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Esperanza is one year older this month.  She is growing so fast.  We have been extremely busy since the start of this semester.  I feel like we are running with the throttle wide open and as such I hope you all do not give up on me posting semi regularly.  I plan to do so.  I just have to catch up with everything that is going on.
Faythe is doing awesome in school.  He is bringing home high marks in all of his school work Inez and I are so proud of him and the work he is doing.  Esperanza surprised Inez the other day by reading to her.  Inez didn’t know that Esperanza could read as well as she does.  I had an idea that she could when we sat down and I helped her read a chapter out of Dick and Jane. She is a smart little girl.

School is running me ragged, I started this post two weeks ago and am now getting around to writing again.  I would go into our current medical woes but that would take up a bit more space than I want to.  Suffice to say, Inez and I are going in for MRI’s on our lower backs tomorrow.  I even hurts to wedge clay, which is not a good thing, since I tend to need to do quite a bit of that.  I am taking figure drawing this semester as well and it is going great.  I am very happy in my progress in being able to render the human body.  I have also posted a picture of one of my current works; in progress.  I will write more about it on my portfolio site, ’cause I need to add some more content there too.

Inez is doing well in her classes as well.  She is an excellent writer.  She should be writing more posts, I should teach her how.

Faythe rashed out a couple months ago, and he was recently able to get into the allergist.  It turns out he is deathly allergic to Tree Nuts and very allergic to Cats and Dogs.  When he was younger he showed an allergic tendancy to peanuts so we have been pretty careful to keep him from eating any types of nuts.  As it turns out that was a good decision.  Now we have to carry an epi-pen around with us just in case.

Well that is all for now.

– Jerel

School starts for Faythe next week.  The rest of us start the week after that.  Where oh where has our summer gone.  I had so many things I was going to do, school projects to finish, rivers to fish, sites to camp at.  This summer was not a total loss though.  We spent our Monday nights at a park in Provo with some friends listening to live concerts sponsored by the Provo Arts Council.  They were pretty good, and the price was just right (free).  Those ended a couple of weeks ago and since then we have been doing B.Y.O.M. (bring your own meat) Barbecues. It has been great.  It has given us chance to try new recipes and enjoy our friends.  I’ve also been honing my Root Beer brewing skills, it is starting to taste rather good, I’m glad I paid attention to Jim Richardson while growing up, though I have tweaked his recipe quite a bit.  I am now ready to move into other soda flavors.

This past weekend we went camping with the Stearmans.  We went up to the Rock Cliff campground at Jordanelle Reservoir.  It was a quick camping trip, and we had allot of fun up there.  It seems we got home at just the right time too, the sky opened up Saturday night and we had quite the thunder storm move through the area.

I have not been out fishing for almost a month now.  When the evenings roll around I am usually pretty tired from the days activities and not in much of a mood to go slogging through a river.  Maybe once it cools down a bit I will get out more, of course with school starting soon that is more of a “pipe dream”.  Inez and I are both going full time, I am very excited I have less than a year left untill I am done.  While I love being in school I am really looking forward to completing my studies here.  It has not been easy especially with some of our more recent trials, but school is worth it. The school we are attending is now officially a University, it is now called Utah Valley University.

Last friday Inez took Esperanza to a princess festival, Ronza dressed up in her “Princess” clothes and got to go to a castle and learn princess manners, save a couple of princesses and dance in a royal ball.  Which is what Inez and Ronza had, a Royal Ball.  Faythe and I hung out while they were at the festival, packing the truck for our camping trip.

So lets recap on what has been happening with the Harwood Family for the past little while.

The last time I wrote I spoke about the projects that had to get done for school and trying to prepare my truck for the then upcoming emissions test. The good news is the truck passed emissions, the bad news is the rear third member (rear differential) went out on the truck, it got replaced, the good news from that is, my truck runs much quieter and I think that I will not have to rebuilt the transmission now (knocks on wood).

In March I was able to go to the NCECA conference in Pittsburgh. It was a good conference and I am grateful to those who made it possible for me to attend. I stayed with Lisa and Nathan while I was out there and really enjoyed their company. While there I saw many exhibits and listened to a few lectures ranging from publishing papers and learning about upcoming books to putting together a portfolio and applying for graduate school.

The time after NCECA through the end of the semester went by really fast. It was filled with paper writing and completing projects for our classes.

Our finals week was very exciting. I went to bed last Tuesday with an ache/pinching feeling in my side, when I woke up Wednesday I was still hurting. Our Wednesday afternoon was pretty booked up. Esperanza had an appointment to get her eyes checked and Faythe was scheduled to have his lip repaired, the last time the doctor has looked at it there was some scar tissue that was causing his lips to close improperly. Through out the day my side continued to hurt and the rest of my stomach area was beginning to hurt as well, by the time we got to Esperanza’s appointment I was feeling pretty bad. The eye doctor put some drops in Esperanza’s eyes to dilate them and told us to come back in thirty to forty minutes. While they were doing that Inez had gotten a hold of our health care provider and had spoken with them, they told her to get me to the emergency room and get checked out. Fortunately the eye doctor was in the same building as a hospital. We walked over to the emergency room, which was empty, and they admitted me right away. They had to do the usual gamut of tests and even preformed a CT Scan on my abdomen. After the Doctor had time to look over the tests and the scan he diagnosed me with acute-appendicitis. He then told me they would have to have to remove my appendix. Their operating room was in use and I would have to wait for them to finish before they could operate on me, this was about 5 PM. At 9 PM they rolled me into the O. R. and removed my appendix. They called Inez around 10 PM to tell her that the operation had been a success and they were going to keep me there until the next afternoon. I was stuck sitting in my chair because that was the most comfortable place for me to be while I was waiting for the pain to subside. By Sunday I was getting pretty restless, Monday I was able to move around a bit more and today (Thursday) I went to work.  As of today I am starting to feel pretty good, though sharp movements or jarring hurt in the abdomen area. Inez has been a wonderful help through all of this, as have the children.

– Jerel