Posts

Showing posts from February, 2008
Would anyone like to, and will go to THIS ? I can take up to 5 family/friends. March 19th, 6:30-10pm
I spent a lot of the afternoon changing my last name to Groneman. I already had changed my SS card and licence, but today I went to my bank and to BYU Records Management. I changed my credit card too. I even called for them to change my name on my desk phone. It's definitely bitter sweet: bitter, definitely because I love my family name (it's still my middle name, though), and sweet because it means I'm married (and that is a wonderful feeling in and of itself). :)
Image
Kiera has developed a few new obsessions. First of all, she loves lids that fit on things. I no longer through away empty milk containers without letting Kiera play with the carton and the lid for a few hours. Another thing she has come to love is hills. We have a little dirt/covered hill in our backyard which has become her favorite thing to climb (and she never fails to get herself VERY dirty on it). I took Kiera to the park yesterday and there is a very large and steep hill at the park. I probably should have known better, but I couldn't resist helping her go down it. She shrieked with delight as her little legs ran. Of course, she started falling about every 5 seconds, so mommy who was holding on to her little hand, bore her weight and helped her regain balance to keep running. True love is defined as me helping my cute little daughter go down and up that hill TWICE (keeping in mind it was just a few days ago that I had to lay down and recover after the exertion of taking a sho
Chad invited me for dinner tonight! However, I can't go. :-( I'm in a three day management class that goes for about 9 hours every day, plus homework, plus I have to do my day job when I can. That means I have to spend tonight and tomorrow night doing work. Now if Chad would have given me more than a few hours notice, I may have arranged my work load differently and would have been able to go. ;-) I appreciate the offer however. Mom will be home Saturday so invite us both sometime next week! I haven't heard from yer mom since I dropped her off at the airport early Monday morning.
Incase you all don't read our Nelson blog (which you all should), I'll update our weekend. My feeding tube got clogged (AGAIN......WHY DO THESE PROBLEMS ALWAYS HAVE TO HAPPEN ON THE WEEKEND WHEN THE DR IS NOT AVAILABLE????) so I ended up on the hospital. They tried multiple times to declog it but failed so they had decided they were going to have to put in a new tube. The 2 doctors came to have me sign the concent form and decided to try once more to declog it and lo and behold it worked!!! Since I was not fed with my tube saturday or sunday I got to see what my life would be like without tube feedings: much like my first pregnancy. I vomited every 20 minutes all day long and was MISERABLE. I had Steve knock me out with some medication at 4pm yesterday after I got home because I couldn't take it anymore. I slept until 7am (a nice medicated sleep). I'm super weak today, but doing better otherwise since my feeding tube is working. I am SOOOO grateful for this fe
Image
My Honey is Gone! Left for NYC this AM. Returning Saturday.
Image
My Honey Is HOME!!!!!
I've grown up. It's a hard thing to do, but ya can't stay 18 forever. I'm one of those old married types now. My car's "GOLINUX" license plate has been retired. We went down to the DMV a couple of days ago and got a new plate. It's boring - "A62 4EU". Now, instead of people looking at my plate and saying "Golly-nux? What's that?", they'll say "Aye sixty-two for you. What's that?" I also got one of the new Utah plates. The ski one since I never really liked the Arches one. But it does look a lot like it was designed by a U of U student. Oh well. The good news is that I still own the rights to the "GOLINUX" license plate in Utah. I'm thinking that I probably won't use it again, even though I'm still passionate about Linux. I might see if Novell wants to buy it off me. I hope y'all never need to grow old...
I was looking through stuff on my phone and found this video I recorded a long time ago. I thought it was worth posting. Funny kid Nelsons.
Kim is requesting an update on Cambrie...so you all get it too. Recovery is slow. She is very weak. Just getting up to take a shower get dressed and lay back down just exhausts her! I asked her today if it was possible that she just isn't getting enough nourishment to help her gain her strenght. She said that she is getting enough, but the dietician told her that she won't really get her energy back until she gets her pre-pregnancy weight back. She lost 18 lbs, and she has only gained 1. Another thing that has been a problem twice in the last two weeks is that Cambrie has had to unhook herself for different reasons twice at night, and forgot to turn her IV back on before going to bed. That means that she isn't getting her meds that normally come via the IV line, so she wakes up feeling really LOUSY, and has a much worse day the next day. I told her she ought to put a rock, or her scriptures on her pillow, and never move it at night until all tubes are functioning r
A fter work last night, Erica and I needed to get some groceries, so we decided to make a quick trip to the store before going home. We came out of the store to find another car with its corner touching our door. We couldn't get in the driver's side at all. We could get in through the passenger's side, but we didn't want to move the car while another one was touching it. Also, we were concerned about the damage the car might have. So we called the police. The police came. They ran the license plate, and tried to call the owner, but they couldn't reach him. They went into Macey's and paged the owner. After some time, the police came back. "That man walking towards us is the owner", he said, pointing to a 94-year-old man, who had a hard enough time walking. Apparently he'd left his car in neutral when he parked it, and it rolled into ours. We felt so bad for him. He got into his car, and moved it away, but not before almost hitting the car behind him
YEA!!!! Brett & Katie are under 150 days!!!!!!
Progress in the basement:
Our mountain trailer in the snow . I'm glad I blocked the center of the trailer with 2x4s. Keith sent me this picture.
I was gonna send this in an email to Marilyn, but decided what the heck , nobody cares but it will be interesting to look back on the blog printouts and see what was going on. Well, I've been working in the basement. Dunno if I told you but there's so much junk I decided to work on half of the room at a time, starting with the South end. I moved all the junk into the north end and for the South end I've got all the framing up, the electrical in, and have started sheet rock. (ugh!) Have I told you that I'm not as young as I used to be? ;-) I'm putting a bank of built in shelves in the SouthWest corner against the South wall for toys. (Where the main house water shut off and pressure reducing valves are). I've contemplated various ways to do this. I first was thinking of putting a closet door in front of them, but to do that I would either have to cut the shelf depth back a lot or bring the shelf closet out a foot or so more into the room than I want do do.
Good and Bad News on the Nelson front: No, Cambrie isn't back in the hospital (that's the good news), but Kiera picked up a nasty bug. Poor little thing who usually goes to bed without a peep at 6 pm for the night was crying, sobbing, fighting, thrashing about for most of 5 hours last night. Poor Steve! He has become Kiera's heavy favorite. Cambrie used to be. But hooked up to IV's and feeding tubes really limits her getting down and personal with her and she doesn't say 1 word to 100 of how much she used to say, because she is still hyper-salavating which dehydrates her further, if she talks. As it is she has to drag around that pole for 2 many waking hours...so she doesn't want to add to the amount of fluid that gets put in. So, Steve, who is WAY cute with Kiera anyway, was the one she wanted. He must have felt like he had been wrestling for hours by the time she went to sleep and didn't wake right up. It would be Bad for Cambrie to get this stu
Yep. It's official(er) now. The wedding is one week later from the original plan. And we're doing a dinner instead of a lunch. We went to sign up for the place to have our festivities, and ten minutes before we got there, someone else signed up for our time. . . So with a lot of variables in question regarding who can come when, prices, changing locations, and how far back we were willing to put the thing, we settled on just pushing it back one more week. So mark it on your calendar kids. The deposit is already on it, so it's happenin' then. Like this: July 19, 2008 10:00 - Nintendo Tournament 13:00 - Wedding @ Mt. Timpanogos Temple [pictures some time in here] 17:00 - 22:00 - When we have the place reserved for food and festivities.
The Dastrups enjoyed a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup this weekend, so of course our boys were spoiled rotten and loved every minute of it. Favorite Benajminisms of the week: (Moments before arrival of grandparents) "Will Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup still love me even if my room is a pig pen?" (Upon examining valentines he and Jacob received from a little girl in the ward: "Uh-oh! NOW I'm jealous! Jacob has a heart on his card and I don't have one on mine!" (Further examination revealed not one, but TWO hearts on his card, so the situation was peacefully diffused.)
Cambrie update: Cambrie had a couple of good days after returning home from the hospital, but as I type she is back at the hospital again with a clogged feeding tube. She doesn't get food 24/7 the nasty nausea returns. I am sure it is back, big time, since it has been 3 hours that it has been clogged again. I will post more when I know more. Right now, they are still waiting to be seen. I can see why she chose to go with the feeding tube. The nausea is better than when she was on TPN...BUT it has problems obviously too.
Image
Erica & Chad took pitty on me tonight. They came over and taught me a new game: Bohnanza It's a real different game. They also caused me to make curry and lemon bars. Mmmmmm. I'm glad they came. It's the first visitors I've had since mom left.
Google maps has a new feature - "Street View". It's a bit disturbing in a way. You put in your address, and it shows you a picture of your house. If you click on the picture, it takes you to an interactive thing where you can look around, go down the street, etc. Technically it's not an invasion of privacy since it's all publicly visible, but still... Try it out. Here's the our neck of the woods .... Brett's car is parked out front of the parental unit's house...
Dad-- you should go to sitemeter.com and put a meter on this blog. I'd be very curious to know how many people outside our family are on this site. I put one on my blog with my friends, and it is very interesting-- it tells you where people find your page, how long they spend on it, what they look at, what time they are on, the time zone they live in, etc. My friend told me about it-- she put one on her family page and had some creepy finds. I'm not advocating that we go private (yet) but we may want to later.
Image
The martians wish us a happy valentine's day! My Brother-In-Law posted this on their family blog. I thought I'd share it: (today only: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html )
Image
Well I'm home. It was strange to be home after living in a hospital for a month. Here is the run down on me and my situation. I'm nauseated, but a much lesser degree than before. I puke 3-5 x daily. I can't talk much because I've got a mouth full of saliva (can't swallow it because it makes me puke, can't spit it out because it dehydrates me). I'm VERY weak which my dietian says is normal since I starved for so long. I'm 115 lbs (down from 133). I've got my feeding that goes directly into my gut that I"m attached to 24/7, and then I've got an IV pole with my IV fluids that I'm attached to from 6pm until about 11AM which makes going anywhere impossible and it is difficult to push the IV pole across old carpet navigating between toys all while protecting my 2 lines from being pulled on my a certain little lady. I've got slew of IV medications to give to myself throughout the day. I spend the afternoon and evenings watching con
All you people who post a day early... tsk tsk. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUFFY! HAPPY VALENTINES EVERYONE! HAPPY TWO MONTH ANNIVERSARY ERICA!
Image
'nuther Blizzard Hits Utah. Hundreds of students had to spend the night at schools in Highland because buses and parents couldn't get to them. Some students had to hike from their stuck bus through the blizzard back to the school. They're still there this morning. The Alpine highway has been closed since yesterday afternoon. Extra! Extra! Read all about it !
Image
Happy Birthday Buff! NO MORE TEENAGERS!
Image
Happy Valentines Day (My Marilyn lies over the ocean, my Marilyn lies over the sea.....) Here's your valentine gift . Remember?
C ambrie got home last night. I thought she was going to blog herself...but I guess she isn't feeling up to it yet. She is supposed to sleep on an inclined mattress, kinda like the hospitals, so her bed was all propped up with pillows etc. That didn't work too well. It gave her a backache, and a lousy nights sleep...so she is trying to nap. She came home with a ton of paraphanelia, many cases of what looks like pre preparded formula, IV pole, LOTS of medical stuff...and once again, her knowing how to use all of this stuff because she is a nurse is the only reason she is out of the hospital. It is all pretty complicated. Steve, who got pretty darn good with all of this medical stuff the last time, helped her to get it all set up again last night. It took from about 6 pm when it arrived, till about 9 pm last night to get everything up and going. Cambrie is still naustious, but is only barfing about 4 times a day now. Most of the time she can just pull out the bile from
Mom, I'm sure you are busy, but we would all appreciate some updates on Cambrie. Is she home yet?
Image
Benjamin has been praying for Aunt Cambrie on a regular basis, but the other day I mentioned that Grandma Groneman was in California taking care of Kiera for Aunt Cambrie, and that night a good portion of his prayer went like this: "Please bless Grandpa Groneman who is all alone and has no one to play with. Help him to be safe and not be too lonely." He loves his gramps!
Phones: I'm going to send Grandpa's phone to Christa. It doesn't have a manual but I'm sure you guys can figure it out. I'm going to send my Treo to Cambrie. If she wants to trade it for Buff's phone, that's up to her. Life is full of choices and I don't have a phone for everyone. There's no warranty on either of them.
Hey! You need your monitor cleaned. This should do it fer ya .
Image
Guess what? More snow. I can't figure out why this wind chime isn't ringing any more. (Click for bigger pictures)
"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win…." I wish Romney would have won. But, you have to respect him and his reasons for dropping out. ROMNEY 2012!!!
Would anyone like to have my Treo 650 ? I got a new phone. It works OK...the on/off button is a little touchy sometimes. I also have Grandpa's old phone that's just collecting dust. It's a Nokia, dunno what model but it looks something like this . They both have to be used with AT&T/Cingular.
For you folks outside Utah, here's an amazing survival story
Image
The latest on Cambrie. WISH I had good news to tell you. I don't. They took her back into surgery tonight. She seems to have an intestinal blockage. But I am not sure they are going to fix that or just move the tubes that the put in the first time. They are thinking that perhaps the reason the feeding tube stuff keeps backing up into her stomach is that the tube has moved from the intestine into her stomach. So they want to fix it if it has...I would think that they could clear the blockage while they are at it...but we'll have to see when she comes out of surgery again. Poor kid, she had finally gotten over being sore from the last go around, and now she gets to start again. Kiera misses her mommy to be sure. Much insecurity there. Tonight, Steve showed up with his parents, and when Bev tried to hold her, Kiera starting crying and clinging to Steve. I am certain she was thinking, "The last time I went to that woman, I didn't see daddy or mommy for a week! Not a chance
Image
We went to Mitt Headquarters to watch some of the results and got to talk to Josh Romney. We told him we love his blog, and Chad was sure to tell him that Ms. Rice would be a great VP.
An easy way to see which presidential candidate is most likely to line up with the way you think HERE . I had no surprises. For me: 1 - Mike Huckabee, 2 - Mitt Romney, 3 - John McCain, 4 - Hillary Clinton, 5 - Barack Obama. It's still early so I haven't seen any Super Tuesday results, but I have some dilemmas. If Mitt gets the republican nomination I don't think he has a chance of beating whichever Democrat runs. John McCain is much more of a centerist than a conservative or liberal so I believe he has much more of a chance at beating the Democratic nominee, though he's my least favorite Republican. On the Democrat side, on one hand I hope Hillary gets the nomination because I think she would be easier to beat than Obama. However, having her be the president if she happened to win would stick in my craw. Even though she lines up better with my views than Obama, I think Obama is more sincere and would be a better overall president than Clinton. I do think Huck
V O T E ! ! ! Especially y'all in California. Cambrie, see if they'll let you do an absentee ballot or something for being in the hospital. Erica and I have been invited to go to Romney's Utah HQ tonight to watch the results. We're probably going to go.
Image
February's inspirational message is brought to you by the campaign to re-elect Bill (and Hillary) Clinton to the White House. (of course it depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is.)
PS... there are pictures over yonder of my hott date on Saturday. <--------------
Hello fmaily! Yes I am alive! I know you have alll been worried about that. So it's been a while since I've written on the blogg... where to begin... So you all know from mom that I have started class...it's really not as bad as she made it sound but it is still difficult...basically it's just a lot of busy work, not that any of the material is very hard. I'm also taking a Home health aide class so needless to say that with taking these 2 classes, working full time, and trying to keep up my social life, I've been pretty busy. So another thing to catch you all up on is that, back in late Dec, I went to a large Southern California singles New years dance. It was a lot of fun and I met a whole new group of friends. I'm popular now! My roommate and I are always trying to decide who we should hang out with: our Riverside group or our Redlands group... it's real rough on us :-) but lately, we've been hanging out with the riverside group a lot. 2 of t
PROOF
More exciting news!!! Jacob actually walked because HE wanted to for the first time about an hour ago! He was playing at the couch, and I was kneeling about 3 feet away from him, and he turned around and walked to me! It was so exciting! We were practicing walking, and he walked all the way across our great room about 3 different times-- all by himself! He's finally starting to believe that he can walk! I got a little footage, but it's not that great, so I will try to get some better footage once Brigham gets home and then share it with all of you fans!
A picture of snow from our driveway HERE The weather service web page said Alpine got 14" and Pleasant Grove got 9" so my guess of 12" would be about right. This pic is 1 day later after the snow had packed down and melted some. The piles don't look as high as they really are if you were standing next to them. By the way, for my efforts yesterday, I got a nummy chicken roll up lunch, some white chocolate cookies, a loaf of something (banana bread?), a plate of warm/fresh cinnamon roles, and a few phone calls. One caller left a message and said if I did nothing else, I was going to heaven so Marilyn you can quit worrying now.
Image
Kim's trip to the Dr. Results: No more monkeys jumpin' on the bed. That and my A1C results were 6, my blood pressure was 120/60 and because I winced when I shook his hand he diagnosed me with "Tennis Elbow". (It's hurt since I moved stuff at Chad's house). No dear, I don't think this will keep me from working on the basement. :-) In other words folks, it doesn't look like you'll be getting your inheritance from me any time soon.
BRAINBASHERS January Results 21 Chad Groneman 1 1 1 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 45.0311% 572 Kim Groneman 1 1 1 12 1 1 7 2 1 1 611 Cambrie Nelson 1 1 3 1 1 6 9 1 1 1 631 Steven Nelson 1 1 3 4 1 9 3 1 1 1 973 Christa Dastrup 1 UR 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2127 Brett Groneman 1 14 1 3 2 6 1 2 1 2 2352 Breanna Groneman 1 1 4 6 2 7 6 2 1 17 Whoa Chad!!!!!! Be sure to enter February's challenge
Image
On Friday I had a good laugh. Jacob's been sick all week with a cold that aggravated his asthma, and bewteen his symptoms and the steriod the doctor gave him, he hasn't been a very happy camper. Benjamin picked up the cold about halfway through the week. Needless to say, we spent a pretty dull week cooped up in the house. By Friday the fridge was looking pretty bare, and although I knew it was very risky to take a cranky Jacob to the grocery store, I didn't want to waste my Friday date night time grocery shopping, so I decided to risk it. It was definitely the wrong choice. Jacob was not happy to be there AT ALL. He cried and cried despite all of my desperate efforts to appease him with snacks and toys. A dear girl at the pharmacy took pity on me and offered my kids suckers, and Jacob was finally at peace for five minutes while he chewed it up (although I certainly wasn't since I was worried about him choking-- but I was grateful nonetheless). Finally after what felt l
So, the update. Finally. Kiera is sick, and she missed her nap, so it was not a happy day for miss Kiera. Now that things feel calm is a better time to blog. So, about Cambrie. Her surgery was 2 days ago. She was still nauseated coming out of surgery, and she had instuctions NOT to throw up, (not to use the stomach muscles they had to cut). So Cambrie asked them to give her drugs to knock her out for the next 24 hours. So she woke up yesterday afternoon. She was sore, and nauseated still...it was a difficult day. Today she is doing better than yesterday. Her back hurts from not being able to sit up straight (because the stomach hurts), she has a low grade fever, which was coming down when I left. She still has nausea, but it is much better than it was yesterday. Actually she explained that to me. She says that the reason that the tube into the intestine is supposed to be better than TPN, is because it is constantly being fed in. When you are pregnant, when your blood sugar drops
Image
For the second time I can remember in my life, they canceled church because of snow. We got about 12 (or maybe more) inches of snow this morning and I spent all day until now plowing snow around the ward. Cool beans. I miss my wife. :-(
I'm officially a bachelor for a while. Marilyn drove to the Nelson house yesterday to help Steve and Cambrie and Kiera. She was going to go today, but due to the weather forecast she decided to leave yesterday. Good thing. It's now 7:40 am and (shock and surprise) it's snowing hard at our house. I'm anxiously awaiting a report on the Punkin' after she had the surgery. [waving] HI HON! I LOVE YOU! There is an upside though....if I want Spam for dinner, I can have Spam for dinner. I can turn the thermostat down to 68. Ok...well, I'd gladly trade that for my lover again, but hey... You gotta look on the bright side.
Cambrie should be getting a PEG line in about now. I am praying that the outcome of that will be a good thing, and not more bad news, if it rips out with her vomiting. I would appreciate anyone elses prayers with mine on Cambrie's behalf. Thanks.
Analog -> Digital TV conversion - If you have a TV without a digital tuner (most don't have one unless you bought it real recently) go to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ and you can apply for up to TWO coupons to purchase digital to analog converters. Starting February 2009 if you don't have a converter or you aren't connected to cable/satellite TV, your TV will be good for nothing but a door stop.