Chipmunk

On Tuesday I went into the dentist for emergency work on a rootcanal I'd had completed over 10 years ago. It took them 3 hours to remove a post from my root that was infected. They sent me home with painkillers & antibiotics. Over the next 3 days, my face began to transform into chipmunk face. The infection & swelling spread into the roof of my mouth, my eye, my nasal cavity, my temple, & is now working it's way into my eyebrow. The whole left side of my face was hot with pain & felt like I had burning shards of glass floating in my cheek bone. I ended up at a specialist office to have my tooth drained & the root canal cleaned out. The pain was so intense that my legs were violently shaking & the dentist would have to stop every few minutes cuz I was sobbing so hard. Drama, drama, drama.


Here is a picture of my normal face.

Here is a picture of my infected face. My left eye eventually got so swollen, I could hardly see out of it.

My attempt at smiling. The muscles in the left side of my face were infected so they pretty much stopped working. I couldn't smile & I could hardly open my jaw.

Jake & his cousin Devan played games while I was down. They set up the table in the living room so that they could be with me & keep me company while I was sick.

Thanksgiving

Dave demonstrates a great way to burn off calories after Thanksgiving dinner.

Adam couldn't quite figure out how to ride the bucking bronco.

Looks like he found a smaller horse to ride.

Sara busted out all of dad's old High School books for the family to look at. This is a picture of her imitating the cheerleading pictures from dads yearbook.

Dad was determined to roast hotdogs out in the backyard. This idea was canceled after the wind notified dad that it is much stronger then his desire to have a hotdog roast in November. The solution was easily solved by the family having a roasting party in the living room fire place.

Mmmmm......fireplace roasted hotdogs.

Soups on!

Come On Baby, Light My Fire

I was laying in bed at 6:30am this morning thinking "My throat hurts, I must be getting a cold........and why does my bedroom smell like camp fire. After a few minutes I sat up & saw that our entire bedroom was filled with smoke. Jake & I got up & our bathroom & our bedroom closet was so full of smoke that you couldn't enter it without going to your knees from caughing so hard. We made a lap around the building to see if anyone was awake. We figured somebody built a morning fire & didn't air the fire properly. Then we went onto the second floor & it was covered in smoke. The laundry room was had a thick layer of smoke on the ceiling. Jake went to the utility door & saw that there were flames behind the door. So I called 911 while Jake ran around telling people to get out. By the time he came outside his eyes were blood shot & his voice was gone. He said he was practically on his knees by the time he left the second floor. We spent about an 1 hr. and half outside while they put the fire out & cleared the air for us. Luckily nobody was hurt. The conclusion was that the boiler was too old and started the fire. I can't believe how bad our apartment stinks. I can't believe how bad I stink. We had to go to work in smelly clothes & no shower since the boiler when up in flames. The worst part is how bad my eyes & my lunges hurt today. I put my contacts in after the fire & dropped to my knees from the pain. It's been a good month for us. Hawaii, our own personal waterfall in our living room, & now the boiler goes up in flames & we get to have camp fire smell all the time. Just makes us feel like we are out doors & roasting marshmellows. Drama, Drama, Drama.

Commencement

Today was Commencement for Jake's cohort. This is the prep room where we get all of the boys dressed up. It's pretty funny to watch them try & figure out how to use a steamer to get the wrinkles out of their clothes.




















The student on the left is Travis Pace. He decided to graduate without any pants on. Yes. He actually went through the entire ceremony with out pants. Luckily he didn't have any exhibitionists moments & nobody really noticed.

Jake had an extremely talented group of friends that he worked with in the program. From left to right is Evan Walker, Travis Pace, Jake, Linda Ung, Stone Lasley, & Marc Means. Missing from the picture is Brett Pehrson. Poor Linda was the only girl to graduate in the group.

Congratulations Guys!

Halloween

Welcome to my Neumont office. Head on Helda had a little bit of an accident when she came into see me.




















This is my red bookcase that I picked out for my office. Students know that I keep licorce on the middle shelf. Their not afraid to interupt my meetings to come in and get some.




















No Halloween here, but I thought I'd show you my desk area. I picked out the picture to pick up on the red book case. The edge of my desk has a little zen garden that the students like to play with.















I love this spider. I seriously want to put it in my house as a decoration. Even when it's not Halloween. I think he's cute.




















Here's my zen garden in it's Halloween state.




















My coworkers Alvin and Butterfly Vampira. Otherwise known as Vee & Corrine. They run the student life program & do an amazing job at it. I don't think I've ever met two people that work as hard as they do. The took the students ice skating tonight.

Jake's working a new job at a company called UCN. Halloween is a huge deal for them. Each department gets a budget & gets to decorate their area. Everyone is required to dress up. Jake's teams theme was the 70's. The had a disco ball & everyone had on huge wigs with afro's & long hair. Jake had the only authentic hair in the bunch.

I dressed to match his team's theme.




















The outfit is a donation from Debbie's mom. By the way, the pants go clear past my belly button & half way up my rib cage.

Happy Halloween!

Pouring rain

The other day I woke to the sound of bath water running in our house. The only problem was, Jake & I were both still in bed. Jake jumped to see what was going on. He came back into the bedroom & said....




















"Get up. Maitenence is coming over."















I walked out into our living room to find the ceiling had collapsed in & water was pouring into our house. That was on Sunday.
















Monday we came home from work to find a bunch of guys working in our house on the ceiling. It caught us completely by suprise as nobody had notified us that they would be entering our house.




















Our house was a complete disaster. Pieces of the ceiling laying all over the floor. All of our property had been moved to different locations. It's a strange feeling to know that somebody has moved your stuff without you being home.















I love that this guy gave me a thumbs up for the picture.




















They were very nice to cover up our furniture. Too bad they didn't rethink putting the wet towels from the floor onto my leather massage chair.















My favorite part was when I found my grill sitting in our bedroom. Everything is back to normal now, but I thought I'd share the adventure with you.

Skydiving Video

Here's the video of skydiving in Hawaii. The video is really small on the blog. If you want to get a bigger version go to http://www.kscollett.com/7ceman/uploads/SkydiveHawaii.avi and double click on the image.

Oceanarium

We ate at a restaurant called the Oceanarium. One side of the entire restaurant is taken up with a gigantic two story aquarium. We arrived just in time to watch the first feeding for the day. After the fish were fed, she put her arm under the sting rays mouth & it latched on. She swam right past our table several times with this huge sting ray attached to her arm. It was so cool.

Pali Lookout

After renting our car, the first stop we made was at the Pali Lookout.