The Happenings

Life has been pretty quiet for us the last few weeks. We have been enjoying relaxing evenings filled with reading, meeting friends for dinner whom we haven’t seen in too long, catching up with each other and hanging out with our goofy pets. We’ve watched a few movies over the last few weeks {Steel Magnolias, 22 Jump Street, Chef and something else I can’t recall} and got through the whole season of Transparent on Amazon Prime TV. We’re just soaking up the calm before the holidays and our 2015 travel schedule, which is somehow even busier than 2014.

{We had a really fun evening at Vio's, an ultra kid-friendly Greek restaurant in Capitol Hill, with the Furtwangler clan this past week.}
{We had a really fun evening at Vio’s, an ultra kid-friendly Greek restaurant in Capitol Hill, with the Furtwangler clan this past week.}

This week started with the highly anticipated arrival of our new iPhone 6’s! We are both hopelessly in love with our new phones. Our previous phones were great but they lacked application choices, so we are overwhelmed with the selection of apps in the Apple store. I have been loving the various health and fitness tracking apps that measure the number of steps I take each day – I really thought I was walking more than my phone is telling me I am, so it’s nice to pay attention to that.

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Alex and I just started doing a Pilates mat class together on Friday mornings. So far we are the only ones signed up so it’s like our own private class! I’m sure that won’t last long, but we’re enjoying it while it does. Alex is really enjoying how it stretches him out and helps with his posture.

{Henry cat has been extra cuddly and snuggly with the chilly weather}
{Henry cat has been extra cuddly and snuggly with the chilly weather}
{Jackson is trying to pretend to be Henry, it appears.}
{Jackson is trying to pretend to be Henry, it appears.}

In personal organization news, I just got a new daily organizational notepad that I’m in love with. I don’t normally organize myself by each day, but I can see that it’s helpful to try to plan things out on a daily basis to be more realistic about what I can accomplish in that amount of time. I bought this here.

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The weather over the last week has been unbelievably gorgeous but super chilly for Seattle. Every day has been full Seattle sunshine, but I added the removable liner back into my coat and have brought out my mittens because the temps have been in the low 30s, which is pretty unusual for here. The nice days have brought me out for more mid-day walks with Jackson this week which has been an extra treat.

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I had a pretty rough day on Wednesday after an unexpectedly traumatic dentist appointment. I had my regular 6-month cleaning on Tuesday morning and the dentist told me it’s time to take care of two teeth that have several really big fillings in them {thank you childhood pop drinking!} by replacing them with crowns. I was less than pleased by this news and left the dentist office feeling very discouraged, wishing there was more I could have done to prevent this from happening, though the damage was done a long time ago.

Wednesday morning I arrived, bright-eyed and bushy tailed {ok, maybe not…} for my 8 a.m. appointment to get my first of two crowns. I sat back in the chair, the dentist started to numb me up and just a moment after he finished with the anesthesia my heart started racing and I started to feel my tongue swell and the area around my throat swell. It turns out that the numbness the dentist creates feels exactly the same as the feeling of anaphylaxis. Having gone into anaphylactic shock before, due to my severe shellfish allergy, I felt the same way that morning in the dentist chair. It was awful.

I really thought that my throat was closing and that set off a serious panic attack. I had no idea I was experiencing a panic attack until the dentist told me that was what was happening. I spent about 30-45 minutes sitting in the dentist chair just shaking uncontrollably, trying to catch my breath and calm down. Eventually I called Alex and he was able to hop off the bus and catch another one back home and come and calm me down. Needless to say, I have not gone through with the crowns and will likely put the appointment off until the new year, so hopefully the second time is better.

On to more exciting things like saving us from avalanches… We are still in planning mode for the upcoming ski season, and a few weeks ago we spent a wonderful evening with the Buffingtons and had the opportunity to test out our avalanche airbags just to make sure they work. Good news! They do indeed work! Hopefully we’ll never have to use them.

{The Avalanche backpacks blew up just like they're supposed to! It looks like a hot dog!}
{The Avalanche backpacks blew up just like they’re supposed to! It looks like a hot dog!}

Watch me “explode” my ABS bag here:

We are looking forward to another relaxing, low-key weekend at home and are really enjoying catching up on stuff around the house and planning for the holidays and ski season. Happy Friday 🙂

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