sunset over Great Salt Lake at 75 mph

I don't know if this picture does the beauty of the sunset justice, but I liked the picture.
It is really hard to get exactly what you are seeing when you are driving by at 75 mph, but it was such a beautiful sunset that was reflecting off the lake I had to try.

One of the things I like most about living in Wendover is the beautiful sunsets that we drive into on our way home. (Which during the summer months happen quite a bit because we wait for the sun to go down so that we are not driving into the setting sun.)

landscaping

Spencer and I have undertaken the task of landscaping our back yard. We have got sprinklers in and now we are just to the point that we need to smooth out the ground. This is huge undertaking. I finally talked Spencer into buying me a landscaping rake which helps tons. (He gave in because he finally decided it was okay for me to have the proper tool do the job because he is always buying himself the correct tool to do the job.) The biggest problem is that the soil is so rocky and just plain hard. Oh and than there is the fact that it is extremely salty.
It will be worth all of the work when we finally get it done, but man does it seem like that day is a very long way off.

ready to scream

Spencer has decided that we need to go a month with spending as little money as possible. Which that is great. Where I have a problem is when he comes in and tells me that I am taking too much money out every paycheck to buy groceries. I almost feel punished.

random

So I have been sitting here with the blog opened for over twenty minutes feeling the need to write, but for the life of me I have no idea what it is that I want to write. The same thing was happening last night, but with trying to reinstall a program and other computer issues, I did not write. So let me see if I can put my random thoughts down and have them make any sense.

1. There is snow on the ground. I was done with cold and snow and here it is again. In the four years that we have lived in Wendover there has never been this much snow.

2. As often as I complain about the inconvenience of living in Wendover, Wendover is still my home. I am not sure how long it will be my home, but until we are through with what we need to do here it will be my home. Inconveniences and all.

3. I love my sleeping children. I always try and go in after they have both gone to sleep to make sure that they are tucked into bed nice because like last night they are often not. Bub was upset that we had sent him to bed and so it looked like he just threw himself down on the floor with his head on his bed and fell asleep.

4. Did I mention that there is snow on the ground?

5. It took Spencer 8 years (and when I say 8 years I mean exactly 8 years tot he day we met) he found out that I am extremely ticklish. He just thought I was whinny when he started tickling me. Well of course I am whinny. Tickling is a form of torture.

6. I would like a small stretch of days when I don't have to put any more miles on my poor car, but it does not look like that will be happening anytime soon.

Well I think that I have rambled for quite enough for one day.

Caesarean births

Saturday night I was talking with my cousin who is pregnant with her third child. Her first two were delivered like mine, via a c-section. Her doctor had told her that the third would also need to be delivered Cesarean. I could not believe the bitterness that she felt about this. I am so grateful for the technology that allowed me to deliver both my children safely. Here is my stories.
Monkey was due on August 29, 2004. My husband had got a new job and we needed to relocate, but because it was a small town we let them know that we would not be coming until after the baby was born. August 29 came and went and we were into the 41st week. The hospital that my doctor is affiliated with will not allow doctors to induce if nothing is happening until the 41st week. 41 week happened to fall on Labor day, my doctor doesn't work on Tuesdays and so I was brought in on Wednesday September 8th and started. This is after sending all of my belonging to the new town with Spencer on Labor day. Him going to work on the 7th and than coming home to be with me for the birth of our son.
Things went well. I tried to do it naturally, but when they broke my water the pain was unbearable and so I did the epidural. I dilated fully and began to push by 6 that night. I pushed for an hour and a half and nothing happened. Monkey than shifted and I started pushing him into my hip instead of down the birth canal. At that point my doctor was called in and she looked at me and told me that I could push for another hour and a half or we could just decide that I wasn't giving birth vaginally and I could just get prepped for a c-section. I looked at Spencer and we made the decision that we would not push anymore and just go for the c-section. At 10:59 pm they brought my 9 lb. 14.5 oz. son into the world. Realizing how big he is it is easier to deal with the fact that I ended up delivering him surgically.
Don't get me wrong I still had this little voice in the back of my head that wondered why my petite little sisters were able to deliver vaginally when I, with the largest bone structure of all my sisters, could not. Some days I wondered if I would ever get over this fact, but than I got pregnant with my second son nine months later. We had moved a little closer a large town with more options to hospitals at this point, but I was still almost two hours away. I was a little slow finding a doctor, but I found one that delivered at the hospital that I had decided to deliver at. And at the first appointment I told him that I was just fine scheduling a repeat c-section. I had been researching and found that doctors were not encouraging VBACs as much as they had been and combine that with the fact that I lived so far from the hospital it just seemed easier. The second pregnancy progressed just fine. By the time that I went in to be tested for strep I was measuring big and my left hip ached and it felt like he was up under my ribs. I had scheduled the c-section for March 21st, eleven days before my April 1st due date. I went into my appointment on March 13, and the doctor talked with me, told me that he would get all the information to me that I needed so that I didn't need to come back in for another appointment before my c-section the next week. He than got up to leave and asked me if I wanted him to check me because it was still early and we already had everything planned for the next week. Something told me that I needed to be checked. I live two hours from the hospital and so I wanted to know if some thing was happening so I could be prepared just in case.
To this day I am grateful that I made that decision. After the doctor checked me he told me that he was glad that he had checked me as well. I was dilated to a three and there wasn't anything presenting. Where a body part should have been near the birth canal, there was nothing. So Bub wasn't even coming feet first, but he was oblique. At this point the doctor left us to call the hospital to find out if there was an opening for the next morning because if there wasn't we would be going in that night. At this point I am kicking myself because I had left the suitcase at home as being wishful thinking on my part that I would even need it.
There are a number of things that can go wrong with an oblique presenting baby. The most serious I think is the prolapse cord. And the reason the doctor opted for surgery instead of just putting me on bed rest was because he didn't want to get a call from an EMT telling him that he had a hand or foot. I was in shock. Spencer had called his boss to let him know and his boss had let the ladies in the front office know so that they could rearrange schedules. One of them called me and I really couldn't talk. I was still in shock. It is scary being told that your baby is coming a week earlier than planned because of a complication.
We leave from my Grandparents home at five thirty the next morning. I am prepped for surgery and my doctor came in with the portable ultra sound to get a better idea of what position Bub is in. As it turns out I had his head under my right ribs and his butt wedged against my left hip.
They get me into the O.R. and get in and break my water and the cord comes out along with the fluid so most likely I would have had a prolapsed cord. If that wasn't bad enough, there was also a knot in the cord that if things had been left could have added another complication.
Do I wish that I could have delivered my children vaginally? Maybe. I am just ever so grateful for my two healthy children and that I lived through both deliveries. Things could have gone so much different than what they actually did.

I was speechless

I picked Monkey up from school and his teacher told me that he spit on her. He got mad because she told him he needed to color his picture and he spit on her. I know we have been having problems with him spitting, but I just can not believe that he spit at his teacher. How do you punish them after the fact and make him understand what he did wrong?

more traveling

Because we didn't do enough traveling last weekend we are going to Vernal this weekend. We will leave as soon as Spencer gets off work today.
Okay so last weekends mini vacation has nothing to do with us going to Vernal this weekend. It is Easter weekend and we spend every Easter weekend in Vernal. Out of all of the holidays Easter is the one holiday you can count on more of my cousins being in Vernal than any other. The Hunting Easter party is now on its fourth generation of attendees. And boy has it grown. I am so excited. I just can't wait!!!!

Capitol Reef

My kids and Jennifer's kids a the look out. You can see for hundreds of miles behind the kids. Such a wonderful adventure.

Here Bub is showing us what is important to him. Not this canyon we are starting into with cliffs that are so sheer, but the dirt at his feet.

Bub is actually looking at something other than the dirt. Monkey needed a little prodding to keep going.He found this little tree and was petty it. It was so cute.
Here is us as a family. I don't remember why Monkey was holding up his three fingers.

Spencer climbed up to this hole and the kids needed to go up with him. They thought it was the coolest thing.

I LOVE this shot. It looks scarier than it is. He is only jumping a foot or so into Spencer's arms, but you can't tell this by the picture. And Bee didn't throw him off, I think she was a little nervous about him being up there and jumping.

The canyon was full of these caves that have been made when the flash flood come through. The kids loved climbing. Bub loved it all the more because of all the sand that is deposited on the floor of caves.

This is one of the tanks where water collects during flash floods. The kids loved this one. I wish I had a picture of the kids playing in here. They had a blast. It was just a great big sand box to them.
The kids were done before Matt and Jennifer were and so started back for the car with Spencer. This is me as I was waiting for Matt and Jennifer to make sure we didn't get too far ahead of them.

Again I need to thank Jennifer for the wonderful pictures.

Bryce Canyon

My kids don't like to pose for pictures. I tired to get Bub to look at the camera, but there was snow at his feet and so that was much more interesting.

What do all of those huge, beautiful rocks have that is so great when there is dirt right here that I can play with? Seriously, if there is dirt Bub is doing to be digging in it. Spencer did tell him he could dig in the dirt at the cabin, but the snow kind of made that impossible.

It was a little scary having him standing up on the fence, but that gave him the best view of the rocks.

Here is Spencer and his "big" brother. Matt stood on his tip toes to even out their height and so of course Spencer also stood on his tip toes. Unfortunately we don't have that picture.

Here is a picture of our backs as we look out across the view. Bub was trying to get down. He was more interested in the dirt and snow on the ground at his feet than what I wanted to show him. He is 3 so I guess it makes sense.

Here are all my boys.

PS Jennifer, thanks for the pictures. (The battery in my camera was dead and so I could only get pictures for part of the day.)

Cabin in the snow

What do you do at a cabin up the mountain when it snows? You sled of course. This is actually only the second time my kids have ever sledded in their lives. They loved it. Spencer even got in on all the fun.Before Monkey could get completely on, the sled started down the hill.

He was having so much fun.It was at this point that Bub was done. The snow is just another form of dirt in his mind that he needs to dig in. His hands were hurting they were so cold. His pants are wet up to his thighs because of digging in the snow. I took him back into the cabin and went back out because Monkey wasn't quite done.

Monkey and I spent the next fifteen minutes sledding down the hill and running into the side of the cabin. It was so nice to take the time to spend one on one with him. Most of the time he gets one on one with Dad and not Mom. Just a special memory for me. I wish I had a picture of his smiles, but it isn't very easy to take a picture from the back of a sled.

What was I Thinking?

I knew we were silly to agree to go camping when the forecast said it would snow. Granted we were at a cabin that had electricity and propane heat. However, you have to get to the cabin before you can enjoy those amenities. And of course once we got to the cabin I did enjoy myself (even though there was snow on the ground.) We were able to get out of Wendover early enough that we met up with Spencer's family for the trip down. Which it is a very good thing that we did. Not only did we not know how to get to the cabin, we would have never actually made it up to the cabin on our own.
All the paved roads were great. There was no snow. It was wet, but it was still good. We turned off to actually go up to the cabin itself and that is a dirt road. Because it wasn't paved the snow had stuck when it had fallen and it looked like there were at least six inches. I was at the end of the caravan of three cars and so I was trying to stay up with the other three cars so that if they made a turn off the main road I wouldn't be lost. So I came up to a corner too fast and started to slide when hit the brakes. Knowing that there wasn't anything that I could do I let off the brakes and threw my hands up and just slid off the road. Before we came to a complete stop I used the momentum of the car to get us back onto the road and we went on our way. Things going good until we started getting closer to the cabin. The other car going up was a rear wheel drive, which doesn't do well on snow pack. (There are some people who would disagree with me on this, but in my experience this is true.) They got stuck and because we were following we also ended up getting stuck as well. Luckily Spencer's dad did have his 4x4 truck. They got the first car pulled to where they were able to go on. The truck than started back down the road after our car, but by backing down a little we were able to get to a part of the road that was not snow pack so we were able to go. We made it almost all the way to the cabin before we got into trouble again. The first car got stuck again and because we were coming up on it last we also ended up getting stuck and so we just parked the car in the driveway of another cabin hoping that we wouldn't be in anyones way.
So the title makes it sound like the whole weekend was a bummer, but in truth I had a lot of fun. I will have more tomorrow along with pictures.

evenings when I finally get things done

I am a terrible procrastinator. Dishes and laundry are my two worst things to put off. Dishes, besides what needed to be done in order to eat haven't really been done for almost three weeks. Laundry was done less than a week ago, but we are getting ready to go camping and so I need to have it all done before tomorrow. Anyway, this evening I finally got busy and got dishes washed. However in the middle of getting things done Bub started crying and so I tried to get him distracted with a show, but it was not the show that he wanted so the crying did not stop. Finally I took my rubber gloves off and told him that I would hold him. He wasn't sure what exactly I wanted from him until I sat down and held my hands out for him to come sit on my lap. I didn't have to hold him for more than five minutes but those few moments that he sat on my lap was all he needed for the rest of the evenings. The dishes did get finished and the laundry got more than half finished and I had a happier baby. Sometimes we just need to step back and remember what is the most important thing in our lives.