This Week - The Waffle Window

Zach and Ksenia have been telling us about the “Waffle Window” for quite awhile now, so this week, we decided to go try it out. What a really cool place it was!! So, this is a picture of the Waffle Window. It literally is just a window that you walk up to and order your waffles. Another cafe lets Waffle Window customers sit in their eating area. The waffles were to die for! Oh my goodness! I would like to go back and try some of the other deliciousness they had to offer.

Zach and Anya were at the window when we got there and Ksenia directed us to a premo parking spot. It was a little drizzly that morning....but what else is new in Portland!

Lucas seemed to enjoy their plain waffles that are like eating a donut. Any visitors to Portland......we would love to take you to get in on the experience. It was very delicious!

Dad would like to introduce you to what he calls “the new member of the family”. Dad’s pointer finger on his left hand has been giving him problems for quite some time. It’s kept him from playing the guitar because it is quite painful. He has found that a classical guitar with nylon strings is much easier to play with his finger the way it is. For Father’s Day, I let him pick the classical guitar he wanted and it happened to come in yesterday at Portland Music. He’s pretty excited about it. It’s a Taylor! It’s WONDERFUL hearing him playing again!

Beau has shown a real interest in picking up the guitar again. He has decided to try practicing 15 minutes a day. He’s re-learning his chords right now. It’s pretty difficult for him with his left hand, but he’s pretty determined and we think it will be great exercise for his left hand and hopefully help strengthen it. He’s also been pretty focused on trying to rig up a string board that will help him learn his chords by feel.

That’s mainly our news for the week. We can’t wait to hear from the rest of you about your weeks! Thanks for participating!!

Everton Updates!!

I thought I’d show you some “before” pictures because our yard is about as tore up as it can get right now. They just ground the stumps this week and started breaking up the sidewalk in the front, so hopefully now, all the work they do will be to improve. I guess it will get worse....I forgot we are re-pouring our driveway, also. But soon....I hope....our yard will start looking better and we’ll show you the progress as it comes.

* Thanks to all of you who posted updates last week. It was so great to hear from you. I know Mal was having finals this week and Travis is on his motorcycle trip with his friend, John. So, hopefully we will hear from them next week???

* I am getting so close to starting my summer and being off work. This week I work 3 full days and then have Thursday and Friday off (Budget Reduction Days), then work 1/2 days through the end of next week and then it’s summer break for me!!!! I can’t wait.

* Beau saw his Speech Therapist, Jenny, this week and had a great session with her. She worked with him on extended attention exercises helping him to focus on tasks longer. She gave us some exercises to work with him on at home. One of them, we’ve had fun working on is, name as many things in a certain category as you can in a minute. The more we do them, the more I see an improvement. It’s seems to be a great exercise in just stimulating his thought process. (It’s good exercise for my thought process, too!) Her intent is to help him focus on things that will keep him from being distracted by his hallucinations. He has an appointment with the Neuro-Pyschologist on Tuesday to do some more detailed and specific testing.

* I took Beau to Roadrunners yesterday to buy him a new pair of running shoes. He’s been diagnosed with Plantar Facitis. It was an interesting experience for him to try on shoes and go through the process they go through to choose the right shoe for you and be blind. His comment was that he realized that for the first time, how the shoe looked made absolutely no difference to him....he realized how it felt was all that mattered. I tried to reassure him that they looked great, but I’m sure he doesn’t completely trust "his mother’s" opinion on fashion for him. But when it came down to it...it didn’t matter.

* Beau has 3 friends that come to visit him most every week. Ryan Wilkinson has always come to visit him weekly ever since he got out of the hospital last year. Now Nathan Fletcher comes every Wednesday and Paul Fisher has started coming regularly to visit, as well. It’s been wonderful to have them come. They are all so good for him. He looks forward to their visits.

That’s about all of our news. I look forward to hearing about your week! Love to you all!

Mom

Everton Updates Continue

The highlight of our week was the Garvin Family coming to Portland to have Taylor blessed. They arrived Friday night late and stayed at Hollie’s. Kyle and Bristol drove up for the blessing and were driving back on Sunday morning so they wanted to be able to see them as much as possible.

The blessing was scheduled for 2:30 on Friday afternoon at our home. Bishop Knowlton from our ward came over and participated in the blessing. Jack and Bambi were here and Zach, Ksenia and kids. Hollie brought her boyfriend, John, also. Kimball gave a wonderful blessing! We took pictures and had light refreshments. Then everyone went home to change and prepare food for further festivities in the evening. Kennedy’s birthday was really on Sunday, but we were having her family birthday celebration Saturday evening.

Kennedy was pretty excited about her birthday and seemed to LOVE hearing everyone singing Happy Birthday to her......unitl...she thought Lucas was going to blow out her candles and then this is what happened.....

She was soon reassured and returned to her happy, excited self and blew out the candles!!!

* For other news, Dr. Grief called me back and has said she is close to a plan of action for Beau. She wants to have him come in for another appointment to do some more specific testing to pinpoint exactly what she thinks his issues are. Then the following week she will meet with Dad and I and go over everything that she has found and set up what she feels needs to happen next.

Beau also met his new Primary Care Physician this week, Dr. Lenhart. She just took over the patients for Dr. Lang who he had before. Dad went with Beau to the appointment so I haven’t met her, but it sounded like she will be good. This appointment was just to get acquainted so a relationship will all ready be established before he actually needs to come in. He has had pain in his feet, especially his left foot. She examined him and said it is plantar facitis. We’re working on some icing and using a tennis ball to massage the area.

* We met with Harold and have set up Phase II for our new front yard. We are actually going to tear up our driveway and the front sidewalk and repour them. We will also get the stumps ground in the yard and we have decided to build a short rock wall in the front because the yard slopes down and it will make a place to let us build it up and level it out more...plus we think it will add character to the yard. There will be a space in front of the wall to plant flowers. We are also having raised garden boxes built for the side yard and have the sprinkler system hooked up to them. He said we should have them ready to grow something in this season!

* This is my last full week of school with kids. They are officially out next Tuesday. Then I will just work 1/2 days until the 24th. It’s getting very close and then my fun summer will begin. It is great having a job that I get summers off. Can’t beat it!

Well, I hope you all can post and update this week. I sure look forward to reading your comments and updates about your family. I hope you all do! Have a wonderful week!!!

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!

Zero Waste Lifestyle

I am passionate about reducing waste. I feel that the amount of waste our society produces disturbing and unsustainable (not only are we quickly using up Earth's resources that are limited, we are also running out of places to put our massive amounts of trash, which results in environmental pollution). We have been trying to reduce waste in our home as much as possible, but we still have a lot of room for improvement (we fill up about one under-the-sink garbage can in a week).

This short video was very inspirational to me. It shows how doable zero-waste lifestyle is. Making changes is hard for me, but once I get into a solid habit -- it becomes easy and feels good. Next on my list for this spring is getting a red-worm composting bin. Please enjoy the video!