Major Catching Up and the Holidays!!

Oh wow I am so behind on here.. I'm afraid this is going to be a super long post to get all the catching up I need to do.. I have been such a slacker lately..

Well I have to apologize. I put all the pictures on here in the wrong order so we are going to have to work backwards in time..

My parents were able to come out here to spend the Christmas and New Year holiday with us.. It was so great having them here. And so much help. I only felt bad that the last week they were here I was down alot and we were not able to go and do some of the things I had wanted to do.. More about that to come..

So anyways here is my mom Christmas day.. My dad and Steve and I have been planning a trip to Hawaii for the whole year to give to my mom for Christmas.. It was so hard to keep it a secret all year. she would continually say she never goes anywhere and we should just book a trip and go.. It would be so hard to say just wait and kinda have to hee hom around and make excuses of why we couldn't go.. LOL so we didn't have all the trip finalized yet so we ended up getting her a magazine brochure on Hawaii to give to her. At first she didn't get it she was like why am I getting a magazine on Hawaii...
And then with a little hinting it finally sunk in.. She was so totally surprised.. It was great.. Sorry mom I had to post the pictures.. She threatened me not to post them but I just had to..
Steve was keeping busy trying to get everything caught on tape..
Me and my dad and Steve were planning on going Ice Fishing while they were here and since Santa knows everything I ended up with an ice fishing pole and some bait..
even Lucky got some nice treats in his sock from Santa!!
oh crap I dont know what I pushed to make it underline everything and I have no idea how to get it off.. Anyways I wasn't real great on getting very many good picts since I was dishing out the presents but here is the best one of the kids with some of their loot.

Grandpa always has to start his mornings off with a cup of hot chocolate!!

Allie is so into Twilight and New Moon so she got a ton of twilight stuff.

This was a picture of our Christmas tree just after we got it decorated up. I bought all new ornaments for it this year since I hadn't bought any for several years. I really like how it turned out. We actually got 2 tree's this year.. Our big artificial one below wouldnt really fit upstairs in our great room so we put it down stairs and decided to start a new family tradition. We went to a nearby tree farm and took a trailer ride out to the orchards of pine trees and got to choose the perfect one and cut it down ourselves. Then they take you back to the lodge for hot choc and can go meet santa. Our family had a blast and thought it would be great to do every year. So we ended up getting a little bit smaller one to put upstairs. And the best part was I let the kids decorate this one with all the ornaments they have collected over the years and they thought that was pretty special, not to mention the fresh smell of pine was an added bonus!! Of course I am horrible with bringing my camera to such funtions that I didnt get any picts nor did I even get one of the final product of the real tree. I know I am a loser!! Owell at least I got some of the atificial one..

Ok so that was our Christmas and now to our Thanksgiving.. We were kind of bummed because we were not going anywhere and nobody was coming here for Thanksgiving so we were not as excited for turkey day It ended up being a blessing in disguise when you find out what happened..... Our month of November was pretty Crazy.. Austins Birthday was on the 9th and we had a little party for him at a basketball/arcade place.. It was pretty fun for him and of course his dumb mother forgot her camera so we didn't get any pictures of it.. At least we did get some pictures of his little family celebration.

Then Steve's birthday was on the 14th. Which wasn't so fun for him.. He finally came down with the swine or at least a very bad flu so the day of his birthday he still wasn't feeling so hot..

Then to top the rest of the month off.. For the week of thanksgiving the kids brought some guest with them...Yep you guessed it LICE!!! Oh gross me out... It was so horrible.. What really pisses me off was 2 weeks prior Jessie had started itching her head alot and Steve looked at it and said he saw a bug in her hair.. I said oh maybe its just from playing outside on the playground but we did take her to a dermatologist anyways and he took one quick look at the top of her head and said oh its just dry scalp start using a dandruff shampoo so we were relieved and of course figured he knew what he was talking about and had her start washing her hair with denorex.. Then 2 weeks later on Thanksgiving break She is still itching alot and Logan is just scratching her head to the point its bleeding. Steve got after them and said quit itching your head. We took them in the bathroom to look and their heads were just covered in them.. I about puked.. I went into a frantic panic.. I called their pediatrician and got an appt for the next morning and confirmed it was indeed lice. Then started our horrible week of vacation.. We had to bag up all their toys, stuffed animals, bedding, sleeping bags that they had slept in in the last couple week just everything... We probably had 12-15 huge yard garbage bags of miscellaneous stuff, because not only did we find it in the girls but we also found it in the other 2 kids and also found 1 or 2 nits on me so we practically bagged our whole house.. Then we started the whole laundry fiasco.. We probably did 40-50 loads of laundry that week. Our Washer and Dryer was constantly going the whole week. We thought they would probably burn out on us.. Every day we had to was their bedding and clothes and pajamas.. And everyday we vacuumed the whole house and sprayed everything down. We had to vacuum all the cars.. It was such a nightmare. So on top of all this cleaning we had to do daily picking through their hair to remove all the nits which are tiny tiny tiny little eggs left by the lice..

Never having this before we didn't know to what extreme measures we had to take and we heard all the horror story's of how the lice shampoos didn't work and many people experience a second outbreak then you have to start all over so we were freaked.. So we would start in the morning after breakfast. Steve would take 1 kid and I would take the second kid and we would go through their hair little sections hair at a time to pick out and remove these nits that are like glued to a strand of hair and are extremely difficult to see so you really have to have alot of light and look at every strand of hair.. The first night there was so many in the 2 youngest girls and of course they have the most hair and with Jessies major thick hair it took us all night.. 4 hours of picking through it and pulling the nits off with your finger nails.. I just cried because it was so overwhelming with how much they had. Poor logan would fall asleep while we picked through her hair. It was midnight by the time we finished going through their hair that first night..

Starting on the second day we would go their hair twice so we would do 1 3hr session after breakfast, break for lunch, then switch kids and start all over again.. we found that if I did say Jessies hair the first time then steve did it the second time it gave us better chances of getting more nits because we would both have our own way of parting through their hair so we would always find more nits that the other one missed. So take in mind we had to do (2) 3 hr checks on them and dont forget the other 2 kids everyday.. So this is 6 hrs a day per child and we have 4.. Austin was much easier being that he was a boy. We just shaved his head the first night to a buzz cut which made going through his hair alot faster...

So by the time we would finish up with the kids hair checks and all the cleaning and laundering everyday it would usually be close to 11 or 12 midnight then of course once we got them into bed steve and I would have to check each others hair.. which mine of course which is long and thick took a couple hours too.. We didn't do quite as thorough checks on us as we did with the kids because steve never did have any nits and I only had like 1 or 2 so we tried to do just the bare minimum with us.. Still by the time we would finally crawl in bed it was like 1 or 2 in the morning.. Then we would start all over again every day for a whole week.. It was so exhausting..


This picture was when steve told logan to put her nose on the lamp so she would hold still cuz it was so hard to get her to sit still for 3 hrs at a time then have to do it again later in the day.. The kids were truly amazing sitting there pretty much the whole day.. We brought a little portable tv with a dvd player in with us and that helped us out immensely with getting the kids to hold still..

We were barely lucky to even get a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day.. we were just going to put it off to the following day because we were just so consumed with all this but I managed to get the turkey in the oven on our lunch break and we finally were able to sit down for our turkey feast late that night.. It was pretty sad but you do what you gotta do I guess..

Later after the whole ordeal we found out that we didn't quite have to go to the extent we did with all the cleaning.. But at least we were very thorough and our house was the cleanest house in the neighborhood for that week and we didn't get any re infestations so that made it worth it I guess.. It was kind of funny because you have to leave all your bagged stuff bagged for like 3 weeks so just when my parents arrived for Christmas we were able to unbag all our stuff and it was like having an early Christmas.. The kids were so excited to see all their toys they hadn't been able to play with and had pretty much forgotten about.. They were so excited!!!

Now to the present.. Well as you my followers know I had fractured my hip the end of August and then found out I had 2 herniated discs in my back that was pinching my sciatic nerve. It has been a very hard time for me physically for the past 4 months.. My hip finally healed and started feeling better in November however my back has continued to get worse. I started doing spinal injections the first week of December and had 1 done about every 2 weeks along with Physical Therapy to try and help alleviate the pain but to no avail they did not work.. after my 2nd and 3rd injections I started taking a turn for the worse and was starting to have more pain. On new years eve day I had my last injection which was thursday and by Sat I was in the hospital.. I had gotten up that morning and could feel that it was going to be a bad day with it. I went to bend over slightly to lift the toilet lid and it pinched my nerve so bad I was in alot of pain.. So I hobbled to the kitchen to load up on my 20 mg of Lortab which if any of you are familiar with pain medication that is one hefty dose of pain med.. More then what they usually give you after most surgerys.. But this was what the Dr.s told me to take. I had been taking this high of dose for probably a week. Then I hobbled to the shower thinking maybe the hot water would relax things up a bit.. Wrongo!! I couldnt even bend or lift my legs to even soap off.. I was in so much pain I just cried the whole shower.. When I got out I bent slightly to just pull some toilet paper of the roll to wipe my tears and that movement dang near killed me. Once again it squeezed the nerve so tight it was just excruciating.. I cried out to my mom or Steve to help me get dressed because I couldnt even move. They got me all dressed and shipped me off to the hospital ER which was another horrible joke in itself.. The Dr. forgot about me. Several times!! And get this to top it off he told me my results of my urine test then came back and blutly told me he had lied to me that he didnt know where my urine was put and that they would go try and find it..

This was pretty much how the whole day went.. They ended up giving me 2 shots of pain medication through my arm muscle then had to start an IV to give me another injection of pain meds before I was released.. So on top of all that I had already taken at home I was higher then a kite. They had called my Neurosurgeon from the hospital and he never bothered to call or come in.. we had previously sched an appt with another Neurosurgeon for a second opinion earlier in the week but couldnt get in with him until next week.. We didnt even think to have him paged because he had never seen me before so we didnt think about it, But come to find out he was actually the Dr. on call that day and he said if he would have been paged like he actually was supposed to have been because he was the on call Dr. for that day but the ER didnt do it he said he would have operated on me then.. DANG!! So long story short I was able to get in with him on Tuesday and have scheduled to have surgery on the 13th next weds.. So now if I can only stay down and get through the week. The thing that sucked was those last few days while my parnets were here I was down so we couldnt go do anything but it was such a blessing to have them there while all this was going on... And actually my mom bless her heart will be coming back out the last week of January to help with my recovery so that is another blessing.. I have such wonderful parents... My dad is actually having surgery the same day I am.. He is having his knee replaced so that is why this has all been so hard because she needs to be home to help take care of my dad. So hopefully he will have recovered enough by the time my mom comes out to help out here.. What a crazy couple of months hu?????

At last this is why I have not been on here so much hence all the catch up.. And who knows when I will get back on here again at least for a while until after my recovery.. Sorry for this being so long and detailed.. I will try better to get on here more often.
I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and is having a wonderful start to the brand new year.. Here is to a better new year!!!!!!!!!!!!!

14 Days and Counting

Wow I'm finally back on.. It took me a while to catch up after my parents left.. I kinda put everything on hold when my parents came out and I have been trying to get back into the swing of things..

It was so great having my parents out for the Thanksgiving holiday and my birthday. It was the best birthday surprise ever. One I will never forget. This was the shot my mom took of me when it finally clicked that I was actually looking at my parents here on my door step.

Another one of us she took. I can definently see where all the turkey and pies went over the week.. I think I put on 5 pounds while they were here.. LOL

This was our wonderful turkey taken fresh right of the farm we live near. And this was us and our dinner.. I dont go all out crazy with the linens and decorations and stuff like that for thanksgiving. Its hard enough to just get all the food cooked... Maybe as I get older and our children marry and come back then we will get fancy...

Lucky our dog and Papa cuddeling in the chair.. My dog almost forgets who his owners are when Grandma and Grandpa come.. They spoil him rotten. He's like another one of the kids.. He gets so depressed when they leave.. My parents keep trying to talk me in to giving them our dog..They really miss him too!! LOL

Papa and Logan snoozing in the chair.

And this was me opening my presents for my birthday.. A few days after turkey day I got another surprise.. My bosch mixer came.. It wasn't supposed to come until after christmas but it showed up early.. Of course I wasn't allowed to open it and use it because it is supposed to be my b-day/christmas gift so I have to wait until we get back from utah. I really tried to negotiate but it didnt work...

Speaking of which.... ONLY 14 DAYS LEFT until we get to head back to Utah!!!! Yeah!!! We are all so excited...The kids are so excited they can hardly stand it.. They each have a calendar and they have been crossing off the days as they count down.... They already miss grandma and grandpa horribly not to mention the Grandmas and Grandpas and cousins and friends they havn't seen for a year now.. We are having a hard time trying to figure out how to squeeze in seeing everybody there in the 11 days we have. It is going to be a crazy week!! We will need a vacation from our vacation..

The Best Surprise Ever!

Oh my gosh I recieved the best surprise ever.......... So let me start out with this.. I have been feeling a little bummed because turkey day was fast approaching and this was going to be our first year without celebrating it with our family's and we didnt have anywhere to go or everyone that we invited to come to our house already had plans so I was kinda bummed that is was going to be just us.. Plus it's also my birthday on thanksgiving day..I have been trying for months now to get my parents to come out but they kept telling me they couldnt and because we were coming out for christmas it just wouldnt make sense to come here for thanksgiving given it was so close or that they just didnt have the money.

So anyways my husband had to fly out of town last sunday on a buisness trip and return on Friday.. He called me from the airport on sundy saying that if I was a good girl he would give me a surprise when he got home.. So I had to go all week wondering what my surprise was.. I just love surprises and hate not knowing or having to wait for them it drives me crazy.. And my husband is not one for doing surprises very often. In the 13 years we have been married he has only surprised me twice.

So I kinda thought that maybe my surprise was that he was going to come home early.. So thursday came and I had lots of things going on that day. I had a parent teacher confrence that night so I got home late around 6:45 and I didnt see his cr in the driveway so I assumed that him coming home a day early was not my surprise so I got dinner going and sure enough in he walked and we were so happy and said yeah this was my surprise, I'm so glad your home.. So I started to finish preparing dinner and it was getting late and we were running around trying to get everything done and then my doorbell rang. I went and awnsered it and I had to open up the storm door and look around the side to see who it was. And standing there were MY PARENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

At first I just kinda stood there looking at them like hu? It wasn't quite clicking yet that they were here.. My mind was like it cant be them they are 2500 miles away.. And then all of a sudden the realization hit and my mouth hit the floor. I couldnt believe they were here... I was so excited. And to find out that they and my husbad had been planning this for the last 3 months!! I cant believe they kept this secret from me the whole time.. They all admitted it was really difficult exspecially for steve but they managed it.. This was like the best birthday and thanksgiving surprise ever!! My mom snapped a shot of my face when the realization finally hit when I awnsered the door but I will have to wait to post it after she gets home and send it to me since I cant download it onto my computer but it is pretty funny.... Ok some of my sneaky blogger friends you know who you are...... I found out you knew too and didnt tell... mmmmhmmmm......

This will be a great thanksgiving to remember.. So if I dont get back on here for a while its only because I am loving my time with my family.. So to all my bloggy friends out there....

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.

I am so grateful for all of you and your friendships and your loyalness to reading my crazy blog.. Wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving this year..

Happy Birthday to us!!

November seems to be quite a busy month for us...

Catching up on my week.. Well we had Steve's birthday on friday. I cooked a nice steak dinner and made him a banana cream pie. It turned out so yummy!! Me the kids and my mom all went in and got him a really nice leather book set of the History of the Church. 8 books total. He has been wanting them for a while but figured they were to expensive to get so it was a nice surprise for him.

Then on Saturday we had Austins birthday party for his friends. I was really panicking when we woke up and it was still raining. I had no idea what I was going to do with so many boys running through my house... We had a pinata so we started cleaning out the garage so we could hang it up in there for the boys. But no kidding like an hour before the party it stopped raining and about 15 mins before the sun came out. Plus it was 71 degrees out side so it was really nice... It was still a bit windy and it was still pretty wet but the boys dont care about that so they spent the majority of the time out side playing various football games. My husband played the whole time with them.. And I cant believe I didnt get any pictures of this or the pinata breaking. Steve later said he knew he was getting way to old because he was having a hard time keeping up with the boys.. I think he's a little depressed because he keeps saying he is now closer to 40 then 30.. Gosh I remember when my parents were this age and I thought they were so old and now here we are....

I was quite surprised when his guests started showing up and 1 ended up being a girl.. I didnt know he had invited a girl.. She was really cute. She is from his karate class and I said she was brave for coming and putting up with all these boys and she said she is used to it and that she usually plays with the boys at school. She could probably kick any one of these boys butts. She is a tough little girl at karate.. Really good!!

As soon as the party was over within 15 mins it started clouding up and really blowing and started to rain again so we were so lucky to have had the nice weather just at the right time for the party. All in all I think it went really well.

Sunday steve flew out again for the week so it has been a crazy week here for us. I was bombarded with appnt for all the kids on tuesday that me and logan were literally gone from 10:00 in the morning and didnt get home until 6:00 in the evening. It was a very long stressful day and logan did so well bless her heart. We have been doing more testing with Jessie and her learning disabilitys. Yesterday she had some vision evaluations done.. I dont get to speak to the dr. until next tuesday but I already know the results will not be good. I got to sit in with her during the tests and I got to see a whole diffrent side to her brain and her thinking and what she really sees that I have never seen before.. Things that I just assumed she knew or saw that she really didnt. In a way it was kinda heart breaking to see her struggle and not know the right awnsers. Or see things the way a person without the disabilitys would see them. Man it is hard. You never want to see your kids struggle or have problems and know it will be something we will struggel with all her life, but I guess it is good we are catching things early so we can do something about it. And things could always be alot worse.. So I consider us a very blessed family.

Today me and Logan got to go help out with a project they were doing in Austin's class for history on the 13 colonies

Thanksgiving will be hard this year not being around family. As of right now we dont have anyone coming for dinner nor have we any plans to go anywhere.. I was hoping to cook a big dinner and have at least someone over but everyone seems to have plans already.. This sucks!!

Owell I am gratefull we have each other and we are here as a family. I will have to come up with some fun things to do...My birthday also happens to fall on thanksgiving this year... I was actually born on thanksgiving day. My mom always said I was the turkey of the family for not letting her get to eat her turkey dinner.. So yeah I get to pig out for my birthday. Plus I am getting a bosch mixer for my birthday... I am so excited I cant wait to use it.. Well it isnt really coming until the end of december so its kinda a birthday/christmas gift. But I cant wait to make some bread with it.

So Its been crazy birthday month at our house.. We woke up yesterday and saw these guys out in our back yard. It was fun to watch them. They seem to come out alot more during this time of year..

And last but not least just a picture of my cutie patootie before school today.