Vivir Sin Aire

I wanted to dedicate a song to Jen...I love the lyrics, they hit home on how im feeling right now. I sang this song to Jen with some random restaurant singer at the Mayan about a month after we met. I felt like a total idiot, but she liked it..and we found ourselves talking about that experience for years. I love you Jen!!!

Camping in Midway

Hey there family and friends. Last weekend Noah and I went camping with Jen's family, it was fun. We haven't been able to go camping in a couple of years, although I don't know how it was actually considered camping being that we spent the night in a trailer. I took Noah fishing on Friday night, but got skunked...I was impressed that Noah sat patiently for a good 45 minutes. Everyone else seemed to be pulling trout from the pond, but they for whatever reason didn't want our worm. Saturday

morning I woke up early without Noah and pulled my limit from the pond in less than an hour. It was awesome, the fishing God's finally took the lid off my ten year dry spell.

We also broke down and bought a 2008 Trailblazer, we love it. Jen and I had seriously considered buying one last fall, so I felt somewhat justified. I can just picture her riding in the passenger's seat with a big smile on her face. Life is going pretty good, we're trying to settle into what we can expect to be the norm. Thanks again to all the friends, for you love and kindness...you mean the world to us. We wouldn't know how to approach our challenges without your prayers and support.

Catching up and San Diego

It has been too long. I have been meaning to jump on to let everyone know how much you all mean to me and Noah. We owe the world to you, we are so thankful to have family and friends who care so much. I was inspired to see all the pictures of Jen circulating on facebook. It left me wondering how it ever was that I landed such a popular "Hottie". She is now my eternal Hottie. I think my brother in law (Todd) put it best. In his most serious high councilman face, he walked up to me at the viewing and pointed out that Jen had passed the test....he then paused and said, boy you sure better not mess this up. Right on Todd!!! I feel that was good advise and feel the responsibility to carry on with faith. We have such a rich heritage to turn to in order to deal with overcoming adversity. I happened to read a quote from President Kimball about two years ago, I loved it so much that I wrote it at that time in my scriptures and it has continued to help me address Jen's death with hope. He said: "If we say that early death is a calamity, disaster, or tragedy, would it not be saying that mortality is preferable to earlier entrance into the spirit world and to eventual salvation and exaltation? If mortality be the perfect state, then death would be a frustration, but the gospel teaches us there is no tragedy in death, but only in sin". Enough said, all I have to say to that is Amen. On a different note, Noah and I went with the in laws to San Diego. It was alot of fun, I hadn't been there for a couple of years. We stayed in Dean and Joanne's condo, it's ocean front property with a great view. Here are some pic's we took.

I wanted to take another minute and just express my gratitude for all who have posted comments. I hope that it wont seem insincere in just posting one big thanks!!! (but that is the benefit of blogging right?). We have had Jennifer back home for several weeks. Aside from the constant fatigue she is doing rather well. I have found that this scare has appropriately put us in the right mood for the holiday's. We have so much, we have hope...and as I have been recently reminded, we have friends who share common beliefs. Thank you all so much!!! For your prayers and thoughts. We are so blessed to have the knoweledge that we have. Our eternal plans are secure even though our limited sight sometimes allow fears to arise. My family has felt the strength and love of you all, we have felt of your prayers. Thank you for bearing this burden with us.

Jennifer's Health

Hello family and friends, I need to take the time to sit down and give everyone an update on Jennifer's health. I am so heavy hearted, and dont even know where to begin...except to express my love to my dear wife. The latest episode in this battle began two weeks ago this Sunday...Jennifer (like always) had a severe headache for 4 or 5 days. By Sunday morning it became so intense that we had to rush her to the University hospital's ER...after consulting with the neuro surgeon, he concluded that the headache was a result of preasure being built from the tumor in the middle ventricle of her brain. His suggestion, was that we let the preasure take it's course, which would prove fatal, but that it would a realatively peaceful way to die. We quickly concluded as a family that we weren't to that point yet, and that we could not in good conscience do nothing. After some persuasion the surgeon agreed to perform another surgery where he relieved the preasure by running a release tube from the brain (under the skin) and into the abdominal cavity. This has helped, but as he stated...it is only a bandage on the problem. We followed up with Huntsman cancer hospital, and Jennifer is back on the Methotrexate, which is the same drug she was on last summer. She responded almost immediately upon having the preasure relieved in her brain.

We are still very hopeful, the chemo she is on has proven before that it has the ability to help her. She has now been fighting for 3 years, it is our faith and hope that if it be according to God's will she will yet live another 3 years!!!

In this I have been reminded of the faith of the prophet Joseph Smith...so many times during his life did his future look bleak. So many times, he was consigned to die, but he feared not because he knew that his life was in the Lord's hands. So must we stand in holy places and demenstrate our faith that if God will yet allow her to live that we will with that time, demonstrate an increase in our willingness to serve and help those who also are suffering. I would like to invite everyone to keep Jen in your prayers, that they chemo will again prove to be effective. With much love

-Ryan

Hurricane, UT 2008

We lost touch for the last half of October, and it was mostly due to how much we have going on. My aunt and uncle (Debbie and Nick) own a vacation home in Hurricane, Ut. We have been wanting to get out of town to spend some time as family, Debbie and Nick were so kind to allow us to go and take advantage of their beutiful home. It is located in the perfect spot to allow access to both St. George and Zion's nation park. This time of year was just right, it wasn't too hot or too cold. One of the higlights of this vacation was hiking in Zion's. We chose to hike the river walk, and because of the time of year we had very few tourists to have to deal with. We also spent a fair amount of time just relaxing at the house. We rented several movies (always one of our favorite things to do on vacation). We were able to see The Incredible Hulk and Vantage Point. We both thought the new Hulk movie was pretty good. It was certainly much better than the waste of time that was released a couple of years ago. Our opinion of the movie Vantage point was that it was too violent, and it got boring having to watch the same scene multiple times. In St. George we took a tour of Brigham Young's winter home. I think Jen was the most impressed with the home, and more especially with the pioneer's version of a micro-wave oven, which was created by pouring hot water into a basin which sat under a dinner plate....which in effect kept the food warm. Jen has not stopped talking about how cool she thought it was for a week. Good times, we were able to hang out as a family and spend good valuable time together. When we were getting ready to leave we hesitated in leaving a heap of Noah's diapers in the garbage at the house...we finally concluded that it was best to throw our garbage away at the cheveron across the street. We had an audience of the workers on their smoke break. Why is it that smokers always hang out by dumsters :)

"This is the place" Halloween

Yesterday we took Noah to "This is the place" Utah state park. It was alot of fun. And it not only presented a good oppurtunity for us to enjoy the upcoming holiday, but we were also able to learn a little bit more about the early pioneers who settled Salt Lake City. They had booth's set up in different locations where the kids could do different crafts. None of which peaked Noah's interest. He was more interested in the candy (which the park was handing out to trick-or-treaters). They invited parents to bring their children dressed in costumes, which ended up being alot of fun. Noah initially had decided that he wanted to go dressed as a cowboy/pirate, but Jennifer with her never ending foresight thought it best to bring the Batman costume, for the "just in case" back up plan. As it turned out, we needed the back up plan. After walking through a couple of the old buildings and taking a train ride, we headed over to see the animals. Noah was able to take a pony ride, which lasted about 30 seconds. At least Jen got a couple of good pictures. We then let Noah run free with the dangerous baby goats and lambs (the horns actually were kind of scary). He was sure to correct a girl who looked to be about his same age, that the animal she was calling a goat, was in fact a sheep. He was right!!! He got a little nervous around the pigs but managed to pull off a smile for the camera.