A Little Bit of This & That...

Well, January was a crazy month. Jordan is finally home from his two-week trip to Argentina and Chile, and Lucy and I are VERY happy for him to be home. I'm in the process of convincing him to do a post on his incredible trip. Here is a sneak peek. Can you believe how beautiful Argentina is? I unfortunately don't know the names of these places, but I love these pictures. In other news, Jordan was officially accepted to the Master's of Taxation program at Weber State. The M-Tax will only take an additional year, so we're excited to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Jordan is currently doing a second internship for Hansen, Barnett, and Maxwell, a regional accounting firm. He will begin working for HBM full-time next January.

Check out his beard!

Remember my crazy post about my biopsy gone bad? Well, the results came back and the good news is I do not have psoriasis on my face. The bad news is that I have a nasty form of dermatitis, which is very hard to get rid of. I'm on a new prescription, so we'll see how it goes. I wanted to give you a perspective of how labor-intensive putting on all my creams/ointments/gels/shampoos on my body each day has been. Here is a picture of everything I've been using since October. The good news is.......my psoriasis is healing!! The hundreds of crusty red scabs have now turned white and smooth. My skin stills looks funny with all of the white spots, but my dermatologist assured me that the pigment should fill back in. Hallelujah!!! The new cream I've been putting on my body spots works amazingly well. Each tube is $400, so you have to prove to your insurance that all the other creams/ointments don't work before they'll pay for it. It only ended up costing me $40 after my co-pay. So awesome. You want to know the best part??

This is my new-skin care regimen. I have ONE cream for my face, ONE cream for my body, and ONE shampoo for my scalp. Life is good.

Onto Ms. Lucy. Lucy is growing and changing so fast I can hardly stand it. She is now eighteen-months old. She has discovered that she can climb, and now feels the need to climb onto every chair/couch/bench she sees. When I got home from New York, I couldn't believe how much more she was talking. She is a never-ending stream of gibberish/jargon, with perfect inflection. I love how she jabbers at me and fully expects me to understand what she's saying. She makes me laugh all day long. Her new favorite thing to do is climb up on a chair with pile of books and read the books out loud.

This is Lucy her first Sunday that she went to nursery. She was awesome. She walked right in there without making any fuss, and was perfectly happy the entire two hours. I am LOVING not walking the halls with Lucy the first two hours of church. It is so nice to actually sit and listen during the classes.

Here she is before we went for a walk outside. She had a great time eating all the disgustingly dirty snow. I swear I couldn't stop her. Oh well, at least we're building immunity, right?

Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made of....

I'm back from the ultimate girl's weekend. All the boys in the family have been in South America for two weeks hiking Patagonia, so the girl's decided to have our own fun. We left for New York City early Thursday morning. We got in, freshened up and went to dinner at this yummy Italian restaurant.

Erin primping before dinner.

After dinner we went to.....the Lion King! The costumes were a.m.a.z.i.n.g.

The next day we shopping. Our first stop was the NBA store to see if we could find presents for our husbands. They had these molds where you could compare your handprint to famous NBA players.

I think my hand is a little smaller than Shaq's.

Dirk Nowitzki could eat me.

Next stop......H & M!!

Poor Rach is six months pregnant and not too interested in shopping. She chilled out in the dressing room eating a fruit bowl. Thanks for being a good sport!

That night we saw my favorite....Wicked! The last time I saw Wicked was in 2004, so I had forgotten a lot. It was spectacular! I get chills every time I hear Defying Gravity.

Fiyero!!!!!

Sporting our ridiculously overpriced Wicked t-shirts.

Kalli is part camel. This girl pounded one of these huge bottles of water every night.

Chocolate cupcakes....the breakfast of champions. Pretty sure I look like I have hydrocephaly in this picture.

The next day we split up. Kalli, Rachel, and Erin went to see Mama Mia while my mom and I saw "The Addams Family". Bebe Neuworth played Mortisha and Nathan Lane played Gomez. So good!

Times Square

That night we went to see Mary Poppins. It was fantastic! I highly recommend it to anyone. I had a huge grin on my face the whole show. My mom managed to get us front row seats so we could see every little facial feature of the performers.

Feeling a little crazy in our hotel room.

The last day we were there we went to church at the Manhattan 1st ward. It's so weird to walk into a high rise building, have the elevator doors open and walk into a typical Mormon church setting. The people were so friendly. After church we hopped in a pedicab for a ride around Central Park. Our pedicab drivers were really cool guys.

They dropped us off at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we browsed for the rest of the afternoon.

What a fabulous four days. It was so fun to get to spend time with these incredible girls. Thanks mom for making it happen!! We love you so much!

Tired of Being a Freak of Nature...

I had an interesting experience at the dermatologist's office yesterday. I went because my Guttate Psoriasis is not really going away and because I had some new red bumps that don't look the rest of my body. Turns out the bumps are bites of some kind, so please bless that we don't have bed bugs or something freaky. I can't remember if I've posted on my rash since the initial post, but I have two different skin conditions going on. On my face and in my scalp I have a scaly/flaky rash that is red and makes me look flushed, and on the rest of my body I have skin lesions that are reddish/white and look something like chicken pox scars (aka Guttate Psoriasis). Anyway, the doctor was looking at my face and felt like maybe it was time that we biopsied the lesions on my face. She found a lesion that was in my hairline and decided to biopsy in my hairline so that she wouldn't scar my face. Now, a biopsy typically takes just a couple of minutes. They give you a shot of Novacaine, tear off a little chunk of skin the size of a pencil eraser and give you a couple of stitches. No big deal, right?

I need to digress for just a moment to remind you that I don't respond well to anasthestia. For example, I don't go numb at the dentist. Every time I have had a cavity or a root canal drilled, they spend forever trying to get me numb but I end up feeling the entire procedure. When I had my c-section, they gave me a spinal block to numb me and I took FOREVER to get numb to the point that they would start the procedure. When the doctor began the incision, I yelped because I could completely feel his blade slicing through my skin and muscles. I still feel pain where the incision was made.

Now that you have the background information, you understand that I was apprehensive when she told me I would feel nothing during this biopsy. I informed her of my inability to numb and she gave me double the amount of Novacaine just to be safe. When she tore off the skin sample I felt everything and jumped. She couldn't believe that I felt anything, and gave me another shot of Novacaine because she needed to stitch me up now. However, my little head would started bleeding out of control. All of sudden I felt blood pouring down my face and seeping all through my scalp. The doctor and medical assistant were both extremely surprised by the amount of blood coming from my head. So, the doctor tried stitching the would together, but I could feel every single poke of the needle. So, she kept giving me Novacaine and I kept feeling her sewing my skin together. Because I was bleeding so badly, she had to use a machine that sent an electrical current in the would to staunch the bleeding. This wouldn't be a big deal if I couldn't feel anything, but I still wasn't numb so I could feel the maching burning me. Betweeen the burning machine, her stitching my skin together, all the shots of Novacaine, and all the pressure of them trying to staunch the bloodflow, I felt pretty crappy by the time I left the doctor's office. They had given me SIX cc's of Novacaine which is enough for an entire surgical procedure, and the entire thing had taken an HOUR. Now my dermatologist can join the long line of doctors/dentists who have told me that I don't "present like the norm". From my extra bones in my feet to my weird skin conditions that don't respond to treatment to my inability to numb, I guess I am a walking freak of nature. Maybe I should join the circus and capitalize on my weirdness. Ha ha. I feel much better today and at least now we'll know definitively what's going on with my face.

Christmas 2010

Christmas was wonderful. Not only have I LOVED having time off but, but it's been so great to spend time with our families. Lucy was so fun this year. She seemed to really get into the spirit of things. Here are some of the highlights:

Christmas Eve: We ended up having two Christmas Eve dinners. First, we ate a delicious ham dinner at the Walkers. Grandpa Parker read Luke 2, and we had a great devotional.

Christmas Eve Dinner #2: We headed to my parent's house afterward for a steak and crab leg dinner. We didn't end up eating until 10:00. That's just the way the Hales roll.

Christmas Day 2010: The festivities started at the Walker homestead. Lucy had such a great time opening presents with her cousins.

Abbi's New Hat

Emma's New Hat

Grandma Walker helping Lucy open her presents.

Jenny in her new onesie.

Christmas Day 2010 at the Hale Homestead:

Scott and Rach are having a little girl!!

Our big presents to each other. I have officially made the switch back to skiing. We went up a couple of times over the break and had such a great time.

The big family present--a Wii, Beatles Rockband, Supermario Bros, Glee Karaoke Revolution, and Goldeneye. We have been playing our little hearts out every night. So fun!

One of the best parts of the day was we got to Skype with Sister Annie Hale on Christmas. It was so fun to see her talk!! She is doing so well in Nebraska. I miss that girl.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a fabulous holiday season. Here's to 2011!