family circa 2010

 We had our family photos taken last weekend--these are three of my favorites.  More to come.

 





























 
photos courtesy of kim davis photography

oh well

Dear friends--too busy soaking up my babies to even upload pictures from my camera of our really wonderful weekend.  Lighting the garden on fire and roasting marshmallows the size of our hands.  So fun.  Pictures someday.

Life is good. 

PS--I am a Halloween Grinch.  We are *probably* skipping out on our ward's trunk or treat, because I hate the assembly line "gimme some candy" feeling, where nobody even bothers to say "trick-or-treat," they just shuffle by with outthrust pillowcase, and our neighborhood trick-or-treat isn't until Sunday night, which is sad because I love trick-or-treating to about ten houses and then coming home and eating scones and cider, but...it's Sunday.  Do you think my kids will forever remember their childhood where their mom made them caramel corn, but they had no sackful of candy like the rest of the Western world?  I hope they're not too scarred.

What's your take on Halloween?  Do you go all out? 

photo update from the last three weeks

When my parents and sister Rosalind visited over Conference weekend three weeks ago, we went on a beautiful (chilly!) walk Sunday morning before the first session.  Fall is my very favorite outdoorsy time of year, and I've been trying to get out as a family as much as we can.  A couple of nights ago Neil and I took the children down by campus to where all the students live in these huge old homes with enormous trees that shed leaf piles that go totally unraked until their landlords stop by; we played for an hour in the piles of leaves all over the sidewalks and grass.  Our favorite point was when Isaac rolled completely off the sidewalk and into the street (not that there was much distinguishing between the two in the knee-high piles of leaves!) and his eyes got big and he said, "Whooooaaaa!"

Anyway...some more pictures from that walk in early October (three days after Neil's bike crash, which is why he's a little dinged up).

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, this pregnancy has been pretty great--except for crippling fatigue.  Fortunately my children are more than happy to spend yet another day lying on the floor reading stories all morning and playing Legos.  It's actually been really nice, in many ways, except for the day that I fell asleep on the floor after dinner and Juliet & Isaac took turns sitting on my head and I still slept through it. 

Neil took this picture on the first day that I said, "I feel like myself again" (although don't let the picture deceive you, because Neil is the one who actually made the pizza). 

But most days are still pretty good, as long as I get an insane amount of sleep.  (Please disregard the fact that, as you can see below, makeup is not happening very often). 

 Walking in to our library to see this made my heart turn over.  Are they not the darlingest little bookworms?

And Isaac has passed the fifteen-month mark.  Boy, is he a character.  He calls Neil "Mam!" and then laughs like crazy at Neil's frustrated," No! Not Mam! Da-da!" (although he will call Neil after Neil leaves for work in the morning and he says, "Bye Da!" at the closed door).  He loves, loves, loves cuddling and being held, and will turn into a shrieking limpet if you do not pick him up immediately.  Which makes making dinner very very hard.  He is a happy little man as long as one of his preferred adults is sitting on the floor where he can come and snuggle if he wants to, so he generally will go play by himself for two minutes, climb back in a lap, snuggle down and say something happily, then run off again to play, back to snuggle, etc. 

The girls have an interesting relationship with him.  Abigail is very motherly (right here she's trying to teach him to do baby yoga, which was her own idea), and Jules and Isaac are either the best of friends or...they are emphatically not.  Depends on the moment. 

Also...he is just the darling.  As are they all. Some days I wonder if we'll ever all be healthy at the same time (right now two of the three are on antibiotics) or if our house will ever get clean, or if I'll ever get to x project that I need to do, but I am just so grateful for my little people.  And even if we are all sick today, and I have no intention of changing out of my pajamas until I go running today, there are few things as downright lovely than cuddling children in fuzzy pajamas while we read stories and eat grapes...all day long. 

last one at Bloom

My final exercise post is up at Bloom today.  And since my sister Elise says it was too easy to miss the announcement in the last post, we're expecting our fourth baby in May.  (Happy, Elise? :-)

the update we've been waiting to post

So I have been SO excited to get our race photos back.  And then when I clicked on the link, guess what--no pictures of me. I searched through all 5000 "lost and found" pictures and found exactly one, where I look like I am about to trip over my own feet.  Awesome, right?

Neil got some pretty good ones (lucky!!) so here's a link to his.


If you look in the background of the first picture, I'm behind him to the left (gray pants, pink shirt, purple shirt tied around my waist) and in the second picture just ahead of him (gray pants, purple shirt). 

I was really frustrated that I didn't have a photo of myself crossing the finish line.  Bah!


So Abigail, sweet little lady that she is, drew a picture of our race to console me. 

And here it is for you.  But wait!  Let's get a little zoom action on that. 

That's right, my friends--baby number 4 has been my running buddy for the last ten weeks.  We couldn't be happier to welcome this new little lovekin next May.  So excited!!  I must say that so far this pregnancy has been wonderful. 

And now that we're officially "telling," here's the link to the race recap.

half-marathon

I was going to wait to fully post about this until I have pictures, but since everyone keeps asking, yes, we did run the half on Saturday.  It was awesome.  I felt fantastic, and we chipped seven and a half minutes (!!!) off our time from the first one we ran in April.  Final chip time was 1:58:54--I was so excited to break that 2-hour mark!

More details later. 

Interview for the Mormon Women Project

For the past four or five months, I've been working with the Mormon Women Project, which seeks to record the diversity and faith among the women of the LDS church.  If you're not familiar with the project, it is a collection of interviews (which we were just told will eventually be harvested for the Church Archives, which I think is so exciting!) with women all over the globe.

This week's interview is one I conducted with one of the women I admire most.  About five minutes after I first met Catherine, I thought, "This is what I want to be like when I grow up."  She is brilliant, witty, spunky, courageous, and very chic.  She has also had some incredibly difficult life experiences and come through them with so much faith, grace and dignity. 

It was an incredible act of courage for her to share her life story.  (I don't know that I would have been able to in her place--I cried throughout the last half of the interview.  So professional, right?!) 

I would appreciate it SO much if you would take a moment to not only read the interview, but to leave a comment--this was something that was difficult for her to do, and I would just love to have a whole bunch of kind and supportive comments.  Please. :-)

Oh, and since I didn't ever link it yesterday, you can read my latest exercise post at Bloom here. 

my kids are going to grow up as weirdies

Isaac was on daily breathing treatments from June 20-October 1st.  We rejoiced when we did the last one. 

Today Juliet's pediatrician told me that Jooj needs some thrice-daily sessions with the nebulizer.  Blast--only seven days of freedom from that machine!

Here is what I did NOT expect:  that Isaac would be crazy insanely mad with jealousy.  But I guess it makes sense, since he was in love with his nebulizer masks and would often climb up to get one down and then wear it around the house.  He threw a tantrum the entire time I was "smoking" Juliet (as we call it around here).  Crazy little kid.  Seriously.  I've heard of some weird lovies, but a nebulizer mask?   Poor Isaac. 

oops

I realized right after I hit "publish" that I sounded a little pretentious in that last post.  I'm sorry.  What I wanted to convey is this:  I am stretched.  And exhausted.  I'm sorry if I sounded condescending and like I shun tasty crackers and look down on movie-watching tots. 

I need to only blog when I have happy things to say, right?  I have a whole camera full of beautiful pictures of my extended family from my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary party, from my family's Conference weekend get-together, and just daily life with the kids, but of course that hasn't made it here yet. Or I could take pictures of Juliet's first-ever haircut, which she restyled as soon as I turned away to scoop up the discarded hair.  Don't leave scissors within reach. 

This is me, walking away from the computer where I have spent eight hours today (thanks to playdates, naptimes, and a husband who let me just buckle down and work as soon as he walked in).  I'm going to bed.  No more blogging until I'm human again.

recipe for awesomeness

Most of the time it's not that bad teaching a couple of classes in my "off hours" when the children are asleep.  I've finally managed to mentally separate the two, so I just don't even worry about teaching when I'm cooking or reading stories or building a pioneer fort.  Teaching is reserved for other times.

But project-grading weeks are hard.  Really, really hard.  Every minute that the children are asleep goes to frantically grading.  All of the things I would normally do during that time get pushed to the side (which means my bathrooms need to be cleaned, I haven't worn makeup in three days, my kitchen floor is sticky, there's a stack of unopened mail, and my beloved books are languishing on my nightstand).  I don't know how many hours I've logged this week, but I can't wear my contacts anymore because my eyes aren't focusing properly.  Oh, and the half-marathon is next week. 

Over the last couple of days the kids have started coming down with colds.  Isaac is only happy when he's in my lap (which means we've had lots of quality time together, but cooking dinner to the earsplitting toddler shrieks of death is not fun).  Today I finally gave in and let Juliet watch The Little Mermaid today during Isaac's nap, rather than trying to convince her to somehow stay quietly in her room and go to sleep. My inventiveness for fun things to do in her room for an hour is exhausted at this point.  Of course, Isaac woke up from his nap an hour early, so I let both of them sit on the floor eating Goldfish watching our teeny tiny little screen while I typed crazy-fast comments on the last paper before I forgot everything I needed to say.  Novelty is the only attraction, I suppose...I can't remember the last time when they watched a movie. 

So here you've got it:

My kids are watching a movie (something I bend over backwards trying to avoid)...

...eating processed snacks (so much for my Goldfish ban)...

...dripping snot mixed with Goldfish crumbs onto the carpet, the vacuuming of which was the only household chore (aside from washing dishes) that I managed to accomplish today.

Don't you think my life is glamorous?  And exciting? 

Weeks like this make me realize just how much of a blessing it is that I normally DO have so much time with my children and my home and all the things that I really love. 

and now if you'll excuse me, I want to go watch Cinderella with my drippy-nosed friends.  Maybe we'll pop some popcorn and really make a festival out of this, because I happen to quite like Cinderella and popcorn and chubby cuddly babies. 

elsewhere

Over at Bloom again today on exercise.  I find this somewhat ironic since I had to give myself a serious pep talk to crawl out of bed this morning for a freezing-cold 6 am run.  Nothing quite like being scared silly by waving grasses and blowing leaves--talk about adrenaline!

update and thank you

Thank you all so much for your prayers on Neil's behalf and kind comments on the last post.  Happily, he is doing MUCH better; the cuts on his arms, hands, and face are healing well (he should be able to have the stitches removed tomorrow).  He seemed to bounce back pretty quickly from the concussion and he's been talking lucidly since.  :-)  We are very, very, very blessed in that there doesn't seem to be any long-term memory loss; he is still numb on the left side of his face, but hopefully the feeling there will come back.

We did find the missing piece to his bike; he'd left his bike on campus overnight on Wednesday since he needed the space in the car to drive the missionaries to our house for dinner.  So we went to campus and found that the axle and all its components were laid neatly to the side of the place where he'd parked his bike that night.  Since it would be virtually impossible for everything to spontaneously fall out at once and still be linked together, we're assuming that someone just removed it as a prank.  An extremely expensive and scary prank.

If you want to see a photo of Neil's crazy bandage/headdress, check out the front page of the campus newspaper here.

this evening

What I had planned for tonight:

A leisurely dinner with the kids
A walk through the woods (maybe to feed the ducks?)
Grading
Early bedtime--SO exhausted all day

What actually happened:

Spent the last six hours in the emergency room.

Here's the short version:  somebody took (or it somehow detached itself and walked away?) the axle from Neil's bike while he was at work.  When he was crossing an incredibly busy street near campus--where there have been pedestrian deaths from oblivious drivers--the front wheel fell off his bike and he was thrown over the handlebars out into traffic.  He managed to drag himself to the curb before he blacked out.  When he woke up, he was covered in blood and surrounded by passersby who'd seen the whole thing; they called 911.  Fortunately one of the guys walking by was also trained in emergency medicine.  The students all stayed with him until I got there.   I had just walked in the door (at the library with the kids) when I heard the phone ringing and answered it to hear a very confused Neil telling me, "The paramedics fixed me...can you hear me?  I got my new jeans really bloody.  There's just a lot of blood, but they fixed me up."  Which of course was terrifying to hear, because he was not exactly coherent. 

We went right over to urgent care; they told us it would be at least an hour wait, so we took the kids home and called a friend to come stay with them.  Neil changed into a set of clothes that weren't covered in blood and I cut away the gauze that was completely covering his head (and scaring the heck out of the kids, who were absolutely terrified.  As was I when I first saw him.  Removing the massive bandages and cleaning off the blood helped a lot). Then we went back to urgent care, where we waited for two hours and tried to remove the rocks and gravel from his skin.  I noticed that his pupils were unevenly dilated and he was really nauseous, when I tracked down a nurse she finally got the doctor to come look at him, who came in and immediately ordered an ambulance to take him to the emergency room.  Following that ambulance with my husband inside was not one of the highlights of this year.  

So we spent about three hours in the ER (trying to keep someone with a concussion awake by playing Phase 10 is interesting); they X-rayed his chest, which had been pummelled by the handlebars, and took several CAT scans of his head and jaw and neck.  (Six hours after the accident, he still does not have feeling in his jaw).  They stitched up his chin, which had a really ugly laceration--really nasty--and scrubbed again at all the rocks and gravel.  Apparently some of it was driven in deeply enough that he may have permanent black marks on his elbows. 

Funniest/saddest part of the night:  the nurse asked him what the date was, and he said, "Oh...we're not on a date. I wanted Rachael to go to the library tonight and have some quiet time to herself, but then I fell off my bike so that couldn't happen.  We're playing cards right now to keep me awake, but this isn't really a date.  Not like a real date, because we're at the hospital, so that wouldn't be a very fun date."  Then I said, "Um, honey, she wants to know what the date is today, like what day it is" and he said, "Oh!  I'm sorry!  November 30.  No.  October 30.  Yes, October 30.  Nine-thirty, October 30, nine-thirty.  Wait...that's not the same thing, is it?  I don't even know what the date is when I feel okay."  (Now I can remind him of this when he teases me about telling the nurse "I do feel a bit discombobulated" before I totally passed out while having my wisdom teeth out.) 

The short story is that he has a concussion, but no fractures.  He ended up with three stitches in his chin, which has a really ugly gash (it kind of looks chewed).  Both his elbows are very lacerated and raw, and he has punctures and abrasions all over his arms and hands.  His face looks like he was in a fistfight; his jaw and browbone are swollen and we were told to expect massive bruising.  His cheek and eyebrow are lacerated and bloody.  We were SO fortunate that his injuries were comparatively mild, since he landed right on the side of his face and elbows.  No shattered bones.  And I am so, so, so grateful to the people who sprinted over to him to get him out of traffic and started taking care of him right away.  And to our friend Andrea, who dropped everything and came over immediately to take care of our kids for the next six hours.  What a blessing. As is the fact that Neil's laptop landed on him, not the road.

But on the other hand, as Neil commented very feelingly, if I found the person who took that axle out of his bike, I would punch them in the face.  With a brick.