Happy Friday! I’m so excited to introduce you to my baby sister, Kerri. She was married 3 years ago (some posts on that here and here) and just moved Florida. This girl is amazing: she’s a registered dietician, super smart, she has crazy good sense of style (always looks amazing!), and she’s crafty too. I’m hoping some of her fashion sense will wear off on me one day. We all love her because she is a ton of fun and has a heart of gold.

Need to catch up?

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

All right, I’ve spent all morning trying to write this post. I’m a little paralyzed here because I don’t know how you want to know about all of this thyroid business. It is a part of my blog story though because 2008, they year I began my blog, was just a crazy year for our family. I read back on my family blog and can’t believe all that happened.

Here we go:

I chose a family doctor after doing some research online, and found one that actually emphasized thyroid issues. He had me do some blood work, which showed I was hyper-thyroid, meaning my thyroid was making too much thyroid hormone, and most likely this was a hyperfunctioning nodule on my thyroid. This explained some of the symptoms I had felt in the last couple of months: racing heart that would take a long time to come back down after exercise, fatigue, yet it was hard to rest, always feeling hot, just not feeling myself, etc. He sent me to get an ultrasound of my neck to get a feeling of what this nodule (growth) was on my neck.

I got the ultrasound, and found out it was a solid mass about 1 cubic inch around. The radiologist said that he'd get it taken out and not mess with it. Dr. Robinson felt the same. Nodules are actually very common on thyroids, 95% are benign, and most everyone will get some at some point or another in their life and never have to do anything about them. But, they were worried if this grew, it could interfere with my breathing or swallowing and felt it was just best to get it out and rule out cancer.

(Okay, I really have to start condensing this part) Basically I would have surgery, my surgeon would take out the right half of my thyroid where the nodule was, my left side would still be able to produce enough thyroid hormone for my body. I had the surgery, it went well.

Hello, friends! We are renting a duplex while we will be building. It is half the size of our previous house, but it’s going to be home for the next 7-8 months, so we’re working with what we’ve got. Here is our autumn front porch:

We adore books in this house and have quite the collection after collecting for more than 15 years. We’ve shared our favorite Christmas books here, but I asked my kids to pick out their top 10 favorite picture books for a little presentation I was giving at my church women’s group. It was so fun and quite revealing to see the ones that they picked together. I don’t know if I would have picked them correctly on my own. I am going to share the links on Amazon, but of course you can find them at thrift stores, ebay, library sales, your mother’s basement, you know.

Hello! Are you sick of hearing from me every day yet? We are halfway through our every day September! Okay, I admit I’m scrambling some days when I don’t plan ahead, but it’s been good! I like the creative juices flowing again..

Speaking of which, I wanted a fall wreath for our door on our rental, but didn’t want to spend a lot. Here is what I came up with: