A New Day

I've been keeping myself busy the last month and haven't had time to blog much.  I am proud to announce I have been exercising 5 days a week, low impact aerobics, running, pilates, 30-50 minutes a day depending on how I feel.  If I can do it, you can too!  When I was first diagnosed and the doctor told me that one of the ways to combact this illness was exericse, I thought I was done for.  I had NEVER exercised before and I hated it.  I actually enjoy it now and look forward to it in the morning. I mix it up doing different things each morning, sometimes a couple of different things together.  You just have to find some things that you can do that you don't Hate and consistency is the key. Just keep going. 

Today I went to a new Rheumatologist and we are trying a new drug combination.  He said I'm doing all I can to fight the disease, we will try the new combination and hope for a little more relief in the pain area, but life goes on for me.  I find joy the small moments with my family.  My little Brinley is growing up so fast.  She is almost crawling.  When I put her in the little walker when she is at my house she gets herself moving all around the place.  She takes everything in with her little dark eyes.  You know she wants to be in the middle of everything but she just isn't quite big enough yet.  Once she is moving around, she and her older brother Korbyn are going to be quite the little mischievious pair. I won't stand a chance.

I wish I could spend every minute with my grandchildren, but that is just not in the plan for me right now.  I will take the moments I am able and be thankful for them! Find Joy where you can!!

Who Knew?

So, I did my first Pilates workout today!  Really? Me? 

Okay, so this all started when I started taking Lyrica.  This medication really helped my Fibro pain.  I felt an immediate change when the Dr. paired this with Sevella.  However, I also started gaining weight.... like rapidly.  Since I began the medication I have gained 25 pounds.  This might not sound like a lot to some people, but on my little 5 ft 1 inch frame, this is huge.  I approached the Dr. about this and his answer was, "well.... ya, that is a side affect, maybe limit your calories." Really?  It isn't like I'm eating everything in sight. This is why there are no pics of me at Disneyland!! Little self conscious here.....
     So I've been using the WII fit to exercise for the last year because we all know that exercise is a big part of fighting Fibromyalgia.  On my "good" days I've run/walked 'treadmill' style up to 5 miles, or done the aerobics, etc. I tried the yoga but the stretching was really hard on my back which is where my pain is located, so that didn't work for me. None of this has helped the weight gain problem. I keep it up for the fibro though.
     So Enter NETFLIX (BIG FAN!).  I'm cruising around this morning on What's new this week and I find FREE Pilates video. Sweet!  I decide to see if it is something I can do and the beginning workout is 10 minutes and it is relatively easy and didn't irritate my back at all.  Score! So I added this to my morning workout.  Let's see if I can get my body back with this.  It works for all the movie stars, right? Sigh. :0)

I'm Back

I know it's been awhile since I've written on my blog.  I feel like I kind of "went dark" for awhile.  I wanted this blog to be a positive place where anyone with chronic illness could go for some uplifting moments. But I have had some difficulties the past few months so I haven't felt much like writing. But even through the difficulties I have had some really amazing moments! 

San Fransisco was wonderful.  We crammed a lot of sight seeing into 3 days. We went to every tourist attraction there.  My favorite was alcatraz.  We also spent over a week with my daughter and grandkids just hanging out.  I had some good days, and some bad days. But mostly it was spent building some really great memories.

Then I had a spur of the moment trip home to spend a week with my mom, just the two of us.  It was a really special time for us.  We just spent girl time together.  We had never done this before and it was really a sweet, special time for us. I got to go to lunch with my favorite Auntie I hadn't seen in years. It was great.

Then.........the big one.  I have always wanted to go to Disneyland with all of my grandchildren (even before we had grandchildren this was a dream of mine).  In November it finally happened!

At this point I was having a lot of pain from my fibro, so I was taking life a moment at a time.  This trip was Magical for me.  I had to really enjoy every moment that I could.  My husband and I started the trip with my son and his wife and their two kids in Palm Springs.  We stayed in a Mansion (seriously!) provided by my daughter-in-law's parents.  We did nothing all day but swim in the pool and sit in the hot tub which did miracles for my back pain!   This place was awesome.  Our bedroom suite had a fireplace, an extra bedroom, bath and home gym. From here we went to San Diego and visited Sea World.  Then we met our daughter and family at Disneyland.  We went for 3 days straight. 

What a sweet and precious Moment!!  Having Sully give the kids a hug?  I wouldn't have missed this for the world.  I'm afraid I was not in hardly any pictures.  I had to be in a wheel chair all 3 days of Disneyland.  I couldn't walk around at all.  But I wouldn't have traded these special moments with my grandkids for anything.  I was able to ride on every ride they wanted me to go on with them.  I think we hit every kid ride there.

  Ok so here is the one picture I let my hubby take of me on my sweet ride:

I truly enjoyed the trip even though it was a challenge and I had to endure a lot of pain.  I've learned that you have to make a lot of trades. I am a work in progress. I know we all have the tendency to answer "I'm good" or "I'm fine" when someone asks how we are, when in reality we are not at all fine. But I know that my struggle is to strive to stay positive and work toward living the best life I can and look for those best moments in life that I can find.

Blessings and Joy

I've had some really wonderful blessings this summer that I feel I need to share.  I've had my ups and downs with the Fibro but I've also had some really wonderful experiences and am getting ready to experience some more.  I leave early tomorrow morning for a trip to visit my daughter and her family in California and while I am there I will get to reunite with a cousin I haven't seen in about 40 years!  Pondering that, it makes me sound realllllly old....

Back to the blessings of my summer. It began with a little retreat with a few sweet and wonderful young women at this quaint little cabin up near Sundance Utah, How Cute Is This????

It was a wonderful experience getting to know these young ladies and sharing life stories and just staying up late and really laughing together.  I was so glad I went and spent this special time with them.

Next I went on a last minute trip home to Eagar Arizona.  I hadn't been home in about 2 years.  I told my mom I was coming but my brothers had no idea.  What fun it was to surprise them.  I hadn't seen my oldest brother in about 6 years.  Let me just say, many tears were shed that weekend.  We had not all been together for a whole weekend in a very, very, very, long time. 

We had a big bar-b-que with my uncles, cousins, neices, nephews, etc.  It was so fun to see everyone and spend some precious moments with them.  With the years passing so quickly, my mom's growing age, the children growing older, it is so important to have this time together. I can't believe my neice Taylor is graduating from high school already!  Time Flies, it really does and if we are not careful, it will zoom past us and we won't even see the things that are really imporant as they fly by.

Crazy thing, that Saturday that we were there, a cousin on my dad's side of the family called and they were having a family reunion at the city park!  What are the odds??? We were able to go over and visit with some family members on my dad's side we had not seen in 30 or 40 years as well as some we had never met.  It was amazing!  We jam packed so much in that short 4 days.

Most important, my son and his wife brought their new baby girl with us.  My mom had not yet met her great granddaughter.  What a sweet precious moment that was.

It was so worth the trip.  We had a wonderful time looking at old pictures, watching old videos and sharing memories together.  We had a lifetime of memories to share with each other.  I enjoyed this wonderful time with my mom, brothers, and the rest of the family.  Thanks to all of you.

Next up My husband and I attended another retreat with the young women we serve in the bishopric of at BYU. 

It was one of the most uplifting things I have been to in a very long time.  We had a wonderful time and these young ladies were so kind and generous to us.  I have to say that when I think of service and compassion I think of one of the young ladies in our ward.  She exudes these attributes so much.  She is always asking how I am doing and she really cares about me.  At this retreat she made sure I was taken care of.  She would not rest until I got my toe nails done with the glitter toes they were doing on all the girls!  It was so sweet! I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to serve these young women and for the love and care they give back to me.  I know that when we are serving other people we have less time to dwell on our own problems and pain.

What a Blessing!

We had Brinley's Baby Blessing (the equivilent in other religions of the Christening) yesterday.  It was wonderful.  She looked like a little princess in the beautiful dress she was wearing:

Of course big brother Korbyn was in on the action and very proud of his little sister and stole a few precious moments with her.  Brinley held very still while daddy gave her the most beautiful and detailed blessing I have ever heard.  The spirit was very strong.  Because of all the family and friends support, the circle was very big.  That was such a special and touching thing to see.

Afterward family and friends met together to celebrate at her mommy and daddy's house. We enjoyed great food and wonderful moments.

She is a brand new blessing in our lives and it meant a lot to be able to be involved in this special day with so much family around. I want to thank Cari's family for being so amazing.  We were so blessed that our son married into such a remarkable family.  

A Tribute

Happy Birthday Daddy

My dad would have been 92 years old today.  We lost him 17 years ago.  He taught me so many valuable life lessons. I was his little princess and he always treated me like one.  I came to him late in life and by the time I was in high school he had retired so he was home all the time with me.  We were so close. He had the best sense of humor of anyone I have ever known.  He taught me it was always ok to laugh about any situation.  The best things in life are truly free: Your TIME with your loved ones, LOVE, and how you spend/give both.  Treasure every moment, life can change in an instant and your loved ones can be gone.

Living life, no really.....

Disclaimer, the beginning of this might not be the usual upbeat thing I normally write, but (there will still be humor)... Let me paint a picture for you:

Picture a dog on a chain that runs between a couple of trees, the dog is hooked by a leash to a rope so he can run back and forth quite a distance between the two trees so he feels quite a bit of freedom and enjoys the days in the sun running back and forth, life is good, he's feeling the freedom of the running, then he kind of forgets the leash is there and he spots something in the distance and he starts panting and thinking wow, it's right there, I can get it, and he starts to run for it and he gets faster and faster, and faster, and snap!  All of a sudden the leash snaps him back to reality and he realizes his world is confined to the patch of dirt he has worn between the trees.  This is his life...... it is what it is.  Do you get where I'm going with this?

I want to say on the BRIGHT SIDE, the new medication is working considerably better than anything I have had in the past!  I had 3 full weeks of GREAT days with just a day or 2 of pain which is a miracle for me in the last year!!!  I haven't used the word Great in a YEAR! I got so used to having nearly no pain in the last three weeks (the dog forgetting his leash) I was up and going and enjoying my life.... maybe a little too much, snap!  I was brought back to reality by an incredibly bad day (actually 3).  I KNOW, lame, I know the bad days will come, it is the nature of the beast of this illness and we will all have them.  There is no cure, but Seriously when it happened I instantly saw this scenario in my mind.  I laughed out loud.  My husband was puzzled that I was in so much pain but laughing!  You gotta laugh! It feels so much better than crying!

So I'm on a combination of meds that seem to be making a big difference for me.  There is still a small amount of pain and the fatigue is maddening (side effects, on top of the fatigue caused by fibro, bummer) but this is life worth living. If anyone wants to know the exact medications, send me an email, I'd be happy to share the names.

I got to babysit my new granddaughter for the first time on Saturday and that was so sweet.  Special moments just me and her. 

I loved every second of it.  Stolen precious moments of time.  I can't get enough of this precious little angel.  I can't wait until she starts reacting back to me (smiling and cooing).

I also had the great pleasure of enjoying some time with my niece Naomi and her two children.  They stopped over on the way home from a vacation they were taking and spent the night and joined us for our annual Spanish Fork Fiesta Days celebration.  We went to the parade and carnival. 

We had a great time and my son got to catch up with his cousin that he rarely sees.  His son got to play with her two kids.  It was great to share that time together and to see my son and my niece interact as adults with their own children. (Where did the time go, it was just yesterday they were little children playing together in my back yard!) I loved watching my grown son with his son and my niece's children at the parade.  My heart swelled with pride.  He was having so much fun getting them to think he was the fun "uncle" Justin with the small fireworks he had brought (even though he is really their second cousin).

I remember always wanting to be the "FUN" Aunt T.  I think my nieces and nephews do look back on those years and think of me that way.  I loved and cherished that time in my life. I'm glad my children love being the FUN Auntie and Uncle as well. Life is short, enjoy the ride!!!