My Arm

Last Tuesday morning I had the stitches taken out of my arm.  Well, they took the three top stitches out.  I still have 12 that are internal and will dissolve.  But I had a horribly mean nurse!!

The nurse last week, who changed my bandages, was really nice.  She took the surgical tape off very gently and was so careful with the stitches.  She put on some new surgical tape that was "glued" down so I wouldn't rip open the incision with all the movement of my arm.  It stayed on really well.

When I went to have the stitches out, I had a different nurse who, frankly, didn't care about being gentle...and you can tell from the photos.  She carefully pulled off the tape from above the stitches and then she YANKED it down the rest of the way.  I thought she was going to pull out the knot for the stitches!  She not only pulled off the tape but also a bunch of my skin!  Then she applied alcohol!!  When I told her it hurt she stopped but she wasn't very nice about it.  I didn't feel at all bad for her when, a few minutes later, the doctor yelled at her for not attaching the lab report to my file.  Justice.

As you can see from the photo below, the new tape they put on blends right in with my arm so it looks much better.  But you can see all the missing skin (in strips) below the incision point where I was skinned by the nurse.  And, you can see all the glue residue that took days to get off because the skin was raw and I didn't want to rub it too much.

I have to massage the incision point daily and wait for the tape to come off.  But I really don't think it will come off any time soon because the nurse "glued" it on again.  I have been swimming twice and soaked it but it hasn't budged.  So I think in a couple of days I am going to pull it off because it's starting to bug me.

Swimming!

One thing my kids LOVE about summer is that we go swimming a lot.  We don't have a pool in our backyard (we wish) but we buy a Tri-Pack Pass which gets us into the St. George City Pool, Rec Center and the Sand Hollow Aquatics Center. 

This week we went to the City Pool on Monday and Thursday and to the SHAC on Friday.  Along with this, Ethan had a swim birthday party for a kid in the neighborhood Friday afternoon, so he swam 4 times.  We think we are going to do a rotation next week of SHAC on Tuesday, City Pool on Thursday and SHAC on Friday.

We try to swim each Friday night and yesterday Bryan rode his bike from work and met us there.  He has been biking a lot lately!

The kids love to jump off the diving board and the one at the SHAC isn't as crowded as the one at the City Pool.  But the City Pool has the hydrotube that is awesome! 

How do we live in St. George during the HOT summer?  We go to the pool A LOT!

Piano Bags

Since Courtney started piano lessons, she felt that she needed a cute piano bag.  I wanted to keep her excited about the new adventure of piano lessons, so we went out and bought some material.  And I made her a new piano bag:

 Which she loves:

 Ethan felt like his piano bag was getting old and he wanted a new one so I used the scraps from a pair of pj bottoms I just made for him (he picked out the material himself) and made him a bag.  He loves it too, although he wouldn't be caught dead posing with it!

Maybe this will excited him enough to practice...wishful thinking!

The End of Our Trip

When we finished up with the party, we went to the new Emery County Aquatics Center in Castle Dale and went swimming.  It was really nice and the kids had a blast jumping off the diving board.

Then we went back to Ferron.  The newspaper had said that the Utah National Guard were at Millsite doing some training exercises for 2 weeks.  My cousin's husband is on the Emery County SWAT team and they were going up on Sunday to train with them.  The newspaper said that on Saturday EVENING there would be a Community Night where the National Guard would bring all their equipment down to the park (right next to the cabins at Gilly's) and let the community see them.  Ethan was all excited for that so we headed back to Ferron expecting to see something.  We were deeply disappointed to hear that the Community Night had been in the morning!  The kids were bummed.

We went and ate at the Grub Box (really good food but slow service), played at the park next to the cabins and then went to bed.

Sunday morning we loaded up and headed back home.  It was a fun weekend!

Oman Reunion/Bert's Birthday

My Uncle Bert was celebrating his 80th birthday so his daughters decided to make it into an Oman Family Reunion.  We haven't had one since my Aunt Donna Mae passed away in 1994 and we all attended the funeral.  How sad it that?!  So it was about time.

We drove to the Church in Castle Dale (which has been added on since we were there last and is HUGE, there is an elevator to get to the second floor where they put the Primary!) and got ready to party.  Immediately I realized that there were people I did not recognize, so I latched onto the cousins I did know and we tried to figure out who everyone was together.  So sad but we didn't want to go up to someone and not know who they were.

There were some who hadn't changed at all (Bert's daughters, Joyce, Maria) but there were others that I just didn't recognize and there were some who didn't know who I was at all but when I told them my name, remembered (thank heavens!).  It was actually a lot of fun seeing everyone.

It was a potluck and there was a ton of food.  We ate and then went around the room introducing each family.  Dad is one of 8 children, 7 of whom made it to adulthood.  There are 4 remaining siblings (Voniel, Bert, Ferris and Eldon) and all 7 families were represented (although one cousin from Voniel's family came really late and we didn't get to see her).  So it was good.  We took family pictures (really informal) and then sibling pictures.

Uncle Bert and his family.  Bert is my Dad's brother.

 Uncle Joe and his daughter Joyce and her son.  Aunt Donna Mae is his wife and my dad's older sisters who passed away:

 Our family, minus Leigh Ann and Gary:

 Uncle Eldon and his family, minus Jesse:

Uncle Blaine and his family.  Uncle Blaine was married to Aunt Ramona who was Dad's sister just older than he was.

 Aunt Leora and her family.  Aunt Leora was married to Uncle Glen who was Dad's brother who passed away when Ethan was little.

The siblings and their spouses or spouses of deceased (except Joe had left by this time)

 The boys:

Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry

Ethan, Courtney and I were watching a documentary on dinosaurs a few weeks ago and it mentioned the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Park.  I told the kids that I grew up near there and they wanted to go.  Luckily, we had a trip to Emery County planned, so we obliged them.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten how long the drive was on dirt roads.  But we survived. 

We were at the gates a bit early, so Courtney, Ethan and Grandpa got to walk around and hunt for more dinosaur bones while we waited.  The volunteers pulled up, unlocked the gate and we drove to the Quarry.  Now, when I was in 1st grade, this was the field trip.  We all thought it was so cool to see the metal building where the bones were being dug.

It certainly has changed, like everything else.  They actually had a museum-type building where you could look at fossils and do some activities.  The metal buildings were still there and looked a lot smaller to me than they did back when I was a kid.  It was "free National Park day" so that was a bonus.

Here are Ethan, Courtney and Grandpa in the museum:

 Here is Courtney after pulling together a dinosaur:

 Ethan after putting together the dinosaur:

After the kids put together the dinosaur bones, we went for a hike around to see some other sights around the quarry.  It could have been a really long hike but we shortened it by cutting through some areas.  It was a beautiful day!

Above: Grandpa, Courtney and Ethan in one of the metal buildings looking at the bones.
Below:  On the hike:

Then we loaded back in the car, drove back to Castle Dale and went to the cemetery where the Oman side of my family is all buried.  It was fun to tell stories to the kids about their ancestors.

Emery County

Last weekend was the Oman Family Reunion/Bert Oman 80th Birthday Party in Emery County.  We haven't had an Oman Family Reunion since 1994 so I wanted to go.  I was afraid I wouldn't know anyone or worse, that no one would know me.  But we planned it and were off.

We stayed in cabins at Gilly's in Ferron (the reunion was originally going to be at the park in Ferron).  They weren't bad at all.  We got to Ferron on Friday afternoon, found my parents (their cabin was next door) and went to Huntington to look at the old neighborhood and visit the cemetery.  Things looked A LOT different from the last time we were there.  The old barn behind our house was gone, along with the work shed.  The side and back lawns with the garden area looked like they were completely gone too.  It used to look huge (even 4 years ago when we were back last) but it looked kind of run down now.  I was a bit sad.

The cemetery looked very nice and it was fun to try and explain how everyone was related.  Bryan thought he had it at one point, but then he lost the connections.  Hahaha.

We then went to Price where we were SUPPOSED to eat at China City.  This was our family's very favorite restaurant growing up.  It's where we celebrated birthdays, graduations, good dentist appointments, etc.  I LOVED their moo goo gai pan and haven't found any to top it anywhere.  It would sizzle as they brought it out to you and it was stuffed full of chicken (not mushrooms like they serve in St. George)  They also had these huge shrimp that were to die for!

I looked it up online to make sure they still had moo goo gai pan and there was their menu with the same building showing on their website.  Imagine our complete SHOCK when we showed up to an abandoned building!!  No go for the shrimp or the moo goo gai pan.  I was so upset...so was Ethan who was looking forward to shrimp.

We ended up at Pizza Hut.

Then we drove around the college, which has changed a lot too.  And started back to Ferron, a 40 minute drive.