Clots

For about two weeks, I was having some unexplained back and leg pain. It started in my lower back and hurt terribly. I was worried that if it persisted I would have to call in sick to work because I could hardly walk. Luckily, it mellowed out after a day or two. Then this stupid pain started radiating down the back of my left leg. I thought it was sciatic nerve pain even though there was no reason for it. Well, I lived with that pain for a few days, then this annoying pain migrated to the front of my left leg around my groin area. It seemed to be feeling better though, so I decided I would just have to wait it out. Well, a few more days went by with this constant ache in my leg. I was a slow walker, and tried hard not to limp. I still had no way to explain the pain, and that was probably the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal. Eventually, by the 8th of September, the pain started to move down my inner thigh, and I even felt it a little bit in my shin. I just figured that the muscles or tendons that were hurt initially were probably connected to the muscles and ligaments down my leg, so if one thing hurt, other things were bound to hurt eventually too. But, I finally decided to contact my doctor's office and ask their opinion. I spoke to them over the phone on Friday afternoon, and they encouraged me to go in and have my leg checked out. I didn't think it was anything serious, I didn't have any swelling or redness, just that pestery pain, so I decided to schedule an appointment for Monday since I had the day off of work. Well, Friday night came along. Brad and I were getting ready for bed after having watched a very stupid movie together. It was at this time that I realized that my leg was, in fact, starting to swell. There were also patches of red all the way down the inner part of my leg. Yikes! That surprised me, and the changes started to really really worry me. I was also worried that I was overreacting, but these signs pointed at the possibility of clots in my leg. Brad decided that we needed to go to the ER. I really didn't want to take this route, but in the end I gave in. Brad's mom came over to our house so we wouldn't have to wake Ellie, and we headed out on a midnight adventure (the last time we headed out on a midnight adventure was the night Ellie was delivered, so of course this was brought up on the drive to the hospital. This time, unfortunately, the circumstances were a little more unknown). We got to the hospital and then played the waiting game. We saw the doctor who agreed at the possibility of clots. He said it was a good thing that we decided to come in. Well, lo and behold, I did have clots. This actually really surprised me despite all the signs. I had one large clot in the upper part of my leg and clots throughout all of the veins in my lower leg. They started me on blood thinners and sent me home with instructions to stay down and keep my leg elevated. The leg continued to swell and be painful for a few days, but eventually the blood thinners kicked in, and I started to see improvements. The instructions to stay down persisted for 2 weeks, but I did finally get to go back to work this Tuesday.

And why did I happen to get blood clots? Well, the only explanation is this......

Yep. This little peanut is already starting out to be a trouble maker. Everyone said Ellie's personality is more like me, and boy I better watch out when we get a little one like Brad. Maybe I'm being warned early on. Who knows! Anyway, we are really excited about this little baby even if it is causing a lot of concern. It is totally healthy as far as the doctor can tell, and hasn't been phased by the whole ordeal. I am now 11 weeks along, and we are expecting the addition to officially arrive in mid April. By the time it comes Mommy's belly will be a well worn pin cushion due to the twice a day shots I have to take throughout the pregnancy, but it will be well worth it. We are so excited to see our little family grow!

Ellie at 14 months

Ellie, as always, is an ever a growing girl. It is hard to keep up with everything new that she is doing from day to day. It is hard to think that I can't call her my baby any more. She is now definitely a toddler. She started walking a few weeks after her first birthday, and now her signature scoot is gone forever. Now the real exercise will begin. We just about lost her a couple of weeks ago at church. She just walked out of Sunday School class without us noticing. She only made it to the foyer so we were lucky. We can't wait for her to be old enough to go to Nursery just so we don't have to chase after her for 3 hours.

Ellie loves to read stories with Mommy and Daddy, especially stories with lots of animals in them. She is so good at making all of the barn animal sounds and a lot of other animals too like elephants, monkeys, and snakes. The library has become a great resource to keep my sanity from the monotony of reading the same board books over and over and over again. Now we read three or four books for about three weeks and then switch when we take a visit to the library. This last bunch of books we got from the library included the book "Opposites" by Sandra Boyton. Ellie loves all the Sandra Boynton books. She loves the rhymes and all the animals in them. Well, earlier this week she kept walking around the housing saying "Ap-a-sit" and for the longest time I couldn't figure out what she was say, maybe A-B-C or something, but then we sat down to read book the Sandra Boynton book, and she she "Ap-a-sit" again. It finally dawned on me what she had been saying all week long. I'm pretty impressed with a 3 syllable word coming from a 14 month old. Unfortunately her new favorite book had to go back to the library today :(

She has become a little parrot when it comes to speaking. Anything we say, she likes to try and repeat at least one word from what we say. Some of the cute ones lately have been "busy" "cook" "pretty"and "messy". I don't really think she knows their meaning completely, but she is definitely on her way.

Ellie also absolutely loves the gift she got from her cousin, Ainsley, for her birthday, an episode of "Baby Signing Time." She is doing a great job learning the signs in the movie. We have to limit this annoying moving to one time a day, more to maintain Brad and my sanity than anything. The songs on that video are just so so catchy. WE CANT GET THEM OUT OF OUR HEAD! We are singing them ALL the time. But if Ellie doesn't get her fix of the show every day, she walks around making the sign for baby while say "baby, baby, baby" over and over again. What a cutie.

Ellie is a great eater. She was introduced to watermelon this summer and now if there is watermelon within her sight, she will not eat or do anything until her appetite has been satiated. We've just learned to use watermelon like a dessert. You don't get to even know that there is watermelon until the end of dinner. She also was introduced to corn on the cob a few weeks ago. I think she likes it better on the cob than off. She has just enough chompers to make it as a viable option for her. She is only picky when it comes to meats. I don't think she likes the texture very much. But if we disguise them with something else, usually we can get her to at least eat some.

So yep. There's a little update on our sweet Ellie. She's as cute as ever, and we love, love, love seeing her grow up.

This is Ellie saying "cheese" to the camera. This is actually a good "cheese" face. Any time she get her picture taken now she squints up her eyes and makes a silly little cheesey smile.

The Zoo, Take Two

The weekend of my birthday (known to the rest of America as Labor Day weekend) we decided to finally go to the zoo as a family. We have attempted the trip two other times in the past month, but both times we failed to actually make it to the zoo. Ellie and I went to the zoo back in May with Grandma, Grandpa, her aunts and her cuzzy, but I was so happy to finally be able to go and experience the joys of the zoo with just Daddy and Ellie. It has been quite a while since Brad last went. Brad seems to think the last time he went to the zoo was on a field trip in elementary school. He has only poor memories of that sad journey. His room mother chaperon decided it was important to first see the insects and snakes (probably because it wasn't crowded there), and after that, they had to go eat lunch and head home. He was a little bitter then, and is still a little bitter now. But he had loads of fun on our trip last week, so I guess the zoo experience has been redeemed to some extent. Ellie loved the zoo again this time. She had so much fun seeing the elephants, giraffes, and rhinos, but we think her favorite part of the zoo was probably the elephant slide. Yep. All those cool animals, and she just had a smile from ear to ear going up and down that silly little elephant slide time after time after time. Brad's favorite part of the zoo was just spending time with his girls. I agree with him. I just had fun being with my two favorite people.

Here's our sweet Ellie enjoying the amazingly exciting elephant slide

Ellie had to experience all aspects of the zoo, including all of the flowers and weeds along the path. She is so cute. Any time she see a flower, whether it be a real flower, a silk flower, a picture of a flower, or a weed that has some semblance of a flower, she has to smell it. So of course she had to do this with all the "flowers" seen with our strolling about zoo too.

She though the rhinos were quite interesting. She likes to point to their horns in books, so she pointed to the horn on the statue too.

I don't think she really trust this gorilla next to her.

Family Reunions

We had a family reunion the last weekend in July and another the first weekend in August. The first was with the Winter Family. The latter was with the Frandsen Family. We stayed in a cabin with the whole Winter family. We saw moose, did fun crafts, and just had fun being with family and learning about our family history. Almost the whole Alan Winter clan was in attendance. We were only missing Josh. Ellie had so much fun learning how to move about with all of her on-the-go cousins, and Brad savored every minute he had with his brother. I forgot to use my camera at the Winter family reunion, but we had so much fun. Luckily, our talented sister-in-law took some great pictures of our sweet family. Ellie didn't exactly cooperate, but I think we still got some wonderful shots. Thanks Kristen! Sorry, I can't post them right now though. The last day of the reunion, we went to Jordanelle Reservoir and enjoyed a beautiful day on the lake. It started to rain just as we were leaving, but it was beautiful the whole time we were out. Between the boat, the jet skis and the beachfront, I think everyone had some fun.

The Frandsen reunion was the first weekend in August down at Grandma and Grandpa Frandsen's home in Sandy. Grandma Frandsen, of course, made her famous yeasty root beer. Apparently Ellie is a fan. She couldn't get enough of it. Brad was able to be there for the Friday festivities, but had to work on Saturday, so Ellie and I ventured down with Grandma Winter, Whit and Emm. We had a lovely time, and it was fun to see cousins we rarely get to see.

Ellie sporting some cool shades at G. Grandma Frandsens

Playing under the parachute with the whole Frandsen clan

And Ellie first experience with Grandma's famous burp beer (root beer, boot-legger style)

Some of the Winters enjoying the burps

Asthma Camp Adventures

First of all, I just want to say that I have an amazing husband :)

Brad got the rare opportunity to go be a counselor at Camp Wyatt last week for Asthma Camp. I'm sure he wishes he could say he did it for some noble reason, but he didn't. Heck, he doesn't even have asthma. He really decided to do it to get elective credit for school. And after the week of camp, he said he deserves those credits. It was definitely an adventure. He got to do some really fun things as a counselor like a camp out under the stars, canoe, swim, teach kids about asthma, alleviate homesick children, eat cotton candy on a churro (you'd never see that at Diabetes Camp[which is this week]), walk sleep walking children to the bathroom in the middle of the night (or 3 times in the middle of the night!),and keep Jeffery's shoes on (not successful). He came home on Friday with so many silly stories to tell, I am glad he had a good time. Unfortunately,Asthma Camp had it in for our family. I think that just about any big event that could have happened, happened while he was away for Asthma Camp activities. Now I don't mean to complain, but let me just tell you all the things that overlapped with Asthma Camp. Training for Asthma Camp was on Ellie's first birthday. Rob, Kristen and family got to Utah the day Brad left. Whitney had her baby. We had our third anniversary. Ellie took her first steps. But we survived. I'm sure this wont be the last time that he will be away from us for long stints of time, so we better get used to it. I sure look up to those Moms who do so much without their husbands around. It's hard work to say the least.

Sorry for the picture-less post. I didn't take any pictures last week, and neither did Brad.

Miss Messy Ellie

We had a fun birthday celebration for Ellie on Saturday. We had a great party with lots of family and a few great friends. I made some homemade bubbles that we were going to play with, but for some reason, the bubble mixture didn't work out. I was pretty bummed because I remember having hours of amusement as a child making huge bubbles with the recipe I used. Despite the bubble letdown, we still had a delightful get together. We started out the party with a barbecue dinner with some of Ellie's favorite foods. After a little bit to eat, it was time for Ellie to have some fun with her presents. It was so fun to watch here open each gift. She did very well, considering a one year old's attention span. She loved each gift, and you can really tell because she hasn't even touched any of her "old toys" since Saturday.

I decided I out try my hand at creating a fun cake for Ellie's birthday. She loves her monkey, so I decided to make a monkey cake. I found the basic idea online, and then adjusted it a little bit. I think for a first time cake decorator, I did a pretty good job. That monkey is pretty darn cute. Too bad the monkey brains got consumed quite quickly. All of my hard work must have tasted pretty good too I guess.

And here's the cutie pie with the chocolate all over her darling face. Oh! I was so happy she got herself good and dirty for some nice first birthday cake pictures. She really didn't eat much of the cake, but I made sure she got plenty of frosting on her serving to make her nice and messy.

Ellie's Birthday

Ellie turned 1 yesterday. Holy cow. It is hard to believe that she has been a part of our family for a whole year. I think back to a year ago on the night she arrived, and it doesn't seem long ago at all. It is amazing to watch your very own little one grow and develop. Ellie definitely has her own personality and she showed it early on. She is usually a very content little girl, but whoa! when she doesn't get her way, she knows how to throw a tantrum. Some of her favorite things include her giraffe and monkey toys, balls, her fluffy blankey, books, magnets from the refrigerator, and tupperware. She also seems to like a lot of stuff she knows she isn't supposed to be playing with, but I guess every one year old is that way. Ellie is a very good eater in my opinion. She will pretty much eat anything that is put in front of her, but some of her favorite foods include peaches, sweet potatoes, spaghetti, graham crackers, sloppy joes, and anything sweet. She is accumulating quite the vocabulary also. About two weeks ago, she discovered the word "no" and now that is probably her most used word. It is so funny though, she rarely says the word defiantly, usually it is a soft little nod of the head and a timid "no". She usually says it when she knows she is doing something she isn't supposed to be doing. That of course, doesn't stop her from doing it. She also likes to say "mom" "dad" "tickle" "ee-eee-ee" (monkey sounds) , "hi", "ball", "dog", and a few others. And she loves to vibrate her lips together to make car noises too. I think she is on the verge of saying a lot more because she can sure babble up a storm. She is also learning to point at body parts, and some animals too. She isn't quite walking, but she is steady with just one hand assisting her, so fairly soon we'll have a true toddler on our hands. For now, her primary mode of transportation is still her signature scoot. She has a constant redness on the outer part of her shins from scooting everywhere. We love our Ellie, and look forward to many more happy birthdays with her.

Ellie with my phone (one of the many objects she seems to think is a toy. She does put it up to her ear and say "hi", which is pretty cute)

Ellie on her birthday in her birthday suit