Anniversary

And Dan and I and mom and dad went out to celebrate my anniversary last Friday. I say "my anniversary" because in August of 2000 Dan and I moved here from Rapid City and I opened up my own court reporting business. Accurate Reporting, Inc., has been in business for ten years and I'm darn proud of that. Most small businesses fail within the first few years, and I made it. Thanks for helping me celebrate this milestone, mom and dad !!

Medical

It seems we've had our share of doctor visits lately. The kids were both scheduled to go to the dentist last week and this was Cora's first visit. She did awesome until the dentist in the "white coat" came in and she freaked out and jumped down from the chair into my arms. Guess that's it, doc ! From what the nice dental tech could see there were no cavities, but we'll find out for sure next time . . . if she lets the dentist see her teeth. Henry did really good too - they took him away to another dental tech and he sat in there like such a big man. I was so proud of him, even though he was really nervous, he went with Laura and didn't make a fuss. He had one cavity which involved a follow-up visit the next day, but the dentists have it down pat and they zip right through fixing up a cavity and we were done in no time.

Then Cora had been complaining about her "owie toe" on her left foot but would never let us see it or put a band-aid on it, so we figured it wasn't too serious. Then she accidentally walked through some salt water barefoot and screamed her head off when her little toe came in contact with the salt water. She finally let me look at her toe and it had a great big open hole that was oozing yellow stuff. Yeah, I know, gross !!!! So off to the doctor we go. The doctor honestly said it was "no big deal" even though I was convinced her toe was about to fall off from the infection. Our doctor is so cool her comment was, "Well, she has nine other toes, doesn't she?" Love you Dr. Ann !! And after three days on the "magic cream" from the doctor it's almost all healed up. Thank goodness.

Then me - I was feeling a little bit stronger than I actually am and decided to move a tree that had broken off in the storm across our backyard over to the garage where dan could chop it into pieces for disposal. Halfway across the yard I realized that I wasn't all that strong and the tree was way bigger than I thought it was - and I couldn't stand up straight. So off to the chiropractor for a few adjustments and a few days of laying on ice packs and I'm all better. Just in time, this week, to have a severe vertigo attack. Seriously, don't really need this. Room spinning, sick to my stomach, wobbly on my legs. Off to Urgent Care where they prescribe some really great medicine for the dizziness, but the side effect is drowsiness. Yeah, right, one pill and it's off to night-night land for Carin for about six hours. Thank you to Sarah and mom and dan for taking such good care of me. I'm good now. So I guess that means it's Dan's turn to visit the doc . . . . . . :-)

Dad

And the other big thing that happened lately is that Dad decided now would be a good time to have heart surgery. Okay, it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds, but it was still pretty serious. On Tuesday August 10th dad started having chest pains but because he's a Smith (we tend to dislike doctors) he ignored the issue until Thursday. Upon chatting with his doctor over the phone the doctor indicated that based on his symptoms it might be a good idea to check out the local hospital. Dad had a treadmill stress test on Friday and according to his doctor, he "failed miserably" Not just failed the stress test, but "failed miserably"

That afternoon he had an angiogram to see what was going on and the surgeon found an artery (the left descending maybe) that was almost completely blocked and "hanging on by a thread." However, the doctor wasn't as comfortable doing the surgery to correct said artery at the hospital we were at. So they loaded dad up into the ambulance and transferred him to the nationally recognized heart hospital in town and continued the angiogram and later surgery. He had only one stent put in but that opened up three other major arteries and will help his heart tremendously.

He was discharted late Saturday afternoon with very few restrictions, but he's now on a ton of medications. Mom and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what each one was for and how often he should be taking it, etc. And he has to go to cardiac rehab for about six weeks now, but otherwise, he's doing great.

The Good Lord was watching over us and put dad where he needed to be exactly when he needed to be there. The family, of course, wishes he wouldn't wait so long to address medical issues, but we're not going to change him at this point in his life. We were very fortunate and really appreciate all the cards and phone calls and facebook posts expressing care and concern for dad.

Even he admitted that he's heard many families at the time of their loved one's funeral say, "he was having indicators of heart problems, but we ignored them" and we are all thankful that dad decided not to ignore them and get up to the hospital when he did. We love you very much, dad !!

Misc.

I swore to myself that when I started this, I would do my best to keep it current. Well, it's been almost three weeks since I last posted anything, so obviously I'm not doing a very good job. There's also additional pressure here - Uncle Ed has made our blog a shortcut on his laptop and he checks it every day to see if there's anything new. Yikes !! The pressure !!! Just kidding, Uncle Ed - we love you .....


A lot has happened in the past few weeks, most noteably Todd and Vicki got engaged in Philadelphis on a short weekend trip and are planning a wedding in warm, sunny Dominican Republic - can't wait to celebrate with you guys. And school started back up again !! If I can get my pictures to upload, I will post some of Henry and Cora's first day.

We've ended up the summer with our last few trips to the pool, the movies, the play place, and Chuck-E-Cheese and are settling back into the routine of early bedtimes, homework (ugh) and early mornings (double ugh). Henry has stated that after one week of school, he's done and he doesn't need to go any more. Yeah, right, little buddy ! But Cora on the other hand loves her new room at Building Blocks. She's a "snail" now, which I find funny because I don't know any three-year-old that moves like a snail. A cheetah maybe, but not a snail. She is having fun playing with her friends she missed over the summer and being a "big three-year-old, mommy"

Cora's cuties

Lately when we put Cora to bed she's been looking at me and saying, "Good night, princess mommy"

And instead of saying "because" she says "a-cause" because "she likes A better than B"

And this past spring she called me on the phone and said, "Mom, I just saw a robber - Dad says that means spring is coming" I quickly figured out that robber actually meant robin.

Then when we were leaving daycare one day and had to take an alternate route because of road construction from the backseat I hear, "Way to go mom for finding a new way out of school."

Just a few cute stories !!

The day everything went right

Have you ever had one of those days when everything went wrong? I know I've had more than I care to remember. However, last year when Dan and I were traveling in Washington, DC for the Iowa Funeral Director's Association, I had a day where everything went right. It was so strange !!!

First, that morning I got to sleep in - which is rare with young children. Then I had a made-to-order breakfast that was free - still don't know why. I met Dan after his meeting and we headed out to do some shopping. Now the state convention for IFDA was coming up in about three weeks and Dan was going to be installed as president. As first lady, there's some pressure to look nice, and I hadn't yet found a dress I liked for the banquet night. The very first store we went into had a pink dress I fell in love with, Dan found the correct size right away, and it was on clearance for 60% off - I love discounts. As we were leaving the store we wandered by the shoe department and found the perfect pair of cream heels that looked great with the dress and as a bonus, I found a pair of black high heels for work that were marked down to $10 - yep, $10.

As we left the store, there was a street vendor (there's tons of them in the big cities) who had Kate Spade purses for sale. Now, I love her purses, but I'm not about to pay the huge price tag she gets for them. These bags however were excellent knock-offs and only $20 - of course I had to get two. Then a few blocks later we found a perfume vendor that still had two bottles of my favorite perfume that was discontinued a few years back and I haven't been able to reorder it anywhere - and the price was reasonable too.

By this time Dan and I are joking that we need to buy a lottery ticket because we can't believe things are going this well for us. We stop in a cute little jewelry store and - you guessed it - find the jewelry that matches the new dress perfectly.

To top the evening off, we went to one of my favorite Brazilian restaurants with about 25 of our friends and had a delicious meal. How could the day get any better than that? So whenever I'm having one of those "Everything is going wrong today" days, I always try to remember my day when everything went right :-)

Winter

Okay, so we're all complaining about how hot this summer is, but if you will recall -we were all complaining about how cold this past winter was too. I guess talking about the weather (or complaining about it) is an Iowa pasttime. Although, whenever I talk to my family in Arizona, they have to tell me about how awesome the weather is down there. Of course, they are originally from Iowa. Maybe it's a Midwesterner thing ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

The Sioux City Journal ran this article this past February and I've been saving it to share with you. Multiple Choice: Which city has received the most snow this winter? A. International Falls, Minnesota; B. Barrow, Alaska; C. Grand Forks, North Dakota; or D. Sioux City, Iowa?

Yep, you guessed it - D. Sioux City, Iowa. As of Groundhogs Day in February we had received over 49.5 inches of snow. I don't know what the grand total was for the winter, but that's pretty impressive.

I guess we could use some of that cold winter weather about now when we're all struggling with the heat and working our air conditioners overtime. Oh, well . . . . .