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I will not be using this blog anymore. Family life right now is crazy for us. I am going to focus on a new blog that is all about being creative and expressing yourself through crafts, sewing, and cooking. Positive things, things that improve us, things that are FUN!! If anything happens with Addison's health I will update on the new blog. The new blog is called- Sew What. The address is: http://mycreativecrap.blogspot.com

Hazardous

Addison has started her next step in her treatment plan. Since the steroid she had been on is only helping to heal her esophagus and not her stomach or colon her Doctors decided we needed to go to the next step in her treatment. This step is the first of three options. This is the easiest and we are hopeful it will work. She is now on a new medicine along with all the other medicine that she already takes. This new medicine is a chemotherapy drug that has also been shown to work on diseases in the GI tract. It is called 6-Mecaptopurine, or 6 MP for short. The medicine bottle actually says: Hazardous drugs require thorough hand washing after handling. Pregnant women are not even suppose to handle or breath in the dust from this medicine. It also has some very serious side effects. Addison so far has been blessed to still feel pretty good while taking it. We hope and pray that will continue. This is how I understand that it works. Normal cells stop dividing when they come in contact with like cells. Cancerous cells continue to divide rapidly not being able to stop dividing when they are suppose to. This medicine belongs to a class know as antimetabolites. Antimetabolites are very similar to normal substances found in the cells. When the cells incorporate these substances into the cellular metabolism, they are unable to divide. I guess this medicine works on the Eosinophil cells like it would the cancerous cells. Eosinophils are white blood cells that are one of the immune system components, along with mast cells, they also control mechanisms associated with allergy and asthma. Eosinophillic Esophagitus and Colitis are allergy related. It is the allergens in foods that react with and cause the white blood cells to release toxins that attack the body. It will take about 3 months before this medicine will start to really effect the EE. After that time the Dr.'s will then re scope everything and do biopsies and determine how successful this medicine has been. If for some reason this medicine does not positively effect Addison's EE throughout her body the next step would then be Intravenous feeds. The Doctors are still somewhat stumped as to why the special formula has not helped her stomach and colon to heal. By not eating ANY food her esophagus looked great and there were hardly any eosinophils there. We just have to get the rest of her body healed. Her Dr. never did tell me what the 3rd step would be. I guess he was very hopeful that the first 2 steps should work.

I saw this on a blog and love the idea. Who doesn't have gobs of ribbon all tangled up in a bucket somewhere in their house? I know I do. What an easy and fun way to not only display your ribbon but to be more functional too.

http://pregnantpower.blogspot.com/2010/03/spice-jar-ribbon-dispenser.html

Brownies

Jarom loves brownies. Addison and I have been struggling to make good brownies in our townhouse oven. For some reason they are really challenging to make them turn out right. We have tried different pans, temperatures, baking times, and recipes. They would never turn out good. One of Addison's YW leaders has 2 of these and loves them. I decided to give it a try.





This was very easy to use and clean up afterward. Jarom gave them a total thumbs up. Clint said they were the best brownies he had ever eaten. I have to agree. We still had to work with the time for cooking. Our oven is kind of crazy. It took an extra 8 minutes for them to be done. I have to say that this was worth the money. It makes baking brownies so much easier.

Update

We are still alive. We moved again at the end of November. We found a townhouse we love that was still in the same ward. We are renting it for the next two years. We are loving renting. We decided that owning your own house is a little overrated. Heaven knows how many homes we have owned (just count how many times we have moved over the last 16 years), but you can't beat calling up the landlord and needing something fixed and not having to fix it yourself. Now that is nice.

I am still home schooling both kids. There are many challenging things about doing this. There are also many nice things as well. We are looking into a charter school for next year, so the kids will be able to get out of the house for a couple hours a day. We will see if we can find something that will work for our kids.

Addison is still not doing very well. After many more scopes and lab work the Doctor found that her stomach and colon are the worst that they have ever been. It is very frustrating because this feeding tube was suppose to heal her body enough that she would be able to start adding some foods back into her diet. It was also only suppose to last 4 months. We are now on our 11 month. Addison is very frustrated to say the least. Her Doctor is going to try her on a different medicine and we are all hopeful this will help her body to heal.

Jarom has been doing Karate with Clint for awhile now. It is the only thing we could get him to do that doesn't involve video games. He is such a great big brother.

I want to be better about blogging. This is the only journal that I will have to look back on and know what happened throughout the year. I think this is easier than actually writing in a journal so I should be able to post at least once a week. That will be a goal for me.

I look forward to reading about all my friends and family. I enjoy seeing new crafts, new recipes, and new adventures that you all do.

We took a quick family trip to Willcox, AZ and Tombstone. We went to Willcox to a farm that had a pumpkin patch, sunflower patch, and tons of vegetable patches. We went through their corn maze too. We ended up picking 2 pumpkins, a red bell pepper, a hot pepper, some black eyed peas and a funking looking summer squash. Yes we took the dogs on our trip. Rudy is a traveling man. Bella shook and was terrified the whole time. All in all they did good and we had a great time together.


We saw a show before we came to Tombstone. It was called Ghost Lab. It was all about the ghosts of Tombstone. It was interesting. Needless to say the kids enjoyed it and it gave us some locations and things to do and look at while we where there. I think that the Boothill Graveyard was the highlight for us.

Anniversary

Today is Clint and my 16th wedding anniversary. It seems like only yesterday, but it seems like 40 years ago. How does that happen? I guess it is the same thing with your kids. To have two teenagers now is pretty scary. It means that I am getting really old. I never thought that I would be 36 years old. I remember when I was younger we threw a big party for our neighbor that was turning 30. She seemed SO old. Well that was 6 years ago for me now and boy I feel old. Life has been full of ups and downs for us and I am sure it will continue to be full of them. But here's wishing for many more years together.

Fry's shopping trip

I couldn't find my camera charger so my son was savvy enough to take a picture with his cellphone. It's not very clear but I wanted to post a picture anyway. Before the Fry's card savings my total was $200.00. After the Fry's card, the buy ten deal, and all my coupons my total was $76.09. It was still more than I wanted to pay but I did get a lot of stuff. Almost 2 full cases of Smart Water, 22 bottles at .49 cents each. A 24 can case of Mtn Dew for $4.97. You could get it for $3.97 if you bought 3 cases of Pepsi products, but I didn't want that many. Toilet paper was $5.oo. I ended up with 78 items and my balance was $76.09. So $1.00 an item wasn't too bad, but I still think I can do better.
Thanks to the guidance of my sister Moira-Lin I may perfect this coupon thing one day.