Well, I haven’t posted in over nine months. Just a little too long to do a good job catching up on everything. I will do my best.
Megan
Megan returned home from her mission on April 30th. It’s been fun having her home. It’s kind of weird because she left a teenager and returned as a young adult. So, when she first came home, it was like a mix of having a visitor and my daughter back. So familiar, yet so new at the same time.
Just when we were starting to get used to her being around, she took off for most of the summer to be an FSY counselor. She did a week of training, a week at BYU-Provo, two weeks in Boise, a week in Ephraim, a week off (when she went to several doctor appointments, got her hair re-braided, and figure out what she wanted to be when she grows up), two weeks in North Carolina, a week at BYU-Provo, and now she is finishing off in Iowa for a week.
You can see some photos of her fun on her Facebook account. She has also been making some big decisions about her future. She decided to go to UVU, but she still isn’t registered because she decided to change her major to 2D Animation, and we can’t register until she talks to her counselor, but she can’t talk to her counselor since Megan is always gone, and because she only decided all this on her week off. We will get it figured out eventually – hopefully in time for classes to start.
Tyler
In December, Tyler had his court date (which totaled about 10 minutes, including talking to his court-appointed attorney online right before talking to the judge). All the charges but one were dropped, and he had to get a mental health evaluation and go to therapy for six months. He has since completed all that, and now he is just waiting until December, when all the charges will be dropped (not sure if that’s the word for it).
He is settled in his apartment and is much calmer and happier overall. He hangs out with his friends and does some airsoft wars and Vietnam reenactments. He is doing a good job learning how to cook, do the laundry, etc., which really wasn’t hard because he was doing all that before he moved out. He really likes living by himself.
He is slowly working on practicing his video editing skills and has edited some of his own videos and uploaded them to YouTube. More and more, he is talking about how he wants to do something to earn money, and he hopes it can be something with video editing, even if it is just a little money.
Since he was officially diagnosed with autism, there is a chance he can qualify for Disability (otherwise known as Supplemental Security Income). We finished the long process of applying for it, and now we have to wait up to two years to see what they say. If he does get it, it will pay for a little more than half of his expenses, which would help us out a lot. If he doesn’t get it, we will just have to keep doing our best to pay for his expenses.
One fun thing Tyler and I did together was to take Front Runner up to Layton, then take an Uber to the Hill Air Force Museum and spend a few hours there. It was really fun to spend time with Tyler, and nice to get to spend as much time as he wanted looking at whatever he wanted.
Kayla
Kayla is a flurry of activity, as usual. I think the highlight of the last few months was being in the play “Hello, Dolly” at her school.
This summer, she is taking a class at Scera that she had to audition for and will be in the play “Matilda, Jr.” in a few weeks. If you want to get tickets, you can get them at this link.
She did virtual FSY this summer, so she was online all week. She enjoyed that because she didn’t have to sleep in a strange place or with a strange person, walk really far back and forth across campus, or eat food she didn’t like (or more like not eat the food and come home starving like last time). She also enjoys the spiritual stuff a lot more than the physical things, like the dances, so it was a good fit for her.
She got a new job at Roxberry in Orem a few months ago. At first, she liked it, but she only worked about once a week. Now that she is working more in the summer, she doesn’t like it so much, but she is sticking with it until she can find something else. At least she is finally getting enough shifts to save toward her goals for the future.
Kayla sold her leopard gecko and purchased a hognose snake, which has been a long-time dream for her. Ask her about it, and she will show you a bunch of photos and tell you why she likes it so much.
Ruby
I was able to get Ruby into my functional medicine doctor. She ran some tests and gave her some prescriptions. She is taking Celebrex (usually for arthritis), which Ruby can’t tell is doing anything. She was diagnosed with chronic fatigue (which really isn’t a very helpful diagnosis), and she tested very high for chronic mycoplasma pneumonia, which is what I tested really high for about 10 years ago when I had rheumatoid arthritis and was able to kill off with low-dose antibiotics for about 1.5 years.
“Myco” can hide in your body and cause auto-immune diseases since your body is trying to attack it, but in the process, it attacks your body. My doctor thinks this could be causing a lot of Ruby’s pain and wants to treat it before we try some of the more drastic things, like medical marijuana, pain killers, etc.
She is having her start by taking some herbal tinctures for three months, and then Ruby will get her blood tested again to see if her “myco” numbers are going down. If that doesn’t work to get her numbers down, then Ruby will have to do low-dose antibiotics, which have more side effects than herbs, so we only want to do that if we have to.
One of the main herbs in the tinctures is called cryptolepis, and it’s pretty amazing stuff. It is gentle, yet very strong and can kill bacteria (including Lyme), viruses, parasites, and fungi! The main thing about it is, the cryptolepis doesn’t make you feel bad, but since it is fighting so many things in your body, it can make you feel really bad for a few months.
I decided to try the treatment too since it costs a lot less than what we were doing before for Lyme, and it can also tackle my chronic EBV (mono), and other problems I have. It took us a month or two to get up to full dose, but now that we are, we both have quite a bit of herxing. Herxing is basically a word for detox or die-off symptoms.
All those microbes don’t like to be killed off, and they let out toxins when they die. We have both been getting headaches, are nauseous, don’t feel like eating, have more pain, and are really tired, but sleepy, and have a lack of energy. We’re back to wanting to sleep up to 11 hours a day, which takes a lot of time and makes it hard to get things done. Luckily, we can take Glutathione, which helps get the toxins out of our bodies faster and helps us feel more like doing things.
The doctor said this is normal, but it should get better after a couple of months. She said it’s a long-term treatment and it could take us a few months to start to feel even a little better, and possibly years to really feel better. Feeling better in a few years is a whole lot better than doing nothing!
We went back to the geneticist, and Ruby was officially diagnosed with hEDS (hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome). It’s supposed to be hard to get diagnosed with it, but Ruby easily qualified. So exciting. She also qualified for a referral to the PAUSE clinic at Primary Children’s, which helps children with enough pain that they miss more than 25% of school. I think we’re going to hold off on going there for a bit since it’s a whole thing and a long wait list to go there. I don’t know. We need to think about it some more. Her doctor said it could take a lot of tries to find something that helps the pain, and Ruby doesn’t feel excited about that right now.
Ruby switched to Mountain Heights Academy in January, which is a Utah online school. She goes to orchestra in person at Lakeridge every other day, but other than that, she has a very flexible schedule. They record classes, so she can do classes when she feels good. It always only takes her a few hours a week, which is really nice. She feels like she is learning more in way less time and says even if she felt great, she probably wouldn’t go back to sitting in a boring class all day every day.
She is still playing the violin and volunteering at Scera concessions, even though it is increasingly hard for her to do. She figures she is going to hurt anyway, and she may as well do at least a few things she wants.
Ruby sold her leopard gecko and purchased two gerbils after doing a lot of research about what animal would be best for her. She is even good about cleaning their cage.
Ruby and I went on a trip to the Hogle Zoo in June since Ruby really likes the zoo. We went the day before and stayed in Little America, and we got a free upgrade to a nicer, larger room so we could fit her wheelchair. We had a nice dinner, then we took our time at the zoo looking at each animal as long as we wanted. It was hot and not the most fun thing of my life pushing her up the hills, but it was worth it. I’m not sure I want to do it again. If this keeps up, we’re going to have to look into getting her an electric wheelchair.
This is a photo of Ruby at Thanksgiving Point. We try to go there as often as we can, since it is one of the few things Ruby can do and likes to do.
Me
Speaking of the zoo trip, on that trip we went swimming in the pool at the hotel. It always hurts my left shoulder so much to do something like swimming. I decided it was time to quit ignoring the pain I’ve had in my shoulder for over 20 years and do something about it.
I went to an orthopedic doctor and he said I have “shoulder impingement syndrome”, which basically means my AC joint is in the wrong place and pinches my bursa and causes pain, especially when lifting my arm above my head. My left shoulder is always slumped forward, and I can’t put it back when I try.
I went to the chiropractor, and he put it back in place. Before, it only hurt with certain movements, but it was kind of numb all the time. After he put it back in, it hurt really badly for at least a week. It’s not used to being in place, and it’s hard to keep it in place. I found some exercises online to do, and sometimes those movements make it go back in place. Now I’m doing physical therapy to make it so it will stay in place and not hurt, etc.
Since I started doing all this, I realized how much my shoulder being pinched affects the rest of my body. So much of the right side of my back has been numb for 20 years, and I could never figure out why. I knew the nights I couldn’t sleep well were somehow linked to the big popping noise I could hear when I moved my shoulders, back, or hips, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, nor what was causing it.
Now that I have started working on my shoulder, I am noticing I sleep amazingly on the days my shoulder is in place. Physical therapy is hard and annoying, but I’m motivated to keep at it so I feel better in the future.
In January, I was released from serving with the Young Women for over five years and called to teach the 4-5 year olds in Primary. It’s a relatively easy calling and a privilege. The hardest part is waking up in time to get to church at 9 am. It’s not working well with my health right now.
After Tyler moved out of the house, I figured I’d better put his bedroom to good use. It is technically our family room and a pretty good size. The walls and carpet were in horrible shape, so Norm ripped out the carpet and painted the walls.
We decided to turn it into my plant room, so he painted the floor with concrete paint to protect the floor and set up a 5′ x 10′ grow tent. I had a theory that if I moved the plants that liked high heat into a grow tent at an average of 85°F all year, then they would grow faster.
I am happy to report that the experiment worked. Really well. Within days, I could see new growth on plants that hadn’t grown in months. It’s pretty amazing. Currently, I have the hot tent with four shelving units and the grow room (our unfinished bathroom) with four shelving units, plus a few plants upstairs.
Since things are going so well with the hot tent, I figure my competitive advantage is growing plants that like the heat, since not everyone can do that. My long-term plan is to move all the plants out of the grow room and have them all in Tyler’s old room. I will have the current large hot tent, another hot tent half the size of the current one, and one warm tent half the size of the current grow tent.
I will have almost the same number of plants that I currently have, but more plants that are more profitable and that I can grow faster than a lot of my competition. We also moved my shipping area into the plant room, and I think we can even fit a potting station in that room, so almost all my plant things will be in one large room. It will be a lot more efficient for me, because right now I spend a ton of time walking all over the house, grabbing plants from here and there. It’s good exercise, but it takes too much time and is just not efficient.
The best part of all this is that somehow my business is doing better than ever. I had a good spring, about the same as last year, and I was really happy with that, then things started slowing down like normal. However, in the past 2-3 months, things have picked up like crazy. I am selling more than I ever have. It’s amazing that I had a dream of what this business could be, and after a few years of working on it, it’s currently doing really well.
I know it won’t last forever, so we’re saving as much of the money as we can and paying back our savings and paying off our house as fast as we can, because you never know when things could slow down.
The main drawback of selling a lot is that I’m working a ton. It’s hard to take a break. I ship and take photos of the new plants most of the day Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. Wednesday and Thursday are my days to go to appointments, clean the house, run errands, water a bunch, and propagate the plants.
I have barely bought any new plants, but they are generally growing well, and I seem to always have full shelves, and I’m always wanting more space. I will clean off a tray, only to fill it up again with a different type of plant immediately after.
I love my job, but it’s hard to do it and be a wife and mom and do things like go on trips. Trips are super hard to prep for and recover from. Megan is interested in helping me do some things like watering, prepping for shipping, etc. – so we will see how that goes when she gets back in a week. Watering is the hardest part about going on a trip. It normally takes me 2-3 weeks to water all my plants, but before I leave, I only have a few days to make sure they all have enough water to last for the trip and for the first few days I’m back, since I will hopefully be busy shipping all day for a few days once I get back.
Norm
On his way to the temple on the afternoon of Halloween, Norm was rear-ended in our Chevy Bolt by a car and then pushed into the truck in front of him. He was stopped at the time, so he wasn’t injured at all, but the car ended up needing about $11,000 in repairs, and I think it took five weeks for it to get repaired. We thought they would total the car since it was only worth about $15,000 – but they didn’t – and we are very grateful.
Norm has been very busy around our house fixing it up. He not only did a ton of work in Tyler’s old room, but he also did all new flooring (LVP) and paint in Megan’s room, and is now painting the outside of the house. It’s taking forever because he has to scrape off as much of the old paint as he can, then he puts a coat of primer over it, and a whole bunch more paint starts flaking off, so he has to start all over again. He has spent over 100 hours out there and still doesn’t have all the primer done. He is saving us a TON of money, though, so I really appreciate it.
He went to help his brother Lyndon work on building his house in May for a week. He loves to go help him and spend time in nature. Norm would love to buy one of the lots someday, but it doesn’t feel very feasible right now. Who knows though? If the Lord wants it to work out, it will.
“Family”
We (Norm, I, Kayla, and Ruby) went on a trip over the 4th of July to Ashton, Idaho. Norm went straight from his sister’s funeral in Seattle to Ashton and helped his brother build his house for a few days, then we drove up and met him. It wasn’t as fun as it could have been because I got sick a few days before the trip, and still felt pretty bad on the trip.
The first full day we were there was the 4th, and we hung out with Norman’s brother, Darrin, and his family. We went to a celebration in the city park, which was amazing because there were probably only a hundred people there. Then we went fishing at the creek on Darrin’s property and went back to our rental to make dinner since all the restaurants in town were closed. We didn’t feel like staying up for the fireworks, so we stayed in and watched a movie and enjoyed the peacefulness of no fireworks.
The next day, we were on our own, so we went to West Yellowstone and went to the Wolf and Grizzly Discovery Center, an IMAX movie, and out to eat at a really good restaurant.
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