What's Up With Me

About 16 months into my mission I decided to take Thanksgiving day and go to a tanning bed (which wasn't a big deal because my companion was Hispanic and wasn't accustomed to celebrating the day anyway) to get ready for my return home. I found the only one open and walked into the slightly dirty, dark, Vietnamese owned shop and signed up for thirty minutes of UV exposure. If you have never fake-baked before, this is an amount of time reserved for the already dark people and since I had been in nylons and long skirts for 16 months, this was not me.

I left the place feeling fine, but by morning, I couldn't get up to exercise because I was so sick with fever and nausea due to the sunburn that had crept in overnight. When I looked in the mirror I noticed that my obviously red body had a long white line about the width of a tanning bed bulb from my shoulder to my foot. Funny, one of the bulbs was not working that day. That bulb turned out to be my saving grace though.

For the past week I have felt the same way I did the morning after the tanning bed experience. It started with aches and fever. Then turned to chills, vomiting, trouble breathing, now coughing. I went to Urgent Care on Sunday and the doctor told me to go to the ER because he thought it might be my appendix. Well, I'm no doctor but I knew my lower right quadrant of my abdomen wasn't in that kind of pain but I went anyway. We waited for an hour and a half before I decided to just leave and go home to sleep.

I slept for about 16 of the next 24 hours and the breathing pain went away. Today I woke up with a fever again and decided to call a family doctor -- who got me in. They did a urine sample, drew blood and sent me to have a chest x-ray. I have to go back Thursday to find out the results though. He thinks I might have pneumonia, maybe. He gave me an Rx and I started taking meds today. Yeah! Hopefully we find something out. I'm missing summer!

Morgan has learned to throw things away. So far she had disposed of her toothbrush and a sippy cup. She also took my lip gloss and rubbed the tip around her mouth without trying to eat it. That's my girl.

Thank you, ward friends, for helping me out with her for the past 5 days. I am so grateful for you and all that you have done for me.

Prom Night!

There's this new place in Boise called Mystique. It's a place to go for dinner and a magic show. Only a group of 18 or fewer people can go at one time.

Anyway, Tom and I weren't sure the market in Boise was conducive to a place like Mystique so we bought VIP tickets and got our good friends, Angela and Kim, to go with us before they close down due to lack of patrons.

I have a couple of my high school dance dresses hanging in my closet so I told Angela that we should dress up in them when we go. I gave her my homecoming dress and I wore my prom dress -- which still fits, yeah!

So there we were, all 1997-ish, I with my puff sleeves (Anne of Green Gables would be proud), Angela in a dress that I still think is cool, and we went on our date.

It was so great. We had a 5 star, four course dinner. Tom and I had crab encrusted fillet (I'm drooling for some now). After dinner -- oh, we were the only ones in our room this session -- our magician magically appeared and put on a fantastic show.

It really was so much fun. I hope they stay in business. If you live or are ever in Boise you need to go to Mystique and Epi's. Those are my two musts to do here.

Here's To Being A Mom...

Raisins, corn and Nemo's friends.

Don't ask me how one baby can poop so much... at the least ideal time.

A Conversation With Morgan

Me - "Morgan, do you want some cheese?"
Morgan - "Ooooo, chssss." (That means she's excited for cheese.)
Me - "Do you want some grapes?"
Morgan - "Psssss." (That means 'grapes.')
Me - "Do you want a mint?"
Morgan - "Oooooo, be."
Me - "Say mint."
Morgan - "Be."
Me - "Mint."
Morgan - "Be."
Me - "Miiiinnnnnttt."
Morgan - "Be."
Me - "Okay, have a be."
And I gave her a mint.

Not You Too!

It's been a pretty crappy week to be one of my grandmas. On the day I left Utah from grandma Camille's funeral, my grandma, Belle, had what doctors are assuming was a stroke. So far she is very confused and can't function normally mentally. She is not showing signs of improvement but has an MRI scheduled on Saturday. I saw her the day before and she was my normal grandma so it was very unexpected.

Anyway reader, if you plan on fasting this Sunday and are in need of something to fast for... here you go and I'd appreciate it.

Morganisms

Morgan loves to pull off the cupboard pad things and suck on them. She knows that she gets in trouble though so when I see she has done it she hurries and puts it in her mouth and takes off to get away from me.

These are one day's worth of the little pad things from the cupboard doors that she has pulled off and sucked on.

Us at Roaring Springs (water park). We have season passes. I bought them with a few friends but they have older kids so it's just me and Morgan that go when we want. Yeah, I probably wouldn't buy them if I had it to do over but while we do have them, they better get used.

Forget sign language like I was trying so hard to teach. Morgan can say:

• dog
• cheese
• more
• mom (and it's not mama. it's mom)
• dad, daddy
• cracker
• cool
• what
• water
• bye
• outside (more like "ide" but I knew what she meant)
• go (we say, "ready... set..." and she says, "go.")

Collette's Baby Shower

As soon as I got home from the funeral I got to host a baby shower for my good friend, Collette. She is having a little boy. Thank goodness for my co host, Sarah. She prepared everything and got all the prizes while I was gone. It was a good baby shower because we ate dinner and only did a guessing game of when the baby will be born and a 'remember the items' game. No other games that people don't like to play. Congratulations Collette!

Afterward we all went to the midnight showing of Eclipse -- that totally rocked, by the way! There was a thunder storm when we left and it rained like crazy for a few minutes so I took my rain coat that happened to look like Jane.

Grandma's Funeral

My grandma, Camille, passed away last week so Morgan and I drove back (we were down there for Father's Day the weekend before too) to Utah to be with the family (Tom's boss didn't want him to go because they had a big meeting on the day of the funeral -- another issue entirely). Grandma wasn't doing well for the last 6 weeks of her life. After she was taken to Utah Valley and transferred to the Delta care center she kept going down hill and couldn't remember who people were or why she was there. She kept telling my family members that she was talking to other family members and friends who had passed away. She had to have someone with her constantly. Anyway, she wasn't who she would want to be. On the day she died she was with a nurse who was putting a bandage on her foot and she took two deep breaths and passed away. They were so surprised because her body was strong and usually their clients show signs that death is near so they can call family members. Grandma wasn't like that. She just went when she was ready. No use waiting for everyone else. I'm very happy for her. I got to give her eulogy and some memories during the funeral. I will post that later, even though it's long.

This is Morgan's new forward facing car seat and how she sat in it for quite a bit of the trip.
These are pics of the viewing. I got to help decorate the mortuary and dress her for the viewing. It was therapeutic. I'm not posting a picture of her in the casket but she looked so good.

This is my grandpa, Keith, in the line for the viewing.