Holiday! Revised

1/6/12
Good golly time flies when you're busy!  Sorry it's taken so long to finish this post.  I still haven't gotten the pictures I took with my camera to load!  Gonna try re-posting them tonight when I get home.  Our trip was amazing!  The drive home was uneventful, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had lunch in Parker with Thom & Judy at one of our favorite little chinese places.  It's odd that our favorite food places are scattered around the western states.  Speaking of which here's a couple fun pics from our stop at our favorite spot in vegas Top of the World at Stratosphere.


We've had a grand time here in the desert, and since I've been having so much fun I've neglected my blog.  I have however been taking lots of pictures so the majority of this post will be those & I will follow later with some of the adventures we've been having.

We arrived Christmas eve and enjoyed our visions of sugar plums from our cozy camper & good times with friends.  I missed being home in Cache Valley for the regular green carpet and home made bbq hurrah, but this year things just weren't meant to work out that way.  There were about 21 of us gathered from our eclectic desert group, most of whom were family of one of the couples who all came to their Mom & Dad’s “house” for the holiday.  The food was varied, plentiful, and delicious!  Judy was kind enough to share the photo's she took with me since I didn't have my camera charged & rolling yet.

I spent my first morning here lolling in the sun, reading & generally enjoying myself.  Scott ran into town and did condensed tour of the vendors.  It has been AWESOME having the bikes with us!  So much freedom to run wherever we want whenever we want without having to beg a ride (not that there’s not always someone offering to accommodate us) or roll the whole rig. Parking is SO much easier.  I’ve had a lot of fun wandering, shopping here is NOTHING like anywhere else.  Here are a few snaps of random things that caught my eye.

Itty bitty Trailer!

We drove out into the desert to look at property and also to find the cheese curd guy.  He’s in Brenda this year & the food’s better than ever! 

It’s late, my computer’s running out of battery, and I’m having trouble posting the pictures.  If this posts without them then please be patient!  I’ll try again to make it work on my home computer. 

Happy New Year!

~m

Snow

Yesterday we had christmas type snow all day long.  It was beautiful, peaceful & pleasant...unless you had to drive in it...which I did, but oh well.

I've developed a lovely combination of tickly itchy throat and nerve pain that spikes every time I cough.  You can imagine my joy.  Can't decide if it's some sort of drug side effect, left over irritation from the tube they shoved down my throat in the surgery or what.  I do know it's darn annoying.

Mom's been busy taking care of Glenn.  His ankle fusion went well, but he developed an abscess on the ball of his foot.  That too has been taken care of and is healing, so hopefully he can be boring for the holidays.

I go in for another MRI Friday.  This one will take 3 hours...yay.  But they're giving me anti anxiety meds so I hope to get through it without becoming any more insane.

I'm nearly done with my holiday shopping, just 1 trip to cabellas & I'll be done.  Can't complain to much about that.

Live long & prosper.
~m

Happy Holidays!

The season is well upon us, and life is full of distractions.  Went shopping with my Hillyard girls yesterday.  We've sort of created a tradition of going to park city, staying at the hampton inn, eating at Ruby Tuesday, & spending a whole day at the outlets.  This was our third...or possibly 4th...year & it was just as much fun as it always is.  I upgraded us to a suite (it was only 20 bucks more) and was very happy I had.  We had tons more space, another bed, and a fireplace!  I especially enjoyed the swimming pool this year.  It is so nice to be able to move & exercise without tremendous pain.  I rarely go shopping just for fun, and this annual trip with the girls is one of my favorite holiday treats.  This year I came home with fuzzy purple boots, feather earrings, and a purple purse, along with a pile of other things that are gifts.  My wallet is a bit grumpy, but I haven't been overcome with any buyers remorse so I'm calling it a success.

So the spine guy walked into my exam room with a very enthusiastic "You have a HUGE disc herniation!"  Not exactly good news but it was rather novel to have a doctor start right off by validating my complaint & offering solutions.  I've had so much experience with doctors treating my like a liar, or some sort of drug seeking addict, that this was rather refreshing.  Turns out that they didn't get a look at my whole spine when they did the MRI just the lumbar, so I'll be going in for another round in the bangy tube in order to get scans of the rest of my spine.  Not really excited about that, but I am interested to see what he says about the rest of my spine once he's seen it.  In January I'll be having corrective surgery to clean out the disc material that's pressing on my spinal cord.  It won't entirely eliminate my pain, but should do wonders for the nerve pain in my legs.  He says I'll likely need another surgery down the road to fuse my L5 & S1 vertebrae but feels that I'm awfully young to give up the mobility I'll loose with that surgery yet.  As long as I can manage the back pain I'm going to put that off as long as possible.

I had a bit of infection develop at one of the incisions from my gal bladder surgery.  Who on earth decided that putting an incision inside your belly button was a good idea?!?  I don't think it is.  The damn thing got infected, it's near impossible to keep a bandage on it, & I haven't been able to wear anything with a waistband that sits at my natural waist for 3 weeks.  Doc Preciado put me on antibiotics and then I promptly came up with a nasty 24 hour flu bug that nearly killed me.  But I seem to be doing better now, and the infection seems to be gone, just waiting for the wound to finish healing up.  I still sleep A LOT and have next to no energy, but even that is improving slowly. 

Scott started a low carb diet this week & I am so proud of him!  His self control & motivation are impressive to witness.  Especially with me having carbs in my diet still.  He's a very considerate & patient man.

We're getting ready for the holidays & starting to plan details for our annual winter vacation in Quartzsite.  This year we are taking the garage trailer & motorcycles.  Should be quite a bit of fun & rather useful to have them.

Speaking of the Q trip, now would be an excellent time to start making packing lists & put together a menu.  I believe I'll go do that now.

Live long & prosper.
~m