Life As We Know It

Well things are certainly changing around here. As you may have seen our house is changing for the better. Fred is working on changing his physical shape for the better. Josh and Bre were sealed together for time and all eternity along with 2 of their children. So that is most certainly a good change. And as for me... well my change hasn't been so great, yet. In my strive to work with my Fibro and improve that part of my life I have managed to do enough dumb things that I have actually aggravated it. I made my body really, really mad. Not only has the frequency of flares increased but the places as well. Before my pain would be localized to my chest, ribs, back, shoulder and neck. Okay that that is a big area but I've been dealing with it long enough in those places that I can deal. Well now I have flares in my legs, hips and waist. So when I flare I hurt from chin to knees. And that has been my life for three weeks now. It has severely impacted my abilities in all areas of life except lying down, and being still. Once I'm in a comfortable spot laying down I tend to be good for a while. On the up side, there is hope, always hope. After seeing my doctor and updating him on my situation he didn't have much for me except to try a new medicine. Once I arrived home I started researching chiropractors in the area. I found one close to home, who excepts my insurance, and was taking new patients. Over the last week I have been there several times met with the chiropractor, the massage therapist, and the nurse practitioner. And as a team we are going to come up with a comprehensive treatment program that incorporates, trigger point injections, massage, adjustments, and physical therapy. So hopefully within a year I will be drug free, and minimal 'bad days'. It's going to take work on every body's part. I'm pretty screwed up (like we didn't all know that) and I have the x-rays to prove it! So I'm still on the road to recovery but the dismal forest doesn't seem quite to bad.
On a good note, I have a clean house. With help from Fred, a little motivation, and some CLR I managed to clean two bathrooms, and help with the garage. Fred, vacuumed the whole house, and did most of the work in the garage. We also celebrated Fred's Grandmother's birthday today. We had her and Fred's parents over for dinner. It was a very pleasant evening. We had homemade chicken pesto pasta with fresh basil from my dad's garden. Fred's parents brought a delectable salad, and Grandmother brought garlic bread. It was wonderful to let them see what we had done to the house so far. Especially Grandmother, she hasn't seen any of the changes and she was the one that helped Fred acquire the house. Grandmother is a fun older lady that just hasn't given up on life. :) After dinner there was dessert, a yummy strawberry cheesecake that I made from my mom's recipe. It is such a simple cheesecake, and Grandmother simply loves it. I made an extra one for her to take home as a birthday present. All in all it was really nice evening. We really need to have Grandmother over more often.

Remodeling Part III

This is the last one for now. It is our living room, there wasn't much to do here. Again, cleaning... to tell you the truth I left things out to make the pictures worse, I couldn't help myself. This picture was also taken before we picked up the piano. So we had to find a place for that too. Which messed with how our pictures were set up. So all the pictures had to be taken down. All the of them reset to fit around the piano. Which wasn't too hard. Once I had them all in there new spots I left in the nails. Put mud in all the old wholes and painted. Yes I painted over the nails, another trick I used. Re-hung pictures moved the piano and took a new picture. Here is the finished product! It's amazing what some elbow grease, paint and a little time you can accomplish. Keep watching for the updates on the rest of our house. We still have a ways to go!!!

Remodeling Part II

Look at this mess. This is the dinning room. For starters we had to clean, and organize. That was pretty easy we had to just find homes for everything on the floor. Then we moved the bookshelves to our office room, and more than happily Mom and I ripped down the stripped wallpaper. Also we took all the extra dangles off the chandelier, and trashed the roll up blind. And then the really fun part of painting, but look at the wonderful finished product. Because there is no wall to this room I decided to do something to tie in the walls with the accent color. So I painted my outlet covers. You may think it's dorky but it with these colors it looks really nice.

Remodeling Part I

Fred and I, with a lot of help from my parents, have started remodeling the house. The first project that we completed was the front of the house. When I moved in this is what the house looked like. The picture is a little fuzzy because I had to copy it off of Google Maps. As you can see there are two overgrown trees in the front. The one on the left is a holly tree that attacks anyone trying to come in or out of our door. It was especially hard during the winter, the ice was always falling off the tree making the stars very slippery. So of course the trees had to go. With a little help from Eli, Mom and Dad we managed to get the trees cut down. Then Fred and our friend Ryan helped take the brush down to Fred's parents house and dumped them in the woods out there. Next was to clean out the planter of all the weeds and dead plants. And this is how it looks......I know it doesn't look like much because nothing is really in bloom, but it is clean. Fred even took the time to reset all the bricks to edge the garden. And Dad helped me pick all sorts or flowers with lots of color. We even picked things so that all summer long something would be in bloom. I'm excited for next spring :)