Easter Morning

We stayed at Kirk & Shalisa's house, and my kids were excited to get their Easter baskets.  They all got new movies (badly needed for our long car rides), and the 3 little kids got a Beanie Boo, while Kason got a book to read.  We snapped some pictures of the kids on our way to church.

Easter at the Cave

We spent Easter weekend in Monticello, which was extra fun because all of Tige's siblings were there. We visited and played games, and especially enjoyed spending Saturday out at the Cave. We enjoyed a delicious potluck lunch, playing bball in the cave, a hike, rapelling, Easter egg Hunt, rolling eggs down the hill, and target shooting.

Coloring Eggs

In preparation for our Easter trip to Monticello, I cooked 6 dozen eggs to be rolled down the rock hill at the cave.   I waaaaay overcooked my hard boiled eggs, but I figured since they were just rolling them down the hill and wasting them, I didn't care that they were like cement.  I have to say my eggs held up remarkably well being thrown down the rocks, and my yolks were intact! :)  When we were finished coloring the eggs, the kids said "that's all?"  Sheesh.  I usually only make a dozen or 2, so you'd think 72 was enough.

 

Christmas

We went to Cedar City for a Taylor Christmas this year.  I didn't get a lot of pictures.  We did the nativity on Christmas Eve with our family, Clark's family, and Andy's family.  On Christmas morning it was just our family and Andy's family with Grandma & Grandpa.  David's family and Jeff's family came after Christmas. 

 

 Abby got a cute kitchen set from Santa with some food accessories.

Taylor got a barn...

 

And Kason got the Nintendo 3DS that he's been saving his money to buy for about 2 years.  He was a happy camper.

 

Abby wasn't feeling well on Christmas day.  Here's some snuggle time with cousin Ryan.  This began our month-long bout with sickness and flu.

 

 We have never been more aware than this Christmas how very grateful we are that our Savior was born.  We reflected as we celebrated his birth how fortunate we are that He atoned for our sins, that He carries our sorrows, and that we have the ability to repent and be forgiven. 

Visit with Santa

Santa visited our ward party and we were able to snap a quick picture of all 3 kids with him.  Then they took turns talking to him and getting a treat. 

When Abby's turn was over, she seemed hesisitant to leave and I had to practically carry her off the stage.  When we headed out to the car, she was really pouty.  I asked her what was wrong, and she folded her arms and said "Santa didn't give me my present!"  I had to explain to her that it wasn't Christmas yet and that he'd bring her present in a few weeks.  She didn't really get the concept.  Why didn't he just give it to her in person while she was on his lap?  Too cute.

A Memorable Thanksgiving

We had a bit of a horrendous Thanksgiving holiday in Monticello.  I couldn't have scripted it and it was really rather unbelievable.

We headed to Monticello Wednesday morning.  Taylor had drank way too much water at the beginning of the drive, and 5 minutes before Richfield, he said “I wet!”  We stopped in Richfield, and when I got him out of the car,  his clothes were completely covered in pee from his arm pits to his shoes, front & back.  Then Tige discovered the carseat was completely saturated with pee all the way through the padding.  We had to strip the car seat apart, dig him out some new clothes, and put him in Abby’s car seat while she went without one.

Then we proceeded down the road and stopped at Wilson Arch to hike (halfway between Moab and Monticello).  We have never stopped here before.  Even Tige and I have never stopped there in our lives, so figured it was time.  It was warm and sunny and seemed like the perfect day to stop.  We hiked up to the arch, took a couple of pictures, and then preceded down the trail to the car. 

Here's some photos:

We started down a really rocky way, and a guy said “hey, it’s much easier over here.”  So Tige had Taylor by the hand and I had Abby by the hand, and we went over to the left a bit to a little easier terrain.  We let Kason continue to go down the rocky boulders.  When we got closer to the bottom, we saw Kason sitting on a rock with that same stranger crying.  Tige picked Taylor up and ran down  to Kason, and then yelled up to me “his arm is broken.”

We didn’t know whether to go to the hospital in Monticello or Moab, but decided on Monticello since it was a few minutes closer.  Tige broke every law imaginable getting to Monticello (excessive speeding, passing on double lines,  passing in turning lanes, etc).  We got to the hospital around 5:30 p.m. and  Tige showed me his arm.  It was a compound (open) fracture with one of the bones poking out of his arm.  Poor kid.  I really can’t imagine how badly it must have hurt.  The xray confirmed that BOTH bones in his right arm were broken a few inches above the wrist.  The one ortho guy from Cortez that can handle this type of surgery was on vacation, so we had to go to Grand Junction, Colorado.  Ugh. 

Tige and his dad took Kason to Grand Junction and I stayed in Monticello with the other 2 kids.  Kason didn’t get into surgery until 11:30 p.m. and was in surgery until 1 a.m.  They said he would need 4 antibiotic treaments through the IV because risk of infection was very high, and we didn't anticipate him being able to leave the hospital until around 6:00 p.m.  But they moved those antibiotic doses up and finally let them leave the hospital around 1:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving day (I'm assuming Tige badgered them to death).  We finally got to eat our Thanksgiving dinner at 5:00 p.m., but Kason was in too much pain and too doped up to eat or even play the kids Bingo game.  L  He went to bed and slept all afternoon and evening, waking up every few hours for a pain pill.  All the kids besides Kason played the annual Bingo game and had a great time.  Abby's favorite prize by far was water color paints.  I had no idea she'd enjoy it so much.  She went through an entire set of paints in just a few days.

 

Also on Thursday morning, JaNae informed us that Gavin and Gaige had been up throwing up in the night, but seemed to be feeling fine now.  She thought it must have been something they ate.  Tige's mom let Gavin come and play with the cousins all day while JaNae and Matt were at their house preparing the turkey and potatoes.

On Friday, Lyon, Matt, Tige, Teina, and I went out target shooting.  Tige just bought a couple of new guns (2 pistols and 2 shotguns), and we wanted to try them out.  This is the first time in my 15 year marriage that I’ve been invited to go shooting with them.  (and the first time I’ve shot a gun in over 20 years).  It was fun!  I wasn’t a very good shot with the pistols, but I hit a couple of clay pigeons with the shot gun and did ok with Lyon's colt 22.  Anyway, this was a fun outing after all the trauma with Kason. We also brought Kason’s BB gun with us, but he didn’t get to use it.

Friday night we played our adult bingo game and a couple of card games.  Then JaNae got sick on Friday night and started puking.  Saturday morning she called and said Matt was also sick and puking.  So Janet immediately goes over and gets Gavin & Gaige since Matt & JaNae were in bed.  A few hours later, while Janet and I were getting the kid’s gingerbread houses ready to decorate, Evie puked all over the bathroom door, floor, and walls.  Tige and I look at each other, and Tige said “let’s get out of here.”  So we packed up our stuff and got ready to leave a day early.  We decorated the gingerbread houses (they were super cute), and had a bite of lunch.  As we are eating, Evie goes into the hall and pukes all over the floor and wall again!  We gave Tige's mom and dad hugs, apologized for bailing early, and headed out.

 

We got just passed Green River with Taylor taking a nice nap that whole way, then he suddenly wakes up and projectile pukes all over the van.  Kason was sitting next to him and tried to get a little puke bag by his mouth with his one good arm, but it was too late.  Taylor’s shirt and pants were covered in puke as was his car seat (that we’d just cleaned and washed from the pee incident above).  It was on the back of Tige’s seat and the carpet of the van, etc.  Lovely.  Really lovely.  We pull over on I-15 and strip him down and wipe everything off the best we can.  Thank heavens for the inventor of babyh wipes.  Again, we have to strip the car seat and put him in Abby’s seat.  Then we trade places, with Kason in the front seat, Abby in the back, and me next to Taylor with Kason’s hospital puke bucket in my hands. 

Taylor proceeded to puke FIVE more times in the next few hours as we got home.  Most of them I managed to catch in the bucket pretty well.  It was completely miserable and gross.  It took everything I had to not start puking myself, since I’ve been pukey with pregnancy anyway.  And the van reeks now.  Time for a professional cleaning.

That’s the end of our Thanksgiving saga.  Not our best holiday vacation!  Out of the 16 people at Thanksgiving, 12 of us got the puke disease (thankfully Kason and Abby were some of the lucky 4 who didn't get it).   It was obvously a very contagious little bug.  

Kason has a blue and red striped cast that he’ll have to wear about 8 weeks.

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween this year with lots of candy!  We carved pumpkins on Saturday, which was only 4 days before Halloween, but was too soon because they were already shriveling by Halloween on our nice weather.  Abby wasn't scared of the guts, which is great.  I went and helped Kason's class at school carve pumpkins, and there were some huge 8-9 year old babies that were scared of the guts.

 

There aren't too many kids in our neighborhood, so as we went trick-or-treating to ward members, they loaded the kids up! It was extra fun this year because Taylor (the Tigger) "gets it" and would say trick-or-treat and then try to walk in the house as they were giving him candy. 

 

Abby was especially cute in her Cinderella costume.  What a sweet little princess she is.  And Kason, our ninja, wanted to trick-or-treat with friends instead of us.  sniff, sniff.  He stuck with us pretty well, but ventured off at the end.  But then when his siblings got full-size candy bars from some ward members and he didn't (because he wasn't with us and they didn't know who he was), he realized that sometimes being with mom and dad isn't so bad!

 

 Look at this awesome SHARK jack-o-lantern that mom, er, I mean Kason carved.

Ready for candy

They love that dad will join in on the fun.  He has it easy because he just wears his work clothes trick-or-treating.  He also brought along this lovely bed pan with some "treats" in it.  He held it out to all our neighbors and they loved it!  He's so fun!