Friday, April 30, 2010

More pictures

From 2010_04_11
Look at my handsome son!

From 2010_04_11
The men of the family!

From 2010_04_11
Our family!

From 2010_04_11
Megan with Dandelions (my niece)

From 2010_04_10
Barbara and David

From 2010_04_10
We probably looked like quite a group at Petroglyph National Monument.
1 man
7 women
14 children including four babies under the age of one.

From 2010_04_10

From 2010_04_10
Megan and Eve

Pictures

From 2010_04_18

From 2010_04_16
She collected 100 roly-polies and wanted to keep them as pets.

From 2010_04_15
Grant is getting bigger every day. He's almost eight months old and weighs nearly 21 pounds. He is really giggly and loves finger-foods and attention.

From 2010_04_14
Lily as Harry Potter.

From 2010_04_14
A mysterious person in disguise! (Ashley, my niece)

From 2010_04_13
Painting my bathroom

From 2010_04_13
Don't look! Amber's in the shower!

From 2010_04_13
Abigail, Annika(niece) and Lily playing in the backyard.

From 2010_04_12
Painting my bedroom

Monday, April 05, 2010

Gordon's next project

From 2010_03_27

Gordon made us a picnic table!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Inspiration to paint our house!

We were driving along when on the corner of the road I saw a breath-taking sight:

From 2010_03_18

I exclaimed to Gordon "we should paint our house like that!" laughing at the bright colors. Then the next house came into view!:

From 2010_03_18

We don't know, but it looks as though, whoever painted their house second was trying to compete for attention from their neighbor's home. Hilarious!

From 2010_03_18

Crazy Hair Day

We went all out for crazy hair day this time.

From 2010_02_24

From 2010_02_24

And because they were not to be left out, I sprayed some color on the younger girls too.

From 2010_02_24

From 2010_02_24

Gordon is a builder, a maker...

From 2010_01_23

Gordon built this fine table with his own two hands. He has found his fun new hobby. I think the table turned out beautifully. I have started a list of things he can make for our new house. I'm hoping to have him tutor me too. I want to learn to make beautiful things.

I've really been feeling the stirrings of an artist inside of me. I want to make beauty. I'm working on decorating Abigail and Grant's room, but I want so badly for it to turn out wonderful. I hope to go on and make our whole house our own style with furniture and art we made that is beautiful.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

On a serious note.

Early in my pregnancy, before I even told anyone I was pregnant, I discovered I had hyperthyroid levels. It was found in the whole blood screening that was ordered during my first midwife appointment. It was recommended that I go to a perinatalogist since she was concerned what my hormone levels would do to my unborn child. But they were too busy and didn't have an opening for an appointment for months so I instead was sent to an endocrinologist. He wasn't worried at first when he saw me. He said pregnancy can sometimes throw off hormone levels a little, and mine weren't too far off. Then he felt my thyroid and felt a growth. He was surprised, he didn't expect to find that. He brought in a little ultrasound machine and measured my growth. He recommended a needle biopsy to check for cancer.

So a week later I went down to the hospital. There I laid on a table while a tech guided my doctor with an ultrasound to put needles in the middle of the growth so he could draw out some samples. It was an uncomfortable procedure, but not bad enough that I needed painkiller. It felt like getting several shots in my neck all at once.

The biopsy came back unclear. He couldn't say if I didn't or did have cancer from the results. To get more answers I would need a full biopsy by completely removing the whole growth. But he didn't think it was pressing enough to push for further action during my pregnancy. I was so happy to go back to just visiting my midwife and preparing to meet my new baby.

A couple of weeks after my baby was born I met with my doctor again. I was hoping that I could push the surgery back a year until after I finished nursing. My doctor was really uncomfortable with waiting that long. I talked him into letting me wait until by baby was three months old.

My saint of a sister and her husband volunteered to spend their Christmas with us since my surgery was scheduled just a couple of days before Christmas. We had some fun playing and exploring in NM before my surgery date.

The surgery went well. We didn't have to wait long in the waiting room. The nurses and doctors all explained things well and answered our questions. I didn't get nauseous from the anesthesia, so that's wonderful. After the surgery I was really out of it, but the preliminary results from pathology looked like I was in the clear.

We had a great Christmas. I got to feeling good again really quick. It was about four days after my surgery and I was feeling basically back to normal outside of some localized discomfort. I never really needed much pain killers.

At my post-op appointment I met with the surgeon who gave me the full pathology report. It turned out that there was a small area that was malignant. I did, in fact have thyroid cancer. But it was already gone, they took the whole thing out during the surgery. She didn't seem to think that I'd need any further action beyond periodical monitoring to make sure it didn't grow back.

I'm feeling really blessed that my brush with cancer has been relatively minor. If I hadn't been pregnant it's not likely that I would have found the growth on my thyroid. I could barely tell it was there after it was pointed out to me. I really doubt that the perinatalogist would have found it either, since their specialty is concerning babies and not thyroids. I feel so blessed to have been in the care of such great medical doctors who gave me sound advice, even when I didn't want it.

This is me the day after the surgery, the orange tint to my skin was an antiseptic they instructed me to leave on for a couple of days. Now my scar is just a faint pink line that most people hardly notice.
From 2009_12_23