Caught up through January!

Hopefully we'll start on February soon before it's over!

Dallas's Art!

Any one who knows Dallas knows that he LOVES to draw! He is well known in his classes at school for his drawing! This is one of his latest drawings that his teacher had them do. He always goes above and beyond everyone else... according to his teacher! She actually "bought" this one off of him for their school "bucks". He is quite proud! And so are we!!!

It wouldn't load without flipping 2 of them sideways... sorry!

These 2 have the doors closed....

This one is with the doors open.

Little Swimmers!

I PROMISE! I will NOT make this a habit to post pictures of our toilet on the blog! But this is the infamous collection of toys that Cohen gathered to let swim. There were close to 15 things from SEVERAL different rooms of the house! He had worked on this for quite some time. All that time I thought he was being good and kept coming in the toy room while we were dejunking it.... he was dejunking in his own way!

Some of the things you can't see were game pieces, head bands, hair clips, other pieces of paper, and a few doll house furniture pieces. Luckily he hasn't figured out how to "flush"!

Micailey is 9!!!!

The girlies making their bracelets....

Opening presents. Notice Brin.... she insisted that she be in on the Crazy Day too! She got herself dressed COMPLETELY by herself! She loved it too!

Blowing out the candles on her massively big cake! She wanted it to be like the one on her cake plates... so we did! 3 Layers later it was so tall that you had to slice off a SLIVER and that was still too much! But it was YUMMY!

Happy Birthday Micailey!

Crazy Day at School!

Wow! I don't know if I was this bold as a child! But they were SO EXCITED to go to school like this... so what ever! Crazy Day also landed on Micailey's birthday so you will notice some similarities in her birthday pic's... she wouldn't even change for her party!

Cohen turned 2!

Happy Birthday to Cohen! He LOVES cars! So this was the obvious choice of birthday themes! He was so excited! It's fun when they start picking up on things like birthdays and holidays!

It took him a while to figure out how to blow the candles out!

It did not take that long on the other hand to figure out that he REALLY likes cake, but not icecream that much!

Jordan's 1st SOUR experience!

After all this, he still asked for more so I guess he liked it! :)

M.I.A.

Wow! Where has the time gone! I never even got around to doing a birthday post for Cohen or Micailey who both had a birthday 2 weeks ago! I'll try to post some pics of those soon.

Last week Rich spent the week in Florida, which means, YES! I spent the week alone in Utah! That was an adventure! I'm not a newbie to a traveling husband, but usually things go a little smoother in my favor than they did this time! EVERY SINGLE DAY something went wrong! He left Sunday before anyone was awake and didn't get home until Friday afternoon. Sunday I opted to save as much sanity as possible and skip church with 7 kiddos and just do a "spiritual pep talk" on my own. I don't know which would have been easier in the long run! One of the 7 had a very hard time listening, obeying, and not teasing! We'll just leave it at chaos that evening. Then at some point during the night Brin came in to my bed and at 2 a.m. and gave a cough/choke sound which wakes any mother up out of a dead sleep! I spent the next 30 minutes to an hour bathing her, changing my sheets, and getting her and Macie back to sleep. The next day, we tried having a FHE lesson with a renewed hope of making it through with promises of cooperation from the previously mentioned menace. I even put the 2 boys to bed to help things hopefully go smoother, but sad to report, still had a struggle making it through a little lesson.

Shortly after putting the boys to bed, while putting the others to bed, I heard Jordan whimpering in his room. I opened the door to tell him to be quiet so he didn't wake up Cohen, and upon entering could smell the reason for his whimpering! After cleaning up his accident, bathing him, and changing his sheets, I finished putting the others to bed.

Tuesday, I put Cohen down for a nap and 30 minutes later I could still hear him jabbering. When I opened the door to tell him to stop talking, I noticed a diaper on the floor by his bed that I knew had not been there before! As I checked in to the situation, I found a buck naked Cohen in his bed who had peed.... without that said diaper on! SOOO, we got to clean him up now and his bed... why not! WE had about done everyone else's beds by that point!

By Wednesday I'd about had it! When the kids got home, we were doing our chores and I was helping in Dallas and Brins room and the little kids were being entertained by toys and in and out of the room. All seemed okay till Jordan ran in from my room and said "Mom! Someone put toys in your toilet!" WHAT!?!? Yep! Upon peering in to my toilet, Cohen had happily went from room to room gathering up miscellaneous objects from each room and returning to throw them in my toilet! He had quite the collection! From what he had gathered, he had made about 6 trips to different rooms/closets to make his collection complete! I don't know if I am going to survive him! The other previously mentioned child was also still having a hard day... would not do homework or chores - cut their finger while disobeying on a can lid that I had opened just minutes before. Woke up the sleeping baby with her whaling. Dinner had just began to boil and need attention along with 2 screaming children now. We made it through though. After dinner, Mackenzie, Brinley, Jordan, & Cohen all ran in to the front room to practice a play and they wanted to surprise me with. I was instructed to remain in the kitchen till the came to get me. So I did, cleaning up the dinner. A few minutes later they had perfected their play and were ready for their audience! Half way to the destination, my nose was telling me that someone was in need of a diaper! As I rounded the corner, I found the said diaper in need being changed with no changee attached! He was found half way up the stairs, once again....BUCK NAKED!!! Now that..... made me mad! He got to have a bath and go straight to bed... No questions asked! We DO NOT DO THAT at my house! We then proceeded with the play and had an actually fun night!

Thursday, nothing note worthy happened... luckily! Other than I never sat down and the phone rang off the hook! I had my sister here for the day and a sis-in-law came over that evening to watch a movie and have jello popcorn. By the time we went to bed the house was a disaster! But I didn't care cause the next day was FRIDAY! Did I mention that Rich came home on FRIDAY! Wahoo!!! I was COMPLETELY DONE by this time! I had such high hopes of what I could do and accomplish while he was gone and I spent the whole week merely trying to stay a float!

I am completely convinced that Heavenly Father designed families with 2 parents for several reasons!!! I do not know how single moms and parents with traveling or military husbands can do it for such long periods of time! But, after some much needed sleep and tlc, I am doing much better! I may even try to upload some pictures of events that have occurred in January when I get a chance! So sorry that I have been missing in action for a while! I'm still here... just trying to survive!

What's up lately~

Well, ever since a few days after Christmas, one kid or another has been sick. Gotta love that! I'm about done with sickness! I'm SERIOUSLY going to become a hermit one of these days! I keep threatening but now I'm really tempted. It started with Cohen and Brinley and moved to Dallas a few days later. It seemed like Cohen was getting better for a few days till Thursday - he was crying as I buckled him in to his car seat, which he does all the time! He never wants to go anywhere and never wants to leave once were there. As he was crying, I noticed his tonsils were swollen larger than I have EVER seen tonsils before! I was worried that something was really wrong! After the entire family had several good looks in his mouth with a flash light, Rich and I decided we better take him to the doctor, and while we were at it, we thought Macie may have a sinus infection or something because she wasn't really getting over her cold and also suffers from eczema which keeps her up all night itching so I was getting desperate for a miracle cream!

I took Macie and Cohen the next day to our lovely doctors office. They were playing and happy, other than a runny nose and a cough every now and then, you wouldn't have even guessed they were sick. So we do the usual stuff and the nurse sticks us in our room. We read books and played some more ... till the doctor came in. That's where the fun ended! Abruptly! He listened to Macie's lungs first. I don't know how he could hear anything with as loud as she was screaming! Checked her throat & ears. Then listened to Cohen and checked his throat, which he wasn't even alarmed at the tonsils that were so big they were almost touching! Then checked his ears... has he been tugging at his ears cause he has a DOUBLE ear infection! He then informs me that he could hear a wheezing sound in both of their lungs which worried him and to my question, he informs me that they both have the starting of RSV!

Having never had this at our house before, I have no idea what this means. He then takes Macie's blood oxygen count, which she vigorously screamed through the entire process, not because it hurt, but because the doctor was touching her! AAAHHH! So she was 95, and fine, but then he announces that he will be doing a breathing treatment on both of them. I, once again, never having been through this, have no idea what this entailed. A few minutes later the nurse came back with 2 machines and oxygen masks and informs me that they will need to keep these masks on for the next 8 minutes. She's preparing both masks at once and I'm looking at 2 kids who are not looking excited and wondering how this is going to go down. After applying Macie's mask to her face and having it instantly and repeatedly ripped off, I informed the nurse that there was no way I was going to be able to do BOTH children at the same time! So, for the next 8 minutes, I physically wrestled Macie nonstop! With every swipe of her hand she had tubes unplugged! I had dressed warm that day for the cold weather outside. I had a long sleeve shirt with a thick puffy vest, a nice WARM scarf, and my hair was down.... needless to say, by the 8 minute mark, I was sweating like crazy!!! The nurse was laughing at me cause the second she came in I was stripping : ) Not really but a few things did have to go before my next 8 minutes in the ring with a fresh and vigorous Cohen! He did much better for the most part. He was thinking this mask thing was kind of funny till about the 6 minute mark and then he thought he had pretended to enjoy it long enough and thought he should be able to be done.

When the nurse came back in, she took Macie's blood oxygen counts again, which with all of screaming, I would have thought they would have peaked at 100%, but they were still at 95. Then she did Cohen. His was 89. They like them to at least be in the 90's. With the reaction and look on the nurses face you would have thought they were in the 70's or something. She had me a little worried for what was to come when the doctor came back in and it was only down by one percent.

The doctor listened to their lungs again and said that my 20 minute rendevoux hadn't done a bit of good for the sound of their lungs, which also silently worried me. I didn't sign up for a hospital visit that day! But when they took Cohen's counts again he was up at 92%. Whew! So, he said that since they were acting fine, and the counts were good, we were good to go with 3 prescriptions for various things, and to call him if they made a turn for the worse.

Wow! Now that right there was.... FUN! Have I ever mentioned that I hate having sick kids! I remember complaining and stating that I would rather be sick than have sick kids! Apparently I forgot to knock on some wood after that declaration, so now I too get to experience their cold! Yay ME! Did I ever mention how much fun it is when the mom of the family is sick?

GOAL REACHED!!!

A couple months ago, I set a goal to lose 15 pounds... didn't have a time line, just knew I wanted to be less than I was. So, a friend of mine posted that she was down in her weight and I asked her how she did it... and it sounded so easy.... I actually tried it! So I'm happy to announce that I've lost my 15 and have a new goal of 10 more!!! Yeah! Lets see if we can reach this new goal!

Thanks Stacie (and Heather for the post) for the info! I'm loving it!