Postings from a galaxy far far away...

It has been so long since I posted anything I frankly don't even know where to start. So Like scrap booking I guess you have to skip the stuff that happened in the past and just go with the current stuff.Here is the most current photos I have of all my family. Rebecca is still in school. She and Preston have little Sophia Marie. She was born on October 30, 2011. I got to go out the the delivery of Sophia. It was the first time I SAW a delivery. I never could figure out the whole mirror thing in the labor delivery room. There were always to many people in the room to really see anything. Really I was busy at the time... Sabrina is in school as well. She is moving and shaking out there. She is in her 2 year of school. She is in the RS presidency. In July she will return home till next January where she will them resume her schooling. I am so glad the girls are out there together! Love this photo of the 3 girls. Benjamin just turned 16! I can not believe it! Since his last surgery in 2010, his/our life has changed. He is wheelchair bound. He is unable to use the lift up the left side of his body 2 inches up but has no real control of it in the way of grabbing something or using his leg to walk. However, lets talk about the great things in his life. He is the SWEETEST person on the planet. He used to be angry and out of control a lot of the time. Those are days that are gone gone gone. The sweet wonderful person that i could only get a glimps of before is here with us full time. I can not even believe he was so rotten. The seizures have all but become a thing of the past and wow what a difference. We can not joke anymore and say," Do you only have half a brain? What were you thinking?" You can do a lot with just half a brain. Abigail is soooo close to 12. She is planning her party already. She is not ready or anything. She is going into the 6th grade. She is playing the piano. She loves to shop and shop and shop. She is for sure going to give this mom a run for her money. Abigail broke her arm close to the last day of school. She was in a volleyball class after school and piano and had to miss the big game. She was very unhappy. However, she got her cast off just in time for the end of the year recital. Nathaniel is 10 now. He is going into the 5th grade. Time flies by! He is in piano as well. The teacher just loved him. Every time I saw her she would say," He is a natural." He really likes piano and I almost never had to remind him to practice. He wanted to... Right? True Story!!! Now don't ask me about his homework because it is not the same story. Reading is for sure not his favorite subject. He still loves Transforming everything into a Transformer. He loves Lego's and drawing. Watch out Disney here comes Nathaniel.

holy CRAP

Sabrina is graduating soon and Benjamin just turned 14 and is now a teacher at church... Kids are growing up so fast

TODAY

well what a shock to have your daughter start a blog about losing weight... I am so happy for her and want to support her in all that she does. I too want to lose weight and be healthier! So I am going to gain inspiration form her and try to set agoal for weight loss and a time frame in which to do that but for now I am going to sleep and decide tomorrow... LOL always tomorrow!

Update On Benjamin

Well, This is the story today on Ben...

Ben in back in the ICU for at least a few more days, maybe more, who knows right now. The resection surgery where they removed the temperal lobe and a few other parts of the brain began to swell alot on Saturday. The surgical site is infected. The infection type is related to MRSA they are calling it ORSA basically the same, so I am told! He is stable. He is in a lot of pain and that pain is not under control. The infecous control team of doctors said that his infection was in fact quite bad. We asked them to give a 1 to 10 scale based on their experience and they gave him a 8. Not super good but there was still room on the scale for worse! The infection was on both sides of the bone covering the brain. They are afraid that the bone might not be able to be saved. WE are NOT focusing on that right now we are going with the idea that the surgery and meds are going to fix this and will not even go into the mess that might happen IF the bone can not be saved. The doctors are thinking that he will be on IV antibiotics for a minimum of 6 to 8 weeks. So we are happy that we did not wait until our scheduled appointment to have Benjamin have examined. He is also having trouble with high blood pressure so we are on a drip for that as well. He is currently still having seizures. In fact I had to stop writing to go and help with one... Not so sure we are getting the best result yet from the surgery... We will keep our fingers crossed that we see improvement. He had a PICC (periferal inserted central catheter) it is a special kind of IV that goes into the vein and runs into the chest cavity intil it hits a main artery. That way they can give more things in the IV site and at higher doses. He will be leaving the hospital with this in place (with any luck) and that is how the IV will be able to go home with us! We hope that it stays in place so we do not have to get another one! He is not breathing well at this point so we have in on oxygen. He is not eating now so he is getting tube feeding that goes thru a NG tube in his nose and we also give the PO (by mouth) meds thru that line. That way we are not fighting with him to take the meds like we had to last time...That was a JOKE! They are doing everything that they can. He is very sick but not fatal. SO we are blessed. It could have been worse!

Thanks to all who are praying for us I truely feel like we are being strenghened and held together by the power of prayer.

Where have I BEEN?!?!

I took an extended vacation from bloggin! I am back... (for today)

So far we have had a great year. Ben is having his brain surgery on the 27th of April. We are looking forward to not having seizures! If you want to learn about it look up "intracranial eeg" and it should take you to a web site about epilepsy and you can learn from there! I started facebooking... CRAZY... but I did. Do I really want to connect with so many people? Am I a private person? I did not know that I was until I started blogging and facebooking...and I would be thinking, do I want to share "that". But oh well...I did!

Kids are great, Brad is great... We are living the everyday life, working and eating and drinking and cleaning up after we are finished.

I have been decorating the house... Of Course... and I finally figured out how to get the room Benjamin has always wanted! He wanted clouds that reminded him of being in heaven, but really he is 12 and I was having a problem with it! To top it off he wanted ME to paint them.. SURE... But, Lowes to the rescue! I found wallpaper and then a wonderful surprise they had vintage wallpapper planes. That is 12 year old boy. So clouds it is!

Our Days In The Hospital!

Benjamin and I have been in the hospital now for 4 days and we were getting BORED! So, I thought that I would blog a bit about the boredom...

Here are a few pics of Ben and the nurse who was doing the ictal testing however he has not had a seizure YET!!!!

How can it be that at home he has them all of the time and of course at the hospital where they want to see them and record them they stay away!

So we have been here and seriously we have had 2 seizures. One while they were putting the EEG on his head and on e the other night while he was in the bathroom and the video cameras were not recording! Just our LUCK... or Lack of Luck!

Looks like we will be doing this all over if they do not get the imaging that they need! Wooo hoooo... Another week of sitting on my bum doing nothing! Not really nothing...I clipped and organized my coupon books which I was weeks behind, I finished all of the blocks for a quilt top but did not put it together because I did not want to lay out the blocks on the hospital floor! I re organized my scrap booking tote... I read Midnight Sun AGAIN!! I love it and I will be so happy when Stephenie Meyer finishes it. I have faith that she will because she will need closure just a little time I think! Now I think I will read The Host of course by Stephenie Meyer, Or I could finish Mansfield Park... I am half way thru that... So much time and so few things to do!

First Day of School

Well today is the big day that I have been waiting for!

The day that all of my kids are in school full time... What a long road it has been to get to this point! Of course Rebecca is not is school right now however, she is married and does not live at home so I do not think that it counts. Here are a few pictures of the kids on their first day back to school!

Nathaniel is very excited!

Benjamin has to catch the bus by 7:20! WOW that was early!

Abigail always has to have something pink on! What a beautiful girl!

Sabrina was off to school to early to get a actual picture of her before school. So here is a very recent picture of her! She is taking advances zoology this year and had to do a summer project. She needed to collect 20 bugs, pin them and categorize them. She did not think it was going to be fun however, she really got into it catching the bugs. Funny story! She went to turn in the project the first day of school and the teacher looked at her and said you have until OCTOBER to turn it in! Guess he was on the phone when she picked up the summer work packet and forgot to tell her that it was not due until later... I think it was great to get it out of the way during the summer and not have to work on it during the time she would have other things on her mind... At least that is what I told her!

Phase 1

I thought that I would share a time table for those of you who are interested in the next few weeks at our house!

Benjamin goes into the hospital Monday on the 8th of September. He will be there a week. The first day we will be finishing the neurological psychological testing that he refused to finish the other day when we were at the hospital... BIG surprise that he refused to do something that was timed and scheduled...
The second day we will be having a PET scan of the brain. The third day we will be having the CT scan. That is what i know of the schedule as of now...After all of those test we will return to the room and they will try to stress out a seizure. I am not sure how hard they will have to stress him? He has seizures all of the time and we are not even trying to force them! Just taking a few less pills will make him preform like a well trained circus animal. I am sure they will get the information that they need. He will of course be having the video EEG the whole time we are there. We are scheduled to come home Friday on the 12th of that week.
After we come home we will have a meeting with the neurological surgeons around the week of the 22nd of September. At that time we will schedule the Phase 2 of the surgery. They tell us that we will be in sometime in October for the actual surgery. We are excited to be able to think about life with Benjamin seizure free! It seems like a miracle to even type the words let alone imagine what life will be like for him not having to take a million pills and worrying all of the time about where he is and if he is having a seizure. Always having someone with him, Abigail and Nathaniel are even used to him seizing they just yell to us from where ever they are and watch him to make sure that he is not falling and getting hurt until a bigger person can come wait and watch making sure that he is safe.
It is a wonderful time to be alive. Technology has improved so many things and hopefully in October I will report how it has changed his sweet life for the better!
Keep us in your prayers!

Things that make you go BLAHHHHHH...............

There are a few things in the life of a woman that take you back and make you realize that YOUR youth is not only slipping away but, in fact, had LONG since escaped your grasp! You can fool yourself while shopping with your youthful children that you are one of them... People always thinking that you are just an older sister or older friend who has found a kinship with some girls younger than herself. Sitting in the kindergarten classroom you could look around and think to yourself, "I do not look THAT old. Boy are my kids lucky to have such youthful parents!" As you walk the halls of the high school you think, surely the other kids are wondering why such a young looking person is checking out that youth from school... Must be a slightly older sister or an aunt surely thay could not be the parent.

As your children grow you remember the details of thier lives with startling clarity. The first time you ever laid eyes on them, Heck you remember the first time they ever moved in the womb! The outfit that you brought them to come home from the hospital, The first little cute poopey, The first time they sit and crawled, The first steps, The first words, Your whole life now becomes changed as you spend it cataloging every first. It is truely amazing that you forget the long night they spent crying, The hard times just seemed more bearable because they were there. Time passes in strange quick bursts. One day you think that you will never graduate high school and then have a child that you for sure just gave birth to graduating from high school. However you can still fool yourself into thinking that you are young because you have other kids that are still young so therefore, you have not really gotten that old.

Then "IT" happened.... The "THING" that I could not shelter myself from any longer. My sense of reality, my unfaltering reality, shattered... time HAD in fact been passing and Quickly. The bubble that I had been shielding myself with, from that painful reality, was burst into a million tiny peices. Yes in deed, I have been getting older everyday just like my kids! The phrase that would send me into a spiraling time zone letting me know that I was in fact not just older BUT OLD!!!!

It was those two nasty little words that would change my life forever and ever, for time and all eternity... I DO!!!

And in saying those two nasty little words, over an alter, my youthful daughter took me from the safety zone I was living in to a new realm.

Last week was one of THOSE realizations for me as I went from young mother of many to.... MOTHER~IN~LAW!!!

No doubt sooner than I would want or imagine she will again through me into a cataclizmic reality and a completely differnt realm when she annoucnes that I will no longer be just a mom or mother~in~law but also a GRANDMA!!!

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO BLAHHHHHHHH!

Youth Trip 2008: Kirtland, Ohio

In July, I went with the youth on a trip. We went to Kirtland, Ohio to visit the church sites. On our first day, we arrived at the church at 8 am.. Of course we were late as was everyone else and we arrived per norm at Mormon standard time, 8:10 am. Me being ME... My gas tank was also empty! Around 9 ish we all loaded up and headed for the open road. Kirtland was a short 4 hour drive... I had the best group of kids in my car! I had the following kids: Stephanie Rampton, Sabrina Nucci, Benjamin Nucci, Jacob Watabe, Ben Bennington, and Cade Webster. I also got to share the ride with a sweet young sister in our ward by the name of LeeAnn McMann. If you counted right, that made 8 people in a car that seats 7. One of the lucky kids got to ride on Ben Bennington's duffel bag. The kids had a good time on the ride there... They played guitar hero and watched a movie, I think Transformers?


When we arrived in the Cleveland area, we first visited a light house. For some reason there was some signifigance of Mormon history there, but i really wasn't paying attention.... so we climbed the lighthouse and toured the museum. The only thing that I remember about the museum was that it was known for having a ghost cat and they had a GROSS skeleton of the cat there! After the museum, we had the best part of the trip! We went to Lake Erie for five hours. The reason it was the best was because I laid out a blanket in the sand and read for the whole time... I am obsessed with the Twilight saga.... Book 3: Eclipse. It was great! Back to the trip....We had dinner at the beach and then a devotional. It was lovely! Then, we went and got our room assignments. We were in 111 at a SUPER motel 8. Good Fun.



Again, I was blessed with a wonderful group of girls in my room! I had the following girls: Stephanie Rapmton, Sabrina Nucci, Daniela Barriga, and Aimee Webster. What a great group of young women! That night Sabrina gave everyone in the room a pedicure and a manicure if they wished. The girls all stayed up late, but I stayed up all night trying to finish the book. I am truly obsessed with the saga....



In the morning the girls and I went to get breakfast and it was not that great! But off we went to the Kirtland Temple. Being inside the temple was great but not the most spiritual situation. You can tell that the building in now nothing but a building... VERY SAD! We spent some time on the grounds and it was lovely. After that we went to a park nearby and I finally finished ECLIPSE! By the way, I am still obsessed with the book! :) But the kids played and we had lunch and a great devotional by the bishop! Finally we left for the church sites at Kirtland; the visitors center, homesteads, and all of the wonderful thing that are there. Our kids were very tired. After we left the visitors center we headed for the Issac Morley farm. It was nice also... then we headed for some ice cream and everyone got a cone. I got a chocolate cone.... Surprise, surprise! Then, finally, we were back to our room, taking a much needed nap. Then we had dinner, which was Cici's Pizza and we went to a pageant called "This is Kirtland." The funniest thing was, Emma Smith was played by a person who lived in our ward in Arlington, named Natalie Sanford. What a small world! We met in the foyer after the pageant and we hugged and jumped up and down. It was so nice to see someone from my old ward; a friendly face is always nice to see. That night we all went to bed and crashed! We even overslept the next morning.




The last day we got up and headed for the John Johnson farm. It was my favorite place on the whole trip. It is the house where the most revelation took place and also the place where Joseph was drug out and tarred and feathered. The feeling that was present at the farm is scarred in my mind forever. We had a testimony meeting and then we were off. Back to the big city of Cincinnati! The kids were great and I could not have asked for a better time or group of kids!

MY Quirks!

Lets see 6 things about me that are quirky.... where to start?


1. I CAN NOT think with clutter around me. Papers, mail, toys, clothing, everything in its place and every place with its thing! I can never start my days outings if the house in not tiddy... I think this is because I do not like to come home to a mess. I HATE waking up to a mess so I would rather stay up late nad clean up the dishes or the house than go to bed and wake up knowing that there are chorse to be done. All chorse or cleaning must be done before I will start any new project. no scrapping or painting until all is clean... guess what... I work a lot and don't play every much because it takes all of my time to clean before I have to get to the next task like now it is lunch or dinner or something else that HAS to be done. Don't feel sorry for me however, it is the way I llike that is way it is MY quirk.


2. The day that i wash my sheets I like to have my legs shaved as well... I dont know??? just do!


3. When I drive I like it to be quiet no radio no anything... but if the radio is on we are going to be ROCKIN' OUT! pretty much at the loudest it goes so I do not even hear the kids if they are yellin at me!


4. I memorize the lisenced plates that are around me... just in case... the other day I actually used it and call in a drunk driver that was all over the road.. literally over the yellow line and then in the dirt... very scarry we were on a two way street and I was I hope that the person got caught... Is that Bad???

5. I don't read books... I finally want to read books for pleasure however, I do not have the time. I keep thinking this is a season of life thing??? maybe that will change? I want to learn what the classics are and then read them... So I have read only: harry potter, the lion the witch and the wardrobe and the davinci code that about sums up my reading list... Makes me feel uneducated but really I am SUPER smart... :)

6. I had to go back and look at jen's blog to remember the other quirkky things about me... I ALWAYS see the numbers 439 and 849. Nothing has ever happened with these numbers one was my prefix on my phone when I was a kid and the other was a street that I lived off of in Texas. other than that I have no clue why I see them. I also like to have my money ascending order... even worse I like to give my chnage in a roll in my hand. Fopr instance... if I had to make 68 cents... i would have 2 quarters, 1 dime, 1 nickel, and 3 pennies in a rool in the palm of my hand... idk... just do!

The Rules:
-Link the person(s) who tagged you
-Mention the rules on your blog
-Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
-Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them
-Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blog letting them know they've been tagged.

It Begins!

WELL... Like my sisters and friends I am caving to peer pressure and... starting a blog! PLEASE do not expect much... I am not even sure that I can remember to BLOG... Most of the time I can not remember my kids names!