Playing outside with Papa

Today was such a beautiful day outside! Papa came over for lunch and, of course, Jack decided he needed to sit on Papa's lap the whole time. Beth decided she needed to as well :) I'm sure that made things a bit difficult for Papa, but he didn't seem to mind it!

Papa's plane doesn't leave until tonight, so we spent several hours playing outside with him. Megan and Kylie made wigs out of weeds, Papa jumped on the trampoline with them, Papa pushed Beth and Jack on the swings, then more trampoline jumping. After jumping for quite a while, Papa decided he needed a bit of a rest, but the kids didn't want to go inside, so we brought books outside and he read to them on the trampoline.

It's been kind of slow lately . . .

so i haven't bothered to write much :) I think this is my least favorite part of surgery - the recovery :) I hate not being able to jump up and do whatever I want/need to do. There are so many things that I could be doing, but instead I have to pick just the very basic ones and then I have to force myself to sit and relax. It's already been 2 and a half weeks though, so we're getting there :) Another week and a half or so and I should be up and around again I would think. The dr said it would take about a month before I could return to my normal activities.

This whole experience has really made me appreciate Rob and the kids more though :) I've had so much more time to sit and watch the kids play. They are better than TV! The other day, Beth was dancing around the playroom, belting out a made-up song at the top of her lungs and Kylie was sitting there playing with something else, but after each line of the song, Kylie would belt out "YEAH, YEAH, YEAH". lol - so funny! I wish my camcorder had been charged!!! I need to get a camera like Christy's that records movies as well. I think mine does, but I forget how to use that function.

I know I've said it before, but Rob has been such an incredible help! He has run the house and even now that he's back at work, he's still doing almost all of the chores and the house is staying fairly clean :) He has never complained once about having to do all the work or having to put up with frustrated me :)

Let's see . . . this week we had an ice storm on Tuesday night, so Megan didn't have school Tuesday (they cancelled it prematurely) or Wednesday (the roads were solid sheets of ice until early afternoon), so it was nice to have some extra family days. Rob stayed home on Tuesday as I did too much on Monday and felt horrible when I woke up on Tuesday. He went in several hours late on Wednesday due to the ice. I'm so glad he's now in a department where he has more flexibility with his schedule! He actually didn't leave for work until almost 1pm as he couldn't get into his car. The freezing rain and sleet had gotten into the doors and sealed them completely shut. Our driveway is on the north side of our house, so it doesn't get any direct sunlight and although the temperatures were above freezing, none of the ice on his car had melted. A coworker told him to pour cold water into the door frames and that helped him to be able to open one of the back doors. He crawled in and then was able to kick the rest of the doors open from the inside.

We ended up clearing the ice off our driveway with water as well. I remember when we were living in Rexburg, ID and our bishop (the LDS term for pastor) tried to hose the snow off his driveway after the first winter storm. Everyone thought it was so funny . . . I can see know why he did it :) It helps when the temperatures are in the 50's by the next day.

Last night my dad flew in, so we've been enjoying spending time with him :) Jack especially is so excited! Papa is one of his favorite people. Jack wants to be carried around by Papa the whole time he's here and every time Papa sits down, Jack needs to be on his lap :)

Today we baked cookies and we discovered that chocolate chip cookies are apparently Jack's very favorite thing in the world. I think he's eaten about a dozen and he would finish them off if I'd let him! He gets so excited when I hand him one - his eyes light up and he grins a huge grin and happily babbles away. Good thing I don't make cookies very often!

Right now, the girls are at the park with a friend. They haven't really been out of the house since my surgery, except to play at a friend's house after school yesterday for a few hours, so I'm sure they are really enjoying it! It's warmed up again, so they didn't even bother with coats. Jack is hanging out on my lap and cuddling :) I should go spend some one-on-one time with him. I haven't gotten to see him all that much over the past few weeks and I've missed my baby.

Tonight we are going out for Mexican with my dad, my sister and her boyfriend. That's about it for us :) Hope all of you are doing well!!!

Official diagnosis and a few pictures :)

I had my post-op appt yesterday and the dr verified that the mass they removed was benign :) We expected it, but it was nice to hear it :) I can pick up Jack again and drive again now, but nothing very strenuous for another 3 weeks and he said it would probably be 4 months before I am back to normal. Going a little crazy here not being able to do anything. I feel fine when I'm lying down, but I can't sit up for more than a few hours and can't walk for very long. On the plus side, all the cross stitch pieces I've started and not finished over the last 12 years are actually being worked on! :)

The kids and Rob have really helped out, which has made things much easier :) Our friends have been wonderful too! Thank you to everyone who has brought dinners or called or emailed or sent me messages on facebook or as replies to this blog! It's really meant a lot to us :)

We haven't done all that much (or rather, I'm not aware of much we've done) over the last week, but I do have a few pictures. The first two are of Rob and Jack playing on the Nintendo. We have an old Nintendo 68 (I think?) and the kids love playing on it with Rob. A friend gave us several games for it, including Donkey Kong Racing and a Star Wars Pod Racing game. Every night the kids try to talk Rob into playing with them. Even Jack knows where the controllers are and gets up on his toes to get them. I took a few pictures of Jack and Rob playing together. I thought it was so cute!




This is a picture Beth took of herself. She has joined her sisters in their interest in the camera, although about half the time she points it the wrong way and we end up with lots of pictures of her shirts or her eye. I don't know if she meant to take a picture of herself or if she thought she was pointing it away from her.



Jack's interest in the activities his sisters participate in has increased quite a bit and he is now old enough to tell if we give him something different from them. Megan is always making "books" and writing letters and making lists and Jack noticed and wanted in on the action. Megan sweetly got him his own piece of paper and a crayon and even sat next to him while he colored :)



Kylie and Beth disappeared into the library the other day. I could hear them quietly talking to each other and peeked in to see what was going on. They were happily engrossed in a book that they were sharing while stretched out on the floor next to each other :) I am so glad my kids love books!

Update on my surgery

Sorry if this isn't very coherent. I'm still on vicotin and am a bit out of things. I just wanted to update everyone. The surgery on Tuesday went well. They did a hysteroscopy and I think a d&c and removed my right ovary and fallopian tube. I don't know what they found yet as I was very out of it afterwards and am waiting until my follow-up appt this coming Wednesday to get details of why and what they found. I have not gotten the results of the biopsy back yet, but the doctor didn't mention finding anything beyond what they had expected to find, so I doubt that it's cancer :)

The kids had so much fun with Christy and Ron on Tuesday at the Dallas Aquarium! We pulled Meg out of school so she could go too and not sit in school all day knowing that I was at the hospital and worrying. Christy has decided she needs to take Megan back by herself sometime because Meg was so interested in all the details of everything and was asking so many questions about each of the exhibits. Kylie and Beth had a lot of fun too and Jack loved it, although he absolutely refused to let Christy carry him. He glued himself to Ron's side and Ron had to carry him the whole time :) I think Ron's found a new fan! Christy has pictures, so I will try to remember to post them when she downloads them :)

Rob has done a wonderful job taking care of the kids, the house and me! I am so lucky to have him :) We are also so blessed to have Fidelity as his employer. They gave him 2 weeks off (with pay) to take care of me, without having to use his vacation time! Our friends have been incredible as well. We've gotten dinner every night this week, even the night before the surgery (a friend said she didn't want me to have to worry about it) and I've gotten so many phone calls and emails and visits! A friend watched the kids on Monday so Rob could go to the pre-op appt with me and another friend picked up Megan from school that day and brought her home for us. We are so incredibly blessed in having the wonderful friends that we have down here! Thank you all!!! You guys have made this so much easier for us!

And the eggs are from . . .

Lizards :) I looked it up online :) Kind of cool! The kids are all asleep, but they will be excited when I tell them tomorrow that they found a nest of hatched lizard eggs! What a neat TX experience (and I am so glad it wasn't snakes, although spiders would have been worse!!!) :)

Happy Birthday Bethington!!!

Today my little Elizabeth Anne turned 3!!! I am so grateful that she is in my life! There are so many things about her that I love. I remember when she was younger than Jack is now, I tried to give her a piece of toast. She toddled over to me and handed it back, but got very upset when I put it back on the plate. I tried to hand it back to her, but that wasn't what she wanted either. After about 15 minutes of frustrated attempts to figure out what exactly she wanted me to do (she couldn't talk yet), she finally managed to help me figure out that she wanted jam on the toast. That is just such a "Beth" thing. She is so incredibly determined and knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it. From well before she could talk, it was impossible to convince her to like something she didn't or to do something she didn't want to do (which occasionally makes things difficult - like today when she got her b-day card from G'pa and G'ma K and did not want to let us keep the money in it safe for her). She loves playing and has the most wonderful sense of humor. Sometimes I sit nearby when she plays and pretend to read just so I can listen to the story lines she comes up with. She's been talking in complete sentences since she was about 16 months old, which is a good thing since it was very frustrating to both of us to have to figure out exactly what she wanted.

She HATES being dirty and therefore strongly dislikes the beach as the sand sticks to her feet. She usually comes inside every few minutes when the kids are playing in the backyard to wash the dirt off her hands. She also dislikes the snow as it is wet and messy. When we had the snow storm last year (yes, we actually got snow - 6 inches of it!), I dressed her up in Megan's old snow suit so she could play in it. It still makes me laugh to picture the dirty looks she shot me as she stood just outside the back door, not interested in playing in the snow at all.



I love that she still snuggles with me all the time. There are so many times every day where I'll be sitting at the computer and she'll come climb up on my lap to play or where I'll be sitting on the couch and she'll leave what she's playing with to come curl up next to me.

She is currently going through an interesting speech phase. I have no idea where it came from as no one else in our family speaks this way, but she puts a "y" on the end of every thing, and often adds the original word on the end for good measure. For example, her bum is now her "bummy-bum", juice is "juicy-juice", etc.

I can't believe my baby girl is 3! She is growing up so fast! I can't imagine what we did without her and I'm so blessed to have her in my life! I love you, Button!

************************

We didn't do much for her birthday today. We had the family party on New Year's Eve with my family and last night we went out to dinner at Cici's Pizza with Kiki as that is where Beth wanted to go. Today Jack had a dr's appt to get a couple of immunizations he missed from an appt where he wasn't feeling great, so that is how we spent the morning, although Beth did get to have her hair done first as it was her special day! We played with friends in the afternoon, then made pizzas for dinner. Rob skipped boxing to spend the evening with her (even though we went out last night so he could go to his class tonight). We baked a chocolate cake and frosted it with chocolate frosting, topped with blue sprinkles. Jack went to bed early as he wasn't feeling great (due to the shots), but the girls, Rob and I sung "happy birthday" and Beth tried to blow out the candles (I ended up helping).






*************************

By the way, does anyone happen to know what type of creature these eggshells would have been from? The girls found them on our back patio, under the pile of extra bricks. I don't think a bird could fit, but couldn't think of anything that lays hard eggs that would be there. Maybe a snake??? How big are snake eggs???

Pudding pie and brownies

Today the kids are outside in the backyard "making pudding pie and brownies", which are apparently created by dumping dirt into the water collected in the upside-down shell of the turtle sandbox and stirring it around with old paintbrushes :) They're certainly enjoying themselves though and it's bath night tonight anyway. Plus, this way the inside of the house stays clean! Everybody wins :)







For those of you who haven't heard, I'm going in for surgery next Tuesday. My doctor found a mass in my right ovary and is removing it. It looks like a dermoid, which is benign and is what I had removed in 2001. This one is only 1/4 the size of the last one, so that's good :) They are operating laproscopically, so it will just be out patient. Fidelity will give Rob up to two weeks off with full pay so he can stay home and take care of the kids while I recover and Christy is taking the day off work so Rob can be at the surgical center with me :) Honestly, I'm not horribly concerned about the surgery. I'm sure it will be fine.

Other than that, we are doing well :) Meg is enjoying being back in school. Kylie, Beth, Jack and I are taking it easy for the most part. We've come up with a new name for Jack - Destructo-boy - he can decimate a room in under a minute when the conditions are right! Boys are SOOOO different from girls! Jack just gets into so much more trouble than the girls ever did! We're going to have to go out and buy some cheap sets of silverware because he's been throwing ours away (we got it as a wedding present from one set of Rob's grandparents). We have to make sure Jack's forks are all plastic because he now stabs the table with the prongs of the fork when he has metal ones. He knocked a chair over on Beth last week and she now looks like she was on the losing end of a fist fight. The bridge of her nose is horribly swollen and all black and blue. We finally had to tie the doors of the library shut as Jack has been pulling every book he can reach off the shelves. He has figured out how to open child locks and loves to play with the mixer. He pulls chairs over to the tables and counters and climbs up on them when I'm not looking. He dumps his food on the table to splash in it and eats with such gusto that his food almost always ends up on his head, his clothes and everywhere else. It is just a completely different world than it was with the girls. He is such a cutie though and we are so glad we have him!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas, albeit a busy one. My whole family came down, as did Rob's sister, Becca, so we ended up with 15 people here. Fortunately some of them were able to stay at Christy's house, so we had plenty of beds. It was wonderful to finally have everyone here as Travis has been gone for the last two Christmases serving his mission. We missed being able to see the rest of Rob's family, but we were glad Becca was here!

Tomorrow is Beth's 3rd birthday. We had a family party for her on New Year's Eve so that my family could be there (unfortunately Becca had to leave shortly after Christmas) and are going out tonight for dinner. Beth wants to go to Cici's Pizza, so it looks like we'll be heading there. We gave her the present from us, which was a doll stroller, high chair and carseat. She loves playing with dolls. She missed moving up into Sunbeams this year (the youngest class in our church's children's program) by 8 days, but that means she will get to spend a full year in nursery with Jack, who will be old enough to go to nursery in just a few weeks. This is the first time we have ever had a child go into nursery (the church class for 18 months - 3 years old) without being weeks away from delivering another baby. It's kind of weird!

I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season!