Win's Eye Balls Get Scraped

So I watched Win have his eye ball scraped off this week.
He went in on Monday for the PKU procedure (similar to LASIK laser eye surgery but instead of cutting a flap of your cornea off, lasering a new eye shape and then putting the flap back in place they just plain scrape off the flap, laser the eye and then let your body regrow the flap over the following week). He didn't qualify for LASIK because of stigmatisms in both eyes, but the results are the same, just a tougher recovery.
We went into the waiting room and while reading magazines a woman came around offering freshly baked cookies- a nice touch. Then she came around again. and then again. I was starting to get shaky on sugar and anxiety so I had to turn down the wonderful things but Win had no such problems, he was eating warm cookies to the minute he went into surgery. He didn't seem to share my nervousness over the coming procedure at all. Mind you it might have been the Valium kicking in. I was a wreck and so when they led him into the operating room and I was able to sit right in front of a large glass window and watch the procedure with a TV screen showing his eye ball magnified I was not sure that I had the stomach.
It only went for 5 minutes or so all up, and probably only 2 minutes for each eye, the laser part was a non event entirely, although Win did say that he could smell his own burning eye ball flesh.
I think the worst part was seeing the metal eye clamps and the sticky tape being ripped off his eyelashes at the end (they use tape to hold the eyelashes out of the way).
Win got up and walked out of there a moment later and he said that he could see better than when he used to where glasses. That was a good sign!
His vision was supposed to get worse on day 2 as the cells started to heal over the eye. Win was pretty dopey from the Valium and I drove him home to sleep for the rest of the day.
I then went to the Real Estate Agency to pick up the keys to our new house. The secretary said "Oh no, they have already been picked up by your family".
Well, I tell you, the family is efficient here! So I got to our new house and there was Ida Mae and Crystal with all my kids stocking the pantry and bathrooms with hand soap, toilet paper, paper plates and cups and food. Then they got to work cleaning all the cupboards, fridge and every where else that needed cleaning.
They are so quick to help out, even when they have a million things going on in their own family.

That evening Charlotte and Toby rang to say that they could help move the couches that we had stored at Ida Mae's house. It took a lot of heavy lifting and we discovered that the sectional sofa we had bought would not fit through the basement stair doorway (after we had already carted one section down and had the second piece perched on the stair rail!). It was an enormous effort to get the over sized piece back up the stairs once we worked out that it would not fit, and there was not a word of complaint from any of them!! Fortunately Costco has a good returns policy on things!

The next day Win had another appointment for his eyes and so Crystal and Ida Mae took care of the kids and school pick ups while we drove the 1 hr trip to Sandy for Win's eyes.
They told Win that he was healing unusually fast (quite the talent.... that's why I married him!) and all was going great. His eye sight was at 20/25 which is the legal requirement for driving. We then spent the afternoon buying mattresses and making trips back to the new house.
Win has to take drops every few hours in his eyes and he wears sunglasses most of the day because he has light sensitivity. At night he wears these really funny plastic eye goggle/eye patches that have to be taped to his face. Its like looking at Louey the Fly because they have ventilation holes. The are to stop him from rubbing his eyes in the night and dislodging some freshly grown eye ball I suppose.

Today we spent the day painting. Well, I painted while Win tried to keep the kids out of the paint. The house had a fairly neutral colour scheme; oatmeal coloured carpet, white tiles,oatmeal white walls and one Utah brown feature wall in the main living room. I decided that I really wanted to add a little colour before we moved all the furniture in.
We are planning to complete the look soon with timber floors in the living area and dining room, I would like to take up the tiled area too but it would be a time consuming task that may be above my skill level.
I will post photos as soon as I can. I bought seven sample pots of paint before I settled on the right colour. Sample pots are the only way to paint, it is amazing how much variation there is when the paint goes on the wall. The sample colour swatches all looked nearly identical on the card but they were completely different on a large area.

While we have been working at the new house the neighbours dropped by to meet us. One one side we have a lovely older couple who work in the temple and helped us work out many of the electrical things in the house like the garage door opener and the thermostat... there house is almost the same as ours so they know the answer to most things we ask!
The neighbours on the other side are a lovely family about our age who moved in 6months ago. They have 3 small kids and they bought valentines day cookies to welcome us to the neighbourhood.
We are really excited about the neighbourhood after meeting them.

Embrace The Moose

In the last two weeks we have bought and closed on a house... although we are not in it yet as the previous owners wanted another week to move out.
Hopefully we will be in there tomorrow.
We also caught up with Holly on Monday. Holly (for those who don't know her, is married to Win's cousin, Chad and they live in Canberrra). She was here for her brother's wedding and stayed in a lovely hotel in downtown Salt Lake City.
We decided that we would drive up to Park City to do some outlet shopping and see some real snow for Holly's benefit. Well, we got what we wished for....
On the drive to SLC we saw signs warning that there was a snow storm expected at 3pm. The sky was blue and it was a lovely warm day in the car so it didn't seem too likely that this "storm" was really going to be anything much.
We picked up Holly, with me driving (Win had a LASIK eye appointment the next day so he couldn't wear contacts for the week preceding). Well, my driving didn't last long because I couldn't work out which Freeway the exit to take and we ended up halfway to Provo before Win decided to take the wheel.
Holly was kind enough to bring a great bag of Australian goodies for us to eat... including crunchies, shapes, cadbury chocolate, vegiemite and weetbix- we were pretty excited but the kids devoured a box of shapes before we left the hotel car park.
The outlet shops looked just as I remembered as a teenager and there were all the good kids clothing name brands to spend far too much money on.
By the time we were done it was around 6pm, dark and snowing heavily.
I started to wonder if we would be snowed in this side of the canyon but we were able to drive back to Salt Lake very slowly, with Win driving (who couldn't see very far ahead due to a lack of contacts) and the ABS breaks periodically shuddering as they tried to find a grip on the icy roads.
I think we may have turned Holly off snow after that....
Back at Holly's hotel we ordered in and talked and laughed until hotel security called to say that there had been "complaints" and that this was her first and final warning before she would be asked to leave the hotel. We made a hasty exit after that, not realising that our giggling had been so loud.
The next day Win had his eye appointment and booked in to have the corrective eye surgery for Monday 14th Feb (tomorrow). The appointment took hours and they had to dilate his pupils to saucers to do the tests. He is not eligible for the normal LASIK eye surgery where the recovery is almost instant because of his eyes, instead he will have the PKU surgery where they cut the cornea flap and then you regrow it. The recovery is more painful but the results should be the same.
The drive home was an hour long and he was on his own with huge dilated pupils which made the light very painful- like staring straight into the sun. He came home a bit traumatised from the drive, if I had realised that they would be doing that I would have gone with him to drive.
So his surgery is booked for the same day that we move into our new house and Win will not be able to lift or move anything in the week following. Should make moving FUN!
The rest of the week was spent furniture shopping, which has been more challenging than we expected. One thing that surprised us was that the prices are no cheaper here than at home.
In fact, I would say they are more expensive.
Now anyone that knows me knows that bargain hunting is a sport in my mind, but I have really struggled to find what I want at a reasonable price.
The quality is kind of Le Cornu in comparison but with a higher price tag.
The other thing that is the difference in style. Contemporary design, or European design is not big here in general. There is a big range in the 'mountain log cabin' style with moose trims on the accent pillows. Holly's advice to me was: "Embrace the moose" which has become my motto for the week.
So in an effort to embrace the moose Win and I finally settled on a few major pieces of furniture.
I wanted to go with white traditional pieces accented with greens and blues in contrast to the black and red tones that we had in our last house.
White furniture is not as easy to come by as I expected here, and so we did settle on a black dining table because there weren't a lot of options in the style that we wanted.
The other large item was a TV. It was hard not to stare longingly at the 65 inch, 3D capable TV on sale at RC Willey, especially when the salesman said "and its the last one before we are sold out at this price". We even went as far as putting it on hold, but then we came to our senses and realised that we didn't need to spend that much on a TV.
The new 3D TVs have incredible picture quality when they are viewed in 2D, even if you never use the 3D feature they are by far the best TVs available.
When we were shopping at Walmart and Win had to buy some eye drops for his surgery at the pharmacy. Without insurance the 3 small bottles cost $179. fortunately he asked if there were any generic brands available. They came back with a new total of $117- lucky he asked!
A few minutes later we were going through the check out when George fell straight out of the trolley; backwards and head first onto the concrete floor. He landed straight on the top of his head with no arms to break his fall.
Somehow walmart got wind of the incident and sent their people to check things out. The first worker called the manager over who quickly gave us ice packs for swelling. He picked out a tube of M&M's for George to munch on and then he handed out candy to all the other kids while he took down our contact details and names.
So off we went on our way, with George munching happily on M&M's unaware that Walmart was worrying about potential lawsuits.

Chelsea started school this week. She has an exceptionally nice teacher and the kids are all very welcoming. The school is only a couple years old so all the facilities are new and high tech.
She is in 'kindergarten' which is more like reception at home and she only goes for 3 hours in the afternoon... much to the delight of Chelsea.
The first day was "100th day" for the kindergarten kids and so they got to count out 100 lollies/cereal snacks and celebrate the momentous occasion. Of course for Chelsea it was "1st" day but that didn't seem to matter.
Americans sure know how to celebrate events. Since being here we have experienced Super Bowl weekend, Valentines Day and Scout Sunday all relatively unfamiliar celebrations but of great importance here. The shops sell appropriate themed food, the aisles are strewn with the colours and every thing goes on sale. Next up: Presidents Day. As long as our TV goes on sale, I say "bring on presidents day".
Also the sales AFTER the holiday are good... I plan to pick up some cheap valentines day themed pillows for the girl's beds when they are 80% off tomorrow!

The other lovely surprise since being here is that George has taken to Great Grandma Scott with particular fondness. He hovers around her like a bee to honey. He kisses her goodbye and shows her all the toys that are of interest. Because she is restricted to her chair most of the time the other kids tend to go off and play without much interaction but George really likes his Great Grandma and he even took off out of the car when we were going home to say a final goodbye to her. I know that Win had a special relationship with her when he was the same age, and George is- in every way- a "mini- me" of Win!

The weather seems to be warming up here and Spring is around the corner. We can't believe that we have been here 2 months now... and that Win's family have been so wonderful to us.
The days are clear and a little bit warmer, with 12C not being uncommon- as opposed to 0C.
We also witnessed two teenage boys sunbaking on a roof yesterday. They waved as we gawked. There was snow still piled in their front yard, but there they were, shirtless and soaking up the sun.
We will post some photos of the new house as soon as we have moved in!

You can make Pavlova in High Altitude

First up I want to say how pleased I was to hear that Cyclone Yasi missed Cairns the way that it did... we felt a lot of worry during the morning that it was happening there. Glad that Sarah and Daniel were able to make a cool cubby in their laundry though. You can count that as a family camping experience.

We had a very belated Australia day celebration, last night, which was as good as any a meal I could have hoped for.
We found an AUSTRALIAN leg of lamb for the occasion at COSTCO (more on the wonders of Costco soon)....
So we invited Josh and Josie Smith +children to our celebration and of course Crystal and family too. We scoured the shops for mint jelly and found some "Mint Apple Jelly" which had to do. I was planning to make mint sauce from scratch but there was no decent mint to be had.
The mint apple jelly was in the jams and spread section, so I was pretty sceptical that it would be the right flavour but it turned out to be quite good.
The Lamb was about $4.50 a pound for a boneless leg of lamb, which I think is around $9.90/kg- I was pleasantly surprised by this given that it was Australian Lamb and that it was a nice boneless cut.
We had to search for pumpkin or 'squash' as they call it. We found butternut pumpkin and also a round small orange pumpkin that was pretty similar to Jap in taste.
Plus we had roast spuds and sweet potato and carrots. We did also do a pork roast just because of the numbers, and just in case the lamb was horrible.

The best part though was the Pavlovas. I had heard that Pavlovas would not work here in the high altitude, the air collapses out of the egg whites and turns it flat in the oven.
So I did some research and decided to try making two different pavlovas- One made in the traditional way, and the other using chef's technique called "Italian meringue". Fortunately I had some idea about how to make Italian meringue because just before we left Australia my friend Kathy Vidulich made some of this meringue in a cooking day at my house.
So the traditional kind turned out with a slightly different texture. It looked like the eggs had melted a little and created that kind of yellow, bumpy,crystallised texture. It did not hold its 'peaks' once cooked but looked a bit more like a round cake shape.
The Italian meringue looked normal with white peaks and a cook consistency. It did bleed a little bit of the sugar syrup out the bottom of the pavlova and it was not quite as high as one at home, maybe a cm or two lower than it could have been but it looked pretty normal in the end.
Once they were topped with goodness (fruit and cream... no passion fruit unfortunately!) they were as good as any pavlova I had eaten.... but perhaps that was because they tasted like home :)

Crystal wants to learn how to make them so I will be making another one for FHE tomorrow night. This time I will try a slightly different technique with the Italian Meringue to see if it will work. Basically Italian Meringue is just were you whip the egg whites like normal, then add some cream of tartar and a pinch of salt. Then while that's mixing you put sugar and water in a saucepan and boil it for 5 or so minutes then you pour it into the egg whites as they are mixing. The hot sugar syrup cooks the egg whites with the heat so that it stabilises the meringue before you cook it.
Chefs use this technique so they can refrigerate the meringue or so it is less likely to collapse in other cooking but it works well for high altitude. I actually found it by reading a blog in Sweden!

So back to Costco... our favourite food shop, we went there for lunch 3 days in a row. You can fill up on all the samples that they hand out. On any given day there will be about 15-20 different stalls with products to sample- and these aren't piddly sample either. We have eaten steak, wieners, meatballs, cakes, pizza, chips, burritos, chocolate covered berries, fruit, specialty breads, muesli bars- and that's just in one day. The samples are actually a great idea because we would not have known what brands and products were worth trying if we hadn't sampled half the store :)

Then if you have any room left you get to the check outs and they have a cafeteria with yum food for $1. They do this hand dipped ice cream, like a magnum but twice the size and twice as good because they dip it in chocolate as you wait then they dip it in big chunky roast almonds.... really this is the most amazing ice cream for $1.50 imaginable. Its enough for three people.
We do shop at Costco occasionally too... but mostly we browse the 60 inch LED LCD tv aisle.

We went to Ikea but there prices were the same as back home. IKEA you are dead to me. Costco has won over our stomachs.

We went to the Olive Garden on Thursday and it was as good as I remembered. Do you all remember the unlimited bread sticks and salad??? They sent a ton of the bread and salad home with us in the doggy bag that had half our dinner it it.
They have this Chicken Ravioli with Gorgonzola cheese and pear.... it was so yummy I have since googled the recipe... I can't wait to be in a kitchen where I can try making it.
We have also found a good bread bakery where they make really good grainy (non sweetened) bread- on the down side it is $5 a loaf.... so we then went hunting for an alternative at Costco. for $2 we found a pretty good substitute that is not too sweet.

So today is the super bowl and many a church family is having a big shin dig to celebrate. Chelsea in fact was hijacked by a family down the street to celebrate with them.
We went into the local bank branch to put my name on the account. Well we were greeted with a table full of super bowl party food..... cupcakes topped with footballs, bags of chips, popcorn, cookies etc. The kids were invited to eat while we worked out the account details. It took quite a while because we were opening accounts for the kids as well. So for half an hour the kids filled up on food and then they came out with free piggy banks for the kids and sent us off with colouring in books and crayons. It was the craziest bank experience I have ever seen. When Win came back from opening the account originally he was given two stuffed ponys for the girls and they bought out drinks and cookies.
I think that we will be finding more excuses to do our banking in person :)

Chelsea starts school this week, so we will be busy making Valentines Day cards for all the class mates.... apparently a requirement here. She has been pretty happy about the extended school holidays but it will be good for her to meet some kids in the new neighbourhood... as well as start on the path to learning how to speak 'American'. She has converted over to the words pretty quickly. I got a note with "I love you MOM" the other day and she asks for "Ketchup" with her food.
Isabelle prefers to stick with her aussie words and tells Chelsea that she is calling it the wrong thing... however she does say "Oh Maaaan" like Cyrstal does... a lot.
George has taken to the food... today he got very excited about his "sloppy Joe" for lunch, he even got naked for the occasion so as not to cover himself in the sloppy stuff.... :P
George also embarrassed us last Sunday, in the middle of passing the Sacrament (when everyone was quiet) by calling out "I need a hair cut" the more we tried to silence him the louder he got to the point where he was standing on his chair calling out "I NEED A HAIRCUT". he probably did need a haircut but I have not idea why he chose sacrament meeting to voice it.
He then followed it up with "I want some banana lollies". ... I am surprised he remember those from Australia.

Isaiah is still our plodder, he spends a lot of time working on art projects of one sort or another. He discovered cutting and sticky taping and has been making endless "Kaleidoscopes". He snuck into Tim's office and drew a really beautiful picture of the family with rainbows and background on one of Tim's business documents. Tim said it was the nicest work document he'd ever had.

Well, we are going to be hanging out with Holly soon and going to Park City. Can't wait, she has also bought over some Australian food supplies which will be very appreciated.