Busy week

This has been a crazy, busy week.  I started off the week with Easter of course.  It was a nice Easter.  Stan had to work all weekend.  He was on call and the normal night shift person injured his back, so Stan had to work both Friday and Saturday night.  He didn't go to church on Sunday.  He was awake when we got home though and had the ham in the oven. We had dinner then Bryon and Margie came over and we did an Easter egg hunt with the cousins.  We watched a few funny Youtube videos and listened to a few funny songs too.  It was a good day.  Nice and calm.  No drama, no problems.  All was good.

Monday I had PT and I had an appointment with Dr Westgate.  It was my normal every 3 month appointment to get my Botox in my leg.  She was pleased with the progress I've made with walking.  I haven't posted on here much about that since last year when I had to start using a wheel chair, but since then, I have improved a lot.  Just before Christmas, I started walking just a little bit.  At first, it was only a few steps and it was so slow.  Now, I can go 40 feet or so before I have to rest.  I can't walk with shoes on though.  My toes drag too much so my shoes cause me to trip.  I have to use a walker too.  I've been trying to walk some around the house when I can.  I walk in the kitchen when I am making dinner and while I am sewing.  Anyway, Tuesday, I had an appointment with a new doctor.  He is evaluating me for a baclofen pump.  I am taking oral baclofen to treat the spasms I have.  They are the worst in my right leg, which is why I get the Botox, but even the Botox can't take care of all of them.  I can't handle the side effects at a dose that is effective enough to treat the spasticity.  By putting in a pump, they can give me the baclofen directly into the spinal cord and then it will be a much lower dose, so almost no side effects even though it will be way more effective. I then had Cub Scouts at my house; we did sewing and wood working.  Wednesday wasn't busy at all, but I needed to rest all day.  I was exhausted from the previous 2 days.  Thursday was just errands and normal stuff.  Friday brought PT and babysitting in the afternoon.

I was trying to be really careful last week to not over do things because if I get too exhausted, I set myself up for a flare.  It turns out, I was already starting into a flare and didn't even know it yet.  Starting around the 3rd of April, I started having a burning sensation around my chest, along with a lot of pressure and occasionally an electric shock feeling.  It is commonly called the "MS Hug".  Not the kind of hug you really want though.  A few days later, I had a week of overwhelming fatigue set in.  I didn't think anything of it at the time.  I thought it was just the change in weather since it was getting hotter.  I told Dr Westgate about this at my appointment and she was a little concerned.  Thursday, the weakness started.  The strength in my legs is down about 50%.  Considering I don't have a lot of strength in my right leg anyway, it took a lot away.  Now losing strength in my left leg, my walk is more of a shuffle, when I can walk at all.  I've had some bladder issues with this flare as well, but I won't get into those in such a public place.  I'll be calling Dr Westgate first thing in the morning and I suspect I will be starting steriods by tomorrow afternoon.  I'm not looking forward to this.  Stan gave me a blessing this afternoon though and I feel much better after that.  I was told that I would regain all that I had lost.  That was a huge relief.  It was frustrating me that I had just lost 6 months of physical therapy work and I wasn't looking forward to having to work again to regain that.  It seemed like an endless cycle.  I'll try to post later this week and keep everyone posted on my progress on this flare.

I decided the best way to allow people to download the Woman of Faith block instructions was to just upload the instructions to  4shared.  They are in a Word Document.  It anyone can give me tips on posting tutorials on blogs, I'm all ears.  I'm not very tech savvy when it comes to the internet.  I know how to do the things I do very well, but I don't do much on the internet, so not my area.  Feel free to share these instructions with anyone.  They are not copyrighted at all at this point.  The block is a very common block and the quotes are from the Book of Mormon and General Conference.  I think it would be cool for as many people as possible to be doing a Book of Mormon/Woman of Faith quilt.  We should share our testimonies through our talent and love of quilting.  If you do decide to make a quilt, please send me a link.  I'd love to see your quilt and your blocks.  Do you think it would be tacky for me to pin my own post into pinterest to get more people interested in doing a Book of Mormon quilt?  I don't care; I may do it anyway.  There isn't a blog/pinterest police to stop me and I don't think it is against their terms of use. 

I almost forgot the link  Women of Faith or Book of Mormon Quilt Block 1

Not much going on

There isn't really much going on right now, but I really want to try to post something once a week more so I get into the habit of posting.  If I don't get in the habit, then it will end up being months before I post again.

Life is just on auto pilot right now.  I started physical therapy about 6 weeks ago to see if I can get some strength back into my foot.  With the flare I had in December, I lost most of the movement in my right foot.  I can twitch it a little bit, but not much more than that.  I really want to be able to drive normally though.  Right now, my van is equipped with a left foot accelerator.  This means my van is the only thing I can drive. It is difficult when Stan has a scout camp out.  No one else has a large vehicle to take the boys anywhere except the Stoddard's and Stan always feels bad that they have to use their van each month.  He used to leave me with the Rio, but now I can drive it.  I will be suprised if I get all the movement back in my foot, but I would like to get enough to drive.  I have made some progress, but it is so slow.  Last week, every time I had PT, my foot would just lock up.  This week was better but I still have a long way to go.

The kids are also on auto pilot.  We still have cub scouts, boy scouts, mutual, dance, cooking class, OT, home schooling, chores, and play time.  Jeremy has been struggling to get his school work done lately so we started a reward system.  He wasn't getting done until 5 or 6 pm.  It was crazy.  Now, he gets a star if he gets done by 2:30.  After the first 5 stars, he got to go mini golfing.  We did that today at Peter Pan Golf.  It's the only mini golf place open in Austin.  There used to be a few really cool one on 290 when I was dating Stan, but it closed.  Peter Pan is just ok, but Jeremy loves it.  Now, he has to get 10 stars and I will take him to a movie of his choice.  Then, he has to get 15 and we will go roller skating.

I started working on 2 new quilts recently.  We started a quilt club at church called Sisters-in-Stitches.  Last month, I taught the nine patch to everyone.  I started a regular nine patch for the purpose of teaching the class.  I also wanted to show some variations, so I also started a disappearing nine patch.  I  finished the top of the disappearing nine patch, and I have it basted to the batting and the backing.  I need to quilt it now.  Rachael has been making her prom dress though, so I had to wait until she finished that.  She did so today, so I need to put the serger away so I have room to quilt.  I'll post some pictures on here once I'm done.  My regular nine patch squares are done, so I need to get the sashing fabric for the class in April.  I can't decide what color to do the sashing, so I need to just look around the fabric store.  That is a pretty dangerous thing for me though.  I've also started another bag.  This is going to be a huge bag with an oriental flare for the YW auction fund-raiser for girls camp. I didn't realize how big the bag was when I picked it out.  It is about 21 inches wide.  It will make a good mom bag though.  I love the combinations of fabrics I chose, so I'm excited to get it finished.  I have a list of projects I need to start and finish before the end of the year.  I"m excited about all of them and can't wait to try some of the new quilt patterns.  I'm especially excited about the new x-block I got at the Georgetown quilt show.  Hey, I just realized I should have posted about that.  I have lots of great  pics.  I'm sleep and ready for bed, so I'll post about that next time.

Have a great week.

Snow Day in Texas

I know to all my family in Idaho, Utah and Pennsylvania, this is no big deal, but it isn't something that happens here very often.  Under the snow is a layer of ice, so Austin pretty much grinds to a halt.  The boys are having a lot of fun in the snow.  Jeremy's friends are all home from school, so they have been playing in the snow.  He plays for a while until his hands are numb, then comes in for a little while, then goes back out again.  Rachael isn't interested in going out at all.  I'm getting ready to start sewing some more.  That's how I plan on spending my snow day.

I finished the quilt for VIR 2 days ago and turned it into Stacie last night.  I took a good photo of it before I turned it in.  I wish I would have taken better photos of my bags before I turned them in.  I took those photos with my iPhone, so they are kinda blurry.

The theme of this quilt is "When Life Hands You Lemons...".  This quilt will be auctioned at the VIR silent auction and dance show that will take place on March 5th at Tapestry.  This was the most challenging quilt I have ever made.  It was also the biggest I've done so far. I'm pretty proud of it.  I didn't think it was going to turn out for a while there as I struggled to make some of the stars.  I tried a short cut I learned on You-Tube and it fails to mention that you have to add extra for seam allowance and I'm new enough at quilting that I didn't think of that myself.  Lesson learned though and I won't make that mistake again.  I'll post pictures of my bags soon.  If your my friend on FB, you can see the photos of my bags on there until I get to post them here.

Long time, no post

I haven't written anything on my blog for a very long time. It's been like 9 months. There has been a lot going on. I'm not going to get into it all, but I will summarize the last 9 months as quickly as possible.

Most of the year has gone by pretty uneventful. We have just been going about our daily life. During the summer, we had girl's camp, youth conference, cub scout day camp and boy scout camp. Youth conference was a pioneer trek, including authentic pioneer attire. They had to trek in the Texas heat in the middle of June. It was a good experience for them.

After all the camps were over, July brought be a mild MS flare. I lost the sensation and a lot of movement to my left hand. I had gone 25 months without a flare. I did my steroid treatment and I got all the function back in my left hand. I had the normal side effects of the steroids-high blood pressure, diabetes, thrush, and just general yuck.

August was a hard month, especially for Rachael. Her boyfriend of over a year left for his mission. He entered the MTC on August 20th. He spend almost every waking minute before that over at our house. The week he left was also the week Rachael started back at school and in dance. She was an emotional mess for the first week. He has been gone for 5 months now and she still has a hard time sometimes. I think what is hardest for her is that he is having a hard time, especially with being home sick. She has gotten to talk to him twice since he left. She talked to him when he left for Norway from the MTC and she got to Skype with him on Christmas too. He is also struggling with his testimony right now and wondering if his mission is really worth it, which is really hard on her. I think it would be better if she could just talk to him rather than relying on the written word. She might be able to talk him through this much better if they could actually talk.

In October, my mom and step dad visited. It was a pretty good visit. I kinda freaked out before the visit and cleaned fanatically. She didn't even criticize my house. It was nice to have it cleaned though. I took advantage of the bunch of energy I had and the motivation for cleaning to purge my house of all the clutter. The holiday season brought more clutter, but it is still better than it was.

The holiday season also brought me another flare. This one was really bad. I lost almost all the function in my right leg. I had to go back to walking with a cane. At first, I couldn't walk very well at all. I did steroids again, although this time they didn't work quite as well. I got the feeling back in my leg and some of the strength, but my entire foot is now paralyzed. We had to install a left food accelerator in our van so I could drive. It's a little bit of a pain because now I can drive any of our other vehicles, but I'm at least grateful that I can drive.

Rachael did really well with school in the fall semester. She got A's in both of her classes. She took environmental science and government. This semester,, she is taking Texas government and english. She will officially graduate from high school in May, although she has been taking only college classes for the past 2 years. She will do one more semester at ACC to finish out her basics, then transfer to Texas state. She wants to save as much as possible so she isn't in a lot of debt when she graduates.

The boys are doing well. They are both still in scouts. Jeremy is a Bear in cub scouts. Andrew is in boy scouts and is a 2nd class. We are working on lots of merit badges with Andrew and lots of various cub scout things with Jeremy. Andrew was able to graduate from OT right before Christmas. He was really excited about that. He has come a long ways. His sensory issues are much better and his handwriting is a lot better too. We still need to practice with him so that it flows better and quicker, but it is so much better than when we started.

Andrew is still enjoying his cooking classes. He goes back and forth about being a chef. He has plenty of time to make up his mind though. He likes his classes, but doesn't want to just experiment in the kitchen. He does like baking more than cooking. Jeremy really wants to start Ti-kwon-do. He will probably get to start during the summer. We wanted to start in the fall, but we just couldn't afford it.

Stan and I both have new hobbies. Stan got interested in doing wood working puzzles in November. He made some for all of our nieces and nephews. They turned out really well. He has more he wants to make. He got a lot of new wood working tools with his bonus. He may even look into selling them when he feels he is good enough. I've started quilting and making bags. The bags started off as just a way to have a messenger bag that was the right size and wasn't stiff and ugly like a lot of them on the market. I made one for Margie for Christmas as a practice and found that I LOVED making bags. I bought a quilting book while my mom was here. We found a bunch of quilting squares that Rachael and Beth started 10 years ago. I finished up that quilt top and put it together. Next, I made a roller derby quilt for Jessica for Christmas. It's a lot of fun. It's not as fast as bag making, but I still like it. I'm working on one for the VIR auction now. I have the top together and it is sandwiched with the batting and the backing. I still need to quilt it. I'm waiting on a part to my walking foot to help keep my lines evenly spaced. I see a lot of flaws with my quilts, but most people love them. I made one for someone at church this past week. It was my favorite one so far. We are even starting a quilting group at church.

Christmas was really good for us. The kids got spoiled as usual. It was fun to spend time with family and friends. We cut back a lot on the extras of the holidays because of my flare. It was ok though. I think it was one of our best Christmases ever.

I'm going to be opening a store on Etsy soon. I have to get my bag stock up so that I have things to sell first. I made my first sell bag on Saturday. I have a bag I have to make for my mom, then I can start making more store bags. I think I'm going to make baby slings, car seat tents, maybe a few quilts and lots of bags. I have a few quick and inexpensive bags I can make and some more complex bags, like diaper bags I'm going to make. There are lots of pictures of my bags on my Facebook page. I need to download them off my phone so I can put them in my blog.

I will try to blog more often. I know a lot of my family use this blog to keep up with me. I'm sorry I let you down.