Well in keeping pretty busy I have neglected my poor blog again. But here is a quick attempt to bring it back up to date. The weekend of the Super Bowl we had plans to party. Saturday night we were able to have lunch with one of Aaron's friends from growing up in Texas--Brad and his family. It was nice to see them again. It is nice that they have moved up to Utah so we can see them more often. The next day was Sunday and we were going to have friends over for a Super Bowl party, but, unfortunately, that didn't happen. When we got up and started getting ready for church Daniel was complaining that his stomach hurt. Now Daniel is quite a dramatic child so you can never really believe him when he complains about things. I told him to go get ready for church anyway. He got dressed and really started complaining about his stomach. I still was going to make him go to church, but Aaron took pity on the poor kid and decided to stay home with him. It was a good thing he stayed home because about 20 minutes later and ended up throwing up EVERYWHERE. I felt bad about making him almost go to church at this point. We called up and cancelled our party after he threw up again when I got home from church. Luckily, no one else got it. I also learned that I may need to take his complaints a little more seriously next time....
The month of February is all about love so I will start out with Noah's love affair with all things cars. You will never see this boy without at least one car in his possession at all times. He LOVES them!! The other day he was trying to carry a handful of cars from one place to another, but they kept falling out of his little hands. He was getting quite frustrated so I showed him all the pockets he had in his overalls that were just perfect for holding and transporting cars. He was so excited! He went around the whole house looking for more cars just to stuff in his pockets. It was pretty funny. He was in heaven.
Daniel had his last basketball game two Fridays ago. While Aaron was there watching him a friend offered Aaron Jazz basketball tickets for that night. Aaron was excited. It was last minute, but he decided to go and it was Josh's turn to go this time around. However, Daniel's game ended at 7pm and the Jazz game started down in Salt Lake at 8:30 pm. I already had the kids in bed so when Aaron got home he roused Josh out of bed and they headed down to Salt Lake to go to the game. They were running late so Aaron hurried so they wouldn't miss too much of the game. Well let me tell you that Aaron NEVER speeds, EVER! If anything he drives under the speed limit which drives me crazy. So.....when he called to let me know he just got a speeding ticket I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't April Fool's Day. Then I just laughed and laughed because he was so smug when I got my speeding tickets. Oh well what goes around comes around right?! Thankfully he was able to do online traffic school so it didn't go on his record and increase our insurance rates. All I can say was that was one expensive Jazz game he went to (even if he got the tickets for free) if you include the speeding ticket!! Anyway they made it to the game. During the game Josh did well the first half, but the second half staying awake became quite troublesome for the poor kid. He is quite the early bird, but late nights do the poor kid in.
They did have fun, but I don't know if we can afford for anymore games in the near future ;).
Two Saturdays ago Daniel was invited to a birthday party. Now times like this it is cause for great celebration!! After I dropped Daniel off at the party I took the kids out for some guilt free ice cream cones. We never get to go out for ice cream because Daniel is extremely allergic to it. If you did go out for it you feel super guilty eating it in front of him so we just don't get it. However, since Daniel was having a fun time at a birthday party so we had a guilt free ice cream party at Arctic Circle. YUM!!! Aaron couldn't come with us because he was down helping my grandparents move into an assisted living center that day, but me and the four other kids had a good time.
We finally hit our year mark of living in our new house so I figured it was time to start on the kids' murals. I am starting in Sarah's room. She LOVES Cinderella so that's what I decided to do. It's hard to see, but here's the initial sketch:
I still have a ways to go but here's the actual painting:
A few days later (she actually has arms now):
Hopefully, I can finish it this week. We'll see...The kids do not make it easy for me. While I was painting Noah exploited the fact that he didn't have my full attention. Our fridge has a feature that if the doors do not close after a few minutes it starts beeping at you. After hearing it beep the first time I came out to find that Noah had scooted a bar stool over to the fridge and was standing on it, with the fridge open while shoving handfuls of grated cheese into his mouth and spilling cheese EVERYWHERE. That particular scenario happened not once, but THREE different times. Also when Aaron got home from work he parked the car only to find Noah wandering around the front yard with no coat or socks on. Noah had snuck outside while I was busy in Sarah's room. I hadn't been painting that long and probably at least half that time was trying to keep kids out of mischief in which I obviously failed miserably! These kids are such stinkers!! I could have had the mural finished by now if I didn't have to chase down Noah and Sarah and trying to get them out of all the mischief they get into to!! Oh well they keep things exciting whether I want them to or not.
Valentine's Day is a kid favorite--I think all the candy they get from school and home has something to do with it. Here the kids are inhaling their Valentine's packages from G&G T. They loved them!
For Valentine's Day it was fun to try something 'hearty' for Sarah's hair. Here's what her hair looked like for Valentine's Day:
She was excited to let me do something 'hearty' with her hair so I didn't hear any complaints when it was time to comb her hair. It was nice.
Sarah had a Valentine's Party at preschool and got lots of candy. She was nice enough to share it Noah who went to town trying to stuff as much of it in his mouth at one time as he could. His favorite was the suckers as you can see in the above picture with a ring pop and a sucker in his mouth. In the pic below he managed to fit three suckers in his mouth at one time. What you can't see is the HUGE drool puddle all over the floor from it. At least he was happy.
Unfortunately, we had major car trouble last week. Aaron was on his way to a meeting with his boss's boss when his car up and died. Needless to say he never made it to the meeting. Luckily a friend from work that lives by us was kind enough to tow Aaron's car home to our house so we could decide what to do with it. We decided to tow it to a car repair place to have them figure out what the problem was. Unfortunately, it was bad news when the garage called us back. The timing belt had gone out on the car and it supposedly took the engine out with it. DOH!!! To have the repair place fix it would have been more than the car is worth so we told them not to fix it and put it back together while we decide what to do with it. At times like this I am so thankful we have three cars. Aaron took the truck out and got it licensed, registered and insured and started driving that in the meantime. In talking with my brother he offered to help Aaron fix it which probably meant replacing the engine. I am so blessed to have a great handyman as a brother!! Since he has all the car fix it tools at his house Aaron and I towed the car from the garage to my brother's house. In towing cars I have always been the one to drive the towed car. This time around I got to be the actual tow-er of the car with the Suburban. It took a few streets to get the hang of it, but I did ok. Aaron did get some major whiplash from my not-so-smooth starts, but we eventually got the car to my brother's house without incident. Here's Aaron and my brother Bryan pushing it up his driveway in to his garage:
This all took place on Valentine's Day. Hey towing cars together can be romantic, right?! By the time we got home we had our Valentine's feast of pink spaghetti and meatballs.
The kids then opened their gifts which was a mug with their name on it and a huge heart shaped, pink Rice Krispie treat with a love note.
The next day Aaron went over to Bryan's house to help fix the car. They decided to try out fixing the timing belt first, but not really thinking that would work. In this type of car when the timing belt goes out it destroys the engine in about 99 times out of 100. I am thanking my lucky stars that we happened to be the 1 out of 100 because when they changed the timing belt the car started working. That NEVER happens, but in this case it did. We are so THANKFUL!!! Especially since we just got news that with the Congress not coming to terms Federal Employees might be forced into taking mandatory furloughs. A furlough is when they tell you not to come into work one day a week and you don't get paid for it meaning it is a 20% pay cut--OUCH!!! I have dusted off my resume and just renewed my Registered Nursing license so I may or may not be in a search for a job, unfortunately. We will know more in the next two weeks about our furlough situation. Anyway that makes me that much more thankful that we don't have to replace a car right now.
Josh is quite blunt. We are working on trying to teach tact and appropriateness, but it does not come natural for him. Take for instance the other day--Aaron was at the pharmacy picking up some prescriptions. It happened to be really busy and that's the time when Josh told Aaron (pretty loudly I may add), "I bet Valentine's is your favorite holiday!" Aaron thought that was an odd thing to say so he asked Josh why he thought that. Josh was surprised that Aaron didn't know why so to emphasize his point he replied incredibly loudly in his condescending voice because he couldn't believe his dad could be that dense, "BECAUSE (insert eye roll right about here) YOU GET TO KISS MOM A LOT!!!!" He said it so loud that he got quite a few stares from the people standing around the pharmacy. Aaron was pretty embarrassed to say the least. Nice, Josh, nice!
Speaking of Josh we had a neurology check up for him last Friday at Primary Children's Medical Center. He is doing well. He did have a questionable spell at night about 6 months ago, but other than that he has been seizure free as far as we know. I did talk to the doctor about the future and she said that if he remains seizure free for two years she wants him to have another sleep deprived EEG. That struck the fear in me since his last sleep deprived EEG caused him to go into status epilepticus (uncontrolled seizures) which sent him via ambulance from McKay Dee Hospital down to Primary's for a long hospital stay. Anyway, that is still at least a year and a half away from now so we will see what the next year and a half will bring. In measuring Josh he has gained 10 pounds in the last 6 months which is a lot. However, he was showing me his 'big' arm muscles the other day. In seeing this picture can you tell me where the 10 pounds went because he is still so dang skinny?!
Holy cow you can count all the kid's ribs!! Anyway with such a big weight gain we had to increase his medication to keep him on a stable dose. If all goes well (meaning no seizures or big weight gains) we don't have to go back for another visit for a year. YAY!!
Monday to celebrate President's Day we had a family day and went up to Hardware Ranch to see the elk. Here's the visitor's center with the huge stuffed elk. I am taking the picture and Noah was not very happy at having Dad hold him since he is such a mommas boy as you can see. He is lunging out at me trying to get me to pick him up--what a stinker!
Here we are the sleigh ride:
Seeing as we were so late in the season this year we were still surprised to see so many elk still down on the field.
Here we are standing by the horses that pulled the sleigh. Josh couldn't wait to get away from them as they caused him to have major watery eyes, runny nose and a sneezing fit during the whole sleigh ride. Here I thought Daniel was the only allergy boy--I was wrong!
It was a fun visit. Hopefully, we can go again next year, too. I hopefully will remember the Benadryl for that visit....
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