Volleyball

I spent all day Saturday in a converted warehouse that the IVA uses for volleyball tournaments. It's the noisiest place - 11 courts with games being played on all of them at the same time, but it's in the Salt Lake valley so it's close and convenient to go to the tournaments.
I love volleyball. I love watching the game and could (and do) watch it all day. I hate to miss any games that Brooke's team plays.
Her team did so well at their last tournament in Park City (at the nicest high school I've ever seen) that they moved up a division. So this tournament was a little tougher. The won 1 out of 3 matches in pool play in the morning. But then took 1st place in the silver division of the tournament. It's so much fun watching Brooke play this year. And her team. They are a great group of girls and get along really well and play well together. The level of play is so much higher than Brooke's team last year. They all know their positions and where they need to be at the right time. Their tournament games were all close and I was so nervous watching their first tournament game. They won the first set 25 - 19 and the second set 25 - 14. In the second set, Brooke's team was behind 8 - 9 when Brooke started serving. She served 9 straight points (a record for her personally and a record for the team that day) to give them a big lead. It was so exciting.
For the championship match of the tournament, Brooke's team ended up playing the same team they played and lost to in the championship match of the last tournament. Brooke's team played really hard and won the first set 28-26 and then won the second set 25-22.
It was a great day and I was so proud of Brooke and her team for working so hard together.

Stroke update

It is Wednesday morning and I am at the hospital with John (Paul's dad). He is doing very well and is scheduled to go home today. We are just waiting for a visit from the doctor to get clearance to go home. He makes a lot of progress every day and is wondering when he will be able to drive. We are thankful for his rapid recovery and for everyone's thoughts and prayers.

Stroke

The phone rang this morning at 8:22 and I knew it couldn't be good. It was our stake conference today and there really wasn't any reason for someone to be calling that early on a Sunday morning. I answered the phone and it was Paul's mom and she said she thought his dad was having or had a stroke. Paul talked to her and determined he was coherent and he wanted a priesthood blessing and didn't want anyone to call 911. So we hustled down to their house (luckily they only live about 5 minutes away) and called a neighbor to help with the blessing. Then we took him to Intermountain Medical Center ER. Luckily it wasn't busy at all when we walked in and they got him right back into a room. After hearing the first two symptoms - his left hand was numb and he had a bad headache on his right side they called in the the Acute Stroke Response Team. We even heard them paging the team to his room several times. They had over 10 people in his room immediately working on him and then off to a CT scan within 15 minutes. The scan showed a blood clot in his brain on the right side and they were able to get ATP started right away. It was great news to hear that they had found things so quickly. I was so impressed with the neuro team, especially the neurologist and the nurse practitioner that worked with us. Paul's dad is an emotional patient and cries a lot and that is such a hard thing to see. Paul does a great job with his parents and remains very calm and composed in these stressful situations. We spent several hours at the hospital taking turns being in the room with John and waiting in the waiting room.
All while this was going on our kids went to stake conference on their own. Brooke got everybody up and dressed and off to church. Luckily Justin could drive them to the stake center. I was so impressed with all of them. It made me so proud of them. What great kids!!
At the end of the day Paul said his dad wasn't doing too well - emotionally but seemed okay physically. He has to lay flat and still for 24 hours so that will be the worst of it, we think.

Delicious Dinner

So I made dinner last night. I was on a real streak a couple of weeks ago and made dinner 10 nights in a row! Major record for me!! Then the last two weeks were very hit and miss - mostly due to busy schedules and not everyone being home for dinner. So last night I made dinner again - new recipe that I got from my sister. She got it here. It was delicious! I loved it! About 1/2 the family liked it. Brooke doesn't like this kind of food and the twins didn't really like it but they ate it. I would definitely make it again but it won't be a weekly thing - too much prep.

Thai Chicken and Sesame Noodles

What You Need

1 env. GOOD SEASONS Asian Sesame Dressing Mix, prepared as directed on envelope

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

1-1/2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips

2 Tbsp. crunchy peanut butter

2 Tbsp. honey

1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper

1 lb. thin spaghetti, cooked, drained

1 cup shredded carrots

4 green onions, sliced

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Make It

MIX dressing and soy sauce. Pour 1/3 cup over chicken in bowl; toss to coat. Refrigerate 1 hour to marinate. Meanwhile, mix remaining dressing mixture, peanut butter, honey and crushed red pepper.

TRANSFER chicken and marinade to skillet; cook and stir on medium-high heat 8 min. or until chicken is cooked through. Place in large bowl. Add spaghetti, peanut butter mixture and all remaining ingredients; mix lightly.

*****
I tweaked the recipe a little bit - here are the changes I made:
I used linguini instead of spaghetti.
I added 1/2 red pepper chopped. Then I sauteed the red pepper and the green onions in a little olive oil before I added them to the whole mixture.
I used Ken's Steakhouse Asian Sesame dressing (lite) instead of the envelope of dressing.
I used all the cilantro called for and it was too much. I would cut it in half.

A little update

I went in for my follow up mammogram yesterday. There was a little "hot spot" they were concerned about. So I got squished again - only much more so and pretty painful. The tech told me not to breathe which was okay because I couldn't anyway. Luckily a radiologist looked at the films right then and I was cleared with no problems or worries and told to come back next year for my regular mammogram. Yeah!
Now to everyone out there who hasn't had their baseline mammogram done - GET IT DONE!! (you know who I mean)

Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam

Kamryn

Jared

My cute little sunbeams.
They started going to Primary in January but it's taken me this long to get pictures of them at church. Since just before Christmas Jared has insisted on wearing a tie to church. He wants to be like his brothers and dad. He looks so handsome. And Kamryn always loves wearing a dress - it's just hard to decide which dress.
They love Primary and have 2 great teachers. After church today they were both telling us about the holy ghost. Kamryn told us how he whispers to us. And then when we were cleaning up dinner Jared was in the living room singing "Follow the Prophets". It was so cute.

Jared

Brooke recently took this picture of Jared. I love it. He's such a fun, sweet, and crazy guy.

Once there was a snowman

Kamryn building her own little snowman.

Josh and Kamryn had a great time building their own snowmen.


Our friends, Josh and Leah, came over with their mom, Jenny, for a playdate. It was so nice and sunny outside that the kids wanted to go play out there. The kids tromped around in the snow and even got up on the trampoline. Then Jenny helped Josh and Kamryn build a snowman. By this time Jared had gone back inside because he was cold. It was great to be outside and thanks to the Hammonds for playing with us.

Talk about stress

Talk about a stressful situation -
I was driving down the canyon this morning from our cabin to take Jared and Kamryn to preschool. It was snowing pretty hard and there was about 4 inches of snow on the road. I was taking it pretty slow and still started sliding near Solitude. Right after sliding and getting back on the road my phone rang and I didn't recognize the number so I answered it and it was someone calling from Intermountain Medical Center saying they wanted me to come back in for a follow-up mammogram. I was just in on Monday for my routine yearly mammogram and the radiologist has noticed some differences from last year to this year. Great. Just cut them off now.

I did it!

I did it - I broke out of my reading slump, finally.
I was up at the cabin for the last couple of days with Jared and Kamryn and Susan and her kids. I read two books while I was up there. First I read, The Wednesday Letters, which I enjoyed. Then I read our book club book, The Shape of Mercy, which was very good.
My problem with reading is I am compulsive about it and just want to read the book until I've finished it and in the process I neglect everything else.