An Exciting Blood Draw

*Warning* This post contains mention of blood, needles, and other things that may make some people queasy. Feel free to skip if you are one of those people. ;)

I had a blood donation scheduled for last Friday. Even from the beginning, it seemed like things were occurring to make it so I wouldn't donate. The first time, I got all ready for the appointment on the 12th. For some reason I was sure that my appointment was set for Wednesday. We were getting groceries, when I suddenly looked at my watch and realized I was late for my appointment. We hurried to the checkout line, and half way through paying for things, I decided to look at my appointment to see where the address was. To my relief, I noticed that the appointment was actually set for Friday.

So, that Friday, I was cooking dinner, and time was running out. I was making pizza, and I was trying to get ahold of my mom to see how long I was supposed to cook it. I also needed to know what temperature. However, she wouldn't answer her phone, and before I knew it, I was late for my appointment. I finally received the information I needed, and ran out to the car. I went to check the address again...only to discover that my appointment was set for the next Friday.

So, fast-forward a week. Finally, the day of my actual appointment arrived. I arrived there in plenty of time, made sure I had my rapid-pass ready to go, and sat down to wait. Nearly an hour later, I finally got into the check-in station. On the first go, my iron was too low. However, during the second stick, I passed. My appointment was for a double blood cell draw, but it was so busy, I opted for a regular appointment instead.

It took another half an hour to get on a chair, but after that, things seemed to be going smoothly. I have really good veins, and I've never had anyone unable to hit them on the first poke. The nurse was able to do so, and blood began to fill the bag. However, as the nurse went to tape the needle to my arm, I felt the needle shift. I looked down and was surprised to see that I could see the open part of the needle. That wasn't a good sign.

I quickly pointed it out to the nurse, and as she looked down, blood began to pool. She quickly grabbed a gauze to put pressure on it, but the blood continued to spread. She tried to calmly call for another nurse to bring her more gauze, bu the other nurse was busy talking to another volunteer. The blood filled the whole gauze pad, and began to run down both sides of my arm. I moved away so it didn't land on my shirt, and sometime in the midst of all this, the needle came out the rest of the way.

About that time, the other nurse finally came over, and they both put on more gauze. Eventually the bleeding stopped, but because the needle had come out and they were out of blood bags, they told me I couldn't donate anymore, so I just had to leave.

So, I got a piece of gauze taped to my arm (they were also out of band-aids). I was pretty embarrassed, and so I kept apologizing. I didn't want the nurse to feel bad either.

Anyway, she told me to take lots of snacks, so I did.

All in all, it turned out to be the most unsuccessful blood donation I've ever been to. Aside from the embarrassment though, I trust that there's some good reason that I wasn't able to donate blood this week.

Curtains

For my birthday, I received some money. I've been holding onto it, just in case we needed it for foster care, but after we had the home inspection, I felt like it was safe to use the money.

So, I purchased new curtains. I'm super excited about it. We've had the same front room curtains since we moved into the house, and I've never really liked them.

 Since this picture was taken, they actually were in much worse shape. There were much worse gaps at the top, and it was pretty nasty.

So, I ordered new curtains. When I ordered them, I wanted them to match the one I put on the back door. My mom had bought that one for me last year on my birthday. However, when the curtains arrived, I quickly pulled down the old one and Grig and I put up the new ones.

I was dismayed to quickly find out that they were too narrow. I had measured before purchasing, but evidently I hadn't counted for the ruffles in the curtains.

They were also a lot smaller than the one my mother had purchased for me the year before. Gaps showed on both sides of the curtains. It was pretty distressing to me. I had already thrown out the old curtain, and I couldn't return the new ones without it being a lot of effort and having a complete lack of privacy in our living room. I also didn't want to put more money into buying two new curtains, but I didn't know what to do. I just knew I couldn't handle having them look like this.

 I called my mother, and asked her to send me the link to the curtain she had purchased for me the year before. As she looked for it, we talked about possible solutions, and she suggested that I measure the back door. The back door turned out to be much smaller than the front window, and my mother suggested that I switch the front two curtains with the back curtain. Then, she suggested that I buy one more curtain the same size as the back one, and use the older curtain and the new curtain to cover the front window.

I felt good about that plan. It would make it so we wouldn't have to return the two new curtains and we'd only have to buy one more. She sent me the link, and I quickly purchased a final curtain.

Two days later it arrived. I was so excited when I put them up. They look awesome!

 I switched the front two to the back door and was pleased to find that they fit there as well. Now, we have blackout curtains on our front and back windows that match. There are no more gaps, and the curtains look nice.

I'm pretty excited about my birthday presents. It's nice to have total privacy.

Also, for those of you who have been wondering about foster care, we still haven't heard anything yet. I'll keep you posted.

The Garden Fence

Last week, one of the major things I wanted to get accomplished was to finish expanding our garden.

In preparation for it last year, we moved our playground equipment across the yard. Since then, though, we hadn't done anything else.

This is where it is now. I love it so much more.

However, we finally got to work on it again. Kevin and I took down the fence during the day. When Grig was on his way home, we had him stop by the store and pick up some wire to attach the fence more securely to the posts. He also grabbed an extra post. After we ate dinner, we all went back out and put the fence up.

I was also pretty happy with the dogs. Even though there was a gaping hole in the yard, they never even tried to go out of it. I'm really happy with how their training has been progressing.

Now, one whole corner of the yard is fenced off. We just have to finish turning everything over and we can plant. It's probably okay that we haven't gotten to it yet though, since it snowed a couple days ago. I haven't taken a new picture of our garden area yet, so you'll just have to imagine it from this one.

From the shed to the chain link is now all fenced off for the garden. I'm so excited to plant more this year. The hot-tub is also gone now, and we're removed cement from the ground.

It's really nice to be able to work outside as a family again. We've been really enjoying the warmer weather. I'll try to keep you updated on new projects as we work on them. 

We haven't heard back from the foster care office yet, but it should be this week or next week.

The Crib Story

During our home inspection, I was showing the inspector the extra beds and bedrooms that we have. I showed her the pack-n-play, and she told me that we needed to have a real crib in order to take in a baby. The pack-n-play wasn't permanent enough.

She told me that if we did get a baby, we could let him/her sleep in it a couple of days, but we'd have to get a crib. Since cribs are expensive, we decided we'd deal with that when we had to, and not to worry about buying it right now.

However, the next day, my grandma called and told me that she had been to a garage sale at a neighbor's home. One of the things that she found there was a crib and my grandma had thought of me and wondered if we'd be interested.

That seemed like too much of a coincidence to not take advantage of, and so we decided to get the crib. We got a really good price on it, and it's a really nice solid crib that comes complete with a mattress.

Grig picked it up after work on Monday. When he brought it inside our home, Kevin got really excited. He began to jump around and babble excitedly about "the baby" that was coming to our home.

He dashed off and exclaimed that he needed to draw a picture of our family with the new baby. He quickly did so, and then he showed the picture to me. Lately, when he draws our family, he draws me with a ponytail, his dad as just a stick figure, and then him, as a smaller stick figure. Sometimes he is wearing a cape. This time, he included an even smaller stick figure that he was holding.

Then, he wanted to hang it over the crib. We hadn't set the crib up yet, so we didn't know where he should hang it up. So, he stuck it in his room instead.

It will still be a couple of weeks, but things keep working out, even when we're not expecting them too.

I think we're definitely on the right track.

General Conference April 2017

Saturday and Sunday were General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had a really good time. Saturday, we got up and listened to the first session. Kevin painted and drew during most of that session. When it finished, we packed up a lunch and drove out to the canyon for a picnic. We had a lot of fun, and it was really pleasant. Grig always feels a lot better when we are able to make it out to the woods. Kevin really enjoyed climbing a small tree that we found.

We got back in the car just in time for the next session to start. After we got home, we made graham cracker houses with frosting while we listened to the 2nd session. Kevin had a really good time doing that, and his house turned out really nice. The frosting was yummy too.

This was the house I made.

This was Kevin's house.

Grig's house had a few technical difficulties, but it tasted good, so that was okay.

After the session ended, I fell asleep, and then, while Grig took a nap, I made onion blossoms and heated up some left overs for dinner. I think they turned out really good. After dinner, Grig listened to Priesthood session on his computer while Kevin and I hung out. Afterward, Kevin went to bed.

Today, we got up, watched the first session of conference, and then we headed over to my grandma and grandpa’s home. They fed us a delicious lunch of fried chicken and potatoes, and then we watched the final session together. Kevin did really well at being reverent during the last session. He was drawing pictures of ties with the other kids, but at one point, I looked over and he was really focusing on the television. He seemed to be listening intently to the talk. I was really proud of him.

Some of the things I learned from conference was that I need to study the life of the Savior more. That was brought up a lot, by a lot of people. I also felt like I needed to make sure my priorities were in order. The other thing that really stuck out was a talk about immediately following promptings when I receive them. The speaker told us that when we question or ignore promptings, we lose the ability to hear the Spirit. I don’t want to do that.

It was an excellent set of meetings, and I’m always pretty sad when they end.