Merry Sickmas........

and hopefully a Healthy New Year!

It seems like every other post I've done for the last few months I've made mention of someone in our house being sick. So why should I stop the trend now?

It really all started on Monday. I stated that I thought we were over the yuck we had been spreading to each other. We'll not so much - just a different yuck this time. When Sarah woke from her nap on Monday I went in to get her to find her, her pillow and sheet covered in throw up. It was almost time to leave for the doctor (which I was taking her in just for her cough before this!) so I quickly gave her a bath and changed her clothes. On the way to the doctor she threw up again and of course I didn't think to bring extra clothes. So she went to the doctor nice and smelly! Sarah had to see the nurse practitioner and she said her lungs sounded clear and that she just had the stomach flu. I wasn't convinced about her cough being nothing, but I didn't push it because I wanted to get home and get her and I changed out of our smelly clothes (I stunk from carrying her). Sarah threw up one more time on the way home from the doctor's and that was thankfully the last time. By Tuesday she was feeling much better - but she still had the cough. More on that in a minute.

Wednesday I got a call from Jeff about 11:30 am that he would be home shortly and was headed to bed because his stomach wasn't feeling well. A few times during the day Emilie complained that her tummy hurt. Long story short - Jeff was sick with the stomach yuck, but never threw up, just had that other stuff (you know what I mean). By 8:00 pm I started to feel it coming on. We do the 12 days of Christmas to someone every year of course it was the last night of 12 days, but neither Jeff or I were up to going out - so I have to give a shout out to our Home Teacher for coming by and taking it for us! Your the best! Then at 9:45 pm Emilie jumped out of bed and threw up in the bathroom sink. My stomach was already in bad shape with the other stuff and it almost made me throw up cleaning it up. I'm just grateful she made it to the sink! TMI yet? It gets better.

Jeff slept with Emilie and Ada just incase Emilie threw up again - which she did 3 times during the night (but somehow through it all she was spared from the other stuff!). I had Sarah in bed with me because she has been waking up coughing so much. She started stiring at one point and I reached over to get her and realized her diaper had leaked a bit (stomach sleeper!) so I decided to get up and change her. I went in her room and changed her diaper. Just as I got her new diaper on I felt like I was going to pass out. So I grabbed Sarah off the changing table who was still asleep and ran in the bathroom. Set her on the floor, got on the toilet for the one and started throwing up in the bathtub for the other. Gratefully after the night that was the end of the throwing up - but not quite for the other stuff for

Jeff and I.

By the moring all of us, but Ada, were wiped out. It was quite the Christmas morning! I got a few pictures, but not many. I was way too tired. Somehow still came even at the risk of catching the yuck. Ada earned the gold star of the day. She handed out presents to all us sicklies to open.

Sarah with her Pedialyte pop

Ada and Emilie

Yep - that is me. Sadly that was probably my best side that day.

Then Ada helped out with Sarah most of the day. I kept forgetting to feed the poor child because no one else felt like eating. Our Christmas day muchies constisted of otter pops, gatorade and some saltine crackers. She had breakfast, but then I think the rest of the day she just had some snacks. By 5:00 pm she said "I'm STARVING! Could you please fix me something to eat?!" Like I said - gold star!

It wasn't exactly how I planned Christmas, but it will definitely be a memorable one!

By yesterday evening we were all feeling much better and we finally sat down together and had our first meal in 48 hours. Waffles, hashbrowns and cooked ham. And honestly it tasted so good! It was nice to have some real food. I think I can confidently say that we are all over the stomach yuck and as for now Ada has been spared.

Sarah is a different story when it comes to being over everything. I took her back to the doctor on Friday because her cough had gotten worse. She is now back on the nebulizer until Tuesday (she was put on one after her and I got home from our SL visit a little over a month ago) and two medicines. One to clear up her nose and the other to help with the cough. The poor girl! But she is taking it in stride and is good to take her medicine and sit still turing her treatments. I knew she was really tired today and I was trying to get everyone lunch and then get her up for a nap and as I finished making my sandwich I turned around to find this:

Gotta love her!

I'm not a big NY resolution person - but I now have one:

To quit posting about someone in this family being sick!

On a side note - we had looked into going to Utah Christmas day or the day after but it just wasn't in the cards. But between illness and weather I don't think we would have made it anyway. We had rain that froze, so the morning after Christmas everything was a sheet of ice. Many on the highways were shut down - the whole toll road across Indiana was shut down. Accidents everywhere and hundreds of flights cancelled. There was even a plane at Midway airport that ran off the runway trying to take off. Craziness!! Then last night we had pouring rain and thunder and lightening. The kind we get during the spring and summer (if you haven't experienced a midwest thunder and lightening storm - you are missing out!) and then more rain today. There are flood watches out all over the state.

All I can say is this has been one interesting Winter break and there is still a week to go! We'll see what happens next!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

"At the focal point of all human history, a point illuminated by a new star in the heavens revealed for just such a purpose, probably no other mortal watched--none but a poor young carpenter, a beautiful virgin mother, and silent stabled animals who had not the power to utter the sacredness they had seen. Shepherds would soon arrive and later, wise men from the East. Later yet the memory of that night would bring Santa Claus and Frosty and Rudolph--and all would be welcome. But first and forever there was just a little family, without toys or trees or tinsel. With a baby--that's how Christmas began. It is for this baby that we shout in chorus: 'Hark! the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King! . . . Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth' ( Hymns, no. 209)."

-Jeffrey R. Holland

Overdue Update

After I posted yesterday I realized it had been almost 3 weeks since my last post. Where has the time gone? I'm sure most of you feel the same way as Christmas is only 3 days away and there is still much to do! Anyway, here is the update of what has gone on at our house the last 3 weeks.

I THINK we are mostly over the yuck that we have been spreading to each other. Although Sarah has started with a cough again and we are headed to the doctor this afternoon.

Part of the reason I didn't post for a while is that since we've all been sick, our computer decided to get sick too. It got a virus. So we had to take it to someone to fix. When we got it back I couldn't get the card reader to work. I searched for days online trying to download different drivers to get it to work. No luck. I was getting really bugged that I wasn't going to be able to download pictures. I called Jeff at work and asked him to go to buy a new card reader. I then was in the basement getting something from the storage room and decided to look in my camera box to see if it came with cables. Sure enough - it had one I could attach right to the camera to my computer. Thanks for putting up with me Jeff! Glad to be back in business!

I told Jeff this year I was done with real trees. I know I'm a scruge when it come to them. It's just one less mess to clean up daily and one less mouth to remember to feed. I wanted an artificial - the 9ft. pre-lite one from Costco to be exact. Just before we left for our Thanksgiving trip, he gave in. Told me to go get it. But alas I didn't have time. So the Monday after we got back we went to Costco. They were out, but the Costco by Jeff's work had some. So he went to that Costco on Tuesday and got the last one. The bonus - it was $100 cheaper than before Thanksgiving. Sometimes it does pay off to wait and I couldn't be happier with it! I love, love, love it! The only problem is that I didn't have enough ornaments to cover that size of tree! I think I'll have to hit the clearance sales this year for some new ones.

Here she is - my new baby:

We had our ward Christmas breakfast on the 13th. I signed up to make breakfast casserole. I decided to make two a 9.5 X 13.5 size one (notice the extra 1/2 inch on each side!) and a 2qt one. I got up early to make them - I'm all about the freshly made if possible. I got ready while they were cooking and they were done about 15 minutes before we had to leave. I took them out and then decided to put them back in to keep them warm until we left. I put the small one in - no problem. As I started to get the big one I realized Sarah was headed towards me. So I had the big one with one had resting the half the pan on the stove, trying to keep Sarah from touching the oven door with my body. As I started to reach for the other half of the pan, the grate it was resting on slipped and you guessed it - I couldn't catch it with my other hand and it landed upsidedown on the over door. I didn't think to take a picture of it before I cleaned up some of it (too chappy about it and not enough time!) But you get the idea:

This is part of it that I threw in the sink

And no the egg shells were not IN the casserole - they were already in the sink!

This is about 1/2 of what was there - not pretty!
Of course most of it landed inbetween the crack of the door and the stove. So I left the stove open while we went to the breakfast and cleaned it up when we got home.
I called Jeff (he was at the church helping to set up) and told him he had to run to the grocery store and get a dozen doughnuts. Wasn't a good way to start off the day!

But we had a great time at the party and Santa and Mrs. Claus came. Emi and Ada of course want nothing to do with the man - they just wanted a candy cane. You can only imagine what Sarah is thinking by her expression!

Aren't they cute?

The only other news worthy item is our weather. It's freezing and we've had a ton of snow. More that usual around here and we are supposed to get more tonight. Christmas break started a day early thanks to the nasty storm that blew through here last Thursday. It had everything - rain, sleet, snow. Even some thunder and lightening. Crazy stuff. Today's temp isn't much better. -5 with the feel like of -25. But we are supposed to "warm" up to 27 degress tomorrow. Don't think I'll be pulling out the shorts and capri's just yet!

The weather isn't helping me to accomplish those last minute errands, but I guess we don't have to worry about whether or not we will have a white Christmas.
Done!

Home church?

It was probably about a year ago on a Sunday morning when we were getting ready for church and Ada said "Mom can we do home church? Kids get to do home school, why can't we do home church?"

Today I'm thinking it would be a really good idea since the actual temp is -7 and the feel like temp is -33. On days like today it's VERY, VERY tempting. If Jeff didn't have to speak today, I would highly consider the option.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving!

(I know I'm late, but better late than never right?)

For Thanksgiving we went to visit our good friends, the Brown's, who recently left us and moved to Pennsylvania. We left Tuesday evening and drove to Sandusky, OH where we overnighted and then drove the rest of the way Wednesday. It took much longer to get there then we anticipated, but we made it!

We had a great time hanging out with the Brown's and Grandma and Grandpa Brown who were visiting from England. While we were there we watched lots of movies, played lots of games, stayed up way too late and ate lots of yummy food!

On Friday Jeff and I and the girls drove up to Hershey, PA. Can you say Heaven on Earth? For me, yes - endless chocolate! We took the tour that shows you how they make the chocolate and got free chocolate at the end, then we took the trolley tour of the town and got free chocolate at the end. I was really starting to like the fact you could take a tour a get free chocolate! We had a great time seeing the sights and smelling the chocolate. Hershey is definitely my kind of town!

Saturday we celebrated Amy's birthday. Her birthday isn't until the 1st, but her family wanted to celebrate with her while she was home from school. Saturday afternoon we went to Longwood Gardens to see the Christmas displays and lights and go to an ice skating show. It was really pretty and lots of fun, but really cold!

Sunday we got up early to drive home. The drive home also took longer than expected between weather (we were in rain or snow the whole way home), lunch and traffic. The bonus of the drive was that we got to take Amy back to Chicago with us! (I'll explain why later) We were making really good time until we stopped for lunch that took over and hour! We stopped at an oasis off the turnpike and it was really busy and short staffed at every place in there to eat. The girls and Amy got McDonalds and ended up waiting for about 20 minutes for their food and then it ended up being really gross. Jeff and I got sandwiches that weren't that great either. Oh well what do you expect from a turnpike oasis?

Once we got back on the road we hit some traffic, but not too bad. But once we got near the Ohio, Indiana border we got stuck in traffic waiting to pay the toll. 8 miles of cars waiting in line to pay. We were stop and go for almost an hour. But we did eventually make it home and we were all glad to finally get out of the car for good! We had our moments, but overall everyone were good travelers especially for such a long day.

Unfortunately Sunday morning Sarah woke up with an eye infection. So I knew Monday morning we were headed to the doctor - again. She is still sick from Salt Lake as am I. Plus Emilie and Ada still both have coughs. I swear for the last two months someone in our house has been sick - and quite frankly I'm sick of it! Then Monday morning Sarah's other eye was infected and the doctor told me she was bordering getting an ear infection. Seriously! When will it end?

Anyway, on Monday I kept the girls home from school and after the doctors visit we took Amy downtown Chicago so she could pick up her citizenship papers. What we thought would take maybe half and hour took over 2 hours. Her appointment was at 1:00 so we decided to get lunch after. Finally at 2:30 the girls and I left and found a McDonald's and waited there for Amy to get done. After that we drove her to the airport. Gratefully her flight ended up being delayed an hour because of the weather here. If it hadn't she would probably have missed her original flight because it took so long at the imigration office. But she made it and we finally made it home about 5:15. Needless to say we were all very happy to be done in the car yesterday too!

So after a very fun and very exhausting week, we are trying to recover and get everone well, catch up on laundry, cleaning and errands. I think I'll just go take a nap!

Watching a movie

Mark, Ada, Amy, Emilie, Stephen

Heaven on Earth

The pink singing cows on the tour

The purple singing cows on the tour

Me and Sarah on the chocolate tour

Jeff and Ada on the chocolate tour

Emilie - not sure what is up with that face!
Maybe the smell of the chocolate was overtaking her.

Me, Emilie and Sarah (love that face!) on the trolley tour

Jeff and Ada on the trolley tour

Emilie and I

We tried Sarah with Santa - she wasn't so sure about him. Emilie and Ada want nothing to do with the man. They just want him to show up Christmas Eve and that's it!

One of my favorite parts about Hershey is the kisses on the top of the street lights!

Seriously love this town.

Sarah and I at Longwood Gardens

Emilie, Ada, Jeff and Sarah

This is a fountain that shoots the water across over your head

Emilie

Ada

Sarah

Us in front of the big Christmas tree - it was amazing!

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

The QUEST?

Moved north Coug fans.

12-0

So much more to say,

but I think I'll leave it at that.

Go'n Red

It's rivaly week folks and I know I'm a bit slow since it's Thursday, but I'm going red for the rest of the week to cheer on my Utes!

Happy Birthday Emilie and Ada!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILIE AND ADA!

Lucky #7

I know everyone says this, but really I can't believe my twins are 7! Maybe because the first 2-3 years are a blur that I think they should still be 4 or 5? Truely time goes by too fast!

As far as I can tell they had a pretty good day, even though the majority of it was spent at school. But they were very excited because they got to wear their new watches to school and their new sweatshirts. They were announced twice over the intercom at school (yesterday - oops, and today) and they got to wear birthday crowns all day. Then they got to have their favorite, McDonald's, for dinner and then open the rest of their gifts. All of their gifts were big hits, but they were pretty excited about the Dr. Suess books and the music box!

The door decorated just for them!

I couldn't resist this picture. They are such great sisters to Sarah and Sarah's face says it all when it comes to them!

Happy Birthday girls - love you!

My AWFULly FUN weekend

A few weeks ago Jeff decided I needed a break from being the mom for a few days. And to be honest I agreed with him. So after some debating, I decided to head to SL for a couple days to visit family and get some R & R. So I could leave a day earlier, I agree to take Sarah with me. So last Thursday I got Emi and Ada on the bus and packed up and headed to the airport for Salt Lake.

Now to preface this whole thing, Emi and Ada had colds and were starting to get over them last week. I harped on them everyday not to touch Sarah because I didn't want her getting sick. Well guess what. She got sick. By the time we got to SL on Thursday I knew she wasn't feeling well. And got progressively worse. By Saturday I was sick too.

So the AWFUL portion of our weekend was:

3 almost sleepless nights for both Sarah and I.

Sarah didn't want anything to do with anyone but me. So I got a really good workout carrying her all weekend! Truly, my arms and back were killing me!

I didn't quite get everything done I had planned on because Sarah was sick and I got sick.

But the good news is that we did have FUN amongst all that.
We'll at least I did!

Thursday night I finally got my haircut - it was in desperate need of one! Thanks Harm - I love it! And thanks to my brother Matt and Andrea and kids for watching Sarah for me!

Friday I spent the majority of the day with my sister. I did get a chance to see my friend Kim whom I haven't see forever. I'm so glad you were able to stop by! Laura and I went shopping at the outlets in Park City, hit Shivers on the way home for lunch (had to have my vanilla Diet Coke!) and then came back to her house for a pedicure. I highly recommend it - not just getting one, but getting one in the comfort of home - fabulous! Thanks Laura for setting it up and thanks Ann for doing such a great job! That night Sarah and I went to dinner with my parents and my siblings. It was fun to get together with everyone and catch up. We missed you Kelly!

Saturday I had brunch with Jeff's family at his sister Katie's house (aka The Frat House - because it's a continuous party there!). It was great to see them as well and the food was yummy - thanks everyone! After Sarah had a good nap I met up with my sister again and did some more shopping and errands and then we hit Training Table. Does it get any better than that? For me - not really! After that Sarah and were so exhausted that we went back to my parents and went to bed.

Sunday morning we packed up and headed home to Chicago. I'll be honest I was dreading the flight home, not because I was going home, but because neither Sarah or I were feeling great and we were both exhausted from not getting a lot of sleep for 3 nights. And to add to it, when I was checking in at the curb I found out I couldn't check 2 bags and a car seat. They would have to charge me $25 for the car seat or I could carry it to the gate and check it for free. Well not having flown for a while I didn't know this! I only had one bag coming out so it wasn't a problem. Plus I had two carry-ons because I was bringing home some birthday and Christmas presents and couldn't get it all in the two bags, so I had to carry some stuff on. Gratefully my mom gave me a bag big enough to put the stuff in and I could also put the diaper bag inside it. So there I was carrying Sarah, a bag full of stuff and her car seat. By the time I got through security I thought I was going to pass out!

When I got to the top of the escalator a guy came up and asked if he could carry the carseat for me. Oh I was so grateful! It ended up he was on my flight and he went to Olympus and we knew a lot of the same people. Gratefully he carried it for me when we got to Chicago down the terminal as well. Chivalry is not dead! YEAH!

As for the flight - the 3 hours felt like 6. I made the mistake of giving Sarah dimetapp. I thought it would help her sleep better. She did sleep, but when she wasn't asleep - she was massively crabby! She slept for about 30 minutes on me, then she wanted nothing to do with me and wanted to sleep on the floor. I know gross, but she slept there for 45 minutes and I wasn't going to rock the boat. Then she decided she wanted me again and went to sleep for another 30 mins. It was the inbetweens that weren't so pretty. But we did make it home. Sadly I think I was more tired when I got home than when I left!

The update on Sarah - Monday I took her to the doctor because her cough was so awful and Sunday night she was wheezing a bit when she was breathing. So she has been on a nebulizer for the last 3 days and should be off it tomorrow. It will be nice to get my baby back!

As for me - Monday I was useless (both Sarah and I fell asleep waiting for the doctor to come in!) Today I'm feeling better but am still congested and coughing. Sadly when your a mom life doesn't stop for you - so I've got lots to catch up on and that makes me tired just thinking about it!

I do want to say thanks to Jeff and the girls for letting me have a weekend away - even though it didn't end up exactly as planned - it was great! Love you!

What's for dinner?

Better ask you husbands ladies because today is
National Men Make Dinner Day!

I really think this should be a weekly thing.

Here are the top ten reasons men should participate in this holiday:

10. While cooking, you can still wear your tool belt, simply replace the hammer with a whisk!

9. Several recipes include beer as a legitimate ingredient.

(does that include rootbeer too?)

8. The blender, the electric mixer and the food processor are loud enought to drown out anyone in the house who is learning

a musical instrument.

7. Whoever is cooking always gets the most attention from the dog.

6. Whatever recipe you choose, you can name it after yourself.

Example: tonight's dinner is called 'Doug's Surprise'.

5. Discovering that '250 ml' is the same as '8 ounces' AND '1 cup' is half the fun!

4. Since YOU choose the recipe, it can be a turnip-free night.

3. Some desserts, such as creme brulee, require the use of a propane torch. How much fun is that?!?

2. Since other husbands in your neighbourhood are also cooking dinner, ironically this could be the ultimate male bonding experience.

1. Participating in 'National Men Make Dinner Day' gives you optimum points with your wife.

USE THOSE POINTS WISELY!

Feel free to share this info with your husbands!

Happy Halloween!

For Halloween I thought I would share a favorite Halloween poem given to me by a friend in college. Enjoy and Happy Hallows!

Don't ever laugh as the hearse drives by

for you may be the next to die.

They wrap you in a big white sheet

from your head down to your feet.

They put you in a big black box

and cover you up with dirt and rocks.

All goes well for about a week

then your coffin begins to leak.

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.

The worms play pinochle on your snout.

They eat your eyes, they eat your nose.

The eat the jelly between your toes.

A big green worm with rolling eyes

crawls in your stomach and out your eyes.

Your stomach turns a slimy green

and pus pours out like whipping cream.

You spread it on a slice of bread,

and that's what you eat when you are

DEAD!

Trunk or Treat! or Not!

Last night was our ward Halloween Party. Sadly my children didn't want to dress up, nor did they want to trunk or treat! Seriously, what 6 year old doesn't want to walk around and get free candy?

Oh yea, mine!

Anway we did have fun and tonight we are going to celebrate Halloween by going to HSM3!

The "Ghostess with the Mostest" and her dad

Emilie trying hard not to smile

Sarah, Ada and their friend Morgan

National Chocolates Day

Life around here has been full of the usual goings on - minus me having the root canal from hell (sorry if I offend you with that, but that is exactly what it has been! I'm now on a third antibiotic to get rid of the infection) and stuff that I just don't want to blog about. Hence the lack of posting for a while. But I have started working on our family calendar for next year and just for fun decided to look up some non-typical holidays that I could add to the calendar.

I had no idea that basically every day of the year is some sort of "day", and some days more than one "day". Well today is National Chocolates Day - my kind of holiday.

I think I might just have to go and celebrate.

Fall Fun

Today was another warm day around these parts and the kids were out of school, so what to do? Decorate pumpkins and play in the leaves with friends of course!

I think Ada had as much paint on herself as she did her pumpkin

Emilie very focused :)

Braden concentrating on his masterpiece

Bret smiling as usual!

The finished products

I'm sure you're asking yourself who did that awesome white one on the end? Ya, that would be mine. I decided to get in on the fun and tried to make it a ghost and used black glitter paint for the eyes and mouth. It was a little too warm outside so the paint wouldn't set and it just ran down the pumpkin. Nice affect don't ya think?

Then we have Emilie's, Ada's, Bret's, Lia's and Braden's

Nice work everyone!

Playing in the leaves with the gang

Bret, Braden, Grace
Emily, Emilie and Ada

Saturday on the Farm

We had such great weather this weekend we had to get out and enjoy it. So Saturday afternoon we decided to take the kids to Blackberry Farm for some fun. (okay I wasn't going to say it, but since it you brought it up Meg - although the face doesn't exactly say it, I think Jeff was having fun. Hmmmmm. Maybe?)

Waiting for the train

Sarah doing tounge tricks on the train

The face of the day!

Striking a pose in the "corn" (hay) maze - even the girls were making fun of it

The Tractor Course

How perfect that there was a pink and a purple tractor!

The carousel
Emilie

Ada

Although our time there was short, it was fun and nice to enjoy such beautiful weather!