Memorial Weekend

So Memorial Weekend was a bit of work and a bit of fun. That is right Roxanne, a bit of work! Ha ha ha. Just kidding. Saturday was spent moving all of our stuff from a 1st floor apartment to the 5th floor! Now, this could have been done faster, but since I cannot lift anything with my shoulder and back so bad still, Chris had to get all the heavy items up there pretty much himself. We fashioned couches and dressers onto dolley's so that he could wheel them to the elevator (thank goodness there was an elevator) and then into our new apartment. It took us 6 hours, but that is pretty good for one person and a cripple!

On Sunday we were invited to go to Lake Livingston with some friends. After teaching our cute little sunbeams on Sunday morning, we hooked up with Wendy and drove an hour north. Contrary to what some may think ( I say some, because I was in this group), Houston area is BEAUTIFUL! It rains a lot here and there is humidity so everything is very lush and green! The lake was huge, and there were hardly any people there Sunday and Monday. We stayed at our friends parents Lake house, where they had waverunners and tubes and wakeboards, etc. It was a lot of fun. I even went on the waverunner for a bit and it only hurt my back a little bit. I really wanted to wakeboard but did not in fears of really hurting my back again and my shoulder. Maybe next year. Chris got so sunburned while playing out in the sun on Monday that when he took off his life jacket it looked like he was still wearing a bright white life vest!! Ha ha ha! Poor thing has been in a bit of pain the last couple of days. We drove back reluctantly on Monday night, but it sure was a blast! Here is Chris going of the rope swing into the shallow part of the lake!!

Chris and Wendy on the tube!

Fun filled weekend!

So we had a great weekend!! We left on Friday to drive to Austin to attend our Brother-in-laws graduation from University of Texas. It was a lot of fun, a lot of family and a lot of Texas BBQ! We are so excited for Rick to have been able to finish his Phd in Economics, but sad that our only family in Texas will now be moving to Utah. It was a lot of fun to hang out with the neices and nephews one last time. We also got to hang with Wendy before she moves to Bermuda to coach gymnastics. Then on Sunday we drove to Dallas to attend the Radiohead concert. It was a great show!! SO MANY PEOPLE!!! Then we high tailed it home to Houston because Chris's parents were staying at our house on their way back to Kansas City. Yesterday we went to the Johnson Space Center. It was pretty cool. It was very cool seeing a lot of the rockets and the space ships, and I even touched a moon rock!!

Chris and his mom at UT graduation

Chris is such a good Uncle!!

The family after all the hard work!

Had to put this cute picture of our niece Katie up! She is so cute!!!

Goofing off in the pool!

Radiohead Concert, I know, you can't see much, but the video wouldn't upload. Sorry.

Mission Control! Houston, we have a problem!

Top of one of the rockets that went to the moon.

Pirate!!!

Ok, so I have some weird thing going on. It started out as something scary, but it seems to be something that I will just have to live with for a few weeks or months and then it will just get better. It all stems back to all the coldsores that I have always gotten all my life! So, my symptoms started last week. Last Wednesday half of my tongue went numb. I thought it was kind of weird, but I thought maybe I had burned my mouth even though I could not remember doing so. It was a bit annoying because I could not taste ANYTHING on the right side of my mouth. On Friday, it was worse. I felt like I had just been to the dentist. The right side of my tongue was numb still, plus my right cheek. Also, my right eye was twitching ALL day. I still thought that I was just maybe having some weird allergic reaction until I went to drink something and it spilled out of my mouth....really weird. I went into the bathroom to look at my face. Nothing to different. I smiled. But only half of my face smiled. I looked at my eye. It was bright red and twitching. I went to bed thinking that that was really weird, but maybe I was just tired. Well, I would get more tired, because my right eye would not shut, so I could not sleep. By the time morning came, My eye looked awful and there was no way that anything on my right side of my face would even move. It was paralyzed. Then I got really worried. I called a nurse on my insurance card and she told me to get to the ER immediately in case I was having a stroke. We live right next to the medical district in Houston which is world renowned, so we didn't even know where to start at which hospital to go to, there are literally hundreds!!! We ended up going to the one that looked the nicest :) Turns out it was one of the #1 stroke hospitals in the world right now!! It was great I walked into the ER, checked in and before I could sit down they called me in (we were in and out of the ER in an hour on Saturday, when does that happen?) They took me in and did all the test and reported that I have Bells Palsy. Apparently, it acts like a stroke in some ways, but it is not and they have these tests to make sure. They don't know for sure, but they think it is caused by ther herpes virus. The virus inflammes and where the nerve to your face goes through a little nerve in the back of your skull there is no room for it so you don't get any nerve connections to that side of your face (whichever side is inflammed). This can last from 3 weeks to 6 months. So there main concern is the fact that my eye doesn't blink, it can get ulcers from drying out. So, thus I am now a pirate. I may look a little funny, too, but at least it is not permanent. The Doctors put me on a steroid to help the inflammation and also the coldsore medicine that I usually take for my coldsores. I don't have any coldsores right now, but it is just the virus inside of my body flaring up, kind of weird. I don't have any pain, which is good. So, hopefully I will look normal in a few weeks!!!

Running!

So I know, it has been a week. Yea, we are boring. Well, I just want everyone to feel my accomplishment. I ran 2 miles yesterday!! Now to some people that may not seem like a lot, but it is a huge accomplishment for me.

a) I hate running

b) I had back surgery and two shoulder surgeries this past year

c) I never ran that much before my surgery!!

All this = Big accomplishment!!!

Woohoo!! I won't be doing any marathons in the near future, but I feel good about the track I am on. I also started physical therapy last week for my shoulder finally. The therapists believe that they know exactly which muscles are weak and causing me to still have shoulder pain. This is finally good news. They are starting to tape my shoulder blade down so that I work the right muscles to get back to normal!!

So this picture has no connection with what I just wrote, but I just want everyone to see Chris in the Lake with our Niece (little girl on left) over Easter. It looks cold, but this is Texas, so the Lake in March is not too bad.