Another School Year Comes To A Close

Mother's Day Party with Ryder
Don't you love the hat he made me?!?!



It's hard to believe that the 2010-2011 school year is already over.  It flew by so quickly!!!! The kids are excited for some time off to swim and travel.  I'm excited to have them home more, and to be done having 4 kids in 4 different schools!  Next year we will be down to 3 schools, because Melanie will be in HIGH SCHOOL next year which means both she and Nicole will be at PHS!

Here is a hodgepodge of pictures from the end of the school year.

Darren's Freshman seminary class that he taught enjoying
their last early morning together for the year

Nicole's Seminary class on their last day

Ryder getting his picture taken with his 2nd grade teacher,
Mrs. Eggelston, after the awards assembly

Here is a sweet card that Ryder and I made for his teacher.  He really enjoyed being in her class!

He also gave her a "Nothing Bundt Cake"  white chocolate raspberry mmmmm. . .

Every year we go to dinner after the last day of school to celebrate.  This year we went to the Blue Goose to enjoy mesquite grilled tex mex yumminess!!  Here's Harrison enjoying the evening:

I notice the chips are already gone and dinner hadn't arrived yet :)  They make some really good salsa!

And I'll sign off with a picture of Melanie and her friend Thi modeling the masks they made as part of their last English project. 

Looking good girls.  Enjoy your summer!!!



A Jaw Dropper

This February we had a little scare when Melanie had a routine CAT scan of her jaw durning an orthodontic appointment.  What the orhtodontist found was a lesion in Melanie's lower jaw down by the roots of 3 of her teeth.  You can see it in the image above by looking at the lower teeth and counting 5 teeth in from the left and looking down by the roots.  That roundish dark area is the abnormalty that was found.

Here's another view where you can see that it is deep from front to back of the jaw as well.

And one more view just for fun.

Melanie was referred to an Oral Surgeon, Dr. Nix, for evaluation and treatment.  I tried to keep cool about the whole thing, but I was distressed by the rough edged appearance of the lesion and the fact that it was eroding the cortical bone (hard outer bone).  These are signs of aggressive tumors that require aggressive surgery to remove.  In addition, Melanie has been sick more than normal this past year, and when Dr. Nix did her evaluation her lymph nodes were enlarged.

I pretty much had myself stressed out about the whole thing.  It's funny I discovered that having a bunch of knowlege and information about oral pathology stored in my brain is a wonderful thing when I am diagnosing a patient's disease.  However, when it was my own daughter, it was almost as if I knew too much and could picture too many possible awful outcomes for it to really be beneficial.

Fortunately, I also know the value of prayer.  I prayed for knowledge and peace and a good outcome.  Immediately upon finishing my prayer my mother called just to talk, and she is always a wonderful source of comfort to me.  In that conversation I discovered that she and my dad were planning a trip to come visit us in April.  Also upon completion of my prayer I was prompted to discuss the information and x-rays with my friend, mentor and all around best dentist ever, Dr. Palmer.  He was the one who put my mind at ease by letting me know that it was most likely a traumatic bone cyst (basically a hollowed out area of the jaw) which would require surgical debridement and biopsy then heal nicely on its own.

The day before her surgery, Melanie received a priesthood blessing from her father and Uncle Kimball.  The next day Melanie had her surgery, and she came through it really well.  Dr. Nix indeed found that the area was hollowed out and consistent with a traumatic bone cyst.  The biopsy results confirmed the diagnosis a week later.

I am so grateful for the way things turned out.  Melanie's face was swollen for a few days, and she had some residual numbness in her jaw, but she has healed well.  I am grateful for the power of prayer, priesthood blessings, and the comfort and support of family and friends.

6 Day Weekend

Well the kids went to school exactly 1 day this week - 1 day out of 5!!!  Now I know what you're thinking, "Those Texans just don't know how to handle snow."  Unh uh.  We handle snow just fine.  It's sleet and ice that really slow us down.  Monday night ice started falling from the sky.  Trust me it was really loud on the windows. By Tuesday morning there was a nice thick layer of ice on everything, and no one wants to drive in that.

I didn't really take any pictures of the ice, because well, it was just roads with ice.  I do have a video of Ryder doing some skating on it though.



The temperatures stayed around 0 degrees (wind chill factored in here) so the ice wasn't able to melt.  So the kids got to stay home on Wednesday and Thursday as well.  We were able to enjoy lots of family time together - board games, puzzles, TV, Wii, baking and some crafts.  Harrison, Melanie, and Ryder put together these little wooden craft kits that I had picked up for $1 each the week before.  My thought at the time was that I'd just stash them away for a rainy day or next summer when the kids are bored.  As fortune would have it, we got to use them much earlier than that.

These little kits were awesome.  As I mentioned before only $1 each, and they included all the wood, paint, glue, paintbrush, sandpaper and rubberbands needed to complete the project!  I think the boys can get some scouting achievements signed off for this too :)

Then Thursday night and Friday we got SNOW.  Probably a good 4-6 inches.  And it stuck.  In fact it's still here.  Unheard of!

Here is a picture from early Friday morning.

And snow or not, poor little Blossom still had to go outside to, well, you know. . . She got icy in the process.

Blossom's mad because her paws are cold!

The fun part is that snow is waaaaaaay more fun than ice! You can go sledding.

Or eat the snow (only pure white fresh snow please).

Or if you're me, you can slip and fall.  I know, cool huh.

The neighbor kids had been begging me to sled the ditch with them.  We all know how that would've turned out.  I kindly declined, and so today I can still say I have never broken a bone!

It's also quite beautiful to see our lake almost completely frozen over.

So as we enter our 5th day of isolation in our home, we are grateful for this little window of time where we could just relax and spend time together.  We are also grateful for food storage, and that I had just purchased milk, eggs, and fresh produce on Monday night!

Thanks for a wonderful break Mother Nature!



UPDATE:  Of course all good things must come to an end. . .

Diggin' Volleyball

We just can't seem to get enough volleyball around here! At the end of the school volleyball season, Nicole and Melanie tried out for club teams and are both officially Texas Titans volleyball players. Melanie plays on the 14's Elite Team, and Nicole plays up an age level on the 17's National Team. This has kept us all very busy with practices and now the tournament season has started.

A week ago Nicole's team played in the MLK Ranking Tournament. They ended up taking 13 out of 38 teams which was a pretty good start. Here's a picture of Nicole going up for a block.

And a grainy shot of her hitting in warm ups (love the facial expression on this one :)

Then this last weekend both girls played in the Winterfest tournament.

Nicole's team played in a 17/18's division.  So Nicole, a 15 year old sophomore, was playing teams with 18 year old high school seniors.  They took 3rd in the tournament, but were the top finishing 17's team!!

Melanie's 14's team played a great tournament and won the Silver Bracket Championship.  Here is a picture of the girls posing with their tiny little trophy:

Their championship game was fun to watch because they lost the first set and came back to win the last 2 sets. In the final set they were down by several points and came from behind to win it. It was so exciting to watch, and I think the girls learned a lot about themselves and volleyball in the process!

Melanie was in charge of bringing the hair ribbons for the team for the Winterfest tournament.  When I finished the ribbons I thought they would look cute attached to a water bottle or Gatorade with custom labels for the girls.  Here's how they turned out:

So if my posts these days seem a little sporadic and rare, it's because I'm probably driving the girls to practice or tournaments.

Go Titans!!

Guys and Gals

Here are a couple more photos from our recent family photo shoot.  It was almost November and still an absolutely gorgeous day.  I LOVE Texas :)

Dear Grandma . . .

A picture's worth a thousand words - and the tears of joy you will shed when you see this picture!

Love,
Heidi

Your amazing and adorable grandchildren

P.S.  You're welcome :)

P.S.2  I have many more to share :)  :)

P.S.3  Click on the picture to bring up the full size image - then copy and save to your computer - well, if you want a copy that is :)  :)  :)

Not For the Squeamish!

Wow, have we had a time of it lately.  Normally we are super healthy and see our physicians only for immunizations and well visits.  Unfortunately, both Melanie and Ryder have had to make trips to the doctor in the last few weeks.

First, Ryder broke his finger at football practice.  Now, I know you may be thinking, "that's what happens when 2nd graders play tackle football," but it happened when another kid tackled him when he wasn't looking - goofing off.  Ryder doesn't usually cry much, and he didn't this time, but I knew when he didn't want to go right back in that something was up.  He sat out with it on ice for a while and then tried to play during his very favorite tackling drill at the end of practice, but he couldn't do it.  It just didn't seem to be improving, so I took him in to have it x-rayed that night.

Sure enough his right pinky finger was broken.  They put him in a splint and scheduled him with an orthopedist to have it evaluated further.  Fortunately a splint and no football for 2 weeks was all he ended up needing.

OK, now for the gross part.  Seriously, if you can't handle gross, don't look at these next pictures.

Melanie tells me she had a hang nail that she pulled off, but when she pulled it off she also pulled a big chunk of skin out from under her toenail.  Well, it swelled up like this.  We tried to treat it at home, but nothing worked, and she could hardly walk and certainly couldn't play volleyball.  So I took her in, and they numbed her toe up and removed a portion of her toenail. and gave her some antibiotics.

I took this picture while the doc was off looking for a silver nitrate stick to stop the bleeding.  When he was done he wrapped her toe up in this enormous bandage.

Do you think it's big enough?  Melanie wanted to go back to school that day, just to show off her ouchie.

I am so crossing my fingers that we are done with doctors for a very, very, very long time!

Thanks For Not Raining On Our Parade!

Melanie and her volleyball friends

Homecoming Day is always a wonderful time in Prosper.  And yesterday was no exception.  We had a blast with all of the festivities.  Not to mention the kids are always happy to get out of school early!! Gotta love small town Texas where the whole community comes home to participate in the celebration.

First here are the kids' mums and garters.  A Texas tradition that I think is totally cool and fun to get into. By the way, the ones my kids are wearing are very modest in size (well Nicole's is pretty dang big - but there are definitely bigger mums out there - worn mostly by the senior high school girls).

Nicole started off the day with a 6:00 am pep rally at the high school.  Our Homecoming football game was the high school game of the week here in Texas, so the news teams were there to cover the excitement.  Then the kiddos all headed off to school for a half day of "learning" before they were released for the parade.  This years theme was "Wild About Our Eagles" thus all the zebra print and safari themed floats. The 3 younger kids were on floats:

Melanie on one of the 8th grade volleyball jeeps

The tail end of Harrison's float.  It went by too fast :)

Ryder on his pirate float pre-parade

Pirate float cool parrot

Full view of pirate float

Now this meant that Darren and I watched the parade by ourselves (Nicole had to stay at the school so she didn't get all worn out before her 4:30 volleyball match).  Thunderstorms were predicted for the day, and it had been sprinkling off and on, so we decided to take an umbrella just in case.  Well, it didn't rain, but Darren had the great idea of opening up the umbrella and turning it upside down to catch all the candy that was being thrown at us from the floats.  The kids on the float thought it was super fun to try and make a basket, so we ended up with quite a bit of candy!!

After the parade we headed back over to the high school for the pep rally followed by Nicole's first district volleyball match against Farmersville (which they won).  Then home for pizza dinner and a break. Nicole headed back over to the high school in the evening for the football game (DON'T ASK about details of the actual football game - this year we will have to revel more in the festivities of the day - and who selected that we play ARGYLE of all teams for Homecoming?)

What a super fun day.  And the whole time Kenny Chesney was visiting our neighboring town of Celina which he featured in one of his recent music videos.  He really should have used his time more wisely and spent the day in Prosper!