halloween 2012

our halloween festivities this year went a little something like this:

 

a couple of weeks ago, i got together with my bff Leslie and her baby girl Izzie to paint some pumpkins. i'm super artistic and talented like that, so be prepared to be amazed. (not).

Izzie and her pumpkin

my pumpkins

Les and her pumpkin! she was super happy i made her stop and pose for a picture while carrying her oober heavy pumpkin.

our church put on a trunk-or-treat. no, we don't have any kids, so you're probably wondering why we'd be going. we just wanted a bunch of free candy for ourselves! ha! no just kidding. Jae was part of the crew that was in charge of putting it all together, so i decided to put on my big girl undies and sign up to make soup for it. i've never made soup before but i did and it went pretty good i think! (more on the soup-making later).

our friends, Cody & Steph, who also don't have kids so we hung out for most of it. until Cody decided to put this deer thing on. then we kind of kept our distance ;)

on Halloween, there's pretty much no better place to be than Primary Children's Medical Center. seriously. and it just so happens that that's my place of employment :) it also just so happens that my boss goes a little bit cray-cray over Halloween, so it's even more fun! we made crafts with the kids/patients, stood in the main hallways as they trick-or-treated, and had a potluck with all the employees in our area. everyone in our department had some awesome costumes, and it was just a fun, no-work work day.

that would be my boss Lyndsy and i at our craft table.

 

after work tonight, i went home and grabbed the pup and her costume and headed to my parents to go trick-or-treating. i promised my mom i'd bring Zoey over in her costume, plus we got to see all the nieces and nephews dressed up! Zoey was the cutest "grandchild". just sayin.

i think it's safe to say Zack was pretty excited he got to wear his cool superman undies on the outside of his costume, just like the real superman



she's not spoiled at all

tonight, Jae is working til late, and turns out we don't get many trick-or-treaters at our house, so i'm sitting at home with the pup, watching the Jazz season opener. and blogging. we did get two visitors at our door, so that was fun!

i mean, look at that puppy bat! cutest ever. she most certainly didn't need the bat ears that came with those wings.

 

ps: you guessed it, Mary, i was a bumble bee!

 

happy halloween everyone!!

{halloween eve}

here's a preview of my costume :)
any guesses?

ganglion cyst no more

so for the last few years, i have had on and off pain in my wrist(s). i wondered if it was maybe carpal tunnel, but decided it wasn't. then thought maybe it was just some random tendinitis. but wasn't sure. i used to help teach a tumbling class, and i remember trying to help a girl fix her cartwheel technique. i did one to show her how she was doing it wrong, and then was going to do another to show her how to do it correctly. well i barely made it through the first one, and i'm pretty sure the second one didn't look any better than the first. bending my wrist back and putting weight on it like that caused so much pain it just about landed me on my face. you should've seen me trying to do push-ups.

then one day in july (sounds like the beginning of a song, doesn't it?), i was chatting with my sister about this dumb wrist pain, and showed her the little bump that seemed to stick out more when it was hurting more, and she's like "oh, well it's probably a ganglion cyst. i've had one of those before."

duh.

i knew she must be right. she had the exact same symptoms and pain and stuff that i had, and it totally made sense. so a couple of weeks later, after a bit of research, i decided having years of this lame pain was enough, and i called the ortho guy that had just done some surgery on my mom's fingers and made an appointment. i assumed they'd be able to aspirate it, as they did on my sister's years ago, and from what i read, they did a lot of times for these types of things.

not so fast.

it was, indeed, a ganglion cyst, but it had become too hardened to be able to aspirate. it had to be surgically removed. without much hesitation, i said sign me up. i was ready to be rid of the dang thing. they wanted to schedule it the day before we left for malaysia. ha! i told them that just wasn't going to work, so we scheduled it for two days after we got back.

my surgery call time was 5:30am (eek), and i had it done in same-day-surgery at LDS hospital. the cyst was about the size of a large grape, and was mostly down in my wrist rather than poking up above my wrist. i guess they had to do some digging and moving of tendons and such to get it all out. hence my fingers are pretty sore when i move them. i remember trying to wake up out of the awful fuzziness of the anesthesia in recovery, and then they took me to Jae in another room. i was anxious to wake up and just go home to sleep. we left around 1:30pm (i think...that day is a little fuzzy) and Jae took me home. him and Zoey took care of me, and i was back to work 2 days later (boo).

it's an awful, straight-out-of-surgery kind of picture, but i had to show how cute miss pup was. she stayed/slept right by me all day.

got to sport this for 2 weeks. makes hair washing awfully difficult.

not the greatest picture, but my thumb bruised right up, and so did my knuckles on my fingers. my thumb looked like i was rockin some special tan line or something.

finally, after having that cast/splint/thing on my arm for 2 weeks, i got it taken off, got the stitches pulled out, and was sent on my way. it's been sore and stiff, but it's healing. oh, and geez, talk about some scaly, dry, peeling skin.

this is from today! i still feel like my hand is bruised, but it's definitely on the mend.

belated birthday date night

one of my bff's, miss mary, had her birthday while we were gone on our trip. so i wanted to take her out on a hot date when we got back.

we started the night with our classic go-to....wendy's. although the ketsup didn't want to play nice. (it totally squirted out, passed the little cup right on by, and landed nicely in the palm of Mary's hand. so funny.)

next stop: pedi's

and the grand finale....froyo.

{please disregard photo quality - they were taken with phones. also, you can disregard me. i was 1 day post-op, a little drugged, and looking fab. obviously.}

malaysia {pt. the end}

friday/saturday: we kept the last couple of days pretty low-key. we took a short boat ride to another island just off the coast of kota kinabalu to do yet some more swimming and snorkeling. we also spent some time at the pool at the condo.



i know this one is almost identical to the one above, but i just had to post it for one reason - Elias.

dang, who is that hottie?
{i'm talking about that one with the floaties ;)}

Liam's most said quote from the trip: "Jae, you are always so silly!"

ready to get our snorkel on

it's a hard knock life for this kid when he has to spend the day at the beach

i could not get enough of this boy. he turned into a little fish on this trip.

Hattie decided Anne (her mother) needed dance-in-the-pool lessons. like, duh! so funny haha. Anne is such a good sport.

sunday: we took a flight to Singapore. our flight leaving Singapore didn't leave until Monday morning so we booked a hotel for the night. we got into Singapore around 230pm so we had the afternoon to get comfy in our hotel room and explore a bit. it's safe so say we would love to plan another trip back to vacation in Singapore. we didn't see much because of our short amount of time there, but what we saw, we loved. plus everyone was SO nice and helpful which is huge when you're in a strange, unknown country. there were lots of interesting food places and dessert stops just down the street from the hotel, so we took a walk around to check them out, but we just wanted to hang out and chill. our hotel had 2 pools, one on ground-level and one on the roof. the rooftop pool had views straight out to the ocean. plus the airport wasn't too far away so you could see plane after plane coming and they were super close. it was so awesome! then we got freshened up and hit the buffet! holy amazing buffet. we ate a.lot. it was the perfect relaxing day for just Jae and i.

that would be a caramel frappachino & chocolate banana muffin for ms. mara. in the airport awaiting our flight.



customary hotel room pic

pool #1

pool #2

had the pool basically to ourselves. it was so nice.

dessert & fruit spread!

monday: got on a plane, ready to head home :)