This & That

Around Here This Week

So around here this week...

Eric, Bryce and my husband headed for the hills to cut down trees for Christmas. It's actually the first time in our 42 years that I haven't participated in the tree-getting, but it needed to be done before Thanksgiving so we could have maximum family participation in the decorating aspect. There is absolutely nothing more depressing for me than decorating the tree with no family around. Seriously, it makes me cry during the whole process. Yes, it's tree-mendously (see what I did there?) chaotic with 11 grandkids all trying to put ornaments on at once, but it's the best kind of chaos. We did it by ourselves one year and I vowed never again. I'd rather have no tree at all. I had too much prep for the dinner and visitors coming to go before Thursday, so the menfolk stepped up. My husband got a beautiful tree and it's sitting in one of the flower beds waiting for its turn to come in the house. You can see Bryce and Sarah's tree sitting next to it.

There was other stuff that happened, but I'm enjoying family time and will catch up next week.

Around Here This Week

So around here this week....

The not-red roses arrived, just as I thought they might. My husband finally arrived home yesterday, safe and sound, after spending the better part of a week in the hills with his dad. My own week was very uneventful.

There was this little moment, though. It's been a long time since Jude held still enough to fall asleep on my lap. I was tending him for a while yesterday, and he just decided it was time to take a snooze. Of course, it was about 15 minutes before his parents came to pick him up.

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, there was this from Evan's family. His wife took this picture at Roger's music performance. He's on the far right.

Over at Eric's house, it was time to put the snakes to bed for the winter.

Good night snakes, until next spring.

Eric is reviving his harmonica skills. He's always been one for interesting instruments. One year it was the bagpipes.

Gwen went to a dance. She and her partner happened to end up fairly similarly dressed. It wasn't planned, since they didn't know each other before this evening.

Ephraim is getting into the spirit of the season. How refreshing it is to see turkeys instead of Christmas trees!

A new batch of cider was pressed.

And Ephraim the Builder admired his tower-building skills.

Collin's boys were very excited about seeing the first snowflakes of the season.

There were various Primary Programs around the family this past Sunday. I played the piano at my ward's, this is the part Isaac had in his ward's program.

Levi said his part as well. I love Primary Program Sunday. 

During this week, Marc's boys did a little bouncing,

and sliding.

I spent a day with my daughter and the babies.

Jack is scooting everywhere.

He's almost perfected the army crawl.

He wasn't, however, very thrilled with the potato/yam combo that was introduced to him. It was at this point I introduced my daughter to the fine art of the food fake-out. I got some applesauce and front-loaded the spoon with that, with a bite of the veggies behind it. He slurped the rest of it up just fine.

We took a field trip during their awake time, but didn't have their stroller with us. My daughter improvised with this and they loved it. They were able to look around, but were corralled so they couldn't grab stuff.

And the joys of having a scooting baby. I snapped this while I was FaceTiming with them this week. Next year will be a real party with them. I have a whole series of pictures of Evan circling the tree when he was 15 months old. He went around it and around it, scoping out exactly which ornament he wanted to snag before he made his move.

Around Here This Week

So around here this week....

I was overcome with the need to do a large meal planning session. If you know me well, you know I do this a couple of times a year, going through recipes I've torn out of magazines, and perusing cookbooks for new things to try. This led to a "give a mouse a cookie" project that involved winnowing a few books. My daughter was actually a little upset with me because I didn't save them until she could come and check them out. Sorry about that. I've enjoyed a few evenings of plugging ideas into weeks, but we won't discuss exactly how many weeks I've been working through. It makes me sound a little obsessive. I will add that when real life steps in, the weeks don't always work out the way I've planned them. (Imagine that...) When that happens I just cut and paste them further out into other empty spots. They get tried, eventually.

I've mentioned the small herd of itinerant deer that roam around our neck of the woods. My husband happened to notice them in the neighbor's pasture and brought me out to see how close I could get. 

I was creeping in between 2 of his trailers, vewy, vewy quietly.

I must not have looked too scary because at this point I was at about 25 yards.

Eventually, they got tired of being neighborhood celebrities and trotted off.

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, I got this one from Collin's wife, Alison. Apparently the boys told her they wanted to spend "infinity days here."

There was also this one of John. He knows all the appropriate sounds.

On Veteran's Day, Collin's family took a drive and he got this beautiful shot. 

Evan's wife, Jan, sent this one of Quincy. Best friends taking a little snooze. Being busy kids is hard work.

And finally, if you need a little Ben Franklin in your life today....

 

Around Here This Week

So around here this week....

It was kind of an interesting week. If I look at it analytically, I accomplished quite a bit. Unfortunately, not much of what happened was on my to-do list. Still, there were several walks to along the canyon rim. 

We saw fall things, which are always beautiful, but I'm not partial, right?

Yes, yes I am. Very partial. Excessively partial.

On one of our canyon rim walks we headed the opposite direction than we usually go to see what we could see.

Different views going the other way. Different, and beautiful.

After we came home from one of the wanders, my husband and I decided it was time to get those Red Maple leaves gathered up. The were...so many piles of them.

I thought it was interesting that some of the leaves were bigger than my hands, and some of them were just very tiny.

This also happened. My mother wanted to go to the ponds and see where Ollie was buried. Since we were going, my husband brought fishing poles and put one in my mother's hands to see if she could catch a trout for her dinner.

She had a good time,

And did pretty well for her 86-year old self.

My husband brought these inside for me which was really nice. Actually what happened was that he was moving some vehicles around getting ready to head for the hills again, and broke off some rose branches, which he then brought inside. They're really beautiful, though.

We had a short rain shower wander through  one afternoon, and the sun came out against the dark clouds. Just so pretty.

This also happened. I got my husband to bring the Thanksgiving bin in before this week's excursion, and Halloween went away. 

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, I got this one of my daughter and Jack.

She also took this picture of the "skele---twins." ;)

Around Here This Week

So around here this week....

We had a little rain and wind come through and start taking down those Red Maple leaves. It's just a bit of a double-edged sword. I love kicking through dry leaves, but that also means the color is on its way out. That, and my beloved rain shakes loose my beloved leaves. It's kind of hard to know what to root for.

We had some gorgeous days as well and I happened to catch the light just right one late afternoon. 

Most of you know I grew up in Southern California, where the only way you can tell the difference in seasons is by the very narrow ebb and flow in temperature. 

Seeing things like this is just stunning to me. I love it on so many levels.

A small group of friends gathered yesterday to celebrate the 90th birthday of that lovely lady in the green. That's Miss Teala, and she was my children's piano teacher, and now teaches Gwen and Caroline. These gals are all role models for me for many reasons, but mostly they're just kind, good friends.

I did this project, that I've been putting off for a year or so.  A good friend of mine died last summer. She spent the lion's share of her church time playing the piano and organ, and accompanying church choirs. In fact, when I was the choir director at church, she was my accompanist for several years running. She took lessons from Miss Teala, and her curriculum was the music she played in church. Her husband gave two large containers of music to a man who used to visit them regularly, with the stipulation that it be given to someone who would appreciate it. He brought it to my house, which touched me deeply, and it took a while before I could start poking around in it without having some tears.

I found this church songbook, published in 1949. In the forward, it says the purpose of the book is for "community singing." I'm hanging onto this. So many good memories going through it all. 

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week....Collin's kids have been sick still. It's just making its way through the family. Poor John fell asleep watching TV.

From Marc's family, his precious baby now has its own blanket.

I also got pictures of their trip to the pumpkin patch.

My little sugar pumpkins can't compare to the behemoths at the patch.

Jude needed a chance to pose in front of the wheelbarrow, too.

Isaac had a pumpkin book report to complete and was pleased with the results.

From my daughter, the twins are now 8 months old. Jack is on the left, Leo's on the right.

And to finish us off this week, a little game of "boo" this close to Halloween. Baby giggles are just the best.

 

The Face, in Many Forms

It's probably time to give an update on what's been happening with my face since the surgery. The process was actually done in 2 parts. I went to Salt Lake one day and through the University of Utah's dermatology department, had a Mohs procedure at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, they lay you back in a padded chair, draw dots on your face, numb you up, and then take a slice of your face, which they then look at under a microscope. The hope is that they get all the cancer cells with that slice, but it takes about 2 hours to do some special staining and cutting of the tissue to check that. 

Wouldn't you know, that the staining didn't work the first time around, so they wanted to repeat the process on the tissue sample they had. They sent my husband and I to get some lunch, told us to go visit our daughter and the babies, which we did, and if they needed me to come back, they'd let me know. Thankfully, when I got the phone call, it was to say that all the margins of the sample were clear and we could go home. This is what I looked like after that experience, and no offense to the cute little tech who put the dressing on my face, but eyeballs don't tolerate tape on them very well. I'm lucky that I have an eyeball man that lives at my house, so he took all the gauze apart and put it back together so it wasn't rubbing my eye. It was hard because they slice they took was pretty darn close to my lower eyelid.

The second part of this adventure took place 2 days later, when the oculoplastic surgeon's office had me come in fasting for surgery at the university's Moran Eye Center at 12:45 for a surgery that didn't start until oh, about 5:00. The interesting thing about this surgery process is that I was in an operating room, having my face worked on for about an hour, with very, and I do mean very, minimal sedation....like a whiff of sedation while they numbed my eye....just barely enough that I didn't quite care that they were stabbing me and injecting that stinging Lidocaine, and then IV Tylenol throughout the rest of the surgery. I. Did. NOT. Like. It. I heard every scrape reverberate through my head, felt the tug and pull of every stitch, and even though the skin was numb, felt the pull and heard the rasp of the scissors cutting the graft from behind my ear. I'm honestly not sure what the reasoning behind this was and I really just wanted to be under enough not to experience it. I really like my surgeon and I'm very pleased with how things are going post-op, but the awake OR experience was really not my favorite. I had this shield for the first 24 hours, and then when I slept after that until the stitches came out.

This is what was under the shield. It's a compression dressing that kept pressure on the graft they sewed to my face to encourage it to "take." If you get a lot of blood accumulation under the graft, it might not adhere well. You can see the dressing was quite literally sewn to my face. Big stitches coming up to my forehead to keep the pressure on. The outside half of my eyelid was also sewn shut. It was itchy and uncomfortable. My brother said it looked like I had a cocoon sewn to my face and he was sure a butterfly was in there desperately trying to get out. You can see another incision on the left there by my hairline. That was where they took the "control" section of skin for comparison when they did the Mohs.

The stitches for the compression dressing came out about 5 days later. A lot of swelling and bruising, but the majority of the graft looked nice and pink, which was the goal. The scab you see on the edge of the graft closest to my nose was a little blood that was under just that end point of the graft. Not totally perfect, but good enough that the eyeball men in my life would check me frequently and both say, "Looks good" or "It looks how it's supposed to look." I was grateful for the fairly constant feedback. Because of the size of the graft, and because the Mohs took a bite out of the orbicularis oculi muscle, which is the muscle that closes the eyelids, my surgeon made an additional incision in the lateral corner of my eye and tightened up the tendon that holds the eyelid. That way, the loss of muscle combined with the weight of the graft wouldn't cause my eyelid to roll outward. The biggest chore after surgery has been to keep the graft moisturized and soft, and to massage it to keep it pliable as it heals.

And here I am almost 5 weeks post op. My husband took out the stitches behind my ear about a week ago, so that's the last of the foreign stuff on me. I can't say it's been the most pleasant experience of my life. I've been living with the diagnosis since the second week of January, and have been moving through the treatment process ever since. What I am grateful for, is the medical science and knowledge that exists so it could be treated, skilled doctors both here where I live and in Salt Lake, and a supportive family that listened when I needed to just talk about how I was feeling, and then cheered for me and gave me encouragement. Some of them drew me pictures "to help me be brave" when I was headed for surgery. I got lots of phone calls and FaceTimes those first few days after surgery checking on me, and even the funny comments from grandkids...."That looks......strange on you." It all helped me not take myself too seriously and distracted me from the pain and/or itching that was going on, and I am grateful.

I've begun the lovely process of full body checks. Those will happen every 6 months for a year and then every year thereafter. I told my dermatologist that I was a little paranoid about every spot I have these days. His response? "You should be. You have the perfect trifecta.....you've already grown a melanoma, you're fair skinned, and you grew up in the 60's and 70's and literally tried to bake yourself. Why do you even bother to go outside?" Wear your sunscreen. I anticipate this might not be the only time I'll have something cut off. OK, so when I was growing up, we didn't really know a ton about sun damage, but we do now. Protect your skin. 

Around Here This Week

So around here this week.....

I'm continuing to love this season of the year. My Red Maple has started to turn, and soon the thousands of leaves will start falling.

Take a look at this aspen in pasture. About 6 hours later most of the leaves here were on the ground. We had a storm blow in yesterday afternoon that took a good 2/3 of them. Of course, it was the afternoon Marc's family was scheduled to come over and have family pictures taken....t'was ever thus. Adjustments had to be made. Still, just so pretty. Isaac spent some time literally rolling in them on the grass when we were taking the pictures.

The family came over for Sunday dinner and we had a cake to celebrate Ephraim's birthday.

My husband and I walked the Snake River Canyon rim trail this week. At least we did after he made me hike up the Evil Knievel Jump ramp. I don't do heights, but this was wide enough that I did OK. I took a picture from the top across the canyon.

We wandered to Shoshone Falls, which is turned off this time of year. The flow over the falls is regulated seasonally and just like the river up at the cabin, water levels are low this time of year. 

"I'm gone" flowers arrived this week. A really pretty autumn arrangement with an added extra feature.

Cute, huh?

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week....I got this one from Evan's wife, Jan. Quincy wrapped himself up in a blanket and their puppy, Cookie, thought he was buried alive and tried to dig him out. I'm dating myself, but Cookie didn't run anywhere to try to tell them Timmy was in the well. Bonus points for identifying that reference.

Another picture of Quincy disguising himself as Santa Claus.

There are some new kittens at Eric & Elisa's house that are getting plenty of love.

Gwen had to do an experiment on an egg. When it was finished, she wanted to be sure the pet toad got a chance to pose with it.

The family went to a ward activity where Elisa was in charge of the face painting. Love the bees....

Emmett chose a shark,

and can you guess what Ephraim was?

Elisa noticed that the leaves were the exact color of her pants, so she needed a picture. I support that decision.

There are some cows on part of Eric's acreage...not his, a rancher uses part of the ground, but one morning they got out and tromped around their yard.

From Collin's family, can you see the feet sticking out of the bag. I guess John can fit in there.

They've had some late summer days when the boys could play outside and do boy stuff in the dirt.

And while I realize this instance here is not the exclusive purview of boys, it just reminded me of days gone by.

 

Around Here This Week

A Friday edition of AHTW because tomorrow is a special day.

So around here this week....

I mean seriously....the colors, and I didn't compose this in any way. This was just a random gathering of leaves on my front walk.

The honey locust tree is dropping its bright yellow leaves on the back patio.

We had a real cold snap this week...like highs in the 40's. As you are aware, this is not a problem for me. The pipes up at the cabin are a different matter, though, so my husband and I took a quick drive up to winterize the place. You can see there's snow in them thar hills.

This was me early, early the day before doing a little grocery shopping. I sent this to my friend in Florida, who responded with the screaming face emoji. Of course, nothing stuck and it was gone an hour later, but it's honestly not uncommon for us to get a bit of snow this time of year. Last year I think the October snow was the only snow we got all winter.

This was the view at the cabin. We were a little concerned there might be 6 or 8 inches we'd have to deal with, but there was just what you can see on the mountain across the road. The road itself was wet, but no snow all the way in.

What a difference a week makes, right? Last week these aspen leaves were all golden yellow. This week they were either on the ground, or frozen black on the trees.

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, I got a slew of pictures from Collin. This was on a hike.

They have a nasty black walnut tree in their backyard and they spent some time picking them up this week. Side note: My husband loves black walnuts. Nobody else in the family can stand them, but then my husband also eats raw fish and black licorice ice cream. Ew.

John very creatively solved the "I need a drink" problem.

David with some goat friends.

Collin also took a couple of artsy pictures on their recent outings.

There you go....some tree fungus.

James likes to fall asleep reading. 

There's the whole family together.

The boys absolutely love to gather treasures like sticks and rocks on their outings, but Collin's rule is that they have to carry those souvenirs home. If they can carry them, they can keep them. Sometimes it's a little problematic.

And lastly, here's this week's picture from my daughter, and I'm pretty sure that's Leo with her.

Around Here This Week

So around here this week...

The colors....Oh, the colors!

And we had rain!! Outside,

And unfortunately, inside as well. Must be time to caulk around those skylights again.

And of COURSE my husband was gone adventuring, but "I'm gone" flowers arrived to help sooth that.

I found this cute picture of Jack....at least I'm pretty sure it's Jack, on my phone. I think my daughter took it while she was here last weekend.

Along with this. They are rolling around a lot, pivoting on their tummies, and Jack is up rocking on hands and knees.

There was also a moment when one of them met Gus. Gus has a LOT more energy than Ollie did, but it was kind of sweet to watch him give the baby kisses.

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, Eric's family did some work on a paver patio this year and put a fire pit in where they've done some gathering.

They also went apple picking at an orchard near their house.

And holy COW, I was struck by how long-leggity and grown up Gwen is starting to look.

Emmett built his muscles up hefting boxes of apples around.

Gwen has been running cross-country. This is something I could never do. After six kids, things would start falling out....seriously.

Some congratulations from Caroline.

Caroline is playing soccer this fall and scored a goal in her last game. Her mama played soccer in high school and is coaching her team, so this is good stuff.

Emmett is also playing soccer and looks pretty serious about it.

Not sure exactly where this happened, but picture the full-body shudder that goes through me when I look at this picture.

....and this one.

Eric pulled and washed some carrots from their garden. Ours are still in the ground waiting for my husband to have a lull between adventures.

From Collin's family, Alison sent this one of James and David contemplating ways to be "Higher and faster." Collin thought it was funny that there's a worried face on the box the stool is sitting on.

And lastly, we discovered while the babies were here last weekend, that they really want to chew on these silicone brushes, but really can't stand how they feel in their mouths. Apparently it's not just my brushes, but the one my daughter has at her house as well.

Around Here This Week

So around here this week....

A lot of it has been taken up with surgery recovery. Again, when things calm down on my face a little, I'll itemize how it all went. Suffice it to say, I'm glad we're on this end of things. 

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, I got this picture of an enormous tomato from Evan's garden. He tried an heirloom variety called "Mortgage Lifter." It's an old variety, so called because the fruit is so huge.

It was 80's day at Edward, Frederick and Roger's school.

When they couldn't find Quincy for dinner one evening, here's where he was found...asleep.

Eric's wife sent me a whole lot of pictures and for whatever reason I can't get them onto my computer. I'll work on that.

From Collin's family, James and David went camping this past weekend.

Collin took some really cool silhouette pictures that evening.

In both pictures in which James appears, my husband and I both remarked that the silhouette reminds us a lot of Collin when he was a little boy, which is interesting since James doesn't especially look like Collin as a little boy.

Ah, there's nothing quite like those early fall nights, though.

Again this week, David provides some comic relief. I can honestly say, I never felt so outnumbered as when I was surrounded by my husband and 5 boys, before my daughter was born.

From Evan's garden tomatoes, we move to Marc's garden potatoes. When my kids were younger and living at home, they hated garden chores. It's interesting that all of them who have the space, plant at least a few garden plants of their own.

From my daughter this week, we have the 7-month old picture of Jack & Leo. Can you believe it's been 7 months?

Jack had a day when he didn't feel well at all. Such a sad face!

The latter part of the week, after I got my stitches out, my daughter and the babies came up for a long weekend. They tried out some of my homemade Instant Pot yogurt. Jack thought it was dandy.

We took them to the local pumpkin patch and took a few pictures.

Fun to have them here during this pretty fall time!