Bummer

Well we had a few activities to choose from to make this Labor Day a fun one, but the one option we were hoping wouldn't happen, happened. I am currently sitting in a hospital room while Thomas is being pumped full of pain meds....yet again. Sigh, wretched pancreatitis. It has been 7 months since his last episode and no new complications (thank heavens) but still just as frustrating. It started wednesday morning while he was at work and I was teaching class. Luckily when he called to tell me about his pain, I had a prep period, so i was able to convince him to go in immediately so that he could get on top of the pain sooner. The sooner we can control his pain, the quicker he recovers. I couldn't leave school, but thankfully his mom was able to come and lobby for him. Little life lesson- It doesn't matter how many times you have been in the hospital for the same reason, you always have to go to bat with the doctors. It is the typical "I am a doctor and this is what I was trained to do in this type of situation regardless of what is documented in your history file" vs. "I am the patient, I have done this 20 times, I know what works and what doesn't, LISTEN TO ME!" I realize that they are constantly making medical advances and that just because you used something before doesn't mean it is going to be best for you now, but inevitably, when what the doctors wanted to do doesn't work (and it never does, seriously), they ALWAYS resort to what we tried to get them to do in the first place!!!!! Couldn't have predicted that one now could we?!!! Sorry, this was my venting portion of this post. Moving on.
Overall, he has been recovering quicker than the last stay, and all but one of his nurses have been awesome, so I have a ton to be grateful for. I have been staying nights with him, but our parents have been taking shifts during the day when I have had to go to work. They are wonderful people and I know we couldn't do this without them!
So this is how we are going to spend our weekend, but we are hoping he will be out by Sunday morning at the latest and then will have Labor day as a buffer day to recover before he has to tackle missed school and work. He is such a trooper.
Thas all for now :)

North Carolina!

The day after my brother got home, Thomas, Cody and Torie and I headed out to North Carolina for a week vacation on the beach with the Butler side of my family. I never thought it would be so difficult to get somehwere! Our flight was supposed to leave at 6 am. We were up at 4 and to the airport by 5 and had no problems getting on the plane. Then plane had other plans though. At about 6:10, they came over the speakers saying they were having communication issues and that it would only be a few minutes. At 6:50 they came on again saying we all needed to get off the plane cause it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. We were also told that before we could go schedule another flight out of there, we had to pick up our luggage first. So we went all the way back out and waited for about 30 mins. No luggage. Finally I went and got in line at the ticket counter. I stood there for another 30 mins. (still no luggage) and they come on the speakers again telling us to get back on the plane. Well that meant going through security again (Thomas had to drink his entire water bottle on the spot before they would let him back through, even though he had filled it up after we had gone thru security the first time). We couldn't get on our plane right away cause they had another flight leaving from the same door (it is 8 am by now) so we decided to call the airline to see what they were going to do for us since we had missed a connecting flight in Dallas. They were very nice but they didn't have anything that all 4 of us could go on. So they put Cody and Torie on a flight to Charlotte and then to Raleigh, me on a flight that we went to Chicago then Raleigh, and Thomas didn't have one. We had to end the conversation though because they wanted us back on the plane and told us that "people in Dallas were working on the situation while you are flying". well great but what if they don't solve the problem? I would rather be stuck in SLC where I live than in Dallas! We got on the plane anyway and arrived in Dallas without further problems. Once there we found a ticket agent and within 15 minutes he had all 4 of us on a direct flight to Raleigh! Heaven bless that man! When we asked him why he was able to do this and no one else was, he said that because we had only paid for an indirect flight to Raleigh, they were trying to put us on equivalent flight types. To fly direct costs a bit more I guess. I have no complaints against him, but seriuosly, it was their fault we missed the connection in the first place! We flew American Airlines, by the way, and while waiting in the airport for our return flight, a different flight had been cancelled. I got the feeling they have cancellations quite often.

Anyway, so we finally get to Raleigh, pick up our car rental and drive the 2.5 hours to Topsail beach. We found out that we were not the only ones to have airplane troubles, but eventually we all got their safe! The beach house and beach were AWESOME! Well all except for our bathroom. In the attic there was an air conditioning unit that was leaking into the bathrooms on the top floor, and down to us on the next floor down. This is the ceiling in our bathroom. You can kind of see the water drops on the wood, but it was also dripping off the pipes as well.

This is the contraption my grandma had to rig to catch all the water that had pooled up on the floor beneath the hole. After two days of only having half a bathroom, Thomas suggested we put a tarp underneath the hole and funnel all the water into the bathtub. Genius!

On one of the days we took a trip into Wilmington to visit the battle ship there. While there, I found myself a sailor :)

This airplane is on the ship and was used to rescue pilots that had gone down in the sea. We had a hard time figuring out how they got out of the sea and onto the wings. There weren't any ladders and the metal would have been slippery if you were wet from the ocean.

We got to tour the inside of the boat as well. I would NEVER, EVER want to be a sailor! The ship smells funny, it never cools down and the living quarters are so cramped! I don't know how they didn't go crazy and sympathize with them when they celebrated ship leaves. This is a where Thomas would have spent some time, it is the hospital area........ yeah he wouldn't have faired very well :)

This is a picture of me by an anchor. It was huge! I think I was trying to do an "oooooooooo" shape with my mouth but didn't quite make it, lol.

This is the front of the ship, I think, and those tube things are the cannons. Everything about this ship was gi-normous! P.S. the man walking away from the camera is my grandpa. Notice the black socks and brown sandals he is wearing (that is for any Butler family member reading this, he he)

It took about 2 hours to tour the whole ship, and this is Thomas after those 2 hours. Interesting, but hot, humid, and tiring!

This is us on our last day there. You can see half the beach house in the background. It ends somewhere behind my dad :) It was 4 levels tall and housed 45 people for a week! As far as I was aware, there was very little tension (at least compared to what could have happened) and so worth the hassle it was to get there! The waves were usually great for boogy boarding and the beach was great for soccer, volleyball and sandcastle building. I already miss the family and all the good times had.

Here is the ocean shot. If you look at the sand we are right on the border of dry vs. wet. While we were posing for the picture a wave came up and soaked our shoes. Thomas saw the wave and jumped forward, but never warned the rest of us. I will admit I was very annoyed with him for the next hour. :)

So long beautiful windy beach!

Thanks to all who made this trip happen and memorable!

Since then, school has started up for me and life is hectic once more. If i ever find the time again, i will post some video I took from the trip.

Devin's Home!

So on August 6th, my brother Devin returned home from the Birmingham Alabama Mission. He was all smiles when he walked toward us in the airport, but you could tell it was all still superficial to him. Reality hadn't kicked in for any of us to be honest :) In the days previous, I had thought about what it would be like to see him. It is amazing how time really does dull memories. It was like trying to imagine someone who has been dead for 2 years coming back..........not that i didn't have contact with him in that time........it just felt that way. I had learned to ignore the void that he had left. However, now that he has been home for a few weeks and I have gotten reaquainted with him, it is as if he never left and I suddenly realized that the void is gone. I don't know if any of this makes sense to anyone, but that is the best way I can describe it.

Anyway, this is him in the airport. The funniest thing about his homecoming was the crowd. When we got there, there was this huge crowd gathered and we just figured there were a lot of missionaries coming home that day. We cheered when we saw devin, but there weren't many of us so it wasn't very loud. About 10 minutes later the crowd just erupts and starts cheering for people coming off the plane, not missionaries mind you, little 14 year old scouts who had been at Jamboree or something for only (compared to 2 years) 3 weeks. The welcome sign in the background was for the scouts :)

This is my family with Devin at the airport.

This is the sign my family made him.

Anyway, welcome home bud!