Day Off

The kids had a good first week of school. Our district starts with a four-day week and then a four-day weekend. We celebrated our first day off of the year with some mild sleeping in, one early cross country practice, and a few free donuts from the summer reading program. And lots of chores.

Bryan was well enough to go outside for a few minutes today. Progress is good, even if it's small.

Brain Glitch

Today Bryan and I tried to catch up on sleep while the kids were at school.

And yet I'm so tired that after more than seventeen years of blogging regularly, I almost forgot to post.

I guess I have more catching up to do.

FYI, Bryan is feeling better. He's okay standing and sitting, but switching between the two is pretty rough.

Rock and Roll

This is me at 3:11 this morning. It's the only picture I took of Bryan's stay in the ER. He was in so much pain, I didn't think we would appreciate any pictures I took of him.

Last night the kidney stone pain combined with medication induced nausea to create a perfect storm. He was back forth about going to the ER again. After he threw up for the third time in less than an hour I said it was time to head to the hospital. He checked in just before midnight. Around 3:30 in the morning we were told that he was being admitted and had been put on the list for surgery. They were going to remove the stone.

Nearly twelve hours and several anti-nausea and pain medication doses later, a nurse arrived in his ER room to wheel him to surgery. Just over an hour later he was out of surgery and in the recovery room. The surgeon found me in the waiting room and told me the stone was so big Bryan likely wouldn't have passed it on his own. They were able to blast the stone and break it into smaller pieces. Then they endoscopically used a tiny basket to scoop out the pieces.

He was finally able to eat food after he came out of the anesthesia, roughly twenty hours after he had started feeling so intensely awful. He has a stent, which is both supposed to help the process and will really hurt over the next five days.

Thankfully he's home. He's still in pain, but hopefully that pain has an end date. And he's really glad to be in his own bed.

Twenty-Four Years and Counting

We were finally able to have our family birthday dinner last night! Does that mean that Bryan has passed the kidney stone? No, it does not. But thanks to some strong pain medication, he joined us for the picture and the meal.

First Day, Again!

This is the first time we've had kids transport themselves on their first day. Cooper and Phoebe both got to skip the bus this morning.

Sophie loved both her first day outfit and her first day hair.

Topher was glad we made his bus on time.

Happy first day, all!

Run, Run Cooper

Cooper had his first Cross Country meet of the season today. It was a huge invitational, thirty schools were invited. Because he took a week off from running due to a foot injury, he was assigned to run in the JV race. He guessed that there were 200 guys that ran that 5K with him. Only the top 15 runners placed.

And looked who placed 15th with a run time of 19:12!

Great work, Cooper! He's had two very good days in a row.

On the Road

We have another driver in the house! Cooper passed his driver's test this morning!

He celebrated by driving to the store and buying himself an Eagles keychain.

Congratulations, Cooper!

Overheard

Cooper: (to Phoebe) Hey, don't shoot the messenger.

Phoebe: I'm not going to shoot the messenger. I'm going to correct the messenger and then educate the messenger.

To Be Connected

Topher gave a talk in primary last Sunday. I've been so busy driving kids around, getting them ready for school to start, that I wasn't home to help him. Bryan took over that job this time. He said he and Topher studied the lesson, watched a few church videos, and discussed. This talk was the result. He did a great job delivering it.

Heavenly Father told the Saints to keep journals. In D&C 85, it says the saints should keep a history of the things that happen in the church, how they lived their faith and what they did. Journals are where we write the things that happen to us.

My Mom has a blog that she’s kept for almost 20 years with pictures and stories of us kids and our family. It talks about important times for our family – like when I was born, or went to the hospital – and also about the things we do together. It’s a history of our family and we all like to read it. It is her journal.

Even if we can’t write words, we can keep journals. There’s a poem in the July 2006 Friend that says how:

I can keep a journal,
And I can't even write.
But I can color pictures—
I do it every night.

Special things that happen
And special things we do,
I draw them in my journal.
And you can do it too.

I have my own journal, it's black and white. I draw pictures of things I experience or imagine.

Even if you can't write a lot of words yet, you can still keep a journal like me. When you grow up you can look back and remember all the things that happened when you were little, and share those things with your family.

Heavenly Father told us to keep journals so we can be connected to our families. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

A Long Long Time Ago

Today is our 24th family birthday. We had planned to eat our traditional family birthday meal, but we needed to postpone it to Wednesday. Bryan woke me up at 6:00 in the morning to tell me that he was having a kidney stone. We think this is his ninth, but that's just a guess since we've kind of lost count. He spent the morning in the ER getting some very strong medication and the rest of the day going in and out of sleep, still on very strong medication.

This is not how he wanted to spend today.

Since the day went sideways, let us instead focus on this day twenty four years ago.

Aw, look at those cute kids.