A Day of Blessings

Yesterday was an amazing day! A huge turn around from the last few months.

As you can guess, the landscaping market is not so hot right now. Actually it has been rather awful. During the month of January, we had NO work. I mean zip, zero, zilch, NADA! It was quite scarey!

February was ok. We got a few small jobs so at least our guys were working again. Unfortunately though these jobs had to be put on hold after the initial tear-out and concrete installation because we need to get rocks out of a field in the Red Bluff area and the weather just has not cooperated. Finally we have had a lot of consecutive dry days and they should be able to get the rocks out on Thursday.

March has been better. We have had a lot of leads come off of a booth Kurt installed at a new car wash right next to our office. The phones have been ringing and we have been delivering bids but not a lot of people are signing.

But yesterday takes the cake. We got 4 (FOUR!) contracts signed in one day!

WHAT? HOLY COW!

That is just amazing. We have been so blessed! Thank You Heavenly Father!

Now we are going to go from one extreme to the other; meaning: from no work to having way too much work as we already have 3 jobs waiting for us (the ones waiting for rocks). So we are going from no guys working all the month of January and no guys working the last 2 weeks to 7 jobs all screaming for our attention. THIS IS AWESOME!

I will gladly take this problem over the alternative!

SPECIAL PRICING ALERT

Kurt found Pillsbury Brownies for $.78 at Winco.

Time to load up people!

Somehow he managed to limit his purchase to 12.

However, he did purchase 20 cans of tuna and 10 boxes of Tuna Helper (which we haven't eaten in YEARS!) The Tuna Helper had coupons for cans of tuna so he basically got the tuna for free! SCORE! I guess it will be a good "last minute - running crazy - don't know what else to cook" meal!

Way to go Honey!

Approaching panic mode

Anyone that has been over to our house inevitably comments on what is on top of our fridge. At any given time there is between 20 - 30 boxes of brownie mix.

Yes, 20-30 BOXES of brownie mix - aka: Kurt's food storage!

The boy LOVES his brownies! (Actually it's the batter he loves the most.) He will drive 15-20 minutes away to buy ONLY brownie mix. He buys it by the case (10 per case) and the cases sit on top of our fridge (who has the cupboard space for that much brownie mix?) The store checkers will usually ask him if he is doing a bake sale and he replies "nope, it's all for me!" Crazy boy!

His "theory" (besides the fact that he loves brownies) is that in an emergency brownies will become the new "currency". When everyone else is tired of their wheat, beans, rice, etc., brownies will become a hot commodity. I have told him that he needs to have eggs, oil and a working oven to make the brownies but he says those are just minor details.

So why are we approaching panic mode? We are down to only 3 mixes left. Yes, I said 3. This is a serious crisis here people! I mean what would we do if we had an emergency today? How would we survive with only 3 mixes?

Hopefully the budget will soon once again support our brownie food storage and we can replenish our load. Spending $20-$30 on brownie mix just doesn't fit in the budget right now. Until then we will just have to make due with only 3 mixes. Man, this will be tough!

You know you have a puppy when . . .

. . . toys start loosing their body parts

. . . church shoes look like this

. . . and blocks start looking like cheese!

It's a good thing he is cute!

Plus it is a great way to purge the toys without being the bad guy!!

The blasting has been postponed

I cancelled my scheduled kidney stone blasting appointment that was supposed to be Monday. I was referred to this urologist by my primary and since the first appt with him (the urologist) we have not been happy/comfortable with him. We switched insurances (and therefore all our doctors) in January and we couldn't figure out if we felt funny because it is a new medical group and we were out of our "comfort zone" or if we felt funny because something wasn't right.

I had my pre-op appt on Wednesday and sitting in the waiting room we just didn't like what we heard going on behind the desk; like the mentality or professionalism or ??? Something was off. Plus, the pre-op info giving nurse was clueless, not a good sign. Then when we were in the lab doing my pre-surgery lab work, Kurt about lost it when the guy behind the counter called someone "dude". He wasn't impressed with the level of professionalism and it seemed that no one took their job seriously or something. On the way home we called a guy from our church in the medical field to see if he had heard of this dr. He wasn't home so we left a message.

I kept thinking we were just out of our comfort zone and that we should go ahead with it but Kurt really didn't feel comfortable doing it. Friday morning the wife of the guy from church called to see if she could help me with something because her husband was out of town in Florida for conferences. I explained the situation and she absolutely said I should cancel the appt and not use that dr. WHAT? She does a lot of medical transcription for her husband and knows a lot about a lot of different drs. and she said this was one of a few that she would absolutely not recommend. WOW!

Ok, so I called immediately and cancelled the appointment. Kurt was so relieved! I should have listened to him and his gut but I was just thinking we felt weird because it was all different and new to us. The husband actually called me on one of his breaks to talk to me about it too. What a great guy! He gave me the names of some urologists who he would recommend.

So the blasting of my HUGE stone will have to wait. Passable stone are 5 mm or smaller. The pre-op clueless nurse said she usually sees them 8-9 mm. My bad boy is 15 mm. Yikes!

Are you a "trigger puller?"

This is a term Kurt and I use when we want to describe someone who: takes chances, is SPONTANEOUS, creative, not afraid to make the jump and try new things. They act on their ideas - make things happen. They don't think that there are "failures", just learning experiences.

The people who don't "pull the trigger" are called "non-trigger pullers" (obviously!). I fall into this category. I like consistency, predicability, routine. I like to know what to expect, I like to plan things out and I definitely don't like to fail at something or have something turn out to have been a "wrong decision."

And guess where Kurt falls? Yep, I married the most trigger happy guy I know. Although we do have a few friends and family that come close. And when Kurt mixes with them, adventure is never far behind.

The great thing is that Kurt and I balance each other out. He pulls me out and gets me to try new things and I calm him down and reel him in from trying every single idea that pops into his mind.

2007 was a year of pulling some big triggers. Some were good and some, well, lets just say, were "not so good." (And what do you know - I am still alive! See I can survive "wrong decisions"!) Well, apparently 2010 is going to be another year of pulling the trigger.

The first trigger was a really fun one. We had friends spend the night on New Years Eve and the next morning the husbands (both trigger pullers) got talking. The wives (both non-trigger pullers) tried to derail the train but with no luck. Within 2 hours we had 3 families and 2 camping trailers packed and on the road. I think that has got to break some record, don't you? We went to Dillons beach and had a great time.

The second trigger we have pulled this year was a biggie. We decided to homeschool the girls and pulled them out of public school. Yes, some people think we are crazy. Yes, we have thought "what have we done?" and yes, we have thought "are we doing the right thing?". Kurt and I both received a very strong answer to our prayers and we have faith that we have made the right decision. So the big question is WHY? Well, long story short: our sweet Kayla has some struggles with anxiety and the anxiety was leading to focusing issues and the focusing issues were leading to getting behind in work and getting behind in work was causing her to think everyone else was smarter than her which just put more pressure on her and caused more anxiety which took her self esteem and ran it over, it was DEAD! She would SOB, not cry, but SOB every night and Kurt or I would have to lay with her. It was really not a healthy situation so we decided this would be better and so far it is a lot better. She now goes to bed without crying, without Kurt or I laying with her, she is happier during the day, her confidence is growing and she is thriving again. What a blessing! We are enjoying it and finally getting into a routine.

The third trigger we pulled just happened within the last 3 days. So I am sure you can imagine that running a household, running a business and now running a "school" (by the way, Kurt says he is the principal! ha ha) is a lot to do for one person. So tonight a nanny moved in with us! I know, crazy, uh? Sunday morning, we had never thought of this ever happening but Sunday night, a trigger was pulled! Her name is Christina and she is a student at a local JC close to our house. She will help watch the kids a few hours a day so I can get the office work done and she will help me stay on top of household chores (which have been severly neglected lately!). I am very excited and think this will be a great arrangement! She is such a sweetie and it turns out that I used to work with her grandma, like 11 years ago! What a small world!

Whew, what a year and it is only February. Wonder what else is in store for us this year?

6 years of one weirdness explained

So I am a bit different . . . odd . . . weird . . . I march to the beat of my own drum.

I always have been and I am totally ok with it now. (I used to feel very insecure about it.)

Even in high school I didn't feel the need to "fit in".

I have always done my own thing.

Well, 6 years ago I went to the dr. because when we went to increase our life insurance, they discovered I was spilling protein in my urine (sorry to much info?) Anyway, I went to my primary who ran tests and sent me to a nephrologist (kidney dr.) and a rheumatologist (lupus dr.). They thought I was developing lupus and it was attacking my kidneys. Not such a great thing!

So I went through more tests and more tests and the results were always the same "You are weird. We don't know what is going on with you so we are just going to watch you". Great - I now had laboratory proof that I was, and still am, officially weird. My labs were off enough to show something going on but not off enough to do anything about.

We delayed having Evan because they were afraid that a pregnancy would trigger a full lupus outbreak. After a year of waiting and watching and nothing changing we finally decided we didn't want to wait any longer and got pregnant. Everything was fine during the pregnancy but they worried about after the pregnancy and that my auto-immune system kicking back into gear would trigger it. Nope, we were lucky and I was just fine and went back to my exact same level of weirdness.

We decided that baby #4 probably just wasn't meant to be. We risked it once with Evan and got lucky. We didn't want to risk it again. I would rather have 3 kids with a healthy mom than 4 with a sick mom. So poor baby #4 just isn't in the plans but we think of him often and he does have a name and causes all sorts of trouble around the house. If the kids won't fess up to making a mess, we say "hmmm, must have been Trevor."

Well, a year ago I switched kidney doctors. The new dr. started off the same "yep, your weird." He thought I was boring because he couldn't do anything to treat me because the treatments he could do had bad side effects so the treatment wasn't worth it because my labs weren't off enough. But what was great was this dr. thought outside the box. Long story short he tried something different that wasn't even in his field to treat.

So during the time he was trying that (it was a 3 month treatment) I went to my primary because I thought I had a bladder infection. They did the urine test and discovered that I didn't have an infection but that I had A LOT of blood in my urine. They sent me directly over to get x-rays of my kidneys. Very scary and freaky; especially because Kurt's cell had died and I couldn't get ahold of him to come be with me.

Well the x-ray showed that I didn't have 1, didn't have 2, but that I had 3 kidney stones! No wonder my kidneys were spilling blood, they are getting beaten up with stones moving around in them.

So I sent those results to the kidney dr. and he got all excited! Finally he had something he could work with. He ordered CT scans, lab work, had lab work mailed to me from back east. All sorts of good stuff!

When we got the labs back they showed that my ana test has gone back to negative (because of the 3 month treatment) which would show that I am not developing lupus! SWEET! That is great. My rheumatologist says I still have 2 little labs that are not normal but what does he expect - I am a bit weird - even my blood.

So my nephrologist said he doesn't need to see me anymore because my kidneys are fine - they just have stones which have cause the protein and blood for the last 6 years! But now I have to go to a urologist to deal with the stones. Turns out 1 stone was not a stone after all. So I have 2 stones: one stone on my left side which the urologist said would drop me to my knees when it decides to pass - looking forward to that! And I have one on my right side that is the size of half a grown man's pinky finger. It's a BIGGY! They are going to have to blast it with waves and the chunks that come off of it may even be too big to pass so they may have to blast again. I have been growing this one for quite awhile - apparently 6 years!

So after 6 years of "your weird" we finally have something to work with. I go in on March 1st for the blasting! Hopefully this will solve the mystery.

And who knows, maybe Trevor will get his chance to join our family after all!