Pre-Cancer...Not for me!

Jeff here,
So I have Crohn's disease, no secret there.  One things that comes along with Crohn's is an increased chance of colo-rectal cancer (like 20x greater).  What was a psuedo-secret was that 18 months ago I had a colonoscopy which showed that I had a "fast low grade dysplasia."  This increased my chances an additional 15 fold.  That really put a funk in me.  I stopped making long range plans.  I was very worried about any stomach pain, which is fairly often with Crohn's.  Any pain and I would imagine my cells transforming like Bruce Banner.  I lost a lot of focus and I know I tended to be more sullen than I wanted to be.

Well, I just had another colonoscopy and the results came back that the Crohn's is under control and the dysplasia has gone away.  My Doctor biopsied four places every 10 cm. and found no abnormal cell growth...nothing. 

I am very thankful to God for giving me health.  To Dr. Jessi Black of a family healing center for guidance and herbs (and head-standing yodeling lessons).  To Elaine Gotschall for researching a diet that has helped me.  And last but not least to my friends and family who dealt with my issues. 

I'm gonna go have a celebratory dinner...pizza, Burgerville, salad...I don't know I just want to tell everybody.

Work????

Just a quick family update - I got a job! It is kinda a big change for our family. I will be working as the Thursday- Friday administrative assistant at MVCA (Heidi's school). it is during school hours, and I may get to pop in to see Heidi for lunch once in a while. I will miss my Clara girl. For the first time since Heidi was born we will be having regular childcare, a wonderful friend will be watching Clara. Change is good - but kinda scary.

Garden Plundering!

We are so excited to have a mostly full garden put in this year! We always have plans for more. This is our fourth summer in the house and it is so nice to see so much food in our own yard. Here is a pic if this mornings plundering:
We have rhubarb, spring onions, snow peas, strawberries, raspberries, beets, and beet greens with lots more coming! The whole time I was picking Clara and a friend we also have a vegetable party and were munching on bolted broccoli and peas and berries. It was lovely hearing two 3 year olds fighting over and celebrating vegetables. And now off for juicing, jamming, pie filling, and lots of blanching. Oh, and Harry Potter at midnight :)

Sorry for the lack of posts and short posts - we don't have internet at home right now and the girls have a time limit at the library. Hope you are having a great summer!

Spring is coming!

It really is. I was informed today that we have had 23 days strait of rain. You know it is Spring in the valley when your back yard is holding so much water, that it squeaks when you walk on it and reacts like a wet sponge when you step on it. And this year for the first time - we have a good amount of Spring flowers!

Last week Heidi clipped and arranged this for me. Daddy and I helped a little bit, but not much. I was very proud of her design skills. She grouped antique jars with an odd numbers of flowers in each. The pink one is actually from a friends yard. But every arrangement needs an accent!

Ahhhh! A girl after my own heart.

Small successes = big blessings

For the last week or so I have been trying to wean my girls back off the television. We created some bad habits at the end of last month due to the bad weather and parental sickness - basically they watched for several days strait while we were just trying to survive. It took some time, but they have been doing really well now most days with the TV limits that are now being enforced and have started playing together good again after we get Heidi from school.

But yesterday was different. They asked only one time if they could watch OPB (that is all we have for TV here) and I said, "not right now." "OK" and they were off. Wow that was easy! Yeah for success - but that was only the beginning. I was doing some work on the computer and listening to them play in their room. Then things got quite - not always a good sign. I told my self to start wrapping up then go see what they were doing. Well it was another 10 minutes or so before I got back to their very quiet room, yes, it was still very quiet. I cracked the door open and this is what I saw:


Warms my heart! Heidi said she was teaching Clara to read! It was a book where there are several items on the pages with words next to them and Clara was "reading" them as Heidi pointed to the pictures. "And mom," Heidi said, "I didn't even correct Clara when she got a word wrong! I just said good job even when she called a 'stretcher' a 'bed'!"

The girls played and did chores without complaining until Daddy came home. I actually got bored at one point because I was left out of the game!

I would like to end by saying this is how my house always is, but I can't. There are still many squabbles to break up, messes to clean and tears to dry; but by taking time to remember the progress I see daily in my girls becoming ladies makes it all so much easier.

Clara quote

I just wanted to share a special moment I had with Clara yesterday and by having it here maybe I will always remember to treasure it. After MoPS yesterday all the kids were telling their mommies that they loved them (good job teachers). This had been on her mind and we were having a conversation about how we loved each other later that day when we were snuggling on the couch before quiet time. It went something like this:

Me: I love you Clara!
Clara: I love you to mommy
M: How do you know that I love you? What does mommy do to show you?
Think, think, think.
C: She forgives me? (yes, sounded like a question, I think she thought it was a test)
M: Yes that is one way!

Beautiful! I love that little girl, and yes I do forgive her. I will need to remember this when she is a teenager I am sure.

What a picture of what God has done for us. We crawl up in His lap and if we just accept that He forgives us, we will know how much we are loved. What a concept for a 3 year old to understand.

BTW she is currently testing the forgiveness theory by standing on a stool behind the couch and kicking her unfastened shoes off over my head. Luckily it didn't have to move to needing forgiveness, I got it stopped before that became an issue. I love being a Mommy to!

Also read more below! I know, I know shocking 2 posts in one day - what can I say I finally had some extra energy - but more on that later.

Finally all moved in!

It has been almost 3 years now since we bought our house. Yesterday I unpacked the last 3 boxes that were packed for the move. What did they contain? PIGS! Yes they are finally up in their full tackiness on the shelf that is finally finished on 2 walls of the dining room.

Yep, I (Odessa) have a lot of pigs. Sadly this isn't all of them. I have larger ones around the kitchen and a whole trunk of stuffed ones. Yeah, sad. Someday maybe I will let Jeff have some of the space to decorate with his GI Joe collection, but for now it will probably only have pigs added as souvenirs from special vacation. And yes, it is tacky...but it is also really fun! The girls love it and there are so many stories up there!

Like this one:
This was our wedding cake topper! The half heads you can see on the sides was our first cake topper...no we didn't get married twice. Apparently not many stores carry pig cake toppers but I had found one online. The first one came and the groom had his ear broken off, so after I had a replacement in hand that was fully intact, we took out the broken one to shoot at. It was the first time I had shoot a gun and took the grooms head clean off with the 22! Now Jeff knew what he was marrying! OK, so I didn't hit another thing for the rest of the day. And to keep things fair, Jeff did take off the brides head.

So there you have it. We are all moved in but PLEASE DON'T GIVE ME ANY MORE PIGS!!!