Park

I have been off work now for 5 days and I am LOVING this! It is always so hard to go back after such a long break. I am not due back till friday so it's gonna be tough!
Since the kids are off track for another 2 weeks I have been trying to do something fun each day so they will have something to talk about when they go back to school. We went to one of my favorite parks growing up, Hunter Park, and had a great time! Izzy LOVES the swings. I had to tie her onto it with her sweater because it only had that chain thingy in the front. The sun was in her eyes the whole time as well but she stilled loved it! haha! Sammy is so funny she is still the same little girl when we go to the park. She has to find any person there and become there BFF this time though it was a little 4 year old girl but she played until the girl left. I asked her why she didn't play with her sisters that way and she told me because they never do what she suggests. hmmmmm....well I guess that is true! anyway Parker, Haven and Aubs brought some things to ride around the park and were having a good ol time. In one of these pics you will notice parker is about to run into Haven and he biffed it haha! He was fine and just started laughing because Haves was not amused! Anyway when we got home a man in our ward brought over AND set up some bunk beds that they no longer needed!! I am soo thankful to him because the rooms in my house are sooo extremely small that when I have the two twin beds apart there is about a foot and a half of space between them so it is very crowded in there! And being as poor as we are right now I could not afford new beds, so I am soooo excited for these beds!! they are awesome! They are in the best condition too! I will tell you what I am not looking forward to the next 6 years being dirt poor, but whatever right!?? We are only on this earth for a short time and the time will fly by (at least that is what people are telling me:) )
Izzy was soooo close to walking today! She has been standing for a few weeks now but refuses to move her legs. The kids and I were all pretty excited! Aubs is doing fantastic! She still needs her pain medicine but she is doing great and milking the Popsicles as much as she can lol!











!

Surgery

Here a few pics of Aubs before and after her surgery. We arrived at the hospital at about 6:50 am. We packed a nice backpack full of games, puzzles and books to pass the time before surgery. While we were playing Uno the medicine that they gave her started kicking in and she was acting all sorts of goofy! It was so fun! They took her at about 8am and brought her back to me at about 8:45am. She was handling it pretty good. She started crying after she saw the I.V that they had put in her hand. I felt so bad for her and wanted so badly to know how the poor girl was feeling! She did not want to talk or have me read to her (so not my aubrey!)
We waited about 25 minutes before she was feeling up to leaving so I got her dressed and we started walking out of the room when she told me she was going to throw up (she was most afraid of throwing up because Haven had a few times after her tonsils were removed), so I hurried and grabbed one of these cool little throw up baggie things but did not get it in enough time before I felt wetness all on my side. At least she had just got done eating an orange Popsicle and not a red one! Anyway I put her back on the bed and let her finish and then I had the nurse wheel chair her out, which she thought was sooo cool! It was then off to Walgreens to get these cool numbing sucker things that Matt's pharmacy compounds and then to Wal-Mart for aubrey's all you can eat Popsicle and icecream shopping spree. She threw up one more time at the store in her nifty bag and has not again since:)
She is doing fabulous and takes her pain medicine diligently and drinks alot of fluid often!
Yesterday was our stake carnival. Aubrey said she really wanted to go so we went for a couple of hours and so much fun! She was really bummed that she could not go in the bounce houses but she had fun playing the games and eating snowcones. The carnival makes me really excited for the Ward one that I am preparing for in October! It will be sooo much fun!
Anyway I also threw in a few pics of working on my little brothers yard trying to prepare it for topsoil and grass, it is nasty work! lol!
Happy Sabbath!

Relaxing is always good

Today has been one of those lazy days, where you just hang out in your jammie bottoms doing a load of laundry here and there while making yummy snacks for your kids all day...
With Aubrey being somewhat down from her surgery it has motivated me to do just that, sit "down". The dishes in the sink have been calling my name all day but it's always nice to just sit down and hang out with my kids.
I did get to the gym which I got to my cycle class 30 minutes late (I forgot when it started) and did do some sweating though:) Haven insisted on going with me. She reminds me of how Sammy was when she was younger. She is a social butterfly but is VERY particular about who she associates with. Right now her best friend is her cousin Tegan..They are soo stinkin cute together!
Sammy is having a hard time not having any friends that are on the same track as her so she is getting bored pretty quickly in the day. As I give her ideas of things to do it reminds me of when I was young and I would pester my mom like crazy about how bored I was and I just wanted to go to the store. It is soo funny to be saying and doing the same things as my mom had haha!
I got a free subscription to a lego magazine a few months ago for Parker, he got it today so he has been in his room most the day creating his masterpieces.. I need to post some pics of the awesome things he makes!
Matthew is going on his Kings Peak hike tomorrow morning so I get to have another fun filled day chillin with the kids (until my stake's carnival that is!) I sure hope Aubs is up for it:) She has been AWESOME! She takes her nasty medicine every time and is drinking constantly, she has almost ate ALL of her yummy ice cream and Popsicle's I got her so I think I am safe to say we will not be making an E.R trip for dehydration thank heavens! I am so grateful for a wonderful doctor that knows what they are doing to help all my kids out with there med problems!! This Dr. put Sammy, Aubrey AND Haven's tubes in there ears and of course took Haven's tonsils out as well..I sure hope he is around long enough for when Izzy's ears catch up to her lol...

Summer is over?!

Ever feel like your life is just whizzing by?? I can't believe my little Izzy is almost 1 years old! I have not even had her pictures taken professionally since she was 1 week old!! (slacker I know!) Aubrey is just wayyyy too big I cant stand it, and Parker will be getting baptized next year!!! what tha heck! and of course Samm who is now old enough to walk with her friend and play at the park BY HERSELF! oh man pretty soon she will be wanting to ride the bus to the mall ugh!
Well like everyone else my life is super full of fun and crazy busyness! I am happy though that we have taken time out to go camping and to Lagoon. It has been a pretty fun summer. I recently switched my work schedule to mornings instead of nights so that matthew will have every night to do homework. So it has been really nice to be home to make my kids dinner everynight.
Samm has been on a waiting list for 6 months now to start piano and she is finally in!! WOOT! She is soo excited and so am I! She really wants to play the Bass in the school band too but I told her she needs to get the piano down for a few years and then we can get her in band...
Aubrey is going in tomorrow to have her tonsils taken out ( I am sooo not looking forward to this!) because they are soo enlarged she has sleeping issues and it will I guess later cause facial problems anyway cross your fingers she does not get dehydrated like poor Haven did. Isabelle has not been able to kick this ear infection yet either so hopefully she does not need tubes, my pocket is crying from all the co-pays!!
On Labor Day not only did we have a way fun family BBQ at my moms house but we did a ward 5K which was soooo much fun! I made prizes for the winners which were the candy mugs that I made for parker and samms teachers at the end of last school year the people loved them! Ariane won the womans category with just under 23 minutess!!! she did AWESOME!! I want to be just like her! And Matthew won in the mens category in just under 19 minutes! He wanted to win soo bad! haha he would have won the whole thing but 3 kids from the local high school track team beat him by 30 seconds! It was awesome. we did T-shirts too that had the word RUN made up of all of our last names from the ward in it! It was great fun!
time to hit the hay for the fun tomorrow!

update

Well I guess since everyone else is posting I think I will fill in on my life a little bit:)
It has been such a crazy summer already! The kids are finally out of school for 3 weeks then 3 NOT 2 kiddos will be going back!! wahoo! my baby aubs is starting kindergarten and it makes me sooo sad! she is my little peace maker so I am not sure what I will do with out her...she reminds me that she will only be gone for a few hours....as she is petting my head! LOL!
Matt and I received a new calling on Sunday....drum roll please...........................we are now the Chair of the activities committee! I could not believe it! we have been in just the committee for OH 6 months, anyway we are SOOOOO EXCITED! I LOVE to partae!!! we have some really close friends from our first neighborhood that are the chairman as well so we are going to feed off each other.
We have our ward campout this month on the 22nd so it will be crazy around here for the next few weeks..of course July is christmas for us as well with all the Birthdays so hopefully I can post about that later!
I will leave you with a few pics of my cute kiddos

Wedding shower

I have been meaning to post about the shower that I did for my soon to be sister in law but kept forgetting so here ya go!
We played some SUPER fun games and had a lot of fun! All of my sisters and my mom put all of this together for her and I think it turned out really great, we had Einstein bagels and a TON of fruit. Each guest got some hershey kisses in a mesh bag. When everyone got there I put some clothes pins on the bottom of their pant legs and told them they could not cross their legs the entire shower! If they did or if they caught someone else crossing them then you would run up and steal their pins! It was so funny to see the ladies run across the room to snag them:) I also gave everyone some balloons that had little pieces of paper in them they had to try to pop them and whoever had the name of Fatima(which is my brothers bride) then they would get a prize, my gma won that one! Then I told everyone that Alan and Fatima were going on their honeymoon to Florida and they would have to guess the items that I had put into some tube socks but they could only feel them with their FEET! haha it was sooo funny to see peoples faces as they were feeling them on the floor! :)
Then I told everyone to get their food and have a seat because Fatima was going to put a show on for us, she had NNOOOO idea what was going to happen lol!
so after everyone sat down I brought out a suitcase and told them that we were pretending that the wedding was over and Fatima and Alan just got to there hotel when the power went out and she had to get ready in the dark! So I whipped out a blindfold and put it on her and gave her the suitcase and instructed her to put everything on that was in it! IT WAS HILARIOUS! we all just ate and watched her get dressed into her SEXY attire lol! she was such a good sport and let me take lots of pictures! she got everything right except for the nightgown which she happened to get inside out AND backwards lol!
anyway then we just played the whats in your purse game and gave away lots of stuff and then opened gifts..it was sooo much fun to watch my little brother kiss all the bows off:) they are so cute and I cant wait till June 9th when they get hitched!!

Mother Hood is tough

Do you ever feel like giving up?--giving up on the diet,--giving up on trying to clean your house,--giving up on trying to teach your kids to be nice--just plain giving up--I wonder how many mothers out there have those kind of days?...
Today was one of those days...I have been super stressed these last few months and have not been able to blog because of it. I go to bed every night super tired from the day mentally and physically( now that I am working out lol)
About a month ago Parker started crying uncontrollably and getting really bad stomach aches when he had to go to school..he swore he was sick and insisted I take him to the doctor, so I did and all the doc said was to give him some stuff for his tummy and it might make the anxiety go away...excuse me! ANXIETY! I did not want to believe her that my son was already starting the sicko effects of this stupid anxiety stuff! It runs on my side of the family and also on Matthew's side of the family so I guess some of my kids are bound to have to deal right?! I have just seen a lot of what it does to people and it just makes me so mad and sad that he is going to have to deal with it the rest of his life! I mean I know that everyone gets anxious but not every one makes themselves sick every single day just with the thoughts of going out..I do not have any experience with this so it has been very stressful for me...I sometimes just want to hide in my room for hours and hope it is better when I get out..but its not ,,,,I have researched a lot about children and their stresses and I know that parents are the key to a successful child learning to deal with their problems...I have seen the psychiatrist at his school and she has been VERY helpful with this new thing:)! I had no idea that schools have such incredible people to help us parents!! I have been doing a rewards system with him that has been working fairly well..if he goes to school without throwing a fit he gets a quarter and if he reads his daily reading book assignment without throwing a fit he gets another quarter. He usually earns about a dollar a week.. he at least does not get stomach aches as much but his little heart just races when he has to go to school or to his church class.
He has also developed this HUGE fear of dying or his body falling apart. This last Sunday at my mom's house her dog started gagging on a hairball and Parker started crying and came running in the house saying "He is dying! He is just going to die!" and was just sobbing...I had to calm him down and explain why dogs get hairballs...anyway this is just a small amount of the things we have been dealing with any suggestions would be appreciated I do not want to put him on medicine so I need all the help I can get! :)On a positive note I did make cheese cake tonight that was FABULOUS!