Miles Reads

At the beginning of our school year, I started introducing reading to Miles. He practiced dutifully, despite not having much enthusiasm for it and despite the headaches he kept complaining of. We learned about his eye issues shortly thereafter and put a hold on reading books. We have done plenty of word work, but reading actual books hasn't been a real priority for him. Instead, we have been working hard on his therapy at home, and at our last evaluation the Dr. said that there was enough of an improvement that he could begin reading again. Yay!

So now he's plowing through the first set of BOB books. I made a chart to help him keep track of what book he was working on passing off to me, also hoping that it would help motivate him. However, every time he would get so close to passing a book off, I'd say, "Do you want to read it one more time and see if we can get it passed off?" He'd always politely respond, "No, maybe tomorrow." And that was that. However, on this particular day, it seemed he had caught the vision. He was on book 9 of 12, and announced that he would pass off the rest that day. And he worked hard, practicing over and over again, and passed off book 12 to me the next morning. He prefers absolute silence when he's trying to concentrate, so I came downstairs and found him in the guest room like this. :) I ran as fast as I could for the camera. A reader was blooming right before my eyes!

When he was a baby I would read books to him, and from day 1 he hated it. He'd squirm off my lap, cry etc. I had to get creative. So I read to him while he was occupied in the tub or in his high chair. I handed him books to hold while we road in the car. I took him to library story times. He's since developed a hard earned (on my part :) love for books. Reading has been a bit of a challenge thus far, so to see him get fired up about it just does my heart good.

The Rabbits

It's no secret that Richie and I love small town life. We got placed in the Salt Lake Valley and thought, hey, we can make do with this! Garden in: check. Clothes line in: check. With chickens, however, we ran into a problem. We know plenty of people in our neighborhood who have chickens. But when we did a little asking around, in the general vicinity of city hall, we found it's not technically legal to have chickens on your property in Riverton, unless you live on at least an acre. Bummer. (Let me give you a hint. We don't live on an acre.) So you know what we did? We stuck it to the man! Kind of! I started emailing city councilors, asking what the deal was, could it be changed etc. I was even told, off the record of course, that there's only 1 city inspector who investigates this type of thing, "so as long as your neighbors are ok with it and don't rat you out, no one will really know the difference." Hmmm...He was right, you know. But I guess the whole idea of breaking the law was kind of a deterrent for us. So I went and participated in my very first city council. I had been emailing one of the councilors back and forth for quite some time. He led me to believe that the change I presented was definitely going to pass, but that I should come to the meeting just to show support. So I did.

Imagine my surprise when the motion is open for discussion and person after person comes to the podium and passionately defends their opinion, both pro and con. "Man, I'm totally unprepared!" I think to myself. I hadn't prepared anything to say, but I got up there and gave my 2 cents. And then....the mayor stepped down from up above, and said he would be acting as a citizen in this matter and would like to state his case. He pulled a few typed pages from his jacket and proceeded to vehemently object to letting citizens have chickens on less than an acre, here in Riverton. Something about his daughter getting attacked by a neighbor's feral chicken years ago. Whatever.

And then the motion didn't pass. And now, we're still not allowed to legally have chickens on our property. Boo.

What was so appealing to us about having chickens on our property was the idea of self-sufficiency. If the world collapses tomorrow, at least we could eat eggs and chicken, you know? It's like living food storage. Alright, city council votes no, dream smooshed. And then, about 3 weeks ago, this crazy idea pops into my head. "What about rabbits?" They are not technically considered livestock, and therefore, could still be allowed on our "crummy" .23 acre property. Now, if you know me well, you know it takes me a long time to process things. I'm a slow thinker. So I brought the rabbit idea up to Richie and thought, "Maybe we'll get some rabbits next year." And then Richie calls me from work about 3 days later and says, "Hey! I've really been researching rabbits online, and I found the ones we want in Bluffdale. I can go get them tonight!" And he came home with 3 full grown rabbits. 1 male, 2 female, and presumably 1, possibly both of the females are pregnant. Ok. Deep breaths. This is what we wanted, my head just wasn't wrapped around it yet!

So we set up makeshift cages and let the kids run around with them. They were in heaven!! And goodness gracious, the rabbits are SSSSOOOO cute! Which might make it hard when it comes time to eat them, which we will do very sneakily, because the kids would need therapy for the rest of their lives if they found out.

The next morning, we're outside playing and my niece happens to be with us, while she passes through to SG from Rexburg. I head inside for about 2 minutes, when I hear Lindy crying. Nothing alarming, just a normal cry. Richie brings her in and says, "She stuck her fingers in the rabbit cage, and they nipped at her. Grab a band-aid." As I'm grabbing the aforementioned band-aid, Richie starts to run water over her left hand pointer finger and then says, "Oh man, we need to go to the hospital. Quick, put the band-aid on." And I go to put the band-aid on, and see the top of her poor little finger, just hanging there. I can't breathe! I can't put the band-aid on! I yell outside to Taysom, "You have Miles and Gwen? Ok, we're going to the hospital." And we RUN out the door. Richie's holding her in kind of a cradle-position, holding her finger away from everything else, in the backseat, and I drive.

I tell ya, the people at the insta-care that day.... We run in, cut in line, say, "Hey! Our daughter's finger got bit off!" And they say, "Ok, we just need you to fill out some paperwork and we'll put you at the top of the list." After waiting for 5 minutes an eternity, they take us back and tell us, "Ok, now we just need to weigh her and see how tall she is. Can you set her on the scale for me?" This is where I lost it a little bit. I shoot lasers out of my eyes at her and say, "Her finger is hanging there, can you just look at it and tell us if we can save it? Tell us if we need stitches? Before we do all this stuff? Please?" Another nurse comes over, unwraps the paper towel we had grabbed, cleans off some of the blood, and tells us that if it was her kid, she would take her up to Primary Children's in SLC because they can sedate her up there. (For some reason they can't here?) The minute I hear, "Primary Children's" I can feel all the blood rushing up to my head and making my cheeks red. Because that's the hospital where really serious stuff happens, so her finger must be really serious, right?

So we bolt out the door, and walk/run to the car. I'm crying, and as I'm about to reverse, Richie tells me to wait. He pulls off his ball cap, places his free hand on Lindy's head, and gives her a priesthood blessing. He especially asks that Lindy will be comforted. And you know what happened next? After crying, screaming and trying to wriggle out of his arms the entire time...she's out of it. She's not asleep, but it's like she's been sedated, and she's totally relaxed. Heavenly Father answers prayers. We also found out later that Taysom had helped the kids say special prayers at home for Lindy. I was so grateful Taysom was there, and that she taught my kids to call upon Heavenly Father in their time of need. It was a spiritual moment when we later testified to our children that Heavenly Father heard their prayers, and helped Lindy.

We eventually found the building we needed to be in, and the nurses there were so much more helpful. Richie runs inside, they see blood, they rush over to him and immediately assess. They are confident that they can save the finger and start the process. We spent about 6 hours there, and it seemed even longer. We felt such empathy for people who have actual sick children and that hospital is their life! They started out by bandaging it mo' betta (As Richie would say). Then eventually they put a blocker to numb only her finger. At the same time, they were trying to find a vein in her chubby little hand, and blew the vein. Eventually they found one in her foot, but my, was that a traumatic experience. It took both parents and 2 nurses to hold her down. Then they x-rayed her finger to see if the bone was broken, which thankfully it wasn't. Then they sedated her and stitched her up. After the anesthesia wore off, we were free to go home.

During this time, Taysom had a shuttle to catch with no one to drive her there. Not to mention, two small children at home with no guardian. The Garners were at a funeral and unavailable. I immediately called Scotty and Lisa, our next door neighbors, who have saved our bacon on more than one occasion. Without hesitation, Lisa took Taysom to the shuttle and their daughter Dani came over to watch the kids. When the Garners were done with the funeral, they came and picked up the kids and watched them the rest of the day.

Whew, so many words! Her finger is fine. It hasn't phased her one bit. We are so grateful for kind people, for knowledgeable doctors, and the power of prayer and the priesthood. The End.

Here's a few pictures of the rabbits and their new home. Honestly, this incident aside, it's been so much fun having them. They run around all day until it's time for them to go back in their cages, and the kids feed them our scraps and follow them around all day. I swear it's made Ozzy 10 years younger. He gets such a kick out of playfully chasing them around the yard.

One step closer to a country life. :)

Today I....

7:00am I woke up to Lindy's cries, which is usually the case. Stumbled out of bed, grabbed her, pulled her in bed with me to try and snuggle and then realized 2 things: 1. Gwen is also in my bed smiling and giggling that she has surprised me. 2. Lindy's diaper is FULL, which is also usually the case, and needs to be changed asap. Dress Lindy, climb into bed to get some more snuggles, climb out of bed, and start the morning routine.

8:00 am Miles is always the last to stumble out of bed. He must be my child. He comes out this morning rubbing his eyes, and complaining that his mouth hurts. I ask if he has some food stuck back there or something. He sleepily says, "I don't think so!" So he opens wide and I'm shocked to see a molar making it's way through. "My 6 year old is teething??"No wonder his mouth hurts! Poor guy. We do our breakfast routine. The kids have almost got "Fifty Nifty" down! We have cold cereal and smoothie. No toast. "I need to make bread later," I remind myself.

8:30 Kids get dressed, check on the dog's food and the rabbit's food (more on that later). I help with teeth brushing and hair-doing. Gwen wants a high bun again. She's really into those these days, and she looks so dang cute in them, so I oblige.

930ish It's Lindy's day to "choose" the morning learning show. "Baby Signing Time"! Wahoo! I took a shower last night, so I'm a little ahead of the game, but I still run once the movie starts, so I can get ready as fast as possible. Without Lindy's morning nap, I'm still learning how to function. Get ready, read some scriptures, make my bed, lay down for a second, and the movie stops. Time for school!

10:00am We begin our official school stuff. It's so fun to watch their reading skills really progress. Lindy does her part by trying to destroy everything we do. Atta girl. I find myself taking REALLY deep breaths a lot during this time. I ignore most of the mess she has made, and we head upstairs.

11:30am We all head outside so I can hang up a load of laundry. I get about half of the load up, when I realize it's too windy! The clothes are snapping off the line as quickly as I put them on! So I pull them off to avoid an embarrassing, "Hey, I think my garments floated into your yard yesterday" conversation.

11:45 Gather kids into the car. Stop at the dry cleaners for Richie's suit coats. Make our way to the Dr.'s for Miles' weekly eye appointment. Ugh. Please can we be done with this? We are so glad for the opportunity, everyone there is so nice..yadda yadda. Trying to entertain Gwen and Lindy in a really quiet Dr.'s office waiting room for an hour, every week for the past 10ish weeks is getting old.

1:20 Make it home. Change another diaper, put baby down, feed kids lunch and read them "The Friend" while they eat. They are really loving this new tradition. Me too! They pick up on unfamiliar words and we have great discussions. Words like: Sealed, adopted, eternity etc.

2:00 Quiet time for everyone! Hooray! Both Miles and Gwen come out once, but overall are doing great entertaining themselves. Miles is absorbed in some picture he is drawing, and listening to books with CD's from the library. I peek in on Gwen and she has some elaborate scene going on, involving a pirate ship, legos, and her small princess dolls.

3:00 Lindy wakes up prematurely and I spend the next hour and a half trying to convince her that she should nap some more. "I'll give you anything you want, just please nap!!!" Something along those lines. I let her cry until I can't take it anymore, and resign myself to the rest of the afternoon/evening with an awake Lindy. Pay some bills, write some Thank You notes, feed Lindy more fruit loops, make a few phone calls, pull out the play-doh, start making bread. Gwen plays on starfall.com, Miles plays play-doh, Lindy snacks on some grapes, I make bread. We rotate activities and read a few books in between.

5:30 It's clear it's going to be a food storage dinner night, and even with an easy dinner, it's still going to be late. I let the kids start a movie BEFORE dinner. Woah. I must be tired. They know they have to agree on the same movie in the evening, and sometimes their negotiations are infuriating, or really entertaining. Tonight, they were so grown up about it all.

6:00 Got dinner on the table, but the bread isn't quite done yet. Richie gets home. Hallelujah! He's been working so hard on his Masters. He had all this time planned out to get a class finished, and then we had an unexpectedly crazy weekend. So these next few nights are long ones!

6:24 Bread's almost done, but not soon enough for me to eat before heading out to a presidency meeting. I kiss everyone and head out the door while they watch "the sacrament movie." Oh you don't know that one? "Prince of Egypt" to the uneducated. :) I don't know why they chose this nickname, but it must have something to do with the fact that we watch it sometime during Easter Week, usually on Passover.

630-830pm Primary Presidency meeting at Amy's house. It's only our 2nd, so we have lots to talk about. I love these gals so much already. I can tell we're going to have so much fun. Oh darn it, the meeting ran long. Guess I can't help with bedtime.

8:40 I walk in and Richie is on ksl again looking for homes in small Utah towns with lots of acreage. Uh-oh, he's got that look in his eyes! Like a puppy dog. He's more trunky than normal and very seriously wants to buy the house he's looking at. This time, it's in Moroni. He's convinced it's like Sugar City, Idaho, aka, The Promised Land. He starts doing the dishes while he talks about relocating. But he's so tired, so I send him to bed. We pray together first and ask Heavenly Father to put us where he needs us, whenever he needs us.

9:30-? I browse blogs, catch up my own blog, do the dishes, iron, basically, whatever I want. "Oh, what's this link? One of the Duggars is courting? Oh I'd better click on that." :) Freedom.


I write these types of posts because one day, my life won't go like this. And I'm afraid that if I don't write it down, I won't remember it. I might remember some big things, but I'll have trouble remembering the minute-by-minute events that fill in all the little crevices. I won't remember that Miles came over and pinched my bum while I was making bread, because he saw his dad do it the other day, and how I had to have a little, light-hearted talk with him about how that's probably not a good idea. I'll forget that Gwen came out of quiet time and saw me eating some chocolate chips and asked if she could please have some after quiet time was over. And how she lit up and when I said, "Of course" and then walked away looking so much more grown up than she is. I won't remember Lindy's funny faces and the way she pushes my buttons, just because she knows she can. So I write it down.

Easter Weekend/The Fogles come to visit!

Our dear friends, the Fogles, had a friend from West Virginia who was getting married in the SLC temple this past weekend. It was a perfect excuse for them to come stay with us and visit! The kids were in heaven with so many play mates, and I'm just realizing now how little fighting their was! For having 7 kids, under the age of 6 in the same house for 4 days, I can't remember any fighting!
I tried to snap a few family pictures of them before they headed off to the wedding reception in their cute matching clothes. It was freezing outside, so when I say "a few", I mean a few. But I tried to follow her kids around throughout the weekend and snap a few more.

Lauren's mom was able to get 3 tickets to the Saturday morning session of Conference. So we left all the kids with the husbands, and had a wonderful morning. It was probably the only session I really listened to. I missed the majority of the blossoms on Temple Square, but the flowers did not disappoint! I snagged a few more pictures, and miraculously the Fogles ran into 2 different people all the way from West Virginia!


We roasted marshmellows, dyed eggs, ate our passover meal, had an Easter egg hunt, stayed up late, you know...the good stuff.


I tried to get "the Easter shot" with all three kids in their Easter outfits, looking at the camera, but how often does that ever happen.


After the Fogles left, we had our Easter dinner at the Garners. We all contributed food that Jesus would have eaten or typical Passover foods. I love this tradition so much. The kids went on a treasure hunt for symbols of Christ's last week of life with Grandpa, and then they flew kites with Dad and the uncles. Such a good day.