Thanksgiving Break 2023

Hey so mental health update. I was feeling in a funk while I wrote the last post two weeks ago. I was able to rally a bit and have a good Thanksgiving. But I fell back into a slump the next week. I spent most of Yesterday (Friday December 1st) on the verge of a panic attack.

I've decided to self diagnose myself with seasonal depression. I'm hoping that putting up our tree later today will help with that.

In the meantime I finally feel like writing. It's early Saturday morning and everyone is still sleeping. The house is SILENT. And I feel like looking at my computer again. Which is kind of a big deal. One reason this blog is so late is because I haven't wanted to look at a computer screen. I've been doing lots of tedious billing projects and they have made me kind of hate sitting at a computer for long periods of time. 

And you know what, I feel like talking about those projects. So we are going to start this post off with a LONG discussion about what I do for work. I know you came here for Thanksgiving content, but this is my blog and billing kind of dominated the last two weeks so you get to hear a lot about billing.   

I had a big billing project for Aspen Grove. I was able to work on it for 3 hours on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but even with that much time put into it I still wasn't done. I didn't have time to work on it on Monday (more on that later). On Tuesday I went into work around 7:00 and spent another two hours on the project. I got it all done. But was REALLY sick of that project by the end. 

As if that wasn't bad enough I also had a big billing project for Castle Therapy. When I offered to help Ivan with his billing I assumed I knew how to do everything. I was so wrong. I had no clue how complicated Medicaid billing really was. Aspen Grove does behavioral health therapy. In Idaho a company called Optum handles all the behavioral health claims for clients with Medicaid. I've loved working with Optum and have never really understood why everyone complains about billing Medicaid clients. 

Then I started helping with Castle Therapy's billing. It's an Occupational Therapy clinic and so the Medicaid claims go through a company called Gainwell.  Now I know what all the complains are about. Gainwell is the WORST. Their system is completely different than any other insurance company and what's even worse is that I can never get anyone at the company to help me with any questions I have. I'll call about a claim like I normally do and they'll be like, "Oh we can't talk about that over the phone. It's for patient confidentiality."  I'm like, "What the heck, EVERY OTHER insurance company talks to me over the phone." I really think they just don't want to put resources into training their phone staff. 

They always direct me to their secure messaging feature on the website. Which would be cool IF IT WORKED. But for some reason it's completely broken for me. I can't send or receive messages.  

So when I started helping Ivan we ended up with a huge backlog of Medicaid claims. We finally figured out how to get those paid. But then I ran into a problem with the secondary Medicaid claims. These are for people who have insurance through a company like Pacific Source or Blue Cross of Idaho, and who are also covered by Medicaid. We run their claims through the primary insurance and then send them to Medicaid as Secondary insurance. 

Under normal circumstances Secondary billing is a little complicated and a little tedious. But its doable. But Gainwell isn't normal. 

Every Secondary claim I submitted was denied. I found out that I needed to attach a PDF of the Explanation of Benefits for the primary claim. NOBODY else requires that. So I went to all the work to get images of the EOB's and I figured out how to attach them. It took me hours. And the claims still were denied. 

This was super frustrating. 

Fortunately Ivan is on good terms with another OT place in town. I'd talked to their billing manager over the phone and she'd helped me with some things. But I still couldn't get a claim to pay. I suspected that I was just missing one thing. I asked her if I could come watch her submit a secondary claim. That way I could see what I was missing. 

So that's what I did that first Monday. I went to work at Aspen early while the kids were sleeping in and then at 9:00 I went to Omni Kids to watch Rebecca do some billing. 

AND I SAW WHAT I WAS MISSING!  

She clicked onto a screen on the Gainwell website I'd never seen before. She showed me some stuff and I had a hunch about what I needed to do. I came home and submitted three test claims. I got onto that screen and added some more info.

And then the claims said that they would pay. PAY!!!!!!! It was amazing. 

But now I had a new problem. I had a huge backlog of secondary claims that I wanted to get paid for Ivan ASAP. And that meant I had to sit down and do the tedious work of submitting secondary claims, attaching the EOB, and adding info on the Gainwell site. 

And the only time to do it was Tuesday. When I'd already fried my brain doing the big billing project for Aspen Grove. 

I put it off for a while on Tuesday, but I knew I was just making myself miserable by procrastinating. At 4:30 I locked myself in my room and went to work, I decided to do all the "low hanging fruit."  Which meant all the claims that I already had PDFs of the EOBs. I could track down other EOBs later.

It took me two hours. At the end of it I was happy to see that the claims had moved into the Pay status. Oh that felt good. This has stumped me for months and has made me feel like an idiot for over promising my skills to Ivan. It was really nice to have finally solved this problem. 

I did another round of secondary billing this Wednesday. It was just as tedious and complicated as the first round. But I'm happy that the backlog is starting to shift. I still have a lot of work to do to get all the claims submitted and paid. But at least I know how to do it now. 

Anyway, that's all a really long way of saying that I did a lot of work on my computer and I got really sick of looking at it. So I haven't wanted to write lately.  

But I do feel like writing now. So let's recap the week of Thanksgiving. Starting with Sunday when Brandon made this amazing pie. 

I saw the recipe for a raspberry pie with a buckwheat crust and a strussle made from buckwheat groats and hazel nuts in the Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. I was like, "Brandon, you should make this with my raspberries."  He liked how it looked, but when I started reading the ingredients we were both like, "Oh this is complicated. Never mind." I'd never heard of buckwheat groats or the spice cardamon. And where were we supposed to find hazelnuts?

I thought that was the end of this pie and that Brandon would just make me a regular berry pie. But when he went to Winco to buy ingredients for his mincemeat pie he tracked down everything for the berry pie. And on Sunday he made it!

It was complicated. He literally had to grind the groats into flour with our wheat grinder. And this was the type of pie recipe that has you cook the crust first. Brandon doesn't really like those type of recipes. But he did it and it was amazing. 

I think I took this picture to commemorate the arrival of the leaves. Our next door neighbors have a big sycamore tree. Every year the leaves fall off the tree and blow into our yard. Through some crazy physics the leaves accumulate in a big pile in our driveway. We'll have a completely clear driveway and then suddenly have a giant pile of leaves in it. It happens every year and I'm always like, "Oh the leaves are back."

Charlotte had been hard at work on a little lego cottage. 

There's a fireplace inside. 

And a cute little kitchen. 

Here it is up close.

The kids didn't have school all week. I love that they get the whole week of Thanksgiving off. It's one of the reasons I don't complain much about school starting halfway through August. Last year I tried to have something planned for each day of the break. But this year I was so deep in Billing Hell that I didn't have time for things like that. I just let the kids watch as much TV as they wanted. And everyone was fine with that. 

In the afternoon I did get a puzzle out and worked on it with Charlotte and Lydia. 

I had Bible Study that night so I was gone when they finished it.  They also did two more puzzles on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Brandon spent a lot of time making rolls. 

He's perfected the recipe. 

These looked AMAZING.

We've already talked a lot about what I spent most of Tuesday doing. Here's the sign I put up on my door when I was working on the Secondary billing. 

I also went grocery shopping on Tuesday afternoon before I sat down to do that billing. I invited Veronica along and then remembered that she is in desperate need of new pants. I never bought her new pants at the beginning of the school year because her school is always really hot and so I knew she'd just wear shorts until mid October. When the weather did get colder she had enough pants to make it work, but recently she'd got holes in a few pairs and a few others were getting too small. 

So I told her, "let's go to DI and get you some new pants before we go grocery shopping."  She was in her pajamas so I told her to go get dressed. She came out wearing a pair of shorts. She was like, "Mom, I only have like three pairs of pants and they are all dirty."  So yeah, it was definitely time to go buy more pants. 

We went to the ladies section of DI and found lots and lots of small leggings. We had something like 18 for her to try on. She tried on 12 and liked them all so I told her she didn't need to try on the others. From those twelve I had her pick out her favorite 8. She was so excited to have new pants.

Then we went to Winco. When we walked in there was a sign on the door saying that half the store was temporarily closed. A worker told us that the power was out so they'd shut down the freezer sections of the store to keep the cold air in the freezers. I was like, "do the cash registers still take cards?" He said yes so we went in and did our shopping. 

It was such a weird trip. We were only there for a few things and so we were able to get most of the things on the list. But we couldn't get things like milk or cheese. I ended up going to Smiths on the way home to get those things. 

Back at home everyone helped me put everything away. But even that was weird. I'd been shopping for so many different things. I had things for Thanksgiving at Brandon's parents. Snacks for the rest of the time at their house. Food for a meal at my sister Emily's house. And food for us to eat the Monday after Thanksgiving when we were back home. 

Here's a drawing Charlotte did for Thanksgiving. 

By Tuesday night my brain was fried. Two complicated billing things, grocery shopping, clothes shopping. I was DONE. I came out of my room after doing all that billing and went downstairs and watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. That was a good reward for everything. 

But I was still not doing great mentally. I was not looking forward to Thanksgiving. After the kids were in bed I sat in my bed and cried about all my worries to Brandon. He was so good and talked through everything. 

And so on Wednesday I was feeling better. 

The day started out with Charlotte and Lydia's well check. They were both really nervous about the appointment because they would have to get a flu shot at the end. The appointment went well and there were only a few tears with the shot. 

Then I had last minute things to do for all three of my jobs. I had a little bit of follow up stuff for the secondary billing for Castle Therapy so I took care of that. I also met with Ivan for about 30 minutes to make sure we were on the same page about some things. (We usually do that on Fridays, but since it was a holiday we did it on Wednesday.) Brandon had helped with an RV on either Monday or Tuesday so I had to take that money to the bank. And I popped into Aspen Grove to check the mail. (Which fortunately there wasn't any.)

Brandon and the kids had packed while I was billing on Tuesday, but I still needed to get my stuff packed. I took care of that too. 

Brandon got off work at 1:30 and hurried home. He took a quick shower and then we started driving to Utah. We made it to my sister Emily's house around 5:00

It was fun to be at Emily's. My aunt Diane was visiting and we talked to her. Derrick had brought his 

Chutes and ladders game and played it with some of his younger cousins. 

Emily made navajo tacos and they were really yummy.  We had a good time talking and eating. 

Around 8:30 we drove up to my inlaws. The kids were excited to unload the car and then to see their grandparents. 

On Thursday morning Brandon was up early to help get the turkey in the oven. One of the things I'd been complaining about to him on Tuesday night was how much I hated turkey. It is too much work for something that doesn't really taste that good. But Brandon likes it and I don't actually have to do any work so its all fine. 

We started watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade at 8:30. Veronica said, "I learned all about this. I have to watch this!" I'd brought a 1000 piece puzzle and I got that out and started working on it. 

The turkey was really the only food prep that had to happen for a while. Brandon had already made the rolls and his sisters were bringing lots of the sides. Nobody in Brandon's family likes Green bean casserole, but I like it and so I brought everything to make it. I put it together and cooked it in the crock pot. My mother in law was trying to be polite so she was asking me what's in it. I told her, "It's just the recipe on the box. There's nothing special about it. It's made with indifference - just how my mom used to make it."  It's not a complicated dish, but it is comfort food and it's not Thanksgiving without it. 

Brandon's sisters and their families showed up. Jacque had everyone start working on the tables. She told me later that she likes Thanksgiving because there aren't any expectations. I was like, "Um we ate on CHINA. I think there were a few expectations." But I thought about it later and I guess she was saying that there aren't any extra expectations. She didn't have to provide presents like she does at Christmas or an Egg hunt like she does at Easter. It was just a meal. 

Derrick was getting antsy and so he was picking at some jello so that became his spot. I sat down next to him to keep an eye on him.

Here I am.

Here's my place setting. We always start with rainbow jello. (More expectations.)

This is the only picture I took of the meal. And this was before everyone was sitting down. Veronica said, "I want to sit by an Aunt." So Melanie sat on one side of her and Shannon sat on the other. 

The meal was good. Shannon's father in law came and he brought shrimp. I was like, "We should serve this every year! Why are we bothering with turkey?" I had one little piece of turkey and everything else was sides. Actually half my plate was green bean casserole and the rest was other sides. 

After dinner was over we rushed to wash dishes. This is where I SHINE. My brain does not understand how to cook all the Thanksgiving foods. But I can wash dishes. 

After that was done Melanie had a fun activity where everyone made turkeys out of little baggies of goodies that she supplied. Mine is on the right and Derrick's is on the left. She didn't want anyone to cheat and look at pictures so she just showed some pictures really fast. But Derrick wanted his to look exactly like a picture so I pulled one up on my phone for him to look at. He did a good job.

Here's everyone working on theirs. 

Here's Veronica's. 

And Charlotte and Lydia. 

Steve had some minute to win it games that he had everyone playing. But I was doing my puzzle with Charlotte so I didn't get any pictures of those. 

Eventually we had pie. And oh my goodness did we have options. Brandon had made four pies. Two pumpkin, a mincemeat pie, and the berry pie. I'd made . . . friends with a realtor who was giving out Costco pies as her thank you gift to clients and future clients so I brought that pie. Shannon brought some cream pies. Jacque had a pinapple pie, a George Washington pie (which was a Walnut pie that tasted like pecan), Weston made a pecan pie. And I'm sure I'm leaving some out.

Here's the berry pie with the lemon glaze on top.  I ate a lot of this pie over the next few days. It was good, but the groats were a little hard so we'll need to figure that out. 

Melanie brought a bingo game and we played that for some fun prizes. Derrick had a really fun time playing. He'd LOVED every game and activity and was probably the most consistently enthusiastic kid throughout the whole day.

We also played a round of Picwits. That was fun.

Then it was time for karaoke. Brandon had been losing his voice for like three days. But that didn't stop him from singing a lot. 

Veronica liked to tell jokes into the microphone. 

Charlotte and I were able to finish the puzzle. 

Everyone eventually went home and eventually we got the kids into bed. 

On Friday I had my favorite day after Thanksgiving Breakfast - pie!

Derrick wanted to go to the train museum in Ogden. I thought that sounded like a good activity. So we planned to go to the train museum when it opened at 11:00 and then go to lunch at Rovali's. (It's become tradition to get pizza there are Christmas time.)

Well that didn't really happen. We got to the train museum and there was a sign on the door saying it was closed for the holiday weekend. So we looked at the big engines through the gate. 

We decided we might as well go check out the Christmas village while we were in Ogden. We walked down 25th street to the park. We had so much fun looking at all the little buildings. 

This was actually the perfect time to be there. It wasn't crowded, snowy, or too cold. 

And I didn't have to worry about my big kids pushing past little kids. 

We were able to look at every single house. We've never been able to do that before. 

Brandon said he really liked my hair. I hadn't had time to blow dry it before we left so it had just kind of freeze dried in the car. 

Charlotte had fun with this pose. 

She's so funny.

We walked back down 25th Street to Rovali's and discovered that they didn't open until 3:00 that day. What a bust!  So we drove to a nearby Burger King and had lunch there.

Brandon and I had plans to stay in a hotel in Ogden that night. But we were doing that without the kids. So we drove back up the canyon and dropped the kids off at Steve and Jacque's. Then we drove back to Ogden. We checked into the Historic Hampton Inn on 24th Street. 

And then we took a 2 hour nap. That was ALL we wanted to do. Just sleep. 

Eventually we woke up and decided to go get dinner. I wasn't exactly hungry - but I realized that my body was craving something leafy and green. So we went to Rovali's and I ordered a salad. Brandon ordered a pizza and we shared them. Here's Brandon.

And here's me. There were a few other people there that night, but it was so much more empty than other times we've been. This is the night we'll have to come back with the kids next year. 

We also got a piece of Spumoni cake to split. It was yummy. 

Here we are outside the restaurant. 

We went back to the hotel and watched Weekend and Bernie's on the TV. I've never seen that. Brandon had a long time ago. He said, "these guys used to seem so old to me."

Here we are at breakfast the next morning. I still wasn't feeling very hungry, but I really liked the potatoes they had. 

This night away had been really nice. It's been over 18 months since the last time Brandon and I went away overnight without the kids. We needed a chance to just be alone. I also liked that we didn't have to cook anything. It was so nice to just relax. 

We went back up to Steve and Jacque's. The kids had been great overnight. Here's Derrick showing off the car that he and Steve have been slowly working on all year. 

Our original plan had been to stay at Steve and Jacque's until Sunday. But I realized that I wanted to be home on Saturday. So then our plan changed to staying and watching the parade in Ogden Saturday night and then driving home. But then we realized we didn't really care about the parade after seeing all the little Christmas village houses. So we decided to just go home that afternoon. So we got everything packed up and said goodbye to Steve and Jacque. 

We weren't heading home quite yet though. First we were having lunch with my parents in Salt Lake. So we drove down there. Here's a view of Snow basin. It's been almost 7 years since I started working there. 

We had a really good time at my parents place. Derrick brought his Chutes and Ladders game and played that with my mom. 

We'd brought Lynn Wilson Burritos and had those for lunch. 

After a while it was time to get going. We drove back up to Idaho without any issues. I was happy we were still driving in the day time. 

I had a little detour planned for the drive. We took the exit for Rupert and went to their main street area. Rupert is known as Christmas City USA and has a lot of really cute things set up. We parked by a store that had this cute sign.

Then we walked over to the cute little area by the Wilson Theatre. 

Everything looked really enchanting. 

The big fires were nice to stand by and get warm. 

Here's a sign explaining why this is Christmas City, USA. I thought this was kind of recent thing, but I guess they've been calling themselves that since the 70s. 

We went for a walk around the town square. The kids loved the big snow banks. Oh the snow. We need to talk about this snow. It was supposed to snow in Utah on Thanksgiving, but it never had. Instead Idaho had been walloped. The kids were so excited to see all the snow. 

The town square was really cute. 

Here I am.

Derrick and Veronica on top of mount snow.

We went back over by the Wilson. There was an ice skating rink. (I found out later this used to be Twin Fall's rink, but they donated it to Rupert after it wasn't used very much. It's way cuter in this setting.)  The kids wanted to skate, but I said we'd come back. We weren't really prepared for being outside for very long. (Lydia wasn't even wearing socks.)

Here's another big pile of snow and the kids admiring it. 

Here's a parking lot. 

And another view of the area around the rink.

This was such a fun way to kick off Christmas.

We drove the rest of the way home. It was a little scary because there were some foggy parts. We made it home and the kids were so happy to see that we had lots of snow in our yard. (I was happy to see that a neighbor with a plow had plowed everyone's sidewalks and even our driveway.)

It felt late, but it was really only like 6. Brandon found some cans of soup and heated those up for dinner. Then we watched Muppet Christmas Carol. 

Sunday was a lovely day of doing nothing. After four days of being on our best behavior while visiting family it was nice to just be ourselves again. Since we'd been planning to be in Utah and watching church on zoom I told the kids that's what we'd do even though we were home. So we just watched church on zoom. 

It ended up being good that we didn't go to church. Earlier that morning Charlotte had been playing with her toy dragon. She'd dropped it on her face and it's horn scratched her open eye. We tried some home remedies, but around the second speaker's turn during sacrament meeting she was crying pretty bad. I realized we were probably going to need to go to instacare. 

I've never actually taken any of my kids to instacare so this was kind of new. Honestly, I didn't really think there was anything they could do for her. So I was pleasantly surprised by the care she received. 

We were called back right away. (It helped we were the first clients after the clinic opened at 10:00.)  the provider was able to put some numbing drops on her eye that helped it stop hurting. Then he put a dye on her eye and looked at it with a blacklight. We could see the scratch on her eye. But he said it wasn't very deep and should heal on its own. He had some magnifying glasses that he was able to look through to verify that it wasn't very bad. And then he prescribed some antibiotics. 

The rest of Sunday was spent with movies and relaxing. (Oh and laundry because laundry will always be with us.)

Charlotte and Lydia and Veronica had been working on a parade set up. But they said that they were probably done with it. So I hurried to take this picture. I'm glad I did because they took everything apart soon after. 

And that gets us to the Sunday after Thanksgiving. That's a good place to stop for now. 

And guess what. I had to stop writing halfway through this post because everyone got up. We put up the tree and it's kind of making me feel more cheery. Hopefully that helps me get through these cold dark days. 

Thanks for reading.