Year End Catch up

The last couple of months have kind of gone by and are blurred. So much has gone on, that I hate to wish a year away, but I'm looking forward to 2011. I wont go into all of it, but here a few of the highlights that made for an eventful end of 2010.
At the beginning October, Michael had shoulder surgery (he's had problems for years, rotator cuff stuff, bursitis, bone spurs, calcification... for those of you who may not know). So, we decided it was time to get it fixed. In a nutshell, and to spare details... He was in a sling for 6 weeks after that, but the following 2 months seemed to pretty much be filled up with Michael's post shoulder drama which landed him another 3 days in the hospital with a nasty bacterial infection, etc. Like I said, I'll spare you the details.
In the midst of that we had Thanksgiving...

Now, I normally don't take pictures on Thanksgiving... and this year was no exception. But the kids came home from school with the cutest pilgrim hats... so here they are with their pilgrim hats. Kate still talks about the "feast" she had in preschool.
Sam got his tonsils and adenoids removed... his adenoids were the biggest problem, they were so big they were blocking his airway and he was unable to breathe through his nose most of the time. His tonsils were taken out too, and they were big, but not the reason we did the surgery.

The hospital held a presurgery class where the kids came and they showed them the hospital, explained what would happen, etc. Kate was able to go and they got these cute little dolls with "special hospital pajamas" let them try out the slushee they'd get to have when they came out of surgery and answer any questions I had. So, this was probably the beginning and end of our good experience.
So the surgery happened on Dec 20, with plenty of time to recover before Christmas... right?! Well, depending on who you talked to, ranging from "it's rough" to "kids bounce back so fast!" Well, Sam didn't bounce back so fast. It has been a very rough 2 weeks.
Not to mention that the poor kid had to fast until 4 pm. (Our surgery was initially hours earlier and got bumped, which was miserable for the poor kid). It was kind of downhill from there. So, just like with Michael's shoulder surgery... ask us in a couple of months if we're glad we did it.

Christmas and Sam's birthday

Every year Michael's dad dresses up as Santa. On the years that it is our "year" for Christmas at Michael's house, instead of Christmas Eve we've gone up earlier than others for the Christmas dinner and Santa makes an appearance for our kids. So, Sam might have figured this out last year had Grandpa done it last year. Which he didn't, because last year it was Michael's brother, who we don't see all that often. So, this year... when we were up there on Christmas Eve and "Santa" came a knocking...

Sam noticed almost immediately that it wasn't Santa. It was Grandpa. Needless to say, he was horribly disappointed. He went into the other room and wanted NOTHING to do with "Santa."

Katelyn was THRILLED!

I went into the other room with Sam to console him. I don't normally like any pictures of me giant and pregnant. But I'm putting this in here to show Sam's misery. Katelyn came in to tell me all about Santa... Sam kept on whispering things to me like "That's Grandpa, I know it." "If that were the real Santa, wouldn't Grandpa come out and say hello." So, I lied trying to console a poor heartbroken kid who believes in all things magical including leprechauns and tooth fairies. I told him "Maybe, Grandpa is Santa's special helper, it is a big night." But he wouldn't be consoled. I said, "Would you like a picture with him anyway, to go in your scrapbook." Sam: "NO."
Katelyn came in with her candy cane. Me: "That looks like a really good candy cane. If you want one... you'll have to sit on his lap." No answer. Finally, I tell Sam I'm going back into the other room to watch... Sam follows me in there watching other kids with slits in his eyes...

Santa says "Are there any more kids before I leave???" So, after a lot of convincing Sam turns to me and says: "I don't care if it is grandpa, I'll go and get a candy cane." Then as Sam walks toward him, Santa says "Come here Sam, come and sit on Grandpa's lap." Sam turned and gave me a dirty look. Then as we left that evening Sam went over to Grandpa and said "Thanks for the candy cane."

I'm too tired to post many pictures but Christmas was fun for the kids. Sam still struggled with recovery and was ok, for an hour or two within a window of taking his pain meds. But we all had some sleepless nights.

So, New Year's EVE... Sam's 7th birthday! Happy Birthday Sam. Katelyn was about as excited for his birthday as he was. Every time Sam got even close to getting in trouble, etc. Katelyn would come to his defense and say, "It's Sam's birthday! Don't get angry with him on his birthday." Well, we took him to see Megamind. Dad took him and Katelyn to go sledding and we had a "movie night" and watched Despicable Me.

Halloween

Here are the kids trick-or-treating at Daddy's work (Friday). What a beautiful day.

(Butterfly and Batman)

Carving Pumpkins at Grandma's house.

Trick-or-treating around our neighborhood where we risked pneumonia for a few treats. It rained, and hard, the whole time. Sam even got sick of it (it helped that he had a haul of treats from Dad's work at home) and bailed early.

New pics of the fam...

Coming January 2011...

So, the Dr. didn't get a great profile shot printed out and I can't figure out how to get a good image off the DVD. But here's a shot of HER cute little feet. We're really excited.

Guy's weekend...

The boys were invited to a "guys weekend" to a cabin for shooting guns and riding on 4-wheelers by our brother-in-law. I have some video of the boys shooting guns, but the video was too large to post, they were pretty good shots. They had a blast!

Katelyn turns 4!

Kate turned 4!

Happy Birthday to Katelyn... we had a great weekend. The boys went out for a boys weekend... so the girls went up and had a girls weekend (pedicure and lunch) and had such a good time. Although Andrea and Melissa kindly made Kate a cake, it wasn't "on her birthday" and she insisted on us making one on Sunday too. So she helped me make the cake and she had a good birthday. It seemed like a weekend of birthday because Monday she started preschool, and they celebrated it there too.

Sam's eventful week...

Sam started soccer (well his first game was last week but it was cold and rainy that day so no pictures).

Sam lost his first tooth! He has been waiting and waiting for this to happen. As far as I was concerned, I would have been happy if he didn't lose his first set of teeth until jr. high. But he got really concerned when his cousin Jenna pulled her tooth out by herself at our house. So a few days before school started (when he was supposed to be practising going to bed early) he kept on coming out and coming out and wiggling it and saying, "When do you think this will come out? What day? I think it is a little more loose now." etc." So... I pulled it out. So he could settle down and fall asleep. He was thrilled!

First day of school. First grade is a long day. We're excited for his teacher... and still anxious for him. Every night this whole week, before he goes to bed, he lays out his clothes on his bedroom floor. I thought he'd just do it the first day of school, we'll see how long it lasts.

Alpine Days...

So, this really shouldn't be entitled Alpine Days since I haven't attended any of the festivities other than the parade and fireworks since I was a teenager. But we call it Alpine Days anyway, since that's our designated "family" reunion... which no one attends :)
Ha ha, family members would be offended if they read my blog. Which most don't (except for you important few -- you know who you are, aka anyone who happens to read this blog). But in their defense, I live close and can easily attend while others live far away and lives get busy and hectic. As Michael explained to his mom, it's a big bunch and even if only half attend it's a lot of people. But here are a few pics of the event... and a few extra festivities that happened on our weekend.

Friday night rodeo, which was kind of a bust this year. Last year the kids were able to try and catch a chicken, and it was entertaining. But this year, I think it was poorly organized and boring to watch so we bailed early.

We left and went to get snow cones. Most of the kids got Tiger's Blood flavoring, which I think is probably just cherry with 4 times the amount of red dye, but the kids loved it. I refrained from posting the grossest pic of Katelyn's teeth. It looked like someone punched her in the mouth and her teeth looked all bloody...

Here are Sam and Luke seriously waiting for the parade to make its way to us. (We almost always sit at the very end of the parade route because it's up the street from my dad's place.) It was a good parade because it was short! About an hour, which is good.

Jared and his friend Julie planned a hike up to Timp Cave and invited us to tag along, so we went. I teasingly told the kids I needed a recent picture of all of them in case we lost them on the mountain and we would give it to the police to post on the news. Little did I know how true that statement could be, because it's a pretty treacherous hike. It has been probably 15 years since I hiked that hike and my memory must not be very good, because although the way is paved the entire way, it has steep switchbacks about a mile and a half up the mountain, and right NEXT to the paved 4 foot wide path is 100 foot drop... to the next path that you passed 10-15 mins before. So I think you could literally fall all the way down the mountain. So we risked life and limb of our kids and my brother's kids up this mountain. Needless to say, it was a nervous hike for us, and MUCH harder than I remembered.

This is half of us on the switchback above us. Katelyn and I brought up the rear most of the time. The kids did great and hiked the whole way on their own. Katelyn got a piggy back ride for a brief time, but for the most part did it by herself. She said her favorite part "was eating food" (the snacks we brought).

Then we went swimming and had pizza.

That night before bed, we checked on Katelyn and saw her asleep with her parade loot.

What a weekend!

Kennecott Copper Mine

I've lived in Utah my whole life and never been here...
So we took the kids for a drive and went to see it. It was really cool to see. I don't have all the facts but it is one of the only man made things you can see from space, and if I remember right they said that if the empire state building were in here it wouldn't even reach halfway up the hole.



So, take a look at those little trucks going up the path there are 4 right in a row they kinda look like ants.

Now take a look a this tire that the kids are standing by. This is one of the wheels that goes on those little trucks.

24th of July

Our ward did a really cute bike parade and breakfast for the 24th of July. My kids were excited ALL week to decorate their bikes and ride in a parade.
I think they went around the circle 100 times. They didn't want to stop. It was such a fun activity for them.

This is Sam's sunflower he planted in kindergarten and we transplanted it at home. It's much bigger now and the sunflower heads are so heavy they point at the ground. Which was a point of much concern for Sam until we found other sunflowers doing the same thing.

Trip to the zoo

This summer we've also been to the zoo with the cousins. The kids had a blast as we melted because we went on the hottest day of the year.

Every time I turned around Sam and Jenna were studying the map of the zoo.
The highlight is always the train ride.

Pet update.

So, an update on our pet. It escaped. Twice. Sadly, we have no pictures of Linny. I thought I'd have ample time to capture the bunny on camera and now... it's gone. Here's a picture of what we thought might be the end of Linny. Our neighbor's cat eyeing it from the tops of the fence. And you can see our reinforcements of the boards pushed up to the cage by the slides. But it squeezed out. The first time some neighbors found him and brought him home. The second time Linny knew better because he was no where to be seen. Sam was lamenting his loss to a neighbor boy when his dad overheard and told Michael that he saw him when he was out running (about a mile from our home) so... I'm trying to decide if we get a replacement.

We are pet owners...

So, since we have nothing else to post and you're all dying to know what's going on in our lives... here it is. I NEVER thought we would be pet owners. But we slowly whittled Michael down and we got our kids got a bunny. I'm tired and so I don't have a picture of it. But I will... it will come soon.
My kids have asked for a pet for a long long time. They've semi-adopted the neighbor cat as their own, but somehow it just isn't the same (as we tried to convince them). My sister bought Sam and Kate a feeder goldfish for Valentines day. They lasted less than a week... less than the baggie of food she gave us to feed them. Sam's died first and he has been in mourning ever since. Katelyn was thrilled when hers died since she could flush it down the toilet.
How did we decide on a bunny? Well, Michael is opposed to cats... and I don't really like dogs. We thought the bunny might hold up to the mauling a little better than anything else. They needed something to cuddle. We've had the bunny for a little less than a day now and it has had multiple names (Linny is the longest standing one, but Katelyn keeps on trying to change it). And I think the bunny is considering just laying down and dying. Of the litter (do rabbits have litters?) I wanted this one since it was the runt and I wanted it to stay as small as possible. Sam was opposed to it, and I had no idea why... until I figured out that the people we got it from referred to it as a "her" and he wanted a boy. So, I told him it was a boy (no idea what it really is) and problem solved.

Father's and Sons Weekend

Well, I've gotten out of the habit of blogging and have thought of giving it up altogether. But here goes:

Sam looks forward to Father's and Sons every year. He LOVES it. Here's some pics of their weekend.