Arizona Trip April 2008!

As most of you know, I miss my sister a lot!! It’s really hard with her living over 1,000 miles away in Mesa Arizona. Even though it was quite a stretch for us financially, I decided to buy plane tickets for Jaime and me to go to Mesa! We were there for about a week and it went by way too fast!!
The hot weather and palm trees were exactly what I needed. Andra, Dustin, Jaime and I were together every day almost all day long. Before I get started with a summary of our activities, I have to say people in Arizona are CRAZY!!!! They think 80-90 degrees is cold! I can’t believe it! They walk around in sweatshirts and pants and don’t even go swimming until its 100+ degrees. I doubt they’d be like that if we took away their air conditioning.
On our first day, we drove out into the desert and shot guns. Unfortunately, Dustin forgot to bring the firing pin for the new gun that we were all excited to shoot. But we still had a few shot guns to play with. Andra and I both had bruises on our shoulders from the shotgun kicks. But it was well worth the pain. Dustin was even able to hit a vulture with some shot gun bb’s. Not enough to hurt him, but enough to make him fly funny for a few minutes.
One of our activities was to Lake Saguaro which is HUGE and in the middle of the desert mountains. I never imagined a lake in the middle of nowhere could be so beautiful. We went on a little hike up to a view spot before the heat got too intense. We were about 150-200 feet up off the water and it was sheer rock cliff. Pretty scary but breathtaking! Then we played around on the beach for most of the day and got pretty good sunburns. Jaime and Dustin disappeared for an hour or two to shoot guns again up some desert road which allowed Andra and I to have a long sisters chit chat. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to have one of those. After the lake, we also stopped by a few spots along the Salt River. There were some sweet cliff jumping spots but the water was surprising ICE cold and we all wussed out. But we had a great time climbing around on the rocks and dipping our feet in. Jaime had a little stumble while jumping across two rocks and slipped into the water hurting his foot. Maybe next time he’ll listen to me when I say “Sweetie, don’t jump across. You’ll fall in and get hurt.” That night we went to Cici’s pizza buffet and then to some arcade castle where we played games the rest of the night.
The next day when we woke up, it was cloudy!!! I couldn’t believe it. Clouds in Arizona? Just my luck. But it turned out okay. We were able to use that day to do some shopping and indoor stuff then that night we went over to Lanae (Dustin’s sister) and Jared’s house for dinner and a movie. It was nice to have a free meal after eating out so much, AND it was by far the best meal we had the whole trip! Lanae made an amazing dish that I would pay good money to eat again.
Dustin was very excited to show us that Arizona does have mountains, trees, and even snow. So he took us all out on a drive up to the Rim, Payson, and Heber, AZ. It was a long drive, but it gave us all a good chance to chat and catch up on things. About ½ the way up the mountains, in the middle of desert there was a HUGE motorcycle junkyard. Acres and acres of old dirtbikes, streetbikes, and bicycles for sale. They were so crammed together that moving one bike could cause an uncontrollable domino effect. Jaime acted like a kid in a candy store! I’ve never seen someone so excited over junk. It was pretty interesting looking at all the different bikes dating back from the 1900’s to present day bikes. The only thing that wasn’t enjoyable about this place was the 5 or 6 meth heads that ran it. None of them had teeth and they all hadn’t showered in about a year and for some reason, they followed us around the tights pathways.
The drastic temperature change was from the Mesa Valley and up on the Rim was amazing. It was probably at least 30 degrees different up there, and VERY windy. We pulled over at a few spots and took pictures. It was so cold up there it was hard to stay out of the car for very long. We went as far as Heber and decided it was about time to turn back, so we had a quick meal and tin roof blizzards at the Dairy Queen. On our way back we made a couple more stops. One was a beautiful lake called Woods Canyon Lake. It was so amazing. It reminded me of a lake you’d find in the middle of the Cascade Mountains. There was even a little snow on the ground. It felt good to get back into Mesa to the warm sunshine. Then we headed over to the Davis’ for a BBQ. Yay for another free meal!
On our last full day in Arizona we went out to the Salt River again. Jaime and Dustin decided to get tubes and float down the river a few miles. Andra and I dropped them off then drove down stream and then relaxed in the river for a few hours waiting for the boys to float by. While we were waiting, we were surprised by 5 wild horses!! They were just standing on the river bank drinking the water. They even had a baby colt with them that was no more than 2 weeks old. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen, but I didn’t think to grab my camera and snap a picture. Sorry. Once Jaime and Dustin came down the river, they’d told us they had seen a few groups of wild horses along their ride as well.
That night we were able to meet up with Jaime’s cousin Cody who also lives in the area. We all went out to Bass Pro Shop for dinner. The food wasn’t all it was made up to be, but the atmosphere was really cool. After dinner we walked around the museum like store for an hour or so.
On most of the nights we were there, we went scorpion hunting near an orange grove behind Andra and Dustin’s house. We found at least one every night except the last. They are so creepy!! We also found a handful of black widows and countless cockroaches.
The end of our vacation came way too soon. I was in no way ready to leave yet. But we didn’t really have a choice. Luckily, Andra and Dustin will be moving up here in the end of June!!! So I’m not as sad as I would be…

Pawsi's outdoor adventures

Jaime and I have been toying with the idea of taking Pawsi camping with us this summer. We decided it would be smart to do some trial runs and take him to the beach to see how he does out in the open and around other people, animals and weird loud noises and smells. We've taken him out in the backyards but nothing too crazy. Last weekend, we took him to Lake Wilderness. HE LOVED IT! He spent and hour or so walking the lake shore and chasing ducks. He even tried to pick a playfight with a boxer puppy.

Pawsi passed the Lake Wilderness test. Now we thought we'd step it up and see how he did. We contemplated going out to Ocean Shores or Westport yesterday. But we slept in a bit too much so decided to keep it more local. We packed up his stuff and headed out to Dash Point Park. We stopped at Home Depot on the way and thought it'd be fun to take him in the store with us. We got LOTS of looks and "AWHHHH" from all the weekend shoppers. He was suprsingly well behaved.

Once we got to Dash Point and got out of the car, HE DID NOT LIKE IT. I don't know if it was all the people, dogs, seaguls, large mass of water, wet sand, or a combination of all. He hunkered down, hissed and cried, and tried to run off and hide under cars and in the big rocks. I don't have any pictures because Jaime and I were both far too busy trying to control the big rugrat. He is SO strong!! I swear that cat is solid muscle. Luckliy we had his kennel with us and were able to put him in there and still hang out at the beach for a few hours. He was very happy inside his safe kennel. We were out all day and he behaved really well except I don't think he is a fan of the beach. We probably won't take him camping very often.

Kidney Stones are LAME

I've been dealing with my third occurrence of kidney stones since i was 19. They seem to get worse each time. Early last month, I woke up at 5am in the worst pain imaginable. Off we went to the ER but by the time we'd got there, the pain had subsided to where it was bearable. Over the next month, it came and went. Usually I was at home where I could collapse on the couch and curl into fetal position. I went to the Dr. and they ordered a ultrasound. Results were negative for kidney stones so at this point I was very concerned to what else it could be. On March 22nd, Jaime and I headed out to Belfair to go dirt biking but about half way there, the pain started. By the time we got about 10 miles away from Belfair I was wishing I would just pass out. I called my sister up and had her do an internet search for the closest hospital. She googled it and found a hospital in Belfair. Once we got there, we discovered there was no such hospital. Now the closest was in Bremerton. At this point, I'm convinced this is the worst day of my life. It seemed like an eternity, but about 20 minutes later I was immediately admitted into the Emergency room. After waiting another 30 minutes thinking my kidney was going to explode out my side, the nurse finally got me an IV with some good pain meds that made me not want to die anymore.
I went back to my Dr the next week and she was very confused (I think she thought I was faking to get pain meds even though I NEVER asked for any). She was just wasting my time so I went to a Urologist. He had me have an Xray CT scan, cystoscopy and finally, a WHOLE month after my first kidney pain, someone had some answers for me!! I have 2 kidney stones in my right kidney and 1 in my bladder which was the one that had been giving me hell the last month.
The day after my Urologist appointment, I PASSED THE STONE!!!!

This stone was 6mm which is the biggest I've ever had. If it had been any bigger, I would have had to have medical procedures to go in and break it up. Very scary. I'm hoping the others in my kidney are smaller and don't grow anymore.

The LeBlanc's are now bloggers!

I've recently decided that I am going to start blogging! There are many instances where something exciting has happened in our lives that I'd like to share with everyone. Mass emails haven't been working out so well with lots of changing addresses and not having others correct email addresses. So from now on, I'll just post on here!