Grandma in the Hospital

Grandma is in the hospital. Yesterday she passed out and fell and cut her head. the cut was about 3" long and down to the bone. She feels like she is about to pass out a lot but has time to hurry and sit down. But not this time....
They put her in yesterday and are keeping her in today and tonight to run some tests.
Yesterday they did a cat scan and saw that she has had some mini strokes, but not recent enough to have been what happened this time.
They also did a EKG and it looked fine. Today they will do a bunch more tests.
--JoAnn

Adventures with the Geocachers

Adee and Adam were in town this weekend. Amber had a Relief Society Conference on Saturday, so Adee went with her. Adam and I decided to have some fun, so we loaded the kids in the truck and went geocaching.

The first couple of hours went well as we hit some easy, rural caches. Adam was supposed to meet Adee at 2:00 and we were running out of time, so we decided to do an adventurous cache to end our day's adventures with. I grabbed a cache description that point to the top of West Mountain just south of Utah Lake. We have had some unseasonably warm weather, and the mountain didn't look so big from a few miles away, so we decided to go for it.

The road was fun and a bit muddy. Part way up we decided to lock the hubs and get into four wheel drive. We were glad we did because we ran into some snow. There were tracks where someone had gone earlier that day so we figured we would just follow them. We traversed the side of the mountain and the tops of some of it's lower ranges for quite some time. The road got rougher and the snow started to get a little deeper. As we neared the top, we noticed that there was a bunch of disturbed snow where someone had turned around. We followed the tracks up a bit further to find that the tracks that we were following had ended and the guy had turned around and went back down the mountain.

I didn't have a shovel, as I didn't think we were going anywhere too dangerous, and we were already going to be late for Adam to meet up with Adee, so we decided we had better call it an adventure and head back down the hill.

Well, the road was narrow, and the truck that had turned around was obviously shorter than my truck. We attempted to turn around but started to slide off the road a bit. We then got one tire lodged on the side of the hill and the other tires were just spinning on snowy-ice. We weren't moving very well.

We rocked the truck back and forth between first and reverse a few times and finally got the truck moving. We decided against turning around and backed a ways down the narrow snow covered road to a point where we could turn the truck around.

The once jovial kids were now deathly quiet with a few soft murmurs of dying, falling off of the cliff to the side of the truck, or never making it home. As we started down the slick and steep road, I started to think of the brakes that I was supposed to replace on the truck ten months ago. We put the truck in 4x4 LOW so that we wouldn't have to rely much on the brakes and made our slow descent down the mountain. We descended from the 6,800 ft ridge down to the 4,500 ft valley floor in roughly 30 minutes.

We really enjoyed our adventure...especially the part about getting down safely. I think the kids will remember this little adventure.

I sure was glad that Adam was there with me for moral support. I think I would have been a bit more wired being up on that mountain alone with four young kids without a shovel.

Multiply and Replenish the Earth

Well, baby number five just got it's first picture taken last Wednesday (February 21) at the doctor's office. The little jelly bean size tyke seems to be doing well. The doctors say that they can tell that it is going to be tall, dark, handsome, smart, charismatic, and popular - just like its old man :-).

Take it easy!

The other day Amber was driving the van and Aliece was riding with her. I can't remember exactly what happened, I think someone pulled in front of Amber suddenly and she had to slam on her brakes. Anyway, when Amber stopped suddenly because of the other car, Aliece exclaimed, "Woah! Take it easy, Mom!"

What was lost, shall be found!

When Aylee turned Seven years old - about 18 months ago, she was very excited to get her very own Soccer Ball. Aylee is big on sports and is good at a variety of physical activities. One of her enjoyments is playing soccer. Well, in elementary school, you are pretty cool if you can bring your own soccer ball to recess. Aylee was really excited to take her ball to the school and play soccer with it between their class times.

Aylee took her ball a few times, but after a few days, she came home without the ball. Amber asked what she had done with it. Aylee was pretty upset. She said that they were practicing kicking the ball in a circle and one of the kids accidentally kicked the ball over the fence. She claimed that they searched hard for it but never found it. I calmed her down and told her that I would go and help her find it.

After dinner we got to the school. She showed me where it had gotten lost. Well, it just so happens that on that side of the playground there is a dense forest of thorny weeds, cattails and a culvert full of slimy water buried beneath the greenery. We searched for about an hour to no avail. We counted the ball as lost and tried to console Aylee.

Just last week (18 months later), Aylee came home with the ball in hand. The ball was deteriorated a bit, but you could faintly see the faded black permanent marker notation of Aylee's name. She told her that one of the kids at the school had found the ball while exploring. After a year and a half, that ball has returned home!

Alayna's Man

As most of you know, Amber hired a contractor a few weeks back to start working on our various parts of our home. She is having him install a laminate floor, paint the entry way, replace light fixtures, redo a bathroom, etc (anything to pre-spend our anticipated tax return!).

The guy that she hired is a really nice guy by the name of Josh Harmon. He is very courteous and detailed in his work. He is kind to the kids and works well around them.

Anyway, Alayna hasn't started to call him Josh like the rest of us. Whenever Alayna talks about Josh or TO Josh, she calls him "Man". It is pretty dang funny to hear her call him that and Josh gets a kick out of it too, I think. :-)

How do you like to read your Book of Mormon?

We have a standing appointment with the kids to read scriptures right at 7:00AM each weekday morning for a scripture/devotional time. We don't make Aliece and Alayna get up for the scripture time because we all know what they are like when they don't get enough sleep, but they are usually up with us. Usually we read a page in the Book of Mormon by taking turns at one verse at a time. If all the kids are up, we sing a hymn. After our devotional time we have our morning family prayer.

Anyway, last week we were reading scriptures as a family. Johnathan was really having a hard time reading for some reason that morning. I figured that he was not fully awake, so we let him continue. Each time it was his turn he would be skipping a line or re-reading the line that he had read previously. After we had read half of the page, it got to be so bad that I thought I would go and sit next to him with a bookmark to keep him on the right line and to keep him awake. As I sat with him, I looked at the page...something did not look right. Then it hit me...Johnathan was reading the Book of Mormon upside down!!! He was so good a reading upside down that we didn't realize that was what he was doing.

That kid is pretty amazing (or disturbed).

It didn't take much to knock me out!

So, my friend, the anesthesiologist says....how ya feeling? I say, I don't want to remember anything. One tube in, then another, then he says "do you feel it working?" I say yes, and that's all I remember.... Wow, it didn't take much to knock me out! And ya know what, I don't remember a thing, dang good thing!!!
The Doc took 6 biopsy's and said that he is concerned there is some area with no visible blood vessels. But said nothing too concerning...so I'm happy. I have an appointment on Wednesday to find out test results, wish me luck.

An appointment with McSurgeon!!

Haha, I love Grey's Anatomy. Anyways...Tomorrow is the day I finally officially meet with one of the surgeons. I work back in the OR so I talk to the docs quite frequently, but I guess it has to be official. There is something wrong with my intestines, they are inflamed I guess. I had some tests done a week and a half ago, but now they are pulling out the big guns. I will be having some scopes done on Thursday, which will hopefully be not too bad. It's bad enough I gotta work with these people...hahaha.
Wish me luck!

Best Hotel for Disneyland

Carina,

The hotel we stayed at was Homewood Suites by Hilton in Garden Grove. It was just over a mile from Disneyland, but even with paying $11.00 per day for parking at disneyland the hotel was VERY much worth it and ended up being cheaper than our other alternatives.

One way to access its information is this link: http://www.extendedstaynetwork.com/Details/Details.cfm?LocationID=15489&Airport=

Disneyland

I want to know which hotel you stayed in! That post totally makes me want to go to Disneyland! Hmmmm...taxes come back Friday....hehehe I see me getting into trouble.

Andersen Family Posts

Hey everyone,

I just wanted you to know that I have posted six new posts on the Andersen Family Blog which can be found at: http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com

The links to the individual posts are here:

• http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com/2007/01/welcome-cloe.html
• http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com/2007/01/looking-for-suburban.html
• http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com/2007/01/wheres-keys.html
• http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-local-library.html
• http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com/2007/02/disneyland.html
• http://arbonfarm.blogspot.com/2007/02/happy-birthday-amber.html

Love you all,

John

What to do?!?

So on Friday, I get a call from the hospital. Silly me, I thought it was test results from that morning. It wasn't. It was the Nurse Supervisor. She offered me 2 jobs. I told her I would think about it over the weekend, and let her know Monday when I went to work. I'm still no closer to deciding. So I need help. Should I take the Health Unit Coordinator job in the ER - 7pm to 7am 3 nights a week. It is checking people into the ER, contacting Docs, Arranging life flights, billing, and filing, and switchboard. The other Job is CNA in Med/Surg PRN - that could end up many hours because they are so short on nurses. I could decide on either and go for an interview or I could take neither. Any ideas?

Happy to see you!

Hi Nedra and John. I'm so glad you joined. Invite others in our family to join also.
What has everyone been up to? We went to see Work and the Glory 3 last night. It was pretty good. Except I didn't like the ending, it seemed like it is going to continue, but it is the last movie.

Hi Everyone!

I'm so glad there is a new way to keep in touch with each other. It has been so long since I've seen everyone. I miss being right in town by everyone (well not everyone is close to poky). I copied John's idea for this, so I hope he doesn't mind. It just seemed really neat.