One Day, Two Sentences

This morning Harvey said his first two sentences. He had finished the peaches he was having with breakfast and he said, "Momma, more of these." I was excited but thought it could be a fluke. Then after breakfast when I was getting him dressed he picked up his pants and said, "Pants! These are mine." So basically he's a genius as well as good looking. Watch out world, here comes Harvey.

Happy Birthday Noah

Even though Noah can't read, I just want to wish him a happy birthday and tell Kari that I didn't forget it, I just forgot to get him something and send it in time. Buy him a book and let me know how much it is and I'll send you a check. Anyway, Noah, don't eat too much cake!

Request

I am asking if any of you might have pictures of Merrit and/or Makayla from 2004 to 2006. This might seem like a weird request, but I'll explain. I make a quilt for each of my kids for their baptism. On these quilts I put iron-on pictures of their family and friends and of them through the years of them growing up. I began Merrit's but couldn't finish because all our pictures were packed away. So I got them out the other day to finish Merrit's quilt and begin Makayla's and realized that our photo albums end at the beginning of 2004 and the pictures I have on my computer start at about 2006, and I really don't even have many from 2006. I can't recall when we first got our digital camera and so I don't know what time frame I would've started to have pictures on the computer. My only conclusions for why I am missing almost 2 years of pictures is that either I have those pictures packed somewhere else waiting to be put into photo albums (which I hope it the case so badly) or they were on the computer and when Charlie purged it right before Christmas of 2006 those pictures were erased (which I hope, so badly, is not the case). Either way, I would like to have pictures from this time frame for Merrit's and Makayla's quilts and it doesn't look like I'll be able to unless I get them from somewhere else; thus my request. I hope you can help me out. Please just email me whatever you have.
Thanks!

Amusing Harvey Story

I called and checked in with our day care provider yesterday and she told me an amusing story I thought I'd share. Harvey approached the little boy closest to his age today and tried to get him to play. This little boy doesn't particularly like Harvey because my son will always take his toys and run away as fast as he can. So when he wouldn't play, Harvey tried a new approach and stuck his finger in the little boys mouth. Of course he chomped down and wouldn't let up until our day care providers pried his mouth open. Harvey cried and cried. Hopefully he's learned not only to not put his fingers in his friends' mouths but that it also hurts when he bites people. With being the youngest toddler, Harvey definitely thinks he is a much bigger boy than he is which makes life a challenge. When do you guys think it is appropriate to start time outs? Right now we just make Harvey sit down for 15 to 30 seconds when he's done something wrong. We praise him like crazy when he does good things but he's a whirlwind of energy and exploration.

Here's some pictures of Harvey we had taken Up North at Thanksgiving time.

a celebration

I am half way through this pregnancy! 20 weeks! It's crazy, the time has flown by this time. I think it's because I don't think about it as much, I just have more distractions (ahem, ahem...Addie). I feel great, although I'm still pretty tired much of the time. My little baby is as big as a banana! And so, to celebrate this achievement, I have included very attractive pictures of each of my siblings in this post.

On Sunday our downstairs neighbors were robbed. The sad part is that we were home and heard a loud bang from downstairs (the burglars breaking down their door) but thought it was probably one of their three kids being loud again. I feel awful. We could have called someone and didn't. I won't make that mistake again. Fortunately, all they had taken was an Xbox and some video games/movies. This apartment complex seems to be going downhill. There have been several robberies in the last two months and several of our friends are thinking of moving out. I still feel pretty safe here, although Jason and I will probably (although not too seriously) look here and there to see if there is anywhere else we'd rather be. If we move, though, we would have to pay a $1200 cancellation of lease fee, and it would almost be impossible to stay in our ward. Our ward boundaries just don't include many apartment complexes. It's pretty unlikely that we'll move, but I'm somewhat open to the idea. We'll see.

Jason has bursitis in his right elbow. I wrote about it a few days ago on our own blog. It is making it nearly impossible for him to do simple tasks such as CHANGE DIAPERS (the most frustrating for me as I've had to change EVERY diaper for a week now!), tie his ties for church and school, take out his contacts, put deoderant on, etc. I've had to step up being a good wife (although it hasn't been without complaint, I will have to work on that). He's going back to the doctor today so we'll see how he's progressing. It's affecting his schoolwork because he can't participate well in his labs. It's sort of hard to do an eye exam or fit someone with contacts when you can't move your dominant arm. We're praying for him to recover quickly! This will be his third visit, and the doctor didn't charge us for the second, so there have been some minor miracles. While we're grateful for those, we really just need his arm to heal! Your prayers, as always, are certainly appreciated.

February Geneology

Dad and I were talking yesterday about all the birthdays coming up in February and I remembered that there are others that are related to us who also have birthdays in February and I thought you might be interested to see who they are. These are the ones you might know, there are others I didn't put down.

LaRee Hill, Donna Lander, Dad, Sue Hutchinson, Hillary, Charlie, Merrit, Alexis, Jaxson, Ella Lindsay (my mother's youngest sister), Ashlee Hill (Loren's daughter), Kevin Hill (Reed's son) and Kyle and Phillip Scott (Sue's sons).

A little bit of trivia for you.

Cute pictures

Today's fingerpainting adventure, she absolutely loved it! And, as always, she loved her bath afterwards.


Cheesy Grins!


Just a sweet girl!

Health Myths

Hi everyone! I recently read some interesting health myth debunking articles and thought I'd share.

I'll do a brief rundown of the results for the impatient, but here are the actual articles if you want to read them: article one, article two.

Myths debunked in article one:

• Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Basically they traced this back to a recommendation for 2.5 liters of water per day, but that most of that will come from the food you're eating.


• We use only 10% of our brains. Evidence doesn't support this at all.


• Hair and fingernails grow after death. Really it's just the skin drying and shrinking back that make them seem like they're still growing.


• Shaving causes hair to grow back faster, stronger, or coarser. Shaved hair has sharper edges that haven't been "weathered," so it appears courser. It hasn't been lightened by the sun like existing hair, so although it is darker, that isn't an effect of shaving.


• Reading in dim light ruins eyesight. It can produce temporary effects like headache and eye strain, but permanent damage is not likely.


• Eating turkey makes you especially drowsy. Turkey doesn't contain a particularly high amount of tryptophan, and pork and cheese actually have more by weight. The drowsiness after big holiday meals is likely because of eating so much food, period.


• Cellphones create dangerous interference around medical equipment. Studies show an extremely low rate of interference, and even then only at very close distances (under 3 feet).

Myths debunked in article two:

• Sugar causes hyperactivity in children. Studies don't support it. It's just a psychological effect, self-perpetuated by the myth. Parents know the kids ate some sugary stuff, and so they perceive the kids as being more hyper.


• Suicides increase over the holidays. George Bailey notwithstanding, there actually seems to be a slight decrease.


• Poinsettias are toxic. This was a big one for me, because I have often warned people of poinsettia toxicity in the past. No evidence for it at all. One less thing to worry about, I guess.


• 40-45% of body heat is lost through the head. The myth probably arose from inaccurate conclusions of an old study. There's nothing special about the head in terms of heat loss. Heat loss is proportional to the unconvered area no matter what part of the body. Speaking from personal experience, though, being bald makes hats a necessity in winter.


• Eating at night makes you fat. Time of day doesn't matter. It's all about the number of calories consumed versus expended.

Okay, there you go. Now we've all learned something today.

So I'm sitting here watching Jaxson play with the vacuum. It was the only way I could get him to leave me alone long enough to check my email and go over some of my homework, and obviously, look at the blog. He's such a poor deprived kid during the day when he has no one else to play with. I try to spend time with him, but unfortunately I have other responsibilities I have too so I can play with him all the time (which is what he prefers). I even tried to build him a fort today, but he won't play in it because I won't. Maybe after I get some reading under my belt I'll be able to join him in the fort this afternoon.

Classes have started again. I have an intro to business class which is on campus and an ethnic literature class which is online. The campus class is on Tuesday nights from 7 to 9:45. The first class was last week. Our teacher let us out early. It would be nice if he did that all the time, but I'm not going to count on it. I have taken an intro to business class before, in fact I think I've taken it twice (maybe). It was really easy before and so I was hoping it would be this time too, but from the way the teacher was talking last week, it probably won't be as easy as I was hoping. I don't think it's going to be terrible, just not easy. It does seem like it will be interesting though. We are suppose to explore many different branches of the business world and different types of jobs available. I know that probably sounds boring to you, but it's interesting to me. I'm also excited about my literature class, although I don't like to read. We are suppose to cover some interesting pieces of ethnic literature and discuss them. I look forward to brightening my horizons.

Charlie and the kids are back to school. They were all sad to go back. They wanted vacation to last a little longer. The kids already have a four day weekend coming up this weekend though, so it's not like they've had to go through tons of school without a break again. Charlie only gets Monday off for Martin Luther King day. He needs it. Wrestling will be over in the beginning of February. I think I'm ready for it to be finished. It wasn't too bad for the first couple months, but having him gone so much is getting a bit old now. I'm glad he had that job though. It's been really good for him.

I was just called to be the first counselor in the relief society. I know it's such a different calling than before. We had a ton of changes in our ward yesterday. I hope it means good things to come.

On Thursday we got a call from our new contact person at the auction house we bought our house from. We are hoping this means that things will finally move forward with the house. We have a clear to close from our mortgage company. We finally got the title work from the seller's title company. So now all we are waiting for it the seller to sign an extension contract so we can get a new closing date. What a process this has been. I don't want to move again for a long time. Thank goodness we've had this house we are in now to stay in and haven't really had to worry about being out yet. The day is coming, but we hope things with our house will be settled before that.

Thank you to everyone

Jana, as much as I love to see how I looked 30 years ago, can we have a new picture on the blog now?

We enjoyed having all of you here at Christmas. We need to figure out why we all end up getting sick every time, though. We can look at it like this, it will make a good family story years from now. Anyway, thank you to everyone who made an effort to make it fun and worthwhile. Heather for hosting book club and making that great dinner, Kari for making cookies for the kids to frost, Hillary for donating felt and helping make the puppets, Jana for playing games with everyone and making them feel wanted, Dad for replacing the shower curtain, all 3 sons-in-law for giving Dad an excuse to watch football (he doesn't do that very much), Kurt for braving the sickness and being with us anyway (that's real love) and Jim for giving up 2 different bedrooms for the visitors. I also want to thank the Grandchildren for giving us a great time. Children are so fun to be around.

A New Family Activity

I saw this activity in a magazine and last night we thought we would try it out. It was soo fun for all of us. Eric just swung Noah into the soccer ball to kick it between the goals (the gray balls). Noah had a blast!

This picture is my absolute favorite of them all. And watch below for the finished product. He's going to be a pro soccer player for sure...he was already trying to dribble the ball.

Our New Year Day

So I wanted to have a picture to post with this, but my camera wasn't working at the time I needed to take the picture. I wanted to show you the insane rash Chelsea developed last week. I don't remember any of my kids ever having anything like it. It started out as really pink cheeks on Monday last week and by Wednesday it was spreading to her forehead and neck. I took her to the pediatrician on Wednesday and he told me that he felt it was probably just a reaction to her body fighting the "flu" bug she had had on Christmas. So I took her home. She wasn't even itching. But by that night, at 8, her body was covered in red and it was starting to creep down her legs and she was itching pretty bad. So I took her to urgent care that night. That doctor told me that it was either a virus and a food allergy that was causing it. The doctor told me to watch her carefully just in case she started to swell (if it was an allergy) and have trouble breathing. She told me to give her Zyrtec to help with the itching. So the next morning her eyes were a little swollen, but the rash was pretty much gone. We watched her that days to make sure the swelling didn't get worse and it didn't. She was O.K. by that night, thank goodness. So I still don't know what caused it, but I'm glad it's over.

I'm pretty sure I had strep throat last week too. It hit me on Tuesday and I pretty much slept all day and my throat hurt bad. I almost went to urgent care, but Charlie was at a wrestling tournament all day and by the time he got home (9:30 pm) I didn't fell like going. The next day I didn't feel nearly as bad, although my throat still hurt. I was more concerned about Chelsea that day anyway. By Thursday, I felt mostly better, my throat hardly hurt. So I actually didn't actually have a diagnosis, but I've had strep throat before and that's what it felt like to me. I talked to Kurt about it and he reminded about Heather's swishing of salt water remedy. I hadn't remembered that in time to help me. I wish I had. Hopefully next time.

And... Charlie got sick on Sunday. He went home from church early to sleep. He was nausea, but never threw up. He felt better after sleeping a while so he was able to go to work today (much to his chagrin). The kids weren't too excited to go back to school either. They were liking the days of laziness and relaxation. I was glad for to school to start again. Although I hate getting up in the morning to get the kids up, I get so much more accomplished during the day without kid distractions. I hope everyone else had a good New Year's Day.

So I was talking to Mom today and she suggested that we have our next first Sunday dinner in February and just skip January all together. That is fine with me. How do Heather and Kurt feel about it?

Our State's Capitol

Friday, before school started again and everything went back to normal, we took an impromtu visit to our state's capitol. Does anyone know what it is? I won't tell you...you'll have to guess in the comments-and no cheating by looking it up.

This mural was painted by a Missourian in the 1930's. It went around the whole room...these pictures don't even do it justice. It was soo cool. It was a timeline of Missouri up to the 30's.

There were mini murals inside the huge mural and this one is of the Mormons in Missouri. The tour guide asked the group if they knew the story about the Mormons in Missouri and no one did-we didn't raise our hands because we didn't want to be know-it-alls. The left half of the painting is the Mormons helping the slaves out and the right half is a Mormon man being tarred and feathered.Here's looking up in the dome. It really was a pretty capitol building.Eric and Noah were pretty excited about being on the tour.A painting of the governer who set forth the extermination order. His first name cracks me up-Lilburn, nice.They had a museum in the building and Noah had a great time walking around the glassed in exhibits. We pretty much let him crawl around the whole place and walk wherever he wanted to.This is a picture of Andrew Taylor Still...the man who founded Eric's school and osteopathic medicine.

We also went to a nature center right outside of town. Everything was free! It was such a fun day for us...especially to learn things about Missouri we didn't know before. So, where were we?