Sick Days

I've had my second talk with the school nurse in two days. Yesterday Shaylee called saying she had a headache and since she had a cold I thought she could have some bad sinus pressure so I went to pick her up. When I got there I found out she had been hit in the head with a basketball but it hadn't even left a red mark so I sent her back to class and told the nurse that she tended to overeact.

Just now Bryce called from the nurses office saying he threw up in the lunch room because someone had cottage cheese and he looked at it and smelled it an it made him throw up. The kid has such a touchy gag reflex I totally believe it. He had already come up with his own plan for the rest of the day. He said he now needed hot lunch because his sandwich would make him sick and that whenever he walked past the lunch room he would hold his breath and plug his nose so he wouldn't get sick again. I could hear the nurse laughing in the back ground.

When the nurse got back on she asked if I thought she would be seeing any more of my kids this week and if we got Jake and Avery in we would set a school record. I said if that happened I would by her hot lunch.

Quote of the day

Avery told her Kindergarten teacher that it isn't OK to tounge kiss your cousins because that is the worst way to get germs. It is ok to share straws with people in your family though. I have no idea where she heard that. Luckily her teacher thought it was flat out hilarious. Between her and Bryce I am going to be notorious at their school. 

The other day Bryce was asking how many jobs he would have to do to save up for this big lego thing that he wanted and I told him it was seventy dollars. He smaked his head and said,"Mom, I don't know how I'm going to get that much money by doing job cause I would have to work all day and all night. And I don't have any wiggly teeth right now so I would have to get someone to punch me in the face so then the tooth fairy can come and I just don't thing that would feel very nice."

September

I've got to catch up a bit. September was a pretty emotional month. On the 6th I have offically survived three years since we lost our little Colin. It was a pretty crappy weekend I won't lie but at least I was only in a funk for a good week instead of month, or year. Every year it gets a little easier. We usually do something fun as a family that we wouldn't usually pay for but we had had an awesome weekend in Utah the week before so instead we bought a present for each of the kids. We told them that it was for Colin's birthday and that he would want us to be happy on his birthday. It worked for them but not so much for me. It think I'm excused though.

As soon as I pulled out of my little pitty party I realized my sister Lindsay was having her hopefully "last" surgery to put her all back together after being cancer free from a bran tumor for a year. I say "last" because we thought the "last" one before this would do it but obviously not. The poor girl has been through so much. This surgery wasn't ideal but they were ready with a contigency plan that worked. Now she is home and somewhat on her feet. It was so good to talk with her a bit. I make it a goal to make her laugh hard atleast once durring a phone call. That may not seem so kind to someone with a major head injury but I firmly believe that laughing will heal you in a way that medicine will always fail at. It heals your soul as I well know.

We started this month in an awesome way. We go to drive down to Utah and see my family. That might not be huge from most people but for our family we are lucky if we are all on the same continent. I mean that literally. We are sometimes spread out in three out of four hemispheres. For now it is just two though. I LOVE to see my family. And I got to do my little sister Jenny's senior pics. She was five when I left for college. Mom calls us bookends because out of the whole family we look the most alike (and if you have ever seen all seven of us kids together you would know that is something!) She looked so pretty and grown up. We also go to meet my beautful little niece of ten days old Ashlynne. I'm pretending she is partly named after me because she has my middle name Lynn as part of hers.  She is a pretty little thing. I did newborn pics for them and she kept smiling in her sleep. We topped it all of with a trip to Cascade Springs which is kind of a heaven on Earth to me if you don't puke on the way up from car sickness. Then we hit the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point and the kids had a blast. There are so many fun things we can do with them now that our littlest is five. And I acutally get to have fun with them!!

Finally, all four of my kids are in school now. It is really, really weird to have such a quiet house. The first day I was all pumped to come home and get a ton of things done. I waved to little Avery as she walked in her classroom with her backpack that is so big it comes down to her knees, and it hit me. I seriously thought I would be doing a little jig back to my car and instead I was wishing my hair was down so it would hide my tears. I kept it in mostly until I got home and it was so quiet that it really weirded me out. Then I lost it and bawled and laughed alternately for half an hour. I called my mom and asurred me that I'm perfectly normal to be hysterical, if that makes any sense.

Now I'm getting in a routine of working while the kids are in school and working in a different way when they come home. I think this is going to be a really awesome year for all of us!

PS I've decide that I'm going to think of one unique thing to be thankful for each day. Yesterday I was grateful for jam that sets. Today I'm grateful for my beautiful motorcylce Jazzy that kicked the bucket today. RIP sassy girl.

Weenie Roast

Jacob told Bryce that there was a wennie roast for new Cub Scouts. Bryce (holding himself protectively) looked horrified and said if that is what it took to be a scout he never wanted to be one : ) Totally had me busting up in the school parking lot.

Finally home

I got back from my weekend with two weddings in two different states. Thursday I had a temple/Air Force wedding in Utah and Friday I did a beach wedding in Florida. I think I over did it a bit during the trip though getting five or less hours of less each night and eating mostly traveling food. After leaving Florida at 3 am and getting home almost 20 hours later (flying to Salt Lake and then driving six hours back to Boise) I felt so car sick and tired I could hardly get out of the car. BUT I came home to a spotlessly clean house. Paxton had vacuumed, cleaned the showers and did all the laundry. Can I brag that I have pretty much the most amazing husband ever? There was only one casualty over the weekend. We lost our dear little hermit crab Dry Bones. We had a ceremony for him and burried him by our slide in the back yard. It is our first pet to pass on to pet heaven and Bryce was pretty teary all day but is doing OK since I told him we could get another one today. Despite all the work I have to do, I'm taking the day off to play with my sweet babies. I think it is quite theraputic for a mom to miss her kids for a little while.

Awesome!

I just bought plane tickets to shoot in Connecticut in October. I have weddings in Utah and Florida in August and another wedding in Boise in October. My kids are healthy. My husband is hot. My flowers are beautiful. I get to wear sun dresses all summer. Life is good.

Heart Ache

For some reason I have been thinking of my little Colin a lot lately. Maybe it is because he would be three soon. Maybe it is because my heart aches for others that I know that are truely suffering but that I am powerless to help. Sometimes I get a cold dose of reality, that life, in general, is a difficult and sometimes cruel thing. But, as painful as those moments are, they make my words softer and my kisses sweeter and my actions kinder. For any one who has happened on this that has felt grief they way I have at losing my tiny son, somehow there is hope and healing. I can't say how, or how long. Those were my first questions to anyone who could relate. How do you stop hurting? How long will I feel like my chest hurts so badly that I can't breath? Even now I don't have answers but I know that somehow I have walked away from this stronger than before. Here is something I wrote and posted a long time ago. I wrote it after looking at my C-section scar that is daily reminder of my little boy I didn't get to bring home.  This is for my amazing younger sister who has been battleing a cancerous brain tumor for pretty much her whole life.

Scars
My finger traces across my skin
Pale lines where a wound has been
Each has a story of some sort of length
Marks of my weakness and of my strength

We start as a canvas, perfect and new
And life paints our portraits with lines and with hues
Our stories are etched in a series of marks
Seemingly subtle and jaggedly stark
Each mark was gained with some kind of trial
Tribute to sacrifice and of survival
The angry lines fade from across my skin
A constant reminder of changes within
My body and face, unique in design
Won’t follow the beauty the world defines
The wrinkles and scars that TV abhors
Are proof of my love for those I adore
When my body is old and my portrait is done
My scars tell the tale of fights I have won
Each tells a story of some kind of length
Not marks of my weakness, but proof of my strength


By Jaymie Quigley
Written 10-18-09 For my sister Lindsay