Hello!

Yeah, it's definitely been a while since I've participated in this side of the blog world. I've checked out all your blogs, but haven't really put anything real out there myself! Well it's time for a little Peterson Update I suppose.

Things are really great for us right now. As many of you know, Mikey has suffered with kidney stones for years (literally...his first one was in 5th grade!). It's been super hard. Finding a doctor/solution has been a struggle. We knew (hoped) there must be a solution out there somewhere, but for so long no one really knew what to do. We even saw a really talented urologist in Salt Lake who, after a lot of examination and tests, finally basically said, "Well, when you're ready to have your kidney cut out, let me know!"

But, to make a long story short, there have been a couple things lately that have made a huge difference. The first one is that Mikey was referred to a pain specialist who performs spinal blocks to basically freeze the nerves in the area where you have chronic pain. Mikey has now had this procedure done a couple times and it's worked! In fact, in the past few months since he had his last block in December he has passed probably about 8 kidney stones without hardly any pain!

The second thing that has really made a difference is a solution that my sister Lynette found. She was researching online one night about possible things that could help Mikey and she happened across a center in Michigan that had some holistic remedies for him. So Mikey and I have spent quite a bit of time in Michigan over the past few months and now we have some solutions. It's so cool.

As a whole, life has always been great, often hard the past few years, but great. And I don't really want to say, "Phew, I'm glad I'm done with that trial," because who knows if it's really over. But it's a heck of a lot better than it has been! So, that's the update. Life is great.

Here are a couple pictures from the recent past. Mikey and I got to go to California over Spring Break to visit his brother, Rusty and his girls. I have to say it was pretty fun to be basking in the sun while it was snowing back home.

Also, make sure you check out Mikey's blog. He's getting back in the saddle, too!
http://mikeyandkarie.wordpress.com/

While at Disneyland, Mikey got to talk to Crush, the sea turtle from Finding Nemo,

who nicknamed him "Malibu Mike."

Other Southern California adventures: