Stylish Blogger Award

I was awarded my 1st blogger award by Liene over at Femme au foyer for my honest, positive blogging style.

I have to admit that there are times where that is not so easy to do.  Life has thrown us quite a few curve balls this year - Eriks' diagnosis being the big one.  His doctor was put on bed rest due to her pregnancy and is still finishing up the report so that we can start OT which he desperately needs and likely medicine to keep him at an even keel through the day.

All the rooms in the house have now been painted with the exception of some touch up work.  This is a very good thing since Grandma & Grandpa are going to be in town from Texas later this week and are staying with us.  Now it's just a matter of finishing up putting stuff on the walls and away in the storage room.  I am desperately trying to find a china cabinet that I can paint black and put in the dining room.  I have boxes of china and crystal that I would like to start using again.

We had an uneventful weekend.  Put together a desk for the office which Lane is currently using (no class today).  I have not stamped or crafted anything since before we moved up to Indy and I have been itching to do stuff.  Now I have a desk I can sit at and work at during the day.  Watched my Colt$ lose miserably last night.  The head coach needs to go.  Made a fabulous pot roast for dinner last night and had my parents over for dinner.  My dad was over here putting up insulation in our garage where there wasn't any.  I figured I could give him a good dinner for his work (thanks Dad).

Have a good week and I will have some photos of Grandma and Grandpa's visit over the weekend!!

ER Visits - CHD Post

I'm fine.  I have made NO visits to the ER in almost 3 1/2 yrs thankfully.  It's been awhile since I posted something about CHD to all my CHD blog readers and after being woken up at 2:30 am by red flashing lights from an ambulance next door, it made me think about my ER visits.  I found out Friday afternoon when I saw our neighbor's wife outside that he has atrial fib issues and the doctors had made a change to one of his medicines and he didn't deal with it well and went into an A-Fib episode and took a trip to the ER in the middle of the night.  He is fine and she hopes the meds will start working the way they should.

Anyhow, while standing at the window watching the flashing lights, I thought about my 1 ER trip in an ambulance when Lane and I were living near DC.  I was being seen at Johns Hopkins.  Lane was out of town and I was supposed to go pick him up at the airport sometime that evening.  Well, my heart had different ideas.  I went into a pretty bad A-Fib episode that would not go away.  When I was having A-Fib episodes, my doctor told me to take another dose of one of the meds I was on in attempt to slow down the heart rate which would allow it to convert on its own and return to a normal rhythm.  Well it wasn't happening and it was getting bad enough to the point where I had to call 911 and have an ambulance take me since I didn't have anyone else around to do it.

Thinking back on it, it was kind of funny because although our dog at the time Sydney was harmless, I was told by the 911 operator that I had to lock him up when the EMT's arrived.  I felt so bad for him being locked up because he was going to be locked up for quite some time.  But he handled it like a trooper when all was said and done.  It was also fun calling Lane and telling him that he was going to have to take a cab from the airport to the hospital and then a cab home from the hospital.  Those were some expensive cab rides.  After I was loaded up in the ambulance I got the lights and all ride through town.  It was kind of exciting!  Out the back window I could see the cars that had to pull over to let us go by.  The EMT's thought it was pretty weird too that I was in such high spirits considering my 120-150 heart rate and the fact that I looked terrible.  All the color had drained from my face and they told me I looked pretty white.  I told them that A-Fib was no longer anything new to me and I'd learned to take it with a grain of salt.  I knew I was going to be dealing with this for a long time.

After pumping me full of Cardizem/Diltiazem, my heart converted.  I spent the night in the hospital just in case and then Lane got to take me home.

Then there was that one time, Lane was busy with work.  I think he was flying actually.  I did have him called to return because I had another A-Fib episode but instead of calling an ambulance, I drove myself to the ER.  I don't recommend this.  I wasn't feeling that bad and figured I didn't want to deal with an ambulance and the 20 minute drive wasn't that bad.  My mom had a cow.  I swear if she could've, she would've reached through the phone and strangled me for doing it.  I'm sure she tried.

So what's the real purpose of this post?  I guess it's learning how to deal with this stuff as an adult when you have to deal with this when you're no longer living at home.  I had a small handful of ER visits as a kid all for broken bones or sprained ankles, but I never made an ER visit for my CHD.  So when I started having the A-Fib issues, I had to decide when it was time to go to the hospital and how I was going to get there.  Luckily I was married and had my husband around the 1st time I had to make an ER trip because of my CHD.  It wasn't too bad before we adopted Eriks.  Lane was around 99% of the time and could take me to the hospital.  When Eriks came into the picture it became a bit more complicated.  When he was a baby we just took him with us.  As he got older there were times he still went with us and other times we scrambled to find someone to take care of him so that we didn't have to worry about Eriks having to go with us.  Being a military wife, never having family around when I had to go to the hospital was bad.  I highly recommend to other CHDers and parents of CHDers, if you move away from home, make sure you have a strong network of people you can count on if you need help and have to make an unexpected trip to the hospital.  I wish we would've had a long list of people to count on in all the different places we lived.

If any CHDers reading my blog or parents of CHDers have questions to ask me, please email me.  I'd love to do a Q & A blog post sometime.

Apple Orchard

Emi had a day off from school on Monday because of Columbus Day so my mom and I took her about an hour south of where we live to get apples.  We had hoped to pick apples, but we waited too late in the season to do that.  All they had were apples in bags for purchase.  Next year we'll go mid-September instead of waiting.  Unfortunately, with schedules and other stuff going on, we had no choice this year but to wait this long.  Doesn't matter because although we didn't pick apples, we bought them and they are some of the best around.

My mom was introduced to Anderson Orchard by her aunt and uncle years ago.  While driving down my mom and I were talking and she was trying to figure out how the heck they found this place.  But they were notorious for getting in the car and taking drives.  My best guess is that it was either a word of mouth, they saw it on TV, or read about them in the paper.  Uncle Albert loved going to the orchard.  He looked forward to it.  My mom said he would also pick the biggest and prettiest apples he could find.  I miss them both terribly.

Monday was a warm beautiful day.  The weather earlier this week was truly Indian Summer weather.  Low 70's for highs and sunny.  Now it's cold and windy and I'm not liking it much.  The orchard was surprisingly busy but I'm thinking that had a lot to do with the weather.  Emi loved the apple she sampled and made a complete sticky mess of her hands.  She also loved the apple cider we shared.  We came back with apples, cider and mums for the yard.  It was a good day!

Ballerina Emi

A few Saturdays ago while I was cleaning house, my bedroom to be exact, Emi went into her dresser and found the leotard handed down from her cousins and a ballerina skirt that came with a pajama set.  The leotard is honestly too small and I need to get her a new one because she loved that thing and refused to take it off.  The music was going via our satellite TV and she began dancing around.  Unfortunately she was moving so fast that some of the pictures I got were blurry and I wasn't happy about that.  But she makes one stinking cute ballerina and I would like to see how she would do in a dance class.  Maybe when she turns four we will give it a whirl.

Wedding Weekend

I am able to take a deep breath again after much craziness helping my parents' goddaughter with her wedding.  I loved every minute of it but, doing it while taking care of 2 kids, a house and a husband who's in law school is hard impossible!

The bride and groom left for their honeymoon this afternoon and I hope they have a very enjoyable trip.  Eva picked a really great man for her husband and since she is very much a part of our family, we couldn't be happier for her.

The kids are exhausted from the weekend and one of them is actually ill.  I picked Eriks up from school this afternoon and he slept the entire way home.  I took his temperature and attempted to give him a snack while he watched some cartoons on the couch.  As he was getting ready to take a bite of his snack, he dropped it and tried to bolt for the bathroom but didn't make it and ended up puking all over the rug - twice.  Poor kid.  Needless to say, I have one child who will not be attending school tomorrow.  I am praying that he does wake up feeling better and there is no more puking to be had.  I'm battling a cold.  Part of it is the crazy up and down weather and part of it the nonstop running recently (see paragraph 1).

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the kids this Saturday at the wedding since they wouldn't stand still.  I can't blame them, it was a rockin' reception.  You'll just have to enjoy some of my favorite wedding photos. I loved taking and editing every one of them!