Quality Friends

Keri is visiting from Hawaii, so we got the crew together (most of us anyway) for a little party today. It was great to see everyone. We had some yummy take and bake pizza and Kaylynn made homemade fazookie cookies for everyone. DELICIOUS! It’s fun to get together now that the kids are getting older and can self-entertain (with the help of some DVDs, toys, and the Wii). They played really well together so we had lots of time to talk and laugh and catch up. It was fabulous. I’m glad I have such awesome friends!

Retro Post - Kawasaki Disease

June 22-25, 2006 – Ben spent a few days in the hospital three years ago this week. They were a lousy few days! It all started with Ben having a fever. We didn’t think much of it. We gave him some Tylenol and figured he would be fine. We even took him boating (a fact that makes me feel guilty to this day). The next day he added a rash, red swollen eyes, a stiff neck, and extreme lethargy to his list of symptoms. He was one sick boy. When I googled his symptoms I got lots of “fatal if not treated” results, so I took him to the doctor . . . and she admitted him to the hospital. They didn’t know what was wrong with him, so they started doing tests to rule things out. The biggest concern was meningitis, so they did a lumbar puncture to test his spinal fluid. It was quite the ordeal. They wouldn’t let us in the room with Ben (probably a good thing), but we could hear him screaming from down the hall. It was pretty horrible. Once the lab ruled out meningitis, they drew blood to test for everything from West Nile disease to Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Ben quickly lost all patience with being poked and prodded and woken up. He hated the IV and pretty much everything else about the hospital. So did we. The doctors were baffled and we felt helpless. Nate and Shane gave Ben a blessing and we prayed lots, but it was frustrating not to be able to do more.

After two days they decided that to treat him for Kawasaki Disease even though they still weren’t sure that was the problem. It was a little tricky to diagnose since there isn’t a specific test for Kawasaki and Ben’s rash was a little atypical for the disease. They gave Ben a quality $2000 bag of intravenous gamma globulin (the treatment for Kawasaki). It was the best money we’ve ever spent. Within hours he was himself again . . . wanting to play with his Thomas trains and laughing hysterically at the Myth Buster guys dropping buttered toast. They let us bring him home the next day. We were all so excited to be done with the IV and get to sleep in our own beds that night. Ben was up and running a day or two later.

June 21:


June 22:

June 23:


June 24 (after the gamma globulin):

June 25:

We got to do other fun things like giving Ben 12 aspirin a day for a while and taking him to Primary Children’s hospital several times for echocardiograms to see if there was any lasting damage to his heart. After a year or so of testing, the cardiologist determined that there was no noticeable damage. I was (and still am) so grateful for modern medicine.

Cousin Time - Pizza Man

We took the kids on a fun little fieldtrip to Pizza Man this week. Nate heard about it from his friend at work and called set up a time for us (9:00 a.m. !!!). The task of getting myself and four kids presentable and out the door before 9 a.m. is always a bit daunting, but we made it. Jody brought Holly’s kids and her friend Tara joined us with her two boys (the older one was only along because he was mowing Jody’s lawn afterward, but he played along with the rest of the kids). The kids got watch how they make and roll the dough and then got to twist their own breadsticks. While the breadsticks were in the oven, they each got to make their own pizza. The guy running the tour was great with the kids and José, the breadtwist man, was adorable. I don’t think he spoke/understood one word of English, but he was super cute with the kids. Everyone had fun. We filled up on yummy (aka best in the world) breadtwists and brought the pizzas home for lunch.







When we got home, Claudy called to see if we wanted to go to the pool with her and Kerri. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon. I took the camera, but I didn’t take any pictures. Once I got in the water I didn’t want to get out in the cold air. (75 degrees feels cold when you’re all wet.) I decided that going to the pool with friends is lots more fun (for both me and the kids) than going alone. It was great to hang out and chat with girlfriends while the kids played.

Father's Day Gifts

I don’t want to feel like an idea plagiarizer, so this post is to give proper credit to the creative people who are really the source of our latest crafting/baking adventures.

The “Fast Food Fun” idea was from Bakerella. She not only gave all the tips and tricks, but provided a PDF template for the little trays and wrappers. Awesome. The kids were seriously so excited about making them. I loved how cute they were, but I have to admit that the flavor combination of a yellow cupcake, dark chocolate brownie, vanilla frosting, and sesame seeds was more than a little strange.

The photo cube idea was from Make and Takes. This is one of my favorite blogs for kid crafts. I used lots of her ideas for Elise’s preschool. For Mother’s Day I made some of the cute photo booth bookmarks for each of the girls in preschool. They were a big hit with all the moms. We made some for our kids to give to their grandmas too.

The silhouettes are from Simply Silhouettes. I’m sure I would have been too cheap to ever really pay for something like that, but I won a giveaway so it was free. I love how they turned out (especially the girls’ hair). The best part is that after seeing them, I thought “I could do that” and did a couple of practice ones. It was pretty easy. I think I will make them for our kids every year or two.

Father's Day Fun

(Guest post by Nate) We spent a great father’s day together. I got to sleep in a bit in the morning, and Malinda made some delicious cinnamon rolls for breakfast. The kids were all very excited about the gifts that they had wrapped, but we waited until after church to open them. Elise was asked to give a short talk in sharing time about her dad. She did a great job. The kids did a wonderful job singing daddy songs in sacrament meeting, but afterward Ben kept telling us “I just can’t forgive myself about Mother’s Day” (since he had been such a stinker when it was time to sing). We told him it was OK, and that we forgave him, but he still feels badly about it. I guess that isn’t such a bad thing; hopefully it was a good lesson for him.

After we got home from church I was spoiled with lots of cool presents, including a Perler bead butterfly from Emily, a croquet set, a bocce game set, some new pants, an awesome silhouette print of our kids, and a photo cube with cute pictures of the kids and the family for me to take to work. I went outside with the kids to play croquet while Malinda put the finishing touches on the kids’ big surprise for me. She and the kids made a fun little burger & fries dessert. The kids thought they were so clever and they couldn’t wait to give it to me. They all tried to fool me that it was a real hamburger and fries. They were convinced that I thought it was a real hamburger, and they got a kick out of watching me be surprised when I bit into it.

We played some more croquet and bocce, had yummy apricot chicken for dinner, then wrapped up the evening and put the kids to bed. It was an awesome day.

Cousin Time - Perler Party

The weather forecast was a bit iffy for Monday, so we opted for an indoor activity this week. Everyone came here for some mac n’ cheese, a little trampoline time, and a perler bead party. Each of the kids made a project (or three). It was a nice, low effort activity and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Lovin' the Rain

We’ve had lots of storms in the last week or so and we love it! The kids insisted on playing in the rain (and hail) Sunday after church. They were all drenched by the time they came back inside. I’m glad to see that they appreciate a good rainstorm as much as their mom and dad.

Anniversary Weekend

We celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary on Friday. I had seriously considered buying some cheap plane tickets and visiting Matt and Keri in Hawaii, but in the real world we decided to spend a couple of days in Cache Valley. My mom came on Friday morning and stayed with the kids until Saturday night. At the risk of sounding like a bad mom, I have to say that I didn’t miss them at all. It has been a long time (8.5 years) since Nate and I have been together for more than 24 hours without the kids and it was blissful. It was fabulous to have two completely unscheduled days to do whatever we wanted. We did a little shopping, tried some new restaurants (Firehouse is our new favorite), walked around Providence/decided to move there, went on a hike, had Aggie Ice Cream, and took a self-guided tour of campus. We stayed at the Providence Inn. It was a quality place and we loved it. They had fresh baked cookies and hot chocolate available all day and brought a yummy breakfast right to our room in the morning. It was great!

First Harvest of the Season

After last summer’s garden disaster, we were excited to try our hands at gardening again this year. We had big plans of making a huge corn field and pumpkin patch in our back lot, but it never really happened. Maybe next year. Our major garden improvement this year was to plant two more boxes of strawberries. Half of our garden is now dedicated to those delicious little berries. We’ve already picked enough to make two batches of freezer jam and the best smoothies of all time.

Cub Scout Space Derby

Last night was Ben’s space derby. We do not take these things lightly at our house. I think part of it is that we know we only get one chance to do cub scouts, so we want to do it right. The rest of it is that we (mostly Nate) are fairly competitive. Nate was always bummed as a kid because they did the pinewood derby every year and he really wanted to do the rockets and the boats. This was his big chance. I was so proud of him for letting Ben do most of the work on this project. Ben sanded it and painted it and helped Nate cut the fins. Once the body was ready to go, Nate jumped into test pilot mode. He strung up a piece of fishing line from our kitchen cabinets to the shower rod in the kids’ bathroom and ran a whole series of test flights varying the number of rubber bands, the number of rotations, the winding technique, the amount of glycerin on the bands, etc. My job was to work the stop watch (and laugh at my cute husband).

As we left the house for pack meeting, Nate piled a bunch of tools, string, superglue, wire, rubber bands, and his cordless drill into a box to take to the church. I laughed. He assured me that “every dad will have a tool box.” Nope. There were a couple of other dads who brought a drill or a pair of pliers, but Nate’s little assortment was one of a kind! Even though I mocked him, it was good he took it all. Lots of dads made use of his quality collection of supplies.

The short story is that Ben won first place. Wahoo! He got a quality blue ribbon (just like every other boy, but don’t get Nate started on the societal trend of “everyone is a winner . . . we don’t want to hurt someone’s self-esteem by having 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place”). I laughed because four or five different people asked Nate if he was an engineer. No. He’s just a cute, analytical, anal-retentive nerd (that I love!).

Ben was mostly excited about getting his Progress Toward Ranks award with three beads. He just needs to finish up a couple more requirements to get his Wolf badge. He can hardly wait. For the past week he has woken me up every morning with his scout book in hand asking if we can work on some requirement. I’m glad he is enthusiastic.

Cousin Time - Dinosaur Park

We had our first cousin playdate of the summer yesterday. It was raining so hard on the drive there that we thought about switching to an indoor plan. Luckily, Holly managed to get lost on her way to the park, and by the time she arrived the storm was moving out. Once the weather changed, it was a great day. The kids had fun playing with their cousins. I love that Elise and Bryton are pretty much joined at the hip whenever we are together. I think they held hands the whole way through the park. The kids loved feeding the fish and ducks (their aunts are lots better than their mom at providing quarters for things like fish food from a candy dispenser). There was also a new live iguana exhibit that the kids loved. I didn’t get a picture, but Emily is still talking about how cool they were.

Holly had scored some discount tickets to Lagoon, so she and Jody took her three oldest kids there for the afternoon and Rachel and Bryton stayed the night at our house. I was great with that until 6:30 this morning when six kids came screaming up the stairs because there was a cricket on Abby’s baby doll. Good morning to me!

Piano Recital "Fun"

Ben had his second piano recital yesterday. He played “We’re Off to See the Wizard” and “Forest Drums.” The good news is that he played both songs beautifully. The bad news is that he was a complete and total stinker about doing it. He was grumpy when we left the house, so I was worried that it might not go so well. When it was his turn to go up and play, he just sat there (for what seemed like forever). Finally he picked up his books and walked to the front of the room. Then he held up the books in front of his face and just stood there. After a minute, I went up there to whisper some words of encouragement in his ear. No go. So, we let the girl after him on the program go first. I worked some magic during her performance by promising Ben that he could have a slumber party with his sisters if he would play his songs. That little stinker walked right up there, introduced himself and his songs, and played right through. Seriously, that kid is going to be the death of me. Whenever I think I have him all figured out and that we are done with his “rough patch”, he throws me a curve ball.

Sister Shelton is Ben’s piano teacher. We love her and luckily, she loves Ben. She is a nice grandma who raised 8 kids (6 of them boys), and is just perfect for Ben. He’s made lots of progress this last year. We are excited to take the summer off, and Emily is excited about starting lessons in the fall.

Air Show

Friday was the big air show on Hill Air Force Base. It was really just the practice show for base employees, but it was good enough for us. Nate and I loved it. We’re hoping that the kids will be more interested when they are older. They weren’t so impressed this time around. In their defense, it was a bit windy and cold and their loser mom didn’t think to bring jackets. Plus, there were a few delays while they were working out some issues with the planes. Ben and Emily liked parts, but they would have been happy if the show only ran 45 minutes from start to finish. Elise did not like it at all and wasn’t afraid to tell us . . . “When are we going home?”, “I’m sick of this place”, “Let’s blow this pop-stand”, “I’m going to puke if we have to stay here any longer.” She’s a joy. It wasn’t just the air show. We heard pretty much the same refrain at the zoo (until we got to the playground) and at the movie theater last week. She is seriously making me reconsider our summer vacation plans. When I mentioned that to the kids, Ben and Emily were quick to compensate. “Thanks Mom and Dad for taking us fun places. We appreciate it. You’re the best mom and dad in the whole wide world.”

I think the best part for all of the kids was celebrating National Donut Day with a free donut from Krispy Kreme after the show. The kicker was when we were pulling out of the Krispy Kreme parking lot. Elise looked out the window and saw a big airplane over the airfield on base (now 3 miles away) and yelled “wow, look at that cool airplane!” My head wanted to explode.

Zoo

We took the kids to the zoo yesterday. The zoo is fun. If we lived closer, we would go every week. Okay, maybe every month. These were the highlights from this trip:

1. The bird show.

2. The daddy orangutan that was being selfish with his frozen treat.

3. Seeing the elephants up close. They were in the rhinoceros enclosure so we were just a couple of feet away through the glass. We could see right up into their mouths while they were chewing. It was very cool.

4. The baby golden lion tamarin hanging onto his mommy’s back.

5. The playground . . . at least it was on the top of the list for the kids. Abby LOVED the little elephant slide. Once she discovered it, she didn’t want to do anything else.








I’m trying hard to be a patient and fun summer mom. I have a low tolerance for whining in general and even lower when we are spending money (or an about-to-expire season pass) to do something fun. Nate says I need to lower my expectations. I think he is right. Our kids are dang good 93% of the time. I am working on not letting the other 7% drive me nutty.