Gall Bladder Fun

When I make posts on this blog, I try to keep it light and focused on updates and the fun times we have individually and as a family. I try to avoid emotional diarrhea and a lot negativity, which I think should be kept personal. So here's a fun spin on the removal of my gall bladder!

I've been having abdominal pain for about 3-4 weeks off and on, like contractions--about 2-4 per hour. It had gotten worse over time and had begun waking me up throughout the night, so I went to see the doctor on Tuesday. When my sleep is interrupted, it's time to take it seriously! I went to my family doctor Tuesday, and went for an ultrasound Wednesday morning. The tech showed me a picture of my gall bladder and it resembled a cluster of grapes! I left the radiology place, picked up a Hot-N-Ready Pepperoni Pizza and went home to watch Judge Judy and give my gall bladder something to do with all that grease. Well, my doctor called the minute I walked in the door and let me know I need to meet with a surgeon sooner rather than later. So I called Dr. Christensen (the guy who removed a benign lump from my boob 3 years ago), and arranged to meet with him 30 minutes later. (I did eat 4 pieces of greasy pizza before I got to his office though...I hadn't eaten since midnight! I was stressed!) He told me he could take out the gall bladder the following day (Thursday), so I went over to the surgery center, had an EKG to make sure my heart issues wouldn't be a concern (they weren't), and got pre-admitted.

I got home and still had 30 minutes before Lauren got home from school! Wednesday after school, she found a snake by our front door and the neighborhood kids had a blast playing with the little guy until I made Lauren set it free. She was sad. Landon arranged for a sub for Thursday, and tried real hard to manage the stress he was feeling that I was having surgery in the middle of his big case study.

This is a few of the stones they let me have. Landon threw them away yesterday. Kind of cool!

The surgery went well, I had 50+ gallstones in my gall bladder, which the nurses seemed to think was pretty amazing. I had most of my pain for about the first 24 hours. Since then, I've been sore, nauseous, light-headed and tired, but definitely well enough to lay on the couch and watch Judge Judy and read magazines and books.

I've been so overwhelmed and grateful for friends and family who have called, brought cookies, diet Dr. Pepper, Papaya supplements for digestion, dinners, and Jamba Juices! The girls have been super nice to me and Landon had the house cleaned and banana bread made by 7:00pm Thursday night. I almost want to break something minor so I can reap the attention again soon.

For the Kimball side of the family, I'm still waiting for my first bowel movement. I'll let you know how it all works out. I almost want to take wagers. Everyone is convinced I'll have diarrhea for a while, but considering my history, I'm betting just slightly softer, more regular poop. I'll let you know!!

General Update

I haven't been taking a lot of pictures recently, but felt the need to update my faithful blog readers on how we've been doing lately.
Landon got his case study last Wednesday and has been so diligent about working on it. He spent about 8 hours on Saturday writing the introduction section (there are 4 sections for the final paper, I think). He's been really stressed about it for almost a year, but now that he has it and can actually work on it, he's very confident and driven to finish it. The final copy is due on October 15th, but I'm sure he'll be done well before that. If you want a copy of his case study scenario to read, I'd be happy to email it to you. It's pretty interesting. He has to read it, decide what the main problem is and what the 2 secondary problems are, then write a paper discussing his opinion and using about 20-25 academic sources to back up his ideas. The final copy should be at least 35-45 pages long, and knowing Landon, his will be closer to 60 pages. (He's a wordy fella.)
When he gets his Masters degree in December, we're going to celebrate for about a year. (I'm serious...that wasn't exageration...we've made plans.)
Emma continues to do well with her bass and with ballroom dance. She talks to her bass in a baby voice like it's a real baby (kind of weird). She is surviving PE everyday, doing very well in math, reading, and science. She has recently decided to become a floral designer when she grows up. She may become a horticulturist, or a botanist or something like that too. She got a free plant at Celebrate Youth (the community event held the day before school starts) that shrivels up when you touch it and comes back to life about 15 minutes later. We don't know what it is, but she loves it. I measured how tall she is today and she's up to 5 feet 3 1/2 inches, so she's a big 'un.
Lauren loves school, her teacher, her friends, and her squinkies. She loves to play outside, wear tight pants, and make us laugh. She recently announced that it smelled like "cow's ass" outside. I don't know where she learns such inappropriate language! She is really into the "peace" sign, buying earrings, and is looking forward to being a baby for Halloween. (Is anyone surprised that she wants to be a baby?) I've already ordered footy pajamas from Target.com, and she is already asking if we can get her a binky and a bottle now.
I've been substituting now and then, cleaning house for a family friend, and trying to keep the home fires burning so everyone leaves with a smile on their face in the morning. My life is less interesting than everyone else's, unless you consider that I had a big boil on the back of my head for about 5 days. It was well hidden by my hair, but it got so big that it made me dizzy and I had a killer headache, and had to endure 3 inch gray roots until it healed well enough to color my hair safely.
If we make it through the next month, we're going to be a lot more fun to be with. Everybody pray for Landon (and the rest of us) to get through this case study!

Harvest

In spite of our neglect, we still harvested quite a bit of food from our garden this year. Carrots don't seem affected by weeds, but onions really suffer. Remember that we planted-like-100 onion starts? Well, they didn't grow very big if they even grew at all. We pulled up what we could find amongst the weeds and the biggest onion was about 2 inches in diameter. The carrots on the other hand, were plentiful and very chunky. We sliced and canned about 7 quarts, and we have a big bag left for shredding and freezing. I'm going to use the shredded carrots for carrot cake, carrot bread, and recipes that call for shredded carrots.We also harvested a handful of tomatoes, which we were happy about. I can't think of a vegetable that I'd rather eat right off the vine more than a tomato (even though it's a fruit). Yummy! These tomatoes are some kind of variety that are orange when ripe.
Our corn stalks are still growing, even though the weeds are literally as tall as the corn stalks. We've seen about 10 ears that aren't quite ready to pick, plus we still have some tomatoes that might ripen.

Squinkies

I went on Ebay to bid on some Squinkies for Lauren, since we can't find them anywhere else (except Amazon, but they're way overpriced). She had a $14 budget that she was willing to spend on her Squinkies. I bid $10 and won the bid for series 5 (there are 6 different series). The shipping was $3.99, so Lauren got her Squinkies! She took the mail key, put it in her backpack and has been checking the mail everyday right after getting off the bus. She burst in the door yesterday and showed me her package from Ebay.She was so excited that she was shaking as she tried to open the package.The Squinkies were smaller than we thought, but she was really happy. She got a turtle, a frog and several little babies, among other characters. Lauren is a wheeler/dealer at school. She likes to trade silly bands (little rubber bracelets), pencil toppers, erasers, gum, and whatever other little crap she gets her hands on. We begged her not to trade the Squinkies until other kids had Squinkies to trade. (No one has them here yet.) She's a funny kid.

Yard Sale

This week we've been preparing for a yard sale at the Christensen's house. We spent Labor Day going through stuff in the crawl space, closets, cupboards, etc. We came up with plenty of junk to sell, so we had our sale yesterday. We didn't have any big-ticket items like furniture, so we didn't make as much as we have in the past. What we sold added up to about $150, so it was still worth our time, and DI benefited from quite a bit of stuff that didn't sell. There were several bigger yard sales around town, so we had a lot of competition, which probably contributed to our lack of steady business. We left our house around 6:50am to get over and set up. We followed the city ordinances and didn't tape signs on lamp posts. We used boxes with rocks inside to keep them from blowing away.It was kind of chilly until about noon! Morris and Heidi put out a few things to sell, and their neighbors had a big sale going on, as well. The girls were going to sell their Littlest Pets, but then we realized how much more they could get on ebay. I asked Emma to set up the pets in their little playhouses so I could take a picture for ebay. While the girls were getting everything set up, they decided they were having fun and wanted to keep them a while longer. I'm happy they still want to keep them and play together a little more!Last weekend we went for a weenie roast after working hard to gather and price our yard sale stuff. We went to the city campground, Eagle Park, or Eagle Rock, or Eagle something. It is directly next to the water treatment facility and it smells like raw sewage. In the past, we had only driven around this place, but we decided to give it a try with a cookout. The city and many volunteers have worked really hard to make this campground nice, and it really does look nice. However, the phrase, "lipstick on a pig" is what kept running through my mind as we sat there roasting our wieners. The place smells so disgusting that I can't imagine spending more than an hour there without wanting to vomit. I like to call this picture, A Man and His Wiener...tee-hee...

Believe it or not, the girls preferred eating a Lunchable over having a roasted hot dog! Landon and I ate the hot dogs, while the girls ate their nasty Lunchables.

Old Video

We've been watching lots of family videos, dating back to the day Emma was born. The girls are loving it, and I get sadder and sadder as I watch the years fly by on the screen. As we watch, Landon and I have said several times, "We make such good babies, don't we?"

Landon has been trying to figure out how to get our videos dubbed onto CDs and downloaded onto the computer. He did one video so far, but the one part I wanted to share on the blog ended a little early for some reason. Either way, this video is so cute you're gonna DIE!

Emma is 3 1/2 and Lauren is 1 1/2, it's at our house in Sandy, Utah. Turn up the volume because it's kind of quiet.

I love that Emma is in her underwear, because that's how I like to sleep for bedtime or naps. When I slept with the girls during naps, she'd insist on stripping down to her panties to be like me. Also, I sang and rocked the girls every night of their lives until they were at least 3 years old.

Fun Times With The Girls

Lauren is currently obsessed with "Squinkies," which are little squishy pencil toppers that come in plastic bubbles. (She's been collecting little vending machine squishy pencil toppers since about a year ago, for $.50 each.) Squinkies aren't available in stores around here and they're sold out online everywhere except Amazon and Ebay. Amazon costs double what they are going to cost at Walmart, when they get them in stock and Ebay is ridiculous. Landon thinks we should buy tons of them and sell them at Christmas time, because we think they have the makings of one of those toys everyone wants but can't find anywhere because they sell out so fast.

As badly as Lauren wants a set of Squinkies, Emma wants a flat iron and her own light-weight hair dryer. I can't believe we're talking about Christmas lists already.

Here's another one of Emma's new outfits. We bought this at Downeast Outfitters...a store she LOVES. She wears it to church without the leggings. I'd love it if she could learn how to pose with a more natural smile. That smile has got to hurt.

Check out the size of this instrument! Holy Crap! Emma is about 5'3", so that gives you an idea of how big that sucker is. I went to pick it up from the middle school so she could have one at home to practice, and I had to call Landon to come over with the truck because it could not fit in the car no matter what I did. I'll be really happy if we don't break it while we're borrowing it this year. It's got to cost a lot.

Conversation Tidbits

• Last night Landon got a phone call at 7:15pm telling him that a little girl from his class didn't make it home from school. He called the girl's mom, who was at work until 5 and had been looking for her daughter for over 2 hours. He told her to immediately call the police; she said she thought they wouldn't react until the girl had been gone 24 hours! He told her to call the police, because that's not true. He then called the principal, and several parents in his class to see if she had gone home with any of the kids in the class. He also called the police to make sure the mom had called. At 8:30pm, the girl showed up at home on her own. She had met a new friend and was playing with this friend the whole afternoon/evening. They had been wandering all over going to soccer games, playing back at the school, etc. Landon called all the parents back to let them know she was safe and sound. I can't wait to hear what happened to her when she got home. Landon's going to get the scoop today at school.
• I took dinner to my Activity Days partner last Friday. She had breast reduction surgery on Thursday. I found out she's only 20 years old! She's been married 2 years and has a baby boy. Her mom came to help her after her surgery and when I took dinner over, Landon asked me if her mom was about my age. Funny. (She was probably 5 years older than me.) Look at the rolls I made! I used my giant baking sheet that I bought at the school district pan sale. LOVE IT! We used these rolls on Sunday for hamburger sliders...we grilled the meat and toasted the "buns" on our handy charcoal grill that Nana bought us a couple months ago. What a yummy meal that was!
• We got some celery with our Bountiful Basket last week, so the girls made ants on a log.
• My visiting teacher, Amy, always feels guilty for not visiting me, so on the months she doesn't visit, she brings me some kind of treat. I've gotten Christmas ornaments, homemade salsa, hand soap, cookies, etc. This time she brought me a basket with produce from her garden! I tried to give her basket back to her, but she said to keep it because it was part of the "presentation." How lucky am I? We got carrots, red potatoes, a green pepper, a cucumber, zucchini, beets, and onions. Landon cooked the beets, and made all of us try them. I almost threw up, Emma didn't like it, and Lauren said it was "okay," but she didn't really want any more.