Random posting

I just wanted to talk about some funny things that have gone on lately. While we were at the park the other day, he took his Spiderman mask, and ask a little girl was trying to climb up, she got scared and started crying, and Kies goes- "Don't worry- Spiderman will save you!" Then he proceeded to go over and see if he could lend a hand! Hilarious! Brensyn has been talking a TON more lately, just within like that last week. The other day Kies was trying to take something and he goes- "Kies- NO! I had it first!" I didn't even know he could say that, and the look on his face was hilarious! Ansleigh has taken to hitting lately, and it's funny, but at the same time annoying, like in the morning when she wakes up, that's how she wakes you up, by hitting you smack in the face! Not a very pleasant way to arise. Yesterday, while driving home from Cody, Kies asked if we were going home, and I said yes. And he said- "OH! THANK YOU!" Then he said- "To my own house?" and I said, "No, to grandmas." And they he goes "Oh, by why can't we go home to my house? I like to be at my house, not grandma's!" So I think we need to figure out what we're going to do with ourselves. Until we either refinance our house, or sell it, we probably can't really afford to rent anywhere, but I think we are going to have to do it soon. There's just not enough room in this place for us all... especially when all five of us are sharing one tiny room! Take Care!

Interesting

I've been cruising my favorite blogs, and I've found that we're all posting a lot less than usual. I wonder- is it because it's FINALLY not raining around here, and we're trying to be out of the house as much as possible should the month-long rains return? It was just a thought.
Now- to the fun stuff- pictures! I hate doing posts unless I have pictures. We have been back in Wyoming for almost a week, and we have had some fun times with the fam. We did a BBQ in the backyard sometime this week, and here are the resulting pictures:

All the kids(except Kies who couldn't handle being still long enough for the pictures)

Ansleigh, can't remember why she was doing this

Brittly being Brittly

Just posted this cause of Kade's face

Brittly having some Pepsi

Brittly throwing her "fit" when the Pepsi is taken away

The boys enjoying their cool pop bottle lids on their pop cans

Ansleigh and my hot hubby- what a look!

Cam

Bob being anti-social and reading the paper istead of talking... wait- is that a bad thing;) j/k!
Anyway- for a while, we were having the kids race back and forth- mostly to tire them out so they'd go to bed. I was at one end and everyone else at the other. At first they'd just run to me, then after a while, they started tackling me... it was pretty fun. We roasted hot dogs and then made s'mores afterwards. It was a fun day.
Well, Jaran just rolled in from MT so I'm going to go give him some XOXOXO's! Take care!

Give Ansleigh a 10 for Prettiest Eyes

Give Ansleigh a 10 for Prettiest Eyes

A Book

There is so much to blog about!
First of all, Shelly is doing much better since being taken to Denver. She is slowly being weened off of the ventilator, and they are starting to take care of her nutrition problems! It's great news, and we appreciate all of your prayers. We got Dad all packed out of his place as well. I went Tuesday through Thursday night and Steph, Cam, and Aunt Deana headed the crew the rest of the week. It's nice to know that they will never have to deal with those awful people again. It's such a long and crazy story that you'll have to ask me about the people when I can talk, cause I think it would take too much space for the whole thing on here. Just know it's a very good thing they aren't obligated to them anymore.

The people tried to keep us out of this room by putting their name on the door and removing the doorknob- but we're smart chics and got in anyway!

Here they had come into the house and removed a table that all of these things were on!

Pictures of the guys footprints at the house. They weren't supposed to be in the house, but we caught them as we were driving up!

A picture of Steph showing Cam how to hold the shotgun for when the guy came into the house un-invited.
Secondly, we had a fun time in Utah over the weekend! It was the Baker family reunion in Provo, and we got there on Friday. Joseph(one of Jaran's older brothers) and his kids were moving back to Utah from Belgrade, so Jaran drove a truck and trailer for him. The guys helped unpack all of the big stuff and then we headed over to Jaran's parents. It was a late night, and the kids were up late as well. We actually slept in until 8:30! It was great, but we were still super tired. Then we all got ready and headed to Provo. It was fun visiting with everyone, and we had a great time.

LaRell(Loyal's(Jaran's Dad) brother), Steve(Jaran's sister Vyedka's husband) and Jeff(LaRell's son)

Joseph, Mark(Noni's husband) and Noni(aka Glenona, Loyal's only sister)

Zak(Jaran's youngest brother) and Ansleigh... so cute!

Kaleb, Vyedka, Vanessa(another of Jaran's sisters) and Steve's bum LOL

Liann(Justin's wife), Justin(Jaran's oldest brother) and RuthAnn(Jaran's mom)

Carol(LaRell's wife) was a favorite with popsicles... as you can see Brensyn and Kellyn(one of Joseph's daughters) are awaiting theirs

Brens and I

On the way to Layton from the reunion

So tired!

Last one to give in, but finally did!

Five years!

Thirdly- the day of the reunion also marked Jaran and my fifth wedding anniversary. A little bird, who loves us dearly, helped make it possible to have a wonderful night. We took the kids home, who as you see got a nice nap on the way home. Jaran's family agreed to take care of them for us, so we took off to Bountiful. We hiked up this little mountain behind the temple there, and watched the sunset.

This is where Jaran also proposed, so it was very special, and we hadn't been there since that day!

I had roped some of Jaran's family into helping me with his present. Kevin, Jaran's sister Erika's hubby, hiked up the night before to the same place we hiked to and took a picture for me to frame and give to Jaran as his gift. It turned out great, but I don't have it to post, so I'll post one we took that is quite a bit like it!

It was nice and cool and quiet, and we loved our time there... just so peaceful!

Then we hiked down and went to eat at the Old Spaghetti factory. It was DELICIOUS and we were so hungry we ate everything we ordered! Then we were blessed to be able to go stay in a nice hotel that night, kid-free, and even got to sleep in until 9! It was very weird to wake up and not have it be from screaming children! I forget how nice it is to have those thick dark shades to make you think it's still time to be asleep. When we woke up, got showered and ready, we went back to Layton to the house for Father's day. It was great to see everyone. I made Loyal a little collage of pictures of the kids for Father's day, but he left before I was finished, so I still don't know what he thought of it! Justin brought his Harley over to show us, and gave Jaran and Kies a ride!


He tried to teach Jaran how to ride it, but that didn't really go over well... Jaran was too worried he'd wreck it and was too nervous to do it right... so he went less than a foot and gave up!

I was a little nervous with Kies on the back, but he did a great job holding on!
It was a nice drive back to Three Forks, and we even stopped along the way(mostly for Kies to go to the bathroom) and it didn't feel rushed.

I'm not really sure what he's looking at, but I caught him off guard!
We both felt jealous that Joseph and Kendra are moving back to Utah. Now it's only Jonny and Erica's family along with us who don't live there. Kind of strange, and there is a little feeling that we are being left out in some way, but there's nothing we can do about it! We have thought about adding Utah to the list of places to move after we sell the house, but I don't know if it'll stay on there long. We always feel this way after leaving Jaran's family. It's so nice to be around them all... especially when they offer to watch the kids for us! J/k, there are so many other reasons!
So that's it in a nutshell. The kids and I are back in Wyoming for a couple-few weeks while Jaran works here. It wasn't too bad being home without Jaran, other than how scared I was, and the kids got a little crazy at times, but all in all, not as bad as I thought it would be. But, the kids miss their daddy a ton when he's gone, so I thought we'd come back and bother Mom and the rest of those in Wyoming once again. I hope we're not too much of a hassle! We'll see, and wish us luck! Take Care!

Update

They had some problems with Shelly yesterday and told my Dad that they couldn't do anything else for her here, so they decided to fly her to University of Colorado in Denver. The left around 2:30 or so this morning, and are wading through her chart to figure out the next step. The last plan was that they would put her on a bypass machine to give her heart a little break. She has started going into heart failure, so they need to figure out what caused that before they can do anything else. They think that most of the problems are probably stemming from the malabsorption issue... not being able to get the things that she needs. She was supposed to go to Seattle back in March or April, but the guy that Shelly works for wouldn't let her off of work. If she would have been able to go then, the probably would have solved the problem and we wouldn't be here, but there's not much we can do about that now. They were being paid by living in this man's house, and since Shelly hasn't been to work since May 13th, he is kicking them out. That's right- she is on her death bed and he's trying to evict them. So much for honest and caring people. So the rest of this week my two older sisters and I will be going through Dad and Shelly's stuff trying to figure out what needs to go where and getting it all packed into a storage unit until they find out where they're going to hang their hats. Things are obviously tense right now, but we're all holding it together, and thank you so much for all of your love and support! It's so much appreciated! Take care!

More info on the Shelly front

I have had quite a few people ask me to tell them more about Shelly- so here it goes! She's been sick for quite some time and has had many health problems. One week after Jaran and I got married, she had to go into surgery to have a double mastectomy. That's right- both breasts were removed for fear some pre-cancerous cells would morph into full-blown cancer. She got reconstructive surgery while she was in there, and later one of the implants got infected. After that got taken care of, she started getting all sorts of crazy problems. They have said she has everything from Lupus to AIDS to Wilson's disease. She has been diagnosed with fibromialgia- which is basically a chronic wide-spread pain. She also has a thing called Chogrins, which prevents her from forming saliva and tears and makes your skin very dry. Without the saliva, you have very bad tooth problems, and she has had to have some pulled and other major work. This latest thing started around January(I think, maybe earlier) and began with her malabsorption problem. This is where she wasn't able to digest the nutrients or vitamins that she ate or took in pill form. Slowly, but surely, she started losing all of the things that she needed for all of her organs to work properly. She had been hospitalized three or four times for problems stemming from too low potassium levels, which cause her heart to start going haywire. She had to have some blood transfusions to get the proper things back into her blood. They sent her home on some liquid medications, but she ended up back in the hospital. This particular stay started out with the potassium thing again. Then her Albumin(?) levels, which help your lungs function, got dangerously low. They also put her on a feeding tube, as she was pretty much starving to death. After this problem, they discovered that she had what is called a pulmonary embolism, which is a clot in the lung. This is a very dangerous thing, and if not taken care of, the clot can move to your heart or brain and kill you. So they put her on blood thinners. She was continuously going downhill after this, and they had to intibate her(put her on a breathing machine). While they were putting the tube into the lung, they tore a small hole in her lung. This forced them to have to stop the blood thinners to get rid of the clot, and put a chest tube in her right side. While being intibated, they had to keep her heavily sedated so that she wouldn't try and pull things out. She also had to have a central line put in, which is basically a direct line into the carotid artery. They also had a PICC line in her right arm- which is a line that goes up a vein in the arm clear into her central system. She entered the hospital around 128 lbs and fluctuated from that to 189 lbs. She was retaining water horribly and tried to take care of it with Lasix, which helps shed water. When they did this, however, her blood pressure would drop, so they tried to do it as little as possible. They finally decided that she needed another chest tube on the left side and to take the tube out of the lung and to a tracheotomy, which is where they cut into the esophagus and it keeps the airway open to help you breathe, but allows you to not have a tube down your throat. Once they did this, they were able to wake her up. She was doing very well, starting to be able to sit up, and even walk around. Then she suddenly took a turn for the worse, and when they did a CT they found another clot, but bigger this time. So they had to put her back on sedation and blood thinners and it has set her back a bit. The Dr.'s are optimistic about things, and tell us that she is improving again. This is 18 days on life support. Once she gets well enough to get off of the machines and meds, her and my dad will be going to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio to have a bunch of tests done to try and figure out what to do about her malabsorption. So that is it in a nutshell. I am sure that I have forgotten things, and for SURE have spelled a mess of terms wrong, but you get the gist of it, right? So you see how much they need your prayers, and they are appreciated by us all! Take care everyone!

I've been a bad blogger...

Sorry everyone! It's been a crazy couple of weeks. My step-mom, Shelly, is still in the hospital. She has been on life support for 17 days today, and it's hard for everyone. She had been getting better, and even had been off the venitlator for hours at a time, but just 4 o'clock this morning, she threw a large blood clot that moved into her lung. Please keep her and my Dad in your prayers, the one's that they're getting are great, but they can use some more!
Jaran left on Monday evening and the kids and I stayed here in Three Forks. Staying alone made me realize what a wimp I am. I am one of the most paranoid people I know. It must be all those crime shows I watch. Case in point: I realized the first night he was gone, that if I leave our bedroom door open, you can see right into our room where I sleep at night. I had to close the door, and then finally Wednesday brought a trip into Bozeman to purchase a curtain to cover the door, because I couldn't take it anymore. Now all that we need is a curtain on the window over the stairs and I will be able to walk around our house at night and not TOTALLY FREAK OUT that someone is watching me. Thankfully, Jaran will be home tonight, and I won't have to worry too much about it!
The boys have been behaving a lot better than usual, and it's been great not having to holler at them as much. Not that hollering really helps- not much does, really. Tuesday they were so good, and it was warm enough, so we went to the park in town in Three Forks. It was fun, and the boys loved it. I had bought Kies some sunglasses Monday and he loves them! Here are some pics(I added one I took of myself just because I never get them taken by anyone else, and I think you all need to know that I am still around, and this is the way I look;):





Sorry Kim and Hill- I know that I suck for not being there for all of the festivities, and yes, it did put me into a deep depression that I'm not sure I will ever be able to climb out of! I will do my best to make it up to you! And thank you so much for the awesome card... you don't know how much it meant! But you don't need to do anything for me, your thanks are quite enough, and I love you for it!

This is from 8th grade when we took the trip back East. I thought you all might enjoy this, before we all dyed our hair. I can't find the pictures of us after we all dyed it... good times!
Take care all!