Last weekend and this weekend

Scott and I have had such a fun weekends lately and many more fun ones planned! Nielsen is awesome because they always give a half day before any holiday. So, Friday was a half day for Scott.

In the morning, we went to quest diagnostics. Our health insurance will give discounts for being healthy. While we were there we saw 2 cockroaches and the place just looked like a dump. It made us wonder what was going to happen to the 4 tubes of blood they took from both of us! Well, afterwards Scott took me to school to do PT and he went to work. I was in doing PT for 3 HOURS! I stopped on my was to Scott's work to pick up some coupons for a new frozen yogurt place in Cincinnati!

Scott and I went to lunch together at this place called Melt. Its primarily a vegan/vegetarian restaurant, but they have some stuff for the meat eaters too. Afterwards we figured out everything we needed to get for young women's camp, since I'm the camp counselor for our ward. We went to goodwill to drop stuff off and to look for a couple things for camp. Instead we ended up finding some really cute red shoes, oh well! We went to a park and played catch together then home for dinner. After dinner we went to the Imax "inside a tornado." We were hoping it would be as cool as Hubble was, but weren't too disappointed. We then went to the self-serve frozen yogurt place which was pretty good. I'm addicted to these places! We saw that the baseball stadium lights were on and so wandered over to see the game. It happened to be in the 9th inning with everything tied up. It wasn't UC playing but it was the high school state playoffs. It ended in the 10th and we went home.

I honestly can't remember what we did Saturday morning or afternoon, but trust me, it was fun. Saturday night we got all gussied up and went out to a nice dinner and then to an opera/orchestra festival at the music hall in Cincinnati. It was beautiful and we give much thanks to Karen Harsh for giving us those tickets! I later learned from Heather (in our church) that Music Hall is the oldest Opera house in the Nation! It is in a not-so-nice area, but they had plenty of police around when it got out at 10:30. By the time we got home I was exhausted and we just went straight to bed.

Sunday was just like any other glorious Sunday.

Monday morning Scott got our bikes ready, well, really my bikes ready, to go on a ride at Miami white water, while I got the rest of the food ready for the church picnic. I was a little worried to leave Scott with the bikes because I think we are on our 4th pump, since he has broken the other 3! That because of his manly muscles I guess:) Scott went to test ride both bikes just to check that everything was fine. My mountain bike tire busted when he went out on it or when he was pumping the tube. So, we had to go buy a new tire before we headed out to the park. Again, I blame this all on his manliness! When we got to the park I replaced the tire and the tube just for good measure. I didn't let Scott touch it, I just didn't want to run the risk right before we were about to go for a ride. So we went on a very short but fun ride, Scott on my road bike and me on my mountain. He claims that he got a workout even though he was on the road bike, I don't know if that's true. I'm so out of shape right now. I haven't run in 2 months! That's the longest in about 5 years! Yes, I am going crazy. No, this isn't entirely my choice.

After this ride we drove around trying to find the picnic. With Kristi Cox's help, we found the place. The picnic was a blast, we got to talk with people and Scott got to play Soccer. I wanted to, but again the no running and what not puts a damper on everything. We went home and looked up Taste of Cincinnati. It is a competition that happens every year. Restaurants from all over Cincinnati come and have 4-6 of their best dishes available in smaller sizes for you to buy and try. We found the different foods that we thought we wanted to try, and drove down. First we went on a walk next to the river, something that I love doing, except running. We got a Montgomery Inn pulled pork BBQ sandwich, a vegetarian black bean burrito, and the winner overall of the best dish this year and I think the previous 3 years running, Bella Luna's Prime Rib Cannelloni. We are defiantly sold on Bella Luna! Two of their other dishes were sold out and we kept seeing people walk by that were so sad that they were sold out. We went home with a movie to just relax for the rest of the night.

This weekend all started on Wed. when we got a call from on of Scott's old roommates, Rob Nance. He said that he and his wife were coming home for the weekend (home is Akron, which is 3 1/2 hours away from Cincinnati). So, on Friday, Scott left work early and we went to Akron, oh to see him. We had a fabulous dinner off a grill with them, and then delicious breakfast after a late night. Saturday we left them at 9:00 to drive back down. On the way we stopped at Dale Stokes Berry farm to pick Strawberries. We picked raspberries at this farm last year and we were so impressed with the price and the quality of the fruit. We were a little disappointed with the strawberries. They were $2 a pound and didn't taste any better than store bought ones. On our way out we thought, maybe we came too early and the sugar hadn't set yet. Either way I still can't wait for their raspberry season to start! Jim and Arlene called us while we were there to wish Scott a Happy Birthday! Thanks again to them for spending the time to talk on the phone (they are in Russia serving a mission).

We got home ate really fast and left to go to a DODGERS vs. Reds game. One of Scott's co-workers/friends gave us tickets to this game. We were right behind the dugout just 5-10 rows up. I will not do the game justice since I did not see 9 out of the 11 runs the Dodgers earned. It was a very low scoring game, at the beginning, since each team had their best starting pitchers in. It was 2 vs. 7 in the top of the 8th. I went to the restroom and while I was there I got to hear about the dodgers, Kemp, hitting a grand slam! It was the first grand slam against the Reds this season! So, then the score was tied 7 vs. 7. It went into the 11th inning. I was getting tired and hungry and wasn't feeling well. I laughed and said that I just needed to go to the bathroom again! SO of I went. Four runs later I came back with the Dodgers up 11 to 7! The reds only got one run in the bottom of the 11th. We got some pizza on our way home and watched Ocean's 11 as we went to sleep. This next weekend we plan on going to Rising Sun, IN and doing a Zip line we bought on Groupon. Hopefully it'll be a ton of fun! We are doing it as a long weekend and a celebration of our 4 wonderful years of marriage together. Since the next weekend I will be in SLC for a wedding, and then the next weekend is surgery weekend! Yes, the count down has begun, 18 days till surgery!

This is the baseball game that we were both drenched in sweat by the end of it.
Taste of Cincinnati downtown!
In the background are THE P&G towers. If the front is Scott getting squashed by the P&G Charmin bear.
No, I didn't give THIS one to Scott (jk). It was from playing Soccer at our ward Picnic, ball to the face.
Inside Music Hall!
This is inside music hall as well.

Surgery as a Birthday Present

We are excited to say that I finally have a surgery date!!!!! So, Scott and I planned and did celebrate my birthday yesterday. We also had an appointment with Dr. Divine (Cincinnati doctor in charge of finances) yesterday at 12:00. Scott worked from home yesterday morning while I studied our script of what I was going to say to convince Dr. Divine that Cincinnati needed to pay for this hip surgery in Nashville, TN. I made Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies as a piece offering as well.

We had to wait a little bit to be able to see Dr. Divine, which was totally ok since I actually knew we were going to be able to see him. This has been a long awaited day. We have tried to get something with him for more than a month now. We have had an appointment scheduled only to find out he was out of town. Nevertheless it has been a very frustrating experience to just be able to see this Dr.

We started out by talking to him about his trip to SLC and the mountains. Then went straight into… I talked briefly to you several weeks ago that I am sure that we are going to have to do a labral tear fix surgery. This surgery is very important and has a huge impact on not only the future of my athletic carrer, but also my mobility and my family in general. Because the decision on who performs this surgery is a critical decision

Dr. Divine interups and says, “Don’t tell me you want to go to Dr. Byrd (Dr. in TN I have been wanting to go see.)”

I continued, “I have done a lot of research on different surgeons. I have read personal reviews online, read journal articles, and talked to several people at UC and elsewhere. This is what I have learned through that research…

This is where the plan got interrupted and Dr. Divine again and he said, “I don’t mean to minimize this in any way, but you have practiced this speech a time or two haven’t you?”

“ Yes, I have, because this affects the REST of my LIFE. This is an extremely important decision to me!”

Well, I tried to go on with me speech which I won’t boar everyone with, but it was amazing (because of Scott’s help).

The jest of the rest of the conversation was that UC will pay for the surgery!!!!! I was SO EXCITED! We thanked him talked about logistics and ran out of there. We went to the indoor track and shouted and pranced around. I think it was more me prancing around Scott. We also said a prayer of thanks that I feel is so inadequate. The Lord truly blesses us.

The end of the story is that I got a hold of the office and we are going to be going for the appointment the 22^nd (our 4 year anniversary), surgery on the 23^rd, and post-op on the 24^th of June!

I want to say thank you so much to all of you. We know that all of our prayers have been answered and have felt everyone’s love.

That night we went to an AMAZING dinner on Nielsen, because Scott is loved a lot at work (another huge blessing). It is a rotating restaurant. We both had steak. I had the best filet mignon I have EVER eaten. I didn’t even need to chew the meat! We went on a lovely walk and then did presents

Scott got me a 24-count mini muffin tin pan and plastic whisk (something I’ve been wanting for a while now). He also bought a necklace and matching bracelet, some muffin tin liners. The best thing was a baseball glove!! We played catch for 5 minutes before we watched a movie together.

This was the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!! I got the best news and gifts and had a blast.

Trip to TX and UT

So, as Scott would like me to say, I left him for two weeks. Really this was only a week and a half and I made him all of his comfort foods before I left along with freezer dinners. Incase you want to know what these may be: Cin. rolls, spinach artichoke dip, banana cream cheesecake. The dinners I made him were: Chicken pot pie, chicken enchiladas, and pasts shells.

The reason I left was to fly to TX and then drive with my sister to Saint George, UT so she could compete in an Ironman and then tour around UT and back home to TX. Now, for those of you who don't know how cool that makes my sister, an Ironman is 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run all one right after the other. The Saint George is either the hardest or one of the hardest Ironmans available. She did extremely well and finished in 12 hours 1 minute and 34 seconds. She was 5th in her age group, so she was able to go on the podium.

It was interesting to be on the viewing side of things instead of the participating side. It made me crave running and competing again. Unfortunately, with all my recent hip stuff, that won't happen for a little while. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry I don't shout things from the roof tops.

After Meredith became an Ironman we headed out on our adventure of southern Utah. Monday we went to Zion's and hiked Angel's Landing. I loved the hike but hoped that we would have been able to hike the narrows. When we started out it was raining. Neither of us had the best clothes for the hike. When we started going back down from the top it started hailing on us. Since it was raining and hailing the whole time the waterfalls were very full on our way back down. We had to run under a waterfall and so were drenched the rest of the way. We looked so funny on the bus ride back because it had stopped raining and so we were the only ones that were drenched.

After we defrosted from the cold ride back. We drove through a snow storm to get to Brice canyon. We couldn't find a cheap place anywhere, but finally found a place for $60 and a soup and pie restaurant with only one type of soup. The theme of this trip was waking up early for sunrises to no avail and bad weather. There were always clouds in the way of every sunrise or sunset. We had a nice hike that ended with a snow storm and drove to arches and canyon lands.

We again tried to catch a sunset and sunrise with a whole lot of failure. We stayed at a little cabin that was so fun and cute. After all of our fun hikes around the parks, we found a little homemade beef jerky joint and got some delicious jerky. We drove way too late into the night and the rest the next day.

We were able to have dinner with one of Meredith's friends named Jen. It was so fun to spend the time with Meredith and make some awesome memories! Here are just a few of the pictures from our trip.

Our sunset failure at arches
Balancing rock at arches
Our sunrise failure at canyonlands
Where they think a meteor hit.
Tunnel arch!
Cool tree at landscape arch
Pine tree arch
Landscape arch
Delicate arch!
Meredith doing camel under delicate arch
These were only from around 1800

Court of the patriarchs

We floated the river when we got back to Texas.
Me under delicate arch
Delicate arch from the other side, I don't recommend going too far over here, I almost fell to a very bad fall.
This was a cool arch on the way to delicate that you could see through to delicate arch. You have to hike up to it a little.
Again Meredith doing camel
And again!

Small update

So, we STILL have not been able to get an appointment with the doctor. Hopefully this week will be the week! I loved the quoted that I heard today in our stake conference by Elder M. Russell Ballard, "Sometimes trials are to show us how much we can endure." I guess I HAVE been praying to be able to increase my patience, and the Lord does bless us with what we ask for.

Scott and I were able to go to "Mormon Prom" as chaperons. I wore one of my old prom dresses and Scott wore a matching tie. We were mistaken as a couple actually going to Mormon Prom more than once. I'm glad I still look like I could be in high school even though my body feels like it could be a grandma!

The day or two before, Scott actually asked me to Mormon prom (even though we were just chaperones) through making me pop balloons and unfold pieces of paper that were a guy and girl holding hands. On it, it read "will you go to prom with me?"

Sometime later this week I will write an update about my trip with my sister to TX and UT for her Ironman! We then went and hiked all around UT, which was a blast!