Fun 3-day weekend

So, with Cory being a farmer now it just so happens that sometimes days off for holidays have to be switched around, otherwise he'd never get any time off.... Well, the 4th July holiday is one of those days. Since Cory is almost certainly going to have to work next Monday he took yesterday off and we had a 3 day weekend. It was so much fun, and I really enjoyed having him home and getting time to hang out. I LOVE spending time together.
So, on Friday we just about finished the flooring at the rental house - which is a big relief because it had been looming over our heads like a humongous hail cloud and we needed to get the majority of it done. Also, they were having a party there on Sat, so we really wanted it to be looking good for them.

Saturday morning we made a trip to the dump - all the flooring from the rental house needed to be disposed of and it had been riding in the back of our truck for a little over a week - yuck!
After that we had plans to go up to hang out with our friend Aaron and some buddies for his birthday - we had to make an unexpected stop at Les Schwab due to a cling-on nail we picked up at the dump, but we got to watch the second half of the USA vs Ghana match on their TV while we waited so I didn't complain. Too bad the USA lost and were sent home.

So, we got back on the road and headed to meet Aaron. We were heading out on the boat for the day and we were looking forward to it. It was near perfect weather and we were in need of a relaxing day - it was exactly that. We got to meet some new people too, so that's always an added bonus. I like meeting new people.
After that we headed a friend's who is also Aaron's neighbour and had a BBQ there - I'd brought a birthday cake and some watermelon so I didn't feel too bad about showing up at their house for food. The one thing I completely hate is going to someones house empty handed.

The food was yummers! A great day all round!

Sunday at 7am was the England vs Germany match. I was so nervous. The history with us and the Germans in general is pretty bad, but in football it's so prickly that I could hardly contain myself. We needed to win, not only to progress to the next stage, but to prove a point that we still had what it took.
I was in church, working on the projection with the live stream on my phone sitting beside me on my desk. I was hardly able to contain myself. The Germans scored - NO!!!!!
Then we had a disallowed goal and I could just feel that it was all downhill from there.

The game ended just a few moments before Church started, the score was 4-1. Our boys were going home, we'd been well outplayed by the Germans, our tails were firmly between out legs.

Boo!

After church we grabbed lunch and headed home to work on the yard - it needed a fair share of TLC!
We were still wrecked from the previous day on the boat so we snuck in a little afternoon nap too. It was a good afternoon!
Cory got sun burnt though, pretty badly on his back. All day Saturday he had kept applying the sunscreen while on the boat, but something about working in the yard without his shirt on he forgot and he was suffering. The aloe was soaking in almost instantly - I felt bad for him, I'd been there before... several times!

Yesterday we decided that we were going to have a chilled day too, so we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the coast. It was warm when we left town, but by the time we got to the beach it was chilly, grey and starting to drizzle. I kind of liked the break from the heat!
We did a little window shopping at the outlet mall, went to the beach and then hit up Mo's for an early dinner before heading home.
Oh, and on the way home we took a little detour and looked at Oregon's oldest covered bridge. It was originally built in 1914. It was pretty cool to have a look at and read the story of how it was saved and relocated. :)

After we got home we did a quick 2 hour whizz around our house and it looks clean as a whistle, it's amazing what you can do in so little time eh?

After that we chilled - watched some TV and had a relaxing evening.
All in all a great 3 day weekend...

Here's some pics:

Another handful

OK, so not literally a 'handful' (you'd need really big hands) but you get the general gist.

The past few evenings I've really enjoyed walking around our garden (yard) with the camera and just seeing what I can find. I am always amazed by the pure beauty in nature.

So, here's a few from our garden - enjoy :)

The Perfect Result

This morning was the last of the games in group c of the world cup. I was feeling tense as I watched England vs Slovenia and USA vs Algeria on my laptop. In my heart of hearts I wanted England to go through, but I also really wanted the USA to go through (just not at England's expense).

It would be the most perfect, but an unlikely result!

England were leading by a goal in their game as they went into extra time, and the USA/Algeria game was still 0-0.

As the whistle blew on the England game securing them a place through to the next round there was some major activity on the other pitch.... Donovan scored for the USA, they were now a goal up in extra time.

They hung on tight until the end of extra time and also went through!!!

So now this weekend the USA will play the runner-up of group d and England will play the winner of group d!

Congrats to both teams and thank you for the perfect result (so far)!

A couple more photos

The other evening we drove to Salem & back in a mad dash to pick up the rest of the flooring we needed for our rental house project. The lighting on the drive home was just beautiful. I tried to capture it with our camera, but it's no way close.
Here they are anyway:

Few pics and quick hello

Not much to report from us, except that we have been working on our rental house this weekend and we are sore... and when I say sore, I mean really sore. I could hardly walk yesterday and when I did it was definitely more than a waddle accompanied with "ouch, owie, ugh...." etc type moans with every step. Not so attractive!
Yesterday was our second, first wedding anniversary. Yep, you heard it right, our second, first wedding anniversary. We had two wedding's right....?!?!?!? Therefore two wedding anniversaries! ;)

We had a fun day, went out to lunch at GVB after church which was really nice, and after that we went up to Tualatin to Erik & Krista's place to say a quick hello to them and Cory's parents since it was also Father's day.

Anyway, here's a few photos from around the Fast household recently... yes, a random collection!
Over & out!The Grosbeaks seem to have left us now, which is kind of sad since I'd gotten used to them and their feeding habits, oh, and not to forget their noise... But here's one of the last pics I took of them. I love how the two far birds have 'locked beaks'!
Our daffodil bulb 'crop'. We sat digging and dividing daffodils out of our yard so we can move them around next spring. There was so many - we left at least the same amount in the ground!

We had two pair of black headed grosbeaks feeding at our house towards the end. This is one of the males. I love how orange their colour is - they are really pretty. The females look different too. They were fun to watch!

Our niece (step-niece if you want to get technical) received an award at school, it was the 'Love one another' award. So I went with her Mom and brother to watch her receive it. Isn't she adorable?!?!

So, I did say it was a random selection of pics, right?!?!

Well, I love the lillies we have in our garden and I am so happy that we have so many too. We spent a lot of time this spring moving and separating out the tubers, but I was impressed that we still got so many with super large flowers.
Yes, Cory's hands are dirty - comes with being a farmer I guess ;)
River walk, Salem OR
"The Mountain's Out"

It's a hard life...

It's a hard life... being a cat!

Our kitty cat loves to chill out on the deck underneath her favourite dogwood bush. I'm not sure why, but she loves it, it's her preferred place to be. It seems like the older she gets, the more mellow she becomes.

So, to me, these photos capture the character of her completely!

Graves Disease - my story (in a nutshell)

Once again I have been asked about my experience with Graves Disease, the auto-immune disease that effects your thyroid gland. So here goes, sorry if you've heard it before but perhaps someone who has just been diagnosed with Graves or suspects they have it might stumble upon this post - my wish is that this might help you to realise you are not alone in dealing with Thyroid disease, and it really is as hard as it feels right now, BUT always remember (and this is really important, and something I had a hard time believing while I was in treatment) YOU WILL GET THROUGH THIS!
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I will tell you a little bit about my story and experience with Graves Disease, and please feel free to ask questions.

One year ago I went to a Dr for a routine visit to have some vaccinations, I was immigrating here from Ireland and needed to have these for my immigration papers. I was very blessed with the Dr I had my appointment with, he noticed that something was wrong with me even though I wasn't there for any of those symptoms and hadn't mentioned them - I didn't even notice them anymore.
He took blood tests and sent them away marked as urgent.

A day or two later they called to say that there was an extremely high result on my thyroid tests and that I needed to come in right away. I did and was told that there was no doubt I had Graves Disease and would need to start treatment right away.

I was shocked and upset, I had no idea what Graves Disease was, I had never heard of it before and at that moment in time I didn't like the sound of it. I laugh now when I think of it, but I didn't even know where my thyroid gland was located until that day, let alone that it wasn't functioning correctly.
My levels of FT4 (Free T4) and FT3 (Free T3) were extremely elevated, approx 5x what was considered 'normal' and my TSH was suppressed, so suppressed that it didn't register on the blood test.

My resting heartbeat at the time was approx 130 bpm. I had an extreme intolerance to heat, I was emotional all the time, I was losing weight at an unbelievable rate, I was having heart flutters and shortness of breaths, my hair was falling out in clumps and there was so many other things I had just gotten used to, I didn't even think they were related.

Right there and then I thought my life had fallen apart, and I think that is a fairly natural reaction to being told you have an incurable illness that you will deal with for the rest of your life.

I was referred to an Endocrinologist and put on medication to keep my heart rate under control (my wedding was less than a week from that day and my Dr was worried about the stress of that on top of the Graves Disease symptoms).

I was determined to find out as much as I could about Graves Disease, so I could fight it. I was determined to win. One thing I would really recommend is that you do your research. Find out as much about Graves Disease as you possibly can. Knowing what you are dealing with will help you to make the decisions you will have to make with regards to your treatment.

I was diagnosed in June 2009 and I had RAI (Radioactive Iodine therapy) in August of last year. I am not 100% sure if I would choose that method of treatment again with the information I now have, but at the time it was the best decision I could make. The RAI itself isn't too bad once you know what you're dealing with (although I was still terrified). It comes in the pill form, and you have to be isolated for a short amount of time afterwards. I was isolated for 6 days after, but that is different with each person depending on the dose of RAI you take. Most people have no real paid with the RAI treatment either, but I did have some since my thyroid was already so enlarged and my uptake test (which measures how much iodine my thyroid absorbs) was so high it was beyond measurable.

There are other treatments available to you, and it's important that you don't feel pushed into making a decision one way or another. Take some time to research the options and make the decision based on what you feel is right.

The other two options were surgery and thyroid suppressing medication.

For my case surgery was ruled out and apparently this is fairly common in cases of Graves Disease, but I wouldn't have picked that option for me anyway so it didn't really effect my decision making.

The thyroid suppressing medication was the other option available to me and at the time I decided against it. If I was making the decision today I would probably still decide against it, for my situation. Basically (my very basic understanding of it) is that you take these medications long-term, (like for two years), and after that time they take you off it and try to work out if it has got your body to go back to normal thyroid function. If it does, then they monitor you closely for a while, and if it doesn't then you have the option of taking RAI or trying to take the meds for another period of time.

The reasons I chose against this option was because I was 29 years old and I didn't want to be sitting there in the Doctor's office making the same decisions in 2-2.5 years time, I wanted to have a permanent fix to my illness and I wanted to be able to get on with my life.

My thyroid was completely obliterated by the radiation dosage (25 mci) I received. At the time we thought that was a good thing, but I later realised that it would have been better to have only lost a partial function of my thyroid. Since I now have no thyroid function at all. It made getting my hormone levels regulated quite a challenge and it took a lot longer than my specialists and Doctor had predicted.

Usually they say that they expect to have the hormones regulated within 3-6 months, mine took a little over 9 months. I was diagnosed in June 2009 and my first 'regulated' blood test where I was feeling more normal wasn't until April 2010.

Now I take two thyroid supplements every single day and will do so for the rest of my life, I take synthroid (which replaces the T4) and cytomel (which replaces the T3). I feel so much better, it's amazing that I now have almost full control over this illness and have the ability to life a full life again.

There was many times through my treatment and trying to get regulated when I felt like I was never going to have a normal life again, and I thought I would never get out of the hard times we were going through, but with good doctors and with being knowledgeable about my illness and listening to my body we got there. I had great support from my wonderful husband and our family and friends too - I couldn't have done it without them.

I'm not sure if this really answers the questions you had, and I have met many people who went through graves disease and didn't have the long period or the extreme highs & lows I had after the RAI treatment. Every person has a different experience, but there are for sure many similarities.

The one thing I would definitely recommend is research. If you are interested I have some book recommendations that really helped me, I got them from the library so I'm sure they're readily available (we don't have the greatest library). Also, make sure to take note of the things that help YOU feel better. They might not be the same as things that helped others but if they make a difference to how you feel then it's important. There are certain foods that interfere with thyroid medications and thyroid function, so once you start taking those make sure that you do give it the hour before eating anything, and avoid the foods that will counteract the medications. It's worth it.

Since you have an overactive thyroid right now I'd cut out as much Iodine as possible. Don't cut it out completely, you don't have to, but it will certainly help if you can limit what you take in. Get plain salt instead of Iodised salt, try and avoid things that are really red in colour, like sweets and candy - usually they have the dye called red #40 and that has a lot of iodine in it... I have quote a few Low Iodine recipes that I used for a long time while I was hyperthyroid to help, I'd be happy to share those with you if you'd like.

The other thing I would really recommend is finding a Doctor that will listen to you. This made a big difference to me and is what helped me get through the hardest times of my treatment. My Doctor knew that I was going through some very large changes chemically within my body and that it would effect me differently on almost a daily basis. He listened to me, he answered my questions and he followed through with my requests.

I hope I didn't overwhelm or overload you with information, that's the last thing I would want to do.

Ask yourself a couple of questions... Do you know how long you have had this illness? Can you think back to when the symptoms started? Is there anyone else in your family with a history of auto-immune illness or thyroid issues?

Feel free to vent or ask questions, bounce ideas back and forth if you'd like too. In the early stages of my diagnosis and treatment this is the one thing I wished I'd had.