The Nutcracker

On December 11th, Alan and I were able to see Eric, Nicole, Ella, and Olivia dance in a local performance of The Nutcracker through the girl's dance studio. It was so good - much better than I thought it would be. Everyone did so well!

Eric & Nicole were Clara's parents in the opening scene. They danced beautifully together.

Ella as The Mouse King

Ella

Olivia had a fever and was not feeling well, but she performed like a champ. 

Ella

The whole family after the show.

Encore, Encore!

Winter Has Arrived!

 Winter has officially arrived here in Riverton. Our first snowstorm arrived on December 9th. Thankfully, it wasn't too bad.

On December 14th, a bigger storm came through and dumped about 8" of snow here in Riverton. Although Alan is still recovering from his heart surgery, he wanted to try out his new snow blower. It worked very well and wasn't hard for Alan to use since it is self-propelled.

Unfortunately, the night of the storm we needed to park our van in the driveway since a couch was taking up the space where we normally park the van. It took a while to clean off all the accumulated snow

I certainly didn't expect this when I opened the back door to see how much snow we had received overnight. Crazy! We really need a covered porch.

Winter has just started and I'm bracing myself for many more storms like this. Snow is so pretty....until you have to shovel it or drive in it. No fun!

Broken Heart

 We have known for a while that Alan had a congenital problem with his heart, but never in our wildest imaginations did we ever think that he would need open-heart surgery to fix it.

Since we moved to Utah last April, Alan has seen a few cardiologists for different problems. After many tests, including an angiogram, EKG, MRI, etc. it was determined that his problems warranted surgery. It was discovered that his enlarged aorta was a big concern since it's like an aneurism ready to burst at any time. Also, instead of having a tricuspid valve and a bicuspid valve, he had two bicuspid valves. Evidently, his defective valve was regurgitating about 46% of the blood the heart was pumping. That's not good. Therefore, Alan needed to have his valve replaced as well as have the enlarged aorta reinforced so it couldn't burst.

On October 26th, Alan met with his Cardiac Surgeon, Dr. Afflack, who confirmed that he needed surgery. He had an opening for the next morning, so on the 27th, Alan underwent open-heart surgery. This was how he looked when I first saw him post-surgery. He was still very sleepy from the anesthesia at this point.

The next day, I got my first peak at his incision site.

Alan's comment to me as I took a peak was "I'm just disappointed that I will never qualify to be a Chip 'N Dale dancer now." Haha! At least he hadn't lost his sense of humor.

When I met with the surgeon (Dr. Affleck)  just after the surgery, he gave me this picture of Alan's heart after the procedures were done. It's pretty amazing to think that Alan's chest was cracked open and his heart was handled (and corrected) by a surgeon. Crazy!

In my book, Alan is a super hero. Because he was doing so well, he only stayed in the hospital for two days before being released. Normally, an open-heart surgical patient will stay in the hospital for about 6 days (or more). He was happy to get home as he hated the hospital food and he wasn't very comfortable being on his back the whole time. He didn't like being hooked up to monitors and being unable to sleep because they were always checking up on him.

About a week post-surgery, the incision site was pretty bruised, but Alan has  felt no pain or discomfort from the surgery. To me, that's a miracle. How can you have your chest cracked open, have your heart worked on, have plates and screws placed to repair the sternum, have the incision repaired and not have any pain afterwards??? That just totally baffles my mind.

Looking pretty spry just 6 days post-surgery. Labored breathing was a problem for about 6 weeks, but he's doing much better now.

It has now been 8 weeks since the surgery was done. Although there were a few ups and downs along the way, Alan has progressively improved and gotten stronger and stronger each week. He continues to do his physical therapy regularly. 

It is very comforting to know that Alan now has a healthier heart and we don't need to worry about his aorta rupturing. A complete recovery is still down the road, but little by little he's well on his way to normalcy.

******

Today (December 22nd) Alan had a loop monitor implanted into his chest. The reason for this is because of an irregular heartbeat and having episodes of nearly passing out in the past. The monitor can't treat an episode, but can only alert his cardiologist that there is an issue that they can monitor. 

Yard Makeover

 We love our new home and we love living in Riverton. However, when you see a problem, you need to fix it, right? We have a fairly big yard, but it wasn't easy to take care of. There was no mowing edge, the sprinkler system wasn't working well, most of the plants were overgrown, there was a lot of "morning glory" weed growing, the yard sloped to the house so in a flood we could potentially have our basement flooded, the sprinkler system didn't work well, there was no automatic watering system to our garden boxes, etc.. None of this is good, so we decided to give our yard a new makeover. Every one of those problems (plus more) were addressed and fixed. All of our planter areas had bark, which wouldn't stay where it belonged. We had all the bark removed and replaced it with stones. I think the stones look so much better than the bark.

Front yard before:

Front Yard During Construction

Front Yard Completed

Side Yard Under Construction

Side Yard Completed (almost)

Side Yard Completed

Corner of front yard (under construction)

They had to remove the fence & gate to the side yard and then reinstall new ones.

Front yard planter area (Completed)

Back Yard Before

Back Yard Completed

Lower patio Before

Lower patio after

We also added handrails to our back patio

All in all, we are very pleased with the results of our yard make-over. I think it will look nice once summer arrives and the lawn has been fertilized. On to the next project!