What a week!

Man do I hope this week and all it's surprises is finally over!

Staring Halloween Wednesday, everything seemed to go wrong.  I had a health crisis that day.  It was horrible.  Started the night before which left me awake all night.  Brian took a personal day (what a great boss he has!) to take me to the Dr.'s, then watched the kids all day while I rested, barfed, and tried to recuperate.  I'm so thankful for Brian!

The following 2 days we had different housing inspections.  Blah.  You can imagine how much housecleaning I was able to get done.  And this was after a month of morning-sickness - meaning very little had been done in the way of, well, anything, for weeks.  So our house was a disaster.  Yay.  How great of me to be on my deathbed during the day I was supposed to be cleaning.

Still, we survived, and following the Friday inspection I headed out to Portland for Time Out for Women.  SOOOO fun.  I was hesitant to go, but darn-it, I really wanted to!  I slept on a rollaway in the hotel which was a mistake.  Not really noteworthy, but just one more annoyance in the week.

I got home, picked up the kids from the Stake Center and Mom's house since Brian had been doing Stake Conference stuff ALL Saturday, and got home to learn that Brennan had thrown up the night before.  Brian had done some cleaning, but I still had to finish up and remake the bed, while feeling very nauseous myself.

Sunday was busy, as I had a job at Stake Conference myself, plus Brian had his.  Otherwise a fine day though.  The calm before the storm.

The next several days nothing worked to keep me from feeling horrible and throwing up everything.  I even have expensive prescription anti-nausea medication, and it didn't help at all.  Hollyn threw up too on Tuesday night, so I'm thinking I probably had a stomach bug on top of morning sickness.  Fun stuff.  But it gets better.

Wednesday night I hurried home after a late appointment wanting to make something for dinner other than cereal.  (Yes, the poor kids have been basically living on cereal lately.)  I prepared some muffins first.  But apparently there was a mess in the oven, and apparently messes like that can catch on fire.  So that was fun.  I had trouble getting the fire extinguisher to work, as the fire raged on.  Finally got it taken care of though.  We couldn't do a lot of clean-up until the oven cooled down, so the kids had cereal for dinner afterall.  Lol.

Later that evening, Hollyn was messy and we were out of diapers, so Brian ran to the store.  He was sick with a head-cold, but ended up with the better end of the deal, because right after he left Hollyn threw up all. over. the. floor.  It was awful, especially since I was already nauseas myself, and the fumes from the fire experience weren't helping.  Neither did the vomit smell added to it. 

I tried to clean up that mess, but she threw up again.  I rushed her into the bath, asked Brennan to get out of bed to watch her (he was still awake and happy to do something besides lay in bed), cleaned up the vomit, and finally got the muffins to the neighbor's house to cook.  So that was a fun night.

We hoped the worse was over, but the next morning, yesterday, Brian had truck-problems on his way to work, which meant the truck in the shop, repair bills, and rides at inconvenient times.

But, today seemed to be fine.  I think the storm has passed.  We survived 4 different illnesses coinciding, a fire, an unhappy election result, car repairs, and a very messy house.  Please tell me this week is over!

Happy Halloween!

 Yes, I know Halloween was SO last week.  In fact, the kids' candy was gone within about 24 hours, thanks to them preferring to dig in after one round of trunk-or-treating instead of filling their bags as much as possible.  But who was I to point out the long-term consequences of their immediate greed. :-)  Anyway, I was pretty sick the last week, so it took me a while to get to this.

*Note, neighbor friend Wyatt, who practically lives here these days because his family doesn't have Minecraft and we do, weaseled his way into all the pictures of the kids.  Love you, Wyatt. :-)

Couple of Ninjas

Bumblebee Transformer, again.  I love that he was content to do that.

.. And a ninja

Little Puppy-dog.

 Brian didn't dress-up this year.  But Mom did.  We call this costume...

There's a Bun in the Oven.

The Bun

See, I Told Ya

I said I'd be back, and voila!  I'm on my 3rd computer now, after the 1st two both had hard drive crashes within a week of ownership.  I wrote a nice, honest review on Amazon about our experience, and then Brian came to the suspicion that it may have been our fault after all. The "new" desk I bought off craigslist is secretary style, with a drop-down table.  Well, turns out those magnets that hold the table up when closed, they're pretty strong.  Strong enough to, say, ruin a hard drive if an electronic device was placed over it.  Whoops.  At least I know to avoid setting this laptop on them.

Anyway, it appears I'm back, and man does it feel good to be connected again!  An old, outdated tablet does not compensate fully for a computer.

My sister Kelly and her 3 youngest kiddos came for a quick visit last month.  We seized the opportunity to visit the pumpkin patch.  Although late September, it was pretty darned warm outside.  So much so, that it made me feel lazy and unmotivated to be out in the sun really long.  But the kids had a blast even though we skipped the corn maze.  There was LOTS of other stuff to do which didn't involve being lost for an hour :-)

After not taking many pictures the last several weeks (no computer to load them on to, remember?) I tried to catch up on my little EIGHTEEN-month-old.  I know, holy smokes, right?  She's been to nursery the last two weeks, and is I suppose having a good time.  She hasn't cried once, even though Brian, who drops her off, hasn't stuck around with her.  I had a feeling the lure of the toys and other toddlers would sway her easily :-)  She's been way over hanging out with either of us for a good long time now.

This is a common smile she flashes us.  It's her purposeful smile.  She squints her eyes and exaggerates her mouth.  Melts my heart every time.  She likes to pull this one out when she's about to be scolded.  And it works for her every time.

 She has started saying some more words, though still not a whole lot.  She's a pretty quiet one, at least when you're trying to get her to talk.  She will (but not if anyone else is being shown) repeat all our names.  Mama, Dada, Minna (= Brennan), Ashhhhhh (= Asher), and Hi-a (= Hollyn).  Sometimes I throw in her near-by cousin's name too. :-)  I can tell that she recognizes these as being the names of us, so that's what's fun.  She also recognizes the names of many specific things and if I ask her to find one of them, she goes looking in the places she last saw/put the item.  So even though she doesn't say many words, she's apparently understanding them.

Her favorite thing to say right now, on her own without prompting, is "no".  Oh goody. :-)  The other day in the car she was repeating to herself, "No no, no no..."  She says it sort of accented though, so it's still cute.  For now.  Interestingly, it seems like when she's saying it because she means it, she pronounces it "neh".  Other times she says "neeeeeew" and puts her lips in a little "o" shape to accentuate the vowel.  I think it's how she says "more" but I can't be sure.  It could just be for fun.

Speak of the toddler, I hear her wanting to be gotten up from nap-time.

Until next time...

I'll Be Back

Hey ya'll.  Hello?  Anybody there?  Probably not.  I'm sure no one has noticed, but yes, I have been rather quiet for a bit.  At least it feels that way because I have all sorts of things I want to post about, but haven't gotten around to.  The biggest reason is because we've had computer drama.  I don't have a working computer at the moment, in fact I've just shanghaied Brian's 'cause he's not up yet. :0

So my detailed and pictured posts will have to wait for another day.  But just so I don't forget, here's a couple topics I don't want to forget

Hollyn's words
Brian's b-day
Brennan's crush
Soccer
Asher's explanations (scientists, how people are made (of soup ;-), etc)
Room redo
School starting and affects on life

Hmmm, maybe that's it.