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!