Our St. Patties Tradition

Ever since the kids were little, we have had green pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast. Since breakfast is just too difficult for us to have together these days with conflicting schedules we had it for dinner instead. Heck, that is even too hard to coordinate most of the time. I guess three out of four of us isn't bad - Jeff was working. So, happy green pancakes and eggs to us!

Uterus Obliviation

Warning: If you are male and squeamish about female anatomy, you won't want to read this.... I will be talking about my uterus and periods.

As I have been getting older, my periods have been getting worse and worse. Up until about a couple years ago they were always super light and very short. Now they are like the tide floods with cramps that would almost put me down. Talking with other ladies, it sounds like this is par for the course, so I decided to talk to my doctor about it.

She gave me a few options: Go back on the pill - no thank you, don't like the side effects. Get an IUD - possibly. Have an Endometrial Ablation done. Endometrial Ablation? Never heard of it. Basically they go in and cauterize the lining of the uterus so it doesn't work any more. Side effects? Well, none really, and you have an 85% chance of never having a period again.... at all. No brainer, where do I sign up!

Not gonna lie, I was excited about the future results of this procedure being done, but was very nervous about the surgery itself. The only surgery I have had up until this time was my double knee surgery, and I was awake for most of that AND, afterward I got a blood clot - NO FUN!! This surgery I was going to be completely out for and I have never had that experience before.

I have the best husband in the world, and he sat with me for hours while we waited for my time to come up. At 3:30 p.m. a nurse finally came in about half hour after my surgery time, apologized for the wait, and asked me if I was nervous. A little, I told her, but I'd be fine. "Well, let me just give you a little something to help you relax". I didn't think I really needed it, but I got it anyway. At that point Aaron went one way, we went the other, and that is the last thing I remember. Something to relax my a@%. I was out for the count. The next thing I remember was someone saying my name trying to wake me up.

Now, my mom does not tolerate anesthesia very well but I had never been put out before so I wasn't sure how I would handle it. Apparently the same.... suck! And, to top the whole thing off, the nurse gave me a Vicodin on an empty stomach. Holy Hades! I came home so sick I could hardly stand it. I think I forced down a small bowl of chicken noodle soup, and two glasses of OJ, just trying to get my blood sugar back up after fasting all day for surgery.

I was beginning to wonder if the cure was worse than the cause! All night long I just sat on the couch with a plastic bag thinking I was going to toss my entire insides. I never did throw up, maybe I would have felt better if I did, who knows. Finally around 2:30 a.m. things started to mellow out. At that point though I think all the I.V. fluids started to take their course and I had to get up every frickin' hour to pee. Not a great night to say the least.

I can say that I have wonderful friends and family though! Aaron and the kids did a great job taking care of me! My mom came over the next day with a big jug of apple juice, 7-up, my favorite HUGE bag of peanut M&M's and flowers and stayed with me all day playing games and watching movies, and got us lunch (McDonald's Cheeseburger) and dinner (Papa Murphy's Pizza). Jess and Jeff had the day off from school, so they were with me too. Corrine brought me some yummy caramel rolls that we had for breakfast with a card and she called me later that night. Jess also knows my two favorite vises, ice cream and M&M's so she bought me some M&M Ice Cream treats. Well, I can't exercise for a while, but at least I have a bunch of junk food to tide me over until I can again. It was nice to be completely spoiled for a day though, and felt very good to be so loved by my family and one of my best buddies!

Thanks guys! Now, lets pray I am in the 85% of ladies that will never have another period as long as I live. That will be so amazing.

Snoqualamie Falls

Jess was having a super hard weekend so we decided to pack up and go for one of our fabulous Sunday drives. We stopped off at the falls for a little while and then explored downtown Snoqualamie - all two streets of it :o).

We found this little used book store that someone put in an old little house. It was kind of odd because we felt like we were just walking in on someone, but you know us, we love books! So we wandered around there for a while.

We also had a ton of fun in a little shop called "The Flying Frog Curiosity Shop". Way cool name. Just a bunch of novelty items and antique type stuff. It was fun.

On the way home we got Fat Burgers and just barely made it home in time for Jess to go to work. She probably was 5 or 10 minutes late actually, but she called to let them know and they were cool with it.

I think she was in better spirits when she left for work, so our mission was complete! Nothin' better than just hanging out with the family! The only thing that would have made it better was if Jeff could have been with us. Kind of par for the course these days though - it's either just us, or just us and one kid.

Birthday Lunch

Teresa and I have been trying for a couple weeks to get together for lunch for her birthday. We finally got our schedules to jive and went out today. We met halfway in between our houses at Red Robin. She couldn't find a babysitter, so brought the boys, but it was okay. Entertainment! Holy Cow that Finn has more energy than he knows what to do with! It's a good thing both boys aren't so active. Owen is just so quiet and reserved. Total Polar opposites.

I had a great time hanging out. It needs to be done more often!!

Happy Birthday Teresa.

Songwriting for Dummies

Aaron had some really exciting news last night. He has been keeping a songwriting blog for some time now called "The Song Garage". Just tips and articles on becoming a better songwriter. He has gathered a small, but substantial following over the year that he has been doing it. Well, a little more substantial that we thought.

He was contacted last night by the people who wrote "Songwriting for Dummies". They are putting together "Songwriting for Dummies 2" and want to use one of his articles in the book! I'm not sure when the release date will be, but I know we will be one of the first in line to get it.

Way to go Aaron!!

Bodies and Beauty

Since our anniversary was on a weekday, we spent most of our celebrating on Saturday. It was a great day, spent with my favorite person! We got up, went for a run, showered and left. It was pretty much an all day extravaganza. Loved it.

We tried a new place for breakfast that one of my clients eats at every Saturday. It's just a fun little mom and pop place downtown Kent and has a very small town feel to it. We even got to watch the short order cook. Kind of fun! Until I saw the size of the pancakes, then I got nervous. Holy crap those things were big! I only got through a little over one of mine (I ordered two). It was super good though!

From there we went to the music store to price out drum stuff and dorked around there for a while, one of Aaron's favorite places. Then it was off to Seattle. We did the bodies exhibit that we have heard so much about, ate a supper yummy dinner at Cheesecake Factory and then took off to watch PNB Sleeping Beauty. Aaron had never been to a ballet before so we gave it a try.

It was a great day, and I enjoyed myself a lot! What better person to spend the day with.

Happy Anniversary Aaron!!

(Below I will tell you of our experience if you feel like reading them. It's pretty long though, so I am putting it after in case people don't want to



Bodies. How can I explain this exhibit and the feelings that I had when I was there? Horrified, fascinated, humbled, mortal...... I'm not sure ethically how I stand on this one.

For those of you who may not know, Bodies is an exhibit of the, well, body. It is made to sound like it's an educational exhibit to help people understand the body and all of it's different functioning parts. The catch is, they use real bodies. All bodies are bought from a company in China who plasticizes unclaimed bodies after they die.

When I first walked in I was extremely nervous about being there. I knew going in I was probably going to have a hard time with this, but Jeff had to go for anatomy class and thought it was fascinating and Aaron has been wanting to check it out ever since. We started out with a section on the arms and legs. I was doing great with the skeletal system. They are just bones and easy to distance yourself from, in thinking they are actually from someone. We then went to a display that had an entire arm and leg without the skin. I got a little light headed, I'm not going to lie. It was very interesting to look at, and I found it somewhat fascinating, until I saw the fingernails. That did it. Too real! I am wondering if it's because muscles, bones, tendons - those are all things on the inside of the body that you just don't see, so it's not real, but fingernails. I see those every day.

After being there for a while I started to acclimate myself and it wasn't as bad. It was just once in a while when you would see eyebrows or eyelashes that it once again reminded you that this is REAL. These were real people once. People with feelings and dreams and... well lives.

They had displays of every system in the body. Muscular, skeletal, nervous, reproductive - everything. It's is quite amazing that they were able to extract all of the different systems and get them by themselves. The most amazing was the blood vesicles. You can see from the picture above that they have the lungs, but it is just the blood vesicles. Nothing else. It was beautiful and amazing at the same time. They had one tank with the entire body, vesicle only. You could make out the lungs, kidneys, liver and all of the places that blood is concentrated. Fascinating.

I have to admit my favorite part of the exhibit was the gestation area. This was blocked off and separated with a warning sign before you went in. The sign did say that non of the babies were aborted by choice and all were as a result of complications with the baby or the mother, but it is still quite controversial and a lot of people get upset by it. They had little tubes with babies at all stages of gestation. Every week from 5 weeks until 30 weeks. Do you know that at 5 weeks you can see a little tiny mouth and eyes and limbs?! That is when you can detect a heart beat as well. The thing that was SO amazing is how much a fetus will change and develop in just one week!! Holy cow! By the time the baby is 7 weeks along you can see little fingers and toes. I was so totally fascinated.

All in all, I will not go to this again. I have a hard time with this exhibit ethically, especially now that I have been there and have seen it. It is sad enough that these people didn't have anyone in the last moments of their lives and no one to claim them. It's even sadder that someone is profiting off of it. These were all someone's child, a person. Who's to say what their circumstances were. To capitalize on that just seems wrong.

Pacific Northwest Ballet's Sleeping Beauty. I have only been to one ballet in my lifetime and that was the Nutcracker. Love the music! Love the ballet! So, I was excited to go and see Sleeping Beauty. We already know the story, so I thought it would be a good one to go to as it would be easier to follow. Aaron was a little excited as well since he has never been to a ballet before.

I don't think Aaron was super impressed and I was disappointed. It seemed like they took this simple story and made it too long with unnecessary dancing. It seemed like most of the time, instead of telling a story, they were just flitting around on stage. There were a few beautiful and fun scenes, when they were actually deep into story telling, and we both really enjoyed those. The rest was just fluff that we didn't enjoy. I don't know if I could get him to go to another ballet or not now. Nutcracker is so much better! But, at least he has been and knows for sure he doesn't like it.

21 Years

February 11th brought Aaron and I to our 21st wedding anniversary. Most of our festivities will take place on Saturday, since we both had to work on the 11th, but it was still a good day.

Aaron went into work late because he had some website work he had to do at home before he went in. So, my anniversary present was getting to sleep in! It was wonderful. He got up and got Jess off to work and just let me sleep until I felt like getting out of bed. I think it was close to 8:00 a.m. before I finally got up. It was the best present ever!

He brought me home some beautiful red roses that night and we went out to dinner. I am really looking forward to Saturday, but if that is all I got then I would call it good. I am married to a great man who treats me wonderfully.

Thanks Aaron!