October and November

Holy Moly! It's time for another update! Geez. Where does the time go?

So things have been completely NUTSO in the Stanley household. Our life has been dumped upside down and inside out... but we're still hanging in there!

Jon has been going through a lot lately. We hit the start of "mud season" in the middle of October. We had stocked up our savings account and thought that we would be okay until things picked up after Thanksgiving. On November 2nd Jon went to his usual Tuesday night basketball game at the church. He called me at about 10pm and said that he had hurt his knee and couldn't walk. I have to admit I totally down played his injury when he called. I figured maybe he sprained it or twisted it and would be back to work in a few days. The next day he went to a sports injury specialist to find the extent of the damage.... almost immediately the doctor said he was 99% sure he had torn his ACL. A few days later they confirmed by MRI that Jon has completely obliterated his ACL. In order to repair it they would need to do surgery and this meant he would spend about 3 months out of work. MAJOR PANIC ATTACK! He is the SOLE provider for this family... I don't work at all. Not one penny comes into this house because of me. We do have short term disability insurance, however, it pays us 55% of his wages over the last 9 weeks (remember we were in mud season... the checks were not pretty), we still have to pay our insurance out of each check, and they still take out his 401k and stock plan. Not to mention we had to "eat" the first two weeks after the injury so we wouldn't receive any money at all for at least a month. YIKES!

Admission #2: Financial struggles make me come UNGLUED! I lose it. If we even seem to be low in funds I freak out. This frustrates the heck out of Jon and we normally end up getting into very heated arguments and one of us mad in the other room LOL. BUT this time has been different. Not a SINGLE argument about money. We knew that we had been doing everything we were supposed to be doing.... and that we couldn't do it alone... and our Heavenly Father has provided us with some AMAZING miracles. Everything is going to be okay.

Jon has been to two sessions of physical therapy and his PT has assured us that Jon can be walking without a limp in 1 to 2 weeks! This means he can be released to light duty and get back to work with a helper or running shuttles to Salt Lake. His PT is pretty much amazing. He came in on his day off to work with Jon, offered to work his lunch breaks so that Jon can get in 2 to 3 sessions in a week. That's so awesome to me! We're going to be working super hard to get Jon walking.

Zoey is doing amazing things every day. We are so incredibly proud of her. It completely blows me away that someone so small can have such an amazing testimony. Our ward had a primary program a few weeks ago and Zoey was asked to retell the story of the first vision in her own words. It took a little prompting (she didn't know that the story of Joseph Smith was called the first vision) but she was able to retell the story of the first vision in amazing detail. We've also started letting her take a turn reading verses in our family scripture study at night. Words that she would normally have a problem with she breezes through. We've talked a little to her about next year she will be ready to be baptized and we want her to know that she is making the right choice (her mom is not a member of the church and occasionally takes her to a different church). We encouraged her to pray to her Heavenly Father, just like Joseph Smith, to know that she is making the right choice. She told us that she already knew which church was the true church and that she wants to be baptized next year. We told her to keep praying anyway so that she knows for sure. We are so proud of her testimony!

Gavin is also blowing us away with his grasp of gospel principals. We have him sit on our lap during scripture study and have him repeat two or three words at a time to get through a verse. For the first time ever he has been able to tell us in his own words what we're reading. What a gift for a 4 year old to have! He still has his crazy little personality that makes us laugh every single day. The other day the kids had asked Jon if they could have a piece of candy. The kids came up eating a small piece of chocolate and Jon teased them "Hey! I said you could have candy not chocolate!" Smarty pants Zoey says "Chocolate IS candy". Jon teases them again and says "Chocolate isn't candy, it's a drug!" Without skipping a beat Gavin goes "Mmmmm! We like drugs!" LOL that took some explaining!

Tanner is getting so big! He is crawling over every inch of this house... and he's fast too! He can make it up the stairs almost as fast as the other kids. He is starting to eat like a giant. Yesterday for breakfast he ate a whole pancake by himself. Then for dinner he consumed FOUR jars of baby food. Tanner is so good at mimicking sounds. If someone says "Ow!" or "Hey!" or "What?" he makes the same sound almost immediately. It's pretty funny to watch. He loves music and pats his hands on his lap whenever you sing to him. I can't believe he will be 1 next month! Where did this year go?

Things have been pretty nutso for me as well. Having Jon home every day has been nice for the company but has completely killed my routine. All I want to do is lay in bed with him all day... my house is greatly suffering because of this. Before Jon even got hurt we decided I may need to head back to work. This feeling INTENSIFIED when he got hurt. I've had some really exciting opportunities present themselves. The one I am probably the most excited about is working as a dental assistant for Dr. Jolley's office. I've had one interview so far and waiting to hear back after the Thanksgiving holiday about the second and third. It seems to be a great office to worked for and I feel really good about it! We'll see how it turns out. In October I was released from my calling as a Relief Society teacher and asked to be a counselor in the Young Women's. It's been a lot of fun getting to know the girls and the other leaders as well. I was really scared to accept the calling at first but my husband reminded me of the amazing leaders I had growing up and their lasting effect on me. My life would not be the same without their amazing influence. I hope that I can have half the impact on these girls as my amazing leaders had on me.

Thanksgiving was just not the same this year. We always have dinner with my family at my mom and dad's. The night before Thanksgiving my dad had been having some dizzy spells. Three or four throughout the day but nothing that had kept him from going to work. That night he was walking into their living room and passed out. Luckily he didn't hurt himself when he fell. Now my dad is not exactly the picture of health. He's over 250 pounds, diabetic with high blood pressure. So when he passes out it sort of freaks us out a bit. Mom called the doctor and they advised her to take him to the ER. Everything seemed to check out okay.... blood sugar, heart rates, everything normal. The doctor still wanted to keep him overnight just to be sure. Because of this, Dad was stuck in the hospital while we were preparing Thanksgiving dinner. He called mom around noon to come get him but when she arrived they wanted to do more tests on dad which could take up to 2 to 3 more hours. They called us and demanded that we eat without them... it just wasn't the same. He came home as we were finishing our meal and seemed to be okay just a little tired. He will be on a heart monitor for the next 30 days and has been instructed to hit the record button whenever he has a dizzy spell. Scary stuff for us Johnson girls. We lost our Grandpa very suddenly in 1998 and now whenever someone tells us that "everything will be just fine" we can't help but second guess.

That about sums it up. I want to post some more about Jon's birthday present but my children are ripping apart my living room as I type.... I will post more hopefully today!