hudson ailments.

Remi is not only the cutest puppy I've ever seen, but she's almost the most accident prone, injured, and scarred up little face puppy I've ever seen. As she has had to grow up with 2 big dogs she's turned into a pretty scrappy pup-she harasses and teases them non stop and they'll get sick of her, growl or bite at her and she'll turn right around and ask for more. As to be expected with behavior like that is has lead to her getting pretty beat up.

I was feeding the dogs one morning and had let them out of the dog run while I dished up their food. Like usual I could hear them jumping up on the back garage door out of excitement. As I went to feed Remi I noticed something sticking out of her leg-I went to look at it more closely and saw it was a piece of wood. I attempted to pull on it and wouldn't budge. As I looked closer it had gone through one side of her leg and out the other. I had to haul her over to Russ's work to have him help me pull it out, luckily it didn't get anything but the skin. We decided she had been jumping up on the door and slide down the door frame, and caught a huge sliver on the way down.

At first it started with a few minor scars (hard to see here with all the grass on her face), but then the last weekend of March we went outside to feed the dogs before bed and found a huge gash on her head. Russ has stitched up lady's wounds with his taxidermy skills but there was no way Rem was going to hold still long enough so we glued it shut to keep it from getting infected.

 April 3 we had an appointment set up for Remi to get spay (no more puppies for us!), and when I went to pick her up the assistant told me all the extra things they added on to her procedure while they had her under. They shaved her head and stapled up her head gash, and pulled some baby teeth that were having a hard time falling out on their own. Poor thing that first night didn't quite know what to think. She was on pain medication for 5 days and antibiotics for 10 days. Because of the staples on her head she had to wear a cone for 10 days, until the staples would come out. It was miserable for all of us! She would run around, crash into things, couldn't eat or drink that great with it on. Finally I couldn't take it and would keep her inside with me all day so I could watch her and put it on her at night.

 Just when we thought she learned her lesson...one month later on May 3 she was harassing Crush while Russ and Kellen were building the dog house and he got her pretty good again. Not as bad this time thank goodness.

Russ and I have had our fair share of ailments lately as well, no head staples or anything but some weird things as well. I've always had a bad lower back thanks to working in the medical field, but it was never anything terrible. One night in March after picking Ash up from the airport from her trip to Spain, it was pretty nice outside so I was raking up the yard a bit. It started aching so I went inside and stretched it out some like I normally do, and went to get in the shower. As I lifted a leg to climb over the tub I got sharp pains that dropped me right to the ground. I suffered through a shower and tried to stretch and walk it out until Russ got home. We relaxed and stubborn me thought I would just rest it and move on by morning. I woke up and went to get out of bed and couldn't move. It was the worst back pain I'd ever felt. I made a phone call to call off of work that night and called and made a Dr. appointment. All I can say is thank goodness for muscle relaxers! I refused an MRI because I didn't want to pay for that right then, and told him if it got worse I'd come back for one. I was placed on steroid medication and muscle relaxers and had two nights off work to help it settle down. Haven't had a problem since and hope I don't have to deal with that again.

On Thursday May 1 I got a text from Russ while he was at work that he had cut his finger pretty good and was debating if he needed stitches or not. With me being 15-20 mins away from his work now, instead of 4 mins, I started to get ready to head up there and take him in. He text me again and said that he'd put his first aid kit to good use, made a splint and the bleeding had stopped so he'd be fine. I saw it that night with a butterfly bandage on and it looked pretty good, until he told me that before he bandaged it up he could see tendons. Crazy man! Anywho, he kept in in a splint, and took good care of it for about a week to keep it from splitting open and/or getting infected. Friday the 2nd of May my right wrist got all swollen with pain radiating down to my elbow (see weird stuff I tell ya). I had been having occasional pain and numbness problems with it lately but nothing quite like that. So I borrowed Jake's wrist brace and took some ibuprofen and my Monday it was better.

Saturday May 3 I was at work, I was working on the Pediatric unit and it was a slower night so we ordered some Café Rio for pick up. As I was eating my salad around 9:30ish I suddenly choked/gagged on a bite. I went to take a drink to rinse it down and suddenly got sharp piercing pains down my throat into my chest, back and arms. The pain continued with every swallow I took. Never experiencing anything like this before I started looking for options of things to make it go away. Feeling like a piece of rice was still stuck in my throat, I even tried hooking myself up to a suction machine in an empty room to see if I could get something out. All that resulted in was gagging :) The chest pain eventually got worse and would come even when I wasn't swallowing. (I had a sinus infection at this same time I was miserable and couldn't breathe even without the chest pain). After waiting 6 hours and talking to my supervisors I ended up going down to the ER a little after 3:30 in the morning to get checked out. I felt so stupid and embarrassed, but afterwards I was SO glad I went. They gave me a GI cocktail-a  drink with lidocaine and antacids to numb my throat, and a couple x-rays. It was determined I had esophageal spasms. The ER doctor understood what I was talking about with my chest pains and told me they get people coming in thinking they are having a heart attack they get so bad with esophageal spasms.  I got put on a soft diet, and a different antacid prescription. I was told if it didn't resolve by Monday then I'd have to see a GI specialist and get scoped. My supervisor sent me home early and told me not to come in that night (Sunday night). I went home and slept, and slept, and slept and slept! I felt like crap, couldn't eat much and was exhausted. I think I was awake for maybe a total of 5 hours that whole day.

The moment where the nurse on duty becomes the patient....

 Needless to say at this moment we are all doing much better! So far 2014 hasn't been good to us health wise but other than feeling like an old lady so far still good!

Home sweet home.

After a couple stressful (sometimes chaotic) weeks, and endless help from some amazing family and friends, we are settled into our new home! It hasn't been an easy road to get here...

I've learned a lot through this process, such as you can't have two houses under FHA loans. Russ had gotten our home in Orem under a FHA loan years ago so therefore when it came time to upgrade we would either have to sell that house, or go off of just me (my income and credit score). It's not an ideal time to sell the Orem house so luckily things worked out for us to get it under my name. Rewind to the first week of April when my former bank made a mistake and dropped my credit score 100 points, and for about a week we didn't qualify for our house. I got the phone call from our mortgage guy the night before our final walk through-needless to say I was very frustrated and while Russ was going crazy with the blue tape marking, I was roaming around a house I had gotten very attached to thinking it was about to slip through our fingers. (Drama Queen much??) To make the long story short the bank was in debate if the problem was their fault or mine so they were hesitant to help me, but if the problem was not to get resolved we would lose our house or have to get another borrower. Anywho, after spending days on the phone and a meeting with a manager at a local branch I received a phone call on April 3rd letting me know that the bank had sent paperwork to the credit bureau to correct the mistake. I'll be honest I was in tears as I called Russ letting him know we  might still get our house after all. Our mortgage guy was nice enough to remind me that this didn't mean everything was okay-because of all the hubbub they would have to do a credit re-score and were still days out from knowing an answer. Thankfully something had fallen through with the fencing company the builders were having do our fence and since we didn't want to close until it was done we held that as our reason for stalling.

We finally received word that the credit score dilemma had worked out and as far as our mortgage guy we were good to go. The fence however.... it was delayed yet another week for who knows why and as it got closer we had no choice but to close on our house anyways (our loan rate had been locked in for the allotted amount of time). We made an agreement that the fence posts would be cemented in before closing and the vinyl slats would be placed the following week.

Tuesday April 15- our awesome real estate agent Spencer and mortgage guy Mark met us at United West Title that afternoon where I began to sign my name on paper after paper while the boys swapped hunting stories and joked around. As we left the title employee, Karen, seemed very confident that since the builders had already signed we could have keys within 24 hours. I went to work that night expecting it to still be days out (at this point I had learned not to get my hopes up).

Wednesday April 16- I babysat the kiddos that afternoon for a little while and as I got on the freeway to head home I got a phone call from Spence telling me we needed to go pick our keys from Quinn's (our J.Thomas homes rep) office. WAHOO! I was so pumped I just kept driving on the freeway straight to Saratoga springs to pick them up.

I went home and packed like a mad woman, (I hadn't done much packing since in the back of my mind the bank was screwing us out of our house). We had loaded some big things in an enclosed trailer the previous weekend, so I packed box after box getting a load ready. Russ got off work that night and my dad, sister, and brother met us at our house. With the trailer and trucks loaded we took off to the new house. That same routine continued on Thursday.  

 

Friday April 18- After Russ got off work we went and helped roof Ash & Jake's rental house (okay Russ roofed while I cleaned up the lawn). Once dark we grabbed some take out, overnight bags, Crush and went and spent our first night in the new home! We finished hanging the blinds and spent the night on the floor in the spare bedroom since our bed was still in our Orem home. Crush was the first dog to see the new house-he can have a slight barking problem so got to come hang out with us.

 

Saturday April 19- Russ went to help on the roofing committee early while I slept in for work that night, then I went over for lunch. Later that afternoon we went to RC Willey and purchased ourselves some Easter presents aka appliances.

our make shift fridge

Tuesday April 22- I was very tired that day after having worked the previous 3 nights, however it was an exciting day!



I could finally go grocery shopping to fill a fridge and do laundry! Ashlee and the kiddos came over to visit and break in the new basement as their bicycle ring.

My housewarming gift from Ashlee. Our neighbors house in Orem had a huge tree that always dropped theses leaves. I would count them as one of the most annoying things ever to always find these covering your lawn. So she grabbed some them, boxed them up pretty and gave them to me just in case I was to start to miss our Orem house.  

With the fence being done our plans were to build a dog run to get our dogs moved down from Orem (at this point we were driving there twice a day to feed them), but mother nature ruined that plan.

 

Saturday April 26- Elk hanging day! If anyone ever visited our Orem home they were well aware of the elk Russ killed years ago mounted on the wall taking up our whole living room. So as we were moving into our home finding a place for the elk was taken into consideration. We decided over the stairs going into the basement to have it out of the way but still viewable. There wasn't a stud in the center where we wanted to put it-so Russ had to get creative but I'm happy to report it's still sturdy on the wall! The troops aka my parents, brother, sis and bro in law came over to help once again, and with their help the elk went up smoothly :)

 



Sunday April 27- The weather let up long enough for Russ to dig post holes for the dog run. We were also lucky to be able to get them all cemented in before bed that night.

Monday April 28- My sweet mom came and spent the entire day helping me deep clean our Orem house. Also, I had asked my dad to come over and bless/dedicate our new home so we made a night out of it. My whole family came and we had dinner, dessert and hung out. The little kiddos also got to have their bath time in our big tub, and I think it's safe to say they quite enjoyed it!



Tuesday April 29- Mark and I were on gravel duty while Russ was at work! Russ was planning on finishing the dog run that night while I was at work (thank you to Mark, Jake, and Austin for helping),and wouldn't have time to get gravel after work. Unfortunately we will be making more of these gravel trips in the future to get our yard taken care of, fortunately it's on a hydraulic system so all we had to do was push a button and it dumped itself for us.

Wednesday April 30- I spent the early afternoon doing the finishing touches on my cleaning job at our Orem house before watching the kiddos for a few hours. I met Russ back at the Orem house after work that night where we proceeded to move the dogs! Russ had built a dog house around some dog igloos so we had to tear it apart a bit to get the igloos out so they'd have something to sleep in until we built them a new house. As we were loading up the dogs, their belongings and any last items we'd had at the house, our renters were moving in. That night we pulled away from our first home together, and the place we'd spent a great deal of our time while dating.  While I'm still very excited about our fresh start in a new house, and we still own the Orem house, I had a tinge of sadness as I drove away. The dogs whined pretty much that whole first night, and the more I think about it I'm pretty sure it was Lady. She had the hardest time with the transition as that other house was the only place she's ever known. But I'm pretty sure they forgave me for uprooting their lives the next morning as they saw the yard in the light and they had their own personal mud pit.

Saturday May 3- My dad came and spent the evening helping Russ start building a dog house while I was at work. Russ had quite the plans for these spoiled pups!

Sunday May4- Our friend Kellen came and helped Russ finish building the dog house. I was sick in bed after a visit to the ER the night before (story to come later) but I snuck a picture before the walls went up. It's a 3 story dog house-one level for each dog, and the second level even has a window that latches shut in bad weather. I need to get a finished product picture because it turned out awesome and the lil dogs love it. My man is so talented!!

caught him trying to take a picture. I think it's proof I've trained him well :)

 

It is amazing to be our new house and even better to have our dogs and all our belongings here! I cannot say thank you enough to all of those who have been at our beckon call these past few weeks to help us get moved and settled, as well as all the food that's been provided. Because of you we have made it through the past few stressful weeks, and not only survived but enjoyed them! See you all again in a few when it's sprinkler system and sod laying time :)