Surgery = Gratitude for the Simple Things

Five days ago, I had surgery for my 2 hernias and muscle / skin damage, etc, etc (my stomach was pretty messed up from my last couple pregnancies!!)  It was a somewhat serious procedure, and it looks like I'm gonna have some crazy scars.... hopefully it will look okay in the end!
Anyway, recovering from surgery SUCKS!!  It put me totally out of commission, so that I need someone around to help me 24/7!  I was actually quite surprised at how terrible I felt the first few days - I couldn't get in and out of bed by myself, could barely walk, couldn't even go to the bathroom by myself!  I have a drainage tube and bag coming out of me that is painful and driving me crazy, and my large incision is over my rib cage which makes it really hard to get a good breath in - it feels like my lungs are collapsing on me.  My whole stomach is super sore and tight and I can't even sit up or stand up straight.  Things are improving a bit day by day, but man, this has been a real trial of my patience.  I have felt very overwhelmed on numerous occasions, and Lee had to try to calm me down and help me to put it in perspective.  It feels like I will never feel good again, but Lee keeps reminding me of the improvements I'm making and that I WILL feel good soon! But through it all so far, I have really learned to rely on others to help me and I have felt great appreciation for all of the acts of love I have seen!!  Of course, Lee has been amazing, he has been trying to be home as much as he can to work from home and take care of the kids at the same time.  He has waited on me hand and foot, helped prop me up with pillows, get in and out of bed, fill up ice bags, get my water and medications, bring me food, and of course has become Super Dad with the kids.  Scarlett is still a huge handful, and I have felt so bad seeing him struggle to keep her out of the toilets and change her diapers over and over while she puts up a big fuss, and to get all the kids ready for school, church, and bed by himself.  He has really stepped up and I am so appreciative of him and his efforts.  He really would do anything for me.  I am especially grateful for his attitude through it all.  He remains positive and and has a way of helping me to be calm and happier, even through all my crazy and illogical thoughts and freak outs!
And then there is my wonderful mother - I couldn't ask for a better Mom in these types of situations - she is the definition of "service"!  She has come over every week day to help out - she watches the kids when Lee is gone, she makes meals, picks up groceries, does laundry, makes the house look cleaner than it ever does, and even manages to get the kids to clean up better after themselves, especially their clothes!  Something I've been working on for years, and she does it better than I can in one day!  She has even been cleaning my disgustingly dusty blinds which, in all honesty, I have barely ever done in the whole 5 years I've lived in this house!  She even washed my hair for me yesterday since I'm still not allowed to go in the shower - it felt amazing! She is always asking what else she can to help, and would be here in a heartbeat if she found out she was needed.  I know she has given up a lot of time to be here and I am so grateful for her and her willingness.  I feel bad though that she has had to lift Scarlett so much since she has a bad back... she really has been amazing though.
And of course, I have also been completely touched by all of the other friends and family that have reached out and helped me in one way or another!  We have had a bunch of meals brought and scheduled to be brought, friends have been driving my kids to school, dance lessons, etc, and many people have offered to help out with kids or whatever way they could.  Although I don't like accepting Service, I have definitely needed it more than at any other time in my life, and it makes me feel so loved that so many people care.  When I'm feeling better I definitely want to make a better effort to serve others more, and I would love to repay all the help that I have received!
I have also had lots of time to reflect on all the simple things that we take for granted.  Like being able to take a shower, pick things up off the floor, and to sleep comfortably in any position and with only ONE pillow instead of 500!  Like being able to run, exercise, play with my kids and especially to hold my sweet crazy baby!!  You'd think I'd be happy to relax and have a break from the kids, but now I realize how much I enjoy being a part of their lives. Scarlett doesn't come to me much anymore - I think she's learned that I wont pick her up and has given up hope, and it makes me sad.  And the other kids ask me every day if I'm better yet, and they have made me notes and pictures and brought me things to help me feel better.  Very sweet.
Well, I think that's enough venting and expressing my feelings for now!!

Slip N Slide!

My sister Jocelyn and her hubby somehow came up with this great idea to build a massive Slip N Slide on the hill behind their house with some big tarps - super cool!  They invited all the family over for a BBQ and to play on their cool invention last weekend, and it was a lot of fun!!  It turned out to be a surprisingly hot day for September, and the kids had a blast sliding down in it all different positions!  The Dads had fun going down it too, and even more so, throwing and spinning the kids down it as fast as they could!  Lee even sent little Scarlett down it - one time a little too fast and she kinda rolled - but the majority of the time she actually really seemed to like it!  It also formed a little pool at the bottom that she quite liked too!  The boys also got quite a good game of football going - it was cute to see Mason right in there playing along - they even let him score a touchdown once!  Oh yeah, and Mason decided he wanted to eat a bug like Dakota had to earn $1... sooo.... Jeff found this massive grasshopper and Mason worked hard at chewing that nasty thing, and eventually got it swallowed! I think I got some good action shots of it all that I wanted to share! (And some of the kids just looking cute!)

 
 

We also did a Food Drive for our ward that same morning, and it was a wonderful experience for the kids.  We had to deliver bags to a bunch of door handles, and I have never seen my kids work so hard - they were  all running as fast as their little bodies could go to try to get as many as they could before one the other ones got to them!  They just kept running to me for more bags and were disappointed when we were already done after only 1/2 hour!  They thought it was neat to pick up all the food for the poor people too - and Grandpa happened to be working at the drop-off station and thought it would be fun to put my kids in the big food boxes! ha ha!

Back to School

On Sept. 4, my kiddies went back to school!  Mason in grade 3, and Dakota in grade 2!  Griffin's still in preschool, but now has it 3 days a week instead of 2 - he REALLY was wishing he could go to Mason and Kota's school, and he especially wants to be in grade 1, but he is happy to go to preschool with his best buddy Jack!  Mason and Dakota were pretty nervous, but excited - Lee was able to give them all blessings the night before, so that was a nice reassurance for them.  I was pretty happy with their teachers and classes overall, but in all honesty, I was hoping for a few more of Mason's friends to be in his class, and I was pretty sad that Dakota's best friend Laura would not be in her class this year for the first time!  Those two have been pretty tight, so we'll have to do our best to have playdates to keep them together!!  It is strange to have  a much quieter house again now, and Griffin especially was at a loss of "what he can do"!  It's nice to be back in routine though - Dakota is in Dance, piano and basketball will be starting, and Mason has piano, Cubs, and basketball.  I kinda ran out of time for getting cute back to school photos, so here's my one lame picture that I took right in front of the school as we rushed to get there on time, and that's all I got!

Enjoying our last few days of Summer!

I can't believe Summer is coming to a close and the kids will be back to school in a couple days!  I can't decide if I'm happy about it - the kids are definitely starting to fight alot and get on each other's nerves, so I think some space will be good, or sad - it will be tough to get back in full routine with reading, extracurricular activities, making lunches, etc!  And we've had so much fun enjoying the wonderful weather.  Oh well, it will be good.  We were lucky enough to get to go to Calaway Park this week as a family - well, a family minus one - Melanie was wonderful enough to babysit our biggest handful, Scarlett, so that we could actually enjoy all the rides and stuff with the kids!  It was our first time going there as a family, and we had a blast!  The kids enjoyed all the rides, and Lee and I did too, until our stomachs started to feel a little queasy... I guess our bodies aren't quite what they used to be!  But we went on all the good ones, watched a bit of a magic show, and got some popcorn and mini donuts - lunch for champions!  It was great, we'll have to go back again next year for sure!  I got a few pics, but not very many...

 
 We also went to Chaparral Lake again this week, and the splash park in Cranston, and rode bikes and played around our house with the neighborhood kids!  Good week.
  On a side note, I always forget to write about the cute things my kids say, so while I'm remembering a funny thing Dakota said last week, I will write it down!  So we were sitting down and this man walks by us with a whole bunch of tattoos!  Dakota says, "Wow, that's a lot of tattoos, I would never want all those tattoos!!  One or two, maybe, but not that many!"  I kinda laughed and said, "Really, you would like one or two?"  Then I gave her the whole speech about her body being a temple and stuff.  She seemed kind of embarassed that she had wanted one, it was cute.  And then later in the week, she found some rub on tattoos in our house and said she wasn't sure if she should use them since her body was a temple!  So cute!  I told her temporary ones were fine! (:  What a sweet heart!
  Oh yeah, and in the same week, that sweet little girl also ate a worm!! A bug juicy earthworm!  Nasty!!  She found it and Lee kinda jokingly asked her if she was going to eat it, and she was definitely thinking hard about it, so I said I'd give her a dollar if she did!  Well, that helped her make up her mind and she actually did it!  Said it tasted like mushrooms! (Which she hates!)  Here's the video:

In fact, while I'm posting, I might as well post the video of the time she ate a grasshopper last Summer!  That one's pretty funny! She's got quite a list of bugs in her repertoire now!  How she got so brave, I will never know!  I wont even touch the things she eats!!

Swimming Lessons, and the Corn Maze!

Well, it's been a long last two weeks!  I've missed being at the cabin so much, it's hard to go back to daily life here and spending nice Summer days overwhelmed with trying to do stuff with 4 kids on my own!  Mainly just Scarlett makes it tough to do much with the other kids, but I must say, she is definitely getting easier now that she's walking!  She just loves to walk back and forth from room to room, picking up whatever she can fine and taking it to another location! (I'll probably have trouble finding something I really need one of these days because she will have hid it somewhere!)  It's very cute though, she seem so proud of herself!  Especially when she walks around carrying the boys' "light saber"!  They all call her a little Darth Vader because she points it straight out and tries to get them!  So cute!
We've just finished two weeks of swimming lessons as well with all the kids!  I had the older 3 registered and realized there is no way I can entertain Scarlett for 1 1/2 hours every morning, so I decided to put her in a class too so I could help pass some of the time!  It was a good idea overall, but also made each day tougher since I had to get myself changed and her at the same time and help the other kids get ready at the right times!  Stressful days!! I was literally counting down each day that I successfully made it through!  Plus the parented swim class with Scarlett was so annoying - I do NOT really enjoy singing songs and splashing in the water with a bunch of other parents and babies!  Especially doing the exact same ones every day for 2 weeks!!  Anyway, it's all over now, thank goodness, and they were all excited to have all passed!  Good job kiddies!
Today was a lot of fun, we took the kids to the Corn Maze for the first time ever.  (My Mom and Joce and her kids came too, and we happened to run into some friends from the ward as well!)  Anyway, we were pretty impressed with it actually, there was a lot of fun stuff to do there!  Big Bouncy pillow, a petting zoo, mini golf, big slides, playgrounds, big and small mazes, bike tracks, pig races, and more!  The kids really loved it, and it was a beautiful day.  Here are some pics to share from the day!

Little Walking Machine!

The past couple nights, Scarlett has really been walking all over the place!  And loving it!  So exciting, and so cute to see where she decides to go and explore!  She was walking all around the house, going back and forth and around the kitchen for like 20 minutes!  At night seems to be when she does her best.... do babies actually understand the whole "bedtime stall tactics", already?!  It would appear so, because man, she turns on the charm before bed and I can't seem to put down such a cute little thing!  What a little goofball she is turning out to be.  I love it!

Ashley Lake Trip #2

So... we had so much fun the first week, we decided we needed to go back for another week!  But so as not to hog all of my parent's time at the cabin, we had to choose a week where no one was going to be there!  It worked out well though, because we wanted to go to the Annual BBQ and Talent show that we hadn't got to go to last year!  It's a great time to see all my cousins and friends from growing up, and usually some good laughs!  Our contribution to the talent show was a number from Mason and Dakota, singing the "I'm bringing home my baby Bumblebee song", but I changed the words from baby bumblebee to "Daddy-long-legs", and they each had a real Daddy-long-legs spider that they had found in their hands.  At the end of it, they actually really ate the spider!  Something they both have done quite frequently at our house (why they do it, I have no idea, but I think they both like the shock value!!)  It was a great, and everyone was pretty surprised! So proud of my brave bug eating children!!

The kids were also happy to have a day to play with their cousins - Skyler, Ethan and Ryley.  It didn't last long because they had to go home, but they had a good time!  Ash and Jeff also overlapped with us for a day, but unfortunately the slept in and didn't make any of the pictures (:

The rest of the week, we had a few days to ourselves, and a few days with our friends, the Irvines, visiting us!  It was a blast! We had so much fun showing them all of the fun things to do around there, and it was fun to watch them do things behind the boat they had never done before.  And it was nice for the kids to have playmates too.  They actually got along really well with the Irvine kids! And wouldn't Griffin and Mila make such a cute couple?! Parents can hope, can't they??

The kids REALLY improved their skiing the second week at the lake, it was fun to see them improve!  One day Griffin even got up the courage to try skiing, which totally shocked me because at the beginning of the Summer, he was too scared to even go in the deep water with his life jacket on!  But surprisingly, he skiied quite a ways - although he was sitting on his skis the whole time and couldn't seem to stand up!  It was pretty funny actually, I have it on video!  He tried a few more times, but then lost his nerve and went back to the EZ ski!  We were still proud of him though for even trying!!

The kids also loved to wake surf with Lee!  Cute!

Anyway, such a fun Summer, the weather was amazing, boating was a blast, and having time together and with family and friends was wonderful!  It was sad, (and a lot of work!!) to pack up and clean up the place to be perfect for my parents! 

Can't wait till next Summer!