Weekly Review February 10 '12

I am sorry I have no pictures to include this week. I guess I could have taken pictures of sick kids lying on the couch, but who wants pictures of that? Sadly, we are still suffering from various ailments around here. All families have those years where everyone gets sick a lot, and this is definitely one of those years for us! Last Friday Jared made it through the school day (although he didn't feel great). But then Scott came home with a migraine and Frank had an upset stomach. So I think Tanner was the only one who was feeling healthy that day. Frank felt pretty yucky through Saturday and Jared & Scott didn't feel great but better than the day before. Seth and I were improving, too.

Because neither Frank nor I were feeling very well on Friday, we didn't make it to the temple again--sigh! Scott felt well enough on Saturday that he played in his team's basketball game. They lost, and since it was their first game in a single elimination tournament, that means they are done. They didn't expect to win so it wasn't terribly disappointing. His team has improved a lot this season, though, so it was satisfying to see that. Jared couldn't play in his game because of his finger. His game was the final for the deacon's team tournament and his team won, so they are the champions of the stake. All three of the older boys went to a party that night which our bishop had for all the youth who read the entire Book of Mormon last year. It snowed a little bit on Saturday but the roads weren't too bad. Jared felt worse Sunday morning so he stayed home from church. The rest of it made it, though!

All four boys went to school Monday morning, but Jared came home early. His throat was hurting and his teacher sent him to the school nurse because strep throat has been going around their class. The nurse called me because although he didn't have a fever, his throat looked quite red and inflamed. She thought I should get him checked for strep, so I picked him up and took him in to the doctor. It was a little stressful because Scott had a follow up exam with the dermatologist that afternoon also and I wasn't sure we were going to get through Jared's appointment in time to get to Scott's, but Frank left work a little early and met me at the doctor's office so it all worked out. The doctor was just coming in to tell me that Jared's strep test had come back positive when Frank got there; I had to leave with Scott right then. I was really surprised he was positive because of the absence of fever. Go figure! Jared was home from school the next two days and returned to school on Thursday feeling much better.

However, in the meantime Scott and Tanner both started complaining of sore throats and had some cough and congestion as well. Scott asked to come home early on Tuesday; I took him to the doctor that afternoon but his strep test came back negative. The doctor said his throat looked pretty bad, though, and he suspected a possible false negative so he put him on antibiotics anyway. Scott stayed home Wednesday and Thursday and went back to school today although he didn't feel well enough to get up for Seminary.

Tanner didn't go to the doctor on Wednesday--I texted him when I realized I was going to be taking Scott in to see if he felt like he needed to go also, but he said he was feeling better. Later that evening, however, he started complaining that his left ear hurt. He couldn't hear out of that ear either. Really? By then the doctor's office was closed, but we talked to the doctor on call and he called in a prescription for Tanner and asked us to bring him in the next day to get him checked.

The story doesn't end there. We went to bed thinking we may be up in the night with Tanner, who would probably need another dose of pain medication before the night was over. Tanner slept through the night, but around 2:30 Seth came in our room and promptly threw up all over the bedding we have on the floor for him. (He told us he'd already been sick in his room, too--we had a mess to clean up in there as well.) Usually when he gets the stomach flu he throws up once and that's the end of it, but this time he woke up repeatedly and had diarrhea as well. Neither Frank nor I got much sleep after that. He was really a sick little boy--was not able to keep down even small amounts of liquid until early afternoon. He had a fever, too. It wasn't a very fun day. I washed my hands a hundred times and went around wiping down doorknobs and such with clorox wipes. Scott and Tanner were both home from school as well and Frank took a sick day from work. When I took Tanner in to the doctor that morning, he confirmed that he did indeed have an ear infection. By afternoon Frank and I were both feeling a little sick as well as dead tired. We both seem to have caught what Seth had, except that (thankfully!) it's a very mild version. We don't have much appetite, but we can eat and it stays down. Our plans to go to the temple have been ruined for the third week in a row, however. Maybe next week?

Tanner stayed home from school again today--his ear is feeling better but he still has congestion, cough, and headache. Seth is also feeling better but since he was throwing up less than 24 hours ago, I kept him home. Besides, he woke up this morning with both eyes looking pink again! We still have drops left over from last week, so we started putting them in again. Frank took another sick day since his stomach is still feeling pretty nasty.

Well, we did do a few other things this week besides take care of sick kids. I did some shopping Monday morning for the YW combined activity--I was in charge of that this week. We had family night Monday evening; I had activity and picked something tame (no K'nect or Wii) since Jared was sick and I totally creamed my knee that morning. (I rammed it hard into a seat belt fastener when I knelt down in the seat of the car to get a carseat out of the very back seat.) I 'm not sure what I did to it exactly, but it ached all day and hurt to walk. Going up and down stairs was especially painful. It was very sore for a few days, but oddly it didn't hurt to kneel on it or touch it as I would have expected. Now today it doesn't hurt very much to move it anymore, but it has developed a slightly greenish yellow tint and it does hurt to kneel on it! Delayed bruising? I don't get it.

Tuesday we signed the papers for a home equity loan. We also put in an offer on a house--but don't get too excited about that yet. The one house we looked at that really interested us had an offer on it already but that deal was supposed to close at the end of January. We found out the deal didn't close, so we decided it was worth a try putting in an offer ourselves--this house is one of the biggest we've looked at and in our ideal neighborhood but it's listed close to the bottom of our price range so it's a really great deal. So we did put in an offer, but the next day we found out that the other deal had been pushed back until the end of February so if that one works out we are out of luck. But that's ok--it it's supposed to work out it will. In the meantime, I'm feeling rather stressed about getting our house ready to sell--especially since we never seem to be feeling well enough to actually do anything!

I had a presidency meeting Tuesday afternoon as well, so it was a busy day. I didn't sleep well at all Monday night (woke up around 2:00 and never went back to sleep; my stomach was hurting) so I was pretty tired. Frank offered to stay home from work that day to help me, but I told him he needed to save his sick days for really bad days--and I am very glad now that he did!

I made two batches of sugar cookies on Wednesday because we were decorating sugar cookies for our YW activity that evening. We also put together some care packages for two sister missionaries serving from our ward. It started snowing Wednesday afternoon and came down for several hours but it didn't start sticking for quite a while so we only ended up with a few inches and very little stuck to the roads. I wondered at times if the activity was going to end up getting cancelled, and truthfully I wouldn't have minded too much--I was tired and my throat hurt a little so curling up in my pajamas was a more appealing idea than running an activity for a bunch of teen age girls. However, the activity went well and I actually enjoyed myself. The YW president didn't make it because she lives out in the country with a long, uphill driveway and the snow accumulation was worse out there.

I was supposed to go in to the school Thursday morning to take kids to the library and to work on pledge drive stuff, but I had to cancel both those things when Seth got sick. Today Frank and I have been trying to take it easy but we are slowly getting a few things done like updating the budget and folding laundry.

We have our Ward Conference this weekend; I'm hoping we are all healthy enough to go to that.

Weekly Review Feb 3 '12

Last week I forgot to include these pictures that Scott took of his school project. I tried to convince him to let me take a picture of him with the project, but he was feeling stubborn. Anyway, this is the project he worked on in his architectural drawing class all last semester. He had to draw the floor plan first and then build a model of his house. I think it turned out pretty nice.

Below is a detail of the front door:

The house has two stories, and on the model the top level lifts off so you can see the floor beneath:

He took a bunch of pictures of his model because--sadly--we didn't have room to keep it, so it had to be thrown out. Scott didn't mind--he said he worked on it so long that he was kind of sick of it! Documenting it in pictures was enough for him.

So on to this week.... I didn't get my wish--we did not enjoy good health all week. Seth has been home from school since Wednesday because he has a red eye and "pink eye" has been going around in his class. He came home from school Tuesday with his eye looking a bit pink but it wasn't too bad. It really didn't look much worse Wednesday morning, but it still didn't look quite right to me either, so I decided to take him in to the school nurse that morning when I took the boys to school. The school nurse said he should probably have it looked at, so I took him home and made an appointment with the doctor. The doctor didn't think it looked too bad but because pink eye is going around his class, he decided to go ahead and treat him, just in case and said he should stay home Thursday also because if he really did have pink eye he'd be contagious until he'd been on medication 24 hours. So he stayed home yesterday too. (Now if I can just figure out how to get eyedrops in a four year old's eyes!) Today I kept him home because in the meantime he still has a runny nose and he's complaining that his head hurts. He's not incredibly sick, but I just decided to give him another day (and the weekend) to get rested up and hopefully he'll be much better and less germy by Monday!

I have also been fighting congestion / slight sore throat / sinus headache off and on all week. Some days I feel almost normal and other days I feel pretty lousy. I've been pretty functional overall, though. Yesterday evening I really didn't feel very well (I skipped a YW training meeting)

and today I'm not much better but I'm hoping I'll start feeling better before the day is over. We were planning to go to the temple tonight and I'd still like to go. We'll just have to see how I feel as the day progresses. Jared has been a lot like me this week as well--feeling pretty good some days and rather sick on others. This morning he is quite congested and definitely not feeling his best. Hopefully he'll make it through the whole school day! Frank has been coughing more the last couple of days but other than that seems to be ok. Still, not feeling 100% healthy! So the "winter of 'the plague'" continues! Should we blame the mild weather? It's possible that at least some of this stuff has been caused by allergies--things growing that don't normally grow this time of year because it's too cold. It is hard to tell.

We did have a few really nice days this week with temperatures in the high fifties or low sixties. Tuesday was nice enough that one of my friends organized a play date at the park. We went right over after I picked up Seth from school and he had a great time. We had to wear jackets, but it was perfectly comfortable that way, without heavy coats. Wednesday was pretty nice also but it's been a lot cooler since then. The groundhog notwithstanding (the one in our area predicted 6 more weeks of winter), we have crocus blooming in the yard, my bulbs are starting to come up, I hear a lot more bird song in the mornings, and yesterday I saw a large flock of geese returning from the south. It certainly looks and feels like spring is on the way. What a weird winter it has been! Frank is a little grumpy about it and Scott is really mad that we haven't had any snow days for his senior year (the seniors get out of school a couple of weeks earlier than everyone else no matter how many snow days there are) but I have not minded at all!

This week was pretty busy, but it would have been a lot busier if a few things hadn't been cancelled. Frank did some cleaning up in his office on Saturday. He still has a lot to do, but at least now I can get to the file cabinet in the corner without having to risk life & limb climbing over a bunch of computers and boxes. He's making progress! I spent a lot of the day working on our tax return; it's mostly done but I'm waiting to see if we are going to get any more 1099s from some of Frank's clients. (We're going to report all the income anyway, but I'd like to enter the 1099 information that we receive.)

Sunday turned out to be busier than I thought because the YW president was sick so I ended up going to BYC after church. Scott also had BYC, APEC meeting, hometeaching, and a fireside and Frank had another ward conference to attend. He went with the 3 older boys to the fireside that evening because he had to make sure the technical stuff worked--they were playing a tape of the Seminary broadcast from last week. Because the YW pres was sick and I wasn't feeling my greatest on Sunday, we decided to postpone a YW leadership brunch that we had scheduled for Monday morning. That turned out to be good--I really needed that morning to re-group and plan out my week. Our presidency meeting for Wednesday morning was postponed also, which turned out to be good since I ended up taking Seth to the doctor that morning and the other counselor was also sick.

The YW president is actually not sick--she is having a major allergic reaction to something, and they can't figure out what. It's been going on for over two months, actually, but has gotten much worse over the last week or two. It started with feeling itchy and a few hives showed up; now she has hives all over her body except for her face--so many that they blend together and it looks like a big rash. They've determined that she has huge amounts of this one chemical in her blood--a chemical that your body normally produces in small amounts to combat an allergen--but that's all they've been able to figure out so far. She even had an appointment at Johns Hopkins this week with an expert and he said he'd never seen anything like it before. Unfortunately, the only medicine that can cure the problem is prednisone (not sure how to spell it) and she's allergic to that. They are treating the itching with a medication that makes her dizzy and drowsy, so for now she is either half awake or itching all over. How miserable that must be! The itching is much worse at night, so basically that means she is non-functional in the mornings from either lack of sleep or the effects of the medication. She says afternoons and evenings are better so she can get some things done then. I feel so bad for her! I hope they can figure out what's going on and find a solution for her soon.

Anyway, as usual I had shopping to do and lots of various errands to run this week. I did manage to exercise a few times, which felt good. We had a class activity on Wednesday for YW; we did some Personal Progress stuff so I was busy planning that and getting some things ready for that. I thought of a few ideas to make it a little interesting and fun! Then I ended up having all the Beehives join our class because the 2nd counselor was sick. It all worked out--she called ahead so I was prepared. I thoroughly cleaned out my desk one day--it took a lot longer than I had anticipated. A guy in our ward who runs a contracting business came over Wednesday before YM / YW to look over the work we want done so he can give us an estimate. If all goes well, he will probably be starting the work on our house in about 3 weeks. It's going to be crazy around here while that gets done, but I'm sure it will be nice when everything is complete. We still have a LONG list of things we need to do ourselves, like pretty much repaint (or touch up)every room in the house. But we may have a lot longer to get that stuff done than we thought since at the moment we aren't seeing any houses that even interest us. There is really not much on the market right now, at least not in our price range. And that's ok--I wouldn't mind staying and enjoying our new floors for a while!

Frank did several hours of work for a couple of clients this week, so he's been busy too. At work they are trying to get through the process of hiring him as an employee. They are running into the same paperwork hassels they encountered when they hired him as a contractor, but at least this time he is working full time while he's waiting, so it's all good. His boss says they are "fighting" to get him hired quicker, so it's nice to know that they really want him.

The boys have not had a lot of activities going on except for basketball practices (Jared is not supposed to be playing but keeps trying to play anyway) and Tanner stayed after school one day to make up some work he missed last week. They are all enjoying the piano keyboard and have surprised me by the songs they can play already. Jared has even memorized a few favorites, such as the Star Wars theme and "Praise to the Man". Frank gave an excellent lesson for family night this week based on Elder Oaks's "Good, Better, Best" talk he gave a few years back, and we are all working on making better choices of how we use our time.

I have to go work on the budget now, so I'll wrap up this post. (We did finally figure out the glitch in our budget spreadsheet--a problem with one of the formulas, as we suspected.) We hope you all have a great week. We are happy that it's February! (Happy Birthday to Ben!)

Weekly Review January 27 '12

Since I didn't take any pictures this week, I thought I'd share a few photos from our past. This is what we were doing five years ago. The boys look so little to me! So in January 2007, we were in the middle of science fair projects and building Pinewood Derby cars. Jared was growing crystals for his science fair project, as you can see in the picture above.

Tanner was studying waves or something like that for his science fair project--I can't remember now.

Jared won 3rd place in the Pinewood Derby.

Tanner got a medal for participating.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that little jog into the past! Now on to the present day. So I was wrong about a couple of things when I wrote last week. First of all, I thought that the week end was going to be busy. I also thought we were all getting better. The week end turned out not to be so very busy, mostly thanks to Mother Nature. We got a few inches of snow plus freezing rain early Saturday morning and in Maryland, that means everything got cancelled. No basketball games and no dance. I can't say I was too disappointed about that. Instead of running around like a crazy person all day, I got to stay home in my warm house. We didn't lie around all day but it was a lot more relaxing than it would have been. We took some time in the morning to break down a bunch of empty cardboard boxes that had accumulated over the last several months and to do some general cleaning up / tidying. Now there is only one box of computer stuff on the lowest downstairs landing instead of several boxes covering most of both downstairs landings, so it looks a lot neater (and is much easier to go down the stairs). We had the missionaries over for dinner that evening.

Sunday wasn't as busy either because our bishop wasn't feeling well so both of the meetings I was supposed to attend were cancelled. Frank was busy--he had two ward conferences to go to so he didn't make it to our ward meetings at all. The boys had a fireside that evening; it was a musical fireside that all the youth in our ward and another ward had put together. The idea was to invite their non member friends to attend. I hear it was very nice; I didn't make it to the fireside myself.

Frank came home from work on Friday not feeling very well at all and he started coughing again. That lasted for a few days; he seems to be mostly feeling better now. Both Scott and Tanner started feeling sick on Monday again. They didn't have school that day so they rested a lot but they didn't get better very fast. Tanner made it to Seminary on Tuesday morning but came home after that; Scott started throwing up right before we left for Seminary so he didn't make it to either school or Seminary on Tuesday. Jared also woke up with a bad headache and congestion so Seth was the only one who went to school that day. (A great way to start out a new term, right?) Scott made it to school Wednesday (but not to Seminary) and so did Jared but Tanner continued to suffer with congestion, headache, slight fever, and fatigue and didn't go back to school or Seminary until today. Scott started coughing a lot yesterday, so he still isn't feeling very well. I am starting to wonder if this is ever going to end!

In spite of all the time I spent taking care of sick kids, I still managed to get almost everything done I needed to do this week, except for exercising. I do that on the Wii, and the televison was kind of monopolized by sick kids. I made it to book club on Tuesday--we were discussing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. Now we are reading a non-fiction book called "The 100 Thing Challenge", about a man who decides to get rid of all but 100 of his personal possessions and live that way for year. I also made it to choir that night, which I always enjoy.

Wednesday was busy with shopping and errands. That evening I met with one of the boy scouts so he could pass off his Personal Management Merit Badge and then had a presidency meeting with the Mia Maid class president before YW started.

Thursday was more shopping and errands. Frank and I went out for dinner that evening--we had a gift card for the Olive Garden. That was a nice break after a busy, somewhat stressful week.

Today I went visiting teaching and worked on the budget. Frank and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a glitch in our budget spreadsheet--we still don't know what's wrong! In between everything else, we applied for a home equity loan so we can do a few repairs / improvements on the house--mostly replacing the floors. We also got pre-qualified for a loan (they are willing to loan us a lot more than we can actually afford, of course) and looked into the cost of renting a storage unit--all this in case we ever find a house we actually want to buy.

Seth said something funny to me this week. I was in the kitchen making biscuits and he wanted me to move a chair to the doorway so he could stand on it and see what I was doing. I said "Why don't you just come over here next to me? Then you can see what I am doing." Seth's reply was "My feet are not floor proof!" (He further explained that they were carpet proof, but not floor proof, so he couldn't walk onto the kitchen floor. Who knows how he got that crazy idea into his head!

What will the coming week bring? Good health for the whole family? I hope so!

Weekly Review January 19 '12

Just for interest, I thought I would start out with a photo from two years ago (February 2010). We had more snow than we knew what to do with! Quite a contrast from this winter--it's only snowed twice and both times we got an inch or less. We have a 90% chance of snow tonight, though--we'll see if it really happens. We're only supposed to get an inch or two.

Here is this morning's sunrise. Not spectacular, but still--I thought it was pretty.

Now, on to our week. Remember how most of us were sick last week? I think we are all mostly better now, but last weekend we weren't feeling very healthy. We were watching Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (none of us had seen it yet) last Friday evening. Not very long into the movie, Seth came over to me and whispered "Mom, I have an ear infection." He said it like he was ashamed of himself--no doubt because I'd been warning him all week that if he didn't start blowing his nose instead of sniffing it in that he would get an ear infection! I asked him if his ear hurt, and he said "yes". Which one? He pointed to his left ear. We decided not to waste any time--it was the beginning of a holiday weekend, after all--and called the doctor. I put Seth on my lap and within a short amount of time, he was writhing and holding his hand over his ear and fussing because it hurt. Thankfully, the doctor on call decided to call in an antibiotic for him immediately. Before we made it through the phone calls, Seth had (thankfully) fallen asleep! I kept him on my lap while we watched the movie; he slept through almost the whole thing. He woke up shortly before the movie ended so we were able to give him his first dose of antibiotic. By then it was bedtime and much to our surprise, Seth went right back to sleep and slept through the night. We were so grateful!

Saturday was Frank's birthday. Sadly, I was in the worst of the runny nose / sore throat / headache thing, so he got to make his own cake. I did have presents ready for him, though:

Birthday Boy

Huge bag of peanut butter cups!

Remote control helicopter (big boy toy!)

That is not a Kitchen Aid in the box; it is an attachment for the Kitchen Aid that makes ice cream. He wasn't surprised about that gift because I had him pick it out himself. We got it a few days ahead of time because the bowl has to be put in the freezer for at least 12 hours or the ice cream doesn't freeze.

Of course, later we had to try out the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker! (We had cake, too.)

Jared liked it, apparently. It is a pretty nifty little gadget!

We also ordered Chinses food for dinner--Frank's favorite, and good timing since I wasn't feeling up to cooking anyway. I didn't sit around and do nothing all day, though. I was able to finish filling out the FAFSA for Scott and got it submitted. I'm glad to have that done. It would be very easy to do if my tax return for 2011 were already done--you have to estimate your taxes instead and that can be tricky. Especially if you had an unusual financial year, as we did last year. Anyway, it's done.

Seth's ear didn't give him any more problems but his left eye looked a bit red and goopy Saturday morning and he still had a runny nose so we decided that it would probably be best for him to stay home from church on Sunday. Since I still wasn't feeling well, I stayed home with him. Scott was still feeling pretty sick, so he stayed home too but Frank took the other two boys to church. Before our meetings at 11:00 he had to go to another ward to do some computer training stuff before their meetings (it was their ward conference) so he had to get up pretty early. That ward building is about an hour away and he had to be there at 7:00. I rested a lot on Sunday and read scriptures and the first two lessons in the George Albert Smith book (I don't get to go to RS anyway, so I read them at my own pace); that was nice. That evening we watched "How Rare a Possession" for our family night lesson. The boys had never seen it--they thought it was a pretty amazing story, which is how I've always felt about it too.

The boys were out of school on Monday for MLK Day (of course). The company Frank works for (Aetea) does not include MLK Day as one of their paid holidays, but Marriott does and they were not even going to be open that day so Frank couldn't go into work. He talked to Aetea and they told him to use it as a sick day so that's what he did. It was nice to have him home since I still didn't feel very well. I spent most of the morning on the phone--we had a YW presidency meeting via conference call. There is so much planning to do for YW--it is ridiculous sometimes! Frank got some groceries for me and everyone helped do laundry. We played Uno for family night activity and ate brownies.

It was (mostly) back to the normal routine on Tuesday, and thankfully I woke up feeling a whole lot better--practically normal! I did get to sleep in a little bit which helped, especially since I didn't sleep very well the night before. (I didn't sleep well nearly every night this week--woke up and didn't go back to sleep for hours. I haven't had much trouble with that problem the last few years. I hope this relapse is only temporary!) The reason I got to sleep in is because Frank had to stay home until we got Jared & Seth to school because we only had one car. The Expedition was in the shop all weekend getting the heater fixed and wasn't going to be done until that evening. I asked my friend Tammy to pick Seth up from school for me--when she brought him home, her son Henry stayed for a couple of hours to have a playdate with Seth. It is always fun to listen to those two play together! Frank and I picked up the Expedition that evening; I stopped to get some books at the library on the way home. The sun was going down and a storm was moving in--the sky looked really beautiful! I felt well enough that evening that I even went to choir practice.

It is really nice to have the heat working in the Expedition again! It is easy to take something like that for granted until you don't have it anymore. It is so much easier to go out in the mornings now, knowing that I have heat in the car. I was talking to Frank on the phone about that this morning while waiting for the boys to finish Seminary; when Scott got in the car the first thing he said was "We have heat in here now; I'm so happy!" That made me laugh since I had just been saying the same thing. The heater was very expensive to fix, but we did find someone who was willing to do it for less than a thousand dollars (not much less) rather than the $1200-1500+ that was quoted to us originally--we are grateful for that. We've had some pretty cold days this week, too, so the timing was good.

The last few days have been a bit stressful / busy because I was pulling things together for the combined YM / YW activity (the Mia Maids were in charge) and I was also in charge of finding rides for all the girls who want to go to the regional dance this Saturday, and it wasn't easy to find people who were able and willing to drive. The ride situation finally came together, though, and the activity went fine (I was a lot less stressed about the activity than I was the rides.) One of the advisors told me she thought she may be able to drive but had to ask her husband first--then I couldn't get in touch with her for days. In the meantime, I called a lot of parents but had no luck finding someone who could drive so by Wednesday evening I was feeling pretty worried. Then one of the parents I spoke with earlier in the week called me yesterday morning to say she could drive after all--I was so relieved! Then the advisor got in touch with me last night and she can drive too, so I didn't need the parent to drive after all. However, I consider it a tender mercy that the parent called me Thursday morning--I would have been stressed about the ride situation that whole day and would have had to make more phone calls trying to find someone else just in case the advisor wasn't able to do it. That one willing parent saved me a lot of anxiety and time, and I am grateful!

At basketball practice Wednesday evening Jared hurt his finger. He jammed the finger as he was catching the ball and at the same time one of the other boys ran into the ball which caused his finger to bend backwards pretty far. It's looking quite bruised and swollen, as you may be able to see in the photos below (they're pretty blurry). In the first one you can get an idea of how swollen the left pinkie is, compared to his right pinkie.

In the second one, you can see some of the discoloration around the knuckle.

In this last one, you can sort of see that the knuckle at the base of his finger is a little bruised too. The bruising doesn't show up very well in the photos, so his finger actually looks a lot better than it does in real life.

Today his finger is not looking any better and it hurts more than it did yesterday, so we decided he'd better have it looked at. I'm taking him to the doctor in about an hour.

Yesterday was pretty busy also--Frank had a long day at work and I always have tons of things to do for YW (sometimes it's like having a part time job!) as well as keeping the household running. I am finding that having a child who is a senior in high school can be time consuming too. There are lots of things to do to help him prepare for college.

Speaking of which, Scott finally got his letter from BYU Idaho, and he was accepted! Ok, we weren't too surprised about that, but we are very glad to have that settled. It's pretty likely he will go there unless BYU Provo accepts him (but we don't really expect that to happen). Scott is excited about it. It all feels a little surreal to me, to be honest! It's a little frightening to think of sending your child all the way across the country.

Well, I got interrupted because the doctor's office called back and said to bring Jared in right away rather than waiting until 4:20 because if they determined he needed an x-ray, they wanted to make sure the radiology place was still open. So we went in, the doctor did decide to send him for an x-ray, and it turns out that he does have a fractured finger. So now he has to wear a splint on his finger for four weeks and then go in for a follow up appointment. No more basketball for him this season, I guess!

On the way home we stopped at the pharmacy (to get a splint and also to pick up a couple of prescriptions) and at the bank; by the time we got home it was time to make dinner so now it is early evening. Seth was asleep on the couch when we got home--he never naps, so I hope he's not getting sick again (although he's awake now and he seems to be feeling fine). Frank had another really long work day--he was there at 5:30 this morning and he didn't get home until 5:30 tonight.

The boys got out of school two hours early today because it is end of term (that means we are half way through the school year already.) They have Monday off as well (the teachers have a work day to get report cards ready) so we have two 3-day weekends in a row. I'm actually glad because tomorrow and Sunday are going to be extremely busy so I'm hoping Monday will be a little more restful. I had all the boys work on Duty to God stuff this afternoon and Scott & Tanner took down the Christmas lights. Frank just took Jared over to his friend Ian's house for a "late over". On the way home he is stopping at Wal-Mart because we just remembered that our snow shovel broke last winter and we never bought a new one. Scott went with him--he wants to return two purchases he made yesterday which were both defective--some luck, huh?

I've been working on this post off and on all day (too many interruptions) but I think I'm finally done, so I'll post it quick before I get interrupted again! Everyone have a great week.

Weekly Review January 13 '12

Alas, no sunrise photos this week! I don't know if it was the weather or my timing or what, but I didn't see any spectacular sunrises like last week. A few pink skies, which is always pretty, but that's it.

We continue to have very unusual weather for winter. Saturday was beautiful--got into the 60's--and yesterday was pretty decent, too--up into the 50's. It rained most of the night Wednesday night. The rest of the week was mostly in the 40's and cloudy, so kind of gloomy but not too bad. Today, however, it is down in the low 30's and very windy so it feels even colder than it is. Definitely more like winter! Still no snow, though. I think it may have snowed a little bit in the night, but nothing stuck. At least the sun has come back out again. My mood really suffers when I don't see the sun for days.

Last Friday Frank and I got our eyes checked so we can get more contact lenses--our prescriptions expired and we were out (Frank), or almost out (me). After we were done with our exams we went to Red Robin for some burgers, so it was a fun little "date".

Saturday was busy--I'm not sure where the day went. I worked on the FAFSA and got it mostly done. Frank and I have a goal to go on a walk once a week, so we took Snickers with us and did that. As I mentioned above, it was a beautiful day so it was a nice day for a walk--we didn't even need to wear jackets! Tanner took Seth to the park for a while too. Frank took the boys to their basketball games that evening while I gave Seth a bath and made dinner. As usual, Jared's team won and Scott's team lost--but Scott said he had a lot of fun. I'm glad he is a good sport about it!

Sunday was mostly relaxing. I missed most of YW because I needed to get my temple recommend interviews--there was a fairly long line to see the stake president. Frank and I both got both of our interviews done though. The temple is closed right now but re-opens on Tuesday.

My lists of things to do each day this week were pretty long, but most of it is not particularly noteworthy. We are keeping busy with the usual stuff. The goals I've set for myself are keeping me busy too! Nothing major, but even little things can add up. It feels good to be doing some things like exercising and reading to Seth more, though.

I spent two mornings at the school--on Tuesday I did pledge drive accounting stuff and on Wednesday I helped with Seth's class. It's always fun to see what kind of things they are doing at school!

Choir practices started again Tuesday evening; I always really enjoy choir although the songs run through my head for two days afterwards.

Wednesday evening we did a family history activity for the YW. One sister in our ward came and told a few stories from her family history--they were pretty amazing! Then we helped the girls get set up in family search. Frank went over ahead of time with the boys (they had basketball practice) to get all the computers set up for that.

Illness is still rearing its ugly head around here. I don't think anyone it the family is feeling 100%. Seth has a runny nose, Frank is still coughing (although not nearly so much), Jared is still coughing a bit and is having a hard time hearing (we've cleaned his ears a couple of times; doesn't seem to help much), Tanner stayed home from school Tuesday through Thursday with the same coughing / congestion / fatigue (although he did go to Seminary all three days--he still has perfect attendance for this year!), Scott has been feeling lousy with the same thing the last two days but dragged himself to school and seminary anyway since he needed to be there, and I have been feeling less and less healthy as the week has gone on. Wednesday was the day I really started to feel sick and now my nose is red and sore from wiping and the coughing is starting. Lots of fun! I've been trying to take it easy a little bit the last two days but that is hard to do when the kids still need to get to seminary, school, and back. Besides, with the boys not feeling well either I don't like to ask them to help out as much. But at least it is Friday and we have a three day week end ahead! Not that I expect to be lying around all week end...but hopefully it will be a little more relaxing.

Frank had a busy week--he had work for clients, work at the stake center, and work for a friend to do (all computer stuff), besides his regular job. Scott did the sound for a program at the high school last night, even though he wasn't feeling well.

Rachelle asked what Scott's plans are--he has applied to both BYU-Provo and BYU-Idaho, but we are still waiting to hear back from them. We don't expect that he will be accepted to BYU-Provo, but decided it was worth applying anyway. We will hopefully hear back soon so that we can start making plans. (We're hoping that the whole family will be able to visit Utah / Idaho this summer.) He thinks he will probably focus his studies on technical theater or architecture.

Well, everyone will be home from school soon so before it gets too crazy around here I will sign off. We are looking forward to celebrating Frank's birthday tomorrow!

The Day I Was Born

Me as a young baby--probably a few months old

One of my goals for this year is to work on my personal history. I thought maybe the easiest way to accomplish this goal would be to do it in short installments. I have a list of "interview" questions I picked up somewhere and I've decided to attempt to answer each question--one at a time--in a blog post. We'll see how far I get!

The first question (actually set of questions) on the list is: "What year were you born? On what date? What day of the week was it? Where were you born? Did your parents tell you anything about the day you were born?"

So here goes...

I was born on July 5, 1968. I looked it up once and discovered that date was a Friday. I think I was born around 2:00 am. I was born in Covina, Los Angeles County, California. I've heard quite a few stories about the day I was born because the circumstances were a bit unique. I like to say that I was a surprise...in more ways than one. For starters, I was born about 9 weeks before my due date--I should have been born in early September rather than early July. But if that wasn't enough, I am also the second baby girl born to my parents that day...and they didn't know they were having twins.

That's hard to comprehend in this day and age of highly advanced and accurate ultrasounds, but when I was born they didn't have that kind of technology. (Makes me feel old!) I don't think my parents were totally unprepared for the possibility of twins...twins run in the family and my mom(who was highly experienced with pregnancy by this time) certainly had some suspicions that something unusual was going on. She even asked the doctor if she might be having twins a few weeks before my sister and I were born, but after listening again and only picking up one heartbeat, he insisted that she was just having "a big baby". It wasn't until after my sister was born that he discovered that he was wrong.

Both of my parents say they don't remember being incredibly surprised when they found out there were two instead of one, but my dad says he must have looked surprised. He asked a nurse for information about my mom and was told "Oh, the first baby has arrived. We're just waiting on the second one." My dad had not had a chance to reply when the nurse said "Oh, you didn't know you were having twins... did you?"

Because we were so premature, my sister and I were both very tiny. She weighed 2 lbs, 15 ozs and I weighed 2 lbs, 11 3/4 ozs. My dad said we looked like little skeletons wrapped in a thin layer of skin. He said he could count our ribs from across the room. We caused our parents a good deal of worry those first few weeks, I'm sure. We were so small that the doctors would not even give them an estimate of our chances of survival. Although we were in fairly stable condition, they said that our condition could deteriorate rapidly without any warning. I was having trouble breathing at birth and sometime in those first couple of hours, they decided to move me to another hospital where they thought I would get better care. My sister and I were born at Covina Community Hospital but I was moved that first day to the USC Medical Center. They specialized in the care of premature babies. I was transferred by ambulance; my dad followed the ambulance in his car so that he could fill out the paperwork to admit me. My mom didn't get to see me before they transferred me. They had put her to sleep for the delivery because I was turned the wrong way and she was still drugged up when they moved me. She had to wait until she was discharged from the hospital a few days later before she could see me. (She told me once that even though she had never seen me that she was worried sick about me--the power of mother love!) I stayed in the hospital for 5 weeks. Fortunately, I progressed well and didn't have any major set backs.

My parents were able to visit during those 5 weeks, but things were very different then--they were not allowed to hold me at all and could only see me through a window. (It used to bother me that no one was holding me when I was a newborn, but then one day my mom told me about the day she brought me home and how sad this little Asian nurse was because they were taking away "her" baby!) The nurses were not allowed to give my parents progress reports over the phone--they had to talk to a doctor or go to the hospital to see for themselves. The two hospitals where my sister and I stayed were not very close together. I imagine it must have been quite trying for them to have to drive to both hospitals to see how we were doing. They had five other kids at home to take care of, as well.

I'm sure it was helpful, in a way, for us to be in the hospital for those weeks--it gave them time to get everything ready for another baby that they hadn't expected. They were very excited when my sister and I finally got to come home, though. Although I was the smaller of the two, I got to come home first because the weight requirement at my hospital was lower. My sister Shellie, who was nearly 5 years old at the time, remembers the day I came home. My mom was giving her a bath when the phone rang. She says when my mom came back from answering the phone that she had her purse in her hands and looked very excited. "The hospital called and said Annette can come home! I'm going to get her!" my mom cried, and left--leaving Shellie in the tub, wondering if she could get out or not. At least, that's how Shellie remembers it! Maybe it wasn't quite that dramatic. ;) My sister Amy came home a few days later and then the fun really began!

That's the story of how my earthly life began.

Weekly Review January 6 '12

It's that lovely time of year when I always write down the date wrong. I have to get it into my head that it is 2012! (I did it right on the title above, at least.)

New Year's was kind of strange this year. We didn't do our usual things to celebrate (dinner of appetizers, eat lots of junk food, make a jigsaw puzzle, and do "toasts" with our special "celebration punch".) That's because our stake had a big dance / activity; the oldest two boys wanted to go to the dance and Frank was asked to help cook the food. So it was just Seth, Jared and I at home. The boys played games and I read. I even took a nap from 10:30 to 11:30 and probably would have slept through the New Year if Jared hadn't woken me up. So it wasn't a very exciting New Year's, but at least Seth got to bed at a decent hour!

Church was funny the next day because everybody was tired. We invited our friends the Pedersens over for dinner and games. We had our traditional appetizer dinner that night instead. We had so much food--we are still eating the leftovers! It was fun to play some games, too. We had a good time. I forgot to make the celebration punch, though--still haven't done that!

Frank had Monday off, but we didn't relax much. I had a presidency meeting for YW that morning. I came away from that with a lot of things to do and lots of things to think about. I was so preoccupied that I forgot to watch the Rose Parade so we could see Janna and Madalyn march with their band. I was so bummed when I remembered--the parade had just ended!

We spent a good portion of that day (after my meeting) taking down all the Christmas decorations. Now the house looks kind of bare, but it also looks more spacious and less cluttered. A lot of people still have their lights up and are still turning them on at night--it makes me laugh a little (procrastinators of the world!) but I like seeing them because they are so beautiful. Actually, our lights outside are still up also because we haven't had a chance to take them down yet. Hopefully it won't be as difficult to take them down as it was to put them up!

When I was putting away all the decorations I switched out salt and pepper shakers, too. I'm not sure if I've ever posted pictures of the ones I used in December, so I took some pictures of them before I put them away. Aren't they cute?:

Frank got these "hard candies" for me a year or two ago.

My mother in law gave me these snowmen. Sadly, their little carrot noses both broke off last year but they are still pretty awesome. I also took down the Christmas wreath and replaced it with this door sign:

And wouldn't you know it--the very next morning it DID snow!:

I guess Mother Nature was just waiting for me to put up that sign...who knew I had that kind of power?! This is the first snow we've had besides that freaky storm we had a few days before Halloween (and the few flakes I saw drifting down last Thursday). This storm was funny too. When I took the boys to Seminary at 6:15, there was no sign of snow. When I got back home, I noticed a few lazy flakes drifting down as I was unlocking the door to go back inside. I was surprised when I opened the door back up at 6:55 and discovered a thin coating of snow all over everything! It wasn't really snowing much by then but then when I got to the church and was waiting for the boys to come out, it suddenly started to snow very hard. It came down really hard for about 10 minutes. It was really funny to see all the kids come out of Seminary--they were surprised, and a lot of them came out in the parking lot and danced around ecstatically! No one got out of school though, because of the timing of the storm. The roads were actually very slick and treacherous on the way from the church to the school, but at that point it was too late to delay the opening since everyone was already on their way when the storm hit. I, for one, was glad--I think it's ridiculous how often they delay or cancel school for snow. By the time I took the younger boys to school the roads were clear again. It was kind of a fun way to go back to school after winter break!

Wednesday was not so fun--it was bitterly cold and windy. Without heat in the car, it was especially miserable for us. We've been looking for a portable heater for the car (Mom & Dad saw advertisements for a kind that plugs into the cigarette lighter) but haven't been able to find the kind we need. Frank purchased a small space heater on Tuesday thinking we could use that because we have a converter thing that can be plugged into the cigarette lighter but when we tried that, it didn't work. It ran for a couple of seconds and then shut down. I suspected that the heater was too powerful, and I was right--after further inspection we discovered that the converter could handle a maximum of 300 watts, and the heater was 1500 watts! I managed to find a 200 watt heater at the store that day, and that has helped a little bit. Thankfully, the weather has warmed back up again. Wednesday was the worst day (never got out of the 20's and the lows were in the single digits); after that yesterday's 30's felt almost balmy! Now today we are back in the 50's which feels very nice indeed. We are still working on trying to get the heater fixed. We are taking the car in to a different place today to have them look at it.

Jared has been congested and had a cough similar to Frank's since late last week (not quite as bad as Frank's, but still not good) and on Tuesday he started complaining that his left ear hurt. It wasn't any better on Wednesday so I let him stay home from school and took him to the doctor. Sure enough, the ear is infected. He got on antibiotics immediately but still felt pretty miserable yesterday morning so he stayed home yesterday too. He is back at school today, though, and seems to be on the mend. That is the third member of our family in the last 6 weeks who has had a virus and then got a bacterial infection related to it. (Seth had an ear infection at the end of November and Frank had a sinus infection right before Christmas.) Unfortunately, Seth has a runny nose again so it's not over yet. It has not been a good winter for us, health-wise. We are not usually at the doctor so often!

The rest of the week has been busy, just trying to get back into a normal schedule. Thankfully, I am sleeping much better than I was over vacation--apparently I sleep better when I get up at 5:00 am in the mornings. I set some goals for the new year and have been working diligently to get started on them. It feels good to be doing that.

YW stuff is keeping me busy; there is always a lot to do! For our class activity this week we made collages to represent our goals for the year. Believe it or not, the girls said they wanted to do something related to New Year's resolutions--I was trying to think of a way to jazz it up a bit and got the idea to make the collages. They seemed to enjoy doing that. I didn't finish mine, though, so I still need to get that done.

Yesterday I took Scott to get a haircut--he was very shaggy and has been bugging me to take him for over a week. Last night I went to a meeting for a group of people we know (mostly in our ward) who are getting a group of youth together to go to the Dominican Republic this summer to do a service project--help building houses, I think. Some of the kids in our ward did this last year and they had a great experience, so they are going again and trying to get others to come too. Some of Tanner's friends are going and I think it would be a great experience for him, so I am trying to find out more about it. Unfortunately, I missed the informational meeting so I am still a bit at sea about details. I did find out where I can go to read up on it, though. This meeting was mostly to plan fundraising, since it is not cheap to make this trip. I'm going to find out more about it before we decide whether or not we are going to try to send Tanner.

Scott worked at the school again last night doing the sound for a band concert thing. It pays pretty well. He will have some more jobs to do in February. It's great that he is getting some work experience in a field that he may choose as a career, and earning some money, too.

I am trying to get going on our 2011 tax return also. We need to fill out the FAFSA this month (financial aid for college for Scott) and we have to have all that financial information. The scholarship / financial aid thing is stressing me out a little right now. There's a lot to do and being new at this, I'm not even sure what I need to do. I'm sure it will all work out somehow, though. I will feel better after I have the time to dive in and do some real work on it.

Frank is keeping very busy also between work, church calling, and a few outside clients. They are moving forward with getting him hired as a Marriott employee and this week they started giving him some long-term assignments. Yesterday there was so much going on that he ended up working pretty late. He only had to work half a day today though.

This afternoon he and I have appointments to get our eyes checked and then we are hoping to go on a date. We are going to "mall walk" a little to get some exercise and maybe go to dinner. It will be nice to get out of the house and spend some time together.

Last year I decided I needed to stop hating January and try to find ways to enjoy it. I really worked at it, and it did seem to help the month go by faster when I had a better attitude about it. So I'm doing that again this year, and one thing is for sure--January has great sunrises! I noticed this fact last year, and this year I have not been disappointed so far. Here is the sunrise yesterday morning:

And here is this morning's sunrise:

It was way better in person, too! I'm actually not sure if January has better sunrises than other months. It may just be that the timing of the sunrises in January is just right--the sun is coming up right about the time I drop the boys off at school in the mornings, so I see the sunrises in January. At any rate, that is something about January that I love. Twenty-five beautiful sunrises to go! :)