Vacation

Has it really been that long since I posted? Well I suppose it has seeing how we went on vacation just after my last post. We spent 10 days back east visiting my parents and oldest brother and his family in Virginia, just outside Washington DC. It was a lot of fun and we did great stuff. We saw a lot of the museums and monuments in DC, and we took a weekend trip to New Jersey to see some of the areas Joe served in when he was a missionary. It was pretty awesome. So here are some pictures of our adventures.
The Washington DC Temple is so beautiful! We had the opportunity to do an endowment session with my brother Josh and his wife Erin. It is huge inside!

We went on a tour of the Capitol building.

The Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial (my favorite)

Mr. Lincoln
Simon loved the Smithsonian Air and Space museum

The Natural History Musuem had a butterfly pavilion which was free on Tuesdays, so we got to go and see really cool butterflies.

Alice and I visiting Julia Child's kitchen


We went to Mount Vernon (George Washington's home)

Here is Joe and the kids with Josh and cousin Andrew

Alice with Auntie Erin outside the Torpedo Factory (now functioning as an artist co-op) in Old Town Alexandria. Lots of cool houses in Old Town.


Grandmama and Eli with the Park Place sign in Atlantic City New Jersey. We went along the boardwalk and saw the famous streets and signs from Monopoly.
We also went to the beach in Ocean city and enjoyed playing in the sand. The water was frigid, but Alice had fun on her first trip to the beach.


This is Lucy the elephant in Margate, outside Atlantic city. She is really big!This is the view from the ferris wheel we rode on the Ocean City boardwalk.

I have a few more pictures to download from Joe's camera that I will have to post sometime (hopefully sooner than later). We really had a fabulous time. I loved how green it was, trees everywhere! I felt like I was in a forest all the time, even driving down a main road. Maybe we could bring some of those trees out here to the plains. Of course that is why they are the plains right? Well I don't think Joe or I want to live on the plains forever.

Last week I turned 30. It was all very low key, seeing how we just got back from our trip, so it just kind of came and went. I don't really feel different, but it is a little strange to think I am past my 20s. Where does all the time go? Eli's birthday is this Friday and I keep thinking to myself, "How do I have a 7 year old?" but I do. I am glad we have cameras to help us remember it all.

We are headed to Bear Lake in Utah for a family reunion next week. We will get to see extended family from my side and Joe's side. We get to see them all in the same week. It should be a good time.

Schools out!

I have been meaning to post for a while, but somehow have just never gotten around to it. You know how that is. Anyway, tomorrow we are off to Washington DC to see my parents and my brother and his family for 10 days. We will see all the cool stuff and we are taking a little trip to New Jersey so Joe can revisit his mission area. That should be fun.

School is out, I am not sure whether to be excited or not?! I am sure we will have lots of fun this summer, but of course there is always some adjustment for the siblings to get used to being with each other all day everyday. Eli had his field day. Here are some pictures from that:

Getting ready for the potato shuttle

The sack race, which he won. That is him in the red shirt and purple sack.

Did I mention the wind was blowing 40mph with gusts up to 60mph? Well it was, but that didn't seem to deter the kids. I couldn't hardly walk straight in the wind, but I sat it out to watch Eli.

He also lost his first tooth a week ago. I pulled it out for him, didn't take much. Then he got $1 from the Tooth Fairy! (There has been some debate in the Tooth Fairy Castle about the going rate for teeth....any thoughts?)

I got my hair cut, it is shorter than I have had for a while, but it is hair and it will grow. Alice is very fond of my hair and pulling it, and I decided it is better to have it short than fight with the baby.

Gotta get back to packing....lots of pictures when we get back of course!

My funny family

This is what Joe made me for Mother's Day, and I just had to share it. I think it is so funny.The idea here is that I am the only "normal" one in the family. It makes me laugh every time I see it. I love that Joe thinks about gifts and doesn't just go buy whatever. I had a very nice mother's day. I will have to post the pictures of the gifts my sister and I made for the mothers in our lives this year, but I haven't downloaded them yet. I will do that soon!

Alice crawls now. She has quickly figured out how to get around and gets up on her hands and knees too. She hasn't quite figured out how to make that work yet, but it won't be long. She also has a second tooth, and will probably have more before long. Eli has a pretty loose tooth, but it hasn't come out yet. I find it funny that he doesn't wiggle it and play with it more. I remember having loose teeth as a kid and constantly wiggling them and trying to help them want to come out. I wonder if he will loose it before school is out in a couple of weeks. Simon got in to preschool. They seem to be excited for him to come. We will see how that goes come fall. In the meantime, we are looking forward to a trip to Washington DC to see my parents in a couple of weeks, can't wait!

Alice has a Tooth

Alice has finally gotten a tooth! I am not really sure why I am so excited about it, but I seem to be. Maybe because it Alice has been teething for 3 months so it feels like some kind of accomplishment. It hasn't made her stop drooling, in fact it seems worse. Maybe because more are coming. Although it does make me sad to think her toothless grin will be gone soon. Oh my baby is getting so big. I already miss the little tiny cuddly baby. Now she rolls and turns and twists all over. No real crawling yet, but she certainly gets around. And is very good at sitting too.

Yesterday my boys got to go ice skating for their first time. Their cousins who take lessons invited them for a buddy day. They both thought it was lots of fun, which was helped by the fact they each had an instructor helping them not fall down. Simon threw a fit when it was time to leave. We may have to try to find a time to go back sooner than later. Thanks cousins!

Simon had a "developmental screening" for preschool. He did very well and all the teachers/testers thought he was pretty fun. He gets so excited about things. Yesterday, we went out to dinner. When we walked into the restaurant, Simon exclaimed, "Wow look at this!" Another man who was waiting for a table really got a kick out of that. He said he wished he could get so excited about things. Simon is a character.

Just for Fun

When Simon was little I took a picture of him in an outfit that I had a picture of Eli in, and then set the two photos side by side for a comparison. We all thought they looked a lot alike. My mom suggested I do the same with Alice. So I found the outfit (actually my sister found it) and took Alice's picture in it. Here are the results.





I actually think they all look very different, although still very alike. Eli and Simon were 4 and 5 months old, Alice is 7 months, so I guess she is definitely the smallest of the 3.

Spring Time

I guess we have been busy since my last post. Spring break came and went, Alice is sick again, Joe is out of town, soccer season started, and today is Easter!

My parents came for spring break and we had lots of fun. We went to Denver to the Children's Museum, which the kids thought was lots of fun. It is different than I remember as a kid, but I guess that is not too surprising since it has been 20+ years! Here are my kids having fun there. Simon loved the little grocery store and being able to push the cart around.

Eli being dressed up as a rabbitAnd they had a little baby area for those not big enough to play in the other parts. Alice had fun rolling around.

Then we went to Casa Bonita. By the time we came out, the snow storm that had been predicted had hit full force! It was a crazy slushy mess and took us 3 hours to get home. I am just glad we actually got home! We are not looking to repeat that adventure again anytime soon. We also fed the ducks and geese at the park, went bowling, to Chuck E Cheese, and saw How to Train Your Dragon (fun movie!) during the week. Here is my dad playing air hockey at Chuck E. Cheese. It was a fun-filled time. Except Alice got sick again. She seemed to have recovered from her first respiratory illness and her ears were clearing up, but then she got a fever again. So I took her to the doctor thinking maybe the ear infection had come back. The doctor said her ears looked fine, but she had a cold and has been wheezing again. More nebulizer treatments. I hope she gets over this soon. She has not been sleeping well and I hope she will go back to sleeping better once she is all well!

Joe went to Kentucky/Indiana to help out his brother. His other brother, my sister's husband, went too. So we have been trying to survive the week alone. This has included soccer practice, no school on Friday, and soccer game on Saturday, and dyeing eggs for Easter. I am glad yesterday it wasn't cold or windy during the soccer game. The kids have been enjoying some Easter goodies today, and I have been enjoying General Conference. I am glad I didn't have to get up and get the kids all ready and to church all by myself. Being able to watch Conference on the internet is great!

Alice is a mover these days. She doesn't actually crawl, but has figured out how to roll and turn and wiggle enough to move around. It won't be long til she is really on the move. She is working on sitting. And she has been learning to like solid food. She seems to like most things so far, and really likes sippy cups. She isn't that great at getting water out, but likes trying!

Hope everyone has a happy Easter and takes the time to express gratitude for our Savior and his resurrection!

What is Hypoxia?

I will tell you what hypoxia is: It is a lack of oxygen, as in the lungs not using the oxygen breathed in efficiently enough. This is what Alice had last weekend, and thus spent 3 days in the hospital. A little scary. Here is the whole tale:

On Monday the 1st, I took Alice in for her 6 month check up. They said she looked good and she had her immunizations. On Tuesday, she had a low grade fever. I thought it was probably from the shots. She also was developing a little cold, stuffy/runny nose and cough. Simon had something similar, so I thought it was just a cold. She continued having a low fever til Friday. I thought that seemed like a long time, so I called just to check with the doctor. They said that was normal and it sounded like she had the same cold that lots of kids were having. Friday afternoon her fever went up to 102. That night I put Alice to bed, but she kept waking up, she seemed uncomfortable and at about 10pm she sounded like she was wheezing and it looked to me that she was retracting (the skin sucking in around her collar bones when she breathed). So I put a call in to the nurses line, got a call back, they said I should take her to the ER. So we went to the ER at 11:30pm. The doctor listened to her, she had chest x-rays done, they swabbed her nose to test for RSV and flu. They gave her an albuterol breathing treatment. Around 1:30am they decided we could go home with the plan to get a nebulizer to help her breath. The doctor thought she might be developing a little pneumonia, but she could probably fight it off. Just before they were about to discharge us, they took Alice's vital signs again and her pulse-ox (measure of the oxygen in her blood) was only at 82%. They didn't like that. So they decided she should stay so they could put her on oxygen and watch her and give her breathing treatments. The hospital was apparently so busy that night that had no available rooms. (We do live in a small town, so of course the hospital is small too.) We got a room in the ICU, which I think turned out to be a good thing. We didn't have to share and the nurses were always right there. We had to stay until Monday around lunch time before Alice was able to keep her oxygen at 95% by herself.
I am grateful it was the weekend and Joe was able to be home with the kids. He did take Monday off, and that was a teacher work-day, so it worked out alright. I didn't get much sleep of course (I think Friday night I had a total of 2 1/2 hours). And Alice's was constantly interrupted by breathing treatments (every 4 hours) and adjusting her oxygen tube and listening to her, and her least favorite part of having all the snot sucked out of her nose! Yuck! but that was very necessary to helping her breathe better. Now she is home and doing very well. Wednesday we went to the doctor for a follow-up visit and found that she had double ear infections. Poor girl. But she seems to be mending well. She hasn't needed breathing treatments today and she is back to her happy self. She never really was that unhappy even in the hospital. Bored of being trapped in the same room, but not really all that cranky. All the nurses loved her and thought she was so cute and of course she is!
We are glad we are past all that. Her official diagnosis was bronchiolitis and hypoxia. They said it was not pneumonia and the test came back negative for RSV, but her pediatrician is pretty sure that is probably what she had anyway. It is a bad year for it and going around a lot. I am glad she kept eating and didn't have to have an IV! Now I've got her cold but am on the mend too. I sure hope we don't have to spend any more nights in the hospital. The nurses were all very nice, but it sure isn't very comfortable, and of course I want my kids to be healthy!