She's been taking some time to stop and smell the roses!

Caught on Camera

I captured Isabella on camera in the middle of a huge laugh-fest!

The Joys of Home Ownership

Really, I do love owning a house, the good things definitely outweigh the bad. We haven't had anything major, just little things here and there. With that being said, our plumbing issues the other night were a little more than we bargained for. The next day as I was scrubbing the floor in the main bathroom, I noticed a ridge or buckling of the tiles. When I pressed down on the floor I could hear water squishing around all under the tiles! I knew immediately that was going to be a problem. If something wasn't done soon, it most definitely would have turned to mold, which in turn would be an even bigger problem. Monte's mom, upon hearing of our troubles, immediately called Monte's brother-in-law, without our knowing. His brother-in-law is quite the handy man, he works on remodeling projects and home improvement projects as a hobby. He came to lay carpet in Isabella's room over the summer, and he saved us tons of money when we moved into our house almost three years ago to the day, by laying flooring and doing other updates. So anyway, he called on Friday night, told us to go buy some flooring on Saturday, and he would be here on Sunday and go home Monday! He brought our nephew along, so that was a sweet treat, and Isabella had a blast with him! They live four hours away, we are SO grateful to him for traveling all that way to help us out. At first we were disappointed about having to get new flooring, since what was there was only 3 years old, and we didn't want to spend the money, but in the end we like the new floor even better. AND, since we were going to the trouble, we replaced the closet door in the bathroom as well, since the old one hasn't worked in about a year! I also totally cleaned out the big closet in there, cleaned out all the other cupboards and drawers, washed the curtains, washed the walls, got new wood trim since the old was starting to rot a little, and did a very minor update by getting new handles for the drawers and cupboards. So it might not look like a huge difference, but to us, it is!

Before

In between

After

A Big Step

We converted Isabella's

crib into a toddler bed on Saturday. I was a little apprehensive about it, but it's gone very good so far. I put her to bed at 8:00 on Saturday, and I could still hear her talking at 9:30, usually she goes right to sleep. So I went in and asked her if she wanted me to stay with her until she fell asleep, which she of course wanted. It was a sweet treat for me, especially since I had just heard this song for the first time that night. I put pillows on the floor, and at about midnight I heard her cry out for a second. When I went in about 5 minutes later to see if she had fallen out, she was just standing in the middle of the floor holding her head. But that has been the only time she has fallen out so far. And just as Monte and I predicted, she absolutely will NOT get out of bed once we put her in there either at night or for her naps. When she wakes up either he or I go in and tell her it's okay for her to get out of bed! So at least we don't have to worry about her constantly getting out of bed. Overall, I think she likes it, she really likes climbing up into bed and "reading" books throughout the day.

A little too soon to be talking about this

The other day I watched my friend's two youngest kids for her. The three year old had a blast playing at our house, and did NOT want to leave when his mom came to pick him up. Yesterday my friend told me that her little boy was asking who all was going to be at Bible Study. She responded that Isabella was going to be there. His response, "Oh good, Isabella's my girlfriend." I later told Isabella that he had said that, and she responded, "No, I not his girlfriend, I Weston's (another little boy we know) girlfrend!" Yikes, all this two year old drama, I don't know if I'm ready for it! :)

Nothing can ruin this day!

Things have threatened to ruin this day, but nothing can ruin it. When Isabella and I got home from Bible Study this morning there was a message to call the Drs. office. With my heart pounding I called to see if they would give me the results since Monte wasn't home. And sure enough they had the biopsy results. I believe her words were, "It's nothing bad, nothing more than you already know, no cancer." The only thing that showed up was a confirmation of the diagnosis of Crohn's Disease. Phew! Talk about a load off of my mind (I say my mind because Monte told me later that he wasn't too worried about it . . . okay, whatever, leave the worrying to the woman :) ) Also, Monte felt GREAT today, yes great!! Day 2 of the steroids and he actually has energy, no pain, and a crazy appetite. I knew he was bad, but I guess I didn't realize just how bad he has been these last months until now that I see him feeling good! The doctor wants him off of the steroids by March, so we'll cross that road when we get to it, but for now, for today, he felt great. So that's how we'll take it, one day at a time.

So besides having a horrendous headache tonight, something really weird happened today. I was washing a load of clothes, when all of the sudden one of our toilets just randomly overflows. Then the other toilet starts bubbling and making all sorts of weird noises. THEN the bathtub and the kitchen sink started filling up with water! Our house started smelling like sewer too. Monte discovered that two vents on the roof were clogged with ice, which after calling the experts (his dad and my dad) we thought was probably the reason. So we spent two hours pouring hot water down the vents, which helped the kitchen sink but nothing else. We could not get a hold of any plumbers until about 5:00 this evening. They worked for two hours. The problem was that our pipes were clogged with tree roots, how crazy is that?! So we spent the majority of our afternoon and evening dealing with plumbing issues, but that's okay because nothing can ruin this day!

Update

Just a quick update - everything went about as we expected yesterday. The doctor came and talked to us while Monte was in recovery (he was put under for a while). He told us things do not look good, and according to the report sent home with us, the ENTIRE large intestine is "severely inflamed, scarred, ulcerated, and diseased". They also took biopsies, which is quite concerning, that could open up a whole other scary subject that I don't even want to think about right now. So Monte is now on 3 different drugs which are not good long term. One of them is high doses of steroids. The hope is that these drugs will help to get things under control for right now, then we go back two weeks from today to consult with the doctor about long term plans. We are also waiting for news on the biopsies. It's been an emotional, difficult time, your prayers are greatly appreciated.