats and dipped everything in chocolate . . . . like everything - brownies, rice krispie treats, pretzels, marshmallows, you name it, we dipped it. 

Kelsey and I were pretty impressed with the decorations and the party itself ended up being a huge success. Jenn was completely surprised - she had absolutely no whisper of an idea that anything was being put together. Which honestly was my biggest fear. Kelsey and I, in cahoots with Jenn's husband Stan, had been planning the party for about two months so I was afraid that somehow, someway, something would be given away.

Good friends.

Good food.

I think it's a pretty awesome way to spend a birthday!

Eric and I got season passes this year to the Farmstead for the family. We only ended up going three times since it just so happened that every day Eric had off was also freezing cold and it's about 30 minute drive from our house, but I think we still ended up with our money's worth so I guess it's all right. We even ended up going once with Brittany and Jared so our kids had fun with their cousins. The kids had a fun running around the mazes and playing in the corn box (like a sand box only filled with corn kernels). 

One of Eric's good friends from University of Phoenix (who was one of the first to move over to Simplot) throws a Halloween party every year. We've been as many times as we were invited. This year Eric and I got a little more into the "costume" side of the party and went as Flo and Mayhem. I thought this was a completely original idea, until I saw pictures of other people all over the internet with the same "original" idea. Oh well. We still had a lot of fun. We picked up the sitter and left, in costume, not thinking about the fact that we had several errands to run AND dinner to get before we went to the party. So we went all over town in costume. whoops.

Of course in October comes Halloween and Trick or Treating!!! Who could forget???
Once again my full intentions of making super duper awesome costumes for my kiddos went out the window. One of these days I will be done with school and hopefully find all the free time in the world to do fun things like that. Until then it was Target to the rescue that provided us with awesome costumes for all three kiddos. We went to the trunk or treat at our church, and went out trick or treating in the neighborhood for about an hour on Halloween night. Oddly enough Parker and Preslie had more fun handing OUT candy at our door than the did going door to door to pick it up. I guess next year maybe I'll just buy them a bag of candy and we can all stay home. ha ha. wishful thinking.

 

 This is Preslie's boyfriend, Zach. He is 26 and married to my best friend Kelsey, but that doesn't seem to stop Preslie, she is in love with him. Draws him pictures, gives him hugs and kisses, and talks about him all the time. Her favorite way of ending Halloween was to eat candy with Zach and pass out candy to trick or treaters.

That about sums up the crazy hecticness of October!

The one With the Big SEVEN

September 22, 2013 Eric and I celebrated our seventh anniversary.

Time for the seventh inning stretch, or the seven year itch, or something of the sort, right?

 

Well it just so happened that the second to last wedding, the final getaway wedding, we had over the summer was Eric's cousin Cody's wedding in Portland and it was the day before our anniversary.

We decided to take a week off of work and head up to Portland. We drove up on Wednesday morning and stayed in Portland Thursday and Friday with the kiddos, going to the park, feeding ducks, and relaxing at Grammy and Papa Dentist's house.

 

Everything in Portland is infinitely more beautiful than everything in Idaho. You can be in the all out ghetto of downtown Portland and it is still beautiful because of the trees and water. This park that we fed ducks at was beyond beautiful, we were there for at least three hours just walking around, eating a picnic, and feeding ducks.

 

Denny and Kelly also live right next to a HUGE grade school and super middle school that have  a great playground and backs up right next to a nature reserve with gorgeous walking paths so we spent plenty of time at the school walking around too.

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday morning Eric and I got up, packed, and drove out to the Portland Temple to his cousin Cody's wedding. Once again, camera-less. Sad really because it was a beautiful day and I had never been to the Portland temple before - the grounds are breathtaking.

 

After the wedding we loaded up in our car and made the two hour drive to the coast to stay at the Salishan Golf Resort just outside of Lincoln City.  On the way out we stopped and got sushi. This is kind of our little tradition - we load up on sushi whenever we can.

My last trip to the coast was right before Paxton was born in 2011, the trip when I found out my dad had been in a bad accident back in Idaho and was bleeding internally, so it wasn't the best trip and my mind was justifiably preoccupied so I didn't really get to appreciate my surroundings.This time was different. There was nothing weighing on my mind (with the exception of homework), no kids, who although I love them to pieces, require so much energy, attention and advanced planning. It was just Eric and I from Saturday through Tuesday. We had been watching the weather report for a few weeks before and in true Oregon Coast fashion it was supposed to rain all weekend and there was actually a "severe weather advisory" in affect for the surrounding area.

Saturday when we got into town though it was gorgeous so we took advantage of the time to walk around the Salishan shops and even picked up a puzzle to do since we believed we'd be stuck in our beautiful suite the whole time. We knew we had an "ocean view" but that doesn't even do the view from our balcony justice, it was beautiful and we got to watch the tide come in and out every day.

Later Saturday night I asked Eric to go for a run on the beach with me. Our room was right next to a path that walked you right onto the beach. It was the most beautiful setting for an evening run I ever could think of.

We woke up Sunday morning and did the same thing. Morning run along the beach. Only this time we saw Santa Claus.

It's sad that I already don't really remember the course of events for our trip. I do know that Sunday we ran on the beach, took our time getting up and ready for the day, went to Tillamook and then came back and got cleaned up for put put golf right before our anniversary dinner reservations. You know that weather advisory we had? Never an issue for us! I'm not going to say it didn't rain, but it never rained when we wanted to be outside. I'd like to think Mother Nature was being good to us but I'm sure it was just good luck. The only time it was pouring rain when we would have been okay with it not was when we had to run from he parking lot into the Tillmook factory, and you know what, we had umbrellas so it was okay. And rain makes it green!

 

 

We had our anniversary dinner at the super nice restaurant inside of Salishan. It was beautiful. And one of those dinners that no matter how good it is you only can do it on special occasions because it costs that much! The only picture we took was of our appetizer shrimp cocktail for some reason but I do remember that I had chicken crab oscar and Eric had halibut and it was probably the best thing I have ever eaten.

 

Monday morning we got up and went on a quest to find WHOLE crab. It's insane to me that being right on the coast it was so hard to find crab. I mean there's crab in everything there. Crab cakes, crab sandwiches, crab salad, eggs benedict with crab on them (which I ate every morning and it was so delicious), but finding a whole crab or even just crab legs was the most ridiculously hard task ever.

 

We ended up driving thirty minutes to Newport Beach where we heard whispers of restaurants that fed you whole crab. I have never wanted to move to the coast so bad in my entire life. I cannot even explain it. What a perfect little coastal town. We parked on the pier and walked everywhere. Ended up in adorable little coast-side shops where we actually talked to a real-estate agent about moving, and walked along docks looking at sea lions and the gorgeous site of a harbor full of boats.

 And yes we even ended up finding at the Fish Peddler's Market - whole crab and it was delicious!!!

 

That night we went back to Salishan, ate Pizza in The Attic Lounge and finished our puzzle. Tuesday morning we got up and made the drive home to Portland. It was a beautiful trip, all that I ever could have asked for plus some. It's important to me to spend time being husband and wife outside of the daily grind and everything we have to do. We came back stronger together and as better parents ready to tackle the world and whatever comes our way!