Early in the summer the Anderson cousins came to visit us on their way to Utah. The kids and I actually took a 2nd car to Breckenridge, where Oscar already was staying for his upcoming race, so that we could see their family and let Tyler go to his friend's birthday party at AirCity 360. On Saturday we met up with Tyler and the rest of the party group at Chick Fil A then took off for Breckenridge.
After getting home Tyler went swimming with the other young men while I got a hematoma from a mosquito bite. It ended up needing an incision and drainage to remove all the uncomfortable pressure. It's a rare side effect from the Brukinsa I take for my CLL. They reduced my dosage afterwards to try to prevent something similar from happening again.
Nibbler continued being cute and sweet. This picture on the right is how I woke up one morning (I'm laying on my side). He is bound and determined to snuggle!
This is a lovely view fromn my walk and a picture of the kids playing Summer Camp with me. We really like it, which is great since I found it on clearance for only $4.50! King Soopers put a bunch of board games on sale in January, so I picked it up and saved it until Tyler's birthday. I didn't know if it would be any fun, but for $4.50 I figured it was worth the cost.
One weekend we took the family to Rainbow Falls. Due to erosion causing rocks to land on cars in the parking lot, they closed the former parking lot and now have a paid shuttle service transport you there from a different parking lot that's far away from any erosion (though it's honestly not that far from the trail head, and I don't think the shuttle service is necessary for most people). We'd had a lot of rain in late May/early June, and the park is only open on weekends, so we went on a Saturday after several days of raining knowing the watershed should be about as big as it's going to get.
Unfortunately the overpass bridge is covered in graffiti (in spite of the city cleaning it all up during the multi-year closure, but the falls are still lovely.
My sweet girl immediately found other kids to sit and watch the falls with.
There were also some nice Cascades going down the trail that I wasn't even aware of.
There's a big drop here that I think deserves it's own name. It's bigger than the main Rainbow Falls.
We hiked down to the picnic area where we had this nice view. I doubt many people going to the falls ever come to this section of the park.
On our way back to the car, the shuttle service took us around to these beautiful views of the valley.
Our summers definitely make for some interesting weather and cloud formations.
The Andersons visited us again on their way back home. Allison made a little sleeping area for Millie in her room. Tyler and Oscar bought some gear to get ready for the Young Men's campout.
One of their activities at church was human foosball.
I took Allison to get her braces fixed (they hadn't been glued properly and half of the brackets fell off) then took her to the fun park and splash pad nearby. I also took her to see fireworks at Banning Lewis Ranch. Unfortunately we'd missed the Falcon fireworks since they did them on the Saturday before the 4th while we were up in Estes Park. I was a bit surprised by that since July 4th fell on a Friday this year. I would have expected the show to be on the 4th or on the 5th, the Saturday after the 4th.
Colorado sure gets some crazy weather and lovely sunsets. One day the hail was so strong it piled up like snow.
Allison kept herself busy building Lego and drawing pictures of her current favorite animal - snow leopards.
Tyler and the other youth in the ward went ice blocking one week.
Oscar took Allison camping down in the Royal Gorge area one weekend. He wanted to make use of all the nice equipment he'd purchased for the Young Men's campout.
Tyler has started mowing our lawn regularly and does an excellent job. These are some interesting lizards/newts/salamanders/whatever they are climbing around our trash can.
A couple weeks later Oscar took Tyler camping up in Rainbow Gulch. It's where he'd intended to hike with Allison previously, but there'd been too much rain in the forecast the day they were going to go, so they found a spot with better weather.
As usual, I enrolled in the vocal arts festival. I had a great two days with a good opening aria, but I ended up getting laryngitis and not being able to perform my scenes. I went to the doctor and was prescribed prednisone, which at first seemed to be working. I was going to rehearsals, and I was showing a lot of improvement, but that was soon followed up with a nasty bacterial infection. I dropped out of the program to take care of myself, and though my voice came back as I was finishing up my antibiotics, I noticed the lump in my throat didn't seem to have improved while all of my other symptoms had cleared up. I went to an ENT where they found lesions at the base of my tongue and ended up ordering a CT scan and a biopsy to rule out the possibility of throat cancer. Turns out they were little clumps of lymphocytes consistent with my CLL. I did not know that CLL could be anywhere but the lymph nodes but my nurse tells me it's been known to happen. It's more likely on the skin, but it does occasionally build up inside the mouth too. It's taken a couple months now for me to be able to sing normally again, but the problem is I keep getting sick. They took a look at my vocal cords and everything looks great with the cords and the larynx, but the problem is singing on this lump dries out the mucous membranes in the throat that help prevent infection. The treatment of course is to keep targeting the CLL, and my medicine is working, but the lump is still there. It's reduced a lot, but it's still drying me out more than I would be otherwise. So after 7 months of not getting sick even when my CLL was at its peak, I got laryngitis and a bacterial infection and two colds in the span of 7 weeks.
On the plus side the CLL is getting much better. My numbers are about half of what they were when I started treatment and about where they were at this time last year before they started really escalating. Even during the 2 weeks I took off medicine before and after the biopsy, my numbers continued improving. Since it's clear the medicine is working for me, we bumped me back up to full dosage and so far I'm tolerating it well.
Here's Tyler with his cubes, Allison making herself a fancy Ramen, and a ground squirrel that got stuck in our window well. We also had a new roof installed.
My mom had come to stay with us for a few weeks, and Oscar's parents also came for a few days on their way to Missouri. During their visit grandpa taught Tyler how to ride a bike and we played a funny game of telestrations. My prompt was "birthday party." Oscar guessed "5 snakes in a pot. 4 kids with triangle hats. 3 presents." Martha drew that pretty well, then Tyler guessed "snakes cursing in front of elves. Grandpa drew that as well as he could, to which Allison guessed "snakes clumsily chasing elves when they run into a block."
The kids started school on August 4th, and I dropped mom off at the airport on August 5th. It wasn't exactly the summer I was hoping for with recurring illness and losing out on performing at the Vocal Arts Festival, but at least we had great family time and got to go on several fun mini-trips in. Read more about those in
Oscar and Tyler also went to Young Men's Camp. I haven't blogged about it and probably won't since I wasn't there and would just be listing off pictures. If you'd like to see those pictures they can be found in this album.
Nibbler continued being cute and sweet. This picture on the right is how I woke up one morning (I'm laying on my side). He is bound and determined to snuggle!
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