Our life continues on in craziness

* My Great Grandmother W passed away as we were traveling back from Gma B's funeral.

* I got a job yesterday at The Tri- Cities Academy of Ballet and Music. Teaching Piano.

*Joseph and I were called to teach in Primary again, this time the Valiant 9's, this should be an experience we've never been in senior primary.

* This is my last week of teaching swimming lessons. Summer is almost over and School is creeping back in.

yup.

more later.

-S

A Love Poem...

Made from Valentine's Day fridge magnets...

We want the dream
Of life forever
With time to fill it up
Come take my hand
and say marry me please
when I am your true love
let's share more kisses under soft moon light
I'm yours for always.



-S

Last one I promise

This is a song performed by a member of a group called Celtic Thunder, amazing. Thanks to G&G Wiberg for introducing us.



-S

All fights worth fighting...

* I fight for my family. I will fight for them always. Someday I WILL be a mother, I don't know when or what else I will need to do before that happens but I want to be ready and be the best Mommy in the world, because Joseph is going to be an amazing Daddy. To become a family we have endured miscarriages, surgeries and Adoption paperwork, bring it on...

* I fight for my husband's health. Joseph has MS, he has been stable for almost 5 years, until recently, he had a flare up (which he is almost through). I have exhausted myself fight insurance, office personal, referral delays, internet research etc etc. Now I am happy to report that Joseph has an appointment with a highly recommended MS specializing Nuerologist (mouthful huh?) in Spokane (a couple hours away) on August 31st- soonest appointment. His flare up has slowed our adoption savings down, but he is more important to me than adopting babies, seriously.

* I fight my body. Sometimes it doesn't like to listen. I had Insulin Resistance, I won that fight. Now with that gone, I can lose weight easier, I am working on it. I have a goal. I do not weigh myself, but I have a healthy size goal and getting close is so good!
*I fight for Adoption. Adoption is misunderstood, I like educating people. I like learning more. I love that adoption has been built into Heavenly Father's plan for us.

**wrist update** I am doing much better, thanks all, its just annoying when it hurts when I mow the lawn or seomthing. My Mom had a brace so I wear that when it hurts.

** Adoption update** it wasn't hard to turn down our last opportunity, really honestly. Met with our new caseworker (ours got transfered out of adoption into social work only), great great guy, we have to get $500 and he comes to the house and we're done! (We had the $$ but trading our car and Joe's flare up drained that, hey, life happens)


-S

Family Photos

Back: Dad, Valerie, Me, Joseph
Front: Mom, Dustin, Marc, Alisha, JR

"Shady Swangers" We're too cool for you, lol.

The Original 4 (before spouses & JR)

Us kids. Yes, this is when I sprained my wrist. Who does that?

*My Gpa Wiberg was the photographer, yea he's awesome. My Gpa's got mad skillz! Must be where I get my love of Photography & music, yup.

Enjoy

-S

Giveaway...I wanta win!

The r house blog is doing a giveaway, awesome right? Well I never win. I wish I did... I enter giveaways all the time so to get another entry I need to blog about it. The prize is a signed copy of this sweet children's book all about adoption. (pictured above)
here's a little sneak peak

"I had been LOOKING for you for so long.
I spent so many days ANTICIPATING your arrival.
Some days SEEMED SO LONG without you."

as individuals who have struggled with infertility, sterility, childlessness and the waiting involved with adoption, haven't we all felt this?

See why I HAVE to win?

-S

Quickly, some funnies

I did two pretty funny things this week...

Numero Uno: I have come up with a solution to tail gaiters. While riding in the back of my Father's Army Jeep. (it's orange, and all open) Keep in mind it was over 100 degrees outside and we were moving in an open jeep. I thought it would be funny to have an ice cream cone. Yes, it was funny, and really messy. Aparently, tale gaiters don't like it when thick white cream hits their windsheild! It was melting faster than I could eat it and we were moving so fast it splattered in all directions, my dad even ended up wearing some too. I was laughing so hard, I bet you would too if you saw us.

Numero Dos: I sprained my wrist. Well this fact isn't funny on it's own. It's how I did it. I sprained my wrist during family pictures... we were taking a picture with us girls holding my brother Dustin up. I took the heavy end and somehow turned my wrist wrong and almost dropped him. Thus injuring my poor wrist. Funny still.

-S

We are all children of God...

We had an adoption opportunity. It was not ideal. Let me explain. We got an email for an opportunity to adopt an African American baby girl. We jumped at the chance to learn more about her situation and how to proceed with the adoption. However upon learning more, the adoption would cost 3 times the cost of going through LDS Family Services, but this agency that emailed us bases their adoption fees on race. We are NOT okay with this, this is unacceptable. We are all children of God and are all worth the cost of adoption, not one more than the other. We passed the opportunity up. In the process of turning the caseworker down he sent a lengthy email justifying their reasons for lowering the cost of Bi-racial and African American babies.

"Our fees reflect the demographics of adoption. You will find we are certainly not alone in this struggle. We do not have a large number of African American families lined up to adopt. We do have a fairly large number of Bi-racial and African American placement opportunities If our fees were the same we would have many African American little angels pasted up as families wait for their Caucasian child. So we have lowered our fees to encourage families to consider them as part of their adoption plan. ( it just is a fact)"

We do not agree with this and will not adopt through an agency that thinks this way.

-J&S

A Quick little update...

* Thanks so much for the comments and well wishes I appreciate it so much, it's been tough, but it's nice to know how to get the help we need when we need it.

*Our cousin Luke is in the hospital, please send prayers his way too!

*Joe is doing much better, he is frustrated with his vision, it's better but not best... His turn around with the steroid treatment was pretty phenomenal to see. He is walking really well, and doing good all around with little to no side effects from the steroids, just sore from the infusions. He is on a wean down dose of steroids for the next 10 days. He has a follow up appointment with the eye doctor and we're still working on the Neurologist we want to see. I may just have to get really pushy!

*Suzy is gone. We traded her in while she was running and still worth something. We are now the proud owners of a 2005 Kia Rio his name is Julius. He is orange, a pretty red-orange.

*We both have talks on Sunday. No assigned topic, trying to think about what I need to speak on...but life is keeping me pretty darn busy.

*Thanks again for all the comments and visits to the blog, I will try to update more. :)

-S

Is is possible to just take a break from life?

Nope, probably not. It would be an understatement to say our life is eventful.

*Suzy is running again, but we are looking to trade her in for a more economical vehicle (and saving ourselves some $). Poor Suzy had gas syphoned out, man we were ticked.... at least it was only about half a tank.. anyway now we have a locking gas cap.

* Joe, well he has had a little trouble with his eyes and balance lately so we had taken him in to have his eyes checked and found out he has optic neuritis in both eyes (or swollen optic nerves, a symptom of MS) so we had to look into Neurologists here, something we were already doing. Turns out there are lots of Neurologists here, not many that specialize in MS and not many with good reviews (Rate your MD online and other patient feedback) So we made an appointment with a family doctor (at an office my family has been going to for years). Before the appointment we knew the kind of treatment Joe was going to need, he needs steriods. Joseph had an appointment with a doctor that is new to the office, Dr. Burrup. I couldn't go to the appointment so I sent my mom armed with all the paperwork filled in and a list of Questions I wanted answers to. Turns out Dr Burrup is totally awesome, and LDS. He got us hooked up with a handicap placard, I worry about how far away we have had to park sometimes with the heat here. He couldn't prescribe the dosage he would need so we had to try to get him into a neurologist, but you can't just get appointments right when you want or need them. So to get things going (and since Joe isn't allowed to go to work for a couple days or until he could get treatment) and you know Joe, he does not sit still. So we went to the ER, they have on call neurologists and we wanted to get treatment started right away. Our plan worked and we spent 4 hours at the hospital yesterday . Joseph is on a three day steriod infusion treatment, he has an IV in his hand we will be going today and tomorrow. Then a follow up appointment with Dr. Burrup on Monday and more steriods but in pill form. Our doctor is trying to get us in sooner with a MS specializing neurologist in Spokane that we found, at an MS clinic. We want to look into LDN treatment, more info to come on that later. Joe says he is feeling better, and he looks pretty good, I think with his time off he may sun a little by the pool.

* After the hospital we got food, we were starving. We stuffed ourselves updated family and left to go babysit my cousins. You can tell Joe is a softy, he got his nails painted, many colors, many layers and some even with sparkles. Those 3 girls were giggling so much. It was pretty funny.

Well that's it for now. I hope to be better about updating, but we've been pretty busy.

-S