Summer Part 1

 Good morning!  I am currently writing while a giant dog rests at my feet and a tiny dog watches all the bunnies through the window.  They both follow me around all day and take turns, or sometimes try at the same time, to lay their heads on my lap.  Tucker, the big dog, belongs to our friends', the Andrews.  They watch Olive for us when we go out of town and she and Tucker get along so well.  Tucker lives with a household of little kids and he is patient and gentle.  We love him and love that Olive gets along with him so well.  Felicity, who continues to have night time fears, is dreading it when Tucker goes home tomorrow.  He has been sleeping in her room, his crate taking up a large portion of her room, and she feels safe with him sleeping with her.  She wants to keep him forever.  

Our summer is flying by.  Our reunion in Florida was great, better than I expected.  FSY was great, better than expected, and Felicity's acting camp was great, also better than expected.  For Piper, she wasn't in a company with her other friends and she worried about being alone with her other friend but it forced Piper to make friends with her company and I'm not sure if she would have tried as hard had she been with her other two friends as well.  Her roommate ended up staying the entire week, which no one expected to happen, and she and Piper enjoyed their quiet nights together.  Next week Piper heads to girls camp and she is excited about her group.  She loves camping and the girls in this ward are all really good friends so I don't anticipate anything but a happy report from her when she gets back.  There are large fires all over Colorado right now and some of their camping plans have had to change a little, which is sad, but I think they will still have plenty of fun.

We were able to attend the temple with Eli the first week of June.  Will and two of his roommates made the sacrifice to drive here so they could attend with him as well.  They arrived at 2 AM on Saturday morning and left at 11:30 AM on Sunday.  

Eli has had a difficult summer and he is ready to leave on his mission.  Having received his call in early February, he is antsy to get started. He has less than a month left and I feel uneasy about him going, knowing that he is leaving with some unresolved health issues (those horrible headaches persist).

I am almost done with the blood thinners.  The hemotologist tested me for a bunch of clotting diseases and so far, it looks like I don't have any of them.  I will see her at the end of July but she said that if the tests come back negative, she will let me stop the blood thinners.  She wasn't completely convinced that I should go back on hormone replacement therapy even though she said that the patch doesn't really contribute to blood clots.  I think the next step is to go to a vascular doctor to see if my unhealthy veins are the source of the clot.  I'm really relieved to be ending the blood thinner soon because I've lost handfuls of hair and my periods have been awful.  I also had a really cool procedure done this week on my eyes.  My eye doctor put a needle in each of my tear ducts and injected gel into them.  So far, it has made my eyes much less dry and things are less blurry and I can see much better.  It was kind of horrifying when he didn't numb me and just stuck the needle in my eye duct but it was worth it.  

Our summer vacation ends in just over a month and I'll be sad to see it go.