Happy Fall

Did you all have a good Halloween? Any good/funny stories to share? Alex and I carved pumpkins this year, and it was fun! His parents dropped off an orange and a white pumpkin with all of the carving tools & templates after we had been talking about possibly doing it this year, so we had no excuse, lol. My white pumpkin happened to be very round and hard to tape the pattern onto, and hard to photograph, and my hubby's turned out A-MAZING because he's such a perfectionist and definitely took his time on it! So mine looks like a child carved it. Oh well, it was still fun! Here are some pictures:

Taking all the gunk out... my wrist hurt after!

Hubby's kitty template

 

Poking the pattern into the pumpkin

 Carving my owl (I added the stars & moon myself :-)

 All finished and glowing!

My little owl

 I know, I know... hubster did an amazing job!

 Never carved a white pumpkin before!

 Meow.

One last picture of our carved pumpkins.

So, things have been going so-so with my and my hubby's health. My jaw pain ended up subsiding after a few days and I will be looking for an oral surgeon who would be able to take payment plans since we don't have oral surgeon coverage on our dental plan apparently. :-/. Other than that, our finances are just insane right now with Alex only being able to work a day or two a week, but God has been able to provide for us so far through our parents. We are hoping that Alex will get relief with our family friend who is a great massage therapist, and he will also be going to a greatly recommended chiropractor as soon as we find the funds for him. I would love to go too but we'll have to really pray about our finances! We have cut back on almost everything possible; We eat out pretty rarely, I make most meals at home, and if we do eat out, it is something that is just as cheap as eating at home, such as taco wagon burritos but taking them home and having our own drinks & chips with it, etc. I've been making some yummy meals that I've found online, and on Pinterest! (Add me on Pinterest if you haven't yet, I love it!)

Oh, today I finally got my spinal injections done again, and I'm hoping that it will bring lots of relief again so I can start exercising without severe pain! This horrible prednisone medication has given me INSANE stretch marks all over my body, and made me gain so much weight... I can't fit into 99% of my clothes. Part of what Prednisone does is make you store almost every calorie you eat, and it stores it mainly in your face and in your belly area. Some people also get what they call a "camel hump" which is fat stored on the back of the neck; luckily I haven't had that yet... knock on wood! I have never had a weight issue before so this is brand new to me, and I am having a hard time with it.  It's quite embarrassing when people who haven't seen me in a few months say "Wow, you look different!" (with an interesting look on their face) or "I almost didn't recognize you"... oh well, hopefully I can get further down on my prednisone dosage, although these last 5 mg's I'm on have been VERY tough; every time I go down by a little tiny splinter of the pill, I have major intestinal problems by nighttime.  And it huuuuurts. If you haven't heard of prednisone or are interested in what it does to the body, you should look it up on google! Prednisone helps a lot of people who have different inflammatory conditions like asthma, crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune diseases, but the longer you're on it, the more bad, bad, bad side effects you get. So it's really a catch-22. Unfortunately all the other meds I'm on for crohn's disease aren't putting this active disease under control, and it's very frustrating. Please pray that I can get off of this stuff ASAP!

Well, I wanted to fill out this "Autumn Survey" I saw on another blog since I kind of enjoy filling out surveys, but I'll post it in a separate entry. Hope all of you are having a good fall so far, and don't forget to turn your clocks back on Sunday! (I didn't even know it was this Sunday until I saw it online yesterday, lol :-)