1st Winter in 2 Years!

The Winter of 2011 was pretty much non-existent. Except for a little blip in March I believe, we had nuttin. Poor Jared got a sled for Christmas and didn't even us it.
But 2012? It looks like this winter might be different. (Let's hope that I didn't just curse things by typing that out loud!) We've already had two cold snaps, and this is out 2nd snowstorm, and this one dropped enough to enable the kids to play outside in it pretty much all day. With daddy's help, Ellie built this snow family. It was great snowman snow. Just the right amount of sticky.
You don't have to look too closely at the lawn to see we didn't get to leaves raked up....that is what happens when all the leaves are still on the trees until the wind preceding the snow blows in and blows them all off. If any of you have figured out how to rake leaves up with the wind blowing, send me your tips! Until I get that figured out, I'll keep my fingers crossed for one last warm up to get this snow melted so I can rake the leaves up!

Mt. Vesuvius

Now this is something that must be preserved for posterity on the ol' blog.

Jared has been complaining of mouth pain since Saturday. Wake him up in the night pain. Send him home from church an hour early pain.

When he came home from church we did finally see some swelling on his hard palate right behind his front teeth. Still not sure what in the heck is going on though.

Once we got up Monday morning at a respectable time and could focus enough to see what was going on, we were greeted with a swollen top lip, swollen gums around his front teeth, and a beauty of a huge bump behind his teeth. Great. All pointing to an abscess.

We got him to the dentist and she confirmed that, and got us an appointment with an endodontist for possible root canals of his two front teeth?!!! Aaaahh! He's 9! My poor kid.

Behold the glory of a very painful abscess. About 15 minutes after this picture was taken, it relieved itself by...well....sort-of...bursting. All sorts of lovely stuff escaped. I have a pretty strong stomach, but that was kinda gross and I was longing for some gloves on my hands when I was helping to get it out of his mouth...

He feels much better tonight. Combination of the decreased pressure from getting the gunk out, and a couple of doses of antibiotics. Wish that was all it would take to get him better.

PS- Out dentist is pretty sure this is a result of his run-in with a golf club that broke off the bottom third of his two front teeth almost 14 months ago. I guess infection can still set in that far out from trauma to the teeth. That is going to prove to be one expensive & well earned Cub Scout golf belt loop...

Good Day....

For a hike.

Highly successful day!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Winter Arrives

Hmmm.....Maybe I should just hit the highlights of the past week, now like 2 weeks ago. Told you this wouldn't work! ;)

Tuesday was Pack Meeting. Blue and Gold specifically. Mine and Jared's first. Back in December I was released from Nursery, and called to be a Wolf Den leader. I was super excited, because Jared is a Wolf right now, and so we are doing scouting at our house. What better time to have a scout calling than when your own boy is doing it?! The pack meeting was fun, and Jared earned two more beads ....one more and he gets his Wolf rank. :) I'm really bad, and didn't take any pictures, but I'll include one from "Scout Sunday" of the two of us.

Winter decided to show up on Tuesday, with lots of cold and flurries, but it didn't stick.
Thursday night it did. We woke up Friday to about 6 inches. The kids were thrilled. Me....not so much. This winter has been the lamest on record. No snow. And now that we don't want it? It snows. The kids sledded. I watched from the car.

Kindy 500

I remembered what I did last Friday! I knew I did something important....

Ellie's long-awaited Kindy 500, also called the Great American Road Race. All the kindergartners make a car, then come to school and drive their car around a track, stopping along the way at certain landmarks and American symbols for a presentation. They learn about Abraham Lincoln & the Lincoln Memorial, the Flag, the White House, Liberty Bell, Bald Eagle, Mt. Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty. They also collect bumper stickers for their car at each stop, and a passport to remember it by. Great way to introduce kids in a fun way to these national symbols and places.
Ellie had lots of fun, both making her car, and participating in the Kindy 500.

Pathetic.

Well....so....Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, 3 birthdays, and Happy Valentines Day, we love you.

Didn't realize it had been November since my last posting. Oops. If you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you have an idea of life in general. ;)

Thinking of trying a weekly review thing. That'll probably last a week.

But hey! Here we go:

Monday was Presidents Day. No school/No Work. Jared was invited with a friend to go up to their family cabin, so he was up (and over-excited)far to bright and early for a holiday. He was gone all day sledding, shooting in airsoft wars, and playing on the snow-mobile. Came home cranky & thoroughly exhasted, so we knew he must've had fun. The rest of us (minus Riley, who slept much of the day) went to a movie, Big Miracle, and had lunch at JCW's, a favorite local burger joint. The movie was good. I wasn't feeling too hot, and hadn't been since Sunday afternoon. I felt like I was coming down with a stomach bug or something. So a low-key Presidents Day done.

Tuesday was....well...not fun?  I woke up at 5AM with the "stomach bug" turned into some sort of awful aching on my left side. Got the kids up and out the door with Ron at 7:45. Then proceeded to die. Or want to anyway. Worst pain of my life. Very thankful for my iPhone Siri, as I was able to moan out "Come home please" and send it as a text to Ron. He very quickly schlepped Ellie to the next door neighbors....possibly still in her PJ's, and took me to the ER. We don't live too far from the hospital, but it feels like an eternity when you are trying to crawl out of your skin to get away from the pain. Thankfully, I don't know who had to run into the ER and tell them to come help us in as I only made it 1/3 of the way walking before I was a doubled over immobile vomiting disaster. What a sight! I am very thankful for IV's, phenergan, and dilaudid. Our guessed diagnosis was correct of a kidney stone. By the time I had the CT, it had already passed, but did get the bad news that I have more stones in both kidneys. Well, isn't that nice. I feel like a ticking time bomb! ;)

I'm not sure what happened the rest of the day. Got home in time for Ron to take Ellie to school, then remained in a coma-like state until Wednesday morning! I did get up Tuesday evening, but I remember nothing.

Wednesday, my wonderful husband stayed home and did all my jobs. Did them better than me too. Finished all the laundry. I really don't remember anything else, other than trying to remember what day it was. I was confused and felt like I lost a day. Because I did.

Thursday. I am not sure what I did. Spent a lot of the day trying to remember it was Thursday. ;) Got the kids to and from school. That's always good. I think I even cooked dinner that night, yay for me and my family! They got to eat! I think that's the day I went out and found my little battery powered tea lights for pack meeting on Tuesday.

Friday. Again, kids to and from school. Honestly, after Tuesday, the week was a practical waste. Or at least I was.

Saturday. Finally! I day I remember and I actually participated in! The morning was spent at a Relief Society Conference. A woman in our area that has literally dedicated her life to Humanitarian Service came and spoke to us, about why she does what she does and some of her experiences. She really is amazing, and spends just about all of her time serving others. We then spent the next couple of hours working on projects. I ended up making a baby rattle out of plastic mesh, yarn, and jingle bells. I didn't even finish it! Lame! It took a lot longer than it appeared to. I am hoping to set aside some time on a Wednesday to go down and help her during her regularly scheduled work sessions. And I won't be picking a baby rattle to make that time! ;)

Then Saturday afternoon for a couple hours I went to a baby shower for and with a group of women I met on twitter. It was fantastically fun to meet most of these women. I'd met about 3-4 of them before at other social media events. I met a few more that I didn't follow that I am now.

I know some people think it is odd to spend time on social media, and even odder to meet people that way, but I don't feel that at all. I have met some wonderful people "on-line", including my husband, and I would have fewer amazing friends without that social outlet.

Big thank you to my husband for letting me flit in and out on Saturday. It isn't his favorite thing when I'm gone all day like that, but he was a good sport. ;)

Sunday. The usual. A visiting teaching appointment (y'know, because it's the end of the month!) and then church. Ron wasn't feeling too good Sunday, so he stayed home. Jared had a talk. he decided to email it to his itouch and just read it off that. I didn't have a good feeling about that, but didn't pay attention to it. Out in the hall before Primary, I had him pull it up on his itouch. Okay, good, all ready. At some point between the hall and him standing up to do his talk though, he erased it. So after looking at me with absolute panic, I went up and just whispered something to him off the top of my head. I hope it made sense, and had something to do with the assigned topic!  Next time, there will be a hard copy in someone's possession.

Well, there you go. Incredibly long-winded story of last week. Now almost two weeks ago.

Maybe I shouldn't pick up blogging again! ;)

And yes, I am aware that I use too many exclamation points and winky faces. Get over it.

I should try and add a picture. but that would just be overachieving. Maybe next time.