Christmas in Raleigh

***WARNING: This is a loooong blog entry***

We drove to Raleigh to celebrate Christmas with Nathan's family. All of us were there except Ben and his family, who we missed much! It was great weather while we were there, for us anyway! One morning Nathan and Marilyn were looking at the weather forecast on the computer and it said that the high would be 45 degrees. Nathan said "Yes!" and Marilyn said "Oh, Man!" I guess it's just your point of view.

The following pictures are from the Children's Museum in downtown Raleigh. Marilyn, who's always thinking of her grandchildren, bought a membership, so all of the grandchildren were free! We went to the musuem twice while we were there.

Sorry, Mirm, I had to include this one, it's so cute!

Even Grandpa got in on the action!

Nathan really enjoyed riding his Dad's Vespa! He was always asking if anyone wanted to go on a ride with him. Andy was a frequent rider.

CHRISTMAS EVE - Marilyn had borrowed some costumes from a friend so that we could perform the Nativity story right. We had a lot of fun with it.
A humble shepard.

Mary quite contrary.

Michael couldn't decide what he wanted to be, here he is a donkey.

Wise man Jack

Angels we have heard on high! Katie loved holding the star!

Andy as a lamb.

My sweet lil' lambie!

Another Wise Guy!

The Stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

Candy - caning the tree.

Christmas morning much have been full of action because I have only this picture of Nathan and the following one of Haley! Oh well. It was a great morning!

Auntie Mimi story time! The kids all gathered together and Miriam read a great story. The kids looked forward to story time every night. Sometimes it was Miriam and sometimes it was Grandma.

A favorite family tradition - Grandma's sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles!

Grandma Story time, always a favorite with the kids!

On New Year's Eve, Mom and Dad made reservations for all of the adults to go out to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory! It is quickly becoming one of our favorite places to eat! We all enjoy being able to have an uninterrupted conversations with our siblings! It was a lot of fun, thanks Mom and Dad!

Update

Dear Family and Friends, you'll have to humor me....I feel this urge to update before I can share what is happening now in our family. It has been a while since we have written on our blog. So here goes with the update. Our update begins in October with Halloween pictures. Nathan was going to be on his second trip to Russia during Halloween. He knows that I HATE being alone on Halloween, I've done it and I DON'T LIKE IT!! So he took pity on me and asked his mom to come out and help me while he was gone for about 2 weeks.

For Halloween, Andy was Wolverine from "The X-Men", Haley was a "Glamour Witch", Michael was Thomas the Tank Engine, and Nate....well Nate got creative this year. He wanted to be Bumblebee the Transformer, but he wanted to actually transform! I had no idea where to begin with this costume, so I thought I'd wait until Marilyn was here and maybe with her artistic talents she could figure out how to achieve this feat. She worked on Nate's costume for a week solid! She did a great job! He even had working headlights. We learned a few things making this costume. Nate was not able to walk very well in his costume, so we ended up having to take it all off except the mask for trick or treating. The costume only allowed for him to be a car once, so I'm glad that we got a lot of pictures so he only truly "transformed" once. Nate really loved his costume and he was a hit at school, so it was worth all of the hard work, right Marilyn?!

Michael was really cute being Thomas, he wanted to wear his costume the entire week of Halloween and even into the next week. He still asks for it occasionally. When asked what he was going to be for Halloween, he'd respond with "I be Thomas!" It was so cute!

This is what our yard looked like before I had a chance to rake the leaves. Nate called it "Leaf City."


While Grandma Taggart was here, we went on our annual visit to Tweite's Pumpkin Patch. It had snowed the day before, so it was a little wet and snowy, but the kids were troopers and even had fun!

No, Virginia...

Nikole and I were confronted with a dilemma this evening at the dinner table. Nate, having apparently heard something from someone at school, asked us whether we (Nikole and I) are the Tooth Fairy. I glanced at Nikole. She nodded at me. And we explained that yes, in fact, we are the Tooth Fairy.

"So there is no Tooth Fairy?" Haley inquired.

Yes, I explained. (Meaning--"Yes, there is no Tooth Fairy)

"Do you KEEP the teeth?"

No, Nikole stated. Anticipating Haley's next question about what we actually do with the teath, I explained that we feed them to the Tooth Monster that lives outside Nate's bedroom window.

Haley, ever the logical thinker, next inquired whether we also are the Easter Bunny. (Yes, dear, we are.) At this point, making a bold declaration of his faith as if to try to prevent further unwelcome revelations that were rapidly disintigrating the foundation of his reality, Nate proclaimed, "Well, there is one thing that I know for sure is true..."

("Please don't..." I thought.)

"...it's that Santa Claus IS REAL!"

I caught Nikole's attention across the table and raised my left eyebrow, asking for her permission. She again nodded to me.

"Nate," I started. "You and I need to have a talk..."

"Dad! I want a DOG, too!" Haley interrupted, not having been listening very closely to the conversation.

I walked Nate into the back room, recognizing that he was on the cusp of a Bruce Willis-at-the-end-of-The Sixth Sense reality-shattering discovery.

I asked him what it would mean to him if Mom and Dad really were Santa Claus. "I don't know..." he mumbled, his eyes already red and watering.

"Well..." I paused briefly, took a deep breath, and then forged ahead. "We are."

I could only imagine what was going through Nate's mind at that point. And it went something like this:

"I really, really want a Nintendo DS. I told Mom and Dad that I want one for Christmas, but they informed me that they won't be paying $130 so that I can play video games anywhere, at any time of day. And while I was bummed that they weren't going to buy me one, I figured that if I ask Santa for one, he is sure to come through for me. And now THIS? Lame."

Next, I brought Haley in and gave her the same news. She took it less hard than Nate. She just kept asking me, "But where do you get all that money for the presents?" Great question, Haley.

I reassured them both that Christmas will continue to be fun and that "Santa" will still visit the Taggart home each year, but that he would appreciate it if those requesting gifts will remember that he is really trying to save money for various home improvement projects.

We went back to the dinner table, the trauma of the initial shock having diffused. I leaned over to Nate and asked him whether he found any new significance in the words of a song often invoked at our house when the kids are getting unruly:

"He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!"

Minnesota State Fair

"Minnesota State Fair, Here We Come!" Andy called this out as we approached the ticket booth to buy our fair tickets. The kids were so excited to go to the fair, it was like Christmas morning, they woke up early and were jumping around anxious to go. Nathan and I were excited to go as well, but for different reasons, we were excited to see Nathan's Aunt Marilyn and her husband Jerry. We had a lot of fun: riding rides, playing games, eating great food, and seeing some fun sights!




Andy got a hold of the camera and started taking pictures. He took about 10 pictures before we realized he had the camera. Here's a sampling of what he took.

One of our favorite booths was the "Lego Experience" the kids had fun building things and seeing what had been built. Here's Haley's creation.


I love this picture of Michael! When he's really concentrating on something, he puckers his lips and drools.

Downtown Mayo

So it's time to play a little catch-up. I don't know why I feel this need to record past events before I can move on to record the events happening now, so you'll have to be patient with me.

Speaking of patient....One day in August I had an early physical therapy appointment and then two hours later Michael had his well-child check up, so we decided to hang out downtown and walk around while we waited in between appointments.

There's a really old, historical building named the Plummer Building, which Mayo still uses for offices and other things. It's cool because inside there is a replica of the building made entirely out of Legos! Nate loves to see it when we can. I included a close up of the cool Legos, it even has gargoyles!

Michael's favorite part of the whole day was watching the water fountain.

I wish I knew the story behind it, but during the Spring, all these geese statues started appearing everywhere downtown. Each one is decorated differently. It's some "Geese Campaign" I guess. Anyway, the kids loved them! We took pictures of three: one outside the Plummer Building, one outside the Library, and one outside The Post Bulletin's offices (our local newspaper).

Shoulder Reds & Blues (meaning nerves)

Shoulder update: So my physical therapist, Laura, looked at my x-ray and relayed that she thought I did not have as much arthritis in my AC joint as had been relayed from my doctor. Not that she was undermining my good doctor, but that the term "arthritis" can be used as a general term to describe any type of inflammation. We used the ionto "Action Patch" to reduce and calm the inflammation in my AC joint.

Looks cool huh? The part of the patch that says the "Empi" has a pad underneath. I load the patch up with steroids (yeah, I'm on steroids - see my bulk?) stick the pad part of the patch directly over my AC joint and pull the little tab sticking out (like on the back of electronic toys). The patch then electronically shoots the steriod from the pad into my AC joint. I did two rounds of this treatment (8 patches) last winter and it helped my shoulder a lot. I only had to do 3 patches this round to calm down my AC joint.

After calming my AC joint down, we could explore and see what else may be causing my pain. To explain my pain: I had pain in my shoulder blade, running down my entire arm (centering in my joints - elbow & wrist), pain under my arm into my rib cage and armpit, pain in my right breast (too much info, I know), pain into my breast bone, my collar bone, and then finally running up my neck and even into my ear some days. I didn't ever have all of that pain at one time, thankfully, it would rotate to those areas. Laura thought that the AC joint was only a contributing factor and not the source of the pain. She started poking around; pushing and pulling (as fun as it sounds) and discovered that it is the nerve network that runs from my C5 vertebra which totally explained all of my pain areas because the nerves run everywhere I was hurting. I asked Laura what would cause this nerve pain and she said looking down a lot, lifting kids, anything of that sort. Laura got all excited because she had been trained in a treatment for this type of problem. For our last four sessions she's done a deep tissue "massage". Massage is a nice word for what she does - it is pretty painful and she has to remind me that the rooms are not private because of all my moaning! She massages my muscles and surrounding tissues pretty hard to communicate to the nerves. By the fourth treatment, Laura said I had loosened up quite a bit and that she could get to more areas than she could before. I have also had a decrease in pain, which has been wonderful! I don't wake up every morning stiff and sore. With the loss of pain, I've gotten excited while exercising and have tried to exercise my arms, but the pain returns pretty quickly, so I'm not ready for that yet! BUMMER!

I had almost forgotten how life without pain felt. It's been time consuming and I've had to find friends who will watch my kids all of the time, but it's been SO worth it! It's also an added expense but Nathan has been totally supportive despite that. Well, I'll keep you updated. I pray for the day that I will be totally free of pain.

Shoulder blues

As a lot of you know, I've been having shoulder pain since last fall. I had an x-ray of my shoulder this past Wednesday and now my shoulder pain has a name: Acromioclavicular Arthritis or AC Arthritis. Your AC is the joint where your scapula (shoulder blade) and clavicle (collarbone) meet. The joint is covered with cartilage and when this wears thin it causes arthritis. Treatment? Physical therapy and anti-inflammatory drugs (Ibuprofen). If these conservative measures do not work within a given time frame then surgery is an option. During sugery they cut off a bit of the collarbone and let scar tissue fill in the joint where cartilage used to be. The results are great for those who have had this surgery, but I'm still hoping that it doesn't come to that.

I had been going to physical therapy before but for various reasons, which take too long to go into, I had not been back since November. Those therapy sessions where kind of exploratory to try and find out why I was having this pain, but now that I've had the x-rays done, we can have more of a focus during therapy sessions.

My first reaction was that I was too old to have arthritis, I was stereotyping, I know. But as I read online and did some research, this type of arthritis is common in weight lifters. How does that explain my situation? I told Nathan that it is common in weight lifters and he said "So you have it because you've been weight lifting Michael for 2 years." I'm not sure that it's all been Michael, but he is one heavy kid and he LOVES to be carried and held all of the time. He's so sweet though and maybe the pain is worth it after all!

Easter Sunday in Russia

For me personally, one of the highlights of my trip to Russia was attending church on Easter Sunday. Because it was such a special experience--and because my previous post was getting pretty long--I thought this story deserves its own post.

A little background is important to understanding why it was such a neat experience...

When I was a missionary in Moscow 13 years ago, we worked really hard to build the Church in Russia--to introduce people to the Gospel and help strengthen those who had joined the Church. Our goal in Russia was the same as it is for missionaries throughout the world--to foster personal faith and righteousness and to develop priesthood leadership. This is often a difficult task in areas where the church is new and members are few. When I arrived in Moscow in 1994, the church had been in Russia only 3 or 4 years. Moscow had maybe 1000 Church members total, most of whom did not attend church. Throughout my 2 years there, we met for our Sunday meetings in rented facilities--elementary schools, auditoriums, recreation centers, etc. We would typically have less than 20 members at church on a given Sunday. One branch I served in had 20 members total, and many weeks we had more missionaries (four) than members in attendance.

My mission also coincided with a period of difficult economic times in the former Soviet Union. The currency was unstable. People were unemployed and homeless. The comment was made to me several times that during Soviet times people had plenty of money but nothing to buy, and now they had plenty to buy (comparatively) but no money with which to buy anything. And when people are struggling with money, they tend to be less interested in God and religion. At least that was my experience in Russia. The growth of the Church at that time was pretty stagnant. And while I absolutely loved my experience in Russia and cherish the friendships I made, I will admit that I have questioned whether our Church would ever grow in Russia.

So, back to my Sunday in Tomsk...

Prior to leaving the States, I looked up the address of the Tomsk branch on the Church website. "No. 10 Prospekt Mira". I figured I'd find it when I got there. I didn't know what time church would start, but I figured 9 am was a good guess. That Sunday was Easter Sunday in Russia (Easter in the US was the week before). Prior to leaving that morning, I checked with the receptionist at the hotel who pointed me in the right direction. I caught a bus heading north and got off at No. 1 Prospekt Mira at about 8:45. I spent the next several minutes walking up and down the street looking for No. 10. It was not as easy as it would seem, since I wasn't sure exactly what type of building I was looking for. It could be a school or a library or some other building that would otherwise normally be closed on a Sunday. I asked some passers-by where No. 10 is, but no one knew. By then it was about 9:20, and, discouraged, I headed across the street to the bus stop where I would catch a bus to take me back to the hotel. I had just missed one bus and it would be several minutes before another would come. I figured that rather than stand around waiting, I'd walk down the street to the next stop in line. As I walked I admired the simple architecture of a building about a block down the road...

As I got closer to the building, I noticed a sign beside the entrance that I recognized almost immediately...

A real building! I was dumbfounded as I went inside. It was as if I were back home going to church. It was clean. There pictures of missionaries from Tomsk in a nice display and announcements for Institute classes and family home evening activities posted on the bulletin board. There was even a list of home teaching assignments posted on a bulletin board. (The idea of home teaching was pie-in-the-sky when I was in Moscow). Best of all, Sacrament Meeting didn't start until 10:00. So I was actually 35 minutes early.

I had to be back to the hotel by 12:30, but was able to stay through Sacrament Meeting and Sunday School. It was an incredible experience and a stark contrast to my recollections of attending church in Russia. The men all wore suits (I was actually under-dressed, with only shirt and tie--no jacket). The branch leadership were all Russian. The talks were well prepared and on topic. Nobody interrupted the speakers. And there were several families--moms, dads, kids.

Several people noticed me as an unfamiliar face and came up to introduce themselves. One young man, Sasha, was from Moscow and his wife had served a mission there (or maybe it was the other way around). They had been sealed in the temple and were starting a little family. That's the second generation of the Russian Church right there! As someone who for the past 13 years has wondered whether the Church would ever really take root in Russia, I admit that I got a little emotional as I realized, happily, that I was very wrong.