The January Blaaaahhhhsss

I'm looking out my office window at a foggy dreary day, but on the other hand I am in my office and I am still alive so that's good!! Went to the Huntsman Cancer Institute on the 9th of January and had a major excavation on my back and my right arm pit. It was a strange day. They had me on an IV for awhile but my feet were killing me that day so I kept getting up and walking around, but the IV would go backwards every time I walked and the tube would fill with blood.

So this guy comes in the room with 2 syringes and says he is going put them in the IV but I have to get on the bed first because when he puts them in I will be history!! I asked if there was any chance they would go straight to my feet because they really hurt but he said "No way!"

I remembered him putting them in and I was GONE!! Julie said I was awake for another 10 minutes talking a hundred miles an hour but I remembered NOTHING When I woke up I could see a clock way across the recovery room and thought "WOW! What happened to that 2 and 1/2 hours??"

I was so dehydrated from not drinking anything since the night before that I thought I would die!! I ate 3 cups of ice chips in about 5 minutes then way across the room I noticed this nurse drinking Coke from a can. I spoke loudly enough for her to hear me and said "Hey - that's not fair to drink that where I can see it!" She just smiled and put the can where I couldn't see it.

A couple of minutes later she was standing next to my bed with a cup full of ice and Coke in 1 hand and the can in the other hand. I think I drank 3 or 4 of them and 3 or 4 cranberry apple juices which I had to mix myself - they just had them separately - in the next couple of hours while I was waiting to see the Doctor.

He finally came - asked a few questions and gave us some instructions and said we could go. By then it was 1 or 2 PM and Julie was hungry and so was I so we stopped at Neil's in Draper and had fish and chips for lunch!! I was still pretty anesthetized so not too much pain, but by the time we ate and got home it was a different story.

It took us 1 and 1/2 hours from Thanksgiving Point to our house because of a wreck on the freeway that had happened at 9 AM that morning!!

By the time we went back to see the Doctor on Tuesday the 13th he had all the test results and said he got everything out of my back and the lymph node they took out of my armpit was clean so no chemo or radiation - just get healed. That drive to SLC and back was not very fun, but I survived and ended up driving myself and working a couple of hours on Thursday and Friday.

My back looked like Frankenstein with a long row of staples and these 2 big cross stiches, but I have all the staples out of my arm pit and about 1/2 of them out of my back now. I get the rest out in a week or so. Doctor Noyes said no racquetball of golf for at least 60 days from the surgery and no heavy lifting - but I am feeling pretty good.

I have this little window on my laptop that is called Google Sidebar and I can pick a city and watch the weather. So of course I set it up to see Moab and I would see sunshine and 7 degrees because of the inversion so I changed it to Tucson and it would be 75-80 and sunshine and that was even more depressing!! So I added Blanding, Las Vegas and Orem and I rotate between those 5 depending on my mood!!

Guess I will give it a rest for now - OH - Jer and Sarah had a baby boy on Monday named Peter David - mother and son are both doing OK.

Love to All - J.B.

New Year

Hi Family!  Happy New Year!

I finished the semester and was super disappointed by a B+ in Economics.  I really, truly hated that class so I guess I should be happy with that but there you have it.  It drags down my GPA. Boo.  Otherwise, the semester went well.  I learned a great deal about myself, namely that I don't want to be an artist.  It was a fun, if not slightly wasted, semester.

We then jetted off the the fabulous Phoenix to go to Rachael and Whit's wedding.  It was so much fun.  I have never been to a wedding that was so cool.  She had the backyard of a really old Victorian house decorated beautifully and Rachael was stunning.  I have never seen a prettier bride.  I was the first one to start crying during the ceremony but that's okay; she is my best friend after all.  They had a s'mores bar and hot chocolate bar and food catered by the Olive Garden.  It was amazing.  Whit's band buddies did the music which was weird and perfect and then we wrapped up the night with some silly-white-people-dancing to a Mariachi Band.  It was so fun.  

I also got to see a bunch of other friends from high school.  It is so nice to catch up with all those people!  If any of you remember my friend Marie Hatch, its Parker now and she is hugely pregnant.  She is due in February.  We also got to go to lunch at Filibertos with Paula, Kory, and Kory's girlfriend Jen.  It was so nice to see them.      

We then flew home to have Christmas with the fams.  We got some good chill time in.  It was good to talk to Daniel (Nate's little bro, on a mission to GA) on Christmas.  He sounded so good and so happy.  

Among some other wonderful gifts from the families (my favorite of which is my David Bowie concert t-shirt I'm wearing as I type), is a sweet new tv from Nate's family.  Nate is in heaven watching all those bowl games on 37 inches, and Gilmore Girl's doesn't look too bad either.  We had to move our couch back.  I was mildly uncomfortable getting such and awesome gift when we have so little to give, but Nate's family is always so generous.  Hopefully next year we can make up for our meager offerings.  The bottom line is it's so good to spend time with family.  We played endless rounds of American Idol on the Wii with my family and it was just so fun.  

While we were home for Christmas, my buddy Courtney had her baby.  She had a beautiful little girl named Claire.  I am loving holding her.  It is nice to sit there and just snuggle a baby.  It is also nice that as I sit there Courtney recounts the joys of pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing, so that I don't get too baby hungry.  Right now I'm just super house hungry.  I'm jealous of our friends that don't have neighbors.  We are at war with ours at the moment, but that is another post for another time.

Nate is back at work but I still have two weeks till I start school.  I am trying to look for a job but that is not very fun. Our puppy, Bowie, is getting bigger and better everyday.  He is going in for his neuter next week and we are hoping he will be a whole new dog (but we are prepared if he is not).     

Yesterday was Nate's 27Th birthday!  Happy Birthday baby!  I love my handsome hubby.

I hope everyone is doing well.  I will try to post some pictures of Rachael's wedding.    

Let it snow - blah - blah - blah

I think we got a foot of new snow in Orem last night - anyway it was a lot. I'm trying to just work and get things done and not think about going to the hospital on Friday but I'm finding it's not that easy to do, especially when everyone keeps asking me how I am doing, etc!! Fortunately today is Tuesday - my favorite day of the week because I leave the office about 2:30 PM and head for the Mt. Timpanogos Temple where I work until we close around 10 or 10:30.

I just printed out the blog and mailed it to Mom and Dad and Dustin and that's what prompted me to write a note. Hope you are all well - wish a lot more of you were reading this and writing here on occasion.

Happy New Year

Hello everyone! We had a really nice Christmas here. My mom came up on Christmas Eve, Molly, Paxton, Gavin, Savannah and Jake came on Friday; and Marisa came on Saturday. We got to see Dylan, Jacqueline, and Jacqueline's new fiance, Tyson. We played games, ate a lot, enjoyed my parents new home, and had a really nice time. On the 29th, Molly and Paxton went to a concert in Denver for New Years'. My mom, Marisa and I kept the kids for them. Gavin had such a fun time "sleeping over" at Grandpa's house. We had a nice New Years Eve, with mini pizzas, a toast with sparkling grape juice, and Luke and Savannah up running around until 11:30! My mom took the kids back to Salt Lake on the 1st, where their mom was really happy to see them! It was so nice to be with family for the holidays! Hope all of you are doing well.

Love from Vernal!!

Cruise Pictures

The night picture of the ship was when we got back from the ruins at Tulum. I got Julie playing with a turtle and the picture of her with the pirate was the day we went to Hell, then one of the ruins at Tulum.

It was great fun - great weather - great company. I hated to come home to the cold and the snow. Next week I go to the Huntsman Cancer Institute Hospital for some surgery so we will see what the new year brings.

Happy New Year and Love to all of you - JB

Love from AZ

Tomorrow is the start of a new year! I hope it is better and more productive than this year. Unfortunately I think I am going to have to do more than hope to make this happen. I finally have electricity and hot water. My car is broken down again but I am buying the part today to fix it and all should be well before 2009 is upon us. I went to see Dustin on Sunday. He is doing good and he looks great. He said he didn't get any cards for Christmas except from me and a note from Dad and Nick. So if anyone wants to drop him a line it is Dustin Hill #200356, ASPC Winslow Coronado Unit 5B2, 2100 S. Hwy 87, Winslow, AZ 86047 He said when it becomes 2009 he can say he only has 2 years left. It has been cold in Arizona but probable not as cold as some of you have been. Kory, Jen and I went to lunch with Nate and Alayna a couple weeks ago. I am glad they called me while they were down here. Your all invited anytime. Hope everyone has a Happy and Prosperous New Year! Love to you all. Paula

2008 on its way out!

Just got back from 10 days in Florida and the Caribbean. We flew down to Tampa on Friday the 19th and boarded the cruise ship on Saturday. It took until Monday morning to arrive at Grand Cayman, where we played with the turtles, the stingrays and toured the island. I will try to get some pictures on here by tomorrow. Some of the turtles were huge - like 400-500 lbs and and very old, but the ones we got to pick up were a lot smaller - maybe 12-14 inches across and 5 lbs. The stingrays were spooky - we had pieces of squid to feed them and they would just mob you - we were probably 2-3 miles offshore and the water was 3-4 feet deep. There were 8 or 10 boats out there at any given time with 50 or so people in each boat!!

Then it took us overnight to get to Cozumel which is an island but our activities were on the mainland so we took a ferry boat over on Tuesday morning in VERY rough water - lots of people were sick. Then we had to walk about 2 blocks to the buses - they were too big to get close to the harbor and about an hour ride to the ruins at Tulum. The Mayan ruins there were fantastic. I had some fish tacos there with a pico de gallo salsa made with habanero peppers - talk about some serious heat!! I just sat there and kept eating and sweating!! Then back to the harbor and another fun boat ride back to the island and our cruise ship.

We cruised back to Tampa arriving there early in the morning on Christmas morning, and stayed there until Monday afternoon when we flew home. I ate a ton of fish and we saw some great sights. We got to go to the Tampa Bay Bucanneers football game with Oakland - my first NFL game. Loved walking around looking at Christmas lights in 70 degree weather!! We got to eat at some amazing places in Tampa - Debbie works for the company that owns Outback Steak Houses, Flemings, Roys and some others so we got the royal treatment and some awesome food!! We also went to Tarpon Springs, which is a Greek enclave with sponges, great places to eat and a lot of shops with sponges, goat's milk soap, etc. We also went to a fish market where we got a 5 pound filet of black grouper for grilling.

I said before we went I wanted to eat fish 3 times a day and I didn't quite do it, but I did eat fish at least twice a day every day and sometimes I got fish 3 times in 1 day. Mike and Becky were there from Las Vegas and Bruce and Debbie live in Clearwater so there were 6 of us on the cruise - it was a blast.

I think it was about 20 degrees when we got to Park 'n Jet and start shoveling the snow off the Jeep - it was hard to be thrilled about being home at that moment, but when we got home the sidewalks and driveway was cleared - haven't found out yet but think our tenants downstairs did that!!

I will try and do some pictures tomorrow and a few final thoughts before we move on to a New Year - Love to all - J.B.