Christmas Pics!

Here’s our Christmas Album!

And here’s our January album too!  Here’s what’s fun… both twins have one dimple, just one, and it’s on the right side.  Since they’re obviously NOT identical twins, that’s a pretty amazing coincidence.

December: Who We Lost and What I Found

When I was looking for a picture I realized we never posted our pictures of Erica’s wedding!  It boggles my mind but I’ve scoured this blog and our picasa and I think it went undone.  I was too playing catch up and then became very pregnant and went MIA.  So click that picture and enjoy!

In December we lost Josh and thinking back on it, I don’t want to talk about what happened and I don’t know what I’d even say…needless to say, we were not alright.

Apart from the fact that he’s our brother/uncle and we love him, I selfishly mourn for my boys because he gave them some things that I cannot which is first, an energetic playmate! and second, an incredible example of what Priesthood and service are all about.  I would thank my lucky stars if some of his goodness rubbed off on these kiddies of mine!

I spent a lot of time over the holiday season, I guess you could call it meditating.  I was searching for peace in these trying times.  I listened to Candlelight Carol a lot while picturing the nativity:

“Candlelight, Angel light, fire light and star glow shine on his cradle til breaking of dawn”  It’s such beautiful imagery.  I’d picture a crisp night, dark blue, shining stars, and all the miracles and just…life…that surrounded the birth of the Savior.  I pondered on the scripture, “unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” and thought about all the meaning it held for our family this year, on the one hand because we were leaning so much on the Savior and all He means to us now and forever, and on the other hand because of our tiny nephew, Logan, who was given to us, to bless Erica and all our family in this time.

And this is what I can say happened to my Christmas this year: was it festive?  Not really.   Cheerful? Joyful?  Not a lot.  Full of parties and fun times?  Nope, not really.  But it was full of Peace.  The Prince of Peace touched my life this holiday season and made Christmas extra special because I felt the true meaning of this holiday very powerfully in my life this year and the Spirit spoke peace to my soul.  And that’s what I found in the midst of all we lost.

Hill Aerospace Museum

On our way home from Thanksgiving in Logan this year, we decided to pull over and take an impromptu trip to the Hill Aerospace Museum AND WOW, that is a great place, and free!  It is without question a fabulous asset to our state and we will be going back!

They had so many planes from so many eras!  They had exhibits on POW camps, WWII, life back home, and I saw no less than four nuke casings!  It blew my mind!

Click the picture for our November 2013 album:

Helmet Head

Hello Again!  It’s been maybe the craziest few months ever with ups and some major downs.  Most pressing right now though is that we’re moving!  And I have only a couple more days with my computer so I thought I’d catch up a little on the blog.

I want to start with Evan’s helmet.  It’s been a really interesting experience and not near as bad as I expected.  Mostly because Evan loves that thing!  He paws at his head when it’s off.

At Evan’s 6 month appointment we were referred to a pediatric plastic surgeon about his head shape.  I took Evan up to Primary Children’s in Salt Lake to see them and it was determined with the plastic surgeon that his mishapen head was severe enough that we’d be referred to Fit-Well Prosthetics and Orthotics.  At Fit-Well, they took measurements and pictures to send to our insurance company.  They have this policy that they pre-approve all helmet patients so parents know how much to expect to pay and can decide from there if they’re willing to keep going with the helmet.  I learned that they have a scale of 1-10 for headmishapen-ness.  1-3, they don’t do anything usually, 3-4 parent’s can do helmet therapy, but insurance usually won’t cover it, 5+ and they recommend helmet therapy and if your insurance covers helmet therapy at all, they’ll approve your claim.  Evan came out at a 5.5.  Thankfully, our insurance covered it, yay!  Which meant this helmet set us back $240 instead of $1700.

We took him in to get a cast of his head

The poor baby had a fever of 102 on the day of our appointment!  He was so lethargic and miserable!  This picture just makes me want to cuddle and coo to him.  That poor, poor baby!  They take a cast because helmets are made to fit precisely to their head, then they let out the helmet in areas they want his head to grow in to.

Evan got the helmet the day before Thanksgiving.  That day and the next 3 appointments were really fun and interesting because it was the first time ever that a blow torch was a large part of a doctor’s appointment!  They heat up the helmet and let it out that way.  It’s extremely heat sensitive, but can handle any other type of abuse!

Here’s our Squeaker in his helmet!  It’s nice and thin and clear.  Not those outrageously awful thick white ones so that’s awesome!

It’s been 10 weeks and we were supposed to go back to the plastic surgeon today to see if Evan’s done, but the Doctor is on vacation!  Whenever he gets the helmet off, I think Evan will have a bruised head for awhile because he’s become very brave in that thing!  I’m excited for him to be done just because I miss kissing him on the head whenever I want!

I Know What You’re Thinking…

“Is she kidding me with all this cuteness?”

Well the answer is no…

No I am not.

Dilos Moritos

We went to Dia de Los Muertos this year at Thanksgiving Point!  I had a great time!  I thought Brad would love it because Mexico, but crafts, food, and dancing aren’t really up his alley.  He read a chapter of an e-book…killjoy!  This event would have been worth it to me alone from hearing Kyle and Joel call it “Dilos Moritos” for a few days!

Spooky Scary

I finished up our October Album!  It’s actually a really good one because we did some fun and interesting things this month!  We went to the Planetarium, on a hike, to Spooky Saturday at the Dinosaur Museum, and Barnyard Boo at the Thanksgiving Point Farm!  Then there’s Halloween of course!

October 2013 Album

September

Here are pictures of our cute kiddies in September!

These little twins are 5 month old!  Evan was diagnosed with Torticolis at the 4 month appointment.  It means one of the muscles in his neck is particularly stiff and it happens a lot with twins because there’s not as much space in the womb.  He favors his left side so we have to try to get him to turn right.  It’s gotten much better, but his head is still mishapen from favoring the left so stay tuned to see if he needs one of those baby helmets of doom…

We have some pictures in the album from their first solids!

Click the pic for the album!

We just booked our next big trip!  Now that we have 4 kids, it’s harder to ask someone to watch all of them, and I want my kids to love to travel as well, so we’re packing up our big, bulky family and going to Hawaii next June!  We’ll spend 2 weeks on the big island.  We have our condo and flights all lined up!  Now we just have to wait in anticipation!

First Day of School!

I’ve done a poor job of posting these last couple of months.  Is it the same for anyone else that your life has this balance and something really little (like my camera running out of batteries) can throw things off (posting pictures on the website) for a long time, even though it seems like such an easy simple thing to do (put new batteries in the camera), but it was just beyond that threshold?  Well, that’s how it is with me!  So I only have a few pictures from all of August and they’re of Kyle’s first day of school.

His teachers are Ms Anderson and Ms Holly.  And Ms East is his reading and math teacher.  I think he loves 1st grade more than kindergarten because he has more time at school so they aren’t cramming everything in like in kindergarten, and they spend more time at music and doing art…things like that.  We’re also carpooling with Paxton, one of his best friends at school, and I think he loves that!

Click the picture for 1st day of school album!

Dog Days

Magically, these babies became three months old!  When did that happen?! (click on the photo for our July Album)

We had a really great Saturday celebrating Tracy’s birthday at one of my new favorite places around here and it made me think it was about time to download all of our photos from July so far.  There’s a park behind Lone Peak High School with a lake/pond for fishing, swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding…with trees and a stream and a playground and grassy areas.  It was the first time I’d been there and that taste of nature and especially trees and that very playable stream just won me over!  I love that Tracy has birthday parties, and I especially loved this year’s!

I’ve continued to successfully accomplish my goal this month!

Week 1: We went to a splash pad and made bird houses!  (actually, our hot water heater went bad (boo) and Brad worked from home while we had it replaced so he made the bird house with them.  It still counts!)

Week 2: We went to Tracy Aviary and took apart a radio to see what was inside!

Week 3: We went to Wheeler Farm and made boats for sailing at Tracy’s party!

It’s been a particularly good month!  We’ve also booked our vacation rental for a nice, big, trip next June to…..Hawaii!

And, we’re starting to gear up for school in less than a month!  Eek!  We’re starting to accumulate the lunch boxes, waterbottles, a uniform attire.  We’re looking forward to finding out about Kyle’s teacher and school supplies in less than two weeks!