Bears, Birthdays, and Rashes

     I can tell that June is going to be a crazy month for us for the rest of our lives.  So much happens during this month; Eric, Krysta, Krissy, Kalli, and I celebrate our birthdays, and Krissy/Merek and Mom/Dad celebrate their anniversaries.  Eric has had a rough month, but I got a new job!  I now work at Eborn Books in Salt Lake.  I can take Trax there and back home, so it makes it very nice car/gas wise.  I am so excited to be working and making some money, and Eric is too, although I come home smelling strongly of the coffee shop next door. 

     BTW, we got a new calling.  Are you ready? ...Scout Den Leaders. Yep, you read right.  Here was my thought process when we were extended the calling:  What did he say? Scout Den what the what...? For the Bears? What does that mean? Oh, they are the nine year old boys. Do we even have boys that old in our student married stake? (The answer is no. Our stake combined with another stake just to get enough boys.) I... Just keep smiling, Carly, maybe this is a dream. It wasn't. I have since come to accept that it was real and I will be working with the Bear Scouts on Wednesday evenings. We will let you know how that goes the next couple of weeks.  

     Eric and I had nice birthdays.  He got a new charger for his camera battery (so he would stop borrowing Krissy and Merek's), some money from his parents and grandparents, and two new suits (free, of course!).

First one is gray.

Such a sexy, serious man!  The next suit he will be modeling is blue with white pinstripes.

 I got an owl pot filled with adorable tiny succulents and a future pedicure from Mom/Dad, a tiny book necklace and a navy blue and white stripped maxi skirt from Krissy/Merek, and some money from my Grandpa and Grandma King.  Our families are so wonderful to us!  Thanks for everything!

(I am the one on the right in case you are confused.  I know Kalli and I look so similar.)

(Now I am the one on the left.)

(My new maxi skirt and necklace I wore on my birthday!)

     The time has come to relate the horrific tragedies that have befallen my beloved husband, Eric.  Be ye warned, it gets pretty gruesome.

     He went on a run at the beginning of the month and somehow came home with a "mosquito bite."  So he did nothing and just kept scratching.  Soon, however, it began to spread and spread.  A week and a half later his whole body, including his face, arms, legs, and torso were covered in what we now realized was a Poison Ivy rash! (or oak or sumac, whatever)

It was so bad he couldn't sleep, couldn't go to work, and couldn't function properly. We hadn't known that by taking hot showers and by scratching and not washing his hands afterward would make the rash spread like wildfire!  When Eric started scratching through his skin and bleeding, ripping away layer upon layer of his delicate skin, I decided it was serous enough that we needed help!  Plus, I couldn't sleep either with him being half-crazed, scratching incessantly and super grumpy from lack of sleep.

     I forced him to go to the doctor where they gave him a kind of steroid which would force his immune system to stop producing the itchy feeling and make the poison ivy rash go away.  And it worked!  He began to get better and his rash slowly went away...until he started tapering off the steroids.  It came back on his arms a few days ago and we had to go back to the doctor.  They gave us another dose of the steroids and told us that if the rash comes back again when he tapers off them we need to have a dermatologist biopsy his skin because it might not be Poison Ivy!  Needless to say we really hope it goes away for good this time!