Everton Updates!

Hi Family,

Thanks to you who posted updates....we missed those of you who didn’t make it this week. We’re anxious to hear what’s going on with you so PLEASE try to join us this week!

Our news for the week.....

* We had the appointment with Beau’s Neuro-Psychologist this week. We were somewhat impressed with her. She really seems like she wants to be thorough and help us if it is at all possible. She met with Beau for an hour and had him tell her his story (we’re pretty sure it’s not real accurate what he told her....) but she was also trying to get a feel from him how he was dealing with everything emotionally and she was able to get a good idea about that. She seemed pretty amazed that he was doing so well showing no sign of depression. I stayed in the waiting room with Beau and Dad went in and met with her for the 2nd hour. Most of what she was wanting to do at this appointment was accumulate data about him. Dad was able to explain Beau’s issues more clearly to her. I also took copies of all of his medical records for her (we’re talking about 2 inches thick) and she wants to talk to some of his therapists. She also wants to get copies of his test scores from high school. She wants to take a week and study everything and come back to us with her analysis and whether she thinks she can help him and where we can go from here. She has not had a blind patient before or a patient with the Anton-Babinsky Syndrome (believing hallucinations are real) but she seemed knowledgable about it. She was able to explain to us that he is not capable of distinguishing reality between what he sees and what is really there. This was helpful for us to know so we don’t feel we have to constantly correct him and try to help him understand they are not real. We have been beating ourselves over the head sometimes trying to help him realize this. Just when we think he’s getting it, he’ll turn around and do the same thing again. So for her to tell us he is not capable of understanding right now, it freed us from feeling like we needed to correct him. We are still hopeful that she will offer therapy to atleast help him cope with it. She did think that perhaps she can work with his Speech Therapist to find ways to help work with him. Please keep him in your prayers, and pray that this Doctor will be able to help us. If nothing else, that she can help lead us to someone else that can help us.

* Dad is doing so great on his diet!!!! He is down another 4 lbs. this week!! He is doing so well and is so excited about this diet, I decided to join him, so that it’s something we can do together and keep each other accountable. We can buy and fix our food together instead of eating totally separately. We are both excited about doing this together. It just makes sense right now, to us.

* We met with Maureen this week to talk about the future. We were glad to know that she is still loving her job with us and wants to stay with us even through the summer when her hours will be cut. She will be working 80 hours a month and that will keep her benefits through Medicaid. That will mean she will come 4 hours a day. I’ll give her a schedule at the first of the week of when those 4 hours will be the most helpful and then she can make plans with her kids. We feel she is such a blessing in our lives. She has been so good for Beau and truly has his best interests at heart. We’ve grown to appreciate her more and more as time goes by.

* Phase I has been finished with our front yard. We’re now ready to discuss Phase II. Harold is coming over on Wednesday to plan with us. We think Phase II will be tearing out the sidewalk in front of our house & grinding all the stumps and huge roots in our yard and leveling it out. Then pouring a new sidewalk. We are wanting to drive around and look at yards to get an idea of what we want planted in the front so we are ready for upcoming Phases!

I’m SOOOO glad Hailey and Drew are safe. I watched the news closely all week, concerned about the tornadoes close to where they are. Joplin is 2 hours south from them and that was too close for comfort.

We’ve loved watching Mal’s music videos each week! I hope you keep them up, Mal! I hope all of you are able to see them on Facebook or YouTube.

We are so excited about the news of Melissa & Kimballs neighbor’s baptism. I know that has been a wonderful experience for their family. We’re excited to have them here next week for Taylor’s Blessing and Kennedy’s 3rd Birthday!!

Will just had his 7th birthday on the 21st! Congratulations, Will!

Have a WONDERFUL Memorial Day tomorrow! I wish we could be together....I look forward to August when we CAN all be together.

Love to you ALL!

Week #2 for Everton Family Updates!

Hi Family,

Well we’re on to week two!! Thanks SOOOO much for all the updates received. We just need to get one more family on board and I’m sure they’ll join us this week.....right? I’m thinking, this may really work!!! Let’s keep it up and see if this helps keep us connected.

Again, I’m open to any suggestions if you think we can improve on this somehow. Its just my dream that we stay close and know what’s going on in each other’s lives.

Here are our Weekly Updates for this week:

* I had my CT Scan and it turned out completely normal. They were trying to make sure I was healing all right from my surgery and the infection I was having wasn’t related to recovery from surgery. It is just a bladder infection and the third antibiotics I took FINALLY started working. I’m almost 100% better.

* Dad is still doing AWESOME on his diet and he’s feeling really great about it! He lost another 4 lbs. this week. He has Saturday’s as his splurge day and Beau and I have been enjoying eating out with him on that day. This week we met him at Dave’s Famous BBQ for lunch and then Beau and I went to a movie that offered Descriptive Audio which made it very enjoyable for both of us. We saw “Something Borrowed”. It was a cute show.

* Beau goes in tomorrow for his first visit with the Neuro-Psychologist we found. We are really looking forward to this appointment. I’ll report next week how it went. He also, saw a Physical Therapist and a Occupational Therapist at the Outpatient Rehab Center at OHSU he’s been going to seeing a Speech Therapist for the past few months. They did an evaluation and have determined that he can benefit from working with them. This has really ramped up his appointments because all three of those Therapists want to see him weekly. With the Commission for the Blind twice a week, it makes for a pretty busy week. But it feels good to be making progress and getting him all the help he needs to try to improve his quality of life.

* I’m starting The Cleanse diet, Hailey told me about. I need something to get me off the plateau I’ve been on for over a month. I can’t seem to lose anything and I’ve been trying really hard. (Dad’s splurge days, may not be helping me, too much). We’ll see how the Cleanse goes. Tomorrow it starts and it’s all fruit tomorrow! I’ve started back this week onto my training for Hood to Coast since my surgery. I need to catch up to where I was before surgery. Hopefully it won’t take too long.

* We’re making progress on our front yard, but it’s pretty slow. Harold Clark kind of has his own time frame and we really don’t know when he’s going to show up next. It may take some time, but it will happen. All the arborvitae are gone from between Bill and our house and he’s also been taking down that little brick wall we built.

Well, that’s our news! I love you all and hope to hear from all of you again!

Hello Family!

I just spent those two weeks in bed recovering from surgery and that gives you some pretty good time to become introspective and a chance to re-evaluate things. The thing that was forefront on my mind was how grateful I am for our family. No matter what is happening in our lives, it’s that strong family bond that truly gets us through the rough times and is the first people you want to share the good times with, as well. We also know that these are eternal bonds that will go with us after we pass from this life. I was so grateful for the phone calls, texts, emails and gifts I received from all of you. It totally cheered me up and made my day when I wasn’t feeling so great. No matter who we are, we want to be remembered and we want to know that we matter to someone else. That’s especially true with our family. Thank you for helping me feel so loved and that I matter to you.

It got me thinking.....!! Is there more we can do to stay close? It would be mine and your dad’s greatest desire to make sure our family stays connected and stays close to each other. I would just hate to see us drift apart, because it’s easy to do if we don’t work on it. Having our family reunions as Travis is planning this summer is a GREAT way to stay connected and to always make it priority to come....no matter what! But what about throughout the year? I think it’s important that we continue to make phone calls on birthdays. That’s a great time to check in with each other. We all like to be remembered on our birthdays!

Another thought I had was using this blog as a check in point. I know I’ve been horrible about keeping it up, but I promise to do better. This will be a great incentive for me to do better if you like this idea! If I submit a post, at least monthly, if not weekly, which would be ideal and then each of you just submit a comment with a few sentences mentioning you or your families highlights from that week, then at least we’ll have an idea of what everyone is up to. What do you think??? I’m open for suggestions or comments! Let me know!!!

For our highlights this week:

I found a Neuro-Psychologist to take Beau to. Her name is Dr. Elaine Grief (That’s with a long “i”). I’m really encouraged that she can be helpful to us. She seems familiar with what Beau is going through with his hallucinations that he sees and believes. We have a 2-hour appointment with her on Monday, May 23rd! This has been a long time in coming so we’re very excited about it.

We’ve hired Harold Clark to come and start working on our front yard. We are very excited to design new landscaping for it without the trees. Hopefully you won’t even recognize it the next time you come! (In a good way)

I still have a bladder infection and am on my third round of antibiotics and they don’t seem to be helping either. I go in for a CT scan tomorrow afternoon to check the surgery site and make sure things are healing as they should.

Dad’s going strong with his diet and has lost around 10 lbs. all ready.

We received a visit from our Stake President, President Bair, and the visiting General Authority for Stake Conference, Elder Ringwold, yesterday. They came to visit Beau. We had a wonderful visit. Elder Ringwold left the message with Beau, that he had learned everything he needed to know about enduring to the end when he served his mission..... and the other message he left was the our Heavenly Father loves each one of us individually and is very aware of what we are going through. He then used his visit with Beau to introduce his talk in Stake Conference this morning and talked more in-depth on the same message. It was a beautiful talk and the spirit was so strong. It was also a great reminder for our testimonies that we are literal children of our Heavenly Father and he LONGS to bless us.

I love you ALL!