Brian and Devri: Our Own Eden

Oh February--the shortest, yet somehow incredibly long month! Shall I tell everyone how we spent our time together?

Well, we started with some A-fib as I was going to be on the 1st. My heart was beating so quickly that my poor watch couldn't even check for the A-fib rhythm. I woke up on the 2nd to so many notifications of a high heart beat, so I knew my heart had been going really crazy all night long. It continued to beat erratically throughout the day. If I moved the slightest bit, it would jump even higher than shown here. I thought perhaps I had not been good about taking my medicine, and figured after getting a days worth of medicine in my system, everything would go back to--well, not exactly normal because I don't even know what that is anymore, but at least lower. Doable.

I didn't let it stop us from having our traditional Groundhog Day picnic, but I let Brian pick up Cubby's on his way home from work. This is one of the few meals we actually had on a real, outside picnic so it seemed to still fit the order of the day.

I pushed through my near constant A-fib for too many days, according to my current EP, but I didn't know that at the time. When the whole thing started a year ago, nobody seemed to be overly concerned by how fast my heart kept beating, so I figured they wouldn't care now. Also, my EP that I'd been seeing had moved to New York in December, and I wasn't sure who to call since I hadn't had my appointment with my new EP yet. But by Saturday, February 4, I was worn out and weary from it. I finally called the office, hoping to talk to the on-call doctor. He was a bit alarmed by how high my heart rate was and recommended taking a double dose of my current medicine right then, and then if it didn't drop back down in two hours, I needed to go to the ER for a cardioversion. Well, it did drop down to 145 beats per minute after an hour, but I wasn't sure what to do. Brian was on a roll with projects in the garage, and I hated to interrupt him to go the ER. I figured I just needed to wait for medicine to work because that's all they did for me last time--give me medicine. However, by Sunday morning, I knew I couldn't take it anymore. Brian and I headed to Provo to the ER there (since they have cardiology and American Fork doesn't).

Amazingly, we didn't have a wait, though I wonder if we still would have been shown to a room even if there had been a line. They started wheeling me back before we even had a chance to fill out paperwork. They did an ECG, got me all hooked up to wires, tried medicine to bring my heart rate down before finally deciding to do the cardioversion. Meanwhile, we made arrangements for our kids to go to church with a neighbor.

They monitored my breathing with this weird tube thing, attached big electric pads to my front and back, gave me something in my IV that put me to sleep (after a crew of 5 ish people walked through the whole process.) After I was out, apparently someone said "clear" and they pushed a button on a machine that perfectly synced the shock with my heart rate. They only had to do it once. Brian stayed in the room to watch and told me how creepy it was to see me jump at the shock and make a small moan when it happened. I woke up and there was a new person in the room, a tech that had come in to do a new ECG post procedure. I felt like I'd been asleep for hours, but they all said it had only been 5 minutes. They reset my heart and did a new ECG in only five minutes! Medicine is amazing!

They kept me around to make sure I ate and drank something without throwing up, and then we headed home.

Our amazing neighbors had us over for dinner (which had been planned a few weeks ago), and our good friends were prepared to bring us dinner had we not already had plans with our neighbors, Beatris and Marcus. Marcus made this killer lasagna. They had also been the ones to take our kids to church, and we were very grateful to them. Thankfully, my heart has been behaving since, though I'm now also on a blood thinner.

A day or so later, I was subbing at the District Office. It was only for a few hours, and then I needed to go to a physical therapy appointment for balance. (I'd been seeing an ENT to see if something in my ear was causing my dizziness). When I tried pulling out of the parking lot, I discovered I had a flat tire. Long story short, Les Schwab sent someone over who removed the tire, hauled it back to the store, remounted a new tire, and then returned and put it back on the car. Here's my bill for that whole ordeal:

I couldn't believe it. Our tire was still under warranty since we'd only had them since July. It took all the sting out of having to cancel physical therapy and waiting around for the tire to get fixed.

Okay, enough about me and my troubles. February meant "Bring Your Dad to Dance" week.

Brian and I went to the temple again. We did an endowment session, and it took us longer to get out the door after the kids went to school than we expected, so we arrived right as our scheduled session was supposed to be starting. Earlier that week, the Church had released a new temple video with a few changes, so people were flocking to the temple more than usual. We had to wait in a line to see if there would be room for us in the next session, 30 minutes later. Thankfully, there was, and we were able to hit our temple goal for the month, though we did feel like the 5 foolish virgins from the parable while we waited to see if we would get in.

After the temple, Brian and I got lunch and went to Orem to check out snowboarding boots. Cal had sold Brian his snowboard, and now Brian needed boots. It was kind of funny watching Brian try on snowboard boots in his suit, but that's how we roll sometimes.

Later that night, we ran into Dustin and Serene at Harmons (on purpose, but I don't remember how those arrangements fell into place). We had to laugh at this canned water and its name.

Rachel tested for A.L.L again, and so I rewarded her by taking her to Lone Peak High's production of Into the Woods with a couple of her friends, Elsie and Bianca. It was amazing! The girls got to meet a few cast members afterwards. Here they are with Red Riding Hood

And Cinderella and Snowwhite

and The Witch (who made me almost cry at one point).

Rachel was used to the movie, so she was a bit surprised by some of the things that happened in the second act of the play!

I'd been talking and scheming about heading back east for an American Historical sites tour for spring break, and I invited my mom to join us. Somewhere in February, she called me up to see if there were any more solid plans for the trip. I told her I wasn't sure since flights were so expensive, and then a rental car, and then the hotels, not to mention the gas and food, (I can't remember if I mentioned I was worried baout having energy to go see all those places), and she said, "If you're spending that much, you might as well go on a cruise." Next thing I know, we had found a seven day cruise with 2 balcony rooms not too far from each other, and we booked it. We went from no plans to cruise to having plans to cruise within 2 hours. We felt a little crazy, but everyone was really excited.

We've been doing Hello Fresh since Decemberish, and I had to laugh when one of our meals came with cheese packets with a map of our cruise.

Our cruise plans kept us going through this relentless winter.

We did have some sweet moments outside. I loved that one night in February, the boys braved the snow and headed into the backyard with some neighbors to play football. When we first looked at this house with its unfinished backyard and weeds, we imagined this day, and my heart was so full seeing that dream being a reality. I tried to freeze the moment forever in my heart and with a few pictures that didn't do the night justice.

We had the Parkers over for dinner.

Rachel got a fever the next day.

She's also been struggling with migraines, so at the recommendation from her pediatrician, I got her a little notebook to track her headaches so we can go see a neurologist about them.

Gabe ate an entire adult meal from Costa Vida--in one sitting. Someone must be growing!

We had a snow day--or at least the post-covid version of a snow day where the kids had online school. It was a bit of a frustrating thing for Michael since his teachers kept posting new things throughout the day, after he thought he was all done.

That day, I was supposed to have my first appointment with my new EP, and in our haste to make that appointment, we got our van completely stuck in the driveway. We didn't realize how big that drift was! It was totally deceptive since there was no snow in front of our garage.

It took us a half an hour to dig the van out.

And longer than that to dig the driveway out.

The plow didn't come until after 1, and we watched as it struggled to even make it up the hill to our street.

We made Disney's California Adventure Num Num Cookies, thanks to a Disney Parks cookbook that Rachel got for her birthday.

There were shenanigans while the cookies were being made (also, see my beautiful Valentine's bouquet that Brian gave me?)

We played Ticket to Ride Europe while they cooked, and enjoyed this tasty treat in the middle of our game.

The snow yielded these amazing snowmen in our neighborhood.

And these snowmen in our yard (compliments of Gabe and our friend Jackson).

There are a few other things that happened in February that deserved their own post. Stay tuned.

In January, it snowed a lot. I often said, "If it weren't for our anniversary and Rachel's birthday, January would be the worst month out of the year." It was long and cold, so we are always grateful for those two big events in January.

We also had a Star Wars marathon--stretched out over several weeks, but still. Now our kids finally understand what Star Wars is about.

The Young Women in our ward and I got to participate in a local service project where we put together bags of food to send home with kids throughout the area over the weekend. We learned about how many local children go hungry over the weekend because of how dependent they are for the meals schools provide. These bins are full of kits for local kids, each containing 10-15 meals. That's a lot of kids who need food over the weekend.

The kids formed 4 lines, grabbed a food item out of each of these bins to fill up a grocery bag, and then they'd pass it off to us leaders, who then tied the bags and filled the bins with the correct number of bags.

For example, this bin headed for Franklin (name of the school) needed 13 kits. So my job was to help count the bags going into this bin and make sure there were 13.

It was a humbling thing to be able to participate in. I'm pretty sure it was founded by the people who created Built Bars.

Rachel got to participate in the Future Chevaliers drill team clinic and performance at Lone Peak High School. They taught her a dance and did her hair and make-up.

She did a great job performing at half time at the Boys Basketball game.

It was our first Lone Peak basketball game, and we sat by Chris and Cindy Burton, whose son is on the basketball team. Chris was our bishop when we were living in Wymount.

Brian and I had a matching day or two in January.

Things were cooked.

We enjoyed having a two car garage (why did we take this picture?).

I got a follow-up MRI on my brain, this time with contrast, to check a cyst they had found on my pineal gland. They had no concerns, and I'll just be doing an annual MRI moving forward.

I had a campus errand one day, so I called up Ella and picked her up for lunch. It was so fun seeing her!

On one of the rare warm days, we decided that it was time that Rachel finally learned how to ride a bike. She fought the insistence. There were tears; there were hugs.