November: 30 days of Thanks

{From instagram/ Facebook...sorry if you've already seen this}

Day 1: I'm thankful for my darling husband, he's the best! 

Day 2: I'm thankful for family. 

We're glad to spend time with them this weekend.

Day 3: I'm thankful for our safe travels. Yup, that is snow.

Day 4: I'm thankful for my job(s) that help me support my family.

I love teaching piano lessons & preschool!

Day 5: I'm thankful for great workout companions. our 6:30am group is the best! Thanks for keeping me motivated and making it so much fun to work out. P.S. I'm "Leah's daughter" if you were looking for my name, haha. 

Day 6: I'm thankful for this snuggle bug, especially when i had a headache, put my shirt on backwards & a marker exploded in my back pocket kind of day.

Day 7: I'm thankful for friends who help me find yummy gluten free foods, thanks Missy they were delicious! 

Day 8: I'm thankful for audiobooks, Joseph & I can enjoy "reading" together, we're reading Harry Potter right now.

Day 9: I'm thankful for my parents

Day 10: I'm thankful for modern medicine.

Day 11: I'm thankful for all the men & women who have served or are serving in the military. Thank you.

Day 12: I am thankful for awesome doctors, Joseph & I both have great doctors.

Day 13: I am thankful for music!

Day 14: I am thankful for goals. Hard work & dedication pay off, I reached another fitness goal!

Day 15: I'm thankful that the church has the LDS library app! I love having my scriptures, manuals, music, magazines etc...all at my fingertips and not weighing down my bag.

Day 16: I'm thankful for good music & variety. 

Day 17: I'm thankful that I work with a book addict, that way I can preview Christmas books before I buy them.

Day 18: I'm thankful for gluten free play dough, no more rashes!

Day 19: I'm thankful for humor, laughter is always the best medicine... or chocolate.

Day 20: I'm thankful for my talent and love of photography. P.S. Jessica is beautiful!

Day 21: I'm thankful for my new warm down coat, it's suddenly freezing here! P.S. sorry no head, I was sick in this picture.

Day 22: "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun." -Mary Poppins. I'm thankful for the 100's of people I see every week at work most of them being children.

Day 23: I'm thankful for hot chocolate & the sweetie that brought me this today!

Day 24: I'm thankful for temples. 

Day 25: I'm thankful that the DOL stopped doing testing (written or driving) it significantly decreased the wait time. I was in and our in about an hour! 

Day 26: I'm thankful for temple marriage, and the knowledge that families can be together forever.

Day 27: I'm thankful for technology. Because of this I am able to communicate with my amazing husband, while spending most of my days in another city away from him. It's great to send & receive emails or texts (from the iPad) 

Day 28: I'm thankful for my family. ALL of you! This is my great grandma Johnson, we were lucky enough to spend some time with her and Bill this week.

Day 29: I'm thankful for beauty, if you look for it, you can find beauty in anything. It was crazy cold all day but the frost covered everything was pretty awesome...except on my car- not so awesome!

Day 30: I'm thankful my job allows me to be home for the holidays.

Summer Catch up (August)

Grandpa Oswald passed away. He was an amazing man and a great example of perserverance , dedication, love and compassion…and so much more. We were truly blessed to know him and call him grandpa. We love you and are so happy that you are no longer in pain. We will miss you terribly.

He passed away on a Wednesday, by Friday we were on the road to Idaho. We stayed in Mt. Home with Alisha Marc and kids. The next day we were all pack up and ready to go and the car wouldn’t start! Marc lacked the proper socket extension so I couldn’t get the battery out, we were stuck without the correct tools, on a military base. As a result of my sister & her husband being anti-social they don’t attend church and their little branch is AMAZING! They didn’t know who their bishop was or home teachers- or anyone who could help us who would already be on base. Thanks to my mom, we soon had the phone numbers of their entire bishopric and through them we got ahold of someone who came right over and got everything working again. Simply cleaning, and re-attaching the battery & terminals, then we were good to go. Driving through many construction zones must have loosened them. Frustrating as it was, we are so thankful that our prayers were answered and that others were so willing to come to our aid.

(Photo credit goes to Nicole)

Rylee helping us pack

Rylee spent most of the trip sleeping in his kennel or riding in Joseph's lap/ arms. 

He travelled so well, it sure was a long drive with lots of construction!

When we stopped for lunch he enjoyed the fresh air.

He learned how to drink out of the water bottle.

Sean & Joseph bonding, he really likes his uncle.

Sera also likes her uncle and disliked me pulling her away to take a picture of her... haha

See she's so happy snuggling with Joseph.

Tori was a willing model, we enjoyed spending time with them.

Singing with me....

Our view as we drove into Shelley Idaho.

 So Saturday evening we finally made it to Shelley Idaho. Then we all went to see Grandma Oswald, we weren’t the only ones. There were so many aunt, uncles & cousins packed in the house, we watched the DVD that would be shown at Grandpa’s funeral. It was fun to have so many of us all together.

Sunday we went to church and then I sped off to Teton Idaho where I had booked a family photo session for my sister-in-laws family. It went well and then I headed right back to Shelley to change, eat & go to the grandkid musical number practice & Grandpa’s viewing.

Monday was the funeral & graveside service. It was a beautiful funeral, so many amazing musical numbers performed by family and each speaker was equally impressive. As they spoke we enjoyed re-living happy memories of grandpa and learning more about our family. Grandpa was a veteran so he was given a military graveside service complete with a 21 gun salute. It was hot so we headed back to the church a little early where we had a luncheon & enjoyed catching up with family. I got to meet some for the first time. We hung out at home (Shelley) then we had dinner in Rigby Idaho with Cyri and Mark, more family fun!

On Tuesday we traveled home, all the way home. All in one day, it was exhausting especially because there was so much construction! But it seemed to be a more pleasant choice than to spend 2 days driving.

Oswald Cousins

John, Mom Mecham & Joseph

Joseph & I with Great Grandma Loveland & Grandma Oswald.

Rylee took his turn driving, just kidding he did this when I made a potty stop... :)

After hearing a funny story about Grandpa sipping the foam off of root beer when he took the kids to A&W, we stopped and bought a mug and root beer while traveling home. 

We were so happy that we could go, even though it was a whirlwind of a weekend. All the time we were able to spend with family, tons of family! It was so much fun and such a positive way to end our summer, even if it was a sad occasion that brought us all together.

The never-ending wheelchair saga

As you know we've been working of getting joseph his TiLite wheelchair most of the year.

When we finally got all of the paperwork in and the prescription written exactly 100% correctly, we had to wait. Wait a month for someone to come to the house to do another evaluation,and evaluation & measuring checking to make sure the he can indeed use a wheelchair. Which was supposed to be the final step in the long list of things we had to do in order for medicare to pay for the chair…nope that didn't happen.

Once everything went through we were ready to finalize the order when we were informed that we would have to pay 100% up front, the opposite of what we had been told the multiple times that we asked. The reason that we were going through the headache of all the paperwork and hoop jumping, was because we can't afford to pay for the pay on our own. Then Medicare decided that they no longer covered chairs coded k0009 only k0005, we scrambled to put together the paperwork for the correctly coded chair and then as we submitted that paperwork we were told that Medicare no longer covered TiLite chairs at all. 

So as Joseph's old chair deteriorated and our options for getting his chair were falling apart…we bought the 2nd choice chair at 1/4 the price. It's identical to the chair he wanted except that it's made of aluminum instead of titanium. And being that we didn't have the cash on hand we put it on the credit card. As delighted as I am that we got the chair FINALLY!!! I'm equally frustrated that after everything we went through to get the chair (paperwork, appointments, evaluations, prescription revisions & many many phone calls) we ended up simply buying it!

Oh, it doesn't end there…..just wait. We were preparing to travel to Idaho for Grandpa Oswald's funeral & his chair was supposed to arrive the same day. We decided we didn't want to wait until 3-5 pm. So we called UPS, got on with the supervisor, then the dispatcher, and the driver of the truck it was on and arranged a pick up in transit. I didn't know exactly where that location was, luckily my little sister did, so we hurriedly jumped into the car and sped off. We made it and met the driver and loaded up the box, it took up my entire rear seat!

We got it home and assembled it, meaning that we put the wheels and the brakes on.

Rylee tried out the pad first

Taking it out for a spin before we packed it into the trunk for our trip to Idaho.

More updates coming!

A family in need.

 (Briana I stole this from your blog.)

You may remember a blog post about the Eric and Briana Hoffman family, Click HERE for a reminder. Briana is a friend from high school, and her parents live in our ward. Anyway they recently lost their baby girl Kate Nicole who was stillborn at 38 weeks. Along with the loss of their child came medical bills, travel costs and funeral expenses. Unfortunately, this isn't the only thing this family has faced, in 2010 their oldest daughter Elena was diagnosed with leukemia which they battled for two and a half years. Elena may be done with treatment and we pray done forever,  her younger sister Lily has had unexplained medical problems which have required lots of testing and visits to specialists. Eric and Briana are doing everything they can to pay their bills, but their financial obligations must be astounding.

We can't take away their pain at losing their daughter and sister, or heartbreak of watching their children face cancer and unknown illnesses. There is one way we can help, we can together help to ease the financial stress for the Hoffmans. They need a miracle right now, and that can happen with every dollar that is donated. The goal is $50,000 while that may not cover everything it will help them immensely. So spread the word, I've posted a widget on the right side of my blog where you can go to make a donation, I've also shared it on Facebook. Eric, Briana, Elena and Lily have been through so much and my heart goes out to them. I hope and pray for peace, comfort and healing for them and their extended families.

Tell everyone, lets make this miracle happen!

All about Rylee

Meet Rylee. 

This is our puppy, the day we brought him home on June 29th.

He is Joseph's new companion dog.

 And because of this he has some specific training to go through, including kennel training.

Sorry it's blurry I took it in the dark, T-Bone keeping Rylee company. 

Rylee made friends with the puppy in the mirror. 

Rylee LOVES to chew, so we make sure to keep good chew toys around. 

That way our things don't become chew toys.

Rylee learned his name! 

Even though he barked at sodas at first, he has come enjoy them..... or the straws.

The first picture I got in which he's looking at me. 

Speckles and Rylee have been interacting more and more, 

they play pretty well together now, here is video proof.

My boys!

Another cute picture, right before he fell asleep.

Sometimes, Rylee gets to go to work @ TCAB. 

He gets lots of socialization, and he shows off all his tricks.

Rylee gets to go on lots of adventures with us, even swimming. 

Although he wasn't supposed to actually get in the pool! 

Rylee even "helps" with chores, he especially likes weeding!

 He jumped into the garbage all by himself one morning, while Mom and I were weeding in the garden.

We are so proud of all the commands that Rylee knows, 

he is a really smart puppy.

Working on "come, sit and down"

Working on "sit" from the "down" position.

Rylee is 15 weeks old today. 

Rylee is incredibly smart, and way ahead for his age. His vet agrees and says he is a happy and healthy kiddo. And needs socialization so he doesn't "nip" or bite, but the only one he has ever "nipped" was the vet himself after giving Rylee a shot! According to the training books my mom has at 15 weeks he should know his name, be working on potty training and tolerate wearing a collar and leash. 

At 15 weeks he knows: his name, come, sit, go potty, no, leave it, kennel, and down.We are working on ringing bells to let us know he needs to "go out", he should be completely housebroken around 16 weeks old. We are working on our manners in public: no barking! or growling!  Also working on getting in and out of the car, "sit, wait, okay come Rylee" and coming and going out of the house,  he sits and waits for us to open the door, instead of rushing it. Rylee is also getting used to wearing his lease when we go out. 

We love Rylee!