11/1/13: Happy November!!

It's been a busy week around here at the Rackham household, and it's a miracle because I took pictures of almost everything, so I'll just jump right in!

Last Friday night our ward had their annual Fall Festival and Dave and I had to go.  It was a chili cookoff and we signed up for cornbread to make sure we'd be obligated to attend.  It was super cute and really fun!

Loved these cute costumes!

Amazing Iron Man home-made!!

Now, please allow me to explain why we absolutely had to go:  At the time of last year's Fall Festival Dave and I had been married for just 2 months and we didn't fully understand yet how important celebrating holidays was to me.  (Read: we had no idea that ditching the Fall Festival and forgoing normal Halloween traditions would result in uncontrollable sobbing by me later that night...)

So one of the biggest things I've learned about myself since being married is that holiday traditions are kind of a big deal to me.  (HUGE understatement.)  Unfortunately, Dave isn't nostalgic or sentimental about many things, and least of all holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, etc.  But I'm incredibly nostalgic about holidays, and when they come around I want nothing more than to be with family, eat good food, sing Christmas carols, carve pumpkins, do fireworks, and whatever else the holiday tradition dictates.

We've slowly indoctrinated Dave into the excessive celebrations that come with marrying into the Penrod family and it's been getting easier and easier for him as time goes by.  I actually think Dave might start to be nostalgic about some things pretty soon here!

So, in the spirit of holiday traditions, we went to a full on pumpkin patch to pick our pumpkins this year because I cried last year after just picking them out at Walmart.  And you know what?  I'm not even embarrassed about crying either, because picking out pumpkins from a pumpkin patch is so much more fun and it's something I want to do with our kids, too!

Heaviest pumpkin ever!!

Is this not the most perfectly shaped pumpkin
you've ever seen?!

So after finding the perfect pumpkins, we carved them with Russ and Annie on Monday night.  We usually go all out with the pumpkin carving in my family, but everyone was a little pressed for time and energy so both couples just did one pumpkin each.  Dave and I found an awesome mockingjay pin stencil for our pumpkin in the spirit of the new Hunger Games movie coming out soon!  It looks way better in the picture than it did in real life, but we'll pretend it was a success ;)

This was such a hit with our primary kids who
trick-or-treated to us, haha.  They love
Hunger Games!!

So this week was Dave's week to have a date and he wanted to go fishing (of course...).  I knew I wouldn't want to go come Saturday morning, so we invited one of the guys from my cohort, Micah, to come with us.  He likes to fish, but he's never had anyone to teach him how to fly fish.  We were nymphing which is a little different than the classic dry-fly fishing, but it was so much fun!!  It took a lot out of me and I completely crashed that night and felt like I was sick with something, but we caught like 8 fish!  

Overall, the trip was a success because I think we got Micah hooked (pun intended?).  He says he's a lot more motivated to make money now so he can buy some of his own gear.  And I actually really enjoyed it.  I thought it was super fun and I caught 4 of the fish, one 14 incher!  I'd go back out with Dave again because this was way better than any fly-fishing I've done before.  He was basically on cloud 9 that night because his wife enjoyed fly fishing with him!  He was filled with hope for a bright future ;)

Please disregard the crazy eyes, but look at that fish!!  

So those were the fun things that we did this week, and now onto the not-so-fun things about the week.  ...I had a nerve-block done on Tuesday up in Salt Lake.  It was basically an hour-long procedure where I lied down in a CT scanner and a couple of doctors stuck needles in my back and probed around to find the right nerves and injected a few things in hopes of shutting off the nerve temporarily.  

It wasn't as bad as I had thought it was going to be, but it was still really draining.  I blacked out in the middle of the procedure when they hit the nerve which they said was a first, haha.  Something about having needles stuck in me and moving around for an hour solid was just too much for me to handle.  

We were really hoping once they injected the anesthetic the pain would go away, but it didn't help.  I was definitely numb all along the nerve, but it didn't touch my regular pain :/  I was really heartbroken about it because I was hoping so badly that this would solve everything.  (naive optimism, in hindsight)  So now we aren't really sure what to do.  We're going to be a little more aggressive about attacking the endometriosis we think might be causing the pain, but we'll just have to do some more trial and error to see what works.  

School was tough this week because of the procedure.  I was just feeling overwhelmed, sad, hopeless, exhausted, and everything that sometimes comes with chronic pain.  But I have an amazingly supportive husband helping me through this and my entire cohort has been so thoughtful this week with asking me if I'm alright, how everything went, if they can do anything to help me, etc.  They've been sort of like angels.  So today I'm feeling more optimistic and hopeful that there's still a chance we could figure this all out.  

Tonight we're having my cohort over for a get-together with delicious fall treats and the classic Penrod artichoke dip!!  (Sometimes I think we like to host people just so we can have an excuse to make artichoke dip all the time...is that bad?)

We're excited, and hopefully I won't forget to take pictures!  Thanks for reading!