Poor Chlo-pants

What we thought was simple shingles virus is suddenly much more serious. Yesterday she had a bunch of blisters:




We took her to the doctor and got her on some antibiotics as quickly as we could thinking it was a variation of shingles. Today the blistering is a little bit out of control.



Sorry for the graphic pics. I'm writing now because We're bored in the Primary Childrens ER waiting for a doctor to come and check out this rash. Docs in Logan sent us here so we could get faster answers as the labs in Logan can't get test results as quickly. So far the doctors in the ER down here aren't quite as fast as those in Logan. The antibiotics are not working and the docs in Logan have ruled out the virus that causes shingles, just haven't ruled anything IN yet. Sounds like a rare case of something that's not very desirable at all. Poor Chloe seems to get all of he junky illnesses in our family. She is miserable as you can imagine and can't wait to not have blisters all over.

Thanks neighbors for helping us out with our other 4, again. We sure appreciate you.

Eyes Like the Sea After a Storm

i devised a sweet plan this week and didn't shave at all so that Saturday I could trim out a sweet Wesley stache (Princess Bride style). Stacie didn't appreciate it. At all.

Mommy's Girl

Layla loves her mom. Alot. The last few days Stacie has been really sick but for Layla, no one else will do. Sometimes it's not that she needs anything from Stacie, she just wants to be by her. The smell of mom right next to her must make her happy. Today, I was trying to give Stacie some resting time, but Layla really wanted into the bedroom to see her. She snuggled right up next to Stac, and then she was happy. Later she grabbed Stacie's iphone to play Talking Karl. She thinks Karl is pretty funny as you can see.

Soccer

Chloe and Elsie's first year in soccer was short but sweet. They have gotten better over the past few weeks and had fun being part of a team. Elsie has a tendency to lose focus, wander around and daydream when the action moves down the field away from her position. But, when she remembers she is in a game she's a fast runner and getting to be a pretty good fullback.

Chloe takes the game a little more seriously and sometimes gets her feelings hurt if the other team scores. She's a tender hearted girl. At first she was really timid and afraid of getting into the action, but lately she's gotten more aggressive which has been fun to watch. The pic below is what I saw while I was watching. She drove to the goal but unfortunately couldn't pull off a shot. Seems like such a small thing, but after all Chloe's been through it's really neat to see her out on the field playing with all of the other kids. She and Elsie both had a lot of fun and want to play next year too.

Clue

My girls like to hang out with their mom sometimes and watch old British classics, especially Addie since she getting older and gets all emotional about the love stories. They also like to play Clue.

Tonight Stacie was sick in bed and Thursday's are no electronics night at our house; Chloe thought we should play a game - Addie decided it'd be more fun if we played it with British accents like the movies. There were lots of dreadfully awful accusations and overly dramatic statements made so it was a bit more exciting than usual. I was impressed with their skills, even Elsie can do a pretty good accent.

Chloe finished the game with a comment that sounded as if it came from a stout, seasoned woman serving warm beer at an Irish pub. And she knew exactly what she was doing. She's got a knack for it, that girl.

Stroll Through the Park

Rhen and Avery taking a stroll. I don't have much to say about this picture, i just thought it was cute.

Everything is better with Bacon

Chloe and I took a trip to Wy last week which turned out to be a lousy day due to horrible weather, cancelled drywall delivery, a basement almost flooding (problem solved), a finger almost broken and very muddy, wet shoes and clothes. Despite all that, and thanks to Chloe, it was one of the funnest trips. She was a great helper and good company.

We just about had some bacon on the car-b-q when out of no where these pigs strolled out on the road somewhere in Ovid. You wouldn't expect to see wildlife in a big city like Ovid, but we did.

new blog

I have a new blog. It is to get some of my creative energy out and have fun with the things going on in my life, and also with building a new house I wanted to document it. Whenever Jake has taken Rhen to our property in Star Valley he has called it the house in the trees. So my blog, mylifeinthetrees.com begins. You can go check it out, or not :).

Destroyer of Self Esteem

Tonight I was reading Rhen some books before bed. After reading several pages of Curious George, Big and Small I started making up my own big and small comparisons.

Me: "Dad is big, Rhen is small. Dad's shirt is big, Rhen's shirt is small." Rhen was in agreement until, "Dad's muscles are big, Rhen's are small"

Rhen: "Whatever. Yours is like a barbie dad."

goings on

not too much has been happening at our house lately. Either that or too much has been and that's why we haven't blogged for a while. It's Sunday and I had some free time tonight so I figured I'd write a long post about the last month. That way when we're old and can't remember anything we can read back about what we did in January of 2011. Anyway, here are some things we did:

I took Rhen up to do some skiing last week. He did great, but was a little more interested in riding up the lift. He thought that was pretty cool. Yes that is a picture of a cruiser around his neck. His sisters were making necklaces and he really wanted his own necklace. I gave him a lanyard and he wanted a picture of a cruiser in it - i was very proud. I think it's better than pink and purple beads.


This is Rhen taking it easy on the hill thinking about going on another lift ride.

Stacie's been skiing more this year than she has since we got married, which is nice because she is learning fast and getting much better. Not that she wasn't good before, just sayin. She hasn't been able to go for a long time because every year we were able, she was pregnant or had a newborn. It's been really nice to have her up on the hill with me and the kids. One of these days maybe I'll get her out in the powder after a nice storm. Chloe loves skiing, Elsie and Addie are thinking about it. I think if Justin Bieber were to show up Addie would enjoy skiing a bit more. For right now she is unsure about being out in the cold for so long voluntarily

Speaking of Bieber fever, I tease Addie about Biebs from time to time and I guess Rhen decided he'd join in. Yesterday i was playing with Layla on the floor and Rhen came running in with his hair wet and combed down over his eyebrows and he says, "hey Dad, Check it out! I made a Beiber!" Pretty cool.

Rhen started to affectionately call Layla, "Lay". It's pretty cute. If she's crying he'll sweetly say, "don't cry Lay. it's ok."

In January, we celebrated Chloe's bone marrow birthday, and then a week later her real birthday. Since she had two birthdays, she wanted a Pazookie instead of a cake for one of them (thanks for the pan Eskelson's/Whites! it gets alot of use). Chloe is down to checkups every three months, which we are really enjoying. We had a visit last week and she is doing great. Everything looks wonderful and we are so grateful. Another exciting event was that Addie got braces as you can see in this pic. Chloe got some kind of mouthpiece aparatus which is a prelude to braces so we have those bills to look forward to.

Stacie distributed some hugs throughout this month as mothers tend to do. This was one. She gives good hugs.


Stacie has also turned into a running machine. She runs most every day and has started capping the weeks off with a 10 miler on Saturday, just for good measure I guess. I run to the fridge when I am hungry, and figuratively I 'run' to the post office occasionally. I haven't capped anything off since that broken sprinkler pipe last summer.

My brother Jeff and I hit a Manchester United game a few weeks ago. He is a huge fan and has really been wanting to catch a game in person so I decided to tag along cause it sounded really fun. It was. I wish I had made arrangements to take Stac with me. I definitely owe her one since she was stressed out with 5 kids while I was galavanting around with Jeff. Oh and Man-U won very comfortably. It was an exciting game and way better in person than on TV.

We cruised through the countryside to catch a church meeting in Preston. The countryside was beautiful as always. Jeff drove that 1.2 liter Skoda compact like he owned it.

We got there just in time for sacrament meeting to start in Preston and had a wonderful experience there. Pretty hilarious actually, but thats for another posting. The temple next door was beautiful as expected.

Then we strolled around the Rievaulx Abby ruins in the rain. It was a very memorable trip and always fun to spend time with Jeff and try and gain a little of his wisdom.


Layla started to walk this last week. She doesn't like it enough to keep trying until she gets it, but she'll take a few steps here and there and loves to stand on her own. She also started dancing - or trying to while keeping her feet planted. It's pretty darn cute.

In between our regular daily duties we've been taking many trips up to WY to work on or check in on our remodel project we have going on up there. We're getting a hefty new roof that should hold up better than the old one, so that is pretty exciting. We also just got a pretty sweet new flight of stairs welded in. It's been challenging for the guy framing up the addition/remodel as we've had a combined snow total of 120" that has had to be shoveled away. It'll be months before we're ready to start finishing things off, but we're on our way.



Well that pretty much sums it up for now. Maybe we'll start posting more regularly, or maybe not. It's the unknowns that make life more interesting.