Friday Butch got home from work early and decided to go fishing. While he was out in the garage getting his fishing gear together, I guess the Wolff's delivery truck pulled up in the driveway and Butch asked the delivery guy who was sending his wife flowers. The delivery guy said to him...you did not send these to your wife and Butch said no and the delivery guy said well I didn't send them to her either...LOL!!! Butch came in the house and I was busy in my office and all I heard behind me was Butch saying..."Should I be jealous?" I turned around and Butch was holding this beautiful bouquet of flowers. I said to him who sent that and he said I don't know, but it wasn't me. It was funny!

I opened the card and it said...Hope you're feeling better!
Love, Dad and Joy
It made my day! You can see for yourself here how beautiful they are!! I just had to show them off!!

Update on my RSD

Since being diagnosed with RSD my therapy and exercises have totally changed and I have been going to occupational therapy twice a week instead of once a week. Because I have been in so much pain, it is hard to do too much and the pain seems to have been worsening each day. I called my doctor because the shooting pains going up my arm had me in tears on a daily basis. He put me on two more meds and set me up for a Stellate Ganglion Nerve Block to be done at the Pain Center at Miller Dwan Hospital. When they called me to schedule this, they told me Dr. Nelson would be doing this procedure...he is the one who did the injections in my back so I felt comfortable knowing the surgeon who would be doing this.

I immediately started doing my research on this procedure and when I found out what was involved with it, I became very nervous and since I had a week to think about it, I became more nervous each day as it got closer and by the time I got to the Pain Center, I had myself so worked up, I was in tears. The nurses there were so nice though and they took such good care of me. One nurse told me it was her job to pamper me. I asked the doctor for something to take the edge off and he said it was too late in the day and told me that if I needed something I could come back in the morning and he would give me IV drugs and I said no I cant go home and wait again....I just have to do this now and that is what I did.

The doctor talked me through it and kept telling me he would be as gentle as possible and I just kept my eyes closed and I made it through the procedure. Here is a quick description of this procedure:

The stellate is a group of nerves in the neck area. A stellate ganglion block is an injection of a local anesthetic around this group of nerves to relieve pain. The pain relief will affect one side of the head and neck, the upper arm and the upper part of the chest on the same side of the body.
A stellate ganglion block can decrease pain and increase the circulation and blood supply to the affected arm.

Immediately following the procedure, the shooting pains going up my arm were gone....a huge plus for me! Another huge plus for me was that my fingers were warm! My fingers have been ice cold for......as long as I can remember back to when the accident happened. I still had the pain in my hand, thumb area and wrist area but the shooting pains were gone and that felt great and the warm fingers felt great!! The first thing Butch noticed when he held my hand was that my fingers were warm!

Before I left there, Dr. Nelson had me schedule another block for Wednesday, Aug. 8th. He wants to hit this aggressively. I have O/T Tuesday and Thursday and the block on Wed. He said that if I go to therapy without pain they can do more aggressive therapy which makes sense to me.

When the procedure was done, I felt like I just wanted to sleep so they wheeled me out on a gurney. I did have the droopy eye, tearing, nasal stuffiness, hoarse voice and difficulty swallowing following the procedure. I came home and slept the rest of the night.

The day after the procedure I could move my thumb!! Another milestone for me!!! I have not been able to do that for a very long time. I can move it back and forth to a certain point and I know with therapy I will be able to move it further!

My fingers stayed warm for two days! They are cold and tingly again. My hand around the incision area, wrist and my middle finger are very painful. Last night I was in tears again. The pain was about an 8 on a scale of 0-10. My elbow has had pain for 2 days too. But the shooting pains are not there so I think that is still good. Maybe the next block will do a little more and the one after that will do a little more. Maybe all I can hope for is a little relief each time. I have gone into all of these surgeries and procedures with huge expectations and have come out with little or no relief and I just need to go into this with a different outlook and just think that it may take a while.

One thing I have not been able to do for a while now that I LOVE to do is scrapbook!! That is my passion and I think if I could get this pain under control, scrapbooking would be great therapy for my hand/arm! I want to try to do a little bit because I have some small projects that I want to do for Ashlee before she leaves for College.

I just need to keep a positive outlook on the situation and keep hoping and praying. I have a great support system in my friends and family and especially my husband, Butch!! I don't know what I would do without him and I love him so much!! My kids have also been so good through all of this and helped out so much with everything and I love them too!!!!

Having some great summer weather!

We have finally been having some really nice weather here. Everyday for the last two weeks we have had the swimming pool, sprinkler and slip and slide out for the kids in the back yard. It has been up in the 90's so they have needed to be in the water to stay cool. We have been going outside about 9:30 AM and staying out all day and even having snacks and lunch outside. The kids who need naps come inside in the A/C and take naps and then come back out after their naps and play in the water again. We have to enjoy the outdoor weather while we can.

Re-licensing time snuck up on me and the paperwork came in the mail right before I left for my vacation. Then I came back and was so busy and then I ended up running late with the paperwork. So, yesterday was dedicated to finishing my re-licensing paperwork and I finished all of it, made all of the copies, went thru all of my files and reorganized and today I mailed the package to the State. YIPPEE!!!! Now I just wait for the State Licensor to pop in on me....unannounced of course...and do her walk thru!!! I feel ready for her.....no problem!!!

Rodney Atkins comes to Superior, WI

Butch and I got to see Rodney Atkins at the fair last Saturday night! We went with Lisa and Gary and we had a really great time. We always have fun with Lisa and Gary...they are a really fun couple!!! Rodney was AWESOME and he sang for about 90 minutes straight without a break!!! He even walked off stage right out into the crowd and you could tell that security did not like that but he did it anyway. He was very personable with his audience!!!! I bought a t-shirt and it had all the cities listed on the back and Superior, WI was the last stop for this tour. I also bought an autographed CD!!! After the concert we walked around the fair for a while and of course had to eat some greasy fair food and play some games.

Just some fun pictures!!!

I wanted to share these fun pictures of the girls together! Ashlee came home from dance camp one day and the girls were playing out in the back yard and Ashlee just joined in like she was one of the little kids. I think she was having a moment of maybe missing these girls and just wanted to spend some quality time with them and I could not pass up this opportunity to take pictures.

These are my nieces Sammy (11), Sophia (3)

and Shana (6) and then of course Lexi (10) and Ashlee (19).

Busy, Busy, Busy...

It has been just crazy busy since we have come home from our vacation. Between trying to get the invitations ready for Ashlee's going away party, deciding on a menu, purchasing the items that she needs for college, painting the daycare bathroom, expanding the opening on the back gate for the party, trying to get Ashlee to start packing her MANY clothes that she has and then my daycare re-licensing all at once and everything having the same deadline along with my medical problems.....there were just too many things going on at one time.

So I decided that I could only do one thing at a time and everything else would have to wait and some things were going to have to be late.

~So I took Ashlee shopping for some of the stuff she needed and of course then she changed her mind and we returned some of her stuff and then we ordered her bedding from Campus Bedding online and it should be here any day now. They guarantee it for 4 years until they graduate or they replace it and it will fit the beds. They have extra long beds.

~Then I got her to finally start getting her clothes packed and she went thru everything and gave some stuff to Sammy and some to Lexi. Then she put a pile of winter stuff together that we will bring to her when we go visit her for parents weekend in October.

~In the meantime, I was working on her invitations.......she had picked out the paper and she decided she just wanted Hawaiian themed invites since we are having a Hawaiian Luau Party!

So here is what I came up with:

~While we were doing all of this Butch and Matt were taking apart the back gate and expanding the opening by 3 feet. We rented a hot tub for Ashlee's party and the trailer that it comes on is wider than the gate opening used to be so now they will be able to back it in to our yard. That took a day and a half in 95 degree heat. After they did the gate then they took out all of the icicle lights that we hang on the house at Christmas time and they checked all the bulbs and plugged them all in to make sure they all worked and they hung them on the fence around the inside of the back yard so we will have some nice light for the party. We already tried them at night and it looks so cool.

~Before starting the gate though, Matt took all of the shelving, changing table, border, etc. off of walls in the daycare bathroom to be painted and re-bordered. We had painted the entire downstairs right before Christmas and never got to the daycare bathroom and I told Butch I wanted to get this done before Ashlee's party and get the border up that I had sitting here since last November. So they worked on this and the gate at the same time going back and forth and finished both jobs in one weekend. I did the touch up painting and put up the border and did the cleaning afterwards.

So that was 5 jobs checked off of my list!

So I said I got the invites done....but then I had to print all the mailing labels and put them on the envelopes and stuff the envelopes and then the envelopes did not have any sticky stuff on them to seal them.....what can I say...they were FREE!! So I used my good ol' tombow adhesive and stuck them all closed and DH went to the post office and got pretty stamps and we stamped them all and he finally took them to the post office on his way to work!!!! YIPPEE!!

Anyway, this post is getting long so I am going to end this one and start another one. But as you can see we have been busy little bees around here.

Ashlee's Summer Dance Camp & Performance

Ashlee attended Dance Camp the week of July 16-20 at Madill Dance Center and they had their Summer Performance at Bayfront Festival Park on Saturday, July 21st. It was a beautiful day for an outdoor performance. This was her last performance with the studio before she leaves for college.

Jenn told me that when Ashlee is home on Christmas break, Spring break or whenever, she can come and take any classes that she wants to. She also told Ashlee that when she is done with college that she wants her to come and teach for her.

This is a pic of Jenn Madill-Hagen and Ashlee. Ashlee really looks up to Jenn and really admires her. Jenn is very talented both as a dancer and as an instructor and Ashlee is going to miss her. I will keep her updated on how Ashlee is doing though because Lexi and Sammy will still be attending Madill Dance Center in the fall.

CSS Challenge #3 ~ "What would I do if I did not Scrap?"

Honestly, this is a hard question for me! I don't remember a time that I did not do something with my pics even when I was not officially "scrapbooking." I have always done something with them even if it was just putting a colored piece of paper behind them in one of those old magnetic photo albums! I suppose if I did not scrap, I would have more time to just spend with my family and just take photos and all of our photos would just go into those old magnetic photo albums and 20 years from now when my grandchildren are looking at them they would be all yellow and the edges would be curled and they would be saying "who is that grandma?"

I am glad that I am a scrapbooker, my kids and my grandkids will have nice "memory books" that will tell them a story and they will know who everyone is and what they were doing.

Thanks again for the challenge Amanda....keep them coming!!!!!