3 Saturdays and A Sunday (kind of)

I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned we've just had 4 Saturdays in a row. I haven't known what day it is as we laze around, eat, decorate for Christmas (while watching the snow fall peacefully outside - it couldn't be more perfect!), do fun family activities and just enjoy life. Then today at church they'd had trouble with the heater earlier in the day, so the Bishop sent us all home after Sacrament Meeting. They thought the classrooms would be too cold, but I went in all of them to collect the trash (apparently that is part of the job description of Young Women's President in this Stake) and they weren't cold at all. After all the lazing and being somewhat cooped up, I had been looking forward to 2 hours of adult time sans kids, but everyone else seemed really happy to go home. So today has ended up feeling like the rest of the days of this long weekend. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying, after 4 Saturdays in a row, I'm not dreading Monday as much as usual.

We loved having Uncle Andrew come visit us from BYU this week. He is such a fun-loving, easy-going, helpful, happy guy, who is so easy to have around. Harrison greatly anticipated his arrival and has been really missing him since he left this morning. He even requested to call Andrew a few minutes after he left because he, "forgot to tell him Happy Thanksgiving." So we did. It was sweet. Here are a few pictures from T-Day. We had our friend Tiffany and her darling daughters over, plus another sweet family from the ward and our neighbor Dave (whose daughters are in our ward, he goes to another ward). The kids mostly ran around like crazy the whole time. Notice the Spiderman "wallet" that Harrison is holding in every picture. He got it at Chuck E. Cheese's on Weds. and hasn't put it down since. He sleeps with it every night. I guess is was worth the 300 tickets it cost. Seriously, 300? That seemed high to me (listen to me talking like an expert on Chuck E. Cheese prizes).

Apparently Harrison has entered the "creating things from junk" stage that I have observed other children his age go through. He is loving the tape, tin foil, paper etc. Here's one of his creations he made on Thanksgiving morning.

Harrison had been begging to go bowling for days, so we finally went on Friday. After a little training from Dad, he got the idea, and didn't have to use the ramp like he had in the past. His strategy was, what I like to call drop and ditch. He would simply drop the ball, turn around and run away. Why bother watching to see what the ball does? The bumpers are going to guarantee you get some pins down and everyone is going to praise you no matter what.

I am sad to report that after countless bowling dates with Nate in high school and an entire semester of a bowling class at BYU, I only beat my 4 year old by about 12 points. I did get 2 strikes and was happy to find out that our old tradition of getting a kiss for every strike was still in effect. (PDA is hard to come by from Nathan). Unfortunately, the kisses were not nearly as thrilling as when I was a teenager, but hey, it was still fun!

Yesterday we went sledding/snowboarding. I forced myself out of my comfort zone and went for one ride on the sled. (I don't like risky activities where I feel out of control). I screamed most of the way down,

and was grateful when I realized I could use my hands as breaks to slow down. Andrew was carefree as usual. This was a much bigger hill than what Harrison was used to, so Nate held on to him most of the way down. He is showing so much improvement each time he does it and seems to like it more and more as well.

Here are Rew and Elizabeth watching them go down.I have also spent a fair amount of time playing nurse to each of my family members the last few days. WARNING - The next few pictures are kind of graphic!

Harrison got a bloody nose right when we sat down to eat Thanksgiving dinner. Elizabeth fell off the bed and hit her head on a spare printer that was on the floor. She spilt her scalp open.

It looked pretty bad, but it wasn't bleeding much, and after the initial crying, she was totally fine. So I took my usual route of avoiding the ER like the plague. We peroxided it and super glued it up ourselves. She was SO cooperative and she's seemed fine since. Even if it leaves an ugly scar, it won't matter, because it's in her hair.

Last Thursday, Nate got this removed.

It's a scar from a birthmark he had removed in high school. It seemed to be coming back and looked kind of suspicious, so he finally got it looked at. The doctor didn't think it was cancerous, but thought it would be a good idea to remove it anyway and said he could make it look better. Does this look like it's going to look better to you? It seriously looks like a pre-schooler or extremely intoxicated individual stitched this thing up. It makes me so upset every time I look at it. In hindsight, I realize that we totally rushed into this surgery without really thinking it through. It probably didn't even need to be done. He is missing out on most of his usual activities because he is supposed to take it easy, it's going to cost who knows how much, he's going to have a worse scar, and I have clean the nasty thing out and redress it every night. Here is all the equipment used in the nightly ritual.

I could really use a nurse myself. I have developed a serious pain in the neck. It has been bothering me on and off for over a week now, but today is the worst. It hurt so bad this morning, I felt like throwing up. It hurts down into my shoulder and gives me a headache. I'm probably going try going to a chiropractor tomorrow, but they make me nervous. It is the exact same neck pain/headache that I get in the 2nd trimester of my pregnancies. But I don't get the reward of a cute little baby this time. And I don't have the comfort of knowing that it will go away in a month or two. I am nervous that it is going to bother me for the rest of my life. Enough complaining, though.

So that's what we've been up to these 3 Saturdays and a Sunday (kind of). Whew, that was a long post!