Donuts, Donuts, Done

Leslie trying to live up to the examples of her grandfathers.  Her Grandpa Haynes served a mission in Oregon/Utah, and her Grandpa Day served a mission in England. I told her we needed a spinning the ball shot so that my Mom can start collecting grandchildren missionary pictures. You can tell that she is totally faking--she's not a lefty, haha. She did, however, win the District PIG championship, so that's fun. My Dad won the "spin the basketball the longest" contest on his mission. He later lost that fingertip in a farming accident. Looking forward to the Resurrection!

Here she is in her glasses, like Grandpa Day, but unfortunately feeling less chipper than he did for his picture. In the month of December she was really sick a lot of the time. 

After some tests and a trip to the instacare, lots of prayers and some answers, she decided it was time to complete her mission, come home and see some specialists.  Not what any of us were expecting, but definitely part of His plan, much like 2020 in general, actually.

Guess what she read on the plane. The Gospel at 30,000 Feet by Elder Uchtdorf. She also taught two lessons and helped in a medical emergency. The ride home was quite the adventure and she felt like all the things that happened her last week were such answers to prayer.

Here is a cool visual she made for me. This includes her mission (the circle) AND locations for people that she taught at some point during her mission. Pretty awesome. Covid had some upsides.

I just wanted a copy of this message to document the missionary experience during quarantine. Usually a missionary is picked up with lots of fanfare--not the parking garage. We sort of cheated on the number of passengers in the car. And the part about not getting out of the car. But we did stay far away from everyone else!

It was fun wearing all of our Kentucky gear that she had sent us for Christmas. She served in Virginia and Kentucky and drove through WV a lot but never actually served there.

Before her mission we were worried that Rosie would sort of forget her, or be shy around her when she returned. Nope! Rosie thought it was about the best day of her life. She deigned to wear her Kentucky shirt (she said it was Luke's since it has a sports team on it) and kept running around yelling, "Kentucky Baby!"

Sorry for the Leslie Photos overload, but she is home with me during the day, so that's just what was on my camera. It's an accurate portrayal of my parental bandwidth right now.

This is Macy telling Leslie to drink her all-cream milkshake already. They weighed the same at the time of this photo because Leslie had lost over ten pounds while she was out, and she was already skinny..

 

This is Leslie "with" one of her best friends Abigail at a wedding reception.  Abby is currently serving in Kansas.

These two hooligans are now sharing a room again. On this night they both came in and knelt at the foot of my bed and wanted to talk until late. It reminded me of when they were little and wanted to play airplane at the foot of my sleigh bed. Cute then, cute now.

We needed to make a special family trip to Krispy Kreme. For one thing, Rosie had never been to see the donut factory in action. 

Another reason was because Leslie's doctors ruled out any problems with her kidneys and other systems and decided we needed to test her for celiac's disease. Celiac's is an autoimmune disease, more serious than a gluten intolerance, because it means the body has this big reaction and attacks itself, which is painful and blocks nutrient absorption. Hence the weight loss. No bueno. Ironically, in order to correctly test for celiac's you have to be eating gluten products until the day of biopsy, otherwise you'll get a false negative.  So, Leslie made a short list of food items she wanted to have before she drops them completely. Brioche. Nutella gooey butter cake. Krispy Kreme. And we loaded up. 

The blood test and the visual scope came back positive, although the sample they took came back negative. So, we had some flip-flop of information, but the doctor finally told her that she had early onset of celiacs and needs to go off gluten completely. 

I think the Lord has prepared her for this particular burden. She likes to cook. I like to cook. She likes lots of naturally gluten free foods. She had a roommate with celiac's before she went on her mission. I had a good friend and next door neighbor who even started her own company, Gluten Free Heaven (and was always baking yummy stuff).  We have people. Leslie went through lots of pain--which makes a pretty good incentive to stick to the rules or else. And coming home early gives her the time she needs for her intestines to heal up (or atleast begin healing) from all the damage before she starts school, also time for us to figure out the grocery products and restaurants, etc.  She still feels a little sick most days, but the pain has greatly diminished and we are seeing good progress.  The doc says it can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months to feel normal again, and I've heard from other sources that it could be more like a year. She is in good spirits and has had a great attitude throughout. 

And I've already got the stuff to make her another Nutella gooey butter cake. Nutella is gluten free😁. It's the little things that count!

In the midst of all this she also had a birthday. We surprised her with singing/songwriting lessons--something creative to do while she waits for BYU's spring term.  

We try to get out of the house when we can. Rosie was excited about the library's Candy Land display.

Leslie and Macy had fun trying to take some pictures on the River Walk for Leslie's updated social media profile.

I've been having fun attending a Writer's group virtually, prepping a piece for review each month. It's a little like this sometimes though.

This quote from author Barbara Morgan Gardner. Love it!

Mark won an award. Or did he? Look closely, hahahaha.  He's still the best of the best, though.

We were so grateful that Leslie got to hang out with her old roommate Carly, who also finished her mission. Now when Carly comes over I will know how to cook gluten free. 

My mom got to come stay with the kids while Mark and I went on a company trip in February. Leslie wanted a picture with her grandma, and I'm sure she was extremely grateful that she didn't have to carry the load of all the new cooking PLUS the babysitting on her own while she felt like garbage.

I can see a resembland in this one, and not just the height!

Here's her Single Lady's Valentine's day shot. I'm calling it her before picture and am hoping to fatten her up, haha. Don't tell her I said that. She already knows I'm slipping extra butter in wherever I can.

Leslie was able to complete lots of very boring hours of certification training to be a loan originator, and passed her great big test so that she can do some work at Mark's company.  Hooray for productivity! It was a good test run for school to start.

She has also enjoyed spending some time out of the house with her cousin Lydia at BYU.

Leslie felt very close to her Grandma JoAnn while she was serving her mission. (Leslie is her namesake.)

Lately I've been teasing Leslie that she is also following the example of both of her grandmothers. Like them, she "has a missionary". 

Leslie and one of our favorite red heads got to catch up.

Last week the town in Kentucky where Leslie was living had severe flooding. This is why it was mostly a ghost town--they need to relocate.

She has kept in touch with this cute couple who are preparing to serve a senior mission. Leslie has been teaching mission prep to them via zoom. 

Hey! Enough about Leslie! We all know who still rules the roost! R for Rosie! She wants a red rhinoceros like in Dr. Seuss's ABCs. We are working on not yelling. Her best line of the month? "Rosie consents!"

Cooper had this cute friend come ask if he could play with him. The answer is yes.

Mark and I passed our covid test requirements and were allowed to go to Hawaii for the Remarkable Home Loans president's club trip. Hooray! And hooray for travel insurance--two other couples had to postpone their trip. We missed them but were glad they could be with their families during the great Texas blackout, Covid, and a scary liver failure. Crazy stuff!  We would have our turn with craziness upon our return. Stay tuned. 

Mark and I are unabashed foodie tourists. As in, there was research conducted before we even left.  The Shave Ice was as good as it looks.  This one is pina colada flavored with ice cream inside and sweetened condensed milk poured over the top.  I never knew there was such a thing. I think we went 3 times. 

Coconut nutella crepes (gluten free available!) AND the shrimp truck. We skipped breakfast, though.

The smoothie-in-a-pineapple was amazing, but I also thought it was funny that another favorite red head of mine got put at the Ginger Table at the luau.

I'm only a morning person in Hawaii, when I've got a three hour head start. Haven't voluntarily watched a sunrise in years. This is what we look like with sunrise on our face.

We saw LOTS of whales. On our hike, watching the sunrise, and while out on a catamaran. You can see this one breaching on the horizon line. 

Mark ringing the gong at the Buddhist temple. Really pretty place.

This is from the King Kong movie set at Kualoa Ranch. Other than the King Kong bones, I think if I HAD to live in Hawaii, I would live on the ranch. The ziplines were my fave.

Jurassic Park was also filmed there.

We did visit the temple grounds in Laie. Closed for Covid.

It was a little current to read about the masks and hibiscus while at the Pearl Harbor museum. The dancers at our luau wore masks as well

Rosie had a great time playing with Grandma while her boring Mama was away.

They had lots of snow...

So true! Grandma took the girls to the newly opened Hobby Lobby. It was the first thing Rosie told me about when we got home.

Rosie and Grandma made some gluten free lemon sugar cookies for Leslie. 

Cooper discovered in his Foods class that he likes homemade pretzels, so he and Macy whipped up a batch. (He hates regular pretzels.)

Honolulu food tourist. This was the Lobster dynamite at a place called Sakura's? Also had sushi pizza.

Mark being a nice jerk to our absentee travelers. 

Our hotel was near where one of my previous Young Women is stationed as a missionary. So, we met up for lunch. They weren't allowed to eat with us because of Covid, just visit, so we sent them along with some goodies. It was pretty funny--Mallory's companion here knew Mark's sister very well and is the daughter of some of his clients.

We also went on a beautiful hike up above a lighthouse near Kailua with my BYU floormate Rosie, who lives there. We missed her wedding last summer so it was good to get together.

And the hot malasadas from the Leonard's bakery truck. Ate a few too many of these also.

Despite the rainy forecasts, this was our only outing that had a little rain.

The botanical gardens at Waimea Falls. Mark took more pictures of the cool plants and beautiful flowers than I did. My favorite was the cannonball tree, pictured below. How would you like to have one of those babies drop on your head?

Mom, can you come home yet? We've got stuff goin' on. 

Boston played basketball. He hasn't played for a few years. It wasn't his favorite experience but we were proud of him for wanting to do it and then for sticking with it when his team had a perfect record.😝

Like I said, hooray for trip insurance. Grandma was kind enough to postpone her departure an extra week while we took care of this big baby.  So grateful! The day after we got back Cooper was complaining of severe stomach pains. Oh No! I thought. I can only deal with one sick celiac in the family at a time! The instacare gave him something for the pain (didn't help) and told us to watch for some appendicitis symptoms. The following day the pain had moved and he was vomiting violently. Mark took him to the hospital. They did a scan and could see a problem right about where you would expect appendicitis, so they admitted him for surgery. It was a relief to him to get knocked out--he'd been in some severe pain. 

After Mark and I had been waiting in the waiting room a few minutes, the surgeon came out to talk to us. "Uh, I opened him up and there's nothing wrong with his appendix. However, he has a herniated portion on his small intestine that has died. It's all black and needs to be removed, then resectioned. Oh, and we might as well take out his appendix while we're at it. "

Ok, then! The incisions had to be more involved (we have a really gnarly picture of his guts on the outside of his body, the dead portion sticking out like a burnt hot dog) and the hospital stay a few nights longer than we thought.  Also, no contact sports for a month. The good news was that the herniated portion was actually a diverticulum--like a thumb growing off of his small intestine--he was just born with it.  So, the doctor didn't have to remove hardly any actual intestine.

He got lots of well wishes and goodies while we were waiting for his system to start working again. He lost a lot of weight as well.  Boo!  I promise I feed these kids!  See?

We decided Luke needed some one-on-one time after all the drama, so we took him out on a date to Mod Pizza. Where they accidentally gave his pizza to someone else, so we had to wait around for a second one.

Mark turned the big 45. We decided we'd celebrate by actually having people over for dinner, for the first time in forever! This was something we have missed the most during Covid. So much fun. It was the most lasagna I have ever made. I even did a breadpan of gluten free for Leslie since it's one of her faves. She said she couldn't tell the difference. Score!

We tried out the duckpin bowling at Doc Brundy's. Rosie liked the phone booth there.

She also liked the bowling. This was the most excited I've seen her in a long time.

Less exciting. Rosie had her first checkup at the dentist. It helps that she has seen her siblings do this before.

Macy had a birthday! She got her ears pierced and I took her and her friend to the musical, "Disney's Descendants" as a surprise.  

Oreo cheesecake with chocolate ganache. (Since you were wondering, yes, I got some gluten free oreos.)

Macy also had a great year playing basketball. She and her friend Meg enjoyed being the twin towers.

Cooper's winter season ended with him sitting on the bench, but he will get to play a few games the end of this month in his March bantam league. These boys are fun to watch.  Mark has enjoyed coaching this year. 

Here is one (of many) videos I took since Cooper likes to analyze the game afterward.  Coop is in white #1 with the short blue sleeves. 

When Cooper came home from the hospital, some of his teammates and Coach came to the door, singing "Sweet Caroline!" and bearing gifts. What great kids! Thanks so much for everyone's love and support for our family.