Scribbles About Sickness

I swear that ^ is what I am going to name my blog from now on *sigh*
I really want to be able to share uplifting, fun things that we are doing as a family...or at least something postive...but, well, that is not what is happening in our life right now.
Ryker has double ear infections and RSV *double sigh*. The poor little guy was miserable with a fever that just kept climbing last night. He is now on two antibiotics, tylenol, ibuprofen, an inhaler, ear numbing drops and saline for his nose. It's no wonder he doesn't eat- his medicines all fill that little belly up. It was amazing to see how well he is taking everything. When the medicine started working, he was flirting and waving to the nurses that had just made him so upset. He is doing better and the medicine is working. I feel that I need to be more grateful so, here are the things I am grateful for right now:
Ryker's upbeat attitude about all the crap he has to go through
Medicine
Health Insurance!
A husband who provides so that I can stay home with Ryker
Our new house
A very supportive family

I really want him to be well and happy...he has had enough in his little life!

Just had to share!

I just had to share the success I am having in my photoshop class! Here is a before and after:

Before

After

Results

...or lack thereof. After all that worry, money and worst of all suffering on Ryker's part, we now have no answers. Luckily, there is nothing wrong with Ryker that they can find, but that leaves us with nothing to help the little guy.
He is now on a round of antibiotics to see if he perhaps has too many "good" bacteria. We also now have a whole team of nurses, occupational therapists, nutritionists, etc. on our side. The wonderful Up to 3 program through USU (which I worked for for about 8 months) will be at our house starting Friday. This is great because hopefully they can help Ryker (and help me help Ryker) learn to eat again. He is down to one "staple" in his diet- raisins. He literally won't let anything else near his mouth. He also won't feed himself anything else either. He may eat a few goldfish or captain crunch berries (never ever the yellow bits of captain crunch!) Really, he is not eating anything that will help him grow. Pediasure is our BFF now and hopefully we will get him through this rough time.
He is also not sleeping in his own bed anymore. I KNOW!!! I was told and told again- once they are there they never leave. I also knew that my son was so uncomfortable he needed reassurance at night....tough situation. Once we are through the antibiotics, I am going to try to retrain him and get him sleeping through the night (I know, pity party on my part- I have not slept through the night since he was born....15 months to be exact!)
Thanks to my dear mom, that statement above is not true. She took Ryker last night and he did great with just him and Grandma. Dustin and I just relaxed and slept. YAY!
I also found a job. I will start next month. It is for a company in Malad (boo for the long drive) I will be working with children with behavioral problems (sometimes adults too). Helping people function better (do you think I could counsel myself?!) It pays really well and I will only be there 2 days a week which I will schedule myself. I love that my whole family is within 20 minutes so Ryker will be in great hands when I go.
House plans are still nonexistent. The lot stuff is taking for...ev...er... Starting in March may be a longshot, but that is what we are shooting for.
Wow...what a long post! Sorry about that! Have a good weekend!

Tamale Time

Ahhh...I totally forgot to share with you another project that I completed like 2 weeks ago! We have a major obsession with taquitos and other mexican snacks at our house! Problem- they are like $5 a box and we were buying 2-3 a month...so, I decided to try my hand at making tamales. Just wanted to share my experience because with that much time and energy going into these things, I was afraid that I would hate them. FYI: I am in love!

These are not mine, but similar.

I had a lot of frozen pork and chicken that needed to be used so that was practically free? I had to buy quite a few things but the spices, oil and masa can be used quite a few more times. So, I used the recipe found here. Super easy, although the rolling instructions confused me. So, here is another way to roll them at Make and Takes, and the next recipe I am going to try.

I ended up with like 4 dozen frozen tamales, 2 bags of frozen meat and 2 dozen we ate fresh. This was not too hard, except the fact that I had a toddler hanging on me the whole time. At least we will be enjoying our tamales for months :)

So, go on out and make yourself a whole bunch of tamales and share your results!

Just Something I Whipped Up...

I have fallen in love with Tatertots and Jello blog and all the delish burlap projects. I found a cute wreath that I knew I needed to try. Using my fabric scraps, spare embellishments, a preused wreath form and just $1.50 worth of remnant burlap (with leftovers to spare!) I came up with this Valentine's inspired wreath.


Go on over to Tatertots and Jello and get some inspiration!


Oh, oh...I haven't shared my house numbers that I made in the fall. I needed them to be able to be seen from the road for my lovely AVON delivery service and everyone else that cannot find my house...so they are huge. Just used my cricket and some leftover vinyl. My wreath does obscure them but really, it's cute enough to get away with that! Also, ignore the icky looking door...we rent :)

And... a picture of Ryker. With crazy hair. And milk all over his face.

Little Trooper

Yesterday was Ryker's scope. It was a very long day for all of us, but oveall it went well. He was a trooper and was back to eating his french fries by 8 o'clock.

We left Logan at 9:30, arrived at noon, he went in at 1:40 and I was back with him by 3:40 and we left at 6 pm...wow. He had some medicine before he left that made him calm and it was a good thing because he was not having anything to do with anyone but mommy. I love Primary Children's (as much as you can love a hospital.) The anestesiologist came and put Ryker in a wagon with a toy and then pulled him into the procedure room. As soon as he rounded the corner and said "we'll see you later", I was out of there. I would have ran down the hall and scooped Ryker up if I had heard him cry when he realized we weren't there.

As far as results go, there was nothing visibly wrong. He has a couple places with bumps, but those can just be normal. Dr. Wu took lots of biopsies to check if his villi were abnormal, if he has enzymes to digest sugar, if he has a chronic infection....

Overall, we were impressed. There were 4-5 nurses with him the whole time. We were the only ones there because he was the last procedure. Results should be in next week so hopefully there is a magic pill that will make him feel like a million bucks.

Keeping my Sanity

...or at least attempting to.

This has been a hard few months. Even though Ryker is SO much fun and I love him oodles, the stress, sleeplessness and constant worry are really hard to cope with. To keep my hopes up, I have had to find stuff to do to keep my mind off of everything. Oh, add in the stress of building a house and finding a job and you have one super stressed, often crazy wife and mother.

So... I turn to:

Scrapbooking. We made cute covers for 43 CDs for Kristi's Young Women...beautiful songs to go with their theme-Joshua 1:9, look it up! Great message, "Be Not Afraid".

Ignore the poor quality pictures in this post. Most were taken on my phone.

They turned out great and I really did love helping out!

Along with this, I am taking a 7 week course in Photoshop and hopefully I can learn how to actually make my pictures look good! We worked on this picture last night. I didn't get finished but I went from

THIS!

To This :)

Crafting. Making 3 jewelry holders for my mother-in-law, Kristi and I. I LOVE THEM and they are easy and cheap (under 6 dollars total). Let me know if you would like a tutorial or info on how I made them.

Bargain shopping. I love after Christmas sales and I love the dollar store. Put them together and you get these B.E.A.Utiful decorations for our tree next year :) Can you believe all this for under $4.50! Regularly $18! I also picked up some huge blue sparkly ball ornaments for 25 cents! I can't wait for Christmas!

I recently found a few new websites for coupons and deals and have picked up 12 bottles of salsa for 14 cents and hamburger helper. Dustin loves this and it makes my life easy plus... it covers up the taste of our free elk burger :)

Food storage. This is where the salsa comes in....I can make like 4 meals a month with each jar so I am getting an awesome deal. At Smiths this week, I also picked up some Dinty Moore stew (a favorite for both meals and camping) for $1.79 each. I think they are like twice that normally. I also have started stocking up on water, both bottled (2.50 at Smiths) and filling my empty apple juice jugs. I found a great website: foodstoragemadeeasy.com and have one of my 72 hour kits completed!

So...in short, those are my stress relievers, but I would really just like Ryker to FEEL BETTER so we can all get a break. What is most heartbreaking to me (other than his pain) is the fact that I don't know what a "normal" baby is like and fear that I can't have more children because I could not do this again...*sigh*...so let me know what you do for stress relief and any tips on bargain shopping or food storage would be greatly appreciated.