This is one ginormous size post

Well this week has come and gone and while I have a goal to blog more than 1 time a week, I am trying to use this as my journal, I had a hard time getting to it.  Since Scott has been working I have been doing housework.  It is amazing how hard it is to do housework when your significant other is home and not helping, it just takes the wind out of my sails.  As soon as he goes to work I feel like cleaning.

Anyway tomorrow, October 25, is Colton's 9th birthday.  I can only say I am glad that he is past 8 and we don't have to baptise him again, I don't hink I could handle organizing a family party right now.  So finally Colton decided he wanted to have a party at the Sports Academy in the gymnastics gym.  Cliff and Josie did this for Bailey's birthday and my kids LOVED it, so he decided to do it again.  I rented it for 1 1/2 hours.  I'll tell you it was great.  The kids needed no direction they just spread out and went all over.  There are 4 olympic trampolines and they were in use the entire time.  Mason had 1 dedicated just to himself, I think he jumped for an hour straight.  Here are some photos of the trampolines (the ones that turned out).  Ok so none of the trampoline pictures turned out, they are just a bunch of blur.  But trust me they were fun, I even spent some time on them.

So then we move on to the balance beam.  It was also a popular attraction.  Here are some pictures.  As you will see Misty if showing us how good her balancing skills after hours of practice on the rail of her bed when she was younger.  She did a cartwheel on the balance beam, she fell off, but she did it.  Cliff was not to be outdone so he did one also.  It was great fun.  Oh and he also fell off so they are even.

Here is a pic of Bowen on the vault.  I am sure he has olympic potential with the way he was trying to break his arm, I mean show off his manly gymnastic skills.

Ok, that now brings us to arguabley the most sought-after activity of the afternoon, the Zip Line.  There was a line up for that thing.  It wasn't very long, but you did get to drop into a lovely soft "pit" of mats and every kid loved it.  Our wonderful host Thomas (I think that was his name, if not that is what I will refer to him as from here on out) spent most of his time taking kids back and forth on that.......

Does Mistly look a little bit big to be on the zip line?

Everytime she hit the ground.  Josie and I laughed and laughed and so did Misty, but she finally figured out how to pick up her feet so she wouldn't smack into the mat anymore.

Bailey tried, but would having nothing to do with it.  Neither would Mason.

Bowen being a ham.  He is also to big to be on the zip line, which was a contributing factor to the next pictures.

My nephew McKay (Michelle's oldest son) was standing in line behind Bowen waiting for the zip line up on a pad, and Bowen was getting ready to go, McKay looked up and Bowen jumped on the line and the line came down so much and as McKay looked up the steel cable smacked him in the forehead and split it open.  Wow did it bleed, like head wounds do.  So I immediately run over and his mother is just standing there not knowing what to do (she is "slow") and goes to get some papertowels, as she hands them to me she decided she wants them wet, but I just grab them and slap them on his head with a lot of pressure.  She then just stands back and says very loudly and in mono-tone voice "Are you ok McKay?"  over and over and very loud.  I take charge, tell her he will be fine and to get him to stop freaking out I just tell him to take big deep breaths in adn out and try to calm down.  I am hearing talks of him having a seizure (which he does) and people getting aggitated.  Everytime I take the papertowls off it just gushes like Old Faithful.  So we just sit there for like 20 minutes waiting for it to stop, and his mother finally walked away.  And my MIL was there, and I only let her stay after telling her to be quiet and let me take care of him.  My friend Denise was there also and she is real big into homeopathic cures and she has some butterlfly strips and superglue in her bag.  She wanted to glue it shut, which I am a BIG fan of BUT we had nothing to disinfect it first and the thought of gluing in the germs made me cringe, so I just took her butterfly bandage and held it together and it seemed to hold fine.  Thomas got a bag of ice and McKay took a break on the chair.  After about 10 minutes he was ready to play again, even though his mother wasn't so sure.  She does not handle these situations well, but I assured her that he was fine to play, just keep his head away from places that could hit it again.  The one thing that bugged me most was the fact she never completely cleaned his face off as you can see in the picture.  I didn't have time to do it because I was helping to watch our group, and she never thought to do it.

Here is a picture of our entire group.  All in all it was a good party.  Everyone had fun.  Colton loved it and got a few gifts, but that didn't matter to him, he didn't want gifts, just a good time with his friend.

Saturday, Aggie Game, Pumpkins.......

So I am going to explain my Saturday.  It is kind of crazy so try to keep up.

On Friday Tamy decided she would come up on Saturday to take family pictures.  Scott wanted pictures in his new uniform and I needed new head shots of the kids since I do not buy the expensive and usually ugly school pictures.  So we were all excited and I washed the pants and shirts needed.  Well on Saturday we woke up and started to do "fall cleaning" outside and putting up bikes and mowing the lawn one last time (I hope) and just putting everything all away.  About 10:00 this morning I get a phone call from work and it is my boss (I work at Lynn's Audio Video) and because we are a sponsor for the Aggie game today he wanted to know if I wanted the free tickets to the game.  Well in all my life in Logan I have never attended an Aggie football game.  I was only a student at USU for a short while before switching schools and I never wanted to pay the $$ to see them and to be honest the first time I went to an Aggie basketball game was last year when my previous employer (Jones Simkins) gave my family tickets.  Anyway, I was like YES.  The kids were excited, we were excited then we checked out the time of the game and it started at 1:00.  Tamy was suppose to be here at 12:00 so that sucks.  We decided to go to the game and miss Tamy.  I am sorry Tamy, we will come see you soon.

The Aggies lost (no surprise) BUT it was a good enough game to keep your attention for a while.  The kids enjoyed the marching band and Big Blue and we discovered the BEST french fries/chips ever. 

Ribbon Fries

Okay, so I will admit there are some certain treats that I like at the local fairs like Texas Tornado drinks and Elephant Ears (fry bread) and now I have found another favorite.  I have never had these before.  They are 1 big continous ribbon of potato that is fried.  The lady was cute when she said "If you eat them hot they are fries, if you let them cool they are chips" and she was right.  We only had 1 plate to share, which was a good thing because I am sure I could eat a few plates myself.  They were so thin and hot and yummy. I now want to buy one myself so I can have them whenever I want.  Seriously the ribbon fries made the lousy game worth it.

Then we came home and Scott is on call for both Autocare (wrecker calls) and as EMT for Millville/Nibley.  He is getting soooooo excited for Monday when he officially starts his job.  The good thing I learned is that our full health, life, dental, vision, HSA insurance goes into effect on the first day of work.  So as of Monday we have health insurance.  Don't get me wrong the kids have always had insurance but Scott and myself haven't had insuance since we left Washington, which is why his pnemonia was so hard on us we had to pay cash.

Then the kids decided to do pumpkins tonight.  And I will admit I am probably a horriable mom because I HATE pumpkins.  I hate the smell, it makes me want to vomit, I hate the slime and the seeds.  Since we have had kids it has been Scott's job to do pumpkins and to be honest if Josie and Cliff hadn't generously brought us pumpkins I may have bought those fake ones from Joann that you can still carve.  Oh well now my house and my cat smells like pumpkin (because they thought she was cute inside a pumpkin).

Have a nice weekend, we did.

Water + Kitten = Drown Rat

Ok, so here is my uplifting story of the week.  And the reason this is uplifiting is the kitten did not, I repeat DID NOT drown.  So enjoy a story and use your imagination.

First off you have all met my kitten Pebbles right?

Isn't she cute?

Anyway because she is a Persian Cat, they have long long poofy (is that a word?) hair and because I am determined to keep her pretty hair nice and knot free she gets bath's in the sink once a week.  I figured if I started this out early she will handle it better when she is older.  So far she doesnt' mind it as long as the water is nice and warm and it does not get in her eyes.  Also, right after a bath she is sooooooo fluffy and she smells pretty.  So like I said she gets bathed regularily, no big deal.

Well last night (Thursday evening) it was bath night and Rainee had taken a bath, again no big deal.  Well around 9:30 PM Scott and I were in bed and I heard this loud kitty screeking.  Seriously it sounded like a banshee wailing.  So I jumped out of bed and since Scott didn't hear it he was like what are you doing crazy woman?  I followed the horriable sound to find, much to my astonishment, my kitten in a bathtub FULL of water.  Let me reiderate this A BATHTUB FULL OF WATER.  She was there with her head tilted up as far as she could and the water, miracously, stopped right at her bottom jaw.  If Rainee had just put 1/2 inch of water in the tub she would have drowned.  And yes, I would have done mouth-to-mouth, let's face it she has grown on us.

So I scooped her up and didn't have a towl near by so I ran back into my bedroom with a dripping wet kitten who is hissing and spitting at me.  I can just hear her thoughts "where did that water come from?  I always play in that tub and there is never anything in it."  She was maaaaaaad.  So I grab a clean town and wrap her up and it is all she can do to get away from me like I am the one who did it to her, when in acutality I was the savior who saved her life and she is forgetting this point.  At one point she did get out of my grasp and ran right to Scott and cuddled right up on his shoulder and that is where she stayed.

No Scott isn't sleeping, he just didn't want me to take his picture.

So he occasionally tried to rub her with the towl to aid in her drying process, but she would have none of it and spent ALL NIGHT perched there on his shoulder.

I am sorry Pebbles.  Rainee will NEVER leave water in her bathtub again.  Why do I know this?  Well being the mean mom I am I sort of, kind of, might have implied to her that she was responsible for killing the cat from her tub full of water, and I then went on to add that it could have been Mason in that tub and he could have drown also.  Then after she was crying, I pulled out Pebbles and showed her she was okay.  That may have been mean but I needed her to understand why what she did was bad, not because mom said.

So I am now sure Pebbles is scared for life, but we will see, now she doesnt' need a bath for another week and maybe she will forget by then right?

Frustrations

So this week has been very full and very interesting.  So I apologize in advance, but I am sure this will be a long and wordy post because there is a lot of explaining to do.

First off this week was consumed with firefighting stuff and sick kids.  And not just a little bit sick, but holy cow how did I miss that kind of sick.  To make a long sick story short we ended up with Colton with Pnemonia in his left lower lung and Mason had a bad case of the croop, or croup, however you prefer to spell it.  It got so bad that the usual 1 dose of steroids didn't work and he was coughing through one of teh strongest cough syrups promethezine with codeine.  Now for those of you who are not familar with cough syrup that is one of the strongest, it is so strong that it is the only one that works when I get my yearly asthma cough.  Anyways it didn't work, so teh next morning with little to no sleep I dragged him back to the doc with Colton who also had a cough, but it was dry and didn't seem to bother him much.  The doc took one listen to the crackles in his chest and diagnosed him and sent us on our way with steroids and strong anti-biotics.  Now this would deffinately freak out some parents, but I am very calm and know that both of these illnesses will go away with no lasting damage. 

So on the same day Bowen had a football game.  Now this wasn't any football game, in his region his Mt. Crest team and 2 different Sky View teams were all tied for 2nd place.  Well there was only room for 1st and 2nd place to advance to the playoffs.  So to solve this delema they decided to have a mini-playoff to decide 2nd place.  The deal was we started playing at 7:00 and we played 1 of the Sky View teams.  In order to get 2nd place we had to beat both Sky View teams that night.  We played the 1st half verses Sky View (black) and teh 2nd half against Sky View (blue).  I wasn't sure this was teh best solution, how fair is it that we play 2 games back to back adn those teams only have to play 1?  Anyways.......

So we are playing the first game and it is going good.  It is after 7:00 and it was COLD that night.  Scott and I were watching while my wonderful mother watched the other kids because of the COLD.  Did I mention it was COLD that night?  Ok, so with 7:50 left in the game we just scored a touch down and were ahead 6-0 when BOOM the lights went out and it was dark.  Now there wasn't really a boom, but when those large gas lights turn off there is a sound, adn then it was followed by a bunch of 11 year old boys saying things like "cool" "let's play in the dark" "who turned off the lights".......It was really really dark.  So we just hung around for a few minutes and then the coaches took the boys into the school which had emergency lights on and kept the boys warm.  The parents sat out in teh COLD while waiting for the lights to come back on or for a decision to be made.  About 15 minutes later Scott took off to check on Grandma and Grandpa Elder and get the kids from my mom since she had a "brown out" and couldn't watch TV and we all know that is teh best way to babysit right?  So I stayed there in teh COLD and finally about 30 minutes later the coaches came to us and said here are our options:  Wait for the lights to come back on and finish the games, Play tomorrow night, or go to Sky View and finish tonight.  It is already late and COLD but Sky View had power and they offered to open the field for us.  The referees were from out of town and wanted to play that night so they didn't have to come back the next day.  The boys were all worked up and winning and they wanted to play, so we all loaded up at 8:30 and headed north to Sky View.  Well we got there and guess what?  It was just as cold in Smithfield as in Hyrum.  So the game started at about 9:00 and we ended up winning.  So that meant time to play game 2.  We played that game, it was anti-climatic but we ended up loosing.  Now here is where I just roll my eyes.  WE PLAYED PEE WEE FOOTBALL UNTIL 10:30 on a Wednesday night.  A school night.  Seriously.  Does anyone else see anything wrong with this instead of me?  Oh well. 

We went home and the power was still out and Scott had ALL the kids in our room incase it got cold and they were all afraid to sleep in their rooms with no power.  HUH?  We sleep in teh dark anyway.  Oh Well, so then I am in bed and it isn't cold, but it is too warm because the ceiling fan doesn't work and I guess it isn't so warm as it was stale air.  But my next problem was my buttocks were FROZEN from hours in the freezing cold sitting on aluminum bleachers.  Does anyone know how cold aluminum bleachers are?  So no sleep that night.  Also my husband who wants to know when teh power comes on turned on most of the lights in the house, so at 12 midnight when the power came on the entire house lit up. 

Now my next frustration.  You all know by now that Scott is working for the Ogden City Fire Department.  Well there are uniform requirements for working there.  No big deal right?  Well they gave us a list of "requirements" and $200 cash to purchase it all.  I guess I was nieve enough to think that amount would come close to cover what he needed, I was even prepared to pitch in $100 because I knew he was tall and would probably have to pay a little extra for his stuff.  Boy was I wrong!!!!  We spent a little over $600 just for the required items, and we left out a few that we weren't sure he absolutely needed because of the $$.  I feel they could have prepared us better for that.  We did not buy 1 piece of clothing, except for his exercise shorts, that did not have to be special ordered in and then altered on top of that.  We had to order shirts 2 sizes larger for the shoulder width and have them take them in the arms and torso so he doesn't look like his shirt is swallowing him.  They wear these jumpsuits to bed so they can get up and go quickly, can any of you imagine Scott in a jumpsuit?  NO!!!  We had to get 2 sizes larger to fit him through the torso and not make him sing soprano (if you knwo what I mean) but it literally drowns him.  The poor seamstress has a lot of work for just Scott's clothes.  He is kind of upset that we can't order his workout shorts in a larger size or in a tall length becaue they are only mid-thigh when he stands up, and can you imagine how short they are when he bends down?  Well he will have to wear some kind of biker shorts underneath so he isn't being indecent when they work out, which it is required to workout 1 hour for every 24 hours you are on shift, so I am sure he will stay in shape.

So there are my frustrations.  Nothing life altering, and I am not upset.  Life is going well.  Scott has the job he wanted, the only thing more he could have asked for was it to be in Logan.  And on that note, he had his written exam for Logan City Fire Department today. He said he felt really confident that he aced it.  Now we just wait for a call for an interview.  They gave the guys today the "don't call us, we'll call you" speech, so now we wait.  He is happy and Ogden and is not in a hurry to leave a job he hasn't started, but he would jump on a Logan job if he had an opportunity then all would be perfect.

Thanks for listening or reading as it were.

Hunting Widow........Kind Of

So in Washington Scott took up hunting.  It wasn't very hard there, get in your mini-van, yup mini-van he had no truck at the time, and drive up the road a mile or two, then get out, BANG BANG, grab the deer and put it back in your mini-van, yes I said inside, good thing it was my old mini-van, and drive it home and take care of it in the shop.

Fastforward to Utah, not many deer, not many elk.  The hunting requires you to drive miles and miles up the canyons, park and hike and hike and hike to find "the perfect spot" only to find that it is the perfect spot for other hopeful hunters also.  He spent hours, lierally, combing over maps and making countless phone calls he was able to feel confident he wouldn't be on private ground or hunting for "spike only" with his "any bull" tag.  It is all so confusing in Utah.  Seriously in Washington we had to drive less than a mile to hit public land.  You just hunted for any buck you found, it didn't matter if it was a spike or a bull, and if you came upon private ground you could just ask teh farmer and 9 times out of 10 the answer was sure go ahead.  Also because of the logging industry there were ample nicely groomed roads that even a mini-van could driver and never get stuck.

So on Friday night, after Scott smoked his fire fighter physical test, and after the life changing phone call from Ogden City Fire Department, he still wanted to go hunting for the elusive Utah Elk.  So since we don't camp he picked a spot to park his truck and was gonig to stay the night in his truck since he had to start hiking about 4:30 AM to get to his "sweet spot" before first light to pick off those elk as they make their way to the safety of Hardware Ranch.  Amazingly enough you are allowed to hunt those animals as they make their way to safety.  So he had to move a few times, he wasn't seeing any elk, so he hiked and hiked and crossed the stream a few times, which is bigger than a stream but smaller than a river and shockingly cold.  At about noon he returend home to me, wet, cold and tired because being 6'6" he doesn't sleep well sitting up in his truck cab. 

So after a nap he packed up Colton and Bowen this time, to offer them up as sacrifice to the occasional mountain lions they came across, Just Kidding, to let them in on the Utah hunting experience.  After a few hours of hiking up and down mountains and across rivers that were too deep for the boys they came home.  They were soaking wet to their wastes, freezing feet and Colton had what he called "Eskimo Disease"  all I could get out of him was that it affected his " boy" area, I laughed and laughed about that.  They all got home and ate a lot of hot potato soup and went promptly to sleep. 

Colton woke up this morning saying his back and legs hurt and Scott wanted to take them back up tonight but he has no takers to accompany him and you can bet I am NOT going.  You hear that right I AM NOT GOING.  I know you are all thinking I am a horriable non-supportive wife, but to be honest we aren't starving, I don't enjoy cooking venison, and I am perfectly happy spending some of our hard earned money on store bought meats.

SCOTT IS A FIREFIGHTER

We all know Scottie has always been a firefighter at heart, but today he not only smoked the logan city CPAT test BUT he got a job offer from Ogden Fire Department.  I do not know the particulars, just that he is now official and getting paid.

I LOVE YOU SCOTT!!!!

Something New

I realize my devoted readers, all 5 of you, are getting tired of my daily life saga, and to be honest I am also.  So today I am going to try to write about something relevant to the current events of today.  Should it be political?  I am not sure, explaining the reasons why I am not at all pleased with our current president doesn't sound too fun.  Should it be religious?  Maybe not, that is also a sore spot right now.  I know, I can talk about my kids' teachers at school.

As those of you who live in Utah know this week is UEA, which means we had parent-teacher conferences and now the teachers get to play for 3 days while the parents have to find alternative ways of keeping kids entertained.  This has been especially hard this year cause it's cold outside, it snowed on Wednesday and I still have to work.  It also means it was mid-term and I had parent teacher conferences.  I will break each one down for you to explain my frustrations.

First off I didn't make it to Bowen's, and I know you are all screaming "Bad Mom, Bad Mom" at your computer, but I know what his grades are and it was scheduled at the same time as the 2 other kids.  I am giong to meet with his teachers at a later date, and they all sent emails telling me what an awesome kid Bowen is, so I feel okay missing his.

The major frustration comes from Colton.  He is my sweetest child.  He is my most sensitive.  He is quiet and he will cry silent tears if you hurt his feelings or step on his toe.  So I have got nothing but great feedback from any of his teachers.  I went to meet with his teacher and hoestly she is a little odd.  I can't remember who she reminds me of but she is tall, slender has wild red hair, well make that orange hair, and it is frizzy and all over and she wears wears bright hooker red lipstick.  We sit down and she tells me Colton is failing 3rd grade.  Did you all hear me?  My special Colton is FAILING 3rd grade.  Now to be honest I didn't think that was possible.  Anyway the main problem is he is not turning in his homework.  We do it, he just doesn't turn it in.  Now that problem can be easily fixed.  Here are the rest.  His handwriting is not neat enough.  What?  My mouth just about fell open.  Colton has a few things working against the handwriting thing.  First he is left handed.  I don't know many left handers that have beautiful handwriting, and if you are reading this blog and have great hand writing I am sorry to offend.  He has had trouble with his eyesight.  We have changed his prescription so many times I can't keep up and neither can the optomotrists.  He writes, and you can read it.  In my opinion it looks like a 9 year old boy writing.......so anyway she says it isn't neat enough, so an F there.  He is slightly below the reading standard according to the DIBLES test.  Yes I know this, he has always been slightly below since he started school at 3.  Yes 3.  He started preschool early because of the eyesight and hearing issues.  He has always been slightly below but he is making progress because he is always below in his grade level.  Big F in reading.  Math is ok, it's a 2 and his teacher was lecturing on how he needs to work at math and I say  Yeah Colton 2's rock.  So I sat there and explained to her that Colton has been deaf 2 times since birth.  He has crazy eyes that never stay the same, he is sensitive and can't you see you are hurting his feelings?  Oh well as we left the room the silent tears came while he was trying to be strong.

Rainee, what to say about Rainee.  Well right now she is puking because she has the flu and I am sure she can't wait to share it with all of us.  In direct contrast to last year where we had nothing but problems it seems she is not an angel.  She is getting all 4's except a 3 in reading.  Her teacher sees this as a problem and wants her to work harder.  Of course all teachers want that and I am sitting by her going "way to go a 3 in reading rocks" while I get sketchy looks from her teacher.  He only problems is she cant' sit still.  She never has been able to BUT she is still listening and gets great grades.

So then we get a call from Mason's preschool.  Oh crap I didn't know they had parent-teacher conferences in preschool.  Well they do that this wasn't a good one.  My precious 3 year old is not the nicest kid at recess I guess.  He is great in class and does well with structure, but when at free time with a group of kids he is mean.  He pushes, scratches and has even bit to get things from other kids.  Yes I said it, my kid is a bully.  We are not sure why, maybe it is because he has no siblings his age to play with?  Who knows.  So now we are starting a sticker chart at school for being good.  I will keep you updated on teh progress.