Saturday, September 22, 2007

Learn anywhere

What do you don while spending 2 - 3 hours in the ER when you are there as the support person? Read Magazines!!
Here's some good stuff I learned:
new online recipe posting, blog or email system: smilebox.com/familyfun
(See my test below)
new website by Disney: family.com full of resources, ideas, recipes etc.
24 hour preschool online: sproutonline.com
Teddy grahams now come in Oatmeal flavor!
goodhousekeeping.com is the new online version of the magazine. checkout the Soup diet and all the interesting recipe related blogs and 30 minute organizing site.
There is a new kind of rechargeable battery called Eneloop by Sanyo - good for tons more photos on your camera.
interesting website: duringdinner.com with stories of families who try to make dinner time a great place to be for families - conversation etc.
In Good Housekeeping magazine I read a great story about an Ethiopian man who endeavors to provide books and libraries for children in Ethiopia -- very inspiring and touching.
Down time can be enriching!

testing Smilebox.com online personal recipe book

Modern Recipe
Powered by Smilebox
Click to play | Make your own Smilebox

Clyde's Trials

We had a busy week - Tuesday Temple, Wed a shower and a ward party, Thursday the BYU Spectacular.
Wed evening I waited for Clyde to return from his night class before I left for the baby shower and he was to attend the ward party. At 6:50 pm he walks in and tells me his lower back really hurts and he thinks he has another kidney stone!
He has had two before, usually the pain begins in the middle of the night and we end up at the ER getting pain shots by IV. This time, he took some pain relievers he had left over from gall bladder surgery last summer. I went to the shower in Cedar Hills for Jill Jackson Smith. At 8:15 he called and said he had talked to his doctor and he told him to take more pain relievers. 7 minutes later Clyde calls and wants to go to Urgent care. I was 25 minutes away! Clyde called Tom Draper, who kindly took him to a nearby urgent care and I met Clyde there. Two pain shots later, he was home and in bed by 10 pm. We were hoping for pain relief through the night. It was kind of a rough night with Clyde getting up a lot since he had been drinking so much water and the pain was back about 4 pm. More pain pills and about 6 am Clyde passed a very small stone.
He feels ok to go teach his Thursday 8 am class, came home for a three hour nap, and then back to teach a 3 pm class. Kind of achy still in the back, handled by Advil. We met Grant and Mary for dinner and the BYU spectacular and got home at 10 pm. Friday Clyde had more back pan in the am so he took the heavy duty pain pills - found out his urologist is out of the office for a month! Friday was a really bad day, pain and such. He did not eat much and spent the evening nauseated -- got to sleep about 2:30 am.
Saturday the back pain is getting sharp again so it seems another kidney stone is present. We finally went to the ER since we knew we would get blood and urine tests and probably a CT scan. The general doctor on Friday was booked and only offered to call in more pan pills! After 2 1/2 hours, we learned that Clyde still had a kidney stone about 2mm in size and about to pass to the bladder, and on. We are Still waiting for it to pass -- still drinking tons of water, still taking Advil and not too much of the heavy duty pain pills. Got to watch the BYU game at home on the TV -- this was ok because it RAINED! Looking forward to going to bed early tonight, hoping the stone will pass soon and this trial will be over!!! One thing we learned at the ER: the Advil bottle says no more than six pills in 24 hours, but in the hospital they regularly prescribe 16 pills ( 4 every 4 hours) over a 24 hour period. Good to know for severe pain.


Friday, September 21, 2007

Week of dinners

Last week was a week of dinner parties - hosted by me! Monday Sept 10 we held a Salmon Bake at our home/ back yard for some of Clyde's colleagues and their children. Clyde was really worried about the children, but we put out the bean bag toss game and some balls and they entertained each other really well. A spouse of one of the professors had brought back 70 pounds of alaskan salmon and they wanted to share and party. Clyde offered our house and my cooking skills to bake some salmon. Someone brought some ready for the grill l(Lime cilantro marinade), one person fried salmon with flour and lemon juice, and I baked two types. I used Emily's honey dijon recipe under the broiler, and found another marinade using maple syrup, soy sauce and garlic. They both were big hits. We ended the night with the best yet fresh peach ice cream. Clyde added lots more peaches and more cream, less milk. One person at the party could not believe how good it tasted and said their homemade peach ice cream was not good at all. She told me they used skim milk! Good ice cream is all about the butterfat!
Thursday night was the Grad Studies dinner for 1000 students and I am the one in charge. We had 1106 RSVP, but we always reduce our dinner count from past experience -- but it still a worry that we will feed all who come. My day started at 6 am, picking up the ticket raffle drum and then setting up the info fair with 29 booths for the 300+ students who would come through. My new student worker said he had never seen anyone so calm for being over such a big event! The dinner went well and we only had 39 empty seats! Whew! I was home by 8:39 pm and in my pj's before 9! Very tiring day, but very successful.
On Sunday we hosted Cousins Dinner for 11 or 12. Roast beef, peas, mashed potatoes, Rhodes rolls, garden tomatoes and double chocolate bundt cake for dessert. All standard fare but so appreciated by the college crowd. We had a few new faces: Caitlin Earnest (new freshman from Washington state), Nathan (Jill's son) and Cisco (Michelle's boyfriend). Next month we hope to have Dean Duke's son also. I was quite exhausted most days of last week.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

What got into me?

Today I went to the grocery store. We didn't need a lot, but are hosting a salmon bake on Monday and making Clyde's famous fresh peach ice cream. Today I seemed to purchase a bunch of new products! I'm usually not looking for new stuff, but a lot of new items seemed to catch my eye today. Here's the list:
  • Barilla "Plus" pasta, which boasts 17 grams protein per 1 cup dry pasta. It is made from whole grains
  • Kellogg's All-Bran crackers - multi grain 20% daily fiber in one serving!
  • Two containers of gourmet rice pudding from Pudding on the Rice restaurant - Raspberry and Ebony / Ivory flavors. Michelle keeps telling me to go there, but when I saw these I thought this would be an easy way to try it out.
  • Two packages of Stacks of Cookies from the store entry - freshly made Peanut and Double chocolate -- for our party on Monday?
  • 1 bottle of Dassani water Plus, with Vitamin E and zinc --maybe for Michelle since she has cold symptoms
  • Zatarin's Tuna Cake mix, ( add two cans tuna and mayo and water). I have been making tuna patties for dinner sometimes when it is just the two of us.
  • Box of instant sweet mashed potatoes -- could this taste anywhere near the real thing?
  • 1 jar Smart Balance chunky natural peanut butter with 1000 mg of Omega-3
And one new item I bought a few weeks ago that I now love - Triscuits crackers: Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil seasoning. Tastes great with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese. Low fat but yummy. Wish me luck on the Salmon Bake. I plan to use Emily's Honey Dijon recipe, and a very highly rated Maple/soy sauce/garlic one I found on allrecipes.com.

32 years!







We went on a fun trip to Star Valley Wyoming and Jackson Hole Wyoming for a few days in late August. Our friends David and Kathryn invited us to their newly purchased 30 yr old cabin on a golf course in a very beautiful part of Star Valley. It was so peaceful and we saw a truy gorgeous sunset reflected on a small pond, as well as deer on the course. The next day we woke to fog and it was really cool to see it rising and burn off teh golf course. We drove to Jackson Hole that day and made a point of returning to a photo spot at the Jackson Hole ski resort where we had our picture taken 32 years ago that very same week after I had accepted Clyde's proposal of marriage. We took another photo and I'll post it here, if I can figure it out. We really wanted to go see Jenny Lake, where we had had our encounter with a moose at night 32 years ago, but the park wanted to charge us $25 and we only had 15 minutes before we had to return to our Cowboy chuckwagon Dinner and show. It was so fun to see the Tetons again!