Monday, April 14, 2014

Here We Go Again

The Gale Academy of Classical Education is on hiatus for the week so here is an opportunity to do some catching up. 
A list of recent happenings:

We found out that we have a couple of more Gale grandbabies on the way. 
Always joyous news! The Seth and Taylor Gale family have officially announced. That sweet little blessing is due in September. 
That is all I am authorized to say. 

Sam is almost finished with his freshman year at BYU. We got this notice in the mail:

He was invited into BYU's honor society due to his
"...early academic achievement at Brigham Young University"
He joins Siara who also earned that prestigious honor. 

He received his mission call to the California, Los Angeles (Spanish speaking) Mission. He reports to the Mexico City MTC June 11th. 

Spencer will be graduating from BYU next week.


 We are heading out to Utah for graduation and during our whirlwind trip, Andy will ordain Sam an Elder and we will all go to the temple with him to receive his endowment. So, overlapping happy family milestones! 
Spencer has earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and he and Adrianna will be heading out to Wisconsin to begin gainful employment right after graduation. Well done! Graduation and a real job! 

Also, this happened:
General Conference with CONFERENCE BINGO!
They ate all the Skittles right away so coloring was a fun way to fill in the squares.

Scott and Nicole and fam were here for Conference livening
things up for us.

I got to spend a week with these two princesses.
There was a lot of Frozen going on around here--
including some fun braided hairstyles.




Norah made the crown and dubbed herself
"Queen Norah"
She also planned a party. When she read the announcement and invitation she was
so cute, Shane and I laughed. She became quite indignant 
and decreed:
"No laughing at Norah! No laughing at the party!"
It was hard not to defy her Royal Decree!

This was the creative party favor she came up with.


These two loved sleeping in the "Big pretty bed" and were
merciful on their old Nana and slept really well. Bailey had some
growing pains the last night so I moved Norah to another room and laid down beside Bailey to rub her feet and her leg. At one point she was crying and I felt so
bad for her. I asked her if she wanted to say a prayer and she wailed,
"Nana, I can only do one thing at a time and I am crying right now!"

And, in conclusion,  you may already know that this is also going on around here:
Another move...
Clear back across the continent to
California.
Deja vu. 

Another job lured Andy away and he started there last Monday. 
Shane and I shall hold down the fort here until someone buys the fort.
I am in denial--the first step in the mourning process. 
Although I have done a lot of packing in spite of my delusional thinking.
I will let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, we have  been blessed beyond measure in so many ways I am going to trust that we will be where we need to be and our family will continue to grow and progress in all the ways we need to.








Saturday, April 12, 2014

My Heart Will Go On

I'm sure you have all been waiting on the edge of your seats to get the heart diagnosis and since I am officially an old lady, my birthday is a perfect day to bore you with riveting stories of my health.

So, after an echo-cardiogram and stress test I sat down with my cardiologist to discuss some matters of the heart. Just a side note, watching the live video of my heart beating and the valves opening and closing was pretty fascinating. I wish I could get a copy of the video for my blog. It would make a great anniversary post "My heart beats for you dear..." 

 But I digress. 

Oh wait, one more thing. My cardiologist looks like this guy:
The actor William Daniels  who won two Emmy awards playing Dr. Craig on a series called St. Elsewhere which I used to watch on Tuesdays while I was waiting for the hubs to get home from his MBA night class back in our trailer house/early poverty days. (That show also starred Denzel Washington and Howie Mandel. Oh the early 80's....)

 And I did it again--off on another tangent! That's what happens when you get old. Bear with me here, I will get to the point eventually.

Where was I? Oh! The diagnosis. 
Left Ventricular Hypertrophy

Let's read what the Mayo Clinic has to say about it:

Left ventricular hypertrophy is enlargement (hypertrophy) of the muscle tissue that makes up the wall of your heart's main pumping chamber (left ventricle).
Left ventricular hypertrophy develops in response to some factor, such as high blood pressure, that requires the left ventricle to work harder. As the workload increases, the walls of the chamber grow thicker, lose elasticity and eventually may fail to pump with as much force as that of a healthy heart.

This explains a few things. Such as, why I feel like I am going to suffocate if I try to run uphill. The left ventricle takes the oxygenated blood from the lungs to send it off through the arteries to bring that life-giving oxygen to the rest of the body. So less oxygenated blood moving means less oxygen means suffocation.  I have trained my heart out (bad pun) and still could not build the stamina for a real long-distance or strenuous run. I can walk all day and hike 'til the cows come home. I just can't do that at a running pace. It turns out my body requires large amounts of oxygen to run like that and my poor heart was working hard but falling short in the oxygen delivery department. 

I come by my heart damage through high blood pressure and I come by my high blood pressure thanks to the genetic lottery of having both parents with it. As I have said before, when it comes to genetics, you win some, you lose some. At this point I suppose I would trade a few gray hairs for lower blood pressure. But I didn't get to choose, so with what I am saving on hair dye I can now spend on blood pressure medication.

The good news: it's reversible. I am on blood pressure medication and in a desperate effort to avoid a second medication, I am following this eating plan:


 Not that I was a slothful glutton as it was, but there is definitely room for improvement. Here's a good place for a shout-out for the


My cardiologist pointed out that the reason my heart is doing so well under such adverse conditions is because of my lifetime of no smoking, no drinking, no coffee, no caffeine (I KNOW THAT'S NOT IN THE WORD OF WISDOM AND THE BRETHREN OK'd ALL THAT DEVIL DRINK LIKE COKE AND WHAT NOT BUT IT'S IN MY OWN PERSONAL WORD OF WISDOM SO... CARRY ON).
 As for that promise of "Run and not be weary" my promise is really "Run and not drop dead" which, you know, works for me. Or maybe "Walk at a vigorous pace but slow down on the hills and not be weary."
 Hopefully my enlarged, overworked heart will shrink three sizes (a reverse Grinch--ha!) and maybe learn to work smarter not harder. 

In the meantime, I won't be running any marathons and that's fine by me. I think I was meant for walking and hiking at a pace that allows for taking in the vistas and the scenery. It seems my heart is telling me to stop and smell the roses. 




Monday, April 7, 2014

Mom's Magical, Mystical Tour: An even longer over-due update

I seem to be falling behind here in Blogland.  I looked through my archives and found some unfinished posts from the somewhat recent past. This is from last August and it is way too long--usually I edit and pare down before I post. I don't like to bore you with my EVERY thought--just a select few thoughts. I tried to tie this together with all of the happy little lucky things that happened on this trip but I think I got carried away...


Gentle Reader,
I just returned from Utah where I settled our seventh child into his new life as a college student. I know you get this a lot here, but WHERE DID THE TIME GO?! It doesn't help that Sam skipped his last year at home and jumped into college a year early. Good preparation for mission and life and all but not enough time for Mom to take in the reality of another fledgling leaving the nest. I have a firm grip on the reality that my job is to work myself out of a job. I want my kids to learn and grow into upstanding, independent, hard-working, mature, useful adults so I can't complain when that is what they actually do. But I can complain that it happens too fast.


I took Sam out to Utah a few days early so we could take in Education Week. It has been a dream of mine for lo these many years to go to Education Week but it never seemed to work out with the constant scheduling complications of a big family, not to mention the moves from one state to the next--and one coast to the other. So, this year all of the planets aligned and even my frequent flier miles added up to allow the luxury of some Mom-time basking in the hallowed halls of learning at BYU. 

You may have gathered from my blog that I am a bit of a Pollyanna--an annoying optimist--but even I was surprised at the many ways this trip seemed especially blessed. It started when I checked in for our flight. I saw that we were seated in first class. Of course this had to be a mistake! I had paid with frequent flier miles and I was lucky to get a flight that was coming and going at the time I needed to come and go.Usually there are so many restrictions I'm lucky to leave within a month of my hoped for travel. I worried that I had clicked on an upgrade and would be charged an arm and a leg for my mistake. I checked my account and saw that I had only been charged the $5.00 fee per flight as expected--I would get to keep my arms and my legs. I printed off the receipt just in case there was any doubt about Sam and I having a seat on the plane--let alone a seat in first class! I have flown first class before but that was back in the days of Andy's premiere, business, special super duper traveler status. 

So then, as I was packing. I pulled down a bin of summer clothes I hadn't looked at for a few years. I pulled out a pair of capris and tried them on and felt something in the pocket. I knew it was money and figured it was a couple of bucks. But when I pulled it out, I was pretty happy to see two twenties. I'm thrilled if I find a quarter so I was feeling a little giddy--although I had to wonder how I had managed to pocket 40 bucks and forget about it--that's a concern all of its own! 

We got up the morning of our trip well before the crack of dawn to  beat the morning commute traffic to JFK. Sam had packed everything he owns into our biggest suitcase and we didn't have time to weigh it. According to my serendipitous first class accommodations, we each got two free checked bags. But that would only be IF those cushy accommodations were ours for real. And there was still a weight limit of 70 pounds. Even if you are fancy enough to travel first class, they still have some limitations on the pounds of belongings you can haul on your trip with you.So, you know, maybe you can only take five gold bars instead of ten.  We got to the airport an hour early and got in the special line for awesome first class people. 

I was  holding my breath hoping that my first class tickets would be legit. As we stepped up to the counter, I handed our boarding passes to the airline employee. She glanced at them and told Sam to put his suitcase on the scale. 76.6. Oops....too heavy. She looked at the flashing number and said, "This is way over. I don't have time to deal with it. Just go." So we went. We got to the gate just as they were boarding first class so we found our comfy accommodations and settled in for the flight. Sam fell asleep immediately. It was nice that he had room to stretch out his long legs and get some real sleep. I could have used some shut-eye myself but I didn't want to miss a thing: Juice in real glasses. A delicious breakfast served on real dishes with real silverware--we were even entrusted with a butter knife! Seriously! The omelet and biscuit were tasty and the fruit was ripe and sweet. Then, the warm towel. Such a civilized way to travel. 

After landing in Salt Lake City, we were fortunate to have Spencer and Adrianna there to pick us up. We enjoyed the drive to Provo visiting with them. After a quick stop for lunch, we drove to Siara and Tyler's house--our hosts for the week. Just as we were turning onto Siara's street, the car began to sputter and gave out right in front their house. Don't worry-- they were able to get it going again later--but thankfully it didn't sputter out on the freeway. Imagine hauling Sam's 76.6 pound suitcase down the road, hitching a ride.



One of my all-time favorite authors is H.Wallace Goddard. He is an author of some very helpful books and he writes for Meridian Magazine. I was pretty thrilled to see that he was speaking at Education Week. One more unexpected blessing this week! After our long day of travel across the country and in spite of the time change and jet-lag, I marched up to campus that evening and attended his class. I have given his book "Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage" to each of our children when they got married. They may not realize it is the best gift they got until that nice mixer wears out and the pretty towels are threadbare. About that time marriage begins to require some soul refining and humility and charity. And about that time, this book will be waiting.  But I digress, the man knows what he is talking about and he brought the Spirit and I was scribbling notes as quickly as possible to keep from missing any of his pearls of wisdom. 'Twas a beautiful beginning to a wonderful week of learning.

A few days before I left for Utah I got an email from my FAVORITE Institute teachers from our California days. Becky Davies and Lesley Meacham. They were a last minute addition to the Education Week schedule. So glad I am still on the mailing list for the Poway Institute! Another bonus: I got to bask in the glory of their amazing insight into the scriptures and enjoy a reunion with many dear friends from our old Poway Stake. It was heavenly. Sam even rolled out of bed and joined me for their classes. 



One of the many insights they taught on symbolism in the scriptures.


Then, I happened to find my favorite ice cream in the little kiosk at the Cougareat one day after lunch (Cherry Vanilla, thanks for asking). And as I was strolling through the Wilkinson Center enjoying that, I ran into these guys:

I just wanted a quick picture of them to prove that I actually saw them,
but they insisted that I get in the picture. So there I am awkwardly
trying to shrink down so as not to tower over Stacy and Mallory and also
keep a grip on my ice cream and my book bag. 
And the guy taking the picture insisted on his expertise at phone photography and
they all endorsed him--but the picture is blurry!
But, you know, it's still Studio C so hey!


And, as if that weren't enough, one day while I was on campus, I came across an exhibit in the Joseph Fielding Smith building. It was all about the history of BYU as well as education in the church.


I read every plaque and soaked up all of the pictures and artifacts. So much of what I was learning about the
importance of education and the importance of learning by study and also by faith, fit my personal philosophy as a mom teaching and guiding learners in our home for so many years. 
A much needed reminder of why I do what I do. 
And why it matters. 

This has turned into a novel--let me find a conclusion here somewhere...

Sunday Dinner at Siara and Tyler's
She is the hostess with the mostest!

The main serendipity was family time with Seth and Taylor, Spencer and Adrianna, Siara and Tyler.
 With Sam there now, half of our children are in Utah Valley!
Since they are all gainfully employed and/or going to school,
we were somewhat limited in times that we
could all be at the same place at the same time.
But we did our best.
It's always fun to catch up with all of them. 
Did I take pictures of all of us together? 
No...I tend to be in the moment when we are all together.

I did take this one of Siara cutting her little brother's hair:



And Sam and Wolfie cat-napping

Is this post ever going to end?
Yes.

Happy Birthday Scott!

 It has been awhile since I updated this little family scrapbook on the internet. I like to pop over here from time to time and look at our ...