Carillon Bell Tower

How many piano teachers take their students on field trips?  Not many, I would guess.  But Daniel and Benjamin have an exceptionally cool piano teacher.  We went with all of her piano students to BYU this week to tour the Carillon Bell Tower.  Just a few days before, the bell tower was featured on KSL news, so we had some idea of what we were in for.  First, you can only have about 10 people in the tower at a time.  To get to the top, you climb up about 100 stairs in a very narrow spiral staircase.  At the top of the stairs, there is a metal ladder with about 10 more steps to climb.  Then, you are in the room that houses the carillon keyboard.  The bells are just overhead, but there is a ceiling in-between.  The whole experience was very good for Benjamin, especially because he is generally scared of tall staircases.

Joseph Peeples is one of the students who plays the carillon, and he showed us how it all works.  Surprisingly, it's played by pounding your fists.  I suspect it's a good outlet for frustration at the end of a long day.

The view from the top was amazing!  The whole room is encased in glass, so you can see out in every direction.

This is a stream near the base of the bell tower.  The kids had fun running around on the path and feeding the ducks.  If you ever get the chance to tour the bell tower, do it!

Easter egg hunts!

Our boys went to three Easter egg hunts this year!

The first was a neighborhood hunt.

The kids collected plastic eggs filled with candy and small toys.

We also had a hunt at my parents' house.

The yard was pretty much littered with candy.

The kids bartered and traded for all of their favorite treats.

Benjamin with his adorable cousin Maddie.

My dad has been sick, so he was taking it easy.

Our last Easter hunt was at Wayne's parents' house.  But first, the kids "hunted" for the neighbor's goats so they wouldn't  eat Grandma's garden.

Grandma's dog wouldn't help them round up the goats.

Everyone dyed Easter eggs which were then hidden by the grownups.

After Daniel and Benjamin found all of the eggs, they turned around and hid them again.  The adults weren't as successful at finding the eggs and needed numerous hints to find them all.

Spring Break Fun

I haven't blogged for a while!  I didn't get a chance to write about Spring Break, so here's the short version.

First, we got the Pass of all Passes and went to Trafalga, Lehi.  It was really crowded, and it was raining/snowing so the outside rides were all closed.  Here's some of the stuff we did there:

We played miniature golf.

Wayne and Daniel climbed the rock wall.

We checked out the closed rides, and it was cold outside!

People were playing miniature golf outside, but we passed.

At Trafalga, we also played laser tag.  That was probably the coolest thing there.  We did other fun stuff during our spring break week like go to the park, visit both sets of grandparents, and just relax!

Some answers

I actually wrote this post about a week ago, but I didn't get around to posting it until now.  So, if you didn't know, my surgery was actually 2 and a half weeks ago.  Here's the post:

I was debating whether to write this blog entry, but then I read an article about infertility in the April 2011 Ensign magazine from the LDS Church. On page 28, it says, "There's nothing in the scriptures or anywhere in the gospel that teaches us to suffer in silence.  That's a cultural thing.  When you suffer in silence, you suffer more deeply."  I also thought this might be too personal, but random strangers at the grocery store sometimes ask me why I only have two kids (only in Utah!).  So, here goes.  If you are grossed out by the medical stuff, sorry, feel free to skip it, but it's kind of necessary to this situation.  

Until recently, we never knew why we couldn't have any more kids.  Or at least, we never had an actual diagnosis.  Over the  years, we had been to different doctors, had lots of tests done, and no specific problems were ever found.  I was generally declared healthy, even though I knew I wasn't.  We were given some theories that couldn't be backed up with my test results.  It's hard to treat a problem when you can't really tell what it is.

I've had chronic health problems like occasional migraines and painful cramps, but those aren't necessarily related to infertility.  Then, I started having more health problems a few months ago.  I went to a new doctor, and he located some specific areas of chronic pain that he said were probably from endometriosis.  I told him that everything short of surgery had been done to look for endometriosis in the past, and none had been found.  He said we'd start with an ultrasound and probably move on to surgery.  With the ultrasound, they found fibroids, but those weren't the cause of my pain or infertility. 

I'm not going to explain in detail what endometriosis is here.  Basically, it means that bits of tissue wander into the abdominal cavity that were never meant to be there.  They cause pain as they grow, and they leave behind lots of scar tissue.  During the surgery, they removed scar tissue from several locations in my abdominal cavity.  When I woke up, it felt like someone had punched me repeatedly in the gut.   For a few days, I couldn't get my abdominal muscles to work at all.  I couldn't get out of bed or up from the couch without assistance.  And I couldn't bend at the waist to sit or lean over.  Good thing I had lots of help around the house from my family.  And my friends brought in dinner for several nights, which was very sweet and very helpful. 

Now, I'm left with stitches and bruises.  I'm still sore, and I can't do anything extremely strenuous for a couple more weeks.  But after about 6 weeks, I should be perfectly fine.  Will the endometriosis come back?  Quite possibly, eventually.  Is my infertility cured now?  Not really.  But having the extra growths gone does make it more likely that I could get pregnant, especially in the next few months.  We'll see what happens that way, but I'm not particularly expecting it to happen.  In the meantime, we are still pursuing adoption!

Fun, Foolish Food

We always have a silly dinner for April Fool's Day.  Benjamin insists on helping me make it.  He especially liked making "Jello" for dinner--but in this case, it's just Kool-Aid in a bowl.  He also set the table, using a variety of holiday paper plates.  The main dish was shepherd's pie topped with pink mashed potatoes (we added beets to the potatoes), so it looked like a berry pie.  We also had muffins made to look like ice cream cones.  For dessert, we had "cheese" sandwiches made from pound cake that we sliced, toasted, and filled with orange frosting.  We got our recipes from Disney Family Fun.   Here are a couple of close-ups:

The "cheese sandwiches."

Benjamin with one of the "ice cream cones."  It kinda overflowed, so it looks like it's melting.