A Break at Last

Life has calmed down a lot since my surgery. Rick is coming to the end of his time at BYU. He will be graduating in two weeks!!! We both can't believe it is already here. He received a position with the City of Saratoga Springs here in Utah. It is only about 30 minutes away from where we live now. They actually wanted him to start working before he graduates, so this week is his first week in the post-college work force. It is a huge change for him but he loves having a real job where he is actually helping to better a community. (And where he doesn't have to worry about homework.) He has already had the chance to review projects that are in progess in the city and set some guidelines that need to be followed in order for them to be approved. He is excited about putting everything that he has learned in school to use in a real world setting, not just for class assignments.

It is nice to be out of the time of uncertainty. We finally feel like things have settled into a pretty set course and are beginning to move forward. We are going to stay in Provo until about August, then we will probably be looking into moving to Lehi or American Fork so that Rick can be closer to his job but so that I can still work at my job down in Provo.

The past month and few weeks has really had its downs but it has also had its ups that are far out weighing the downs. It is hard to see the blessings when you are going through challenges but we can definatley see how blessed we have been the past two months. Thank you for your prayers and support! We love you all!

More Suprises...

So this month isn't getting any better. This weekend Rick and I were excited about not having to worry about too much and just spend some time together. Well, I've learned that if you plan for something it usually doesn't end up happening just the way you plan, usually it's the opposite. In fact, this weekend went nothing how we had planned. I woke up on Saturday with a really weird stomach ache. Thinking that it was just my normal stomache ache that I get every once in a while I thought nothing more of it. So Rick and I went down to Redmond Lake to go Pike fishing. Well, when we got home my stomache started to hurt really bad so I just went to bed hoping it would go away.

I woke up Sunday morning too sick to go to church. Rick went to sacrament meeting and then came home to find me unable to move because of the stomache pain. We called his dad and he told us that we should go into the clinic. (Another Sunday tradition this month, take Michelle to the clinic) :) So we went to the clinic and the doctor thought it was just a normal stomache ache, but she took some blood tests anyways. She found out that my white blood cell count was high. (This means that there was an infection somewhere) So she told me that I need to have a CT done. At this point I'm thinking okay maybe tomorrow, but she said that the hospital is expecting me right now and I need to get down there as fast as I can. This really started to worry me because I had no idea why I needed to go down there right now and the doctor wasn't being very specific on why I needed to go down there right this very minute. So Rick took me to the hospital and by this time my stomach feels like it is being ripped apart. I do the CT and then I am told to wait while they call my doctor and then he will call me back and let me know what is going on. A few minutes later I get a call from the doctor saying that I need to go the emergency room right now to have an appendectomy and that Dr. so and so will meet me down there. At this point I was scared out of my mind and the rest of what the doctor said was a blur! I had never been a patient in a hospital before, this was only the second time that I had ever had blood drawn and I had never dreamed of ever having surgery and it all happened only within a few hours after we decided to go to the clinic.

While I was in the room waiting for the doctors to get everything ready for the surgery I kept making all the alarms go off because my heart rate was so high. They were worried I might be having heart problems, but I told them my heart was fine I was just scared out of my mind. They laughed and said that was understandable. But I still had to have a guy come in and put probes all over me to monitor my heart rate. They told me to take deep breaths, which is very hard to do in this situation, to help calm me down. Well, that didn't work so they finally had to give me sedative to help calm me down. I also found out that my uncle had just been released from the hospital in Salt Lake City on Saturday for the same reason I was in the hospital. I guess it must run in the family. :)

Another thing that was added into this crazy weekend was that Rick had two job interviews on Monday. So he wasn't able to concentrate on those very well. But mom drove down from Logan to stay with me sunday night so that Rick could try and get some sleep at home so he wouldn't be too tired for his interviews and so I would have someone to stay with me on Monday so I wouldn't be at the hospital alone. It was quite the adventure but at least I will never have to go through that again. And Rick's family doesn't have a history of it so he probably would have to worry about it either, thank goodness. Hopefully we won't have too many more suprises this month. At least not crazy ones like we have been having. Good ones would be very welcome, but I don't know how much more we can do this month. :) Hopefully April will be nice and calm. (But I'm not planning for anything this time).

Busy Month

So this month has been very busy for us. School has been demanding for Rick and so has his job search. He has applied at several places around here in Utah like Saratoga Springs, Provo, and Farmington. He has also applied for one out in Rifle, Colorado which is about 4 hours away from Provo. So now we are playing the waiting game. Hopefully we will have good news in a few weeks about where we are going to be living in a few months.

We have been able to have some fun though. We went bowling with my friend Katie and her son Avery, Rick went shooting, and we also took my sister Jenni ice fishing. We had fun ice fishing but it had it's consequences. My face got so sunburned that it swelled up so big that I couldn't see. We had to spend the entire morning in the instacare clinic on Sunday because we were worried this wasn't normal. But the doctor said that it does happen once in a while and gave me some medicine and within about 2-4 days i was back to normal. But we still had a great month.

Pike Fishing at Redmond

This weekend, Rick and I went to Redmond Lake to go pike fishing. Last year we caught 3 Northern Pike the entire year, but while we were up there this weekend, we caught 6 of them. I had never caught one before so when Rick hooked one he handed me the pole so I could reel it in. It was so much fun to reel that huge fish in. As soon as Rick handed me the pole it bent down so far that I couldn't keep it up. He told me I needed to keep the pole up and I told him, "I'm trying but I can't". I finally had to just walk backwards because I couldn't reel it in. It was so much fun. That day I caught 2 and a half fish and Rick caught 3 and a half fish. We had so much fun together. The smallest fish we caught was 23 inches long and the biggest one was 25.5 inches long.

Family Night

Last week for family home evening, Rick and I found these cute wooden toys at Wal-Mart and painted them. I painted the truck and Rick painted the helicopter. It was a really simple thing to do but we had a lot of fun painting them.

Christmas from Pennsylvania

A few weeks ago, Rick and I received our Christmas package from his family out it Pennsylvania. It was a little bit of an adventure to get the package from UPS because they didn't leave a notice on our door but they said the package went out for delivery that day. So we went over the the place the trucks go at the end of the night to drop everything off to check and see if it was there. The lady that helped us was so nice but she didn't think that the truck was back yet but she would go and check. About 25 minutes later she came back with our package. She said the truck just pulled in when she went back there so she dug through the entire truck until she found our package. It was so nice of her to do that for us because we were really excited to get our package and we really wanted it that night. (But if we had to I guess we would have waited, I'm just glad we didn't have to) :)

It was so much fun to call our family in Pennsylvania and open the package with them listening since we weren't able to go out there this year for Christmas. They gave us so many nice things and also a lot of fun things. We got several DVD, beautiful ornaments, pictures, a nutcracker, and several other things. We also really enjoyed getting presents from our niece and nephew, Christopher and Emily. Christopher gave Rick a really nice Eagles hat and Emily gave us little snowman angels with our names on them. It was so sweet of them. Our families have done so much for us and we love them so much! Thanks for everything!

Shooting Rick's New Gun

Yesterday Rick and I went up Provo Canyon to shoot his new gun. It was really fun to see Rick so excited about his new present. He had a smile on his face the entire time. While we were up there we also saw a bunch of wild turkeys. It was weird because they were walking all around us and weren't even scare of the gun shots.