Fun, Scary, and (hopefully) a Cure

First the fun... I'm getting ready to go visit AnneMarie for a few days. I cannot wait for this for many reasons - in no particular order - the weather, the mountains, the people (although I won't get to see Carson at all and Maren only some of the time. I still can't wait to hang out with AM), shopping for LDS stuff without having to do it all online, being there without children.

It drives me nuts when people here say (about Arizona) that "it may be hot but at least it's a dry heat..." To which I think "so is my oven and I don't see you wanting to live there." when it's 95 (humid) here it will be 115 there (or worse) and I don't care about dry or humid at that point 115 is worse any day! As for Utah's weather... the actual temperature is usually very similar to here but it cools down more at night and I prefer a dry 95 to a humid 95 - always!

Okay, done with the whine.

The scary is two-part. First, although I love to visit other places, I HATE to fly! From the second we start taxi-ing to finally getting into our destination gate, I'm a wreck. Call it irrational, that's fine but I still don't like it. The second part is actually worse - two days after I get home, Abby is having surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids. She has HUGE tonsils, even the doctor said "Wow, those are really impressive!". She's snored super loud for years, can't breath well sometimes, has sleep apnea and can be quite grumpy/hyperactive during the day. Research seems to point to tonsils being a huge culprit in all of those issues. The hope is that she will calm down because she will actually get better rest at night. Plus, now she won't keep the rest of the house up all night either. I'm sure Susie and Isabelle could swap stories... Abigail gets her tonsil size from me.

So, that's also the (hope for a) cure part... that Abby can sleep, breathe (easier during the day and constantly during the night), be in a better mood during the day, and that Isabelle will be able to sleep peacefully again. It's so scary and upsetting though to see your baby going in for surgery. Even when Mikkel had his several years ago, I was a nervous wreck. I still think that anytime a child needs to be in a hospital for any reason they should automatically prescribe stress meds for the mom!

Oh... great news!! Daniel is potty trained!!! He still has accidents once or twice a day sometimes but overall, he's doing great! In fact, he had three accident free days this week alone! I just hope he can keep it up while I'm gone and can't remind him.

It Works!

That thing Abby talked about in FHE really works! Last night Fred plugged his drill in to charge and this morning the charger was all melted and distorted with a little bit of charring on it. There's no smoke detector in that particular room and it's directly beneath my bedroom closet and Isabelle's bathroom. Had that thing caught on fire any more, we might not be in this house right now! Fred said "we must have been doing lots of apologizing!"

Whatever it was, I'm glad our home is still intact and we are still safe.

FHE

Abby and Jacob decided to give the family home evening lesson last week.

Abby gave a talk on apologizing. She went on for about 5 minutes about "Jesus loves when you apologize to mommy. If you apologize, you'll be safe. We should apologize to mommy because then we will be saved." I truly have NO idea where that one came from!

Jacob came next. His talk went like this (this is word for word... he wrote it out) "When I get 8 I will be bathtized then I will go to kollij (college) but first I will go to first grade and I will be good for always and for everone."

Abby then came back and said "I do NOT want to go to college... it will take too long!"

Mikkel's Last Baptism

In the Veracruz mission, that is. He will officially be in the Villahermosa mission on Thursday.

Soccer Fan

This was sent to me by my stepmom. She and my dad are serving a mission in Johannesburg, South Africa. Turns out Moroni is a real fan - he even has his own vuvuzela!

Random Pictures

Okay, I finally went to the apple store and learned how to add pictures so they would stay...

These are in no particular order, just as I found them.

An excerpt from one of Mikkel's letters:

So, fun story. I went to sleep and turned on my fan, as usual. Nothing exciting. I wake up in the morning and to my surprise, my fan is no longer on... hmmmmm, that's strange, let's check this out... nope looks just fine, I look at the wall and WHOA! Good thing these walls are made of concrete! Looks like the cable had a short and caught on fire during the night. So, i decide to try to pull the plug out of the wall, SPARKS FLY EVERYWHERE! Pretty cool, scared my comp, almost caught my pile of socks on fire... all in a days work. I eventually just yanked it out, one of the contacts stayed in the wall, I had to pull it out with a sock to protect against fatal shock. So, fun morning, woke up my comp and me pretty well. I bought a new cable though, it's working just fine, I'm using the same socket, but I moved my socks this time.

He has two pair - they both look like this.

Thank goodness for Missionary Mall's two year warranty on everything they sell!

February 11, 2010

Calf Scramble winners

Update: She's decided to buy a breeding goat since we have a place to keep it and we'd have to board a dairy cow... that darn budget won again!

Halloween 2009 - Trunk or Treat.

Daniel - 2

Abby - 3

Jacob - 5

Some of the young women in our ward.

Halloween Trunk or Treat 2009

Jacob

Isabelle was putting sunscreen on the kids the other day so we could go "swimming" (I put that in quotation marks because what that really means is Jacob is scared to go in the water while Abby is fearless so I go between trying to get him in and trying to keep her from going in without me...)

Anyway, I digress... so she was rubbing sunscreen on and mentioned that Abby's arms are bigger around than Jacob's. He's always been so thin (and a picky eater)that this doesn't surprise me, but it does make me think. I happened to get a coupon in the mail for pediasure (or something like that) so I bought some hoping it might help at least a little bit. I told them it was just for Jacob and Abby says "it's because you are too skinny Jacob!"

Later, when Fred comes home Jacob says to him "Daddy, Mommy bought me some special chocolate milk to make me fat!"