Where's Maldo?

Do any of you guys recognize this guy? This is a picture of the new bishop of our ward. Do any of you have a bishop that looks like this?! You can add this picture to the collection of Greg's bad pictures this week.

Our youth group at church played a fun little game tonight called Where's Maldo?. They asked some of the people in the ward to dress up in disguise and then walk around the mall (not in the stores themselves) and blend in. The kids then had to search around the mall to find all the people on their list. They had to approach each person and state who they were. In return they were given a sticker to verify that they had found that person.

Greg chose the urban cowboy look. His wonderful, full head of hair is actually the hood of a halloween costume I made for Adam a few years ago. It is a wolf costume. He just taped down the ears, and kind of pulled it together in the back to make a ponytail. He pulled out a little of the faux fur and stuck it on with a glue stick to make the nice little whiskers under his lip. I bought the hat at Goodwill and some cheap glasses at Wal-mart. Then I used some mascara to darken up his goatee area. The look was completed with a grungy t-shirt and a longer pair of cut off jean shorts. The kids and I went to the mall just to see everyone dressed up and to see their reactions to Greg. We of course did not walk around with him, but it was fun to see the others in our ward dressed up too. It did make for another scary picture of Greg though. What do you think? 

Adam's new skill

Greg has been working with Adam the last couple of weeks teaching him to ride a bike. Just yesterday he finally got to where he can start himself and stop himself. He still has a little trouble steering and stopping (he has crashed several times into our light pole and Greg's car which is sometimes parked on the street), but I think he has finally gotten it. It has taken a little while and many, many crashes. As a mother it was hard to watch him, especially at first. He would really bang himself up sometimes and just cry and want to quit. He has perservered though, and I think it is safe to say that he can now officially ride a two wheeler. We are so proud of Adam and what a hard worker he is. This seems to have brought him new freedom and an increased desire to be outside. It's great!Here he is rounding around our cul-de-sac. At least he didn't wait 'til he was on a mission to learn, like some people I know:) It makes you want to go out and ride a bike doesn't it? 

Bad picture day

Okay, so Tammy made me feel guilty enough to finally sit down and do this! What's been going on in my life ...

About a month ago I had a sleep study done. A simple explanation of a sleep study is where you go to a sleep center, they hook a hundred wires to your body, jam a tube in your nose, strap a microphone to your throat, turn on a video camera, and tell you to go to sleep. If you're lucky enough to actually fall asleep in that environment, then they monitor you as you sleep. They track eye movement, knee jerks, teeth grinding, breathing, heart rate, oxygen levels, snoring, and so on.

The results came back a couple of weeks ago and it turns out that I have severe sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is essentially when you stop breathing while you're sleeping. It's typically caused by throat muscles relaxing as you enter deep sleep to the point that your airway is closed off. Your body has to wake itself up in order to start breathing again and so you never really enter deep sleep and never get as good of rest as you should.

It's pretty common to have some apnea's when you're sleeping. I think they said that they don't worry much if you have 10 or fewer in an hour. During my study, I averaged almost 60 an hour. The average length of time that I wasn't breathing was 23 seconds per apnea. So if you do the math, I'm only breathing less than 2/3 of the time that I'm sleeping. One apnea lasted 48 seconds and my blood oxygen level dropped to 80%. Kind of scary to think about!

So, to treat sleep apnea, there is a machine called a CPAP that pumps air into your nose all night long. The constant air pressure holds your throat open so that you can achieve a deeper sleep. Problem is, having a machine pump air into your nose isn't all that fun and not so conducive to sleep.

CPAP machines only work on some patients so I had to go back last night for a second study wearing a CPAP mask. It was a LONG night. Not only was I totally uncomfortable, but every time I did finally fall asleep, the nurse would come in and have to wake me up to fix something (a wire falling off or whatever). It was an awful night! If I opened my mouth on accident, my lungs would collapse from the loss of air pressure and a breeze would start blowing from my nose down my throat and out my mouth. They say you get used to the machine after a while and a lot of people that I've talked to that use them absolutely love them. They say this discomfort of wearing the mask is far outweighed by the benefits of getting better rest. We shall see!

So, here's the first bad picture of me for the day. This is me all rigged up with the CPAP jammed up my nose.


Enough of the bad news. Here's some very nice news, but an equally bad picture. For Father's Day and my birthday, my good wife bought me a brand new Lazy Boy recliner. She's of course in big trouble for spending way too much, but I love it! It is soooooo comfortable - I would sit there all day if I could! She had it sitting in the driveway and blindfolded me to go out to find it. I wondered if I was getting a new car when we went outside. Here's the picture...


Aside from that, my life ticks along at a hundred miles an hour getting pulled in every direction. But all-in-all I'm happy and am looking forward to getting a good night's rest tonight before I have to start wearing that machine every night!

Boring old me

I thought I should post since I haven't posted in a long while. Part of the reason that I haven't posted is that I am so boring. Nothing out of the ordinary happens much. I do have lots and lots of the same old, same old. Greg on the other hand has lots of things happen to him, but he doesn't have time to post about them. If you didn't know, he had his birthday last week. He turned 32. He has had a couple of sleep studies done recently. He continues to help people as the bishop. He got some really cool presents for his birthday and father's day. I don't want to tell too much because I keep thinking he will blog about it one of these days, and I don't want to steal his thunder, although, he would probably say he would LOVE if I would do it for him.

Anyway, I am looking for some parenting advice. My kids have been fighting a lot lately. It seems our home is often filled with screams and shrieks these days. There is also a lot of she did this and he did that going on. It has been my experience thus far that usually that means one or more of them is in need of more personal attention from me or Greg. It continues to be very difficult to find one on one time with each child, though. How do you do it? Lizzy is particularly struggling. She always feels like she is put off and ends up screaming at me to get her things and do things for her. My unforunate response to this is that it makes me want to be around her even less. My head aches from all the screaming! I have this book that I have been intending to read, called "Siblings without Rivalry", but I haven't gotten to it yet. I am up for any suggestions. I know family life can be more pleasant than this.

One quick story about Ben. He is becoming quite independent these days, not all in good ways. He pretty much helps himself with whatever he can, whether I want him to or not. It is not uncommon for me to find him rummaging through the pantry with an open box of crackers at his feet. Anyway, we went to the grocery store the other day. Our store has those little carts that are like little cars where the kids sit up front and down low, like they are driving. The only bad thing is that Ben usually screams and pushes out all the other kids. So we were in the checkout aisle putting our food on the conveyor. Ben was down in the truck cab and the other kids were helping me load everything on. I leaned over to get something out of the cart and I heard Ben say, "Mmmmm". I looked down in there and he had swiped a candy bar off the shelf (it was Baby Ruth if you want to know) and managed to open the thing and had started to chow down. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. I just took the wrapper and put it on the conveyor empty so we could pay for it. The other kids of course got candy as well. The checker, and I. got quite a kick out of that. Ben continued to "mmmmmmmmmm" his way through the whole thing, peanuts and all.

Well, sorry I am so boring. If you are not asleep yet, feel free to make a comment. Oh another side note. I listened to the "Thief Lord" on tape. I really enjoyed that. I think some of you have read the book. Anyway, ciao. Boring people rock!!

KANSAS!!!

I was recently assigned to work on a new project at work. The sponsors of the project are located at John Deere's marketing office in Lenexa, Kansas. I found out a week and a half ago that I would be traveling to spend a week in Lenexa working with the project sponsors. Since Lenexa is only about 30 minutes from my hometown where my brother and sister and grandmother (and various other relatives) still live, we decided that Tammy and the kids should travel with me. So, we spent Tuesday through Saturday last week in Kansas and had a great time! During the daytime, I worked in the office while Tammy and the kids played, then in the evenings we traveled to visit family.

My brother and sister, Jeff and Sandee, live next door to one another. Tuesday evening we traveled to their homes for a barbecue. Jeff and Sandee each have four children so together with our four there were 12 little ones (ages 10, 9, 7, 7, 7, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3, 2, 1). It was quite a party! We didn't get back to the hotel until after 10 p.m. so everyone was a little fried the next day.

Wednesday we ended up staying at the hotel to get the kids to bed at a normal hour - otherwise we would not have survived the week. The hotel we were staying at (company paid) was very fancy - one of those you feel uncomfortable having kids at. Also one of those where they take as much money from you as they can knowing your company is paying for it ($7 for 30 minute internet access, $5 per min phone usage, $30 breakfast, and so on). We did venture out of our room Wednesday evening to try out the pool. Other than Lizzy nearly drowning, that was an enjoyable time.

Thursday during the day, Tammy and the kids went to Science City (a hands-on kids science museum in Kansas City) and Kaleidoscope (a kids art gallery sponsored by Hallmark where they do some simple art projects). Thursday evening we spent the evening with my Grandmother visiting and playing games. Adam now believes he is the world champion Skip-bo player.

Friday I wrapped up work around noon. The rest of my project team was traveling that afternoon back to the Quad-cities, so I took off to spend time with family. We, along with the 12 kids and their moms, headed to the zoo. It was a very hot day (95 deg plus high humidity) but we survived and had a fun time. Friday evening was spent back at Jeff and Sandee's houses. We also moved to a cheaper hotel with free breakfast, free internet, and free phone calls since the company was no longer paying.

Saturday was a very enjoyable morning. We took Grandma out to the community where I grew up and where my dad grew up and where Grandma grew up and where her dad grew up and where her Grandpa settled in the 1800's (yes, there's a LOT of family history in that area). We wandered around the cemetery where my dad and grandpa and great-grandpa and grandma, and great-great grandpa and grandma are all buried. Grandma's grandma was named Lizzie and when our Lizzy discovered that, she couldn't stop talking about it! Grandma told stories of many of the fine people buried there (such as the man who delivered her at the local country hospital and who eventually became her uncle and whose deceased wife's headstone rolled over and nearly crushed Grandma's brother). It was so much fun - many of the stories I had never heard before! At one point Grandma said that she thinks she knows more people buried at that cemetery than she knows still living in the rest of the world! I very much enjoyed that time with her and felt a new and stronger bond to that part of my family than I have ever felt before.

After lunch with Grandma, we started the long drive home and it was a LONG drive home. The kids were all tired, but we finally made it around 8 p.m. and got to bed at a decent hour. Aside from the drive home, it was a very nice week. Fortunately, we forgot to bring the camera. Otherwise, you would have to put up with more pictures of our cute children. Sorry!