Say Eight

So Friday night Marsha said she wasn't feeling very good. She thought it might have been bad beans on the burrito she had for dinner. She took some Tums and went to bed. The next morning, she still felt lousy. Right after lunch the pain was increasing, so she decided she needed to get to the InstaCare (of course it was a Saturday.) She fully expected the InstaCare doctor to send her home for rest. Instead he noticed that her white blood cell count was elevated and she was running a fever (symptoms of some kind of infection.) That coupled with the pain made him send her over to the hospital for a CAT scan. The results weren't conclusive, but they suspected appendicitis.

From the CAT scan, we headed to the emergency room. The surgeon on call concurred with the other doctor that it was likely appendicitis. They recommended an appendectomy. Lauren had been watching Ryan and Joseph. We called Valerie (Marsha's sister) who immediately headed to our house to help out - including picking up pizza for the kids for dinner. While we were waiting for things to proceed, we called our home teacher. He happened to be home and available, so he made a quick trip to the hospital for a blessing.

At 7:15, Marsha was wheeled in to surgery. The surgery lasted for just under an hour. The surgeon came to find me in the waiting room and said, "That was one angry appendix! It wasn't ruptured, but it was all but." It's good we caught it when we did. There is now one fewer angry appendix in the world.

The first thing Marsha said when she came out of surgery was, "My belly button hurts." The next thing she said was, "I assume they took out my appendix because I feel a lot better."

Here is a picture of Marsha just before surgery. She gave me permission to post the picture and the post-surgery quotes.

Just before surgery

We did get in some good contextual Brian Regan lines at the hospital. ("Tell 'em you're shot!", "A two maybe the high ones", "Say eight!") We kicked around the hospital for a couple of hours and Marsha felt pretty good, so we headed home just after midnight.

Marsha is recovering well. Before the surgery was done, we had someone (visiting teacher) lined up to bring in dinner for today. We also had someone volunteer to take the kids tomorrow (holiday from school for them, but not from work for me.) We have since had people say they would bring us dinner for the next few days. Some friends stopped by with a loaf of fresh-baked homemade bread. Most of the ward knew about the surgery by the time church started today (9:00 AM.) The huge and immediate outpouring love and concern from caring friends and family is somewhat overwhelming. We really do have great friends and family.

Fun Gifts and Christmas Traditions

We had a really fun Christmas this year. We did most of our traditions that I have written about before.

We put together a gingerbread house:

Ryan's favorite part is smashing it on Christmas day

Joseph had a Grinch play for school. He was a Who from Whoville.

We had our traditional Eureka Christmas Eve dinner of crab salad and clam chowder
We went to look at the lights (the mansion and the dancing house were our favorite)
We did our nativity. Nobody cried or yelled, "No be konkey!" this year (first time in years.) Belle was a sheep.

We had our Christmas Eve treasure hunt. Ryan and Joe got Perry the Platypus PJs. Lauren got Mickey Mouse PJs and Mark got just PJs.

Santa came to our house

Lined up to check out the loot

Self-powered slot car race track for Joseph

Lego Millennium Falcon for Ryan

Melodica for Mark (see details below)

Cell phone for Lauren

For those of you who haven't heard of a melodica - it is a cross between a harmonica and an accordion. You blow into a mouthpiece and make notes by pressing the keys. For American Idol fans, Casey Abrams played one at the end of his audition. I recorded a brief clip of Mark playing the melodica.Click here to see the clip. The song he is playing is from the powerhouse harmonica video that Lauren posted on her blog a while back. Click here to see the blog. You may recognize the song from old Bugs Bunny or Tex Avery cartoons. Mark had no idea he was getting it. It was fun to watch him open it and try to figure out what it was.

Probably the funniest present was in my stocking. First a little background. For those of you who have not seen the Bad Lip Reading youtube clips, check them out on Lauren's blog here. The one that is relevant here is the one from Rick Perry. When he is meeting the fire fighters and shakes each one's hand, he says, "Tuna, Eggs, Doritos, Cheesecake, Tamales." As I pulled each item from my stocking, I found the following:

A little creativity was needed for the cheesecake (yogurt) and (hot) tamales, but it made me laugh.

Here is a picture of Ryan's completed Millennium Falcon. It is pretty cool.

The Sumpters came to visit before Christmas. We went to temple square to look at the lights and then to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. They came again after Christmas. We went to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum. We had a great time with them. We didn't take too many pictures, but here are a couple.

Mitchell with a present

Karen, Steve and Miranda

We celebrated New Year's with some friends and actually stayed up until midnight for the first time in a while.

We hope you all had a great Christmas and have a great 2012.