Praying for Health

With all the scare of the swine flu I am praying that the Coffer household remains healthy. While I believe the media has blown this who swine flu thing way out of proportion, I truly do want the three of us to remain healthy. Being a teacher, I have a high chance of getting sick--even though I have only taken 1 sick day in the 4+ years I have been teaching, but with 94 kids absent today due to illness I am reminded that the "bug" could hit me next. So, just a friendly reminder from a teacher, please wash your hands, cough and sneeze into your sleeve instead of covering your mouth with your hands, don't eat or drink after anyone else, and stay home if you have a fever. Thank you.

Makenna and the Giant Pumpkin

Sorry it has been a while since we posted. There hasn't been too much to report--just the normal day-to-day things. However, I thought I would post these to pictures of Makenna with her "pumppins" as she would say. She is fascinated with them. And yes, the big one is real. It was grown by Makenna's Papa Larry and he gave it to us to enjoy. As you can tell from the picture, Makenna likes to sit on it.

Fall Fun

We had a great weekend. Friday night we finally got outside to enjoy our new fire pit. Makenna really loved it, too and it was perfect weather to spend outside as a family. On Saturday morning, I woke up early and went to some garage sales with my mom. We also hit a children's consignment sale where I bought Makenna a few things. Saturday afternoon, Justin, Makenna, and I went to Rutledge-Wilson Farm, a local park, for their annual fall festival. We picked out a pumpkin from the patch, saw some animals, and took a hayride pulled by Clydesdales. Makenna absolutely had a blast. Sunday, we headed off to church and had a relaxing afternoon at home. We decorated our pumpkin with decorations I bought on clearance last year at Wal-Mart after Halloween. They just stick into the pumpkin and it is SO much easier than carving a pumpkin, especially with a toddler. We are going to be getting some more pumpkins this week from the farm in Bolivar, so stay turned for more decorated pumpkins. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Makenna outside Friday night

Our new fire pit--I was just practicing with my new camera

Ready to go to the fall festival

Looking for just the right one

In the pumpkin patch

Playing on an antique tractor

Look at this onery smile

Waiting for our turn on the hayride

Hank--our first decorated pumpkin of the season


Makenna carrying on a conversation with the pumpkin. I think she would talk to anything.

Pictures...Finally

I finally got some pictures to upload from my new camera. These were all taken this past weekend. We hope to take Makenna to a park/farm this weekend for some fall activities (ie: hayrides, pumpkin picking, etc.) so hopefully we will post more soon.


Makenna playing at Growl Nite.


Just a cute picture. Who can resist that smile?




Her future's so bright she's gotta wear shades--sorry I just couldn't resist


Makenna trying to keep bubbles in the air by blowing on them--it was hilarious. Also, all the jewelry she is sporting was mine when I was little. She loves playing dress up.



Makenna running around on the farm.



Makenna and Justin on the farm

Weekend Recap

We had a busy weekend and I can't believe it is almost over. Friday night we went to Bolivar's football game for homecoming and didn't get home until late. Saturday morning Justin woke up a little on the ill side and I had a baby shower to attend. I was home for about an hour and I then headed to school for our annual Growl Nite, which is a community festival so to speak and our school's only fundraiser. Luckily, Justin was feeling better by late afternoon so he and Makenna were able to come out for a little bit as well. Then on Sunday we headed to Bolivar to spend the day with family. While there, Justin finally got some wood for our fire pit, so hopefully we will be using that soon.

With all the activities of the weekend, I did get a chance to practice using my new SLR camera that I got in the mail on Wednesday. However, I am difficulty uploading them to the blog, but whenever I figure out the problem I will post them.

Good News

I am happy to report that the tests of my ultrasound came back normal and no cyst was found. Praise the Lord!!! I haven't had any pain for about 3 weeks so Dr. Williams said that it probably burst (which explains all the upper back and shoulder pain) and now it is gone. I just pray that the pain doesn't return because if it does and they can find no cyst than we are back a square one and honestly, I am tired of tests. This whole ordeal has been quite expensive, but thankfully I have good primary and seconday insurance coverage so I won't have to pay much out-of-pocket.

In other news, I received an early birthday present yesterday that I am super excited about--a Canon XSi SLR digital camera with LOTS of extras. I haven't had much time to play with it, but I LOVE it already and am excited to learn how it works and take some amazing pictures with it. We are planning on taking Makenna to a pumpkin patch next weekend so hopefully this will be a good time for me to test it out. Fall is my favorite time of year so I cannot wait to take all the pictures I can. Don't worry--I will definitely post them on here.

This weekend will be a busy, but exciting one for us. If you recall from an earlier post I mentioned that we were excited about something, but I couldn't go into details about it then. Well, now I can. Some very dear friends of ours from church, Nate and Alicia, have been waiting to adopt a baby for about a year. On August 28th, they finally got their little girl, Quinnlyn. We are so excited and happy for them and I will be attending a shower for them on Saturday morning. Then, my school is having our annual fall festival known as Growl Nite so we will be there all afternoon and most of the evening. Sunday, we have church and nothing else planned but watching football and probably taking naps.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Big Girl Bed

Tonight Justin and I finally converted Makenna's crib to a toddler bed. I had been wanting to do this for a while now, but Justin just didn't think it was time, or in my opinion, it made him sad to think that Makenna no longer needed a crib. I love her bed because it is fairly simple to convert and Makenna loved getting in it after we had it put back together as you can see from the picture below. She has now been asleep for about 30 minutes and after I type this I am going to go check on her. I know we will have nights were she gets up and plays instead of going to bed, but tonight we didn't hear anything that would lead us to believe she didn't stay put.

The other picture below is just a funny one taken of Makenna last week. The potty training process is coming along slowly, but she really loves the "Melmo" panties I bought her and this particular night she decided to put a pair on over her PJs. As you can see from the picture she also had to get her "Melmo" book to read while she was wearing her "Melmo" panties. Yes, she is a bit obsessed with this little red monster, but that is the least of our worries at the moment. We are hoping it is just a phase, but she has been acting, well just rotten lately. She has thrown numerous fit where she literally throws herself on the floor and kicks and screams and she has also slapped us a few times. It is normally when we are trying to help her do something, so I don't know if she just doesn't want the help or what. But like I said, I am praying that the Terrible Twos have hit the Coffer house early and that they go away very quickly.

I am sure some of my blog readers are also wondering what I found out when I went to the doctor last week and the answer is nothing except that the test the wonderful (once again let me emphasize the sarcasm in what I am saying) doctor did on me to diagnose that I had an ovarian cyst cannot accurately diagnose such a condition. Dr. Williams, my OBGYN, said that they only way to tell if a woman does have one is with an ultrasound so I am going in on Monday for this. He told me that he doesn't think I currently have a cyst and that hopefully if I did it has gone away. So, that is where I am at in the whole ordeal, but I have been feeling better so I am hopeful that I won't have any other flare-ups because if I don't have a cyst and the pain returns, I really don't know what else it could be.

TGIF

The title says it all. These past few weeks have been quite stressful and I am so ready for the weekend. Due to new requirements placed upon the staff at my school, I am spending tons of time outside of my contract hours doing school related things and I honestly feel like I haven't spent any quality time with Justin and Makenna since school started. Also, I haven't been feeling 100% and yesterday I started having a great deal of pain in my upper back and neck--which I found out is often times a side effect of an ovarian cyst. I didn't think I would ever say this, but I cannot wait to go to the doctor on Thursday to hopefully get some answers and also some relief from the pain I am experiencing.

On a positive note, we do have some exciting stuff going on this weekend. One of my co-workers had a baby this morning, so me and a few friends from work are going to the hospital to visit her tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully after the hospital visit Justin, Makenna, and I can do some shopping together (we need to buy a birthday present for Makenna's friend who will be turning 1 next week) and just spend some quality time with one another. We are also looking forward to something else this weekend that I can't go into any great details about yet. But I will fill you in whenever I can. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

What a Week...and it's only Tuesday

The title says it all. The week school begins is always stressful and hectic around the Coffer house, but I believe this year tops them all to date. Let me begin back to last Thursday. I began having some very dull abdominal pain, but it really wasn't bothering me so I didn't worry about it. Friday afternoon it got a bit worse so before I left school I went to talk to our nurse. After telling her my symptoms she said it sounded like a kidney stone and told me that I should probably go to the doctor. For those of you that know me well you know that I HATE doctors so I wasn't too keen on the idea. Plus it was 3:30 on Friday afternoon so I knew I probably couldn't get in anywhere. I know some of you reading this are thinking that I could have gone to the ER or urgent care and I am fully aware of this fact. But let's go back to my dislike for doctors and you will surely figure out why I decided to not do anything about it. I told myself that if it wasn't better by Monday (which was yesterday) I might think a little harder about getting the pain checked out. I went to work Monday morning not feeling 100%, but not feeling too bad. However, as the day progressed the pain got worse and worse, but I thought I was doing a fairly good job of hiding it. And apparently I was until about 1 o'clock when the first of my co-workers asked if I was feeling okay. I told her I was just in a bit of pain and she told me to get to the doctor. Then when the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th person asked me (without knowing anyone else had asked me) if I was alright, I knew that I was know longer hiding the pain and I began to think that I needed to see a doctor. By 2 o'clock (just a span of 1 hour) I was in incredible pain! I was demonstrating a lot of symptoms of an appendicitis, so I finally broke down and headed to urgent care. I called Justin and he met me there. It was a very scary experience and I was in a lot of pain, however, the doctor I had didn't seem too concerned. After a battery of tests including a urine analysis, lots of blood work, and x-rays of my chest and abdomen, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I felt like the doctor thought I was crazy, but I was in tremendous pain. She decided to send me for a CT scan and then we went back to wait in the exam room. My CT scan got done at about 6, so at this point we had been there for 3 hours. For another 3 hours Justin and I sat in the room with me in quite a bit of pain and Justin starving because he hadn't eaten. Not one person came to check on me so I was not a happy camper. Finally at 9 o'clock (looking back I have no idea why we waited so long) Justin asked a lady sitting at the desk outside my door if we could get an update because no one had come to see us in 3 hours. She said she would go check and my "awesome" (please note the sarcasm) came in not 2 minutes later. She said that they had just read my results (which I don't believe for one minute) so that is why we had to wait so long. Anyways she proceeded to tell us that everything on the left side checked out okay, but that they did find an ovarian cyst of my right side. She said it would have nothing to do with the pain I was experiencing, but I wasn't convinced. She also told me that it was a pretty large cyst, but that I shouldn't worry about it. Once again, I wasn't buying a word she was saying. At this point we left the urgent care (at 9:15) and I came home and did my own research. I found out (I am so thankful for WebMd and other medical sights) that the pain experienced due to ovarian cysts tends to radiate to the opposite side (and people who have experienced this have verified this information) and that there is always a chance that they can burst and cause more trouble. Oftentimes they aren't anything serious and go away on their own, but due to the fact that I believe the doctor I saw is completely incompetent I called my OB today to get an appointment to discuss this with him because he is a competent professional who I can get some accurate information from. Unfortunately, they couldn't get me in until September 3rd, but if they pain continues I might see it they can get me in earlier. I will keep everyone posted on what I find out.

On top of my ailments, Justin hasn't been feeling well and he thinks he has a very bad cold. He didn't sleep well last night so he stayed home part of the day today and slept. So, with all the events of the past few days, we are exhausted. However, Makenna is doing good and getting sillier by the day. I hope my next post will be about her instead of me. Stay tuned!

Cookie Monster

We finally got the video to work of Makenna imitating Cookie Monster. Her good imitation is at the very end so make sure you watch the entire clip. Enjoy!