Stay at home mom

Being a stay at home mom is one of the most difficult jobs there is. You don't get to call in sick. You don't get any days off. It is a 24/7 job. The list of responsibilities are endless. The rewards are endless as well. One of the things that I am most grateful for is that my husband has a great job that allows me to stay at home with my kids. I can't imagine letting someone else take care of my sick kids.
Many moms really want to stay at home, but can't. Many moms can, but don't want to. There isn't any place I would rather be than here with my kids and I am so glad that I can.

Happy Birthday Aaron

I fully intented to write a post for my husband, but my children need a lot of attention right now. His sister wrote a great tribute to him so I am just going to link to that. If you have a moment, you can read it.

Amoxicillin

Day 18
As the doctor told me last night that Cassidy had strep, a small part of me wanted to cry, knowing that this was one more infectious disease that will be going through our family. A larger part of me was glad because it also provided some hope. Hope for my poor little girl that has been suffering so much. There is now something I can do to relieve the pain instead of just saying "I know you are sick, but I can't make it go away." When Whitney woke up this morning with no voice and a sore throat - waving her hands around in her own form of sign language that only she can understand. I can have hope that maybe her sickness will be shorter lived because we can treat her sooner. Well, I guess that depends on which one of our infectious diseases she has - croup or strep.
Amoxicillin (Penicillin) is one of the greatest discoveries in modern medicine. To just think of the countless number of people that have died from diseases that we can now simply drive up to a pharmacy and pay $4 to cure. We are so blessed to have something as simple as this, something that we often take for granted.

Happy Lindsey

Lindsey has been so happy the past several days. She is the bright spot in my days lately. It doesn't matter what is going on around her - crying, whining etc. She is happy, cheerful, full of smiles, eager to help me, entertains herself and Grant. Her imagination is in full bloom right now. It just makes me smile to see her and the things she says and comes up with. I would be a lot more grumpy right now if it weren't for her contagious smile and laugh.

Gratitude

I've decided that I am not being very positive lately. I'm way to focused on the negative things happening around me that I am becoming a big whiner head. I started my gratitude list a couple of days ago on my sidebar, but it is too hard to write just one sentence, so I am transposing it into posts. I am going to try and add a new post everyday for the rest of the month.

11/10 - Laura - I am copying her idea on the gratitude posts. I have enjoyed each day reading the things she is grateful for. It has helped me see how negative I've been and how much happier it makes you when you think of all the blessings that we have.

11/10 - My washer and dryer. I really hate doing laundry, but I couldn't live without my washer and dryer. I couldn't imagine doing 10 loads of laundry a week by hand. I think we would be wearing dirty clothes a lot.

11/11 - My husband and my father. These are two of the greatest men in my life. They both share the same birthday - Happy Birthday!

Cassidy #5

I can't believe my baby is already 5 years old. Time has really flown by. I would love to report that she had a wonderful day and that everything went perfectly, but alas, it was not so.

The night before her birthday I was just finishing frosting the last cupcake for her party when Cassidy wakes up crying. Aaron checks on her, 104 fever. We had to cancel her VIP day at preschool. Cancel her birthday party. Cancel going out to dinner as a family. It was a pretty miserable day for her. I even made her go to the doctor. I was worried she might have the flu and wanted to get Tamaflu to shorten the life of it- but it wasn't the flu. Luckily I had finished sewing her PJ's for her present so she had something to enjoy while she was in bed all day.

I finally had her birthday party yesterday. We've all been sick for the past couple of weeks, so it took a while to find a day when we weren't sick. I did something to my back before her party so I could barely walk. I was in so much pain I just bluffed my way through the party. (Thank goodness my Brother in law is a Physical Therapist and fixed it) I only forgot a few minor things like, having the kids sing Happy Birthday, serving the ice cream with the birthday donuts, taking pictures. I think the kids had fun despite my low energy. We made some fairy wings that they could wear. We painted fingernails with a touch of glitter. We played a cakewalk type game. They danced around like fairies with their new wings. Hopefully Cassidy had a little more fun on her birthday party day than she did on her actually birthday.

Do you notice anything different about Cassidy in these last two photos? On the way home from my brother's wedding last week, Cassidy broke her glasses. We replaced the frames so that we could keep the lenses. Aaron picked up the glasses on his way home from work Thursday night. Friday morning at preschool Cassidy breaks her brand new pair of glasses. It was all I could do to not be furious at her. There goes $60. I think we are going to try a different frame this time.

Finally I would just like to apologize to all the parents of the kids that came to our party yesterday, to all the people at church and to my family. Cassidy is sick again. We had to leave church early because she came down with a fever again. She seemed to be better after a nap so we went to my mom's for dinner to celebrate my dad and Aaron's birthday. She threw up all over my mom's floor. Luckily she made it to the tile and not on the carpet. I didn't have any medicine with me at my moms and her fever had come back. I was trying to get her is swallow half of a regular ibuprofen. She didn't like that. I crushed it up and put it into a spoon full of frosting, but she gagged and threw it all up. I would just like to say to Mary Poppins that a spoon full of sugar does not help the medicine go down. And sorry to everyone that we may have infected with our nasty bug.

My baby brother is married.

My brother Jeremy is 3 years younger than I am. My mom started working when he started school, so we would spend a lot of time together when we were off track and during the summers. One of our favorite game to play was boat. We would pretend the couch was the boat and the carpet was the water. (It is so funny to see my kids come up with the same game). There weren't a lot of girls on the street we grew up on, so I would play cops and robbers with Jeremy and all the boys on the street. Our yard was also nicely set up to be the baseball field. There were many evenings spent in our front yard. My dad always made sure that his girls didn't throw like girls. I also remember playing a game when it was starting to get dark outside. It was sort of a hide and seek game, but it had a little chant that had something to do with bears coming out. That is all I remember about it, but I remember playing it a lot.

Jeremy has always been such a great brother, we never really used to fight that much. I have my dad's memory - so maybe we did and I just don't remember it. Maybe that is a good thing, because when I look back at my childhood and memories with Jeremy I can only think of happy times. I remember sitting at numerous little league baseball and Jr. Jazz games. Watching him, and of course all the cute boys around. He returned the favor by having to come to all my choir concerts in Jr. High and High School. I do feel bad for making him always sit in the very back of our 4-runner. I have become so strict about seat belts now that I feel horrible that we let him sit back there. Of course, seat belts weren't stressed like they are now, but still, I am so grateful he was never injured by being back there.

Jeremy never reads my blog, so it is easier to say things, because he will probably never read this. I'm very proud of him. Seeing him in the temple getting married was a great moment. You know that he has made the right choices and done the right things to be at that place at that time. I am so happy that he was able to find someone to share his life with.

I just have to write down the funniest moment at their wedding luncheon. We were going around introducing ourselves. We get to my aunt Karla. I don't know how old she is now, but at least in her 70's. She gets all teary eyed and says "Jeremy, I just want you to know that your grandma and grandpa would be so proud . . . (looks at my dad and says, was he born yet? My dad nods yes) . . . would be so proud of you right now." Maybe you had to be there or know my aunt, but it was all I could do to restrain myself from busting out laughing. She was trying to pretend like she knew my brother, when in fact she didn't even know if he was alive when my grandparents were alive. Aaron agrees with me, it was funny.

Jeremy and Alicia are going to have a great life together. I am very excited to get to know the girl who finally won my brother's heart. I love you Jeremy.

Halloween

Here we have Hannah Montana, Belle, Pocohontas and Giraffe Man. Hope everyone had a great Halloween.

I couldn't resist taking a picture our giraffe in front of the zoo sign.

One of those nights . . .

Last night the Universe seemed to be against us. As I was going to bed at 12:30am last night Aaron said - "We are going to regret going to bed this late." That was an understatement.

• Cassidy comes in our room at 1:00am with a bad dream - I send her back to bed.
• 1:30am I wake up suddenly thinking I needed to go check my kids, I talk myself out of it for a while then finally just get up and check on them so I can go back to sleep. I must of been having a bad dream. They were fine.
• Somewhere in the 2:00 area Whitney comes upstairs and says her stomach hurts, tries to throw up, but can't and I get her back in bed with a bowl.
• Shortly after that Grant wakes up. I went in there a couple of times, but he eventually goes back to sleep.
• 3 or 4:00 Whitney comes back upstairs and starts throwing up. I hold her hair for a few minutes then Aaron takes over - he is in charge of throw up in the middle of the night. He gets her back in bed.
• 6:00 - Grant wakes up. There is no way I am getting up at this point, so we give he a cup of milk in his crib and go back to bed. Terrible I know but desperate times . . .
• He cries off and on for the next hour. I am too tired to get him out of bed and have him up for the morning. He eventually falls back to sleep.
• 7:00 Whitney's alarm goes off and she runs upstairs and throws up again. She then stays on the couch in our room watching TV.
• At some point the rest of them came up to and then we begin our day.

If you were to ask me this morning who my favorite child was - I would say Lindsey. What a good little girl to sleep all night long and not disturb her parents once. Bless her. So, now I have to rearrange my plans and stay home all day with a sick child. Good thing I don't have anything going on this week - oh wait - I have a crazy, busy week. I have Cassidy's birthday on Wednesday for which I have to create a VIP poster for her preschool, I have to figure out what to do for her birthday party - it is a Tinkerbell theme - any ideas? The new movie is coming out tomorrow, so that is going to be a large part of it. I just don't know how long the kids will want to watch a movie. I am sewing her some PJ's for her present. I have them cut out, but haven't started to sew yet. I still need to figure out what else to get her. We have Halloween on Friday. My brother is getting married on Saturday. I have preschool at my house on Monday - so I need to figure out what I am doing for that. I was supposed to go into Whitney's class this week and talk for 15 minutes about our family history. Luckily my mother-in-law is taking over that for me and going to her class (Thanks Jean!)

Last week was a horrible week. I think my stress level is at an all time high right now. Last Sunday morning started off with a phone call from my mom at 7:30am. I knew immediately something was wrong for my mom to be calling me so early. My mom took my dad to the American Fork ER the night before with chest pain. They took him from there by ambulance to the new hospital in Murray. There were no signs of damage at that point, but decided to do an angiogram on Monday to make sure. They found four blockages in his heart/arteries. Thank goodness for modern medicine that they were able to repair them right then. He spent last week recovering and is now back to work. Tuesday my friend Tamsen went to the hospital. I feel bad that I was already emotionally drained from being at the hospital for the past few days with my dad, so I wasn't much of a friend - I'm sorry I wasn't more helpful to you Tams - I'm glad that you are feeling a little better. I won't get into the rest of my week. Let's just say that on Wednesday my sister says to me - you aren't looking so good, maybe you need to start taking iron or something. That same day my friend stops me in the parking lot at Smith's and I guess I didn't convince her I was fine because she emailed me later wanting to know what was wrong. I must look really bad.

Anyway - I didn't mean to get into all this - my point was just going to be that I had a long night. I feel bad complaining because there are so many people with a lot of problems right now. Mine are very small in comparison. I will gladly keep my own trails for as much as others are suffering right now.

Will cast spells for Chocolate

We went last week to Gardner Village with our cousins. If you have never been during Halloween time you need to go. They have animated witches all over. The kids love it. They also have added a petting zoo and pony rides since I was there last.Here are a few (ok, it is more than a few) photos of the kids and their cousins enjoying the village and the witches.