Disneyland

Well, I made it to Disneyland. Here is what happened. I went to the Hospital to have some CT Scans done at around 1:30 last Wednesday. Then, I had a doctors appointment at 4:15 with Dr Daynes. He came in and told me that I did indeed have a kidney stone. I told him that I was sure of that. He asked me if I had had them before and I told him that I should be collecting frequent miles on that train. Of course, the real question I had, was can I go to Disneyland. He told me that I only had the one and it had gotten caught up in getting into the bladder, but it was right at the end. I may feel a little bit more pain with it tearing its way into the bladder, but then the next pain would be expelling it. I was also told that it is 4 mm x 2.5 mm. They will actually blast 4 mm stones, but this was already to a good point. The only real pain that I thought I would have would be in it coming out of my body. I got a prescription for percocet (which I picked up) and left his office. The stone passed through the rest of the way at 4:30 AM and I caught it in the strainer. I knew it would be there in the morning because I felt the pointy edges that night. I was just grateful that I wouldn't have to carry a strainer with me on the trip. That's always fun to explain to the security check points at the airport.

When we were leaving to the airport we were driving through snow. I couldn't believe that it would actually be snowing as we were leaving. Of course we hoped for great weather in California (which we got). I had forgotten to take my pocket knife out of my pocket until I was at security, so I had to go buy stamps and mail it back to my house. The plane ride was uneventful, but my wife was kind of sick as we landed at the long beach airport. She thought it was about as bad as riding the teacups.

One of the reasons my wife didn't want to rent a car was because she was sure I would get lost. So, we found a van that would take us to our hotel for $45. The funny part was, he got lost on the way to the hotel. He took us to the wrong hotel. We were staying in Homewood Suites by Hilton and he took us to another Hilton. Then the woman at the Hilton told us to drive the wrong way to get to our Hotel. We passed Disneyland, and I called the Hotel and got the real directions. We weren't lost too badly. It was hard to understand the driver. He was from Cambodia, but has been in this country since the 80's. He just didn't speak all that clearly for us. He seemed to be really nice. We set up for him to come pick us up on Monday when we were going home.

Soon after getting settled into the Hotel, we went to Disneyland. We started out by getting onto Star Tours, and went from there. We were pretty lucky and though Disneyland was crowded with Spring Break people, we got on quite a few rides that night. We went back to the Hotel and the kids enjoyed swimming while I enjoyed being in the Hot Tub.

Friday, we went back to Disneyland but went to California Adventures. We were in the front, and had gotten there early enough that we should've been the very front to the Tower of Terror (that is our all time favorite ride). As they let people in, everybody rushed and quite a few actually would elbow you back a bit. Then, a group of kids were holding hands and cut everybody off. My wife was quite perturbed (and who could blame her) and lifted up some of their hands and broke the line. We got in pretty good to the Tower of Terror. Those kids were pretty mad though. We stayed until around noon, and then went to the Hotel for swimming. We came back later in the afternoon.

More of the same happened both Saturday and Sunday. We couldn't believe all the people who were there on Easter Sunday (of course we were a part of that). Monday morning, we decided to go there and get in a few rides. This was the biggest crowd that we had seen the whole time. The line to get through security was a lot longer. The line into Disneyland was huge and then it was so crowded one could hardly walk around. The Indiana Jones ride was already over an hour wait and the fast passes were two hours away. We walked around a bit and then went to California Adventures around 11:00. Those lines were still way long. It was incredible. However, the Tower of Terror line was short and we got right in. We went on that twice and then the kids decided we should just go to lunch and get ready to go.

We got a different driver to pick us up at the Hotel. He called and told us his was a black van and the new number. It wasn't at the Hotel. I called him back and asked which Hotel he was at (yes, he got lost too). He was at the wrong Hilton. Anyway, we got to the airport with a lot of time to spare. I had left our aerosol can of suntan lotion in my carry on, so that had to be thrown away (that was a stupid mistake). The trip home was uneventful.

After getting to our SUV we went to Pams house to pick up our dog. We visited for awhile. Her foot had been cut and she was bleeding. My wife spent some time that evening taking care of our dog. We put a bandage on it with a sock to help keep it on.

I stayed home from work on Tuesday. The kids went to school. My wife and I went shopping at JC Penneys, and other than that, did nothing else. We did go to the in-laws to pick up our bird and then got home in time to hurriedly eat and get to Young Men/Young Women. As it worked out for me, the Deacons had gone out passing out bags for the Food Drive this Saturday. I missed that. Instead, I went and picked up a few grocery items and got some DVD's. We just had to get "The Tower of Terror" as something fun to watch. We watched it that night.

Tonight, we went to a concert that was put on with the Concert Bands and Orchestras at my daughters middle school. There really isn't anything else to write.

You've got to be kidding

I am writing here in frustration. My family is getting ready to go on a trip to Disneyland, and here I am passing a kidney stone again. This is getting out of hand. I am frustrated, angry and over all just pissed off. The pain started coming on around 9:00 last night, and I started to see blood in my urine. I immediately started to drink water and for the most part the pain hasn't been unbearable. It has been right next to unbearable though. Right now there is no pain and no pressure. Hopefully, that is the way it will stay. The pain has not been with me since about 11:30 last night. I think I am done, but am not certain of that. My wife thinks I need to stay home from the trip and I think I will be OK, but I can't be sure of that. We will lose the price of the plane tickets but will be able to recoup the price on the actual Disneyland tickets. I have already called and transferred everything to my wifes name. I guess I just had to write here because of frustration and because there isn't anything better to do at the moment.

When I got into work this morning I found that my jobs had all gone down. There was a problem because there was a lot of data to tear through and there wasn't enough memory for it. I got the database people to give me more memory and the jobs are running fine, but will take some time. It's a good thing I didn't call in sick from this other problem. I was able to get right on it and get things moving. The sooner they get done, the better.

Since I last wrote, we have had cold weather in my area. We actually had snow on Saturday and Sunday. It wasn't so bad that anybody had to shovel the walks, but we did have a couple of inches of snow. This year has been a wet one.

The new scouting job is going to keep me busy. This scoutmaster expects a lot out of his people. It will be something that I spend quite a bit of time with. He actually goes on camps once a month. I have never had that kind of thing happen with the calling previously. Well, hopefully, we'll be able to get some of the dads to go up with him at times.

Not much else going on. Just frustration.

Callings

Yesterday evening, my wife and I got called into the Bishops office. He was there, along with the first councilor (Bro. Medieros). There was a bunch of idle chit chat and just plain talking with the two of them. Then we were asked how our Activities calling was doing. My wife is quite tired of it and I could take it or leave it. It really didn't matter that much to me. One problem that we have had is that with both of us being over the Activities, we at times butted heads. Well, it's been a year since we were given that calling, and as promised they are going to release us on Sunday.

Of course, in the Mormon church, it is rare that you ever get to sit idle and do no job, and my wife and I are no exception to this rule. The bishop turned to me first and said that they wanted to call me to be the Assistant Scout Master over the 12 and 13 year olds. Of course, this is a calling that I had until we created our new ward this year, so it isn't anything really new for me. Along with that (and actually before that) I will be called to be the Deacons quorum adviser. Part of the thing is, they need to get all the paperwork in on me to the Scout offices before I can be called back to being the Assistant Scout Master. This shouldn't be too difficult for them. My wife pointed out that this would be good for me because she knew that I kind of missed being with the boys and with what she called "Man Bonding". Chad kind of laughed and corrected it to Male Bonding because Man Bonding 'sounds kinda creepy'. I of course accepted this position and will do what I can with it. I like the current scout master, but, he is strong headed and we may butt heads on occasion. I will have to wait and see what happens with that. I'm pretty certain that I can work with him because I think I pretty well work well with most people.

Now it was my wifes turn. The bishop turned to her and called her to be a Special Needs teacher. We have an autistic boy in our ward as well as a Down Syndrome girl. My wife knows Allie quite well, and now will get to know her better through this Sunday assignment. She will gear her lessons kind of toward the Young Women lessons because of Allie, and as far as Spencer goes, she will sing some songs (because that is what he loves) and then just plan on losing his attention. Mostly, she will have to keep her eye on him as he wanders about. This will also allow for her to go to Relief Society every other week and Sunday School on the alternating week. I think this will be a great calling for my wife, and I am sure that she will shine.

Well, we went home from that relieved because it could've been far worse with some other calling. Mine will be a fairly busy calling because these boys deserve to have somebody looking out for them and helping them along their path. My wifes calling will be a busy calling helping out some of our special children of God, and I believe she will be a great resource to those children.

Anyway, even though I'm a day late, I thought I had better write about the callings because this is something that should be kept in a journal of ones life experiences.

Museum

It's been almost a week again. It seems I am not writing as much in here as I was when I started this up. I guess at least I am writing here.

There hasn't been too much that has gone on to write about (that's my defense). Most things are the same way as they were, and not a lot changes. Last Friday (2-29) was my day off. The kids had the day off of school as well for teacher prep type of things. Our daughter has been sick most of this week. There was the one day that she was taken out of school and then she stayed home also on Thursday. She also stayed in bed most of the day on Friday. We did try to find somewhere to go on Friday, but that didn't go anywhere. My wife was a bit upset because she thought I had wasted quite a bit of time on nothing while she was getting ready. I told her we should go to Fort Douglas museum on Saturday. That sounded OK to her, but we weren't sure about our daughter.

Saturday came, and my wife took her time getting ready. She thought our daughter was too sick to go anywhere, but our daughter had gotten up and gotten dressed so she could go. I said something to my wife and she became upset at me. She told us to just go. I had a few things that still had to be done, so I told the kids to get some lunch. We were finally ready to go, when I went back to say goodbye to my wife. She said something about hurrying to get ready and here we were going to go. I told her we would wait for her, but she said that she didn't want to go now and I had better get my head out of the bathroom door. We left. That was a mistake. She couldn't believe that I would actually go although I clearly heard her say that she wasn't going to go now. The prednizone that she has been taking is making her really grumpy.

We enjoyed the time at the museum and looking at the old guns that were in there. We also went outside to look at the tanks and the helicopters. I just wish they would've made it possible to look inside the tanks to see how they were. It was a little bit cold outside and we hadn't thought to bring coats, so we didn't spend too much time there. I asked the kids if they had enjoyed their time and they indicated that they had. On the way home, we stopped into Walmart to get ice-cream and root beer for some root beer floats. That is the first carbonation that I have had since I had been in the hospital. I gotta say that it was good.

Saturday evening it snowed. I felt guilty because I can't go out and shovel the snow yet. My son and my wife went outside and shoveled the stuff. It was only a couple of inches. They didn't take very long, and then my wife went for a walk.

Sunday, I had to teach a primary class. Had to is to strong of words because I kind of enjoyed it. The lesson was on Jesus was once a child like us (or something like that). The lesson had so much material that there wasn't any way to get through it all. I did my best and gave the lesson. At one point we were comparing food that we ate in common and in difference with Christ. One of the girls couldn't get past that. From that point on everything I said she said Jesus ate _____. The funniest was when she said Jesus ate baaabiiis (babies). She pronounced it kind of funny (thus the funny spelling). We didn't laugh in class, but both my wife and I laughed as we left church that day. There were 9 five year olds in that class (there are 13 on the roll). This just goes to show how young our ward really is. We have a normal size ward, but the amount of young children is staggering.

We skipped Sacrament meeting (I know it's the most important meeting) and headed to my in-laws house to help out there since my mother-in-law was coming out of the hospital after having re-constructive knee surgery. She came home with the walker and we helped out a bit and then visited. I went on a walk with Anne and my daughter. It was a good walk (but cold).

Well, this week just keeps on moving along, but really there isn't too much to say. I have been kept busy at work and that is about it. Tonight, when nothing was on TV, I played "Endless Ocean" on the Wii system that we have. That is an addictive game to me, and it really has no action to it. It's kind of relaxing, and educational at the same time.