Project: Apartment Beautification

Thomas and I have been decorating our new apartment--finally!!! Here is a little taste of what we've been up to:

The Living Room

Our Beautiful brown curtains we got on sale! woo!!

We are both pretty proud of this "s". We worked on it together. Precious, I know. We just bought a canvas and covered it with fabric and hot glued blue buttons in the shape of an "s". It is even our wedding colors!!!

This is one of our favorite paintings of Christ. It is "O Jerusalem" by Greg Olsen. It was so expensive everywhere we looked, but we ended up getting a pretty good deal on it! 

This is our big wedding picture that is in the middle of the array of pictures shown below.

My friend Katie gave us that awesome "all because two people fell in love" sign thingy and it is just perfect! Usually people put pictures of their kids under that saying, but we are sticking with the fact that all because two people fell in love, they got married. It works, right?

THE HALL

Our cute little marriage certificate from the temple. 

Everyone has to have a Proclamation somewhere in the home, so here is ours! I really like the frame for it and it was only 3 bucks! We got all of our frames from DI or Savers. It saved us a TON of money seeing as all our frames ranged from 3-5 dollars instead of 15-20. 

This is our pre-marriage frame. All the pictures are from our dating days. There are three little reminders in there of when our anniversaries are of when we got engaged, our first date, and when we officially started dating. Tomorrow is 1 whole year from the day we officially started dating AND its a holiday. Ain't that convenient?

This was Thomas' project. I handed him the pictures and the ticky tack and he placed them. It is fun to have a collage of our favorite scripture stories and pictures of Christ. It is a good reminder to look to Christ. This collage is right next to a mirror so it also reminds us to have His image in our countenance. I think he did a great job!

BED AND BATH

These are our new curtains for our bedroom! They have random birds that are green and blue(wedding colors!) all over them. We got them at Lowe's with a gift card. The crazy thing is that they were with the curtains for little kids. We weren't super fond of any of the adult curtains though. They were boring. We love these though! I guess we have a childish style?

This picture was given to me by my brother, Adam when I was a teenager. I have always liked it and wanted it somewhere in our apartment. We decided to put it in the bathroom because sometimes when you are sitting there it is a real uncomfortable struggle to let things pass, but this reminds us that it eventually will!! Fitting, right? My mom suggested we get wall words for our bathroom that say, "Do your duty with a heart full of song." Get it?? My grandmother had the New Era picture of Christ that said "You are never alone" in her bathroom. It was always a little weird to go to the bathroom in there. I guess our family is full of church related potty humor.

Welp! That's the tour of our decorations. We would love for you to come see them in person sometime!

Brain Gym

So last night at work we had a training on Brain Gym. It was very interesting. First, we discussed how the body responds to different language. The lady had someone stand at the front of the room with their arm at a 45 degree angle and match her pressure. The volunteer said "yes yes yes" and could hold strong, but when he said "no no no" he couldn't hold his arm up. The lady directing the training said that our brain shuts down when we hear negative. She continued the demonstration with having him say " I will try" versus " I will do my best." When we tell ourselves we will try, we are still leaving room for failure and the negative takes over our brain because its easier. She also had him say "I have to" versus "I choose to". This was very interesting to me. I already know that in the classroom we are to praise and focus on what they do right more than anything else, but the word choice we use also makes a huge difference.   

We also learned all about the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. We talked about what happens when you undergo stress and how one of your hemispheres shuts off. This is what often happens when students are test taking. They cannot access the information they know because they can't cross over into that hemisphere. This is true for many students with dyslexia on a day to day basis. They have a processing disorder. Brain gym is a lot of different exercises that help students to get ready for learning or testing. Most of them have you cross the center of your body so that you activate both hemispheres. Studies have shown remarkable improvement by using these exercises with students. One boy took a spelling test of 10 words and only got 2 right the first time. The teacher had him do 10 minutes of brain gym (no studying or reviewing) and then he took the same test again and got 9 right! Amazing! The exercises also help you to relax when you are stressed. When the body is stressed, it locks up and is unable to perform at full capacity.

One really BIG thing she stressed is staying hydrated. When you are dehydrated, your brain can only perform at 64% capacity. If you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated! So drink water before and during classes and tests!!!!!

The most interesting thing for me is that I have a student that is very behind. He is 17 and his reading level is probably around 3rd or 4th grade. After the training, I had him draw figure 8's on a white board for me( one of the exercises we learned), and he could not do it. It had the hardest time crossing over. This tells me that he struggles to access information from both hemispheres. If we can work on these brain gym exercises and using both sides of the brain, I think he will improve a lot. Plus, its kinda fun to just do a few exercises in the middle of your class. It was an interesting training and I am converted to most of it. Some of it was a little too out there for me.

Back To School!

Monday was Thomas' first day back to school! He wasn't excited about taking the picture, but he did enjoy his first day. He has good professors and lots of friends in his classes! It is really weird not going back to school with him. There are a lot of changes that we are both trying to get used to.

Thomas usually leaves for school around 7:30 and gets back from campus around 3:30 or 4. I work from 3:30-8 so we miss each other almost every day. He is also volunteering as a Spanish interpreter at the hospital and for Friends for Sight, a non-profit organization that does vision screenings for the community. This is a HUGE change from us being together 24/7. I miss my baby!!!! He has been doing awesome at staying on campus and studying though and I am really proud of him. :)

We are slowly acclimating to this whole school life. I often run out of things to clean and organize during the day. I have to come up with lesson plans for work so that takes up some time, but not all of it. I often feel like a lazy bum. I was going to get a second job but it would have been full time and Thomas doesn't want me working that much. I wanted to get a cheap sewing machine to play around on and to have something to do during the day, but that will have to wait for a while. We have more important things to get!

Last weekend was our open house and it was a lot of fun! So much fun that this week has been a drag in comparison. I wish we were back in California hanging out with Mike, Erin, and the girls. We had a lot of fun swimming, dancing, and playing with them! I can't wait til Christmas when we get to be with the Seymour family again! It has been fun getting to know the amazing individuals that lie within my new family!

That's just sick!

I have gastroparesis. This means that my stomach empties slower than the average human. Because of this, the food I eat is unable to be digested and consequently comes right back up. For 8 years I have been sick on and off with the “on’s” lasting anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 months. My schooling suffered as I had to drop several classes and had to drop out of 2 semesters entirely because I became too weak to attend classes. During a two week period, I tallied the number of times I threw up each day as assigned by my doctor and it amounted to 18-26 times a day. I was very weak both physically and emotionally. I have had many break downs and times of depression when I just wanted it to all be over. I wanted to be healthy again and it felt like the only way that could be possible was to die. I struggled for years with doctors, friends, family, church leaders, and what felt like everyone in the world doubting me and feeling as though this was a hoax so that I could receive attention. Doctors ran test after test to no avail. Each time before a test I would hope and pray that this was the answer--that I would finally have a diagnosis and be able to move on with my life. I came to a point where I wished for any disease. I didn’t care if it was cancer. I wanted an answer. 

Fast forward through those terrible 8 years and I married my best friend, my number one supporter-Thomas. Someone that believed me and didn’t think I was a crazed maniac looking for attention by making myself throw up. Don’t worry, that’s not the only reason I married him! ;) He believed me and so did his family. We went on a celebratory hike up Rock Canyon on our two week wedding anniversary. On the way down I started throwing up. My heart sunk and I knew this one was going to be bad. I knew. I just knew this one would break me. I worried he would change his mind and back out of this marriage. I was wrong, thank goodness. He took care of me even though I didn’t let him do much at first due to my stubborn nature. It got to the point where once again, my school work suffered. I was to graduate in December, but I had to drop out. Unfortunately, the classes I need are only offered in the summer. My final semesters and I get sick AGAIN and have to give up my life-long dream for another year A few weeks into the sickness, we went to visit some of his family in St. George. While there I was thoroughly embarrassed as I had to slip away to the bathroom frequently to throw up. Over the years, I became a pro at putting on a brave face and pretending all was well but this time it got too hard to put up the façade.  The last night there it got so bad that I was in tears and would not face my new family in such a humiliating state. I stayed in the room and just laid in agonizing pain and humiliation while he sat right next to me and wiped away my tears.

The next morning his brother-in-law, Tyson mentioned he knew a girl that had similar symptoms and was diagnosed with gastroparesis. She got something called a gastric pacemaker and it helped her a lot. Through all the testing and the many diagnoses that never really stuck, I remember a doctor mentioning I may have a case of gastroparesis. They tried the medication to treat it and it didn’t help so the diagnosis was thrown out and diagnosis of faking for attention came back. The entire four hour trip back to Provo all I could think about was that pacemaker and how badly I wanted it. Thomas and I did research on gastroparesis and the pacemaker when we got back. As Thomas says, if you google anything related to the gastric pacemaker on his computer, all the links will show up red, indicating we have already looked at that link. After many many doctor trips, a third endoscopy, a gastric emptying test, and a lot of phone calls, we found a doctor in Salt Lake that had worked with pacemakers who referred us to a doctor in Vegas who could actually perform the surgery. Blessings! Finally it felt like we had an answer. Don’t get me wrong, I had a LOT of doubt. If it weren’t for Thomas, I would have given up.

As we continued to attend the temple regularly, pray consistently, and read our scriptures daily, everything began to line up. The doctor was able to get us in early, she agreed I needed the pacemaker, SHE BELIEVED ME!, the insurance approved the procedure, and we got in for the procedure with perfect timing. I have really struggled with the concept of hope. It seemed to me that if I thought the worse would happen, I wouldn’t be so disappointed when things didn’t work out. That’s how I went about life- thinking the worst would happen. Thomas brought a whole new light to hope for me. He taught me that it feels better to hope and that you have hope that things will work out in the end even if its not the way you envision it. I had days when I was sure everything would work out and I had nights where I would break down and wish I could just die because no one would ever know what was wrong with me or how to help me, the insurance would never approve the procedure, it was too expensive, I was too expensive and he needed to find a better wife, and on and on. Some nights got so bad that I became suicidal and Thomas had to hold me to keep me from hurting myself. (I guess the people who said I was crazy weren’t too far off! J) It was a nightmare made reality. 

Luckily my days of hopefulness began to outnumber my days of dark, depressing thoughts. The insurance was supposed to take around 2 weeks to approve the procedure. It had been two weeks and no phone call back. I prayed all day and all night. I had dreams of Thomas’ phone ringing and it being the doctor saying to come in the next day. Then I started worrying about what we would do if we couldn’t get the procedure until September, which would mean Thomas was in school. We couldn’t do the procedure in August because my brother is getting married the first week and we have our open house the third week. No time to recover. I started thinking of how I could make the trek to Vegas on my own for the surgery while Thomas was in school. Letting him miss was not an option. I had hurt him in too many ways, held him back while he took care of his sick wife. I wouldn't let him miss school. I decided I would drive myself and sleep in my car until the pain killers wore off after the surgery to where I was alert and attentive enough to drive back home. Thomas hated the plan, but I thought it was the only way. I couldn’t stay in a hotel, it was way too expensive! And I have no family here and my friends would all be tied up in school just like Thomas. Well, Thomas decided to call the doctor’s office and find out if they had heard from the insurance. This was Thursday.

They hadn’t heard anything, but they would call the next day. Oh and by the way, someone was scheduled for the same surgery on Monday, but "just happened" to cancel last minute. Friday came after a sleepless night of anxious waiting. The phone FINALLY rang and my heart pounded as I awaited the news. I looked to Thomas’ face for any sign of what kind of news this would be. SUCCESS! The insurance approved the procedure and I was scheduled to have the surgery on Monday! Talk about a miracle! 

I have to admit, even in the last hours before the procedure I had moments of doubt. We arrived to the hospital at 9am and by 2pm we were still waiting to have the procedure. I laid there in that ridiculously revealing hospital gown telling myself they had forgotten about me, that Dr. Barber had fallen asleep after another surgery and would have to postpone this on account of being too tired to operate, that the insurance backed out, and millions of other thoughts of why things didn’t work out. But they did. The Lord always comes through and I know He was watching out for me and he still is. I will be forever grateful to Him and to Thomas and both his and my family. Laura and Tyson were a big help in finding doctors and having a place to stay so we didn't have to drive the whole 6 hours to Vegas in one shot. Thomas is my hero. He is the reason I am alive today. He helped me through my hardest times and has stayed by my side through everything. We have only been married 3 months, but he is my entire life and I am so blessed to know him, let alone spend eternity with him. He is the most amazing man I have ever met. I am so lucky to have him and I will do everything in my power to keep him and keep him happy!

Since the surgery one week ago, I have only thrown up twice. As I walk around our apartment, physical evidence remains of the days and nights of endless puking agonizing pain and doubt that things would ever change. The ring of mold around the toilet from throw up that had splashed, the misplaced chair near the bathroom because I sometimes became too weak to stand after another episode of  throwing up, the juice boxes in the freezer and fridge because drinking water brought on more violent puking than any liquid or solid combined, the air mattress in the living room because I was in so much pain that I couldn’t sleep unless I was distracted by a movie, the medical bills scattered on the kitchen counter, the piles of clothes because I was too weak to do laundry, the bare apartment walls because I had no energy to decorate our new apartment. Gradually these things will fade. I will re-gain my strength and clean the bathroom, do the laundry, pay the bills,and decorate the house. But the memories. The memories. Those will never fade.