Updates April

What is this post? Yeah, it's different, see my explanation here.

April 13:
So, Noah didn't finish his sandwich tonight, and since he's now asleep I decided to finish it off. On my first bite my teeth bit something really hard - does deli-sliced roast beef ever have bones? I opened up the sandwich and there was a large washer in it. Perfect end of the day thing to do for my dear tornado-offspring. I woke up this morning to the sound of Noah saying, "It's all gone!" "What's all gone, Noah?" "The medicine. I drink it." I open my eyes to see an empty bottle of baby gas-ex. Later he broke my glasses while I was in the shower, then smeared yogurt all over the table and chairs while I was putting on makeup. There is more than one reason why I don't get dressed as often as Candacy. :) And that's just one day. Last week he probably set a new record, so much so that I don't remember details. Except that he started the practice of throwing stuff off the top of the refrigerator, that I do recall.


I have to put in a plug for Noah being ridiculously cute and sweet, for the record. (I can't leave this with him sounding awful.) He loves to be held, and runs around singing all of the time. He sang "I Love to See the Temple yesterday, and my heart melted when he sang "sacred duty."

Last week is mostly kind of a blur of running from one place to the next, but on Friday we decided to take a break and went to pick Gary up from work on Friday. While we were driving to Salt Lake Josh started talking about the Children's museum, so my cold heart was melted and we went there for about 45 minutes. Afterward we went to Rumbi - delicious. Fish tacos are our new craving.

On Saturday Josh had his first spring soccer game. Because there are so many kids they're playing 4 on 4 instead of 3 on 3, and Josh seems even more little than he did before. However, if he didn't lead the team in any other stats, he definitely led in excitedly bouncing up and down. It was adorable and contagious. The whole blue team was bouncing after a while. Josh did score one goal, and was excited about that, even though I tried to emphasize that wasn't the important part. I have to try, right?

I had a vision to change our whole house around on Saturday, but only got far enough to make a bigger mess. Oh, well, Gary did the first lawn care of the year, so that was a success, and maybe created a net gain. We tried to get Noah to sleep in his new "cave" but that only produced late nights and middle-of-the nights . . . it doesn't make sense when he gets in and out of the crib at will anyway, but . . . But who knows. I do know Gary and I have both exercised a couple of times, so we're feeling awesome.


April 19:
As for us . . . hmm . . we put sand in our "new" (picked it up from my mom's trash pile) sandbox last week, and it's a hit so far. The kids play and play and then "jump their sand off" before coming in. Noah does a lot of shoveling onto his head, but as long as he's having fun . . .


I went with the sister missionaries to an appointment last week, and it was so good for me. I felt all motiviated for a moment. They are teaching an awesome family, but they live two stakes away from me, so that's disappointing. However, the sisters dropped by on Saturday to say they have an appointment on Thursday with the people across the street. I was so excited! They wanted me to come, but my sister is graduating, so I can't. Pray there's another appointment! (Not for my sake, of course.)

On Wednesday the kids and I went to Utah county to get my hair cut, visit my old school briefly, eat lunch with my sister, and see the BYU dinosaur museum. It was crazy fast, but fun. I drove down 8th north in Orem and felt so sad that there was no Matthew and Rachel family!

My sister ran the Salt Lake Marathon on Saturday, so she came up from St. George the night before and stayed the night with me. I was trying to tell myself that I didn't need to get everything perfect (we're in a mess, trying to do a lot of projects) to impress her since I had been so busy that week . . . and then at the last minute her boyfriend ended up staying there, too. I was so excited to meet him and more than happy to host . . . but what an awful first impression! That's okay, Josh and Noah made a great impression, as did the marathon prep meal we fed him. So maybe he still wants to be best friends with old-sweats-sister . . .oh, well.

Sunday we went to Preston for my nephew's blessing. It was at 9 a.m., so we started early, but got a long day up there. It was such beautiful weather, fun to talk, always great to eat . . . awesome.

Gary put up a garage storage thing on Saturday, toured Utah's Alcoholic Beverage Control place today (he said, "Emily, you've never seen so much alcohol in your life." I don't disagree.), and is good at cleaning the bathroom fast. Josh scored a couple of goals on Saturday, but peed his pants mid-game. Nobody knew until after when I realized it. Good coverup job Josh, just play harder. Andrew rolls around, sits, is adorable, and fell off the bed today. Noah walked into church on Sunday and said to my sister, "Here I am. I got my outfit."


April 27:
So, hey guys, it's me, the one who does Monday things on Tuesday . . . The story of the week is running to and fro, sick kids . . . Okay, I'll give you my triumph of the week. We've been trying forever to get Andrew to eat a little food (he's 6 mo. today), but no luck. He doesn't like rice cereal thick, thin, with formula, with apple juice, with whipped cream, not in a house, not with a mouse, he will not eat it here or there . . . anyway, finally we tried bananas (sans cereal). Gary layed him accross his lap so the food couldn't seep down his chin, and fed him bananas - success!!


On Wednesday Josh and Noah went to a birthday party at a bounce house and LOVED it. There was also a transformers mask given out that Josh wore for the next two days, but the funniest thing was when we were telling Gary about the jumping. Gary said, "That doesn't sound like fun." Josh totally missed the tease, and spent time trying to convince Gary that it actually was awesome.

My sister graduated from BYU last week, and we had a fun day. My sister was a campus tour guide (the golf-cart drivers), so she took us all on a tour. It was amusing to be the one in the golf cart getting looks. Josh and Noah kept saying, "BYU, BYU, BYU," the whole time. The graduation was short and thought provoking, and even though the kids were at the end of their ropes and Josh won himself new shorts due to peeing his pants (and the back-up pants), it was delicious and fun to eat at The Macaroni Grill afterward with everyone.

We're trying to rearrange everything in our house so that we'll have a playroom, so we're doing some major shuffling, and Gary has been quite the run-around guy trying to build and move things. Josh and Noah and I saw a little of the high school track meet and they have been saying, "Mark, set, go, bang," and running around everywhere ever since. My brain is really scrambly due to all of the things we've been doing, but I guess I'll just say we really like to eat ice cream. That's what I remember, the ice cream, two nights in a row . . . mmmmm . . .


May 3:
Noah, Josh, and Andrew kept us up from 2:30-7:00 a.m. as a combined effort one night last week, and at one point Noah had a complaint of hunger. Gary was so tired he grabbed him a Poptart and shoved him in bed with us. The next morning there was Poptart all over Gary's side of the bed. However, with Andrew being sick and us being so tired, we never got around to changing the sheets, and I forgot all about it until Gary climbed in bed that night right on top of it. I said, "Are you going to sleep on the poptart?" "Yes," he barely mumbled out before falling asleep. Don't worry we changed the sheets after Andrew puked all over them.

I love the booty shaking story. Oh, Tessa . . . I'll have to post some of Josh and Noah's moves. We've been doing a lot of dancing the last couple of days, and it's pretty funny. Noah calls it, "dancing on the carpet." If I get off the carpet, I'm in trouble. Anyway, a cousin dance party seems fun. Good luck with the finals, Ted!


So the evil spring cold provided more fun last week. Josh's ear got infected and eventually burst, so he's got two antibiotics for that. He pretty much seemed on the way up last week, though, it was Andrew who turned for the worst. Poor baby got really, really sick. I took him in to get his ears looked at after the first sleepless night he had, but no ear infection at that point. I hate it when I bring them in too fast. The next day he got a fever, and it lasted for around 3 days. We had to use Tylenol and Motrin together to get it down, and he was just listless. He would just lay in our arms and stare into space, which is not like him. (He usually can't resist smiling at people who smile at him, even when he had RSV.) We were worried about that, but when he stopped eating, we really got worried. That's not AT ALL like him. There was a stretch of 32 hours where he didn't hold anything down. I took him to the urgent care, where after all of the tests the diagnosis was, "very sick." He got an antibiotic for an ear infection, and I was told it would also catch any developing pneumonia. He's finally doing a lot better, but still sounds horse. That's a long explanation for one episode of sickness, but we were really worried about our little guy. So glad it wasn't worse.

It was my turn to teach preschool last week, and we had a lot of fun. We had caterpillars sent to our house a couple of weeks ago, and we watched them grow, make chrysalides, and now emerge as butterflies. The kids loved the topic, and Josh and Noah have loved them being in our house. They say the chrysalides look like bananas.

On Friday Gary and I got a rare night out (with Andrew) thanks to baby-sitting swapping, and it was fantastic. We ate barbeque and bought a shower curtain. Romantic! For real - Gary makes me smile. Especially when I'm eating good food.

The neighbors cancelled their appointments with the missionaries twice, but now have a third set up. Their excuses seem legit (there were ambulances at their house today for their daughter's heart problems), so I pray they really are a little interested. Along the church front, they have called two assisstants for girls' camp. Phew.