Dusting the Cobwebs part 2

I know that I'm leaving a lot of things out, but here is a summary of January-April

January

Paul advanced in Taekwondo

 Daniel turned 43
We celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary

February

Daniel and Jane played with sidewalk chalk on a nice, warm afternoon.

My roommate from college and her family came for a visit. Michele has 5 kids and it was a full house, but so good to catch up with her.  They live in Washington.

Her daughter Lyla is the same age as Jane and they were two peas in a pod!

I made a quilt for my sister-in-law's mom.  Mary has brain cancer that has spread to her other organs.  She has lived a lot longer than they predicted, but her health is very temperamental. She was complaining about the winter, so I made her a quilt to bring an early spring into her cold winter. Mother Nature complied and brought some warmer weather as well! 

Jane picked out a new Easter dress from Costco and we had a "drop the egg from the roof" contest at my parent's house.  

The 5 of us won with our eggs surviving two throws off of the roof.  My egg was just in a ziplock bag of Cheerios and put into a mailing envelope.  Simple (last minute) and effective!

March

I went to the Hogle Zoo with my cousin JaNean.  Her daughter Allison and Jane are the same age.  Jane got scared on the carousel and Alli held her hand to comfort her.  So cute!

Ryan Allison Jane Seth

Sherron JaNean

Seth and Brandon went skiing. We used the coupon in their passport to get lessons.  They did great and had a wonderful time on the slopes!

We went to Thanksgiving Point museums with my parents.  Jane really was terrified of this shark. Seth loved it!  

My parent's celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in January, but we had a party for them in March (when roads were more likely to be free of snow for our traveling family and friends) We had a lovely time catching up with neighbors, family, and friends.  It was a lot of work to put together, but I'm so glad that we did it!

 Kaye (my dad's sister) Ron, LuJane, Leland (Kaye's husband)

Me and Vicky Paul (she lived in my parent's neighborhood)

In a bit of sad news for our family, Master Kim from Taekwondo had to move to California to take care of family issues.  He has been deeply missed by my boys, especially Daniel.  Master Kim had an infectiously happy attitude. The boys would come home from a hard workout feeling amazing.  Things are a bit different now and it has been really tough to not have him around.  He was a great teacher for Mark to learn from.  

April

Taekwondo had their annual tournament.  The guys did a group form and took first place.  They all did really well in their competitions and I'm proud of them for going out there and working hard.

 Brandon came to watch.  He is in Seth's class at school and two of their other classmates were competing in the tournament. It was fun to see the boys cheer each other on!  

(Jane might have a bit of a crush on Brandon)

Dusting the Cobwebs part one

Wow.  I have been absent from writing in this blog for 9 months.  I have perfect excuses, but I miss being here documenting my life.  I'll quickly justify my absence, then try to figure out the best way to move forward from here.  What do I catch up on, what do I ignore?  We'll see how it goes as it goes.

The first week of January I hurt my right wrist.  I was stitching the digits back on my Cabbage Patch Doll (the threads came off and she didn't have any toes on either foot). After I finished that, I hand quilted about  5 or 6 inches on a quilt that I wanted to finish this year.  My wrist was aching, so I stopped, but the damage had been done.  My right wrist was so painful that I had to start using my left wrist a lot more, but that just made my left wrist hurt a lot, too.

In March my wrists were really hurting all of the time. They were falling asleep/going numb all of the time.  Using the computer for over 5 minutes at a time hurt my wrist,- even if I didn't type. Just using a mouse would hurt for 20 minutes afterward. I was struggling to make dinner, wash dishes, fold laundry, etc. I made an appointment with a physical therapist who specializes in hands. Taylor gave me a referral to someone she knows and I happened to go to high school with him!  I enjoyed catching up with Andrew Bracken.  After a month of therapy my wrists and elbows were actually getting worse, so he referred me to a surgeon.

It took a month to get into the surgeon.  My wrists had healed a bit, but they still were easily hurt. We did a nerve conduction study and found that the nerves were just fine. We couldn't figure out the cause of the pain and numbness, but it was good to know that the nerves weren't being compromised.  I got a cortisone injection and it kind of helped, but didn't resolve the issues.  Surgery isn't really a valid option right now because they don't know exactly what they'd do to solve the problem.  But it looks as though the carpal tunnel has returned.  Boo!  I had carpal tunnel release surgery done on both wrists about 13 years ago.

Just doing this much writing in one session is stressing my wrists, but they are much improved over how they were this spring.  Luckily, most of the steps in quilting don't bother my wrists. Cutting the fabric is the most stressful part. I'm grateful that I'm able to quilt without pain.  If there is a silver lining with the limitations my wrists have put on me, I am definitely lucky that I am still able to enjoy quilting.