Standing on Top of Mountains!

After taking nearly a 9 month sabbatical from writing in my blog…I’m back!  I decided that a blog is no fun unless you keep it updated...and I know my daughter in law Brittney would agree with me there because she’s told me several times that I needed to!  

Rod and I on top of Mt. Evans while on our Denver trip - 14,260 ft.

Today officially marked the first day of summer for me and the boys!  They actually got out of school on June 1^st, but life just got crazy after that.  I went to Denver with Rod for 5 days for a safety conference that he had to go to and then less than a week later I went to YW Girls camp for 4 days.  And all of that time the boys were hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa Carling...or driving back and forth so they could go to Scout Day Camp!  Then once we finally all got back home, it took me nearly a whole week to catch up on laundry and cleaning.  So today the boys and I finally got go to do something “summerlike” together...and we had a blast!

 

I had originally made plans with our friends to go hiking to Mt. Timpanogas but we were unable to get tickets for today so we’ll have to just do that another day.  In the meantime, because we had planned to go hiking today, the boys and I did all of our Friday cleaning yesterday and there was no way that we were going to sit around and waste a perfectly good day! I suggested that we go swimming because it was going to be so hot today, but when I suggested that we go hiking up Snow Basin….that’s what they wanted to do!

It took us most of the morning to get ready to go, so we didn’t even leave home until noon, but we still packed our lunch and had plans to eat it at the top of the mountain.  That meant that we didn’t get to eat until after 2:00 because we had to hike 2 ½ miles to get to the top...and that was only after we drove 30 minutes to get to the trailhead! It was well worth it though!

At the start of our hike

We saw lots of flowers on our hike (this is Scarlet Gilia, my favorite)

I knew Hayden would love the hike because he’s gone with me before when I’ve taken Young Women hiking...but I wasn’t so sure about Connor!  In the past, he actually did more complaining than anything else when we hiked and I definitely didn’t want to deal with that!  I was pleasantly surprised though!  Not only did he not complain, he had a lot of fun and he only asked if we were close to the top...because he was hungry, not because he was tired!

One of the views near the top

Our "lunch spot"!

When we finally got almost to the top, we found a bench alongside the trail and since it was in the shade, we decided that that was going to be our lunch spot.  I decided it’s not such a bad thing to prolong eating like that because when you do, everything tastes better than it ever would have if we had eaten it at the bottom of the trail!   

We made it to the top of the mountain!

One of the views from the top!

The views from the top of the mountain were amazing!  We were overlooking Ogden and we could see for miles!  It was well worth the hike!  And we had a great time together!  I told the boys that I was sad that they’re not my babies anymore, but I sure do love that I have some cute little boys to take hiking with me...and they definitely are good hiking buddies!        

We're almost back to the bottom!

Basketball, Baseball, Soccer and More!

I have never been much of a sports fanatic, although I do like to play a good game of volleyball or softball on occasion. Rod, on the other hand, was quite the baseball and football player in his time (or at least that’s what he tells me!) And our older boys…well they tried out baseball and basketball when they were younger, but the only thing they ever really showed much interest in was wrestling and they didn’t even love that!

Now that the little boys are old enough to play sports themselves, I really want to give them the chance to find out which sport they like the most…but it feels like we just go from one sport to the next and I feel like I’m going to one game or another almost every night! The way the city sports are set up, while Hayden is in 5^th grade, he plays sports every Tuesday and Thursday night and in 2^nd grade, Connor plays every Wednesday and Friday night...which quite literally means they play almost every single night of the week! They played soccer last spring, baseball last summer, soccer again in the fall and they just barely finished playing basketball this winter. I’m just plain tired of sports...but not them! They now want me to sign them up for spring soccer again!

This year was the first time that Connor has ever played basketball and it’s only the second time that Hayden has ever played it, so it was definitely a learning year for both of them. They’ve gotten the hang of dribbling and passing, but it’s hard to learn how to shoot unless you get a lot of practice…and without a basketball standard of their own, that’s hard to do! So Rod decided to change that! He used a big chunk of our tax return and bought the boys their very own basketball standard! We didn’t tell the boys anything about it, so when it showed up last Friday afternoon, they were not only surprised, they were excited beyond belief!

Connor played around more than he helped!

It took Rod and the boys a lot of work to get that thing put together and they even had to improvise a little because some of the holes had been drilled wrong...but they figured it out! And now I can’t keep Connor inside! Everytime I can’t find him, I just have to look outside and I can either find him shooting baskets or jumping on the trampoline! He loves being outside! He has yet to improve on his shot, but I figure that if he continues to practice as much as he has been he’ll eventually get better!

It's All In The Heart!

As of the end of this year, I have run a total of 8 marathons! I used to really enjoy running them, but this year, for some reason, I seemed to be having problems with my breathing and my stamina. I knew that I had asthma, which I believe was mostly runner induced, but it seemed to get worse this year for some reason. After running the Salt Lake and Ogden marathons in the spring and finding that my stamina just wasn't getting any better, I decided to go see my pulmonologist to see what was going on and to possibly resolve any issues before I had to run my next marathon...the St. George Marathon! Do you know what he told me? He asked me if I had ever thought that it might just be because I was getting older! When he said that, I just smiled and told him that I was willing to accept that, if that was what it was, but I wanted to rule out other things before I settled for that as my answer.

The doctor sent me to get a stress echo, which involved running on a treadmill and an ultrasound of my heart to see what was going on. At the same time, he threw in a “bubble study” because I just happened to mention that my dear friend had found that she had a hole in her heart and her symptoms seemed to be similar to mine. I think he threw in that “bubble study” just to appease me, but it turned out to be a “tender mercy”. While they were doing my “bubble study” they realized I had a hole in my heart too!

I was almost relieved to hear that there really was a reason that might be causing me to have breathing problems but I had no idea what was ahead of me. Once they determined I had the hole, they had to figure out how big it was, so they sent me for more tests. They also sent me to get an MRI to see if I’d had any “events”, which I found out later was the same as “mini strokes”. Well I’ve had a lot of migraines in my life and I’ve heard them referred to as “mini strokes” before, so I was interested to see what the tests would show.

The doctor scheduled an MRI and a couple of other tests and then I was supposed to go see him 2 weeks later. However, when they called me on a Friday night at 7:30, the same day they had done my tests to tell me that I had a small hole that was going to require surgery...I knew it was probably even more serious than I thought. I mean, when does a doctor’s office ever call you the same day to give you results to a test...and on a Friday night at that?

The next Monday morning, I got a call from the surgeon’s office to schedule my surgery and although they had an appointment that Wednesday, I opted to put it off at least a week because I had too many other responsibilities to take care of. So on November 2^nd, I went in for a simple surgery. The surgery wasn’t supposed to take longer than a couple of hours and all it required was that they cut a small hole at the top of my leg and go in through an artery to my heart so they could insert an “occluder” (that I thought looked similar to a jelly fish) in my heart that would seal up that hole and gradually the cells would grow over it and so it would become a part of my heart.

When they were prepping me for surgery, I was informed that I wasn’t going to be fully sedated because they needed to be able to communicate with me as they inserted the occluder. To say that I wasn’t too happy about that would be putting it lightly! I mean, they had to insert the occluder through a vein in my leg and they had to put it in my heart, which meant that all of my “private parts” were going to be exposed…and I didn’t want to be coherent enough to realize that! Fortunately, even though I was “awake” I can’t remember much of anything!

Before I went into surgery, the doctors all emphasized that my hole was quite small, but they never told me just how small. Their concern was that my MRI showed that I had had several mini strokes and I also had a thing called Factor Five that had to do with the fact that my blood tends to clot more than a normal persons...which in combination were all prime factors for a stroke...thus their concern!

Well as it turns out, once they started the surgery, the small hole (which I later found out was supposed to be 2mm in size) turned out to be not even close to small! It was not only NOT small, it was 20mm! The occluders they had weren’t even big enough for a hole that size, so they quickly had to call other hospitals to see if they had one big enough. Fortunately, they had one at Primary Children’s hospital and my surgery was being done at the U of U hospital, so they just had to walk across the way to get it, but my short, simple surgery turned out to be anything but short and simple! However, I was definitely lucky because they said that if my hole would have been any bigger, they would have had to do open heart surgery! What a blessing it is that they had found my hole before anything major happened to me!

After the surgery, I had to stay in the hospital overnight so they could monitor me, but other than a huge bruise on my leg, I really had no major side effects. I had to lay off any strenuous exercise for a full month, but as soon as that month was over, I was right back running and swimming just like I had been before! I can’t say that I feel SO much better than I did before, but I also haven’t run any big miles yet...so I have yet to see if I can feel a difference and I truly hope I can!

The End of Summer

Our summer came to an end and it was time for the boys to go back to school…and like all good things that come to an end, it was met with bittersweet feelings from all of us! The boys were excited to go back and be with their friends and do something different, and I was excited to get back to a normal routine. But at the same time, we all knew we’d miss the days of playing in the pool and sleeping in as long as we wanted to and just doing whatever sounded fun each day. There was no doubt that we’d had a wonderful summer and we’d done a lot of fun things together, but there will always be another summer for more of that and for now, it’s time for the boys to go “broaden their knowledge”. Unfortunately, that means they’re growing up too...and that’s what I’m really not ready for!

Our Summer in a Nutshell!

In my mind, summer is the greatest time of the year and as long as the kids are on summer break, I think I deserve to have a break as well. That means that even though a lot of things happened over the summer, I was “on break”, so I only wrote about a few of them. Unfortunately though, now that I’m going to try to do some catch up, it’s going to be nearly impossible to share everything that happened, so it will have to be in abbreviated form!

After only being out of school for a week, I had to leave the boys and go to Girls Camp for a week. That was an amazing experience all by itself, but I’ll save that story for another time. Since Rod still had to work and wasn’t going to be home to take care of the boys, they got to go spend that week with grandma and grandpa Carling in Logan, which they absolutely love to do, so they didn’t mind. Then I was only home from Girls Camp for one week and it was time to go to San Diego for our summer family vacation. Unlike most of our summer vacations, this vacation was different in that it didn’t include the trailer, the boat or the 4 wheelers, but it was amazing nonetheless!

At Girls Camp - all of the Stake YW leaders after our Ugly Duckling skit

Girls Camp with our new Stake

Our hotel in San Diego

Shamu times 2 at Seaworld

The Shamu car at Seaworld

The whole family at the Wild Animal Safari Park

At the ocean

After breakfast at our hotel

The boys favorite souvenirs were the smashed pennies

After we got home from San Diego at the first of July, we were finally all home for an extended period of time and our summer fun around here began! We sat up the pool for the first time on the 4^th of July because quite honestly, even if we would have been home at all during June, it probably wouldn’t have been warm enough to put up the pool anyway! Besides that, I hate trying to keep the pool water clean and swimmable so I didn’t see any sense in setting it up any earlier than necessary. Once we got it up though, we probably used it almost every day...and sometimes multiple times in a day!

Swimming/rafting in the pool, who cares as long they're in the pool?!

Besides swimming in the pool, we went to the movies, to see fireworks, to parades, to the park, to reunions, and to the splash pad. The boys also took swimming lessons, played baseball, and played with their friends. We all went boating with our brothers (and Brittney of course) and we also went to Lagoon, and did I mention, swimming in the pool? The boys were basically fish this entire summer and surprisingly, they didn’t even have much of a tan to speak of...and it’s not because I was good at putting sunscreen on them, because I wasn’t!

All the brothers, but where's Brittney?

Our new water tube

At the July cousins birthday party

Fireworks - our favorite part of July!

At the Lamb reunion in front of my mom's childhood home in Hyde Park

We went on a walking tour of Hyde Park at the reunion

As if the pool wasn't enough, the boys pulled out the waterslide

We got home from San Diego just in time for Hayden's Pinewood Derby

At the Splash Park with the Harrisons

The roller coaster at Lagoon was one of our favorite rides - it was also the ride where we lost Jared and Hayden - it was a scary couple of hours!

What do you think? Do they look ready to play?

Me and the boys at Lagoon - one of our other favorite summer traditions!

Baseball anyone?

Swimming lessons with the Rosenlunds

Hayden's scout troop at Day Camp

Can you say "moose"?

Before the summer was over, we finally got the chance to go 4 wheeling one more time and we went with our friends the Jacksons. It was only a day trip, but we went all the way to Logan to go up Temple Fork Canyon so we could see Old Ephraim’s grave. And for those of you who don’t know who Old Ephraim is, he was an infamous 9 foot tall grizzly bear that was a huge menace until he was killed sometime back in the 1920’s. The grave was pretty amazing and was built to be exactly as tall as Old Ephraim was...and he was obviously huge!

4 wheeling is a little dirty but it sure is fun!

Old Ephraim's Grave - notice how tall it is

After we saw the grave, we continued to ride up into the mountains despite the black clouds that were gathering in the distance. I was a little worried that we might get rained on and even get caught in the middle of a lightning storm, which wouldn’t have been a good thing being on top of the mountain, but luckily it never did catch up to us! Right in the middle of our travels, we came across this huge meadow of flowers…and there were butterflies everywhere! It was incredible to be surrounded by butterflies like that but I loved it! I have now lovingly renamed that meadow (as if it had a name to begin with) “butterfly meadows”. It was an amazing day…and a good way to bring our summer break to an end!

The butterflies and "butterfly meadows"