On a happier note...

On Saturday morning, M&M had a gymnastics competition that her gymnastics class performed in. M&M has LOVED taking gymnastics and she's pretty good at it. She also has really enjoyed having a couple of her friends in the same class. The competition is organized by a couple of the dance teachers in the area and there were only a couple of gymnastics groups. There were judges that scored them, but the scores weren't really important. Everybody went home with a participation trophy.

On the way to the gymnastics competition, Blondie asked from the back of the car, "What's this hair doing on my legs?" I looked back and she was inspecting her legs and was noticing for the first time that they had hair on them. Then a minute later I noticed her inspecting her arms as well...

My jaw feels 110% better than it did last week. The stitches in my mouth are all gone and my gums look like they have healed nicely. I am still on antibiotics and my jaw is still slightly swollen where the bone was removed. I think that that is normal - but I will definitely ask at my appointment tomorrow. Hopefully the worst is over and it will be clear sailing after this.

We got the part to our dishwasher on Friday (even though I didn't check the mail until Saturday). DH installed the new part and now we can use it again!

I got a call on Thursday from the furniture company and they have finally received our sectional. The earliest they could deliver it is tomorrow (Tuesday), but I have a dentist appointment tomorrow and I have something else scheduled for Wednesday so they will deliver it on Thursday. Hopefully they got the order right and that there won't be any further problems...

I'm still getting the run-around trying to get info on MD testing. I finally talked to the genetics counselor from Texas on Thursday and she gave me the phone number that I already have from the University of Utah. She was very nice to talk to though and was able to answer some of my questions that I had. I called the U on Thursday and Friday and I still have not been able to talk to the person that I am supposed to talk with there. I will be trying again today.

When it rains, it POURS!!

Well, for those of you who have been sitting back thinking that I need a few more trials in my life because it has just been too easy & uneventful over the last few weeks, you got your wish on Friday. The day started out pretty good. I did some clothes shopping in the morning and then came home in time for Luke to get off the kindergarten bus. We were out front playing because it was a very warm day and I thought, why don't I get the water turned on outside and run through the sprinkler zones to see what we need to do to get them ready to start watering the lawn.

To let you know, the water shut-off valve for the outdoor water is about 6-7 feet underground in our front yard. It is accessed by a hole in the ground and we have a huge "key" that is about 8 feet long that you lower down the hole in the yard and twist it until it feels like it is on the valve correctly and then you turn it about a half turn to turn the water on or off. The key is just a large iron bar that has a C-shape on one end to fit over the valve and comes to a "T" at the other end which makes a handle.

It took me about 2 tries to get the water turned on and then I went to the sprinkler controller in the garage to cycle through the 6 zones. The first 2 zones are in the front and they both seemed to work alright. The water pressure didn't seem to be as strong as it should be but I didn't think too much of it. Sometimes it takes a while for the sprinklers to get water all through the lines and work as they should. The next 2 zones are in the backyard and when I switched to those zones, neither of them worked. I wasn't too concerned again because we had some problems with those valves last year. The thought also crossed my mind that maybe the water pressure was too low to turn those on since they operate a little differently than the front ones. The next 2 zones are on the side of the house and those didn't work either. So my next thought was that there was something wrong with the electrical connection that goes to those 4 valves. The valves for the back and side are located together in the backyard (the front ones are in a separate sprinkler box).

Well, I ran through the front ones again and then to the back and while it was on one of the back sections I went out back to see if I could hear the water trying to get to the sprinklers. While I was looking over the backyard, there was a weed sticking up that really seemed odd to me and I decided to walk out there to pull the weed. On my way back to the house I happened to look down into the window well that goes to the kids' play room in the basement and to my dismay, the well was full with about a foot of water.

I quickly ran to the garage to shut off the sprinklers and then I ran to the front yard to try and turn the water off. Then I quickly got the kids in the house and ran upstairs to grab some towels and then I ran down to the play room to see what was happening down there. There was water leaking in from the window down the wall to the carpet. I hurried to move some toys away from the window and I stuffed some towels on the windowsill and tried to mop up some of the water. I then ran upstairs and grabbed a bucket and ran back outside to the window well. I lifted off the grate on top of the well and climbed down the ladder to get to the water at the bottom. I got a bucketful of water and lifted it up to the top to dump. I tried to get Luke to carry the bucket but it was a little too heavy for him to move very far. Luckily my neighbor, Lois, happened to walk in her backyard as this was happening and noticed me lifting out buckets of water from my window well. She came over to see if I needed help. She went to her house and grabbed a couple of more buckets and then I would fill the buckets and hand them to her to dump out on the lawn. Luke was able to lift some of the smaller buckets and sometimes I wouldn't fill them as full so that he could lift them. Blondie & Kitty also wanted to help and got some of their small toy buckets and were filling them up with water to dump in the yard. I thought that we were making good progress because the water was definitely not as high on the window or on my legs.

(You can get an idea of how high the water was in the window well by looking at this picture. On the right side of the window you can see some dirt marks. The highest mark is about how high the water was when I noticed the problem.)

My neighbor had to run back to her house to check on a pie she had in the oven and while she was gone, the water was definitely higher than when she had left. I kept listening to see if I heard any water running and neither of us could hear anything. When she came back after checking on her pie though it was clear that the water was still coming into the window well. So I ran out front and tried once again to turn off the water. This time I knelt down on the ground so I could hear and feel better what I was doing and I clearly heard the water shut off. I then ran out back again and we started hauling more buckets. This time it didn't take long to realize that I had finally stopped the water and we quickly emptied the window well. While I was finishing up outside, Lois went downstairs with my kitchen trash can and wrung the towels into the trash can and managed to mop up some more of the water. She then came back upstairs and stayed outside with the kids while I went down with our shop-vac and started vacuuming water out of the carpet.

I then called DH at the vault to let him know what was going on. Then I brought the kids inside and let them watch some cartoons while I worked down in the basement. When M&M got home I had her help with some of the vacuuming while Luke helped me clear most of the toys out of the play room. We have a carpet cleaning vacuum which I also used to suck some of the water out of the carpet. M&M & I took turns with the two vacuums, in-between emptying water out of them.

DH surprised me by actually coming home at 3:00 (the earliest he has been home in a LONG time). He surveyed the extent of the damage in the play room and then went outside to see if he could find the problem in the sprinkler system since I had things pretty much under control in the house. My guess was that since the leak hadn't stop when I turned off the sprinklers with the water still turned on, that the leak was in the main intake line to the backyard sprinkler box. It turns out that I guessed right. When DH got down to the sprinkler pipes right next to the window well, there was about a two-foot long split down the pipe that originated at an elbow joint that then feeds into the sprinkler box. We were able to get some parts to fix it that night and DH installed the pieces the next day. We turned the water back on once the glue was dry and it appears that we have fixed the problem.

M&M & I managed to vacuum out all the water we could from the carpet and then we just set some fans on the carpet and opened the window to get as much air circulation through there as possible. Right now the carpet is mostly dry and we will have to keep an eye on it to see if there is any permanent damage. If there isn't then we will come out of this experience relatively unscathed, but having learned a lot.

Lessons I Learned:
- Never turn on the water at the start of the season unless your husband (or other able-bodied adult) is around.
- Learn to use the wet part your wet/dry vac before there is an emergency - it doesn't help to have to run around looking for the instruction manual when you need to be using it NOW.
- Having a wet/dry vac that can hold a lot is not necessarily a good thing. 10 gallons of water weigh a LOT. I luckily caught it before it was full and managed to carry the vac upstairs to dump the water out in the sink.
- Keep fans around even if you think you will never need them. We have talked many times about getting rid of some of our fans since we moved from our apartment to a house with central air. This is not the first occasion that we have needed them...
- We now know that the main line for the water sprinklers runs all the way around 3 sides of our house. I'm not sure if I like how the previous owner designed the sprinkler system...
- If your husband has been working late hours and you want him home sooner, call him and tell him there has been a little problem at the house...

Things I Am Grateful For:
- An awesome neighbor who helped me out.
- A husband who can fix things (and loves to figure out how things work).
- A weed in the backyard that really stuck out and made me want to pull it.
- My kids who wanted to help, even if they couldn't do too much.
- The water pipe broke near the window to the toy room and not the window next door which has all of our computers & equipment in it.
- Most of the toys in the play room are kept in plastic storage containers so there wasn't any damage to anything in the room (other than possibly the carpet).

Kindergarten Field Trip

Luke's kindergarten class went on a field trip to the zoo this morning. It was pretty crazy because it was the morning & afternoon classes that his teacher teaches, plus one other kindergarten class from the school. I drove and met the school bus at the zoo so I could take Blondie & Kitty with me. We had a girl from Luke's class, Cortni, that was assigned to me to chaperone so it wasn't too bad. (The worst part of the trip was that every time I stopped the stroller for 2 seconds, Kitty would climb out and want to walk around. She kept trying to wander off and do her own thing. Maybe next time I'll take the child wrist strap with me...)
It was a VERY nice day, close to 70 degrees. The animals were more active than I have seen a lot of them. When we first got to the zoo, a tiger and a wolf were both walking pretty quickly around their enclosures and coming up to the fence. When we got down to the other side of the tiger enclosure some of the zoo staff were doing a demonstration with the tiger on how they train him and reward him (with food) when he follows their commands. At one point he stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on the fence in front of him. I couldn't believe how BIG he was. (Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it because I was trying to keep the kids together.) Right next to the tiger demonstration there was a leopard that was pacing back and forth right in front of the viewing windows, just staring at the people looking at him.

A lot of the animals were eating: the giraffes, bears, rhinos, elephants and some of the monkeys. There is a baby orangutan at the zoo that was having all sorts of fun in his enclosure - climbing things and swinging around. Kitty liked it when he lost his grip and fell a short distance to the ground. She kept saying, "Uh-oh, he fall down." Right after the orangutans there was a large gorilla who was walking back and forth in his cage. Kitty thought that he was pretty scary looking and wanted me to hold her.

We also saw a peacock showing off his tail. It was beautiful - almost fake looking! When we got close to him we noticed that he was actually shaking his tail back and forth slightly and it was making a rattling sound almost like the sound a rattlesnake makes with it's tail. We think he may have been trying to scare off some turkeys that were near him.

All in all the trip was nice but seemed pretty short. The buses ended up leaving the school a little later than they wanted to so we didn't get to the zoo as early as we would have liked. By the time we walked around a little and then ate lunch it was just about time to go. Since I was going to take Luke home with me we dropped Cortni off with the bus group and then the kids wanted to go play at the playground for a few minutes. So we walked over to the playground and played for a few minutes but I think the kids were getting a little hot and tired (and the playground was pretty crowded with bigger kids) so there were no complaints when I said it was time to go home.

Luke loses another tooth

Luke's second tooth on the bottom started getting pretty loose this weekend and by Sunday evening we could tell that it was going to come out very soon. When he got home from school on Monday I was actually surprised that it didn't fall out while he was at school. Luke asked me if he could eat an apple, so I gave him one and as you can imagine that hurt to eat with his loose tooth (he was hoping it would help the tooth come out). Not too long after that though he was trying to twist it and it finally came out. He looks pretty funny now!

Updates

Well, things have taken a turn for the worse with my jaw. On Sunday evening it was hurting a little more than it had been, but I didn't think too much of it. On Monday morning I felt okay but then around afternoon time it started hurting to the point where it hurt to talk or eat very much. Of course this happened after office business hours so I figured I would just hold off until the morning and call first thing to see if I could get in today. Last night by the time I went to bed my cheek was all swollen again like it had been the day after the surgery and it was slightly warm to the touch. I didn't really have any fever but I would get cold chills and then I would be sweating a few minutes later. I tried some warm moist compresses but while they made my jaw feel better, they didn't do much for the swelling. So then I tried some ice packs and they seemed to help some. I didn't sleep too well because of the pain & discomfort and I woke up at around 6 a.m. and couldn't really get back to sleep after that. I thought that the endodontist's office opened at 7 a.m. so as soon as it hit 7:00 I went and called and of course I got their answering service. I asked the person what time the office opened and he said not until 8:00. So, I laid down on the couch for a little while and tried to help get the kids ready for school. DH in the meantime was deciding whether or not to go to work (the vault is still not stable with the new upgrades).

So 8:00 rolls around and I called the office only to get the answering service once again. The lady said that the office should start answering their phones any minute now so wait about 3 minutes and then try again. So I waited about 5 minutes and then called and was able to get an appointment for 11:20 this morning. I sent DH off to work and said that I was okay to drive myself and I would try and find someone to watch the kids for me. One of the problems with an 11:20 appt is that Luke gets home from kindergarten at about 11:30 so I would have to find someone who could either come to the house or who lives close enough that they could meet Luke at the bus stop. A couple of my Beehives are off-track from school right now so I tried them first and neither of them could do it because they had to watch their own siblings. A couple of other people I tried weren't home and then finally I was able to get a hold of one of my visiting teachers who lives just around the corner. (I hate to bug her though because they have their home up for sale so they have to be ready to show it whenever someone calls.)

When I arrived at my appointment everyone that sees me comments that it looks like I've come to the right office and it's a good thing I called in. When the dentist gets around to seeing me he looks at my mouth and says that I've got a pretty good infection going on. So they numb me up, and then flush out as much of the infection as they can with hydrogen peroxide and then he put some antibiotic ointment on it. They gave me a prescription for a pretty strong antibiotic and the nurse told me that they got quite a lot of fluid out of my gums. She stuck some cotton balls in my cheek and told me to keep them in until I get home (making me look even more swollen). The dentist said that if the infection isn't feeling better by Thursday to give them a call and come back in. In the meantime I have an appointment set up for a week from today to check on it again.

On my way home I stopped at the Wal-Mart prescription drive-thru to get my prescription filled and the first thing the lady at the window said to me was, "Been to the dentist, huh?" It was going to take about 15 minutes to fill so I ran to the store to grab a couple of things and then stopped back to pick up the prescription on my way home.

The unfortunate thing is that I'm supposed to go to the zoo for a field trip with Luke's class tomorrow. I'll have to see how I'm feeling (and looking) in the morning and then I'll decide if I will go or not. I was just going to meet them at the zoo and take the two little ones with me.

On another note, I got a call from the genetics lab in Texas on Monday while I was out (of course). The lady left a message and said that she wanted to call and give me some contact info as to where I can get some genetic counseling and then get tested. She said that she would be there for the next hour and then was leaving for the rest of the day. I apparently got home just a few minutes after this call but when I called back there was a message that said that no one would be answering phones from 11-2 for a staff meeting... So I left a message and haven't heard anything today (and I wasn't quite up to calling myself). I can't quite figure out why she would rather call me than just respond to my email. If she had just emailed me back with the info, I would have it already...

On Monday afternoon I also got a call from the manager at the furniture store. He said that he had just talked to the manufacturer of the sectional and they assured him that it would be shipped this week and he should have it in his warehouse next week (his guess is either Tuesday or Wednesday). Apparently there was some problem with the fabric color we had chosen but they were able to get it worked out and we should have it next week. He apologized for the inconvenience and said he will give us a $100 gift certificate for the hassle we have been through (which means we'll have to buy something else there). I wasn't in a very talkative mood because of my jaw so I didn't ask too many questions. I figure if DH has some issues he can call them or talk to them when it arrives next week.

Frustration!

I have been trying to decide how personal I want to make some of these blog entries. There are a lot of things on my mind lately and I struggle with whether or not I want to share or just keep things to myself. This is one of those entries that I have been debating on whether or not to share...

In addition to the tooth trouble I have had lately (see previous blog), I have had several other frustrations that I have been dealing with that all seemed to culminate at the end of last week:

- DH has been working long hours this past week since he is now at the vault upgrading their computers and testing the system. On Tuesday & Wednesday he arrived home at about 7:30, to which I was pleasantly surprised. Thursday evening I had a YW training meeting organized by the stake that I was supposed to attend. I had told DH about it and said that if he thought he would be working really late that I could get a babysitter to watch the kids. Well, I didn't hear from him all day so I assumed that things were going well and I would see him around 7 or 7:30 again. When he wasn't home in time for my meeting at 7, I loaded the kids up in the car and left him a note telling him to pick the kids up at the stake center. Our meeting was in the cultural hall of all places (not a very good place to try and keep kids quiet). I sat off to the side with my 4 kids trying to keep them quiet with some coloring pages I had printed out. I told my YW president that I expected my husband to be there any minute. Luke kept asking when Dad was going to get there so they could go home. An hour goes by and still no DH. The kids were terribly restless. The meeting finally ended at 8:30. I was not too happy, to say the least. I took the kids home, got them in their pajamas and off to bed and then DH finally came home after 9:00. If I had known that he was going to be gone that whole time I would have gotten a babysitter to watch the kids. I had even asked a girl the night before if she would be available to babysit if I needed it. I think my husband learned his lesson though because on Friday he actually called me a couple of times from the vault to let me know how things were going and when he expected to be leaving for home...

- We would like to have more kids and I would love to be pregnant right now, but there is some genetic testing that I would like to have done before that happens. My sister has a son who has Muscular Dystrophy and my sister was tested and found to be a carrier for the disease. It is an X-linked recessive gene which means that since my sister is a carrier, I could also be a carrier. We were all surprised when my sister was diagnosed as a carrier because we have no family history of it. We all thought that her son was where the genetic mutation began, but apparently not. With an X-linked disease if the mother is a carrier, there is a 50/50 chance that a son would have the disease and a 50/50 chance that a daughter would be a carrier. (My sister has 4 kids - 2 boys and 2 girls - and she has all four of the possibilities you can get.) There is not a huge chance that I am a carrier since there is no family history of it and I have 3 brothers - all of whom don't have MD - so the mutation either started with my sister or a very slight chance it started with my mom. I have thought about it a lot and I just can't bring myself to have another child yet, knowing that there is even a slight chance that I might be a carrier. I don't know if I could ever forgive myself if I ended up having a son who had MD because I didn't get myself tested. The life expectancy for the type of MD that my nephew has is the early 20s, with a wheelchair usually required by age 12...

The frustrating part is that I have been trying for the last couple of months to find out how to go about being tested for MD. I have talked to an OB/GYN (who didn't even know that it was an X-linked recessive gene) and I have emailed and tried calling various groups that work in genetics. My children's pediatrician gave me a phone number for the genetics lab at the University of Utah and they don't know anything about MD and gave me another phone number to call. Every phone number I have been given, the people at the office don't know anything about MD and pass me on to another number. Last week I called my family doctor and set up an appointment hoping that they could at least draw some blood and send it to the lab that my sister's blood work was done at. Well, I basically paid a $15 co-pay for nothing. The doctor couldn't find any lab order numbers for testing for MD, so he couldn't even order the test. He gave me another number to call at the U of U and once again it was another dead end. One phone number that I was given by the U of U is supposedly for the MDA clinic in Utah and every time I call the number I get a busy signal.

So on Friday after my appointment I tried finding more information on the lab where my sister's blood work was done and I found an email address for them. So I sent off an email explaining my situation and asked if they could give me a lab order code so that my doctor can order the lab and get some blood drawn and sent to their lab. Hopefully I will get a reply in the next day or two. If not, I will try calling the lab (it's located in Texas - my sister lives in New Jersey). I just would really like to get this testing done so that we can then move forward.

I had a friend ask me if I would be okay not having any more kids if I was found to be a carrier and I think I am. We have 4 healthy kids and the risks would be too high for me to want any more. We might look into adopting if it turns out that way.

- We still don't have our sectional that we ordered almost 4 months ago now. Since we wanted a color that was different than their floor model, it had to be a special order and we were told that it would take 60-90 days. It has been MUCH LONGER than that now and we have made multiple phone calls to find out what is going on and we still don't have an answer. DH did finally talk to a manager on Saturday who said he will find out what is going on and let us know today. Well, we'll see...

- So, to top off my wonderful week last week, a critical piece to our dishwasher broke on Saturday. I ordered a replacement part for it, but until it arrives in the next week or two I will be washing dishes by hand... Yuck!!


So, by Saturday all I could do what think about how frustrated I was that we seem to have so many unresolved issues that we are trying to deal with right now. Hopefully by the end of this week some of these issues will be resolved and I will get some answers to my questions. Stay tuned...

Tooth trouble...

WARNING: You may want to just skim over this blog entry if you have a weak stomach...

These last couple of weeks have been quite eventful for me (in a bad way unfortunately). It all started out while my kids were off track and I had a dentist appointment. The past year I have had to undergo a lot of dental work and I was hoping that I was finally out of the woods. Well, it turns out that one of the teeth I had a crown put on last year for some reason or other managed to develop an infection in the root so the diagnosis was that I needed a root canal. I wasn't too happy, but I thought, no big deal. I have had one other root canal done and it really wasn't too bad.

So I went in the next week to have the root canal done. The dentist started by drilling through the crown and was successful with that, so we were off to a good start. Well, the dentist then started on cleaning out the insides of the roots and then he took an x-ray, did some more work, took another x-ray and then came back and said that he was going to have to send me to a specialist. "What? Why?" I tried to say as my mouth was still being held open and I had some files sticking out of my tooth... It turns out that for some reason or other he couldn't get down to the bottom of any of the three roots and he didn't want to end up causing damage trying to do it. He referred me to an endodontist who specializes in these types of procedures. So I called up that office and they scheduled me for a consultation 2 days later.

The strangest part of all of this is that I have not really had any pain or hot/cold sensitivity in that tooth. It has been a little sore now and then when I would chew on that side of my mouth, but I thought all along that it was my implant still healing.

The news from the consultation was worse than I could have imagined. It turns out that the infection in my tooth had gotten into my jaw bone and they would most likely have to cut into the gums to get at the infection in the bone! Yuck!! The procedure is called an apicoectomy. To top it all off the endodontist recommended that I be put to sleep for the whole procedure. In his experience when you have to work with the bone, sometimes there is pain that can't be treated with just local anesthetics. To make matters worse, the tooth with the infection is right next to the implant that I just had put in last May (a baby tooth gone bad that had no adult tooth under it). If the infection in the bone spreads it could affect the implant which would mean I would need the implant removed and a new one put in. So I scheduled an appointment for the surgery for the following week.

As you can imagine, I was quite upset when I came home and had to call my husband at work and tell him all of this news. My teeth have seemed to be nothing but a money pit lately. To complicate matters even more this was on a Friday and the following Tuesday my husband was scheduled to go up to the Granite Mountain Records Vault for 2 weeks to update their scanning software to the newest release he has been working on. This date was picked after many meetings and discussions and plans to try and ensure that things would go smoothly. The date picked for my surgery was the following Friday and my husband (or someone else) would have to come to the appointment to drive me home.

So after talking to my husband at work he made some phone calls to some of the higher ups at work to see what they wanted to do. Even though I protested that I would probably be fine after the surgery and that he could go up to the vault if they ran into problems later on in the day, my husband made the decision that he wanted to be home that whole day to help me and to take care of the kids. So after talking to some managers they made the decision to put off the installation at the vault for another week, for the Tuesday after my surgery instead of the Tuesday before.

I was a little unsure about being put to sleep since I have never had it done to me before. I was also a little concerned because in all of the dental work that I have had done in the past year (and in previous years I have had wisdom teeth pulled), this was the first dentist who actually recommended that I be put to sleep. All of the other times I have had dental work done the dentists have recommended that I not be put to sleep but if I really wanted to, they would do it. Even with my implant where the oral surgeon had to drill into my jawbone and literally screw a screw into it, I was just given a local anesthetic and I didn't feel a thing (I hope I haven't grossed anyone out yet).

I found out on Sunday that our Relief Society had a temple trip planned for Tuesday morning and I decided to go with them. While I was there, my upcoming surgery was on my mind and I just felt a peaceful feeling that whatever I decided to do I would be fine and to rely on the priesthood. So I decided to go ahead with being put to sleep and I had my husband to give me a blessing before we left for the appointment on Friday.

They had given me a sleeping pill to take the night before so that I could sleep. I don't think it really worked though because I still woke up in the middle of the night like I usually do...

The whole procedure took longer than they thought it would. Apparently they had to remove more infected bone than they initially thought and ended up putting in a piece of artificial bone in its place. Also, I apparently have REALLY long roots on that tooth and they had to cut the bottoms of the roots to get them all cleaned out and then put caps on them to seal them off. (DH says that the endodontist told us that I have the roots of an NBA player, even though I don't remember that part...)

I don't recall anything of the procedure and it's probably a good thing. I remember asking after it was all done if I needed to come back for a follow-up appointment and I vaguely remember being put into a wheelchair to be wheeled out to the car. My husband said that I was talking and I apparently gave him some directions on the way home because we ran into traffic, but I don't recall any of that. We stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home to get some prescriptions filled and the only part I remember about that is that when they asked for a birthdate, my husband started giving them his own and I corrected him and said that he needed to give them my birthdate. I then vaguely remember getting home and my husband asked me where I wanted to go to lay down and I said that I would just lay on the couch and had him put a DVD in for me to watch. The next thing I knew I woke up and Kitty was cuddled up on the couch next to me asleep. At first I thought it was Blondie because Kitty is not really a cuddler, but then I realized that it was Kitty. DH said that he was upstairs getting the kids lunch and he came down and saw her like that so he's not sure how it happened either.

I actually haven't been in a lot of pain. The endodontist gave me a prescription for a painkiller but I only took it for the first couple of days and then I have just been taking tylenol when it bothers me now and then. The most painful part has been opening my jaw wide. I still can't open it too far without it hurting and it hurts to yawn. I was pretty swollen the next day - I looked like I had a big wad of gum in my cheek. I was able to talk fine, I just looked pretty funny.

On Sunday morning I got a call from the YW counselor over the Beehives who was going to teach the lesson that day saying that she was really sick and was wondering if there was any chance that I could teach the lesson (she was not aware that I had undergone dental surgery). I agreed to since I did feel fine really (as long as I didn't smile too much) and I had read the lesson several weeks before, plus we don't have church until 1:00. I then got a call from the YW president making sure that I was okay with teaching with such short notice. I assured her that I would be fine, in fact I had just finished printing out all the handouts for the lesson. About 10 minutes later the YW president called me again and said that she had just heard from one of the other advisors that I had just undergone dental surgery on Friday and she was concerned for me having to teach. I then told her that I really felt fine, I just looked a little funny since I was still a little swollen. I thought it was sweet of her to call though and make sure I was really okay with that. There were quite a few people at church on Sunday who were quite surprised to see me though. I had to keep assuring them that I really did feel alright.

I'm just over a week out from the surgery now. I've got quite a few stitches in my gums so I can't eat on that side of my mouth until those heal and I can't really brush my teeth too hard on that side either. I go in this Thursday for my follow-up appointment so I'm hoping and praying that things look good and that the infection is gone and that things are healing well. So, stay posted and I'll update everyone later on this week...

Lots of helpers!

Today DH & I went to the dry pack cannery to can some more food for our food storage. When we got home we decided that we needed to reorganize our food storage so we can better access the food for rotation. At first we would do it all ourselves but then we thought, certainly M&M & Luke can help move the cans around for us as well. The next thing we knew, Kitty came down to help too and then Blondie joined us.


It was really cute because even little Kitty wanted to carry the cans from our storage room to the "clubhouse" so we could organize them (and some of the cans are pretty heavy). We ended up having to make assignments for the kids because they kept getting into each other's way and fighting over the cans. We assigned Blondie & Kitty to carry the cans to the clubhouse and then M&M & Luke would organize the cans into piles according to what was in them.

It's funny how things that look like hard work can end up being fun for kids...

Luke loses a tooth!

Luke lost his first tooth today on his way home from school. We noticed a few weeks ago that the two bottom ones in the front were loose and this morning he was complaining about his teeth hurting while he was eating a bagel for breakfast. I had a babysitter at my house when he got home from school and as soon as I got home he opened the garage door and told me all about it. He was so excited! (Mostly because he will get money from the tooth fairy though...) Apparently on the bus coming home from school he was playing around with a couple of other boys and he thought that one of the boys put something in his mouth so he spit it out. Then he noticed a tooth on the floor of the bus and felt in his mouth and realized that it was his tooth!

For some reason my kids can't lose teeth normally. M&M's first tooth she lost in the first grade in the middle of class when she had a substitute teacher and another tooth came out at school while she was eating lunch...

D-D-Dora Birthday!

Kitty turned 2 today, but because of some conflicts with DH's work (because of some dental work I needed to have done) we celebrated it yesterday. Kitty really likes Dora lately so we had a Dora theme for the day. Kitty calls her D-D-Dora (if you're familiar with the theme song from the show you should understand why).






We started out the day by going to the store and ended up getting matching shirts & scooters (skirts with shorts underneath) for Kitty & Blondie - just different colors. As soon as we got home from the store they both had to try them on and ended up wearing them the rest of the day.







In the afternoon I decorated a Dora cake and we got Kitty a Dora balloon at the store. Kitty sat at the counter and watched me decorate the Dora cake almost the whole time I was working on it (and it takes quite a while). She was very excited about it and after she ate some she informed me that it was delicious. She got several presents that she immediately wanted to play with or try on. It was fun watching her get excited about some of the presents. Several of the presents we had a few fights with the older siblings trying to play with them.



DH was videotaping her opening the gifts and she lately likes to watch what is being videotaped, so she would open a present and then run to the videocamera so she could see herself being videotaped! We are able to turn around the viewscreen on the camera so that you can see what you are taping if you are in front of the camera, so DH would turn the screen around so she could see herself. In this picture Kitty was trying to see herself in the videocamera with her new sunglasses on.

Kitty has also been singing the Happy Birthday song the last week or so, so it was fun to actually sing it to her with the cake & candles and she was singing some too.

BYU Museums

Today we drove down to Provo to run a couple of errands and visit two of the museums on the BYU campus. The campus is starting to look really different with the new alumni/visitor's center that they are building. I was surprised at how big the building is...

First we visited the Earth Science (or dinosaur) museum and then we drove up to Orem to eat lunch at Daddy's office and then we went to the Bean Life Science museum.


Kitty & Blondie thought the dinosaurs were scary and the kids all enjoyed the hands on exhibits.

Our little daredevil

This is some video that we took a couple of weeks ago. The kids had been playing outside and I was making dinner in the kitchen. The other kids came in and Kitty was left outside by herself when I looked out and saw her doing this. DH ran and grabbed the video camera and was able to get her last time doing it before her siblings came out again and took over. You may have to play it twice to make sure you get the very beginning of the video.

Trip to the library

We went to the library this morning right before lunch to get some books for the kids to read (M&M goes through them very fast when she is off track). After we came home and ate some lunch, I found the 3 older kids like this:

No thank you

This is how my conversations with Kitty go lately:

Me: "Kitty let's get you dressed."
Kitty: "No thank you."

Me: "Kitty can I change your diaper?"
Kitty: "No thank you."

Me: "Kitty let's go eat dinner."
Kitty: "No thank you."

Me: "Kitty let's get your pajamas on."
Kitty: "No thank you."

Me: "Kitty it's time for bed."
Kitty: "No thank you."


So I was thinking the other day that while she may be difficult and uncooperative at times, I should be grateful that at least she's polite about it...

Easter!

I love Easter time and being able to make my girls easter dresses. The dresses this year will serve two purposes - they were their easter dresses on Sunday and then they will wear them again to their Uncle D's wedding in June, with all their girl cousins in matching dresses. D & K's wedding colors are lavender and light green. My mom was able to buy a whole bolt of a lavender fabric that I used for my girls and my sister and sister-in-law will also use for their girls. Blondie is really excited about matching her cousins and keeps asking when Uncle D's wedding is. I think the dresses turned out really cute and the girls all loved it wearing them. I bought Luke a new white shirt to wear on Easter and he absolutely LOVED looking like his dad with a white shirt and tie. It was really cute.

Unfortunately Kitty didn't want to cooperate for a picture before OR after church, so this is as good as it gets...



Check out Kitty's face when I was trying to get her to stand with her siblings for a picture before church. She and Luke can pull some great lower lips when they aren't happy about something...

Our decorating eggsperience

On Saturday we decorated our Easter eggs. I was laying everything out on the table and the kids were all excited for it. I thought it would be fun for the kids to watch the food coloring tablets fizz when you add the vinegar to them, so I put a tablet in each cup around the table and was then preparing to measure out the vinegar when the next thing I knew, Kitty was coughing and gagging on something. I picked her up and was trying to look in her mouth, trying to see what she was gagging on. I asked my husband if he had given her a piece of pickle (he was eating some dill pickles right before this happened and had given some of the kids a piece to try). My first thought was that it was a piece of pickle and she was gagging because she didn't like the sour taste of it. When my husband informed me that he didn't give her a piece of pickle, it finally dawned on me that she had put one of the food coloring tablets in her mouth thinking it was candy.

At this point the inside of her mouth was a bright orange color and she was almost foaming in her mouth (my husband wondered later if it "fizzed" when she put it in). I was able to get the tablet out of her mouth (she hadn't eaten the whole thing) and then my husband grabbed the sprayer at the sink and started spraying inside her mouth to try and wash it out. Needless to say she didn't like that and I think she was wondering what we were doing to her. After we were able to flush a good portion of it out, I took her upstairs and grabbed her toothbrush to try and get some more of it out of her mouth and off her teeth. When I went upstairs my husband grabbed the egg coloring box and read that the tablets are non-toxic (thank goodness!). When I was finished with Kitty upstairs and carried her back down to the kitchen, Kitty informed me that the tablets were "yucky". She kept saying, "Eww, it's gross!" We were then able to finish our decorating with no more problems. Hopefully she has learned her lesson (and I have too).

To all you fellow parents out there with precocious 1 or 2 year olds, beware. The tablets sure do look a lot like candy. They're the perfect size to just pop in your mouth and they come in a variety of pretty colors...

Amazingly, the dye that was all down her shirt came out and there were no stains on her clothes (I was quite surprised especially considering how concentrated those tablets are). Needless to say, we didn't have any orange eggs this year...

Where's Kitty?

The last 2 evenings around dinner time, this is where I have found Kitty:

She's been in the pantry sneaking handfuls of cereal...

Tracy Aviary

One of the perks of being a member of the Hogle Zoo now is that we can also get into the Tracy Aviary free on the first Thursday of each month. Since this week was the first week of April and the weather is still beautiful, we took a trip to the aviary on Thursday after M&M's orthodontist appointment. I think the kids' favorite parts were feeding some geese and trying to find the peacocks that roam the grounds. They are very noisy birds and could be found hiding on roof tops and in the bushes...




The aviary is located in a corner of Liberty Park in downtown Salt Lake City. After we finished up at the aviary, we went to play at the park before we went home. Once again, Kitty had to climb up to the HUGE slide, over and over again. Every time she got down to the bottom she would say, "Whee, that was fun!" Thankfully M&M & Luke were good at looking after her...

I'm including a picture of the whole slide this time. M&M is in the right side of the picture to give you a perspective on how high the slide is...

Tulip Time!

I have some tulips blooming now:

Trip to the Zoo

The kids are off track now and the weather is beautiful once again so I decided to take them all to Hogle Zoo today. The weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold. We ended up wearing our jackets almost the whole time we were there.
Some of the kids' favorite parts of the zoo today were the train ride, the elephants, the peacocks and the huge snake slide at the playground (which totally defeats the purpose of actually going to the zoo instead of the park down the street). Thankfully my parents gave us a one year membership to the zoo for a Christmas present this year so we can go as many times as we like for free, plus we get discounts on anything we buy throughout the zoo.
The kids are at ages now where it is actually somewhat pleasant going to the zoo and not a huge amount of work on my part. M&M is getting old enough to help out with the others and Kitty is old enough to walk on her own or ride in the stroller (she and Blondie took turns walking and riding).


Every time we stopped, Kitty had to climb out of the stroller so she could climb whatever railing there was around.






Here are some pictures of the kids on the train ride (Kitty was very excited) and going down the snake slide (I'll have to take a picture next time of how big the slide is).

General Conference

The Pros and Cons of being able to watch General Conference at home:

Pro - Can multi-task while listening to conference (On Saturday I was able to get some sewing done on my girls' easter dresses and DH was able to change the struts on his car while listening to conference on the radio)
Con - Can multi-task while listening to conference...

Pro - Don't have to get the kids dressed up on Sunday.
Con - Sunday feels like any other day when we're not dressed up.

Pro - Don't have to sit through conference at the church with the kids, trying to get them to be quiet and behave.
Con - Can't hear what is being said because the kids are being too noisy (why is it they always have to play in the room where the T.V. is?)

Pro - Don't have to sit on uncomfortable benches or chairs.
Con - The couch can be a little too comfortable (see picture).

Pro - The kids (and dad in this case) can take a nap during the afternoon session (Luke it turns out was sick and dad worked a little too hard on the car the day before).


Anyone have any more pros or cons to add?

A Day Off?!?

This is for all you fellow moms out there: