The Nightmare after Christmas

While taking down the Christmas tree this afternoon, I discovered this.

One of our many ornament casualties--someone has a slightly macabre sense of humor and decided to hang it even without it's body. It's Christmas meets the French Revolution.

It goes right along with some other incidents this season. We have many different Nativity sets--a few are just for the kids to play with. My kids are pretty hard on toys, and these are no exception. A recent conversation...
Isaac: "Mom! I just found baby Jesus' body!"
Me: "Dang it, I threw away His head a few days ago."

Wishing you a Healthy New Year!

As I drove to the doctor this morning (just had to sneak in one more visit before the end of the year...) I was reminiscing on the year 2009 and all it had to offer us. Here is the list I compiled:

-Three episodes of severe Bronchiolitis
-One Advanced case of Basal Cell Carcinoma
-Two bouts of pneumonia
-Two raging cases of Swine Flu
-Two out-patient surgeries
-Two trips to the Emergency room
-Two overnight hospitalizations
-A diagnosis of Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome (that came at today's visit)
-One CAT scan
-Four chest x-rays
-Three oxygen tanks
-Countless breathing treatments
-At least seven hundred trips to the doctor
-About a mortgage payment in co-pays and prescription meds

It's been a crazy year! I couldn't have survived without the support of such kind and generous friends who have helped us out in so many ways. Here's hoping they don't need to help us out quite so much next year...

Christmas

We had a very merry Christmas morning. The kids were up bright and early and we jumped right into it. I decided that this year we were having a "minimalist Christmas." I wanted to focus more on the experience and less on the stuff. I spent very little money on gifts (all garage sales and e-bay) and we tried to do lots of fun activities together throughout the month--especially service-oriented things. I don't know if the kids really got it this year, but I hope they will look back with fond memories on what we did, not what they got. I know I will always cherish the memory of dressing up in disguises (including Lincoln in a dress) to go anonymously deliver goodies to people. Instead of having the kids buy each other gifts, they each chose something of theirs to give to a sibling (or they did an act of service.) The older kids painted pictures that I put in inexpensive frames for Ryan to take to work. We all worked hard on a big surprise for Ryan's Christmas present--I cleaned out and organized the crawl space which was an absolute disaster ever since we started finishing the basement. It was a good Christmas.

Here is the before...

Lincoln was thrilled with the Winnie the Pooh toothpaste he found in his stocking!All Audrey wanted from Santa was an Indian doll (she is obsessed with indians lately.) He came through with flying colors! (Thanks to e-bay!!)

Oh, Santa really knows me well.The aftermath...AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!

Justin and Sarah and their kids came down for a fun Christmas dinner. The kids played with their cousins and we all enjoyed playing and enjoying the evening together.

Exciting news!!

We are....


















dog-sitting!

(Fooled some of you, didn't I??)

We have been watching my friend's dog, Mika, since Wednesday and the kids have been in seventh heaven. It almost makes me think about getting a dog. Almost. She has added a whole new element to our daily workouts! Running three miles, with a dog, outside in six inches of fresh powder when it is 18 degrees outside on Christmas morning is not something I ever thought I would do, but I actually loved it. Once again, it almost makes me think about getting a dog. Almost. She is a great dog and has been a lot of fun for us over this break. One day I might cave. Might.

Twas the night before Christmas...

We spent most of Christmas Eve cleaning the house and getting it ready for the big day. I loved it! In the late afternoon we delivered more Christmas cookies and went to see a live nativity at a local church--with real camels!!

We came home and had our annual Shepherd's supper on the kitchen floor, opened new jammies and had donuts and chocolate milk before heading to bed.



Ryan and I had no extensive assembly to do, so we enjoyed a relaxing night watching a movie. We were excited to get a good night's sleep--only to be awakened at 4:00 am by Lincoln requesting candy! Merry Christmas! (More to come...)

CANDY!!!!

Today we went with some friends to the Hammond's Candy Factory in Denver. Perfect, since all Lincoln has asked Santa for is "Big Candy." We took a tour and saw how they made it and got some free samples, as well as a goodie bag from the "oops" candy bin (all we could afford--dang that stuff was expensive!)

In other news, we took Linky back to the doctor again this afternoon and they finally took him off oxygen! We still have it in the house in case he needs it, and we are checking on him often, but hopefully this will be it for a while. He is such a trooper--he got so good about dealing with that thing in his nose and telling us when he got stuck (as in his tubing got caught on some furniture or his disgruntled older sister put something heavy on his tubing because she was mad at him...) He really just adjusted to it and lived his life as normal. Although, today at the candy factory I heard a few kids referring to the little boy on the leash--I'm sure that would have gotten old after a while.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

It has asthma.

Although I, the lowly mother without the medical degree, have been saying it for the last eighteen months, it took a severe asthma attack requiring an overnight hospital stay and portable oxygen tank for the doctors to agree with me.

Lincoln has been diagnosed with asthma.
(He is not particularly fond of those things in his nose.)

Yesterday morning he woke up breathing very quickly and sucking air through his ribs. We immediately gave him a breathing treatment and I called the on-call doctor. After another treatment did nothing I loaded him up and took him to the ER. Thank goodness I did. When we got there his pulse-ox levels were in the low 80's (anything above 90 is okay, but you want as close to 100 as possible) and he was breathing almost 70 breaths a minute (you don't want over 40 in someone his size.) They immediately put him on oxygen, then did a chest x-ray, which came back negative for pneumonia. They decided to do another breathing treatment and then see how he did on "room air." Within about a minute after taking him off oxygen all sorts of alarms were going off and the nurse came rushing back in to put him back on the mask. He had dropped to the mid 70's. They then decided he had to be admitted to the hospital.

We got settled in to our room which was really nice. The Children's Hospitals here are awesome and this was no exception. I had been keeping Ryan updated on the situation all day. At around 2:30 he called to let me know that my incredible friends had "ganged up on him" at church, taken our kids for the night and the whole next day and kicked him out so he could come to the hospital with me. It was such a blessing. I wasn't at all worried about the other kids because they were in good hands and it was incredibly helpful to have Ryan there with me. Especially throughout the night when they had to wake Lincoln up every few hours to give him his meds. It was a very long night--especially the stretch between about 1:00 to 2:00 am when Lincoln cried, "Mommy, hold me right now" repeatedly. I finally gave in and rocked him to sleep, only to be woken up about 30 minutes later by the nurse with more medicine!!! Luckily he slept through it that time. (I didn't.)

This morning the doctor checked him out and decided to release us--but Lincoln is on constant oxygen and we have to take him back in to get checked out tomorrow. At least now that he has been diagnosed and had such a severe attack, I feel like they are taking things more seriously. He is now on daily controller medications, so hopefully nothing like this will ever happen again.

Finally asleep...
For the moment.

Here he is, happy to be home with his new BFF, "Tank."

Ice Ornaments

Here they are...

I think we will try them again tonight with a few modifications--like a string so you can actually hang them. I think they will look really cute hanging from our front porch.

Ten years!!

Happy Anniversary!

December 16th and 17th

Yesterday we started our Christmas Tree Crystals, but they take a while to grow, so I waited until today to post. Here is where we started...


And here they were a few minutes ago. I don't know if you can tell that the crystals have grown all over the bottoms of the trees. I think next time I will make the trees a little smaller.

Today we made ice ornaments, but those also won't be ready until tomorrow, so I will have to post a picture then.

We had a fun day today--kids have been running wild in this house literally all day long. Sometimes it is fun to just have a giant, wild playdate. The most we got up to was 8 kids at a time. But the kids have loved every minute of it.
Here are the girls (with their friends Avery and Emily) helping make even more Christmas cookies (I think we might set a family record this year.) They had also painted their faces, in case you are wondering what those strange bruise-like things are all over their faces.

December 15th

This afternoon we made a candy bar train to get us to the gingerbread house. Lincoln's favorite phrase of the day? "Just one more, Mommy, just one more..."
p.s. Please ignore the state of the girls' hair. I had a lazy day today after working until midnight last night!

December 13th and 14th

Yesterday we did our Gingerbread house. The kids absolutely love this tradition and I learned from last year's experience to assemble the house the night before, so it was much more enjoyable for all of us. In fact, I think I might make my own next year.

Today's advent activity was buying a present for a needy child. It was really fun to take the kids to the store with me and let them help pick out presents for someone else. The store I work at has adopted a family for Christmas so we got a few things for their two-year-old daughter, new baby and grandmother. I have been trying to get the kids more into the spirit of giving, and I think they really enjoyed it. Although the concept of a budget is still a bit out of their grasp though...if it had been up to them, that family would be having a really good Christmas!!

Here is our funny family picture that we took before going to church yesterday. Check out Lincoln's face! That is what he does when we say, "Smile!"

December 12th

Finish hanging the Christmas lights! The kids had fun "helping" Ryan with this--or just watching him up on the ladder. Every year we get a little more ambitious--next year we want to tackle the upper roof too. I still want to add lights in the upper bedroom windows, but we will see if I get to it.

Tonight we also went to a Polar Express party at Chick Fil'A. I don't know how that restaurant makes any money. They gave a free kids meal to any kid wearing their jammies tonight. Ryan and I don't really eat fast food, so we just got drinks, so in all we paid $3 for dinner! Plus, they really know how to throw a party! They had transformed one whole section of the dining room to look like the train car. They were giving away free hot chocolate and all the people that worked there were dressed like they were servers on the Polar Express. They gave each kid that walked in a tiny gift box that said, "Believe" and inside it was a jingle bell that they could wear. There was a conductor reading the story every hour and they even had a horse drawn wagon ride in the parking lot!! It was really crowded, of course, but a lot of fun!!

December 11th...Or, You might be a redneck if...

You Visit Santa.

I heard from one of the moms at gymnastics the other day that the best place to see Santa was at the Bass Pro Shop. Not one of the stores I frequent, but hey, I'll try anything once. It took us about 35 minutes to get over there, but it was well worth the drive. They had tons of fun activities for the kids to do--many of them were hunting related, but I tried to keep a positive attitude. The kids loved shooting rifles and dart guns at targets, "fishing" on the Wii and playing with remote control race cars and monster trucks. There were letters to write to Santa and he will be answering us with the e-mail address I provided! We also spent quite a bit of time roaming the store--trying out the four-wheelers, running through the tents, testing the boats and looking at hundreds and hundreds of dead animals. I guess you could think of it as a free museum. Or a homage to killing innocent animals for sport.

Check out the dead reindeer!

At least they kept the fish alive.
Brothers racing cars.
Lincoln found what he wants for Christmas!
Anyway, the kids had a blast and at the end we got in line to see Santa while they played in this fake snow area for at least 45 minutes. It was really well done and all FREE! I highly recommend it (unless you are a member of PETA.)

Disneyland...finally!

About a month ago, Ryan called me from work and told me he had to go on a business trip to California for the first week the kids were off track. UGH. I was not at all thrilled. Having all four kids home all the time is only remotely survivable if Ryan comes home and TAKES OVER every evening so I can regain some sanity. But in this day and economic climate I wasn't about to tell him he couldn't go on the business trip. Then I started thinking...and asking questions. Where in California is this trip? Only 15 minutes from Disneyland? Okay, we are coming, too.

We decided to surprise the kids. We were already in Utah for the wedding so we got in the car and told them we were taking a different route home. Two days later we pulled up to the happiest place on earth. Their reaction was not what I was expecting. Isaac just kept looking at me like he was thinking, "This looks like Disneyland, but there is no way they brought us to Disneyland." They were all too shocked to be screaming with excitement like I thought they would be. It was still awesome!

The trip went well! The kids and I hung out at the park from around 10:00 am until about 5:00 every day. Ryan would usually meet us for an early dinner and take the kids on as many "big kid" rides as they could hit before it was time to leave. It worked out perfectly and it was a great way to start our long winter break! Here are a few pics of the trip. (I didn't have our nice camera with us for most of it--I can only do so much and keeping track of my four kids, the stroller, the backpack and the camera was just too much! So I got a disposable camera for when we were alone and Ryan brought the nice one when he came at night...)

Our annual attempt to free the sword.
This was Lincoln's reaction to any dark part of any ride--he would "play dead." (He's not asleep.) It was hysterical! At the end of each ride, he immediately said, "More!" He was fun.

Autopia--one of our favorites!Waiting for the incredible Christmas parade to start.

This is the outside of our hotel.
Here is Linky's favorite person of all time--Handy Manny (or Dada Manny, as he calls him.) He is much bigger in real life than he is on t.v., though, and Lincoln got a little shy when we got up close.Hey, look! The word "California" contains all of our initials!!

Chloe

Ryan
Lindsay and Lincoln
Isaac
Audrey
I just have to say, Disneyland is incredible this time of the year!! They always do everything 150%, but I was shocked at how much they pull out all the stops at Christmas. Everything was beautifully decorated. "It's a Small World" was just amazing! There were virtually no lines and the weather was a balmy 70-75 degrees the whole time we were there. It was a great trip!