Jeff's Grandpa

On Tuesday morning I was upstairs in Jeff and my room packing up some more stuff to move to Cedar that afternoon when he was done at work for the day. I went downstairs and his mom was crying and told me that Ray, Jeff's Grandpa, had passed away. So I went back upstairs to call Jeff and tell him but he told me when he started his student teaching that if I went into labor or some other emergency I should text him to call me and then he would know that it was important. So I just text him, "CALL ME" and he called me right back. I felt bad though because I knew that with my due date so close that he probably thought it was something to do with the baby and for that minute between my text and his call he was would be getting excited. So the second I answered the phone I just blurted out that his Grandpa had passed away. Although "blurted" isn't necessarily the right word since I had been fighting back tears. Anyway, he was able to get off work right away and come home. In the meantime, he called his brother Derek and told him.
But then I went downstairs and his mom had found out more information, his Grandpa hadn't passed away, he just wouldn't wake up that morning so they had called an ambulance and he was on his way to the hospital. So then I called Jeff back and told him his Grandpa hadn't passed away. So he came home, his Dad got on a plane to Salt Lake City, and we all just sort of paced randomly around the house trying to figure out what we should do. Jeff was supposed to have one of his University Supervisor's come watch him teach the next day but they were able to move it up to that day, later in the afternoon. Ang & Der decided to get in their van right away and make the 12+ hour drive to SLC because if Ray (his grandpa) was going to pass, they wanted a chance to say bye, and if he wasn't, then they would get to see family for a few days and then go home again.
We decided to drive up to SLC for those same reasons and by the time we were on the freeway headed North his Grandpa had been put on a respirator and they had found a lot of bleeding in his head. On Monday, he had fallen in the kitchen and hit his head on the counter but had seemed to be fine the rest of the day. It just took 12+ hours for the bleeding to get bad enough to affect him. Jeff's parents called and said that the doctors were going to take him off the respirator, but they didn't know how long he would breathe on his own. Needless to say, Jeff was flying more than driving up I-15.
When we got to the hospital his Grandpa had been off the respirator for a couple of hours already and was breathing on his own. It was labored breathing and he was in a coma-like state, but still alive. I love Jeff's Grandpa- ever since I met him back when Ang & Der were engaged 8 years ago, he hadn't been able to communicate very well because of previous stroke(s), but he was always excited to see you and tried really hard to get across what he was wanting to say. Him and Jeff had always been really close and Jeff looks up to him a lot. So anyway, it was difficult to see him like that because he obviously wasn't the same as he had been. But for me it was even more difficult to see Jeff sit and hold his Grandpa's hand, knowing that these were the last hours he would have him on the earth and in his life. We stayed at the hospital the rest of the evening, alternating between the waiting room and his room. The nursing staff were great, and didn't make a big deal about all the people going in and out, although I am sure it added stress to their jobs.
By about 1 am, everyone was pretty worn out, and Ang & Der weren't there yet, and their cell phone batteries had died so we didn't know if they were going to make it. It's a surreal feeling to sit and watch the monitor with the heartrate, blood pressure, and oxygen level, as all the numbers and lines go up and down. A couple of time his oxygen level went to unrecognizable (<1 & normal is between 90-100) and those of us still in the room didn't think they would make it, but then it would hop back up to 50 again. So finally, sometime after 1 am, Ang & Der made it and they were able to see him and say good-bye. Jeff was determined to stay through the night and at one point I was going to leave and get some sleep, but decided to stay with Jeff. We left his Grandpa's room at about 2 and came back at about 2:20 am. Jeff's Dad was in the room, and his brother Jace and his cousin Spencer were heading back to the room. When they got there at about 2:35 am, all of a sudden his vitals started to detoriate really fast. At 2:45 am, he stopped breathing, but his heart didn't stop fighting for 7 minutes. I didn't know that was possible.
So then we left the room while the nurses cleaned him up and then went back in the room to wait for the mortician. At about 4 am the mortician came and we left pretty soon after that. Jeff refused to leave his Grandpa (or his Dad for that matter) alone at the hospital.

One of my greatest fears(or dreads) since Jeff and I have been married is I knew the day would come when his Grandpa would pass away and I didn't know how he would handle it. I am so grateful he had the chance to say good-bye. But, I shouldn't be surprised that he has handled it well from the minute he got the news-- he knows that his Grandpa was getting more unhappy and frustrated everyday that he lived in the body that wouldn't cooperate anymore. At one point he was consoling me. Go figure.

So now we are just hanging out in SLC until the funeral on Saturday.

** The good news about all of this is that my sister is coming to stay until after the baby is born instead of going back to Omaha. Yippee!**

Jeff's finished in 3 weeks!!

I don't know if it is because of the baby or what but Jeff has worked out a sweet deal for his student teaching. Normally, for secondary ed, student teachers have to put in 6o days, 6 hours per day. Instead of having Jeff put in the requisite number of days, they are allowing him to do the hours, anyway that he likes. So, this week, if he goes from 8-5 everyday, it will count as 9 hours, which equals 1.5 days. Thursday night we went through his time sheet/log and figured out his hours- and if he shows up for the standard 40 hour work week, he only has 2 weeks and 4 days left.

YAY!! So we should be able to move up to Cedar permanently by the 4th of July. I am really not a fan of the cold- but I can say that I like the summer temperatures up there. Especially being pregnant, anything under 100 degrees is pretty fantastic.

. . . Speaking of which, my feet and ankles finally returned to their normal size 1 week after we began the move from AZ-which was a relief because I was afraid my ankle bones were gone for good until after the baby was born.

We went to Cedar again this weekend. We were able to sort through every box in the garage and for the first time in our marriage have a 2 car garage that we can fit 2 cars in! The rest of the house is pretty close to being put together as well.

Jeff's mom let us borrow her steam cleaner so we took turns going around the house steam cleaning everything we could think of. Jeff even declared our toilet the cleanest toilet in Cedar City at one point. It's really kind of gross what come out of stuff that looks clean to begin with (I didn't ask if this happened with the toilet- didn't want to know). Or when you realize that the tannish-brown grout in your kitchen is really supposed to be more of a creamy-beige color. So gross. But at least now I can rest easy that the majority of the germs and dirt in the house are going to be our germs and dirt- that I can handle.

We also screwed the bookcases to the wall so that we don't have to worry about them tipping over on some unsuspecting toddler sometime down the road. Or more likely, me.

One fun reality check this weekend was how much it costs to get all the "staples" for a house- like cleaning supplies, ketchup, mustard, tin foil, toilet bowl brushes, plastic wrap, toilet paper, etc. When we were first married, the majority of our gifts came in money or gift cards. We used the gift cards to buy all that kind of stuff for our house- and since then have just moved it with us everytime we've moved- replacing them one at a time, as needed. Except this last time, I just left all that stuff for the 2 guys renting our house, hoping that if they already had the necessary materials to clean the house, they would be more likely to keep it clean. So now we are starting over and it is somewhat painful. Although Wal-Mart probably loves us right now.

30 days!!

Just wanted to take a moment to celebrate my 1 month away mark. Elea is due July 16th- although I know the odds of her actually being BORN that day are slim. Jeff is so anxious for her to be born that if he could personally will her out of my body I think he would. I, on the other hand, am okay with her coming any day between now and her due date- after the 16th I may start to lose my patience.

Yay for just 30 hypothetical days though!

Unpacking.

Jeff and I went back up to Cedar yesterday afternoon to continue unpacking and sorting through our boxes. When we unloaded the truck, we put a lot of the boxes in the garage so that we would be forced to go through them and chuck the stuff we have been needlessly carrying around for the past 3 years. Or longer. This was our 7th move in less than 3 and a half years- so you would think that this little project would have been done on move 3 or 4. But no.

So last night Jeff came across this huge box. I knew it was clothes and old jerseys that his parents had kept for him. As he started to go through it, he became more and more perturbed and I started laughing harder and harder. There were shirts and pants and old sweatshirts that he hasn't been able to fit in since he was 16. And they haven't been "in style" (since we all know how much he and I worry about that) since then either. I ran and got my camera and took a couple pictures, I will post them later. When he put them in his back seat to take to D.I., they almost filled up the entire back seat.

I think I did the attractive, belly laugh/guffaw about 10 times as we were unpacking last night but the other time that I remember specifically was when he found a box of baseball cards that he has had for over 10 years. The box said 1996 on it but I haven't looked through any of the cards yet. But figuring that the point of owning baseball cards is to save them until a couple of them are worth good money sometime down the road I started to holler at him not to throw them away as he was heading towards the garbage can. I even physically got up and went over to him-- which means a lot these days. He started to argue with me that they aren't gonna be worth anything as he opened up the box. He grabbed a chunk of cards and then looked at the card on top. It was a Ken Griffey Jr. card. The same Ken Griffey Jr. that hit his 600th home run that day.

He decided to keep the box of baseball cards without any physical intervention on my part.

We've moved!

Well mostly. We flew to AZ on Thursday, packed up our storage unit and house and drove to Cedar on Saturday. We had to leave some furniture in AZ but hopefully we will be able to sell it or maybe just include it in the sale of that house someday when we decide to sell the house. Who knows. I'm not letting myself worry about it.

The move actually went really smooth. A lot better than I was anticipating. This "nesting" thing that I have going on is really coming in handy because I didn't feel like shooting myself in the face while packing & unpacking. :) Honestly, I would recommend moving when you're 34 weeks pregnant because "nesting" makes you super efficient and you don't have to feel obligated to lift &/or carry anything heavy. The only downside is the belly making it difficult to bend down, lean over, etc. and in my case, my feet got swollen and my ankles disappeared into a mass of puffiness for the first time since I got pregnant. But besides that, the move has been/was really easy actually.

Jeff drove the moving truck back, and normally on our ride back from AZ he is ornery before we are even out of phoenix, but this time he was happy as could be the entire ride.

We're going to be spending the weekends in Cedar and the weekdays in St. George because Jeff still has his student teaching in St. George. Hopefully he'll be able to get all his student teaching hours in before the baby comes so he won't have to commute back and forth.

While we were in AZ we went to Babys R Us and bought a car seat/stroller combo. And then the basics for the crib. So at least now if I go into labor early (highly doubtful) we will at least be allowed to take the baby from the hospital and she'll have someplace to sleep. So that's good.

We realized on Saturday afternoon that it was exactly 1 week to the hour from our first conversation about making the move to when we pulled up to our house in Cedar with the moving truck! It felt like it had been a month. But no, just a week. :)

Hope you're sitting down.

If you have known Jeff and me for longer than 3 months then you know that we don't tend to stick to our plans very well. In fact, it is more appropriate to say that our plans are more like little stories that we tend to keep re-telling ourselves over and over until one day we decide to do something completely different.

We aren't moving to Arizona anymore.

We are moving back to Cedar City.
(Gwen-- you can stop screaming and hyperventilating now . . . it really is okay, and I really am happy with the decision).

So let me rewind:

For the past month or so I kept having the thought that Jeff & I could move to Cedar, rent, and just continue renting out our house in AZ. Jeff loves Cedar. And he is guaranteed 2 assistant coaching positions there-- Football & Baseball.

However, I never said anything outloud about this idea because let's be honest, I really really wasn't a huge fan of Cedar last time we lived there. At all. And I sort of refused to live there this past 10 months and made Jeff commute back and forth 4-5 days a week. And I didn't want to give Jeff any sort of big ideas about moving back there, especially if the feeling went away, cause then I'd be stuck. But the thought kept coming up, and every time one of the P.E. job postings on the school district websites in AZ disappeared, the idea about Cedar reappeared.

We've been thinking that Jeff would probably just have to substitute teach full-time in AZ and hopefully get to know one of the coaches at one of the schools well enough that he could help coach somewhere by Spring. Which was sad to think about because he wants to coach more than anything, that is what he loves.

Then last week I was sort of in the dumps. And I couldn't explain why, other than being pregnant and hormonal-- which hasn't really happened to me throughout the pregnancy. It was a few days of feeling like sitting up was too much work. . . then I even steam cleaned our bathroom, thinking that accomplishing something would make me feel better. (Needless to say, it didn't work).

So Saturday I finally brought it up moving back to Cedar to Jeff and it was like watching a kid on Christmas morning. I'm surprised he didn't choke on his sandwich from shock. He said that if he'd made a list of the top 10 things he never would have expected to come out of my mouth, that would have been number 1.

Sunday we talked about it some more and then I stayed up until 4 in the morning looking up stuff about renting in Cedar and renting out our house in AZ, jobs, etc. I spent Monday morning on the phone with property management companies in both AZ and Cedar. This is already turning into a novel, so I will just sum it up that financially it makes sense to rent out our house in AZ and rent a place in Cedar. We were heading down to AZ this weekend for a preliminary interview and for him to take the Arizona licensure tests, but now instead we are flying down, packing what is left in our house, and driving a moving truck back up. Yee haw!

We went to Cedar yesterday and looked at a couple of places. We really liked one of them and should hear back today from the property manager whether we can rent it or not . . . if not then we will be heading back up there this afternoon to look at some others. Jeff will still be student teaching in St. George so we are going to continue living with his parents during the week and then live in Cedar on the weekends so that we can get the house settled and go to Church there a few times before the baby comes.

So there you have it.

For those of you who worry about my mental health, here is a list of why I think Cedar will be okay this time, as opposed to last time:

1. Before, I was working full-time and going to school full-time. Therefore, I was not able to leave for a few days whenever the cold became too much for me, and Jeff & I didn't see each other very much because he was working and going to school as well. NOW, I won't be working or going to school (and I have mastered the art of staying at home), so I will be able to drive to St. George or Vegas for a day or 2 or 3 until I am ready to go back to the cold again.

2. Before, we were in married students wards at church, so we were surrounded by all sorts of little families with babies and girls who were staying home with their kids. Therefore, I left church depressed every Sunday since we'd been trying to get me pregnant and hadn't succeeded and so church became a 3 hour reminder of such every week. And, I didn't make any friends in the ward(s) because my full-time school & work schedule didn't mesh well with the stay-at-homers (and it's hard to have a lot to talk about with a girl with who has 3 kids when you're sort of really bitter that you don't even have the beginnings of 1- as immature as that sounds). So the obvious difference now is that I will have more time, and a baby in common with the other stay-at-homers AND I won't leave church upset every Sunday.

3. Jeff has crossed-his-heart-hope-to-die promised that if he starts to fall back into the "Jeff-O" routine of hanging out with his buddies then all I have to do is say something, and it won't be considered nagging, and he'll snap out of it. (He doesn't think he will at all, and that I should give him more credit because he has grown up a lot in the past 3, 2, or even 1 year . . . so I guess we will see on that one).

4. Jeff has also promised to make an effort with me to make new mutual friends so that we can hang out with other couples that we both meet. As opposed to before, which meant we were hanging out with guys that he has known for years and I was left to make conversation with random wives that I may or may not have liked and/or had anything in common with.

5. We will be living in a better housing situation than before and I am going in with the mindset that Cedar is probably where we will be for the next 20 years, so there will be more motivation to really settle-- instead of looking at it as a temporary stop on our way to somewhere else. (I may even hang a couple pictures on the wall, or even a decoration or two!)

5. I recognize that post partum depression may hit me like a Mack truck-- but I promise not to disappear off the face of the planet if it does.

So there you go. No mas Arizona.

Nightmares

I have read that pregnant women tend to have dreams about small animals and other cute "puppy dogs and rainbows" type themes.

I don't.

I have dreams that I deliver the baby pretty much all by myself. In my last dream my mom was there but she became so engrossed in trying to tell everyone else (who I couldn't see) that I was having a baby that she didn't actually see &/or help me have the baby. The creepiest thing was that the baby didn't have an umbilical cord. It was weird. I don't remember the details of the other "birthing" dreams, but there have been a few.

The other recurring theme is me trying to nurse the baby. And I can't. In my dreams I am even trying the different methods I have seen lactation consultants teach women on "the Baby Story", "Bringing Home Baby", & "Runway Moms". But it doesn't work. In my latest dream my sister pointed out that I was failing miserably at the whole nursing thing and I had a full on break-down sobbing tantrum-- throwing myself on my bed and kicking my arms and legs. . . something I don't remember having done in the past 20 years. Weird.

Because I know that I will have lots of support after the baby is born I haven't been too stressed or nervous about the impending motherhood . . . but obviously my sub-conscious has a huge fear of "failure" with breastfeeding.

Now I just get to cross my fingers that it will work out.

It's June.

And we still don't know what Jeff will be doing for work in the Fall. If someone had told me back in March that we would be in the same exact position in June that we were in then, I would have probably smacked them.

The only thing I know for sure is that we are going to have a baby girl in July sometime . . . beyond that I have no idea. This past week or so Jeff has kept bringing up my offer from a year ago when I tried to talk him into being a stay at home dad and letting me go get a graduate degree-- and then work.

He said no. Many times I asked and many more times he said "no."

Now he wishes he would have taken me up on the offer and now I am so grateful he didn't because I have come to really appreciate not having to show up to work everyday. And I am pretty excited to stay home with Elea.

I honestly don't think he would be happy staying home all day every day with a baby because he goes stir crazy by about 8 pm Sunday night after being home all day. But it is pretty funny to hear the different angles he uses to bring the subject up- trying to talk me into it without being too obvious.