How Did That Even Happen?

Somehow last week I managed to bruise my tailbone. I have NO idea how it happened. I don't do any kind of sport, I didn't fall. Absolutely nothing sticks out to me about what could have caused it. At any rate, I've been in a lot of really bad pain most of the time. It hurts the least when I'm laying on my stomach, but even then it's still not totally gone. I have found 2 things so far that have made a dent in the pain. The first is Tiger Balm. I can't say enough good things about that stuff. It's the only thing that helps with my upper back pain and it's the only pain reliever I've tried that's even made a dent in the pain in my tailbone. John also went out and got me a seat cushion this morning with a U cut out of the back so that my tailbone isn't sitting on anything when I'm sitting down. Apparently a bruised tailbone takes 4 weeks to recover from. Here's hoping for a quick 4 weeks...

Thoughts and Reflections

I realized this morning that over the past 12.5 months, I've actually become a lot more private of a person. Hardly anyone knows about the bigger things that have gone on in my life. I'm okay with that, some of it just doesn't belong out there. I wasn't even going to blog about the whole cancer thing, but then I realized that since I really suck at journalling, I should at least have some record of this somewhere. At any rate, here are 10 things that have happened in the past year that I'm willing to share:

1 - I was released from the Young Women presidency in our ward in a VERY VERY VERY emotional meeting with the bishopric member. Apparently they drew straws over who had to be the one to tell me. I still miss it a lot. But I am enjoying the calling I'm currently in.

2 - After spending years growing my hair out and getting it back to it's natural colour as well, I chopped it off super short. I enjoyed it being short, but have now started the process of growing it out again.

3 - Caleb lost his first tooth. He was over the moon about it and has lost a few more since then. In our house, we buy the kids a milkshake when they lose a tooth, which he loves.

4 - We found out that Brettley is allergic to something in creamy salad dressings. Since then, I have made a LOT of homemade Caesar salad dressing.

5 - I burnt my arm really badly while making Rice Krispies squares. I have a permanent scar from it. I have not made any squares since then.

6 - Caleb had his first piano recital. He did well and looked so dapper in his suit.

7 - We finally got a brand new couch and love seat. I think my mum fell out of her chair when I told her they were brown. (She is HUGE on decorating in brown, and I kind of hate it, but I'm really warming up to certain shades of brown).

8 - Brettley had his second strabismus operation. His eyes are a lot better, but not 100%. I'm trying not to make him do another surgery, since he never fully recovered from the second one.

9 - Ty started Kindergarten and my mornings got a LOT more quiet. His favourite thing to do at school is the house centre.

10 - I finally got a laptop. I got inheritance money from my grandparents and while most of it went to paying off debts, I got to buy one really frivolous thing, so I got a laptop and a wireless trackball mouse. I love em!

My Mum

Can I just say... My mum is a rock star. She is Wonder Woman. She is amazing! I think I was still in shock a bit in my last post when I talked about finding out she'd had cancer. I couldn't get across at the time how it worked in to everything else, but I'd like to do that now. In May 2012 my mum's mom went into a home due to her Alzheimer's and dementia. She wasn't herself anymore and continued to lose who she was from there on. Mum went as often as she could to visit with my grandma and was always thinking of new things she could do to make my grandma as comfortable as possible. Mum is one of the most compassionate and selfless people on the planet. That's just how she is. My mum started getting sick a lot more last year and while doing some tests in her throat area, they found something. She found out that they'd had suspicious results a couple of days before she was called to stay by her mom's side during the last few days of her life. While Mum was struggling with what these results meant for her, she doted upon my grandma and helped her dad and 4 brothers through the whole process. She took care of Grandma until her very last breath, doing everything she could to make Grandma's last days as comfortable and happy as possible. Grandma's battle was finally over, and Mum said goodbye to her mother while taking care of her dad through the process. Not even 6 weeks later Mum found out that there was indeed a mass that was probably cancer. Within days she received word that her dad had passed away. There was family drama going on left and right (horrible drama that I will never recount on here), and Mum had to come to terms with the whole cancer thing at the same time that she was essentially burying both of her parents (we buried both of their urns at the same time). She entered the Christmas season getting more and more sick every day. She had to decide whether or not to tell my brother and I about the results. The decision was to not tell us until after the surgery for very good personal reasons. So while her health was deteriorating and she was mourning her parents, my mum had only her husband for support while preparing for surgery. May I add, she continued working full time through all of this. Weeks before her surgery, at a time when she was always exhausted, barely making it through the days, she was making meals for her friend who lost her daughter at a very young age.

2013 was not kind to my mum. But she pulled through, while still doing everything that she could to continue to help others around her. My mum is one of the most inspirational people that I know of. I am so amazed by how she dealt with everything. She is truly an example of a compassionate, selfless and patient woman. I can only hope that I end up becoming half the woman that she is. I am truly blessed to call her my mum.

January Thus Far

I've been sick this month. Like 'knocked flat on my back, ended up really dehydrated and all' kind of sick. Caleb has been sick this month and ended up needing antibiotics that smell horrible and according to him taste just as bad (he's allergic to amoxicillin and so they usually give him a grainy antibiotic called Biaxin that is apparently now super minty). Ty has been sick this month and is currently home from school for the second day in a row. Brettley has been sick this month and coughed so hard this morning that he threw up. With all of that said.......
2014 is STILL already so much better than 2013, ha ha. Maybe it's just my state of mind forcing it to be, but either way it doesn't matter. I'm so much happier these past few weeks.

Had a big shocker of a day last Saturday. Earlier this month my mum had her thyroid removed, so we'd been texting a lot since she was really bored during the day, but couldn't really talk. On Saturday I decided to give her a call and see if she was up to talking yet since it had been almost 2 weeks since her surgery. I found out during the phone call that the reason she'd had her thyroid removed was because she had thyroid cancer. Um, say what?!? Anyway, she has a clean bill of health now, they got it all and next month she gets to do her radioactive iodine treatment and spend 2 days in isolation. John and I are trying to think of which superpower she should try to get while she's radioactive. Anyway, you'd think that after my FIL passing away from pancreatic cancer almost 2 years ago now that I would have learned that parents aren't invincible, but apparently I still felt like my mom was. I cried and cried. Later in the afternoon that day I got the news that my dad heard back about a procedure he'd had done in the fall and because of the results (precancerous masses removed), I now have to start going for routine cancer screening. BLAH! I keep thinking in my head that I'm way too young for this (29), but right now I'm just massively grateful that, at least for right now, both of my parents are okay.

On to more fun news...I have started losing weight again. We waited until I was stable enough to do it, and so far I have lost 4.6 lbs, which I'm super excited about. I was kind of worried at first since I am losing weight so fast at the moment, so I talked to John about it. He reminded me that I'm not skipping meals (I'm actually eating 3 meals and at least 2 snacks per day), so I'm certainly not starving myself. It's just that I'm eating smarter and not having huge fatty snacks several times per week anymore. Then we realized I'm probably losing  it so fast right now because at the same time as I started counting calories I also went from drinking pretty much no water and several Coke Zeros per day to drinking at least 2 litres of water and rarely even having 1 Coke Zero in a day. It was a huge change that I was really nervous about making (I'm not the hugest fan of unflavoured beverages), but it's working great for me. I keep a jug of water in the fridge to fill my water bottle with so that I have super cold water to drink. The hardest part was the caffeine withdrawl, but drinking so much water is making it a lot easier on me this time.

So that's kind of been our month so far. I'm just mostly taking it easy and trying to keep up with this crazy weather that can't decide whether it's winter or spring in January. Next week I'm cutting out white grains and red meats from my regular diet for health reasons, and I'm actually really looking forward to next week's meal plan :)

2014

It's a new year! I am so incredibly relieved to be able to say that. Without going into a lot of detail, 2013 was arguably THE most difficult year of my life. Even the last day of the year was filled with trials (although one of those resulted in me getting a brand new fridge yesterday which I didn't have to pay for, so that was a nice perk).

But, today is a new day and today is a new year, HUZZAH! This year will bring a visit to my Uncle & Aunt's house for spring break, my brother's convocation at the UofL (which I get to travel without kids for), a trip to Magrath for the first time since late winter 2012, Caleb's baptism and me turning 30 (eep!). It's a fresh start and I am excited to see what it will bring to our home. Happy New Year!

I wanted to have a focus theme type thing for this year. Something to sum up what I'd like to get out of the year. I ended up going with 'Go Back to the Basics' and always keeping my 5-5-5-5 rule in mind. For the 'Go Back to the Basics', I want to do as much as I can to keep our lives simplified and to just focus on doing the basic things that we need to be doing (saying our prayers, reading our scriptures, etc) rather than focusing on a bunch of other things that aren't quite as necessary. As for my 5-5-5-5 rule, I'm trying to remember to ask myself if what I'm stressing about will matter 5 days from now...5 weeks from now...5 months from now...5 years from now. I am a very high stress person, and I think if I try to put more perspective into things in the moment that it might make things a bit less stressful for me. So those are my focuses for the year, and I'm very excited for both of them.

Parenting and What Not

I break this blogging silence to stand on my soapbox once again. Earlier this week I had a friend/family member make an innocent comment on a mutual facebook friend's status. I understood why it was being made and really didn't think much of it. However, apparently another member of the extended family we've both married into did, and was highly rude in her comments to my friend. It made me realized that I have an official opinion for ALL seemingly controversial parenting topics of our generation. And my official opinion is this:
Pray for what is right for your specific child at that particular time. Then do what you are told to do.

Too often we are quick to judge others who make parenting decisions different from our own. However, we seldom know all of the reasons those decisions are made and are certainly not in on discussions between Heavenly Father and the parent about these decisions. I, myself, have received answers that others didn't understand and judged me for because they didn't have all of the facts and didn't have the right to receive revelation for me the way I do for myself. Who are we to think that we have to right to decide what is right for someone else? Ugh, this compulsive need for superiority in this generation just disgusts me. Do your best, get your own answers, follow those answers and allow others to do the same without acting like a condescending jerk. That is all...

***

Now that I've gotten that frustration out, we are about ready for the Christmas holidays here. I am still working on my Personal Progress after a hiatus. I am VERY MUCH looking forward to welcoming in 2014. This year was very hard on me physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I am looking forward to the feeling of starting fresh and making 2014 a very awesome year. We have plans already for Spring Break and in the summer that we're really looking forward to. Plus, 2014 will bring with it the baptism of our oldest child, who will turn 8 at the end of September and also be starting Cub Scouts. Lots of exciting things to look forward to. But before that, I'm going to take a deep breath and plug through the very busy week and a half I have ahead of me :)

64 Years Minus 29 Days

64 years minus 29 days. That is how long my grandparents' marriage on earth was. That number is just mind blowing to me. I will never reach that with John, unless by some miracle he lives to be 93. The moment at my grandma's funeral that made me cry the most was my grandpa leaning over to kiss the box containing my grandma's ashes. It was one of the most sweet and most heartbreaking things I've ever seen in my life. 6 weeks and a day after my grandma left my grandpa, he was reunited with her. A love that stood through decades and decades continues on. With that said, I'm off to pack for yet another funeral...