Blessings

I got bad news from my doctor last week....another surgery for me. I have a cyst caused by my endometriosis on my ovary which has doubled in size since December. In order to "save" the ovary, surgery is necessary. This makes for #4. I was pretty upset when the doctor revealed the bad news, but have been overcome by so many blessings in the last few days. 1) I have a wonderful husband who is very supportive and understanding. I could not ask for a better guy! I love him so much. 2) We have awesome family and friends who truly care about us and would do anything for us. 3) I'm grateful for modern medicine. Being that this is surgery #4 I know pretty much exactly what to expect. The surgeries are done laprascopically and only take 4-5 days to recover from. Aside from the incision pain, they aren't too bad. 5) I'm grateful for my health. Despite the struggles that I do have, it could definitely be worse. We have a friend who is going through chemo right now and I realized that my problems are minimal when looking at the grand scheme of things. 6) Kurt has a good job that offers awesome benefits. Comparative to others, our insurance is really good with small deductibles and co-pays. I'm blessed to have these little reminders in my life that bring me happiness and joy when I'm feeling down.

Snow Snow Go Away! Vacation here we come......

It has felt like a very long winter. This year we've had tons of snow. One of the biggest winters in probably the last 6 or 7 years. It doesn't seem like the snow will melt until May because it's piled so high. I often find myself daydreaming for warm, sunny weather when I can lay in a pool and relax. Those days seem far away, but will come soon enough! Kurt and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary next month and are going on a cruise to the Bahamas. We are very excited. We almost went to the Bahamas on our honeymoon and it will be our first cruise (which I've always wanted to do), so it's going to be a special trip for us. I've always dreamed of swimming with dolphins so I will be able to check off 3 things from my bucket list in just one trip. Kurt is playing in a hockey tournament next month in Vegas and is very excited about that. My best friend from high school lives in Vegas and we are staying with her and her husband. Kurt plays hockey and I get to spend some time with a close friend; the perfect trip for both of us :) Check back for pictures from our trips to come......

New Year's Eve sledding

I think it was 22 degrees on this day. It was very cold, but we had a lot of fun-despite the few crashes that I had.

Waiting at the top with my niece. This may have been the run that flipped me over and I ended the run on my stomach sliding down the hill backwards....without the sled. I hurt my hand when I tried to soften the landing. Definitely not as young as we used to be :)

Kurt and my sister's husband sledding down the hill. This was 400+ pounds on a sled. I guess we all get to act like kids every once in a while. After sledding we enjoyed some peppermint hot chocolate and spent the rest of the evening and New Year's Day playing games with Jodi's family. And of course eating a lot of food! We hope that 2013 brings much joy and happiness to you.

'Tis the Season

This past weekend Kurt and I watched my 1 year nephew and 6 year old neice while their parents were celebrating their birthdays at a weekend getaway. My neice had a gingerbread house kit to make while she was with us and after that Kurt wanted to make a gingerbread house so we bought a few kits, a lot of candy and began building........
The lighting in these pictures is pretty bad, but my camera battery was dead, so I was using my phone camera.

Kurt is definintely a perfectionist and since he used to build houses he wanted his "walls" completely straight. All of his icing lines were completely straight and neat. Mine were thick and messy-but unique nonetheless.

Merry Christmas!!!!

I love Christmas!!! So many christmas parties, family fun, gift exchanges, lights, decorations, christmas movies and yummy food. It is probably my favorite month of the year! I love giving gifts and I put creativey and alot of thought into the gifts that I give. One of my favorite family childhood traditions are getting a box of cereal by our stocking every year. It is something my mom started doing when we were little and each of my siblings have carried on the tradition with their family and it is still a family favorite. Kurt used to get a can of mandarin oranges in his stocking every year and he loved that tradition. Christmas Eve is the day that we celebrate with my family. We start eat dinner, exchange gifts (we draw names for gifts) and play the white elephant game. This white elephant game is super fun. The white elephant gifts are food related and we play the game where you can either choose a new gift or "steal" what the previous person had opened whether you like that treat or not. We have a lot of fun with that one.
Christmas with Kurt's family is different each year. His dad and stepmom live nearby, but often travel out of state to visit her family. Kurt's mom and stepdad live 5 hours away so we don't get to spend every Christmas with them, but have been blessed to spend the last 4 Christmas's with them. Although traveling on Christmas Day is not fun, we enjoy the time that we get to spend with them. This year we have decided to stay home for Christmas.

We hope this holiday season brings you much happiness and joy.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
-Kurt and Jodi

The many adventures of Kurt........

The day before Thanksgiving Kurt was able to go elk hunting and he was successful; the only problem was he went hunting alone and was not able to get the 1000 lb animal out alone. He called me around 3:30 and asked me to call some friends for help. I was able to get my brother-in-law who has a 4 wheeler to help. Another problem arose....there were only 2 people that knew where Kurt's location was. Desperately I called one of those friends and he was getting ready to leave for Thanksgiving, but took time away from his family to help us. We finally arrived to help Kurt around 5:30. We drove the 4-wheelers in about 5 miles and hiked down a mountain another 50 feet (in the 10" of snow and pitch black) until we finally found Kurt. We spent another hour getting the elk up to the 4-wheelers. It was freezing cold, muddy, pitch black and crazy. On the drive home we almost hit 3 or 4 deer that ran in front of our truck.
What an adventure!!!! There is certainly never a dull moment with Kurt. He always keeps me on my toes!!
We were very grateful for our friends that day that always come to our assistance when we need it.

The joys of owning horses....
People that have come to know me in the last 10 years assume that because we have a horse I am automatically a "cowgirl". They are wrong! I have always been scared of horses...and heights and for someone that is afraid of heights, sitting on the back of a horse 6 or 7 feet off the ground seems like 100 feet. When I was 11 I was bucked off a horse pretty aggressively and I've been even more scared since. When I met Kurt, he happened to have a horse so it is a lifestyle that I married into. I don't ride our horse, and only take care of it if Kurt is not able to. This summer I rode a horse for a long period of time and Kurt was very proud of me. It probably won't happen very often, but I try to involve myself in Kurt's hobbies so we can always do things together. We are very lucky to have enough property at our house to have a horse in our very backyard.
A few weeks ago on a stormy Monday night I was getting ready for my Volleyball game and Kurt went outside to feed the animals as he does every night. A few minutes later I heard our dog barking a lot, which is not super common, but he is known to chase the horse and bark at him if the horse is running around or something. After several minutes I heard Kurt yelling my name very faintly so I went outside to see what was going on. It was very dark and I couldn't see him. When I called Kurt's name, he didn't answer.....so I called it out again. At this point I knew something was wrong. I ran out into the pasture with my socks on and saw Kurt on the ground with Woodrow, who was also laying down. When Kurt went out to feed something had spooked Woodrow and he tried to kick Kurt. Luckily he missed, or else Kurt would have been badly injured. But as he got spooked he took off running down to the end of the pasture and reared up. As he reared up, he lost control and fell over onto our chainlink fence taking out 4 of the posts and getting tangled up in the wires. I went to get the neighbor and some tools for Kurt to cut the chainlink so Woodrow could be free. Remember how I said I was in my socks?....well in the drama of all this I never had time to get shoes so I had thorns in my feet. As Kurt cut him out of the fence Woodrow was able to get up and roam around. We had wonderful neighbors and friends come over to help us. We took Woodrow into the garage (where there was light) and he had several cuts all over his body, with a very severe cut on his left hind hoof which was bleeding badly. His other hind leg was not cut, but was very swollen and was getting bigger. 4 hours later we had him settled down and cleaned up. Kurt took Woodrow to the vet the next day and luckily nothing was broken or severely injured. We were grateful that Kurt wasn't hurt, Woodrow is recovering and that we were only left with a broken fence. It was a very scary night for us. Kurt is so amazing and always tends to stay calm; which then helps me to stay calm. We're thankful for neighbors and friends who came over to help because we couldn't have done it alone.