Ava's Surgery

Yesterday, on November 17, 2010 Ava had her adenoids taken out. Adenoids are similar to tonsils but where tonsils are in the throat area, adenoids are higher and behind the nose. The surgery was done by Dr. Hill, a pediatric ENT, at Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City.

Everything went really well and Ava is happily recovering at home. Here are some pictures from the day.

This is the room where Ava changed into her "hospital jammies." Luke wasn't here yet so I just took these pictures with my little cannon powershot.

Luke arrived as Ava and I were in the waiting room, just waiting for her turn to go back into surgery. Just as Luke arrived Dr. Hill arrived to take Ava back. We walked together to the big double doors where we had to say goodbye. Ava was very excited and skipped her way down the hall. I don't think that's normally how kids go to surgery so we were very lucky.

This is the mask Ava wore that put her to sleep. She breathed in a strawberry scented drug.

The recovery area.

All the parents wear their kids names on them. I think it's a good idea so everyone knows who you go with.

Ava was very tired after the surgery and slept quite a bit.

My mom gave her a Barbie before she went into surgery. She obviously couldn't take it back with her, but when I met back up with her in recovery I gave her the doll back.

The nurse wheeled Ava out to the car for us and then we drove home. The morphine made her feel sick so she threw up a couple times, but she's fine now. We've got a week of rest here at our house and we'll probably be watching lots of movies!

The Deseret News

So I'm going to brag a little about my husband Luke. He just got his first picture published in the Deseret News. Last night he shot the BYU mens basketball game and Deseret used one of his pictures in their sports section of the newspaper. Also, they used 10 images on their website. Awesome! I'm so proud of him! He's living his dream. And loving it!

Here's the link to check out his pictures on the website: click here

For the past year I've slowly been trying to accumulate some food storage and finally I've got a system that works! I'm so excited about it so I just had to post! The inspiration comes from the book "It's in the Bag." Basically, what I've done is compile items with a recipe together in a bag that is easy and quick to make for dinner. The items in the bag have to be food storage stuff, like canned veggies, powdered milk, rice, pasta, canned meat, stuff like that. Yesterday I took inventory of my food storage and compiled a list of any additional ingredients I needed. Today I purchased the additional items and organized everything into 20 bag meals. Each one is a complete dinner and they're really delicious. We had one for dinner tonight! It was a recipe for Caribbean Chicken and Rice. I totally recommend the book and system because it helps you rotate your food storage as well as enjoy a couple easy meals each week. The book costs about $10 on Amazon.

Luke's Pictures

Luke has probably already put these pictures on his blog, but I thought I'd update mine as well. He's been having a good time with his camera lately!

Quiet Time

During quiet time this afternoon things got a little too quiet. If you're a mother of toddlers you know what I mean. Suddenly you realize, like a 6th sense, that something sneaky is going on in your house. When this happened to me today, I immediately went in to Tessie's room. I found her laying on her bed enjoying her entire bucket of Halloween candy while watching Nacho Libre. I don't know how she got the candy, but it was all over her face, the DVD player, and her sheets! What a mess! And what a funny little girl!