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This was taken the last week of November. Our yard should not have this much snow until January! The grass is still green under the trampoline. There are still flowers on our rose bushes. There is easily 12” of it – and my daughter says she got 2 feet! I hope we get November weather in February…

The first week of November Randy had some training that he needed to go to in Nashville, TN. Normally, this would have been a great trip for him because he was staying at the house of the guy who used to be our music producer when we lived there, Fred Vail. And we have so many friends there that he could have contacted. However, his Meniere’s disease started up again and he spent most of his free time laying down or in bed! First, let me give a little history on this – Almost 2 years after we were married, we had moved in with my parents in San Diego because the guy in Utah that Randy had been working for could not pay us the thousands of dollars that he owed us and we had no other options. After about a month, my parents sold their house and we moved them up to Lakewood, CA and were still living with them because Randy had no job. Did I mention that we were expecting our first child and additionally we had no insurance? Anyway, one day he answered the phone, but couldn’t hear out of one ear – not too good for a musician. Soon he got a job and after we had enough money, we moved into an apartment shortly before our first son was born, but the ear problems continued. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t hear, but he would have ringing in it, and eventually it got so bad that the room would start spinning and he would start throwing up. I would have to get him a pitcher of water to set by his bed, he would drink something so that he had something in his stomach to puke, and finally after hours he would fall asleep from exhaustion and sleep for about 24 hours. He would be kind of groggy for a day, and then he would feel normal again for a few weeks. Several times I actually had to go pick him up from work and take him to the hospital where they would shoot Dramamine into his veins – which actually did nothing. He was tested and found that he had a build-up of fluid in the inner ear called Meniere’s disease (named after a French doctor). Did I also mention that there’s no cure for it and that one cause might be stress?

Anyway, he ended up losing at least one job because of it. Then he was called as a counselor in the Bishopric in our ward. He explained his health problem to the Stake President, who along with the Bishop gave him a blessing. His Meniere’s disease went into remission. Fast forward about 23 years. The same day that he moved to Utah to start a new job, it started up again. (Leaving me and the two kids (still at home) in Topeka for a few months to finish school, seminary, sell the house, etc – stress??!!)For the first 3 years after this move, he had intermittent problems with it. Then, it had not given him any problems for about 6 months, but started up again a month ago. He was really sick while he was in Nashville and he has had episodes several times a week ever since. I had to go to his office once to pick him up, and once I had to go to a parking lot to pick him up since he was too sick to drive. The day before Thanksgiving he had an episode while teaching a safety class and because he couldn’t reach me by phone a couple of guys from work drove him home. He had a bi-annual safety inspection from the insurance company out of Connecticut today – luckily he made it through without any Meniere’s attacks, but it probably wasn't good enough for us to get the money we should. Anyway, this has been our life lately.

My sister, Becky came up from Las Vegas for a few days to visit my mother and other sister, Connie. Randy and I were going to go out of town for a couple of those days, but Randy was too sick. His new calling, by the way, is one of the two Gospel Doctrine teachers. Because he didn’t know who to call as a substitute, he made it for class one week. (The Sunday School president is going to get him a list of those people willing to sub.) And last week he didn’t make it at all.

We had tickets (that were not inexpensive) to go to the play “The Drowsy Chaperone” on the same night that the weather reports were telling everyone to stay home because a blizzard was coming in. The theatre is about 30 minutes from our home. I called the theatre and they said that all they could do for us if we couldn’t make it would be to switch our tickets for another night at 5pm to see “A Christmas Carol”. I wasn’t real excited to see that play, plus I would have to make extra arrangements to get there at that time. Randy did not want to lose the money we had spent for the tickets. So, we decided we would go for it and have a snow adventure! Besides, we have life insurance on both of us :o) The visibility was supposed to only be one half mile, but we could see much farther than that. We did have to drive about 25 mph in a 60mph zone because of the snow and ice, and we saw quite a few stopped cars and emergency vehicles, but we got to the theatre about 5 minutes before it started. I lost a lense out of my glasses at one point (I found it), Randy lost the nose guard from his glasses and also got them caught in his sweater (so he had to go without them until intermission), one wiper came off and had to be put back on, and we almost ran out of gas. The drive home was much better. It had quit snowing and even though there had been about 3” at the theatre, there was only about 1” at our house. (They had been expecting 10”) Oh – how was the play? It was well acted, funny, there were things and people coming down from above, people and things coming up from below, marvelous costumes, etc. We really enjoyed it, but it’s not a play I need to see again!

Well, our family Christmas card will be arriving in a few weeks. Tyler is working on it, but he is also trying to finish classes for the semester. We always have a lot of fun doing those, so I’ll try to post it online.