2008 R and S

Ryan

Since I am going backwards through the alphabet Ryan is the first one of us that gets a posting. Lucky guy, huh! Ryan is doing great, he is still working as the Controller of his uncle's workers comp insurance company. He loves his job and his co-workers. I do too! When we lived in LA we almost never saw each other, he worked between 50 and 80 hours a week and had between a 45 min and a 1 1/2 hour commute, it depended on which job he was working. It was so hard on us, but now he works 40 hours and gets to spend quality time with our family. Madison counts down to when he gets to come home, she looks forward to their time together.

His co-workers introduced him to UFC and he has become quite the fan. Thankfully he has enough friends that watch UFC that we don't have to order the Pay-per-view fights, he just has a guys night at someone's house. I watch the free ones with him and actually really like the reality show (shhh, don't tell him, it gives me leverage when I want to do or watch something he doesn't). He got to attend a UFC fight in February last year and snuck down to the floor seats to watch the entire night of fights. He gets to go to one this year too, I let him have one per year, and Parker gets to go with him this year. Apparently I got him tickets for Christmas. Merry Christmas to me!

Ryan and I team teach the primary at church and really love it. We have the 4-5 year olds and Madison is in our class this year. The kids are so cute and make the best comments. It is amazing how much they know about Christ and His teachings. I always end up learning something from them.

He is such a great dad, I had no idea when I married him that he would be so willing to be involved in our kids lives. I got super lucky there! Everything I do he can do too, which takes so much stress off of me. We have a great little routine going, the kids get up at 7am, which is when he wakes up, he gets to see them and visit with Madison while he gets ready, I get up when he leaves and take over from there. He gets off of work at exactly 5pm and is home by 5:45, which is right when the kids go to bed. I feed them dinner at 4:30 and get them ready for bed so when he gets home we take the kids upstairs, read stories, have prayers and they are both asleep by 6pm. It rocks! Jealous of our kids schedule? Read this book, it changed my life, but it is up to the parents to commit to the schedule, we don't have much of a night life, we don't go anywhere together at nights unless we have a babysitter, which explains why we watch so much TV.

Surgery


This year each member of our family ended up with some type of surgery. None of us have had surgery before so it was quite an experience for our little family to end up with 4 in one year.

Hunter started us off with the normal surgery little boys get. I don't think I need to be more specific with that, let me just say that it about traumatized me, I told Ryan that if we have any more boys he has to take care of it. The Dr. had me in the room feeding Hunter a bottle, I cried the entire time, and if you know me I do not cry very often at all. It was really difficult for me. Poor little guy!

Madison got her surgery in March. What a blessing that has been. She had her tonsils and adenoids out, her tubanates (sp?) shrunk and her ears drained. Thankfully she did not need tubes. She has become a completely different kid, it is amazing how many different problems those things caused. She sleeps much better and she eats so well now, she has gained 8 pounds since March and she looks so much healthier, she looked a little bit like a Holocaust victim, her ribs stuck out so far and nothing fit her. She also speaks softer now and pronounces her words much clearer. The biggest thing for her has been her health. She used to catch every little bug that was out there. She always had a runny nose and about twice a month she got a 24 hour bug where she would throw up for a day. It was awful!

During her recovery she received her first flowers from a boy. It was so cute. Lindsay brought over a little care package for her and she put in a cute card that folded out into flowers in a flower pot. I consider it her first flowers from a boy! She still has them and knows they are from Riley, so thank you Lindsay, it was so sweet of you!

Here are her and Riley playing together. It seems like all of her friends are boys and so she has become quite a fan of swords. Don't worry, she is usually the princess, her friend is the prince and they often end up married after the sword fight.

Ryan was next. Sometime in the summer he had oral surgery. His root canal got infected so they had to drill through his gums to fix it. It was so nasty. I just felt so bad for him because his mouth was swollen for a few weeks and towards the end his cheek was all yellow from bruising. He looked like he had been in a fight!

I had my surgery in October. It was the most minor surgery ever, I got a deviated septum fixed. My nose looks exactly the same, which is great with me, but I was having headaches every day and nothing was working. I tried allergy medicine, migraine medication, sinus everything and nothing worked. I was mainlining coca-cola trying to get through the pain because nothing else even made a difference anymore. I was taking way too much Excedrin migraine. Finally I went to see Madison's ENT guy and he said that fixing my deviated septum, shrinking my tubanates (they are in your nose, I have no idea what they do) and clearing out my sinuses would give me a good shot at getting rid of my headaches. I am happy to say that since my nose healed I haven't had a headache. It is such a relief, it had really started to interfere with my life, I couldn't get anything done!