Memorial Day

On Memorial Day we went up to my parents' house. We also went up and visited Micheal's grave. They finally got the headstone up about 3 weeks ago. Perfect.

Ok, those are scary faces.

My parents left put this sign up at Micheal's grave. It perfectly describes our country and the servicemen that give their lives for it.

Of course Amy and the boys left DARK chocolate M&M's there.

We took one of Micheal's other favorites, Mint OREOS.

The headstone turned out absolutely gorgeous. This saying on the back is the quote Micheal said to Amy when he proposed to her. There's his bag of dark chocolate M&M's and the empty space on the left is for the military plaque that will be put on soon.

Micheal used to say this to Amy and laugh. Of course she put it on their headstone. She is one incredible woman. Some days I wake up and think my life is so hard and I honestly don't know sometimes she gets out of bed. She amazes me EVERY single day.

Amy's side of the "bed" as she words it. Running shoes and lists, pretty much sum up Amy.

Books and biking, sums up Micheal.

One of Micheal's students left these sunflowers.

There were a lot of flowers there. It's hard not to miss such an amazing person.

Micheal's view. You can see the Temple right there in the middle of everything. Josh said he wants to buy our plots there right in front of Amy and Micheal and block their view. :)

THANK YOU for your service and sacrifice!

Softball Mania

This was way back at the beginning of April. Wow, I'm so behind on my posts. Amy, the boys, my mom and Matt came to my house for spring break. It was lots of fun. My mom and Matt left the day we did softball so I don't have any pictures of them.

I called Todd and asked him if he'd throw some balls for us. Amy wanted to smack some balls to relieve stress. He was awesome and brought all of his bats, hats, balls, gloves, you name it. We had a blast at the park. The kids LOVED it!

You can see the ball in the air coming to him, it looks like it's right above Kennet's head.

And he smacks it!

It was so fun to see Chloee batting. The kids all took turns and either Todd or Wes would throw a whole bucket of balls to them. Chloee could not hold that bat right to save her life.

Todd had to draw a line for Chloee. She kept creeping up onto home plate.

He is so great with kids. He even had some Boston Red Sox hats left over from the year before when he was coaching his son's team. He gave them to Kai and Kennet. They were ecstatic because they were just like "daddy's" hat. Micheal wore a Boston Red Sox hat all the time. Amy has now inherited it and wears it.

We had a blast, we all got sunburned. It didn't even feel like it was hot enough outside to get sunburned. Halle was running around causing a ruckus, of course she was. She had scrapes all over her knees when we left. My children are so accident prone.

5K Diabetes Fun (?) Run

Amy and I had signed up a few weeks ago to run a 5K up on the University of Utah's research park for diabetes. It was on Saturday, May 22nd.

The night before the race, I stepped on this ever so lovely pin. It went right into the side of my big toe of my right foot. I was holding Halle and screaming at Amy to pull it out for me. I swear it felt like at least half the pin went into my toe.

Later that night, Kennet came up to me and wanted me to open a full bottle of XZude for him. I think it was around 36 ounces. As he was lifting it up to me, he dropped it and it came slamming down on my 2nd and 3rd toe on the same foot as the pin. It landed bottom first and must have hit it just right. I held back my obscenities, which always flow out of my mouth when I get hurt or scared. It's like a reaction, I don't even realize I'm doing it. That night as I was getting ready for bed, that toe had swollen up to twice its size and I couldn't even touch it without wanting to beat myself for touching it. PAIN.

You'd think I would have taken the pin and the bottle as signs not to run the next day. I'm surprised that I could even get my shoes on.

My goal was to finish, which a did. Yeah! I am in such bad shape, it literally almost killed me. I had to walk/run. Amy was an angel and stayed with me the whole time, she just kept jogging in place when I was walking and was such a great support to me. I kept telling her to leave me and actually "run" the race, but she was a dear and stuck with me. At one point I was crying, I was in so much pain. She just kept pushing me and we had this couple that would be in front of us, then behind us, and back and forth again. We made a goal to beat them and we did!

Don't ask, cause I don't know!!!!

P.S. Majority of the course was hills, no joke!

Appendix Timing

I found out a very odd, little fact the other day. I found my old diary and saw in it that I had written about when I had my appendix out. Oddly enough, Josh and I had out appendixes out almost exactly, to the day, 15 years apart.

I had mine out on March 27, 1995.
Josh had his out on March 20, 2010.

I thought that was a little crazy and that I should document it!

Halle's New Favorite Food

Yep, you guessed it. It's cat food or dog food, whichever one she can get her grubby little mitts on. Josh was outside with her and he turned his back for just a bit and when he looked back at her she was chewing something. He made her spit it out and it was dog food. She was all sorts of mad when he made her spit it out.

She was at Amy's a few days later and in the amount of like a day, she had stuffed 2 whole, huge handfuls of cat food in her mouth. I made her spit that out and once again, temper tantrums, screaming, yelling, hitting, you name it, she did it.

I swear we feed our child actual food that is good. Anything can be better than cat or dog food, right? Maybe my cooking is that bad. Now there's something for me to really ponder about.

Taking Chance

We borrowed this movie from Amy. It was absolutely amazing. No wonder Kevin Bacon won an award for his role in this movie. I honestly had a migraine after from crying so hard. I was crying in the first 3 minutes of the show. It hit a little close to home and really made me proud to be an American. I especially loved watching how carefully and honorably this soldier's body was transported home. It lets me know that Micheal was taken care of just the same. Lots of tears and joy.

My Girls Love Me Too Much

Girls, girls, come on, I already know how much you both love me. You didn't have to get my name tattooed on your arms. Wow, now I really know that you guys love me. All the crap about you telling me and hugging me and giving me kisses, it meant nothing, but this, this truly tells me you care.

Busy, Busy, Busy

This last week was insane. I was home for about 2 hours, that was it. I went up to my Mom's on Monday and Tuesday. Some guys that Josh works with from John Deere flew in Monday and were there until Wednesday. Josh didn't get home from work until 10 pm Monday night and 11 pm Tuesday night. Amy came up to my mom's to talk at a fireside on Tuesday night.

We all stayed and left Wednesday morning. Amy was a life saver and took Halle with her so that I wouldn't have to worry about her while I was packing. I left my mom's, came home for a few hours, packed for me and the girls for the next 3 or 4 days and left for Amy's.

Josh's brother got married that Thursday. They did the "luncheon" the night before, on Wednesday. Josh came right from work to Amy's and we were still late to the event. We stayed at Amy's Wednesday night. Josh and I went to the SLC temple Thursday, while Amy was a doll and watched the girls. We came home, got the girls ready and left for the reception in Lindon. We were there all night. Came back to Amy's, slept there again and Josh left for work in the morning.

Josh and Chloee had a "Daddy Daughter Ball" to attend that night. I got her all dressed up and took her to his work. There's a post about that coming as soon as I get the pictures back. They leave, Halle and I stay another night at Amy's because Amy and I had signed up to do a race on Saturday for diabetes. That's another post to come.

I didn't get home until Saturday afternoon. I wasn't home for this whole past week except for those few hours on Friday to pack and head down to Amy's. It was crazy and now I'm only going to be home Sunday, Monday & Tuesday before I leave again. Amy, the boys, me and the girls are headed down to St. George on Wednesday to see my sister Annie and her family. They live in California but will be in St. George for her husband's side of the family. They are doing a reunion or something. So, we are going a few days before their reunion to spend time with them.

I feel like all I've been doing the last few days is laundry, laundry, laundry!!!

Steer Clear, Halle's Behind The Wheel...

Sure, in this picture it looks as though Grandma is in control of the tractor. Oh boy, does she have you all fooled. Halle loved taking a trip on Grandma's lap while she mowed the lawn. Yeah, it may have been a short ride, the rest of the grandkids wanted a ride too. No worries, Hals didn't feel too bad when she got off... she ran right over to Gretchen (their cat) and tortured her.

Halle and X-Rays Don't Get Along

The night after I came home from getting my tetanus shot, I noticed that Halle refused to use her left leg. She would sit and cry or limp around without using her one leg. She screamed and cried the rest of the day and all night. She was also holding her ear all night crying so I figured she might have an ear infection as well. When morning came, she was still not using her leg.

I finally called and asked her doctor if I should be worried about it. He told me to bring her in. He first looked in her ears. I have to hold my ever so strong child down every time he looks in her ears because refuses to let him. After A LOT of screaming and me trying to pin her down, he has to clean her ear out because there is too much wax. Now if that's not embarrassing, I don't know what is. I swear I clean her ears out but that stuff grows overnight while she's sleeping, it seems like it anyway. He had to dig it out and found that there was a ball of it that was so hard and old and it was way in there, pushing on her eardrums, thus causing her pain. No ear infection though, yeah!

Trying to hold that girl down about killed me. She is so strong, no joke. The doctor commented on it multiple times. He said he remembered having to call 3 nurses in to hold Chloee down along with me, just so he could get a catheter in her. He said to me, "You have extremely strong girls. They are probably the strongest girls I've ever had to take care of as patients. No, scratch that, they are stronger than most of the boys that are their age too. Your girls sure now how to put up a good fight. Have you ever thought about putting them in a contact sport?" I said, "Like soccer, you mean?" He said, "More like Lacrosse." We had a good laugh about that.

He examined her leg and foot, then sent me upstairs to have x-rays done. I am sitting in the waiting room, Halle is screaming and I can't put her down because she won't use her foot. I am waiting and people who are checking in after me are going in before me and leaving before I even get in. The sign says that it is a first come first serve office. I keep waiting, with might I add a screaming baby, she never let up. I can only hold her with one arm because the other one is in throbbing pain from the tetanus shot the day before. She is screaming, I'm sweating and a man who is in the waiting room also, answers his phone and says, "Hold on, I can't hear you, there's this baby in here who won't stop crying" (glances over at me). Under my breath, I say, "You asshole!" A little old woman looks at me and can tell I'm either going to burst into uncontrollable tears or I am going to kill someone. She looks at me and says, "Men! They never understand. I am a grandma and a great-grandma and I know you aren't just sitting there pinching that child to make her cry just to see if she can annoy everyone in this waiting room. He thinks he's so important, having to take a phone call right now. I hope they call his name and he isn't here and misses his appointment." She put a huge smile on my face!!!

After 25 long minutes of Halle screaming uncontrollably, they call me back. I jokingly, but not joking said, "So what... did you guys call everyone else back before me because you didn't want to deal with a baby?" She answers, "Well yeah. We saw her age on the paperwork and none of us wanted to do a baby, they don't cooperate." "WHAT?" I said. She looked at me like, "Ooops, I shouldn't have said that, huh?" She was a moron.

We get back to the table. Chloee has to sit in another room. I put on the vest and Halle's vest. She instantly starts to scream as I lay her down. I have to hold her down and the nurse proceeds to keep getting mad and screaming at Halle, who is only one, and keeps telling her to hold still. I thought, "you do know that she doesn't understand you, right?". After lots of her screaming, turning, kicking and not cooperating, the nurse really starts getting mad. I lost it on her, I screamed at her and told her to get someone else to help with the x-ray. I told her to have someone else go out of the room and push the button. Duh, a baby isn't going to keep her foot still for 20 seconds while you run out and push the dumb button.

They pull her off and say that they'll just have to work and they'll be "good enough". Oh no, no, no.... I told them to get them perfect and that I wasn't going to leave until it was done right because I sure as hell wasn't going to come back up there and have it done again because the doctor couldn't read the x-ray because it was "good enough". Lots of glaring going on at me. I didn't care. I was covered in sweat. I had just waited for 25 minutes holding a screaming baby and then held down my child for 30 minutes while they were trying to get x-rays of her.

I was sweating everywhere. I think I started to have an anxiety attack. My armpits were soaking wet, 2 inches back from where my hair starts of my head was soaked in sweat. I had sweat dripping off my face. I walked back into the doctor, he took one look at me and said, "Are you okay? I mean, are you... okay? You look... not good!" I proceeded to tell him about my experience with the imaging people and he said they are awful and he's had other parents complain as well. He said he'd talk with them.

After this very long story, Halle did not have a break, fracture, or hairline fracture. He said that sometimes hairline fractures are missed in babies and don't show up for about 7-10 days. I guess their bones are more soft than even their ligaments and sometimes it takes a few days for it to show up on the x-ray. He said that he thought it was maybe a pulled ligament and to watch her and if she still isn't using it after 7 days to bring her back in. Of course, the very next day she was walking on it.

The Park, A Razor Blade & A Tetanus Shot...

What do these 3 things have in common? Hmmm.... Well, they pretty much sum up my day a couple of weeks ago.

I had just taken a cake to the church for a funeral. As I was driving home, I thought, "I think I'll go take the girls to the park. It's nice and sunny outside. Hey, let's even go get Chloee's friend, Trevor and have him come with us."

We are at the park for about 5 minutes, no joke, when I run back to the car to get something. On my way back, something flips up from the grass and goes right underneath my big toe, between my flip flop. I felt something cut me. I kept walking, then saw the blood gushing out of my toe, turned around and it was a RAZOR BLADE. Yes, a razor blade in the park! I packed the kids up, try to stop the bleeding and head home.

My mom made a good point about the fact that I was overdue for a tetanus shot. I called the doc, he said I definitely needed to come in and get one. My arm hurt for days. That's just my kind of luck, we go to the park for some good old vitamin D and I have to get a shot! Figures.

Josh's New Job

Josh started a new job back on the first of April. No, it wasn't due to the economy and/or the government. It was a choice we made. I meant to write about it back when it all happened but his appendix thing happened. He accepted the job that Friday and Saturday, BOOM, he was in the hospital getting his appendix out. I couldn't really write that we were even looking because many of the wives of the guys he worked with read my blog.

There were a lot of reasons this choice was made and there was a lot of fasting and praying that went along with it. He now works in South Salt Lake, yes he commutes, it's about an hour, depending on traffic. Even though he does have a commute, he's so much happier where he is now. I can just see it on his face when he comes home and it's just in his whole countenance. He loves his job and it's been a long time since he's been able to say that.

The company does many different things but the one that he is working on right now is with John Deere. His previous job he did aerospace for the government. He is glad to be out of the government end of it and to be learning something new. He wants to be well-versed.

"Welcome to Holland"

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. All rights reserved.

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away...because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But...if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

***This is an exceptional writing. My mom went to a conference and one of the speakers talked about this woman. This not only pertains to you if you have a child with a disability but to every part or our lives that didn't or won't go the way we planned. We plan our entire lives to go to Italy and we think that is exactly how it will be but alas, it is not our choice where the plane lands.

Everyone that you come in contact with is struggling with something you may never know about. Let's face it, sometimes it seems like everyone else's plane has landed in Italy and we are the only ones in Holland. That is not true. Sometimes we feel like we are the only ones who are experiencing pain, suffering and trials. The only way to know that we are not the only ones experiencing something difficult is if all of us wore signs around our necks that said what our struggle or trial is that we are trying to endure. Surely, that is not how it happens. I think we'd all be a lot nicer to one another if we could read from everyone's sign and know what they are battling.

Let us not forget that we can be a little nicer and that we can serve others. You may never know the impact you have on someone's life. You may never know why you were brought in contact with that person, but surely The Lord knows and that is why we need to listen to the promptings of the spirit. That someone may have an impact on you and change your life when all along you thought you were doing something for them.***

The Uses Of Adversity

I just finished this book, The Uses of Adversity by Carlfred Broderick. It is Amy's book, she let me borrow it. It is a small, short book which makes for an easy read. Sometimes we feel so overwhelmed with a big book. We start the book and then think that we'll never have enough time to finish it and then we don't. It was bout 60 pages with big print. It was an amazing book and I got a lot out of it in just those few short pages. This is definitely a book I'd recommend. On the back of his book is a quote.

"The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in event of pain."
-Carlfred Broderick

Mother's Day

I spent all day Saturday down in American Fork. I was doing some pictures for a wedding and then some of a new little baby. Let's just say that me and the girls did not get home until midnight.

When I came home, Josh told me that is was "Mother's Day" seeing as how it was past midnight and this was sitting on my nightstand. He's such a sweetie!

Because I am so unobservant, he had to point out to me that he had a present sitting on my dresser. It was one of those signs I love to put up all over the house.

This morning Josh made the most amazing breakfast! I LOVE the bacon, egg and cheese biscuit from McDonald's. I know, really fattening but I love them. He made the biscuits, yes from scratch and everything. The bacon was that really thick, yummy sliced bacon and he even got what he calls, "the fake cheese" just like McDonald's does. You know, the Velveeta singles.

They were so divine!!!

We also had some of my favorite juice to complete the meal.

Chloee came home with this from Primary. She told me that she made that flower and that we better put it in some water before it dies. They also did this questionnaire about their mothers. It is really cute. The kids fill in the blank on the sentence about their mom. Obviously, the teacher had to write Chloee's seeing as how she can't write words other than her and Halle's names. The questionnaire says this: (Chloee's responses are in the purple)

My Mom's name is Kimberlee.
My Mom is just this tall.
My Mom has black hair.
My Mom's eyes are green.
My Mom is really good at doing dishes.
If I could buy anything for my Mom, I would buy her earrings.
My Mom is funny when she cleans the kitchen.
My Mom always says that I do a good job.
My Mom loves to do dishes.
I know my Mom loves me because my dad and mom tells me they love me.
My Mom's favorite thing to wear is pink.
I love it when my Mom makes soup.
My Mom doesn't like it when I mess her room.
I love my Mom because she is my mom.

I love chicken cordon bleu. It is probably my favorite dish of all time. Well, he makes the best pies, so why not combine the two. He made chicken cordon bleu pot pie. It is to die for!

Josh then gave me some more presents tonight. He knows I'm always looking for "pick me up" books and these 2 look perfect.

Chloee gave me these lists and highlighter. I am an incessant list maker, yes, just like Amy, but not as bad. Chloee is also a list maker and this was the perfect gift from her. I also needed a new highlighter for my scriptures.

Halle gave me this adorable book. She handed it to me and then proceeded to show me the pages, point and I think she really thought she was reading the book.

To sum it up, I was treated like an absolute queen today! I am so grateful for my sweet husband and my 2 little girls who mean everything to me.

I haven't forgotten about the mothers in my life. I'm going to do a post on that tomorrow.