Gratitude post...

So, with tomorrow being Thanksgiving and all, I thought I'd list some things I'm thankful for. In no particular order of course...

~My family...Brian G., Zacky T., Matty, Maxers, and Gracie Sue!!! They are the best!!!
~My family. I keep thinking about my childhood and all the fun memories I have! Thanksgiving was so awesome when my Uncle Don's family, Grandma Hazel, the missionaries, and people in our branch who didn't have anywhere to go, would come over and we had so much fun!
~The gospel of Jesus Christ and His redeeming sacrifice for us and His great love for us!!!
~My Heavenly Father and His love for me and all He does for me and for my love for Him!!!
~My calling
~Having our own place to live and just...be
~How cute it is when Gracie runs...cutest thing ever!!!
~My friends
~Sewing (I never thought I would say that one!!!)
~Making projects
~Modge Podge :) 
~Paper plates and plastic cups
~Chocolate popcorn
~A working forced air furnace
~Snow!!!! :)
~Warm clothes
~Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin bars, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pancakes...basically all things pumpkin. Oh, and decorating with them too!
~Washing machines and dryers
~Blue skies in the dead of winter
~That Ibuprofen helps take the edge off of my TN when NOTHING helps most people!! HUMONGOUS blessing!!!
~Being diagnosed with SOMETHING. Not the actual diagnosis..that sucks big time..but I have gone to so many doctors and no one could tell me what was wrong. It was horrible not knowing for so long why I feel the way I do. Someone that was supposedly close to us even told people that he thought I was bipolar because of the extreme changes in me from one day to the next sometimes from one hour to the next. You try feeling excruciating pain in your head and different parts of your face ALWAYS but with varying levels of pain and then some days you don't feel SO bad so you actually CAN function a bit better and then the next day you're back to feeling like crap. Or sometimes you feel super for hours in a day and then suddenly you have so much pain you can't stand it or you wake up in pain at 4a.m. and don't get enough sleep on top of the pain you have and then see how super bright and smiley you are and how consistent your moods and functioning levels are. You never know what can trigger it to intensify it just happens (it turns out stress can make it worse and I was beyond EXTREMELY stressed in the living situation I was in at the time. AND you have 4 precious kids to care for AND I had a person in my life who was trying to make it as difficult as humanly possible. Not a good combination!
~I am so thankful for Brian I know I already said that but he has been amazing through this whole thing. He loves me and I love him. Our relationship has grown in many ways over these past about 2 years or so and he has helped me so much and has been so loving and understanding and I just don't know what I would have done without him!!!! We are not perfect. Our life is not perfect. Our relationship is not perfect. But we have learned a very important lesson this year. We might not have a lot of worldly possessions and life isn't easy but as long as we have each other and our sweet little kids we are ok. So sorry he has been through so much this year but I am so grateful for his unconditional love and I want the best for him!!! He is an amazing man and I just wish EVERYONE knew that!!!
~Prayer
~The Priesthood
~Blogging
~Music
~The scriptures
~My notebook/laptop thing Brian gave me for my birthday in January
~Nursery
~Vacuum cleaners
~Reading
~Journaling
~The healing power of gratitude! Life is so much easier, happier, and more enjoyable when we look for the good things in it rather than the bad things.
~Modern Medicine
~Healthy, happy kids!!!

A bit of randomness...

~We've been waiting for this moment for so long, and finally, yesterday, it happened....Gracie turned 18 months old and went to nursery!!! Hooray! Doin' a little dance! She is, by far, our child that has been the most attached to me. She LOVES church though, which is great! She won't go to family, she is such a stinker about that. She likes all of them at a distance, she just doesn't want them touching her. At church, though, she becomes a social butterfly. She is hilarious! Everyone oohs and aahhs about how pretty she is all the time and smiles at her and they even indulge her when she touches their scriptures and other pretty things they might have. She has even run her hands up ladies' legs playing with their silky pantyhose and they just let her. She is funny! But I wasn't sure how she'd handle being in nursery...alone. She cried for just a minute until the leader held her on her lap during their little singing time. Then she had the most terrified look on her face and had her little hand shoved in her mouth for comfort which completely tore my heart out. Seriously PAINFUL for mom to watch secretly through the awesome little window in the door! She is so sweet I really hated for her to be so scared and sad. Then there was snack time. She LOVES food and water in her own little cup. She was in heaven at that point. My friend, Sherelle went in there to help the leader who was in there alone, and Gracie knows Sherelle well enough that I think that helped her out. She didn't cry again and did really well. YES!!! We'll see how she does next week when she knows we'll leave her again but so far so good.
~Have you all seen the commercial for pistachios where "Snooky", whoever that is, eats a pistachio off of a tanning bed? Do y'all remember when I worked at Steph and J.J.'s tanning salon? Yeah, I used to clean tanning beds. Do you know how many butt cracks and hoo-hahs slide across that part of a tanning bed in a day. DISGUSTING!  I am such a germaphobe, as you know from previous posts, so I REALLY scrubbed those beds down after someone used them. One time a coworker came out so quickly when she was supposed to have cleaned a room. You have to spray the little plastic rug and wipe it (that person could have athlete's foot or who knows what else), spray and wipe down the chair (umm, yeah, someone could have sat their in all their glory, you just never know. And their undies were just sitting on it and I don't even want to know what could be on that chair if you don't sanitize it), spray and wipe down the bed. I had to give her a little "cleaning the room" demonstration after that because ICK!!! So, watching someone eat a pistachio, or anything else, off of a tanning bed, that I'm sure was EXTREMELY sanitized, makes me want to hurl every time it comes on. WHAT were these advertisers thinking. SERIOUSLY nasty!!!
~WHAT do these young girls see in Justin Bieber? I "get" the attraction to Joe Jonas, and Zac Efron, but Justin Bieber?! Just don't get it! We had so many "hot" guys to have crushes on when we were growing up.  Maybe that's it. Maybe there just isn't enough manmeat out there for them to crush on so they are DESPERATE! I just don't "get" it!!!
~Max has his Thanksgiving Feast at preschool tomorrow. This morning Brian reminded me that when Zack was little he called it the Thanksgiving Veast. Loved that!!
~So, we get to speak in church again Sunday. We are SO thrilled about it. We're praying that lots of people are still out of town for the holiday. We are forcing our children to each speak too to take up more time. Aren't we nice parents!? They were like, NOOOOO!!! So I said, ok, here are your options...either you give a little talk or you sing a song together. They decided the talk would be better. I was like, seriously dudes, you just had to do your parts in the Primary program and you did AWESOME!! And you have to give talks in Primary so you can give a little talk in Sacrament Meeting and it won't kill you. We need to settle in one place and never move again if for no other reason but to avoid speaking in church so often.
~Brian made this yummy dessert the other day that he got in an email the other day. You make it like you do a cobbler in the dutch oven. It's best to mix the cake mix some with the butter so you don't have clumps of uncooked cake mix just like a cobbler. He just cooked it in the oven in our big pot and he didn't line the pot with foil. He cooked it at 350 degrees for about an hour. It was really good!!!

Pumpkin Pie Crunch

Ingredients:

1 can solid pumpkin (15 ounces)

1 can evaporated milk (12 ounces)

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp. salt

1 pkg yellow cake mix

1 cup butter, melted

Optional 1 cup chopped pecans (we did not add these)

Line dutch oven with heavy-duty foil and spray well with cooking spray. Combine the first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Pour into oven. Sprinkle cake mix evenly over pumpkin mixture. Sprinkle with pecans, if desired. Pour melted butter evenly over whole cake. Place 6 hot coal pieces in a circle under the Dutch oven and about 20 pieces evenly around the outside of the lid on top for 50 to 55 minutes. Cake is done when the pumpkin custard is firm. Lift the foil out of the Dutch oven and place on a large dish to cool. 

Roller coaster week

I started my anti-seizure medication, Gabapentin, Monday. It has been a roller coaster week! The plan is to take 1 each night for a week. If I don't see any progress I take 2 pills for a week. I can add a pill each week if I'm not seeing improvement until I'm up to 6 pills a day. If I still don't see improvement I have to switch to a new medication and I will continue this pattern until I finally find the right one. I took the first one Monday night and when I woke up Tuesday I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. I felt HORRID!!! On top of just feeling so horrible my head felt like it was spinning. Some of the side effects are fatigue and dizziness. I already have fatigue and dizziness so added fatigue and dizziness was so bad!! I thought there was NO way I could live like that!!! Then when I woke up Wednesday and Thursday I felt a bit better but not much. Thursday night Brian convinced me to take a muscle relaxer I had been prescribed a couple years ago, along with my gabapentin. When I woke up Friday I felt FANTASTIC!!! No pain! And can I tell you that sleeping straight through the night without waking up at midnight or 4:00 in excruciating pain because the ibuprofen wore off was AMAZING! I can't tell you how WONDERFUL I felt! I can't tell you how long it has been since I felt THAT good! Around 8 am the pain started to come back and I took some ibuprofen and then throughout the day it got steadily worse but I felt great for a few hours and that was SOMETHING! Saturday when I woke up I didn't have the nerve pain. My head felt like it was in a vice. Warning: TMI coming up! I was having a visit from my Aunt Flo and the cramps were comparable to labor pains and just horrid all day and the ibuprofen didn't touch the pain. I only occasionally take darvocet and I would have done that yesterday if it hadn't been recalled on Friday for causing heart problems in people that take it and even causing deaths. Apparently gabapentin can cause added problems with menstration and can even cause early menopause and stuff like that so that's a super fun side effect. Anyway, even though I was in pain in other ways yesterday I'd take that over the nerve pain any day of the week! This morning I feel good again. It takes time for the medication to build up in your system and it takes time for your body to adjust to it but hopefully once everything gets adjusted it will be the perfect solution and I won't have to take more than one pill a day. I really don't like to take medicine of any kind. I hate that I am even taking so much ibuprofen but I'm grateful it helps take the edge off the pain since most people with TN don't get any relief ever from anything.
There are 2 permanent solutions we have learned about. One of them is a gamma knife procedure where they pinpoint radiation to the nerve which damages the nerve which stops the nerve from causing pain to the face. It is all done on the outside, no surgery. I think this would be an awesome solution but I've read that it usually helps people who have pain that comes and goes but not so much with people who have it constantly like I do. I am going to find a neurologist who can perform this treatment and see if it would work for me. The other solution is to cut open your skull and treat the nerve right up to where it goes into your brain. Sometimes it is caused by a blood vessel pressing up against your nerve so when they cut you open if they see that that is the cause the move the blood vessel away from the nerve but sometimes it will move back there eventually. This procedure sounds very scary to me and the recovery is excruciating so I'm really hoping the gamma knife thing will work for me so I don't have to take medication all the time that can cause side effects that suck or have to have surgery. Hopefully I can find something that will help me feel human again and will help me be the kind of mom I want to be and that my children deserve!!! Here's a picture of the nerve and everywhere it hurts me. Fun stuff.

Putting Christ back in Christmas, Part 2...

At Shani's request, here are the things I wrote on my papers in my jar.  Hope this helps!

Sing  I Know That My Redeemer Lives  Hymn 136
Sing  The Lord Is My Light  Hymn 89
Sing  I Feel My Savior's Love  Page 74 (childrens' songbook)
Sing  A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief   Hymn 29  
John 9:1-11
John 11:1-45
Mark 7:33-37
3 Nephi 17:11-25
Matthew 9:1-8
Luke 8:41-56
John 13:34-35
Matthew 14:14-21
Read "None Were With Him" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  ( I found this on lds.org it was from the May 2009 Conference Issue
Ether Chapter 3
READ  How Great Thou Art  Hymn 86  (I decided reading it would be better because I cry when I read it or sing it so I can just have someone else read it and cry without sounding like a freak. Such a beautiful song!)
Matthew 3:13-17
Luke 17:12-19
Sing  I'm Trying To Be Like Jesus  Page 78
Matthew 6:1-4
Matthew 14:22-33
3 Nephi 17:4-10
Read "The Certainty of the Ressurrection" by President Spencer W. Kimball ( I will just read the first part of this talk. Found it on lds.org)
Sing  I Stand All Amazed   Hymn 193
Christmas Eve: Read Luke 2    Sing Jesus, Once of Humble Birth (Remember to put this one on a different kind of paper so that it stands out as the one to save until Christmas Eve)


You can certainly mix this up and change things to what you like better or whatever. Maybe you'd rather sing a song about Resurrection or read a different article that means a lot to you. You can personalize it however you want but this is what worked for our little family.  

P.S.  Make sure the mouth of your jar is big enough to put your hand in. Mine barely is I just discovered. Brian would never be able to fit his hand in there. HEHEHE  Might want to check that detail out before decorating up your pretty jar. Course maybe kids' hands would fit or you could shake the papers out. Remember that I printed the references on the white, back side of  pretty Christmas paper to make the jar look prettier. Hope you have fun with it! :)

Putting Christ back in Christmas...

So when I think of last Christmas it is just a big ol' blur of craziness! Lots happening, not living in our own home, I was in pain, it went by SO fast, I just don't remember much of anything except that at the end of it all I really felt like we hadn't focused on the Savior through the month like we always have in the past and I was really sad and felt ashamed that we hadn't tried to stop and really focus. Well, I decided this year is going to be different. The kids are fully aware that they won't be getting as much as they did last year. I asked each of them if they care if we don't have pj's to open on Christmas Eve. Zack and Matty were cool with it. I was honestly quite suprised that Matty was cool with it. Zack has given us a very small, modest list of things he would like to have. It was like pulling teeth to get Max to tell us ANYTHING at all to get him. Even after a special trip this weekend to Toys R Us, walking up and down each aisle, he still only said he wanted a skateboard. What 4 year old doesn't usually say he wants EVERYTHING at Toys R Us! It's awesome in some ways but hard when you're trying to buy him something for Christmas! Then there's Matthew who wants

EVERYTHING!!!

I was SHOCKED when he said he didn't care about the pj's and Max was the one that was upset about it. Turns out he just want SOMETHING to open that night so I'll just make a trip to the $1 store and wrap a little something up for them that night and all will be right in his little world.

Back to the focus...our Savior! I decided it would be nice to dress up an old pickle jar and fill it with little pieces of paper (I printed them on the backside of pretty Christmas scrapbook paper so that it makes the jar look pretty) with scripture references written on them that have to do with miracles he performed or teachings of his or just special moments like when he blessed the Nephite children. Some of the papers had the title of a song about Him that we could sing. Some were from the primary song book others were from the hymn book. None of them were Christmas songs or scriptures about his birth. As I studied the scriptures, looking for just the right ones that our children could appreciate and understand, and as I read the words of the songs as I searched for just the right ones, I was so filled with the spirit and so grateful for my Savior and His love for us and His atonement and sacrifice and example and life. I felt that I should add something about his atonement and about the resurrection and I decided to search for talks on LDS.org. I found the one by Elder Holland a year ago in May that was so beautiful about the atonement and decided to use that one. I just put Read, None Were With Him by Elder Holland, on the piece of paper and printed the talk. I'll highlight parts to read that night. I also found one by President Kimball about the resurrection that I thought I'd read the first part of. We will have a little prayer, sing a lovely Christmas song. No Santa ones! And pull a paper out each night of December and follow it's instructions. I put the Christmas Eve one on a different piece of paper so we know not to take it out til last and it tells us to read Luke 2, which we do each year and it will be a nice end to our little Christ centered Christmas. I really enjoyed this project! It really brought me closer to the Savior just preparing it and I hope it will help bring our family closer to Him as we return the focus back to Him again this year. I just used what little things I had in my scrapbook stuff to decorate the jar and I thought the Merry Christmas sticker was just right because I want the kids to relate the whole Christmas holiday with Jesus and it's decorated festively and stuff and I'm hoping they "get" that the true gift of Christmas is our Savior. I know we've talked about this before with them and in years past we have always tried to focus on Him in some way the whole season, as I'm sure you all do too. I just thought this was a neat little way of doing it that hopefully helps us have a truly meaningful Christmas season! Just thought I'd share in case any of you were looking for something different to do.

Great news!

NO TUMOR!!!

I do have trigeminal neuralgia but for who knows what reason. They don't know. But it's not caused by a tumor or M.S. in my case thankfully!  Basically I will have excruciating pain the rest of my life because of a nerve in my head that for some reason has been causing me excruciating pain for about 3 years off and on and especially for the last year. I have to start taking anti-seizure medicine in an attempt to control the pain. I will have to take it the rest of my life. So, I know that this pain will not be easy to deal with as the doctor told me but I am just glad I don't have anything life threatening!!! This has been a very scary few days I must say! I just kept looking at my babies thinking how hard it would be to not be here to raise them and watch them grow. I am so grateful for my life and for the lives of my family! Among about a million thoughts I had during the past few days, I started thinking about all the things I wanted them to know about me if something were to happen to me. My testimony. Testimony building experiences I have had in my life. Little fun tidbits about me and my siblings and parents as I grew up and stuff. The things I like. The things I don't like. I wanted them to know the details of Brian and my courtship. EVERYTHING! I started realizing that my journal is very factual I guess you'd say. Like a travel log. I want them to know about me as if I was having a conversation with them telling them the stories and such. You can learn so much from other people's experiences, how they got through the challenges in their lives, and how the celebrated the great blessings in their lives. And I LoVe hearing stories from my parents and grandparents from their childhoods!!! I decided whether I was ok or not I wanted to start telling my story in a more meaningful way so that it is documented for them. I hope it will be fun for them to read some day. That my grandchildren will read it someday and enjoy it too. I wish my grandmothers and parents would have done this! One time Stan set up a video camera up in my Grandma Irvine's living room without her knowing it and got her talking about her life. She had such interesting stories to tell. Anyway, I think everyone should start a little history book about themselves for their posterity. I think Tara H. would especially love doing this and hers would be so clever and fun to read!!! Not just a journal where you sit down and write what happened that day. Get a big ol' 5 subject notebook and start writing about yourself. I started writing where I was born and on what day. Who my family members were when I was born. Then I just started writing about things like my parents divorcing when I was 1, my mom joining the church when I was 2, my mom meeting and marrying Stan when I was 3, my younger siblings' births, and then things just started to flow. Stories and tidbits my mom told me about that time. Things I remember from my childhood. Pals I had. It is rather random but it's written down anyway. I have written about my fear of drowning when I was baptized because I was so scared of the water and how I prayed really hard and can you imagine, I didn't drown! Or about times I received priesthood blessings or fun holiday memories and such. It is fun and I write it like I would tell it to someone else, dramatically and full of fun and silliness. It is just a fun project. You should try it! I even decorated my notebook really cute so it makes it even more fun to write in. Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts! I appreciate it so much!!! So blessed!!!

I'm scared!!!!

About a year ago I started having a LOT of pain on the right side of my face. It ran across my lower jawbone, my upper jaw and cheek bone, up to the top of my head and everywhere in between. My teeth really were the worst. It felt as if I had a HORRIBLE toothache and the pain radiated from it all over. I had a tooth that had had some problems for years and a dentist had told me I would probably have problems with it the rest of my life because of the issue with it. Well, I was in such constant pain, needing round the clock medicine for it that I finally just asked Dr. Bailey to pull it. I kept having pain in my teeth and would go in for visits and Dr. Bailey suggested a couple of times that I see a TMJ specialist. I never did make a special, costly, trip up to Salt Lake to see a specialist because I just couldn't see going all the way up there just for me and besides the pain wasn't consistent with what I had read about TMJ. Well, this entire year I have experienced this pain in varying degrees MOST days. Each time I would get a tooth fixed I would start feeling pain in another tooth. Then I would suffer with it for weeks because it's such a pain in the butt to make it to a dentist appointment. My biological father and both of my biological grandmothers wore dentures so I just figured I had bad teeth genes and eventually that would be my lot. Usually when he would fix a tooth it would feel better for a few days before I noticed another one hurting. Sometimes the pain was bearable, sometimes I needed some ibuprofen, about 4 weeks ago it really intensified and I was back to using ibuprofen round the clock and 3 teeth were bothering me. I called Dr. Bailey's office and had to wait a week to get in. The pain got so bad the weekend I went to Manti for baptisms for the dead which was Halloween weekend that I was taking 4 ibuprofen and a Darvocet we had left over in our cabinet and I was STILL in pain. I was also taking some sinus medicine because I also started feeling a LOT of dizziness, pain and pressure that made me wonder if I had a BAD sinus infection on top of it all. Well, I called first thing Monday morning and they got me right in. He did an x ray and said my teeth looked fine but I had a cloudy sinus that I have 2 teeth growing into and he thought the dizziness could be from an inner ear infection because my ear hurt too, everywhere on that right side hurt too but sometimes tooth pain radiates so I just thought it was teeth. Well, I took the antibiotic he prescribed and showed very minimal improvement if any at all. My mom was like, you NEED to go to a Dr. so I finally did and it is IMPOSSIBLE to see a doctor the day you call the doctor's office in this town. Maybe just if you are a new patient, but Dr. Etzel was the only doctor in town that could get me in the next day so I went to him. He said he thinks I have a condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia a.k.a Acute Facial Pain. I saw my regular doctor Dr. Harrison on Friday in Provo for my yearly visit and she is a family practice dr, a DO, she delivered Gracie. She is AWESOME!!! I really trust her judgement. I explained my symptoms and she said she thought it was Trigeminhal Neuralgia and I hadn't told her his diagnosis. Dr. Etzel had sent me to have a C.T. scan Thursday. He told me he wanted to do the scan to eliminate the sinusitis as an issue but that he REALLY thought it was the trigeminal neuralgia and that he would give me details and talk treatment after the results of the C.T. were back. Well, his office called Friday and said that he wanted to discuss the results with me in his office and then she told me something I can't remember how she worded it but basically it was a message from him and it was letting me know that it is the trigeminal neuralgia. What I've read and what Dr. Harrison said is that often times you have a tumor that is putting pressure on this nerve in your head causing the pain. Sometimes it can be caused by M.S. Sometimes you have had an infection of some kind and it can trigger this condition. Sometimes you just get this condition for no apparent reason. Dizziness is not a symptom of it. And either are some of my other symptoms. They didn't have any openings to discuss the situation until Monday at 11:00. So I have been a wreck all weekend waiting as patiently as a very impatient wife and mother of 4 little kids can possibly wait to hear whether she has a tumor in her head or not. I keep thinking about words I've waited to hear in my life. I love you from Brian. Will you marry me? Forever. You are pregnant! It's a boy! It's a boy! It's a boy! It's a girl! Mama! How exciting and thrilling those words were to hear. How exciting the anticipation was as I waited to hear these beautiful, life changing, glorious words! I'm terrified of the words I will hear on Monday. Of course my mind has gone over all of the possibilities. If I hadn't had so much pain, and if the dizziness and pain had not debilitated me so much these past weeks. If I wasn't fully aware that this has gone on for an ENTIRE year meaning that if I have a tumor it has grown in my head for at LEAST a year. Why didn't I listen to Dr. Bailey and see that specialist a year ago? Maybe they would have figured it out all that time ago. If I hadn't lived in this town, in the 8th ward for about 7 years, off and on I might think it couldn't happen to me. But you can't live in that area and watch so many around you get diagnosed with cancer, M.S., or other diseases and not realize...it can happen to anyone! I'm scared! Really, really scared! How do you tell your children you have something wrong with you. I don't want to have to know the answer to that! Prayer is a beautiful thing! It is the first step towards experiencing a miracle in your life! It is comforting and healing to the body or spirit or both. I was going to wait to blog about this until after I had the results. Instead I decided to ask for your prayers. Please pray that it isn't really anything major. Please also pray that I will have the strength to endure whatever the answer might be. Whatever HIS will is for me. Thank you friends....

Sharing the savings...

Brian was looking on Fresh Market's website one day and saw that you could sign up to have coupons mailed to you weekly. Well, he signed me up for them and I must say, it is definitely worth signing up for if you have a Fresh Market store in your town! This weeks email included a coupon for a 5 lb. bag of potatoes for .79 and one for $2.00 off any $10.00 purchase at the butcher block. Last week there was a coupon for .89 for a loaf of their farm bread with a limit of 4 loaves. Their farm bread tastes just like Grandma Sycamore's bread I love it! It's regular price is pretty good anyway comparatively speaking at $1.49 a loaf but .89 is really good! And there was a coupon for 64 oz. bottles of apple juice for .79 with a limit of 2. The week before that was our first week and the coupons included one for 4-12 packs of Pepsi for $8.00, and 2 bags of Doritos for $3.00. I know we are all trying to find ways to stretch our dollar so I thought I'd share! If this interests you just go here and sign up.

Happy Savings!!!

And so it goes...

~I hate going to the Dr. I can't decide which I'm more worried about. That he'll tell me that something bad is wrong with me or that he'll blow me off and just act like it's no big deal and I'll have wasted time and the $25 copay. Either way, not looking forward to it!!!
~Poor Matty has strep throat. Of course he didn't tell us his throat hurt until AFTER he went to Primary yesterday. I hope no one in his class gets it. I hope no one else in our family gets it. You gotta love this time of year. I feel like I need to get a job just to pay for our copays and prescriptions.
~They say there's no use crying over spilled milk but I have to say that it does help a little to cry when your 4 year old drops a brand new gallon of milk on the floor, breaking it and causing milk to go all over the frig, the floor, under the frig, and run down the slanty floor and get all over the coats and jackets that he thought would be so super fun to unload from the closet. I've asked him to ask me to get him drinks but he thinks he is 20 years old, does not need parents, and certainly does not need help doing ANYTHING!

~big sigh~

Today was just SUPER!!! I know it could be worse but the way I feel today, it was plenty!!!

On a positive note though, some of you will remember my cousin, John's son Parker who had meningitis at the age of 8 months about a year and a half ago. Well, I know it's been a long time since I updated you about his condition but he got a cochlear implant some time back and has been doing really well with that and now......HE WALKS!!! Renee put a little video on her blog of him walking. WONDERFUL!!! Such a blessing and an answer to so many prayers!!! So happy for Parker and his parents and beautiful sisters!!!! Miracles happen!!! God answers prayers!!!

The trade off...

Today, while I made this for one of my Beehives' birthday gift....

 

Gracie was busy making

this.....

 

I asked Max 3 times to put it in the sink when he was done with it. He's very obedient as you can see... Don't you love how there is always a trade off when you make something fun or do anything besides clean. Oh well! At least she's cute!!!

Halloween...

Last Saturday we carved our totally awesome pumpkins.

Zack did a great job! Sadly his pumpkin rolled off of the table and broke but Brian saved the day by using some wood bbq skewers to hold it together. 

Max had the big daddy pumpkin! It's almost as big as he is!

Matty was SO excited to carve pumpkins!

So focused!

Mine

Max's

Matty's

Zacky's

Max was a scary ghost for his preschool party on Thursday.

Matty was a mummy and Zack was Frankenstein at their school's Halloween parade and carnival. Brian did a great job of painting him up complete with scars and everything! This activity was a fun addition to our Halloween celebration!

Max was Dracula for Matty and Zack's school party.

Saturday night I was exhausted! I have had a sinus infection for a week now. I thought it was just tooth aches and a cold but I went to the dentist this morning and he said it's a sinus infection. Hopefully once I start my antibiotic my head won't feel like it's going to explode anymore!!! Anyway, on Saturday I went to the Manti Temple with the youth to do baptisms for the dead. When I got home I just wanted to go to bed but it was time to go trick or treating. Brian let me lay down for a few while he put everyone's makeup on and got everyone ready. He is an amazing husband and father and I am so grateful for him! It started raining right when it was time to start trick or treating. We just drove them to houses in our neighborhood to start. Max INSISTED on going to Miss Tawnya's house first! He is so funny! He loves his preschool teacher! We kept having to make them wait in the car until the rain let up. A lot of people thought that it was dumb of us "mormons" to go trick or treating on Saturday instead of Sunday so they didn't pass out candy. One person even stuck a note on their front door that said, " Halloween is tomorrow, come back then." It's also the Sabbath so thanks but no thanks! We drove out to the best neighborhood to really load up at and they went to a few houses before the rain really started to pour down. This had been happening off and on for about an hour or so by this time. The kids jumped in the van and we asked if they wanted to wait for it to let up again or if they just wanted to go home. They all opted to just go home. I said, I KNEW my kids were smart!!! I felt bad for them that they didn't get as much candy as they would have liked but it will be nice to be rid of candy wrappers sooner and hopefully avoid cavities!