Good news: Chuck's still alive

Bad news: We racked up a bit of a hospital bill last week when Chuck had emergency surgery!
Now that I've got your attention, let's figure out what in the world happened to my husband. . .

Did an injury occur when we went shooting last Monday . . .

with these awesome people? (Sidenote: a future post will be dedicated solely to this shooting venture because it was awesome, and yes, Eden did destroy that pop can that Quinn is holding. She's hardcore).

Nope, not a shooting injury (thank goodness!). Hmm, did something happen later that day when Chuck joined Quinn and Eden for a whitewater rafting trip on the Payette River??

(Okay, this is not actually a picture of them, BUT it is very similar because I stole it from Sean's facebook page. Sean is the fellow at the back of the raft, aka the river guide. He's one of Quinn's best friends and has been a rafting guide on the Payette for the last several summers and his wedding present to Quinn and Eden was taking them out rafting. Chuck got to tag along, lucky!)

Nope, it (again, thankfully) wasn't related to the rafting trip. So what happened? Well, I'll tell you. Chuck's own body turned against him:

Yep, appendicitis!

And although the 'doctors' say that appendicitis is a random infection of the appendix without any apparent cause, we know differently - on Tuesday morning I, ahem, strongly encouraged Chuck to shave the mustache he'd been sporting for about a week, which he did. That night, the stomach pains started. We have since come to the conclusion that Chuck is a modern-day Samson and draws his strength from his hair. (But hey, who needs a healthy husband when you can have a clean-shaven one??)

So, as I said, Tuesday night Chuck started having severe stomach pain - he was up pretty much all night and miserable. He called in sick to work on Wednesday and moped around the house. I finally convinced him to go to an urgent care clinic that evening, and they convinced him to go to the emergency room . . . where appendicitis was diagnosed at about ten pm and it was decided they would do the surgery immediately!

That was a fun call to get. I freaked out for about thirty seconds, then snapped myself out of it :). I summoned my mom over from Boise to stay with the boys, and my dear friend Nicole to stay with the boys in the meantime until my mom arrived, and I then I headed to the hospital.

I made another call, and these awesome guys beat me to the hospital to give Chuck a Priesthood blessing. We are very appreciative of their willingness and worthiness to do this at ten-thirty on a Wednesday night.

And then it was go time! They loaded up Chuck's IV with some happy concoction to knock him out and then wheeled him off to the OR.

I found the empty waiting room and distracted myself for an hour by texting Sam and Heidi and Lee (Chuck's younger brother who had an appendectomy just a few months ago!), talking on the phone to Quinner, and taking random pictures of myself. Hey, we all cope different ways, right?

Then the lovely nurse came out at about midnight and told me that the surgery was over and everything had gone wonderfully. A few minutes after that, the surgeon came out and confirmed all of that. He did apologize that they had forgotten to pause the screen (the surgery was done laparoscopically) to take pictures of the inflamed appendix, but I assured him that was just fine :).

And about an hour later, Chuck and I were reunited in his hospital room, where he enjoyed a late-night (early-morning?) snack of orange jello.

The next morning Chuck got a visit from the surgeon with post-op instructions. We both really liked Dr. Ballantyne, which is always nice. This is also when he estimated that Chuck's appendicitis was 'acute' and would have probably burst in the next twenty-four hours. Soooo when your wife tells you to suck it up and go to the doctor, you should go because she's probably SAVING YOUR LIFE.

Then Chuck got to go for a romantic stroll around the hallway with his grandmotherly nurse (unfortunately not pictured) to prove he was ready to go home.

And as much as I enjoyed the sight of him in a hospital gown, I had been nice enough to bring him regular clothes to wear home :).

I was bummed to say good-bye to my special bed, aka window seat :). And yay for wi-fi at the hospital so we could gratefully receive all of the facebook well wishes!

As always, a special thanks to my mom for all of her help. She ended up taking the boys to her house Thursday and Friday so that Chuck could recover more easily. I got to have 'visitation' with them on Friday when my mom and I took them swimming, which was super fun :). Chuck really missed the boys, obviously, but those first couple days post-op were pretty miserable for him, so it was really nice to know that Clyde and Will were happy and taken care of and just focus on Chuck.

I retrieved them on Saturday, and they immediately (and gently!) joined Chuck on the couch for some Star Wars video game playing . . . sigh :).

Chuck's doing much better now, about a week post-op. He still moves real slow and the incisions are a bit painful, but he's hanging in there. Thanks for all of the love and support we've received!!

Happy birthday Pops!

Today is my wonderful father-in-law's birthday and since we're not with him to celebrate as we have been the last two years, I figured the least we could do is throw a little party on the blog and share a few of the many things I love about Dave.

Pops is, without a doubt, a family man. His family is his pride and joy and he never hesitates to share that love and affection with all of us. I still remember how friendly and welcoming he was the first time Chuck took me to Elko to meet the family - he immediately insisted that I call him Dave . . . unlike Chuck's mom, who let me call her 'Sister Izatt' for a couple months while she warmed up to me :). To be fair, we caught them off guard since Chuck never specified he was bringing down a 'girlfriend' (we'd only been dating a month) and Terri loves and adores me now . . . hopefully still, haha!

Pops is also an incredibly hard worker - a trait that he (thankfully) passed onto Chuck. Pops works long hours and frequently picks up extra shifts (meaning days off can be few and far between) so that he can support (and spoil!) his family. He's also the first one to volunteer to help with projects - remember when he used vacation time last fall to come up and help Chuck extend our patio? And last February when he and Chuck got the Saturn back into working order? He also helped a great deal when we bought our house; he and Chuck (with additional help from brothers and brothers-in-law) painted every room.

As evidenced in this picture from Chuck's baptism, Pops is clearly responsible for Chuck's ability to grow facial hair like nobody's business :).

Dave is hands-down one of the smartest, most knowledgeable people I know. He does the crossword in the paper (even Sunday!) in pen . . . the entire thing. The one time I can remember him losing in Scrabble was when Chuck and I played as a team . . . and we cheated (it's all good, we confessed like three hours later). When we play Trivia Pursuit, he can not only tell you the correct answer, but also expand on it with additional information.

Pops has also been a vital resource for both Chuck and myself in our current church callings (I'm in Cub Scouts and Chuck's in Boy Scouts). Chuck's parents have both been heavily involved in Scouting and they are always happy to answer questions or give us ideas - or buy me an extra Scout shirt!!

As I mentioned, Dave (above with Clyde and below with Will) loves his family but finds particular joy in his grandchildren - he currently has eight, with two more due in the coming months (one in the coming weeks, actually!). He's famous (or infamous . . . ) for passing out Smarties during church, helping the kids 'plant' donuts, making pop bottle rockets, reading books, finding batteries for battery-operated toys (usually to the parents' chagrin), and lots and lots of hugs and love.

I am so, so grateful to have Dave as my father-in-law. We are admittedly very different (which is why we deliberately don't discuss politics!) but I love and respect him so much and I'm sure I don't tell him that enough. I love you Pops, happy birthday!!

(P.S. Happy birthday to the other two Izatt extended family members born July 17th - Lee and Bri! We love you!!)

We've been married for SEVEN years, yikes!

Well, technically seven years, one month, and four days (this post is a little late, shockingly).

Our anniversary was pretty low-key this year, thanks to morning sickness, work, and Quinn and Eden's wedding three days later. We honestly didn't even go on an official 'anniversary date' - sad, right?

Thus there is no official anniversary picture of the two of us, but here we are a week later! The seven year mark kind of freaked me out a little because in the Marriage Prep class I took at BYU back in the day, we had an assignment to write a paper about successful marriages and we had to interview couples that had been married for at least seven years. So now I feel like this is some benchmark and Chuck and I should have everything figured out by now . . . and there's a chance we don't :). I will repeat what I shared on facebook about Chuck's mottos for marriage - "Happy wife, happy life" and "There's no way out, so we better work it out." Those have served us well!

We did find an excellent way to commemorate the occasion - buying a new camera, hooray! Although technically it's our gift for Mother's Day, Father's Day, our anniversary, Fourth of July, Pioneer Day, and possibly a couple other holidays :).

Our anniversary fell on a Sunday so I opted to wear all white. Can you tell I'm running out of creativity with my 'different outfit for church every week' goal?

That evening I cowgirl'd up and actually made dinner for possibly the second or third time since finding out I was pregnant, and we had a really nice evening after Chuck got home from work. Aaaand I made him an awesome video of pictures of us from the last seven years! Fair warning that it's verrrry cheesy, but it also has some hilariously goober-y pictures of us mixed in too so if you have three minutes to spare, enjoy!

Not really breaking news, but . . .

Granted, school got out in May but let's not focus on the tardiness of the post. Let's focus on cute pictures of my cute boys wrapping up preschool and playschool :).

Clyde went to a cute little playschool at the high school for a few weeks in April and May; here he is on his last day.

Every day the high school students focused on a different 'theme' and did activities/stories/snacks centered around that theme.

One of the highlights of playschool for Clyde was hanging out with Katy, a cute little girl whose family actually moved out of our ward shortly after we moved in three years ago. It was a very mutual attraction; Katy was very complimentary of Clyde's voice.

Will's last day of preschool came a couple of days later. Here he is braving the cold that morning as we waited for his school bus . . .

And here's some corroboration from Clyde that it was quite chilly.

Luckily the bus rolled up quickly and Will happily got on board and waved me good-bye. I loved his bus drivers/attendants - these two ladies were always so excited to see Will every morning. The attendant was forever telling me what a sweet smile and laugh he has :).

Back when I was growing up, the last day of school was a pretty big deal in our family. I have a distinct memory (circa 1995) of driving down Bergeson in the ol' station wagon with the windows down as my mom honked the horn and we cheered and waved to friends . . . ahh, those were the days. So even though my boys are still at that stage where they love school, I figured we could still do some celebrating on the last day.

So instead of letting Will ride the bus home like normal, Clyde and I picked him up; here he is with his wonderful teacher.

On the way home we stopped for chicken nuggets,

ice cream sandwiches,

and balloons.

And then the boys celebrated their newfound freedom and carefree lives by wrestling in the backyard. Yaaaay summer!