Christmas Eve

So I still have two very young children. Here it is not even 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve and they are both sound asleep. (Okay so they may not yet be asleep, but they are in bed and very quite.) Christmas gifts are out. Santa has been here and already left. The best part about the kids not really knowing exactly what is going on is that I will be able to sleep in until at normal times tomorrow. There will be no four in the morning for this house hold. I am just going to enjoy the kids while they are young. I do look forward to the time when the kids will be excited for Christmas morning to get here.
I guess maybe if I let gifts stay under the tree they might be more excited, but the presents were unstairs in the spare room and the door was locked for the most part until today. They got really excited bringing most of the presents down to put under the tree. Monkey did a very good job of putting the presents all the way around the tree.

Kids presents to Mom

Last night I took the kids to a store with my sister and had Danielle take the kids to find a present for me. I told her to find me a necklace or some jewelry. Monkey found me a "bird" necklace. And immediately wants to show it to me but I resist. We get up to the cash register and I turn the box over to see how much the necklace is and it says $59.99. At this point it is too late to try and get him to find something a little less expensive so I just pay for it. Luckily for me when it rang up it was no where near the $59.99 that the box said. It was only $14.99. Danielle apologized for not checking the price. She had meant to, but with two little boys what you want to do and what actually happens are two completely different things. At the same time if she had checked it she would have put it back and convinced him to find something else for me and so it actually probably turned out okay that she hadn't checked.

Uncle KC

Uncle KC came to visit again. He came in the door just about 10:00 last night and Bub attacked. Bub has always been more out going than Monkey, but last night when KC came in it was the most rambunctious I have ever seen him. If anything Uncle KC is a favorite. (It also helps that this is the third time he has been out to visit us in the last month.)

I really don't like the cold

So it has been snowing here for the last two days. At least I assume it has been the last two days because there was snow on the ground when we got home Sunday night. I really like it here because the snow usually melts off the day after it falls. Last winter it was so cold that we had snow last a week which is bad because it means that it is very cold here. I really hope that this winter doesn't turn out like last. The months of below freezing temperatures were awful. I really shouldn't complain because up until this last cold front blew over last week we have had above average temperatures. The snow is pretty. I should just think about that and not how cold it is...

Milk

Little kids and milk jugs do not mix. It seems like every time the kids want to pour their own milk I have got a mostly full gallon of milk. And so I end up with half of it on my kitchen floor (well if I am lucky and they haven't decided to take it into the living room to pour it.) This morning Monkey decides to make himself and Bub a chocolate milk shake like their daddy makes. It was in bowls and not glasses for one, but that doesn't change the fact that I have to mop my kitchen floor today to get all the milk off.
last night Bub decided he wanted a glass of milk and so took it into the living room and poured himself a shoe full of milk. And when I tried to take the shoe into the kitchen to dump it out he hits it and makes some of it spill. Not that there wasn't already a bunch of milk on the floor because he is only 2 and can't pour milk that well yet.
Things are not very kid friendly which makes them not mom friendly. And I just HATE cleaning up spilled milk in the quantity that I have to clean it up in.

bad week

Monday night all of the sudden I felt like my world was crashing down. Now there was no reason for these feelings. I hate when I get like this. I really don't know why all of the sudden the feelings came because things are really good for us. We are in a good place. The economy is terrible, but we are in a really good place. Spencer is still installing at least three new Internet accounts a week. And at this point even if that stopped he has expanded his duties at work and so he would still have his job. Depression is such a frustrating thing to fight. I keep thinking that I have the upper hand and then I have a day like Monday and I just wonder if I will ever have the upper hand.

Christmas Tree part II

So we went into SLC yesterday. Bub got his second flu shot. He was remarkably well behaved for the whole thing. He barely made any noise when the nurse gave him the shot.
We then spent the day shopping for the kids Christmas. It was a long day, but I think I have Christmas shopping taken care of!!! (I think the is a record. I normally wait until the very last minute.)

So if you will recall from the last blog I needed to get more lights for my Christmas tree while we were in town yesterday. I was successful in remembering. They are sitting here on the table. I was woken up this morning by a crash. I knew immediately that it was my Christmas tree falling over. To hopefully prevent this from happening again we took another 8" off the bottom of the tree. This required us to take two rows of boughs off. I no longer need the lights that I bought yesterday for my tree! The tree is still really pretty. It just doesn't take up half the room anymore! With the tree falling a lot of the ornaments fell off which actually probably was a good thing. I picked up more yesterday, but Monkey didn't want the same silver ones that I got so we got the same package, but in reds. So now we get to disperse the ornaments a little more geometrically.

Christmas Tree

We weren't there when our tree was cut, but I saw it and new that I had to have it. Mel also wanted it but Chris didn't think that it would fit in their house so I was luck and got it.

It is HUGE!!! I ran out of lights before I got it all lit. But it is pretty. I am also going to need to get more ornaments as well as lights.

back online

I am back online! Last Sunday I came home to find out that Bub had watered the kitchen. My laptop had been sitting on the counter closed, but one of the kids had opened it and so it also got watered. Thank heavens my husband is a computer guy and was able to get it turned off and opened up to dry before any damage was done. He wouldn't put it back together until my new keyboard was here. It didn't come until we were out of town for the Thanksgiving weekend. (I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures.)

It was a good weekend. Long, but good. We first went to Fillmore on Wednesday. We had Thanksgiving with Spencer's family. There weren't as many of his family there so it didn't feel so crowded, but it was kind of sad to not have the family there. Friday we went to Vernal. Mom picked my Grandma up and brought her out. We had dinner with most of my family on Saturday. Then we left for home on Sunday afternoon. We planned on getting our truck back from Matt and so we had to make a stop in Highland. When we called Matt we found out that he got snowed in in Cheyenne and so it was going to be latter before he got back into Utah. So we stopped by his sister's house in Alpine. By the time we did end up getting the truck back I was tired and did not know if I could make the trip home. Spencer's parents had brought our Christmas tree up and met us at Matt's and I don't think that I even said goodbye to them.

Wedding Pictures

So, we had my cousin's husband take the pictures for my wedding with his digital camera. This was seven years ago. Because of the lights in the area we had the reception, all of my pictures had a yellow cast to them. We all looked jaundice. Tonight, I finally figured out how to correct the color enough that I finally feel like I can justify spending the money to get the pictures developed.

(the picture is actually taken the day before the wedding by Spencer as we drove around town getting our license and other last minute tasks.)

what our kids do

So tonight Spencer was building a bed frame for Monkey. This required that he use his table saw. So he is out sawing and Monkey takes his square off of the saw and Spencer doesn't see what he does with it. By this time Monkey had come in to go to the bathroom and so Spencer comes in and asks him what he had done with the square. Monkey calmly tells Spencer that he had put the square under the dirt. So Spencer goes out to see if he can find it in the backyard "under the dirt." A couple minutes later Spencer is back in and gets Monkey dressed (Monkey has to take all his clothing off when he goes to the bathroom) and then takes him back outside so that he can take Spencer to where the square is. By this time I am awake and can tell that Spencer is upset and so I go out with Monkey to have him show me what he had done with it. I go into the backyard and I can not see where there is any dirt that has been disturbed and so am at a lose to know what Monkey did with it. So I come back in the house and look to see if Monkey by chance had brought it in the house. I still had no luck. Monkey keeps insisting that he put the tool in the garage, but there is no where in the garage that he could have put it. About an hour after we had started looking Spencer calls my cell to tell me that he had found it. When I get back outside he points out where he had found it. Monkey had put it away. There are clips on the side of the saw that the square slides in and that is where Monkey had put it.

Monday morning blues

So Spencer made the comment this morning about what the kids think when we allow them to climb in bed with us in the morning. This stemmed from the fact that yesterday morning about six thirty Bub came in and climbed into bed with us and fell back asleep. At night we insist that they sleep in their bed, but in the morning it is okay for them to come climb in bed with us. I have to agree with his reasoning as to why we allow it. In the morning we are still half asleep and would like to sleep longer and if that means that we have a little boy in bed with us than we have a boy in bed with us. I guess the whole reason I bring this up is because Bub has never fallen back asleep in our bed when he has come in. He is definitely a morning person.

So this weekend Spencer got shelves put in our storage room for our food storage.

This set up is a lot easier to use than the shelves up in my pantry cupboard in my kitchen. (Which I think that the pantry cupboards are the stupidest cupboards someone ever came up with. Having the shelves so deep make it so inconvenient to find anything in them.) After we finally got all the can that we could fit on the shelves along the one wall we came up and tried to figure out what items we now needed to buy to add to our growing amount of storage.

The joys of Mothers and milk

Okay, so two days ago Bub decided that he needed to poor himself a glass of milk. I ended up having to mop up a half gallon of milk. So then today I am upstairs and come down because I hear liquid dripping. I come down to find that he had again tried to poor himself milk. So I send the kids up to their room so I can clean it up. As soon as I let them back down and leave the room I again here liquid spilling. Although today it wasn't a full half gallon of milk at one time, it ended up being that much when you add both spills together.

Now lets add that to the fact that they decided that my laptop keyboard didn't need to have any of the keys attached to it anymore and lets just say that I did not have a very good day!

am I or am I not

So I have been getting sick on and off for the last couple of months. Because of how it comes and goes I keep thinking that I might just be pregnant, which we are trying for. However, every time I have taken a test it has come back negative. Now the nausea is terrible and I don't want to take another pregnancy test just to have to come back negative. I keep thinking that it was so easy to get pregnant with Monkey and Bub (which I got pregnant with both of them before I had really thought about even becoming pregnant) and now that I am actually trying to get pregnant I am finding that it isn't all the easy!

what kids do

Spencer helped the kids get the family room clean up two nights ago of all their toys. So yesterday they were again playing with their Duplo blocks, but just playing on the floor wasn't enough for them.

house work

If there is one thing that I am not good at it is house cleaning. I hate this job. I am home all day with the kids and so this should be no big deal, but for me it is terrible. I will get the house clean and then something will happen and I will just not worry about it again. When this happens it gets to the point where it just seem over whelming. And I beat myself up because I know that if I had only kept up on it from the beginning than it wouldn't be so much work to try and catch back up. This is the cycle that my life goes through. I hate it and one of these days I am going to break the cycle. I just hope it is sooner rather than later. i really would like for my kids to grow up feeling like a clean house is the norm and not when only when we are expecting company.

Day with Grandma

So I had to take the kids into Salt Lake today. I knew I wanted to stop by and visit my Grandma so I called her when I was about half way there. When I asked how she was doing she told me she wasn't having a very good day and that she wasn't able to keep her food down and needed someone to come visit. I thought maybe I would take her shopping with me, but wasn't sure she was going to be up for it. So anyway, I stress all the way to Grandmas. (My sister calls me the family worrier and I am.) I am hoping that she is just having a bad day and just needs to get out of the house, but preparing myself for the worst. I get there and she is ready to go shopping with me. I had just kind of planned on going somewhere there close because I needed to take the kids in to get their shots. Talking with her it kind of sounded like she would be up to spend the rest of the day with me so I dragged her along to the doctor's appointment. I know she enjoyed the day. I enjoyed spending the time with her. And although it was a little stressful worrying if she would forget in the middle of a store it was so nice to have her there to help me with my kids. I don't know when I will manage to get back in, but I need to take her and do it again. (Hopefully the next time I won't have a doctor's appointment in the middle of our time together.) When we dropped her off at her place Bub said in his sweet little voice "bye grandma." I wish I had had something to record it because how he said grandma was precious. Besides it was the first time he had ever said grandma.

When we went down for my great uncle's funeral Jen, Drew and I remembered times that we had spent with our Grandma Great. My kids are too young to remember much of went on today, but it makes me so happy that we are able to spend the time having fun with Grandma. Although I did hear stories multiple times and had to remind her what we were doing, I was able to be with my Grandma today. As tired as I am right now, it was a very good day!

Middle of the week

So I am taking the kids into Salt Lake to get flu shots. I am wondering if this is really worth the trip. I had hoped to make it a day with the whole family and then I found out today that Spencer can't make it after all because he has a safety meeting that he has to go to in Wells. I am not very happy about this. I was really looking forward to spending the day with him as well as being able to buy myself some new pants. The new pants will have to be put off again.

I hope to get a lot of my Christmas shopping for extended family done tomorrow. That will just leave me trying to figure out what I want to do for my kids. I am excited to be staying home for Christmas again this year. All though we have to make trips to visit both families before or after the holidays it just seems less stressful not being at my parents or his parents on Christmas itself. We will be making a trip to Fillmore two weeks before Christmas and a trip to Vernal sometime in the week following Christmas.

Now if only Thanksgiving could be that spread out. For the last three or four years we have gotten together with my family the weekend before Thanksgiving for our Thanksgiving dinner. That left Thanksgiving open for all of our in-law's. However, this year no one was available for the weekend before so we are going to do it the Saturday after instead. This means that we will be making the trip to Fillmore on Wednesday, having Thanksgiving dinner there. Going to Salt Lake on Friday and spending the night. Picking up my Grandma (if we can convince her to come out with us) Saturday morning and going to Vernal for dinner. I told Mom I would get Grandma there if someone else would get her home because I don't think that she would want to spend the night and I refuse to make my kids to that much driving in one day.

It really is no wonder holidays are so stressful.

Bub

I had to share this picture. We were sitting at the table at dinner time, which was a little later than we normally have it, but still before seven. But Bub hadn't taken a nap and so he looked like he was going to fall asleep in his dinner.

Quilting

I finally finished the quilt I started for Monkey before Bub was born two and a half years ago. He finally has a quilt that is big enough for the twin bed that he has been in for these last two and half years (the reason I started it). The biggest problem now is getting him to use it. He told me last night that he will use it tomorrow. So after he fell asleep I went and put it on him.

I found this "pinwheel" design and was able to use my embrodiery sewing machine to quilt it. It took me about five hours to do the 96 designs, but most of the time was because I had to hoop each place individually and then make sure I had the start point where I wanted it. Now that i have it done I think maybe I should have used the larger design on the middle of the squares instead of in the corners, but it still turned out nice in my opinion. It is bright which is my favorite part of it. Monkey's favorite part is the pinwheels and butterflies.

But now that I have the twin size quilt done I need to get the crib size one back from my mom. (She was going to pin it for me where I had just had Bub and didn't have time or energy to do it myself.)

Halloween

I forgot to get the camera out and take pictures of my little Spidermen.

Monkey had a party at preschool yesterday. They asked me to help so I was able to go in and help the kids with their Halloween craft project. This included a LOT of glue. (which these are four year old kids so quite a bit of the glue ended up on the table!) They were gluing Halloween pictures and foam shapes onto the outside ring of a paper plate that they had painted orange the day before. There were kids that all they wanted to do was glue one or two things onto their wreaths and then there were others that needed to make sure every available space was covered. Each child has their own personality that shines through.

It was kind of funny that Monkey did not want to wear his costume to school. He wanted to be Spiderman so I bought the costume for him and then he did not want to wear it to school. He is very much a creature of habit. He doesn't wear costumes to school any other day and so it wasn't acceptable to him that he wear it on Halloween. I took it with us to school so he could put it on when he saw that all of his other friends were wearing theirs, but he still did not want to wear it. He did put it on to go up and down our street trick or treating. (That is all we did this year and they were perfectly happy with just those few houses. In fact both of them were in bed before 8:00.)

Bub was a little upset this morning because kids came a stole our pumpkins and smashed them. I had thought they would have left them alone because we hadn't carved them, but they didn't.

sunrise over the flats

I normally get shots of the eastern horizons at sunset. This morning I was up and actually paid attention to the sunrise. It is really cool how the sun reflects off the salt.

do we ever finish a project before starting another?

Right now we have what seems like two dozen projects in the middle of being done. We still have all of the stuff in our back yard that needs to be finished. The sprinklers up in the terrece (at least I think that is what the area is called.) We need to fill in the terrece with dirt and make it all level so we can plant grass. We need to buy/rent/borrow a tiller to till up the yard because the gournd is just too hard to plant anything in and there is the fact that we are on the edge of the Bonniville Salt Flats so our soil is extra salty (hence the title of the blog) so we need to work something into the soil so grass will actually grow. Then there is the deck that needs to be built. Now this is just the back yard. We still have the sides of the house and the whole inside of the house. We have been living in the House for three years now and I still haven't managed to get the walls painted. Which really this wouldn't be a big deal except that the walls have never actually been painted. They were just primed. So I have nice white primed walls. Anyway the reason that I bring this up is because Spencer has been working on the east side of the house. We found this rock that is pretty flat when it broke off of the rest of the formation so we are building steps down from the front yard down to the back yard. To finish this project all Spencer has left to do is level the area between the two steps at the front of house and the steps at the back of the house. And I guess there is the step of getting the white gravel to fill in that area as well.

I know that we are truly blessed that we have our house, but owning a home can be so over whelming. The project never seem to end and there is no one but yourself that will get them done.

economy

A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with my little brother (fresh out of high school) about the problems that we are facing with the economy these days. While I feel secure in where my family is in this tough time, I know we are in the minority in this. Tonight I read an article about a town in California that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. The article said that this was the second time that this town faced a foreclosure crisis. The last part of the article had a line that said something like "They will always forget." This is something that our country needs to learn from not forget about. Gas dropped below $3 a gallon and all of the sudden people started looking at the bigger cars again. Pretty short memories we have.

Three years ago Spencer and I purchased a home for $174,000. We borrowed 99% of the value of the home. This scared me to death. Today I am so very glad that we did. The biggest problem with these kind of loans is it truly makes people house poor. When we first moved into this home I felt like we were drowning in house payments. However, my mind set was still back from college days when I was only making $8.50 an hour. Today, I sit down on payday with a very clear idea of where my money is going. There is a lot more money there than I ever dreamed we would be making on a single income.

why do we let ourselves get so upset?

So last night I got pretty upset with Spencer. I was still very upset this morning after we woke up and I had it out with him. I was upset that he changed the plans that I had made with his brother. Come to find out that when I told him that I needed to take my grandma into Orangeville tomorrow I forgot to mention that I was taking her to a funeral for my Great Uncle Keith. So all of the sudden me being mad at Spencer over what I perceived as a slight was actually a lack of communication on my part. To make matters even worse, a couple of hours after we had gotten things back to how I wanted them with Spencer's brother my mom calls to tell me that Grandma had forgotten that Keith had passed away. Because when Grandma was told of Keith's passing she got really upset so Mom didn't want to go through that again so I am to just not worry about picking Grandma up tomorrow. Now I just hope that she doesn't remember that I was suppose to pick her up to take her down.



Grandma losing her memory is terrible. I hate to be scared that she will get in her car and drive away and not be able to find her way back. Mom had wanted to take Grandma back to Vernal with her yesterday so that Mom could take her to the funeral tomorrow but Grandma didn't want to do that. She told Mom that she would rather drive herself than go to Vernal with Mom. Which is why I said I would drive her. When Grandpa went into the hospital the week before he passed away Grandma hit something with their car and dented the transmission fluid pan causing the fluid to leak. She doesn't remember hitting anything. Like I said, it scares me to death that she has that car there.



I feel like a terrible person, but I hate to see Grandma slowly lose her memory and the ability to control her emotions. If I knew for a fact that on one else would be hurt I would rather see Grandma pass away in an accident.

evening

So Monkey LOVES preschool! It is so wonderful that he is not fighting me to go like he was the first week of class. Now if only I could get him to stop fighting me when it is time to go home. He is a perfectionist. When he is given a paper to color he will spend the whole two hours coloring it. I got to class today and his teacher told me that he had just finished the first paper he was given and had just started on the second. He didn't even stop to eat his snack. Between teacher and myself we were able to convince him that it was time to go home.

Bub got sick this week. About the same time last year Bub caught a cold that turned quickly into croup. When that happened I had been watching him all night because I knew he was going to be needing to go in to see the doctor. So I got up first thing and jumped in the shower and by this time Bub was struggling. I tried to call the clinic here in town as soon as the opened up, but they were not yet answering the phone. Frustrated I threw my phone and Spencer ended up calling the boy's pediatrician in Salt Lake. While Spencer was on the phone I changed Bub's diaper and as soon as I got his pajamas down I realized that he was having a harder time than I thought. His whole chest wall was being sucked in when he took a breath. Having been trained as an EMT I knew that I was seeing "retractions". I just didn't know that it could get that bad. So at this point I knew I needed to get in the car and get going. The sun was in his eyes and so he was not happy which didn't help make it easier for him to breath. I ended up stopping at the rest area just ten miles out and calming him down enough that I was able to go on. I then spent the next hour and a half wondering if I was making the right choice in driving him myself or if I should have just called 911. When I got into the doctor's office they knew that he wasn't doing too hot and so even before I could get my co-pay paid they had us back in the room. He wasn't bad enough that he needed to be admitted to the hospital so I was okay doing the trip to Salt Lake on my own. I just never want to feel that way again. So when Bub woke up Tuesday from his nap with the croup (seal bark) cough I had him outside in the cooler air and had the humidifier plugged in for bed time. He still coughs occasionally, but at least it hasn't turned into croup yet!

Last night I was watching a movie and ended up falling asleep on the couch. I woke up at four this morning because I was cold. Which having slept from like ten to four without once waking up is pretty good for me these days. The last couple of weeks I have been waking up three or four times a night. And with the kids going to bed just after eight they have been waking up way to early in the morning.

This picture is taken out my back door. I have the most beautiful view of the Bonneville Salt Flats! This time of night is the most beautiful time of the day. It just is so peaceful. If it wasn't for this beauty I would never be able to live here.

I wish I was still in bed

I ended up not going into SLC to pick Spencer up Friday night when he flew in. My cousin Ed picked him up for me and then let him spend the night at his place. (Thank you Ed and Raquelle!) I picked him up Saturday just before noon and then we went shopping. I forget how long it takes to get shopping done when all of your shopping gets piled up waiting for you to make that trip. I figured it would only be a couple of hours, but it was almost five before we got finished and than we went up to Spencer's sister's house in Sunset for a few minutes. And then the kids needed to eat and next thing I knew it was eight o'clock. When we pulled into the house at 10:45 I was ready to just climb in bed and sleep. Unfortunately I woke up at like six thirty and couldn't get back to sleep. So after dinner yesterday I ended up in bed for few minutes and fell asleep. It wasn't much of a nap, but it was enough so that when Spencer was ready for bed I wasn't.

This morning I knew we would have issues when Spencer went to work. I just didn't know how bad the issue would be. Bub cried for over fifteen minutes when Spencer left. Normally I can distract him a lot quicker than that. I think in his little mind he thinks his dad is going to be gone for another week. So after we take Monkey to school we will take Bub and go to lunch. It will good for Zidane to spend more time with his dad.

ready for hubby to be home!

I hate when Spencer is gone. I hate it with a passion. I hate having to get their teeth brushed and flossed. I hate having to be the only one to get the kids into bed. I hate that they scream and try to make me leave them downstairs. I hate listening to them cry that they are not tired. However, I do love having them asleep and me being able to get things done around the house.

Spencer flies into Salt Lake tomorrow night just after eleven. I hope that this storm that is coming in is not too terrible. I would not want for him to be gone any longer than he has to be. I don't think that I can go another day with out him.

This wind is really blowing here. It seems like we are having gusts upwards around fifty miles an hour. I am not very excited about the change in the seasons. I like summer. I like late spring and early autumn. I just don't like it when it gets cold. I like to be warm. I really should move out of areas that see all four seasons. I need to move to were the temperature never drops below 50. For me that would be heaven.

good times

I found pictures from my open house. I can't believe it has been seven years and two months. What I wouldn't give to be able to fit back in that dress! What I wouldn't give to have no cares except loving my new husband! Well, except add my two boys and I would be completely happy.

I wonder what he would say if I told him I wanted him to grow back his sideburns?

online shopping

For most people I don't think they would run into the problem that I have been running into lately.
I worked for an on-line company and we wondered why people would put the street address and then their PO Box # in their shipping/billing addresses. As soon as I moved here to this small town I learned exactly why people do this. Companies will often times not ship items to address that are not people's billing address. Well, when people get their mail at the post office, than it is their post office box that is their bills are sent to. However, UPS and FedEx do not ship to PO Box's. So to get around this, people put first their street address and then their PO Box # as their billing address for their credit cards. Up until this past year I have been able to do this when I have shopped. With both address on a package it doesn't matter how the company decides to ship the package, it will get to me. This year, more and more companies have stopped allowing addresses with PO Box's in them. Now if I could choice the carrier that the package come from in this case I would select FedEx or UPS and not USPS. This does not happen though. Instead of me being able to choice the carrier they choice the cheapest carrier which often times turns out to be USPS. Well guess what... post offices don't deliver mail addressed to street addresses!!!!
My husband bought me a camera on-line for my birthday (after my birthday had come and gone). So the camera that I was going to get for my birthday is back at the shipping center that it was sent from because the company doesn't think anyone gets their mail at the Post Office anymore!

October is already here

Life seems to be flying by. It doesn't seem like August should be over and here it is the first of October. I don't know where the month of September went.
I went to pick Monkey up from school today and he didn't want to go. He was on the playground playing and looked at me and then took off in the opposite direction. Now this is definitely an improvement over a month ago when he screamed for me to take him home when I dropped him off in the first place. However, I had Bub in the car sleeping and so to have to chase after Monkey while he hung onto everything really was not what I needed this afternoon.

So Monkey loves to play with my laptop. Now I don't know if it had anything to do with everything that he was doing last week, but my master boot file got corrupted. Now this wouldn't have been a problem, but it took Spencer so very long to access my files to get them backed up (I should have backed up the files two weeks ago when I started having problems. I actually started but didn't get it finished.) He did manage to get them backed up, but not after asking me a half dozen times how much it was worth it to me to get the files back. I hope he knows how much I appreciate it that he went the extra mile to get the files for me when it would have been so much easier and faster on him if he had just given up and reformatted the drive.

End of the Day

Preschool is going so much better. After the first week I thought for sure it was going to be a long time before I was able to get Monkey to be excited to go. All it took was sending cupcakes with him for his birthday last week and he is now very excited to go. He was dressed and ready to go almost an hour before we needed to leave this morning.



Bub is adjusting to not having Monkey around. He didn't know what to do with himself the first couple of days that Monkey wasn't around to play with, but he has now adjusted. I think that it helps that Spencer and I take him out to lunch. Which is what we did today. When we got home, he found the pile of blankets that I had stacked on the floor and.....

I love picture of my kids sleeping.

time for a vacation

My last post was about Monkey's trip to the dentist. Which other than around his two crowns is still a little sensitive, his mouth is doing great.

Mom on the other hand is ready for a vacation. Thursday morning as I was getting ready to take Monkey to preschool I realized that Bub didn't look very good and when I touched him he was extremely hot. He has a temperature of 102.6. After taking Monkey to school I called to get him an appointment at the clinic here, but the only opening was when I had to go get Monkey. By that time, because of the medicines I had given him, the fever was down so I just figured I would watch him and if he still acted sick Friday I would take him in. The fever was down by Friday, but he kept putting his fist in his mouth like he had a sore throat. He doesn't have strep, but his throat was really red and his one ear looked infected. So he we have him on amoxicillin.

Saturday, I woke up and said to Spencer lets go into Salt Lake so that we could get the part that he needed to get the sprinkling system tapped out of the main line to the house. He told me that he could get the parts at the local hardware house. Famous last words. At about twelve thirty he came in and told me that he they had turned the water off. Forty-five minutes later he came in and told me that they were not able to get the parts he needed here in town. He called the place over in Wells just to see if they might have them, but they didn't. So he jumps on the internet and finds a place in Sandy that has the parts that he needs but they are only open till four and at this point it was about one thirty. So I get us all ready and get onto the main drag and realize that I didn't have enough gas to make it in so I stop and fill the car up and Spencer runs in and gets us all lunch. We made it into the place about 3:35. A hundred and one dollars later he had the part that he needed.

Oh, and about 11:00 that morning, as I was getting ready to go out and help Spencer I realized that Monkey looked like he wasn't feeling very good. His temperature was up to 102.4. So all weekend I kept giving him pain killers to try and keep the temperature down until I could get him in to the clinic Monday. He also didn't have strep which was good. His throat also was really red and he also had an ear infection in one of his ears. The poor kid. We didn't even make him a birthday cake for his birthday. I figured we would make it up to him later this week when he is feeling better.

On top of all of this, the truck's electrical isn't working so we are down to one vehicle until we can have someone out to look at the truck.

I am so ready for a vacation.

dentist

So I finally found a regular dentist to look at Monkey's teeth last week. Look was about all Monkey would allow, but it was all the dentist needed to be able to tell that there was some teeth that needed to have work done on them. He figured there were four or five cavities. He contracts with an anesthesiologist that comes to his office and does IV sedation so we opted to go that route. We hope Monkey wouldn't have a terrible experience.
We lucked out and there had been a cancellation for the anesthesiologist so we were able to get Monkey back in today instead of a month or two down the road. I had a feeling that the dentists estimate was low on how many cavities Monkey has and unfortunately I was right. He ended up having 8 cavities fill, 2 root canals, and 2 crowns done.
Now I am very glad that we had the work done today, but I would not recommend doing it alone. Spencer is in St. Louis this week and so I had to go into town by myself. There was no one else to help when I had to tell Monkey that I could not feed him. It was the hardest when I was feeding Bub and myself lunch (I wouldn't have eaten but I was starting get light headed). He had been telling me that he was hungry from the time we left this morning. I probably should have woke him up this morning at 8:30 so that I could feed him. I decided that he is less fussy when he is hungry than when he is tired.
Spencer's sister watch Bub for me (Which I am so grateful for. I didn't call her until this morning.) Monkey was pretty upset that we were not staying to play. Then to have to hold him down while they gave him a shot of stuff to knock him out. The hardest part was turning him directly over to the anesthesiologist in the waiting room instead of in the examine room. I wasn't prepared for that. It is hard watching your son, who is drugged, being carried into another room.
He is happy now so I am guessing we made the right decision. I am exhausted, but he has been sleeping all afternoon so I doubt I will get to go to sleep anytime soon.

thoughts

So, as I was reading the news today I read that Senator McCain chose a woman as his running mate. Now I didn't read any of the articles. I just read the headlines. Whatever happens in November will go down in history. Either we will have our first black president or we will have a female vice president. It will definitely be interesting what happens.

I love nights like tonight. The battery in the car died so after jump starting it we took a drive. Bub fell asleep. When we got home Monkey wanted a drink of milk. After he was finished with his milk he took himself up to bed. It is so nice to not have to fight them to go to bed.

How do you get a kid to not just pee in the middle of a room? Monkey was doing so well with going to the bathroom and then all of the sudden he has started peeing where ever he is when the urge strikes. He is starting preschool next week so it will be interesting to see how that goes. It isn't as if he ever tells me that he needs to go. I was about ready to put him back in diapers because I was tired of having to clean the messes in his pants when he just all of the sudden started going to the bathroom by himself. When we go to the park he doesn't tell me that he needs to go, he just takes off for the bathroom. This wouldn't be such a big deal if he didn't insist on going into the men's bathroom!

deck

When we moved into our home three years ago there was a small deck off of the kitchen. When you walked out on it the thing swayed. With that and the fact that when it was built they left one corner without boards on it. Because Monkey was learning how to crawl I decided that it needed to be replaced. We tore it down and started planning another deck. Well three years later, we have finally finished the first step in getting the deck up!

Spencer works for the power company. A couple of months ago I had the thought that it would be nice if we could get the truck they use to dig the holes for power poles. I didn't really think that it would happen. Then two weeks ago Spencer got the idea in his head to use old power poles as the supports for the deck. He talked with the line supervisor for the office here and was told that it would be no problem. So this afternoon they showed up and planted seven posts for my deck! It sure was nice to not have to dig the holes by hand. It was also nice to have three extra sets of hands to get the posts in the whole so all I had to worry about keeping little boys out of the way. I am so very excited to have something done on the ddeck. I have missed not having the deck out back to relax on in the evenings.

It is like Spencer said though... we got the hard part done and now comes the expensive part.

Just a Tuesday Morning

Monkey is such a joy! He brings me in some Duplos and as I sit here playing with him he tells me that he loves it. He kisses it and I promptly drop it only to have the "sword" break apart into fifteen pieces. What is most wonderful is that he didn't get mad that I dropped it and broke it! Now he is telling me that I need to "click x". For some reason his favorite letter on the keyboard is the letter x. If I am talking to someone on instant messenger he will insist on helping me. (I only let him help when I am talking with Spencer or my little brother. Spencer as his dad takes it in stride and KC just laughs.)

My mom came out to visit me Saturday. She brought my sister Danielle with her. Danielle probably shouldn't have made the trip with mom because she had her tonsils out on Thursday. I might be seeing a lot more of Mom. I am the closest to Grandma out of Mom's kids and it is going to be tough on her as they try and figure out what do do about her now that Grandpa has passed away. Grandma is losing her memory. Her doctor told her that it was just circulation problems, but the way Grandma is so easily upset makes me believe that there is more to it then that. The anger is the hardest part. I wish I could do more for Mom then being a place "closer" to Grandma (even if closer means just two hours drive difference.)

I am doing better now that Spencer is home. Last week was extremely hard. My emotions were all over the place and it seemed everytime I turned my back on the kids they were into something they shouldn't be. I am going to sign Monkey up for pre-school this year. I hope he will enjoy that. I also hope that having the challenge to learn will help him to explore his creativity in other ways beside with peanut butter.

Stay at home Mom

I have often told people that being a stay at home mom is the hardest thing that I have ever done. When I worked my nine to five job I was able to leave work at work at five and had the weekends off. Being a stay at home mom has no down time, unless you count the time when you are actually asleep. Spencer is away on business and so I am home with the kids and so have no one to help clean up after the kids. Today, Monkey found Spencer's shave gel and so that was all over the bathroom. Then I left them downstairs for no more than ten minutes and they had dumped out fifteen packets of instant oatmeal.
Just a a disclaimer... I love that I am home with my kids. I am lucky that I am able to stay with them. It is just some days, like any other "job" it is overwhelming.

trouble

They are so much easier to deal with when they are asleep.

Yesterday the boys decided to bring the hose intot he house. Now the flooring in front of the door is coming up. The door catches on it so it is being pulled up even more when I open the door.

And then today they got into the peanut butter and that is all over the carpet. It seems like every time I turn my back on them they are into something. As much as I love them... the messes are so frustrating!!!!

First Post

Life has been hard the last three weeks. My Aunt was diagnosed with cancer about the time my youngest son was born two years ago. At the time she was given three to six months to live. July 22, she passed away. It was a blessing. I was able to see here while I was in town the week before and knew at that time that it was close. I just didn't think that I would be getting the call less than a week after I had seen her. Already having a hard time with my Aunt's passing, I couldn't sleep the night before her funeral. At about midnight, my mom's sister called (my aunt that passed away was my dad's sister) to say that my Grandpa was not doing very good and they were taking him to the hospital. At the funeral the next day I could not stop crying. After the family dinner following the funeral I wanted my mom to call to find out how grandpa was doing. My sister Jen gave me a hard time for being "our little worrier". Mom made the call and we found out that grandpa was doing a lot better. Mom went up to be with them the next day and he was able to go home from the hospital the day after that. This was the day that I planned on going home so I stopped by to see them. He looked pretty good. I didn't want to stay too long. My three (almost four year old) and a two year old wear both grandma and grandpa out rather quickly.
My sister Jessie called me Saturday morning to let me know that Grandpa was back in the hospital and they didn't think that he would make it through the weekend. So I got me and the kids ready to go and made the two hour trip to see him in the hospital. When I got to the hospital they had him on forced oxygen, which is a lot different then just having him on oxygen. The forced oxygen mask has to have a complete seal otherwise the air would be forced out around the mask instead of down to the lungs. The force of the air made it so that he could not relax even though that was what he needed the most. I was very glad that his oxygen levels got up high enough that they were able to take that mask off of him and just have a nasal cannula on him. He was able to talk with Jessie and I for a good hour. I had to go home Saturday night. I don't think that I could have handled being there Sunday. I called my mom Sunday after visiting hours were done and she said that he was doing as good as could be expected. I told her that he couldn't die the next day because it was my anniversary. I knew she had no control over it and neither did he. And to be honest, I would rather see him at peace then to see him as restless as he was when I first got to the hospital on Saturday. Mom called me just before nine Monday morning to tell me that the hospital had called just after eight to tell them they needed to get up there because he wasn't doing very well. I was devastated. I had to get mortgages paid, but as soon as that was done we again made the trip. Mom called me about twelve forty-five to tell me that grandpa had passed away around eleven that morning. I hadn't even left my house in time to see him. However, Spencer dropped me off at my grandma's house and took the kids to his sister's. I spent the afternoon with my Mom, Jen, Grandma and Aunt Utahnna.
Spencer and I did go have dinner and it was healing to sit with my family. However, waiting all week for the funeral was hell.
Grandpa, you were a great man, truly the world's greatest grandpa. I love you and will miss you always!