Happy New Year!

We did this last year and had fun answering all the questions. It was even more fun to look back at our answers from last year the other day. I don't normally make New Year's Resolutions, so I loved being able to see that we had accomplished most of the goals we set for last year! I changed a few of the questions to keep it interesting. So here we go again...

Ryan--age 33
Favorite food: Big Borderito
Favorite fruit: Navel Orange
Favorite drink: Diet Mountain Dew
Favorite toy: Rubik's Cube
Favorite t.v. show: Fringe
Favorite game: Flux
Favorite Restaurant: On The Border
Favorite Animal: Jackalope
If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? Either NYC or DC
Favorite thing to do with my family: Go Hiking
Favorite memory from 2009: The month of September! That was while we were playing so much after my graduation but before the onslaught of illness that hit us.
What are your wishes/goals for 2010? Learn Java & get rid of those love handles

Lindsay--age 33 (too old apparently--someone asked my age the other day and I honestly couldn't remember if I was 32 or 33!)
Favorite food: right now...Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Shake
Favorite fruit: peaches
Favorite drink: Diet Coke, preferably 64 oz. from the fountain with ice. :)
Favorite toy: my weight room
Favorite t.v. show: The Mentalist
Favorite game: I don't like playing games. Except mind games.
Favorite Restaurant: On the Border
Favorite Animal: Golden Retriever
If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? Hawaii
Favorite thing to do with my family: go hiking
Favorite memory from 2009: Playing in the river while hiking in Castlewood Canyon and dressing up in disguise to do secret acts of service this Christmas.
What are your wishes/goals for 2010? Get my financial house in order--master Quicken, be diligent and consistent with our budget, save more, spend less and be in control.


Isaac--age 8, third grade
Favorite food: burritos
Favorite fruit: papaya
Favorite drink: Root Beer
Favorite toy: Mr. Dum Dum Face (huh?)
Favorite t.v. show: Mr. Men Show
Favorite game: Flux
Favorite Restaurant: Casa Bonita
Favorite Animal: Anything with sharp teeth
If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? China or Planet X (huh??)
Favorite thing to do with my family: play games
Favorite memory from 2009: getting baptized
What are your wishes/goals for 2010? Play 100 games of Flux with Dad.

Audrey--age 6, Kindergarten
Favorite food: hamburgers
Favorite fruit: peaches
Favorite drink: Cranberry Juice
Favorite toy: Black Sparkles and Jennifer (her webkins)
Favorite t.v. show: Arthur
Favorite game: Tag, you're it
Favorite Restaurant: Wendy's
Favorite Animal: Zebra
If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? Casa Bonita
Favorite thing to do with my family: have Family Home Evening
Favorite memory from 2009: going to Cold Stone with Mrs. Cornell (her kindergarten teacher)
What are your wishes/goals for 2010? Learn to tie my shoes.

Chloe--age 6, Kindergarten
Favorite food: cereal
Favorite fruit: grapes
Favorite drink: Cranberry Juice
Favorite toy: Snowy (her webkin)
Favorite t.v. show: Dora
Favorite game: Slamwich
Favorite Restaurant: Casa Bonita
Favorite Animal: Cheetah
If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? Disneyland
Favorite thing to do with my family: have a family party
Favorite memory from 2009: going to Disneyland
What are your wishes/goals for 2010? Go to a movie.

Lincoln--age 2 (Most of these he was able to answer with little to no help, which explains some of the randomness of the answers...)
Favorite food: cheese
Favorite fruit: strawberries
Favorite drink: juice
Favorite toy: Buzz Lightyear
Favorite t.v. show: Buzz Lightyear
Favorite game: Hide and Seek
Favorite Restaurant: Cheese Pizza
Favorite Animal: Elmo
If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? Disneyland
Favorite thing to do with my family: play
Favorite memory from 2009: Buffaloes
What are your wishes/goals for 2010? juice

100 days

Haven't been doing much blogging lately. We've been sick. I know, what a SHOCK!! Ugh.

The girls are celebrating their 100th day of school this week so we had to collect 100 things and take a picture of them with these things (don't you love kindergarten homework--guess who does most of it??) Anyway--here are their pictures. Obviously not much is going on around here if I am blogging this!!

100 shoes--I didn't think we were big shoe people.
100 books--that was easy. Those were not even close to all the books on the girls' shelf.

New Shoes

My mom sent me money for Christmas to buy some new shoes I had been wanting. I got the Merrells I wanted and had some left over. The cute, young girls I work with suggested I get some Keens. Here is what they look like...
Cute, huh? I'll admit, I feel a little young wearing them, but that isn't a bad thing! So after I got them, I tried them on and asked the girls if they liked my new shoes. They said they did. I said, "They are kind of like my own ruby red slippers." They said, "No, Mom, they are like Arthur."
Huh. Not exactly the look I was going for. But there you have it.

The new obsession

And I mean obsession.

Buzz Lightyear. (This picture was taken while he was sick and had fallen asleep in costume with his new friend by his side.)

Lincoln cannot get enough of him. All we have watched, read or talked about for the last week is Buzz Lightyear. You can't just call him Buzz, either. It's Buzz Lightyear. At least the obsession with Bob the Builder seems to have passed. I can stomach multiple viewings of Toy Story. Bob the Builder, not so much.

Thinking of changing the name of our blog...

to General Hospital.

We certainly have more than enough drama.

Lincoln was in the hospital all day again yesterday after an asthma attack. We are all exhausted. We saw his doctor again today and she was able to answer some questions. Like, "I thought he was on controller medicine so this wouldn't happen again." Her response: the controller medication prevented it from being much, much worse. He wasn't even admitted this time! Me: "Why does this keep happening?" Her: He just caught another virus that triggered the attack. It is that time of the year. Me: "Was I overreacting by calling the on-call doctor and taking him to the ER yesterday?" Her: Absolutely not. The sooner they can get him on steroids the better. (I always like hearing that I did the right thing, because I do tend to overreact.)

Anyway--this is what I am getting: He has asthma all the time. When he gets sick it triggers severe respiratory issues that are somewhat lessened by the twice daily controller medications, but they don't cure the asthma. Anyway, here is my real question: Should I just ban him from going to nursery altogether so that I don't have to keep paying out an arm and a leg to take him to the ER every few weeks???

p.s. I don't know why this is in such large font, but I don't have the energy to deal with it anymore.

Resolutions

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to comment more on people's blogs. I know. You are all very impressed by my high aspirations. I figure if I write it on here, I might be more apt to actually do it. So be looking for my tidbits of wit and wisdom more often!

(That is only one of my resolutions. I do have more ambitious ones as well.)

Potty Trained!!!!!

Can I say that?! Is it possible?! I don't even know myself...but Lincoln appears, for all intents and purposes, to be potty trained! So easy, he almost made up for the girls...


We started last Monday. My potty training methods are simple:
1. Wait until all parties are ready--no matter how long that takes.
2. Go cold turkey--Pull-ups are for wimps!
3. Nudity is key.

Lincoln has had maybe five accidents since we started--two because he couldn't get his pants down fast enough, one because we were at the zoo and couldn't find the bathroom, one while he was sick with the stomach flu and one at a friends house where he was too caught up in playing to tell us in time. He spends all day at home naked, but I frequently hear the toilet flush and he comes out and tells me he just went potty. AMAZING!!! No more diapers!!! (At least while he is awake. He comes from a long time of bed-wetters, so I'm not expecting that to change for years. But still!!)

WHAT just happened??!!??

We had a great day yesterday--everyone was happy, reveling in our new 9:00 church schedule. We relaxed, played games, baked and enjoyed the day together. Everyone was doing fine. Then all of a sudden they started to fall like dominoes. First Isaac. I wondered why he didn't eat much dinner. As I was reading to the kids at night I noticed a horrible grimace on his face. He made it to the bathroom just in time. Within 30 minutes Ryan was also throwing up. Chloe came to me about 8:30 and said her stomach hurt, so I sent her back to bed with a bowl. She woke me up about 10:00. After I got her set up with the boys downstairs, I went to strip her bed. I looked over at Audrey sleeping soundly and thought, "I should probably get her a bowl." But I decided not too. Oops. She woke me up about 11:30, screaming and covered in vomit. I got her in the bath, stripped her bed and ran another load of laundry. I got her set up downstairs and finished cleaning up and went back to bed. Lincoln made it until 5:00 am--although I think he had thrown up a few times in the night without waking me up. That was considerate.

They were all up most of the night. My poor little family. We racked our brains this morning trying to figure out if they had eaten something that I didn't and couldn't figure it out. Finally I called my sister-in-law to see if anyone there was sick since we had been with them all day Saturday. I guess EVERYONE who was at the baptism has it. Except for me and my niece. Hopefully we are immune!!!

And sorry to anyone we have now passed it along to...

Here they are last night around midnight I think. Back to the laundry I go!

What we have been up to...

I haven't had much time to blog, but wanted to remember some of the other fun things we have been up to in the last week or so...
On New Year's Eve day I took the kids over to "Little Monkey Business" which is an ingenious place. It is basically a coffee shop with a giant enclosed playground inside of it. So the kids ran wild and played while I relaxed and read. Ryan was working on a project at home. Here is a shot of the kids in the art room. They never slowed down long enough for me to get a picture of them in the play area.


On New Year's Eve evening we went to some friends' house to celebrate. When Amy called me to invite us, I only accepted after I told her we don't actually stay up until midnight. I don't even remember the last time I did that and honestly don't really have plans to ever do it again. It's just not a big deal to me. Luckily they felt the same way, so we had fun counting down and celebrating at 7:27 pm that night. We gave the kids all noise makers and shot off little bottle confetti things. The kids had a blast. I regained my hearing about four hours later...
"And then, oh the noise, oh the noise, noise, noise, NOISE!!!!" Happy New Year!! (somewhere)

On New Year's Day evening we went to see the zoo lights with some friends. It was COLD, but we had a good time!

Then, on the 2nd, we went down to Colorado Springs to see Eli's baptism. Once again, we all had a great time hanging out with family.

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!