Random

We sold our baby carseat! 

It was definitely a huge milestone to do it and it was bittersweet! 

Tays playing in it one last time!

Mason with his Valentine's Day gift to his teacher, Mrs. Dey.

Tays is quickly out growing the play crib at Grandma Hixson's! I told him it was bed time, so he climbed inside!

Tays loves being with Vaughn. 

Whenever I get on my cell phone or home phone, Tays starts saying, "Dad? Dad? Dad? Daaaaaaaaaad!!!!" It is beyond adorable!

Tays loves playing with toys. With his siblings and by himself! 

Tays LOVES the backyard! He will go out in just his diaper if he's fast enough! Even with snow on the ground and him in only his diaper, I had to DRAG him back inside! 

He feels like one of the big kids now that he can climb the ladder to the play house! 

Mason did a kindergarten basketball camp! He loved it and it was so great for him to get out of the house and be active after school! 

Photo bomb!! 

He is sitting on the potty training seat!

 If only, if only! I cannot wait until he is ready to potty train! 

That is our next big milestone! No kids in diapers!! I CANNOT wait for that!! 

Sam got into one of my ink pads. I could not help but laugh! She totally reminds me of Elphaba from Wicked!!

I can still hear her saying, "I sorry mom." What a nut!

Oh Tays. 

Looks like he takes after Mason in his eating habits! 

She's got Style!

I wish I could tell you how much Sam loves loves loves to dress herself! I know that is a favorite past time of most little girls, but this is such a new experience to me and for our family!! She can no joke go through all the clothes in her dresser within a few hours! I just cannot keep up with her! Here are a few of her outfits!

This one isn't that bad, but she HAD to have the wings on. At least they matched! That is more than I can say about her other ones!

Games, Friends and a Dang Dog

It was seniors night for our high schools basketball game, so we decided to go watch them play. The kids had a blast playing with their friends and Vaughn and I enjoyed being out and about and getting to socialize with people!! It has been a long winter and seems like it has been forever since we've seen anyone!!

Tays was so content after he got his sucker! Vaughn was wearing a white shirt...probably not the best idea on my part...whoops!

Love this girl! 

This is Melissa, one of our amazing trek daughters! 

She watched Sam and Tays during the day while we were on our cruise and we just love her! She just left on her mission to Tennessee! We are so excited for her and miss her already!

I love that Mason is such an independent player. 

He always makes the coolest things out of his blocks and other toys. 

This dog, seriously. He ruins EVERYTHING!!!

And yet, we keep him.

We built a fence around the garden to keep him out. 

Well he ended up pushing between the gates so many times that he broke the latch.

Now he has made a hole in the wire mess that he has made bigger and bigger, so it is easy for him to squeeze through. 

Grrr!!! I can't wait for summer so we can fix this and he will be chained up again!!

Sam's Illness

Jan 30, 2014

So the day we arrived home from our cruise, Malita told me that Sam had been hacking all night long. We got home and I made the decision to send her to school anyway. When she got off the bus that Monday I knew that she was way too sick to be going to school. So I kept her home for the rest of the week. And actually she was removed from the JEEP program that Thursday, so the Monday was her last day of pre-school for the year. :( 

Anyway, I got a text from one of her teachers, who is also in our ward, who let me know that a boy that rides Sam bus had exposed her to whooping cough. I had heard of whooping cough, but I didn't know a lot about it, because my kids have never had it. After almost two weeks of her being sick I decided I should look into it and see what the symptoms were. Sam was showing all the signs and after two weeks was still not showing any signs of getting better. 

She stayed on the table for the whole exam. That is totally not like her.

Tays was knocking to get out and our P.A. was knocking on the other side to come in. It was cute! 

Our P.A. said that she was showing all the signs, but we wouldn't know for sure until we tested her. They don't do that in their office, so I would have to take her to a lab. He checked on the price for me and it was almost $150 to run the test! I told him I would pass on it and he said that we could still treat her as if it were whooping cough. Just to cover our bases. 

I let her teachers at school know that she was being treated for whooping cough, even though she hadn't been tested and they had to notify the South Central Health District. Of course. My kid is the one that raises the alarms of an outbreak! 

When we got home from Twin there was a message from the SCHD asking me to call them back. They said that since there is a possible outbreak that they could test her for free! Only problem is that they are located in Twin at CSI. So back into the car we went to figure out what is going on with Sam. 

By this time Sam was just miserable. She was crying and complaining of not feeling well and only wanted to be held. Her fever kept spiking and I was giving her medicine every 8 hours to try and stay on top of it. She was one miserable little girl.

So we arrived at the SCHD and they took us back and tested her. It was an uncomfortable test of sticking a q-tip, u-shaped thing up her nose and holding it there for 30 seconds. She did not like it at all. The nurse administering the test explained that while it could be whooping cough, and she wouldn't be surprised if it was, but that there was another strain of infection going around that acts just like whooping cough, and is treated the same as whooping cough, but it is slightly different and that one is not reportable as an outbreak. 

Since we were treating this as whooping cough to be sure, Sam was considered contagious until she had been on her medicine for 24 hours. That was so much fun! (Sorry, lots of sarcasm on that one!) We had to wait almost a week for her results to come back, which were negative for whooping cough. The nurse said she wouldn't be surprised if it was the other strain that isn't reportable. By the time we got the results back, Sam had started very slowly feeling better. It took her a another couple of weeks until she seemed normal again, but I am glad that the medicine helped her! 

Poor girl!! 

It was a long hard road, but she is doing great now!!

Pinewood Derby

Jan 25th, 2014

Drew was able to participate in his first legitimate pinewood derby race! The last four or five years Vaughn or I have been in the cub scouts and we have let him run his car down the track. This year he was so excited to finally be doing it for real!

Amber Bench (Cub Master), Drew & Bishop Williams, 

Elder Behrens & Elder Madsen

Drew came in 2nd place and earned a place at the district races! He also won the award for best paint job!

Which I have neglected to take a picture of it painted! It is green and looks like Ben 10. He helped Vaughn with every step of the way and was so excited to get it painted!!