Vacation

So our little family decided to take a road trip for our vacation. I had to force myself to clear my days off for vacation. I was supposed to take off this entire week, but that didn't happen. However, I did end up with only two appointments/visits. That was a good thing. My training last Friday had also been cancelled, so we were able to leave earlier than we had planned. So what follows are pictures and captions of what we did on our field trip. Holy cow, did I just type that? I meant vacation, not field trip. Geez, I need another vacation apparently.

The beauty of this entire vacation/roadtrip? Not having a planned agenda. It was so nice to just say, "hey, let's stop here," and not worry about being late for anything else.

First stop:
Fillmore - We stopped and got a free (the lady was so nice, we were so late and close to the closing time, and asked if we could just walk around really fast instead of getting an official tour, that she didn't charge us!) self-guided tour of the historical capital building of Utah. It was VERY interesting. There were SO SO many portraits of people on the wall. We asked who they were, and they were all people who had settled Fillmore. Amazing.

Kiernan was excited to get out of the car.

Our first hotel had some awesome quality artwork posted...(if you can't tell..it's a magazine page...)We stayed in St. George in the Cronoado Inn. It's...cheap and you can tell it's cheap. But we had a kitchenette, a playpen, extra pillows and everything, for HALF the price of the next place we stayed in. So worth it.

He was such a good kid for this entire trip. I seriously couldn't have asked for a better car kid.

We stopped at the Rockville cemetery in Rockville, Utah to take some pictures of Bryan's ancestor's graves.

Then we spent the rest of the day at Zion's National Park. Man...we're not going during shuttle season again, getting that stroller on and off was a pain. Otherwise, it was a beautiful place.

I think this may have been one of...three? tantrums Kiernan had for the entire trip. Yeah, I'm totally counting my blessings.

I just love how happy we both luck, despite the blurry pic

The hotel we stayed in that night was in Page, Az. It was *AWFUL* Travelodge is a place we'd never recommend again. They didn't have a playpen/crib for Kiernan, so we had to share the bed with him. As you can see, he takes up a lot of room.

The captioning didn't work on the tv, and they had no extra pillows, and etc. etc. etc. Fortunately, that was the worst part of our trip. Not bad if I say so myself.

The next day we stopped at the Glen Canyon Dam on our way out. It was cool, but it made me sad to see how much water has dropped at Lake Powell. I really miss Lake Powell.

We wanted to go to the Petrified Forest, but there was a SEVERE dust storm going on I40 and the road was blocked off for basically the entire day and night. So we turned around and went the other direction and went to the Grand Canyon that day instead. See, that's the beauty of having no set agenda. It was awesome!

The pictures REALLY do not show the beauty and the wonder of the canyon. Seriously, it was AMAAZING. Kiernan loved it too :)

See how tiny those people are? We were right on the rim of the grand canyon. (south rim if you're curious).

Kiernan and I got out to see some Hopi ruins at the grand canyon

The watchtower. I was SO disappointed to find out it was a modern day building (1930ish) and not built by the Native Americans. It was still cool though.

A stuffed mountain lion at the general store at the grand canyon. We were buying some much needed excedrin, the sign said that kids were welcome to touch, pet and climb on it. Thank heavens, because Kiernan was getting anxious to do something.

We stayed at the Ramada in Flagstaff that night, found a great deal on Priceline. No pictures for that though.

Next stop, random stop too, Walnut Canyon National Park.

The picture above makes it seem like "so what?" after the grand canyon. But if you look below, you'll see the cool ruins we saw there.

See the piled bricks and such? Yeah, they were living on the SIDE OF THE CLIFF. Amazing!

There were so many stairs (though not nearly as many for Iguazu Falls in Brazil), and the ranger lent Bryan a pack to use for Kiernan. It was a very wise thing to have. Behind them you can see the ruins up close, we're almost halfway down the cliff at this point.

See the black? That's from the smoke that the Native Americans had used...around I believe 1250.

I think this is our ONLY family picture :)

Then we moved onto the Petrified Forest. It was really neat. SOO many logs that were fallen, petrified and broken into pieces. They also had some places with petroglyphs. It was pretty neat.

This was a HUGE petrified trunk.

The Petroglyphs

Ruins at the Petrified Forest

We drove through Native American Reservations. It was amazing how spaced out everyone is! We stopped in Tuba City to try some chinese food (totally did not want to do it, but Bryan said to think of it as an adventure). We couldn't even take more than three bites of it. It was AWFUL. We went to McDonald's to get me some chicken nuggets to get rid of the taste...they were out :( It was very sad. However, the drive was beautiful and really made us both think about civilization, etc.

We then stayed the night again in St. George at the same Cronado Inn. Again, it was cheap, and SO much better than the Travelodge.

We headed over to Bryce Canyon National Park. I honestly didn't expect much, since it was such a small park compared to the other ones we had just been to. Much to my surprise, Bryce Canyon is BY FAR my favorite Place. It was SO beautiful!

Just a preview of what was to come.

How awesome is this? There's more!

I thought the white part looked like a bust of someone.

They called it the natural bridge, when really, it's an Arch.

Seriously, Amazing! Hard to believe it's water, ice and wind that creates all of this.

That was the end of our trip. We drove home that night, and got home around 11:00 PM. It was seriously such a good vacation. I think the key part was that neither one of us brought our laptops, and I did not bring ANY homework or work with me. I checked my e-mails once in awhile on Bryan's iphone, as did he, but...that was it. It was really just us three spending time together getting an eyeful of nature's beauties. It was awesome. I can't wait to do another roadtrip. We're thinking of doing one in July to go to Yellowstone and the Glacier National Park. We bought an annual national park pass for $80, If we hadn't we would've paid about $100 just for this trip, and more for any future trips into other national parks. So worth the money for us. AND it gives us an excuse to go visit more national parks! YAY!

Now it's back to life and reality. I was so not ready, but I do have to get back to it....my Final Comprehensive Presentation outline and printed materials for it are due on Tuesday. Sigh. Just two more months. Then I'm done with it ALL.

Just two more steps to go...

I finally got my score report from the Praxis II that I had to take. I definitely passed for the state of Utah requirements, so I checked the passing requirements of all the other states that require this particular test as well. I've met the passing requirements for them too. *whew* That means I definitely will not ever have to take my Praxis I or my Praxis II content specific test. However, many of the other states do require an additional test, but after looking at some of the practice questions on it, I really think it'd be easy to do, so no worries there. I'll only take it if we end up moving to a place that requires it.
So basically, if I can pass my comprehensive presentation on the 12th of June, and pass both my student teaching and my class this semester. I'm done. Certified. Degreed. Licensed. Everything. Just. Simply. Done.

I so cannot wait for August 4th. The official ending date of this semester and my graduate career.

Cochlear Implant - Long post

So for a very long time now, I have wanted a cochlear implant. However, I was told for years by professionals and professors that I probably wouldn't be a candidate because I did so well with my hearing aids. I was able to understand speech and get along pretty well with my hearing aids. (To be a cochlear implant candidate, you basically have to have a hearing loss that's bad enough you can't understand speech that well with hearing aids, and you have to be close to the bottom of the audiogram...see below).
I was born with MUCH more hearing than I have now (again see the picture below), and am now definitely in the severe/profound range that is preferred for a cochlear implant candidate.

Decibels (dB) (the side numbers) are how loud things are. Frequencies are the pitches. If you start at the left side, that's the low pitches, and move to the right, those are the high pitches. All the pictures on there give you an idea of what sounds are that loud, and what pitches are in that frequency. For example if my loss was about where the airplane was, I could hear the airplane without hearing aids if I were close to it, but not anything above that airplane. Anything above the lines in the picture, I could/can NOT hear.
Basically, if you have 0 dB hearing, you have perfect hearing. If you have 120 dB hearing, that means you're basically completely and utterly deaf.
Now to explain the lines I've drawn onto the picture. The darkest black line is what I had when I was born (mind you, it's an approximate, not exactly what I had). This is without my hearing aids. As you can see it's pretty high up there, and having hearing aids would've brought that line up.
I've done the other lines as representations of different times in my life. The one right below the black line is from when I was about in middle school, right below that one was right after high school, and the final one is after having Kiernan (or basically what I am right now). As you can see...I've gotten worse over time. Wearing hearing aids now will only bring me up to somewhere in between the second and third line (basically the middle). That doesn't even really get me up to being able to hear speech sounds perfectly.
I have, over time, been able to tell a difference in my hearing losses over time. I can tell I'm missing more information, I rely much more on lip reading and cueing than ever, and require lots of repeating. This was made evident in the hearing test I did on Tuesday.
First he did the pure tone test (basically beeps of the different pitches, no speech sounds). The right ear alone, and the left ear alone. Together, my hearing loss is at about the last line that I drew on the audiogram.
Then he did a word test where he gave me five words over and over, and went quieter over time, first my right, then my left then both. I honestly don't remember how quiet he got before I couldn't hear him anymore (that is, with my hearing aids in). I believe it was around 60ish dB.
Third, he did a sentence test. I had NO idea what these sentences were going to be. I wore my hearing aids for them. The volume was presented at normal speaking volume, with the speaker in front of me about the same distance I would be from a person talking to me. First we did the right ear with the hearing aid, then the left ear with the hearing aid and then both ears with the hearing aids. The right ear, I got 22% correct. The left ear I got 12% correct. With both ears, I got 57% correct. This showed that I really utilize both ears to try to understand what I'm hearing. The typical cutoff point for comprehension of sentences for candidates is anything below 60% correct. I was just under it, but the audiologist said he would've recommended me anyway because of the scores I got on my word level, and because my hearing loss is progressive, and especially drops after having a child. I really have to wonder how my audiologist didn't bust up laughing during the sentences part (i had to repeat them back), because man on man, I knew I got a lot of them wrong when I was thinking the guy said "strawberry cheese squee." He held a straight face the entire time. I was very very impressed, especially since I laughed after a few sentences.
The next task was to identify words with the same speaker from the sentences. Same volume, same rate of speech, etc. Right ear, left ear, both ears with hearing aids. For the right ear, I got 10% correct, for the left ear, I got 2% correct and for both ears, I got 10% correct. This is very consistent with the sentence portion, as with sentences I have a better chance of "guessing" correctly because there are more words to help me make sense of a sentence...like I know there is no way strawberry cheese squee. was a sentence. However, He washed the dishes was definitely a sentence. However, with words, I have no way of using other words to help me guess it. These were random spontaneous words. It was extremely difficult. There were 50 words each time, so I was guessing on 150 words total. It was exhausting.
Finally, the final task was to see how much I depend on lipreading and how much I depend on my hearing. This was not to determine my candidacy for a cochlear implant, rather it was to do a comparison of before and after if I do get a cochlear implant (or two). The audiologist sat down in front of me, I had both aids in, he said ten sentences, and I had to repeat them back. I was able to use my hearing aids and lipread him. Then I had to take my hearing aids out, and he then said ten sentences (with is voice so that he wasn't doing any unnatural movements with his mouth), and since I didn't have my hearing aids in, I had to rely completely on lipreading. I got 100% with the hearing aids in, and 77% with the hearing aids out. This means I do lipread...quite well, but definitely do use my hearing to get information.
All in all...the entire testing took just over an hour. It was *exhausting*.
After all the testing, the audiologist told me that I was actually a candidate for both ears to be implanted, and in his own roundabout way, suggested I do a bilateral cochlear implants. For those who aren't familiar with cochlear implants, typically, people are only implanted on one side. So this was very surprising information for me. But he did bring up some good points: 1 - I'm gonna lose all my hearing anyway, period. No doubt about it, especially after I have another kid. 2 - it's cheaper to do them at the same time, less hospital bills (that is, if the insurance will preauthorize doing two cochlear implants and not just one) since doing them separately would cost more.
Admittedly, people who have bilateral implants (they also tend to implant at different times, instead of at the same time) get 80% of their functioning from the first implant, and only 20% from the second implant. But then again....they all implant at different times, not at the same time. SO I can't help but wonder if doing them at the same time, and training both sides at the same time would make them equal? I need to do some research on that.
He then showed ups the three different companies for cochlear implants, and gave very fair and unbiased information. The three companies are advanced bionics, cochlear and med-el. I'm leaning towards cochlear right now.
As for whether I'll get two or one, I'm not even thinking about choosing one or two until I find out if it's even an option through insurance. Fortunately, our insurance right now is in the open enrollment period. So we're trying to get real information from the insurances right now to see if we need to switch plans that would give better coverage for the cochlear implant(s). If there is a way to do two cochlear implants, then I'll start considering it. Right now, it's a lean towards yes for both, but man it really freaks me out.
After we left, on our way home, we called the secretary of the other doctor that I have to see for a consultation. She's already sent a package and appointment times for an MRI to check on the structure of my ear to make sure it's good for getting a cochlear implant, and for a consultation with the cochlear implant surgeon to go over all the information. It's on June 22nd.
SO there....there's the longest blog post every, and the start of this possible journey. Please feel free to ask any questions, I promise I won't take offense and understand why would not be happy with me getting an implant, and why some would be ecstatic. I also understand if you could care less :)

Oh yeah...basically getting a cochlear implant would mean I would be at this level, just you can understand why I would even consider having my head cut into, and my skull being drilled into it. And if you want more information on how cochlear implants work, there's a link to a fantastic video at the bottom of this post.
Cochlear Implant Hearing Level (approximately in between the two thick black lines):


And the link to the cochlear implant video: