Endoscopy results

As I wrote a while back, i've been having difficulty swallowing dense foods.

Well, last week, I had a barium upper GI. They didn't see anything major on that, but it was done more as a roadmap for the doctor to look at when he did the Endoscopy, which was this morning.

They found lesions in my esophagus. They did a biopsy to make sure there's not an infection in them and to make sure they aren't cancerous. I won't have the results for a week.
I have Gastritis, (irritation of the stomach lining/esophagus that can lead to stomach ulcers and are the reason for the esophageal ones). Gastritis is usually caused by an increase in a good bacteria. With this increase in bacteria, your body senses it and starts attacking, creating more acid. This is what caused the lesions (ulcers) in my esophagus.

I have a significant amount of irritation in my stomach and lesions in the esophagus, so the best way to make sure there are not pre-cancerous cells in the esophagus and stomach. It's a precautionary measure, there's no reason to suspect there's anything major going on.

The biopsy will also help to determine if the lesions are infected with a of bad bacteria.

On top of all this, i have a Hernia. The stomach is pushing through an opening in the diaphragm. Most people who have this are born with it and have no problems. But many women have problems after they have been pregnant and everything gets shifted around. Basically, it allows food and acid to back up into your esophagus.

So that's what's going on w/ me. I'll update as I get more information.

Playdate with Fiona & Kylie

Today the kids had a playdate with Fiona and Kylie.

Their mom, Maura, is a friend of mine that I met on a message board before either of us had kids! We were both pregnant at the same time and talked via email for a few months and finally met in person shortly after she had Fiona. I was about 8 months pregnant with Ally. Maura is one of my really good friends. We get along great and the kids all get along great, too. We had a great time visiting!

Fiona is 2 months older than Ally and Kylie is about 2.5 months older than Tommy.

To the right is a picture of Kylie. She'll be 3 in the fall. She was a little shy, so she didn't want to be in pictures with the other 3 kids. I snapped this one while she was sitting on mom's lap.

Here is a picture of Tommy.

Here's a picture of Tuck and Louie playing. Louie is their new puppy. He's about 3 weeks older than Tuck.

New pictures of Tucker -

I was thinking that he was like 10 weeks old when Ashley's mom asked me today, but I just looked on the calendar and he will be 12 weeks on Friday!!! WOW! I can't believe how time flies. We got him at 8.5 weeks, so it makes sense, but that's just crazy how quickly that went by! He was born on 3/30/07, so that makes him almost 12 weeks for sure!

He's doing much better with the biting. He still does it, but not nearly as badly as he was doing it for a while. He wasn't doing it to be mean. I think he's just trying to play and not realizing how sharp those teeth are!

He's doing well with house training. He has had accidents in the house 3 times. Not too bad for a puppy. The first time was our fault...we weren't paying attention and with him being new and us not really knowing how often dogs poop, we just didn't think about it. Since then, we've gotten really good about having him go out and go before we let him out to play. He did have a #1 accident last night, but it was right at the front door, so i'm thinking that he must have some idea about where to go if he did it right at the door. And luckily the floor there is old crummy vinyl that we'll be replacing. Of course, we won't be replacing any flooring until he's completely house trained!!

I thought this was a funny picture to show how big chase is and how little Tuck is. lol

Bubbles!

Yesterday the kids got to play with their bubbles. They love bubbles.

There's a quote from a movie and the one guy says, "wow your kids love bubbles, don't they" and the father of the kids says something like, "yeah, i can't think of anything I get excited over that compares to how excited they get about bubbles." Isn't it funny how that happens as you get older.

I love getting out the bubbles for the kids. Yes, they are slippery and dirt sticks to them like glue when they play with bubbles, but what a great time they have! They were both very good and they were getting along so great while playing with the bubbles, too. It was a fun night.


















It's always so enjoyable to see their smiling faces when they make a really big bubble or when they fling the little bubble wand that makes a zillion bubbles just from waving it around.

I have fewer pictures of Tommy b/c my camera can't catch up with his fast little legs! Most of my shots of him are out of focus! lol

Here are pictures of Ally with Collin and Ally with Paige. They had so much fun together.

Rates drop again...

Well, rates are now back down to 6.18%. It's so weird how they fluctuate so much. So we're still planning on getting the house ready to sell. We picked out some paint swatches for the living room. The main color will be swiss coffee, which is a light beige color and the wall with the fireplace will be a shade darker with water chestnut -- it sounds dark, but it's very light tan - a little darker than the swiss coffee color for the rest of the room. They are in the same color family, so they will compliment each other. We picked out some pergo for the entry foyer last night. Our fireplace mantle is a walnut color, as is the half wall for our steps to the basement, so we'll do the walnut color pergo in the foyer. We also priced carpet for the livingroom, hallway, and steps at Lowe's. We'll look around and see what other deals there are. I think Matt's going to put in walnut-stained window sills in the living room. We did that in our old house and it made a huge difference in how the house looked. And it's not too expensive, so it'll be one small thing we can do to make the house look nice.


We'll see what the rates do as we get closer to putting our house up for sale. If they stay under 6.5%, we'll go for it. If not, we'll just wait until they go back down. And the house will be painted and with new carpet and new flooring and the bathroom being done, it will look great and at least we'll get something out of it! lol

I think we'll do a blue in Ally's room to coordinate with her border so that we don't have to remove it. I just bought her a new bedding set. It was regularly $79 at Penney's, but it was on sale for $59 and I had a few coupons and free shipping coupon code, so i ended up getting it for $27! Awesome deal.

Here's a picture of it. It's so cute. It's reversible, so it can look like the bed on the left or the bed on the right. It's very girlie, without being too young. I thought that she was ready for a more big-girl look.

My big boy

For those of you who don't like potty-training stories, now is the time to stop reading. lol
Tommy went #2 on the toilet today! This is only the 2nd time he's gone in the toilet. And the first time he went was on the little potty chair, not the big boy toilet! He was very proud of himself and definitely remembered that he's allowed one treat when he goes on the potty! lol He always tells me when he wants to go #1 on the toilet, but he usually either has already gone or just wants to sit there and not do anything. He's interested in it, but not interested enough to actually go. But somehow when I noticed that he seemed to need to go today, it was easier to talk him into sitting on the potty BEFORE he went rather than after he went. I'm very proud of him. I know this is only the beginning and doesn't mean that he's going to keep it up, but he's at least showing an interest, which means the world to me considering we battled a major fear when we were working on it w/ ally. Luckily she finally faced her fears and now has no issues at all. But it was a long road. So we're hoping that with Tommy being more interested, it won't be a problem.
Way to go, Tommy! :)

VBS

Today during our church service, ally got to get up front with all the other kids and sing her VBS songs. She loved it. She was very nervous and didn't do all the motions of the songs, and the ones she did do were done very close to her body. I could tell she wasn't 100% comfortable, but she didn't cry or anything. She kept her eyes on my a majority of the time (waving several times) to make sure I didn't go anywhere (i sat down in the front row after taking her up to the alter).
I meant to bring my camera, but I forgot. I'm just glad that she went up. She's such an anxious kid that these little things are HUGE for her. She's getting more and more confident every day. I'm so proud of her!

rate hike

Interest rates have gone higher in the last 3 weeks than they've gone in about 18 months. So we're kind of up in the air about what to do now. We're weighing our options. We really want to move, but our current interest rate is 5.325%, which is very good. The rates when we first talked to our lender about moving were about 5.8%, not that much higher than we currently have. Well, today, they jumped to about 6.625%, almost a full percentage point in less than 3 weeks!
By the time we have the house cleaned up, painted, etc, they may be over 7%. I realize that 7% isn't that bad when you compare over the last 20 years (in the 80s and 90s rates were double digits, and even when we bought this house, we had a rate of 6.75%...we refinanced to 5.325 about 2 yrs later.) but we're not sure we want to go up 2 or more %age points when we have such a nice low one now. I guess we'll just have to decide what's more important. Hopefully things will stabilize and by August or September they will start going down.
We're still fixing up the house. We worked on cleaning and getting rid of stuff all weekend. Matt cleaned out half of the unfinished part of the basement and I went through boxes of stuff and put a lot on craigslist to sell. The basement looks so nice and clean. This weekend, we're going to finish cleaning the other side. Matt took off the first week in July to start painting and installing flooring in the foyer and hall bath. We'll probably hold off on installing new carpet in the living room/hallway/steps until we decide if we want to sell or stay here. What kind of carpet we put in will depend on if we are staying here or not.
So at least we are still moving forward with the plan of moving, but if we get stuck here b/c of interest rates at least we'll be happy with the outcome of the house. It will be nice to have it looking the way we want it to.
So that's the latest....

Vacation Bible School

Today was Ally's first day at Vacation Bible School at Messiah. She had a GREAT time! She was scared at first and asked me not to leave, but she didn't cry. She just had a very quiet, sad voice when she was saying, "but mommy, i don't want you to leave." I felt bad for her, but I really wanted her to stay and enjoy herself without me hovering. She really needs that, especially with starting preschool this fall. It was the first time i've left her anywhere w/o me, Matt, or her grandparents. She kept telling me she wanted to sit on my lap, so I told her that maybe Miss Lauren would let her sit next to her. I think that made her feel better because once I sat her down next to Miss Lauren, she seemed a little bit better. I gave her a kiss and told her I'd be back to pick her up. And if she needed me, she could ask them to call me.
Today was also the first time that Tommy and I have spent a significant amount of time together w/o Ally around. We've spent a half hour or so together when Matt has taken Ally w/ him to the hardware store or whatever, but this was 3 hours of free time for me and Tom. It was kind of nice. It was nice to see what kinds of things he would think to play with without the influence of his sister.
After we left VBS, Tommy and I went to meet a lady who was buying some stuff I had on craigslist. After that, we went to McDonald's and got a Cinnamon Melt. We came home and ate that together. And he said, "jus mommy an e?" So I told him that we are having a mommy & me day! He was happy, but he did ask about Ally several times. I don't know if he knew what to do w/ himself. lol After our treat, we went downstairs to play. We played downstairs for about a half hour and then I decided I had to run to Target for something, so we ran up there for a while. Then it was time to pick Ally up. When we got there, she was up singing and doing the little dance! I could tell she was having fun! And i could see a little craft that she made. When it was over, she seemed very excited to tell me that they made a spyglass and had snack outside. She wasn't able to tell me much about what she learned that was church-related, but i'm sure she was overwhelmed and didn't really get the message they were trying to send just yet. lol I'm going to talk to her about it later on tonight and see what she thought she was there for and see if she picked up on anything.

Tuck - 9 weeks

We've had Tuck for 1 week already! And he's now 9 weeks old. He's such a good little puppy. He's very affectionate and loves to play. He does have sharp little teeth, though! He doesn't bite to be mean, just play-biting, but we're trying to break him of that habit. That...and chewing on shoes! lol Luckily he is listening pretty well so far. We got him a small chewy ball and a small chewy pork chop shaped toy to play with. Distraction from the shoes is pretty easy with these new toys.

He does so well with house training. He's only gone in the house twice. Both times, he went on flooring that we will be replacing when we are ready to put our house up for sale (and we'll put in new carpet prior to showing) so that was great. Every time we take him outside, he goes within minutes of being put down. So he's doing great.

Another thing that amazes me is that he sleeps at night! He doesn't get up whining at all! Not once! I can't believe it! lol He's very content in his crate and doesn't make a peep!

I had him at the vet on Tuesday b/c in order to get the 1 yr guarantee from the breeder, we had to have him looked at w/in one week. He is doing great. No parasites or mites or anything that they look for when dogs are in close quarters (as they are with breeders or pet stores). He's very healthy. The vet did give him some medicine b/c his stool isn't 'normal' right now. He said it's probably from the transition from well water (where the breeder lives) and city water. And could also be nervousness and new environment as well. He is 2.2 pounds. A TINY little thing!! lol

We had him outside today while the kids were playing the pool, so I decided to take a couple pictures.

Fun in the Sun!

Today was a beautiful day. The kids and I played outside for a long time this morning while Matt went to a golf tournament with his dad. He had a great time and really enjoyed that. We, here at home, also enjoyed our day! The kids were having so much fun playing in the water table and swinging. We had lunch outside and just enjoyed the beautiful day!

The kids were sleeping when Matt got home from golfing. He decided to fill up their pool for them to play in after dinner. They were both so excited when they woke up and found out they would get to swim! Tommy asked over and over, "are we go-ing wim-ming?...am i go-ing wim-ming?... is eye-e (ally) go-ing wim-ming?" He was just so excited he couldn't think of anything else!

It was such a nice day out, we couldn't pass up such a nice opportunity to get outside! They had so much fun together and got along great!

Poor Tommy got cold and decided that it was

time to get out. Ally stayed in for about 30 more minutes. She just couldn't get enough!

Doc visit

So today I went to a new doctor b/c i've been having difficulty swallowing. Not something a 29 year old usually has. It's strange, I have no problems swallowing at the back of my throat, but it's lower, like in the esophagus. The worst foods are dense foods like bagels and tortillas, but I have trouble w/ chicken, beef, etc. Anything that doesn't mush or crumble.
So anyway, the doctor is having me do an upper GI. This will show any minor problems. And it will also give the doctor a roadmap for when they do the Endoscopy, which I will be doing soon also. The Endoscopy is a little camera that they will put down my throat after sedating me. This will show if I have strictures (rings that form in the esophagus) or any other problems, lesions, etc. If I have strictures, they will have to dilate the esophagus, which is not a risk-free procedure, so i'm hoping that everything is fine. Maybe it will just be from reflux or some common/minor problem and they can give me medication for that. So we'll see what he says...

New surprise from Matt!!

Today, Matt told me that there was a fair out in Moscow Mills and we should go see what they have there. Well, we jumped in the car and off we went. On the way out it was raining like crazy so I kept telling him that I don't think it's going to be stopping any time soon. Well, he just kept on driving. So he pulls into this driveway and i'm thinking maybe he got lost or needed to turn around. He pulls around the back of the house and I was like, "what are we don't here?... who's house is this?"

Turns out, he had a BIG surprise planned for us! Is was a puppy breeder's house! I have been wanting a puppy for a while now. We looked at all the different dogs he had and we all fell in love with a Cock-a-poo. He is 8 weeks old and SO cute! :) He is estimated to be 10 pounds full grown.


We've named him Tucker (the kids call him Tuck).

First entry

This is my first entry. I have a myspace page, but I had a bunch of weirdos trying to access it. So I decided to start a blog instead.

Today is June 1, 2007. Things have been really crazy around here the last few weeks. We've decided to move, so we'll be putting our house up for sale in a month or two. We have quite a bit of work to do to it, so it will take some time to get that taken care of. We have to paint, install carpet in the living room, steps, and hallway. We'll have to re-do the hall bathroom. It needs paint, flooring, and new fixtures. Matt has to fix the chimney b/c it has a leak. It's not as big of a project as it sounds, so that shouldn't be a big deal. But he does have to fix a leaky seal around a pipe that comes in from outside into the basement. He'll have to dig down about 6 feet on the side of the house and replace that seal. That won't be easy. I think he is hoping his dad and uncle can help with that, though.
We'll start on all the above projects once we are done throwing away a ton of stuff. The unfinished part of our basement has so much junk in it. I don't know why we kept it all. We have a ton of baby stuff that we'll want to keep in case we ever have another child, but other than that, there's not much down there that we absolutely have to have. So we'll do a lot of that over the next few weeks.
We started some spring cleaning over Memorial Day weekend, so that helps a ton.
I'm going to have to start boxing up stuff that we don't need b/c it will help reduce the amount we'll have to do later, not to mention it will look much better without the clutter. I have a friend who is starting a new home-staging business. It's where they give you tips on how to make your house more marketable just by rearranging furniture or replacing a vase here or lamp there, etc. She's going to help me for free because she said she needs the experience, so that will be great! She knows I don't want to spend money buying accessories and stuff, so she's going to try and give me ideas with furniture and decor that I already have. The main part will be de-cluttering and de-personalizing the house. She said one of the best things you can do is take down family portraits because she said that you want buyers to invision themselves in the house, not us in the house. I thought that was a very smart tip. I may keep out one 5x7 pic of the kids on the tv or something b/c i would hate to take down all my pictures. But I see what she's saying, our fireplace mantle has like 7 pictures on it. I should probably remove all of them and just put a candle on each side. Something pretty, yet simple. Of course, i'm a long way from even doing any of that. Right now, we need to start by throwing away all the stuff we don't need. I've already put a bunch on craigslist and donated a bunch of clothes and misc. items. So i'm pretty motivated.