2011 first day of school!

Morgyn was way excited for school to start! She is in 9th grade now.

All the kiddo's ready!

Jacob, 4th grade, and John, 1st grade, so excited! Johns is excited to be there all day!

Camping

We went camping the weekend before school started. We needed to get our camper out of the mountains for some much needed repairs. It has been in the high Uintas for at least 15 years. It was little Jared's first camping trip. He was so excited!


This was just before we entered Evanston.

 It was a really nice trip! Jared drove the truck with Isaac and Jacob, and I drove the van with John, Jared, and Morgyn. We took it slow and pointed out beautiful nature to the kids.


This was a beautiful cloud!



YES! There is still snow in the mountains in late August!

We put the kids right to work when we got there!

We needed to rake rocks away to put up the tent.



We also needed to gather firewood.



Morgyn in Lex and Shannon's camper getting it ready for her to sleep in. Thanks for letting us borrow it!

John checking out our camper where all the boys slept.



Fire starters

I made these ugly little things (fire starters) out of an empty egg carton, dryer lint, and melted crayon.
They worked great! We put 2 in each fire that we made and had no problems starting the fire!

Jacob LOVED being on fire duty!



We roasted hot dogs and made yummy smores.

The kids had fun shooting bb guns and sling shots.

View 1 of camp.



View 2 of camp aka "the gravel pit".



There was a deer watching us from the neighbors cabin! That was pretty cool!



The potty

 Here is the "potty". I thought for sure we would have a melt down with Isaac, who gets grossed out way easy, or little Jared, who is potty training. But Isaac didn't complain and little Jared thought it was great!

And here is the camper all loaded and ready to roll.

It really was a nice trip! I hope we can go again soon but only stay longer. One day is just not enough!

Locks anyone?

I have been having a problem with the kids getting into stuff and eating ALL DAY long this summer. Well we came up with a solution. We installed door knobs with key locks on our bedroom doors, the laundry room door (it has all the cleaning supplies in a closet in there), and the storage room door. Then we installed 4 latches with pad locks for the pantry doors, and we installed cables with pad locks on the refrigerators. We also found the key to the lock on the freezer. Hopefully this will stop them!

Isaac was in the newspaper!

My pediatrician is retiring this month and they had a story on him in the Standard Examiner. I had taken Jacob and Isaac in for a final check up with Dr. Kramer before this dreaded day came. He came in and said that they were going to be taking his picture and asked if it was OK with me. He was really embarrassed by the whole thing but I said that was fine, he is such a humble man! He was so funny. He wouldn't let her take the picture if the boys had their shirt off. He said, "You can't take a picture of his half naked body!" He wanted her to take a picture of all of us together but they told him they were here for him. Then he said, "You have to get a picture with the mother, I wouldn't have a business if it wasn't for the mothers!" In the picture above Isaac was actually sitting on my lap, but you really can't tell. They took several pictures and I wasn't sure if they would use any of the ones with the boys in it. Then a family member told me they saw Isaac in the paper! He thinks it is the neatest thing ever!
Click here for a link to the story!



Dr. Kramer

 I really love Dr . Kramer! He has been such a wonderful pediatrician and will be greatly missed! He does live in our steak so I will be able to see him occasionally at church functions.

Stress, stress go away!

So we have done some fun stuff with the kids this summer, but we have also had our share of stress! Last December I took Morgyn to the Dr because I thought maybe her hormones were off or she had thyroid problems. He did some blood work and everything came back normal except her ALT level was 66. It is supposed to be under 50. This level can get up into the thousands so it wasn't extremely high, but Dr Kramer wanted to retest in 6 months. I took her in July 11th and her ALT level went up to 111. He was concerned so he called his colleagues at Primary Childrens Hospital to see what they recommended. They wanted him to do more blood work as well as an ultrasound of all her organs. We went back on July 15th for the blood work and ultrasound. He called the next week with the results. The ultrasound showed nothing abnormal, everything looked fine. Her ALT level had gone up again to 142 and now her AST level had gone above normal at 69 (it should be under 50 as well) and her Gamma GT level was at 106 which is elevated. These counts are all associated with the liver. He said he would call back after he called his colleagues at Primarys again. He called later that day and said that the liver specialist team at Primary Childrens wanted to meet with her. The said it is probably fatty liver disease, but they wanted to make sure they weren't missing anything. Well we meet with the Dr at Primarys yesterday and after looking at her file he doesn't think it is fatty liver disease because some things point to that but others don't. For instance her counts should have gone down when she lost 9 lbs instead of going up and it points more to something with the bile ducts in the liver. They took a bunch more blood and today we get to collect urine for 24 hrs. I need to take her back in 2 or 3 months unless the blood work comes back showing something else is going on and then I will need to bring her in for a liver biopsy. He started talking about sclerosis of the liver and a liver transplant. The most common need for a liver transplant is sclerosis of the liver cause by obesity and not alcohol intake. That really surprised me! I hope she will take this seriously and work harder to loose more weight. This has been a family goal and we are all working on it so she is not working on it all alone! I will keep you posted when we find out more info.

As if all of this isn't stress enough, we have been trying to help Jared's sister who has been heading down the wrong path for quite some time now. We got a call the other night telling us she was brought to the hospital unconscious and it was most likely drug related. She came back to and they released her so Jared's brother took her back to her apartment. Then we got a call that same night at 12:30 because she was having a panic attack and they had to call the ambulance. We went over to her apartment and they were able to calm her down and didn't need to take her back to the hospital. Jeremy (their brother) was able to talk her into letting him take her daughter (2 1/2 years old) home with him. We didn't get home until 2am and Jared had to be up at 5am for work at a new job he was starting that morning. I felt so bad, he was sooo tired! The next morning DCFS was called (again) and the custody battle continues with my in-laws. She was arrested on Saturday for a warrant and Jared and I went and visited her in jail on Sunday. That was such an emotional experience! I had never visited anyone in jail before. She seemed so sincere with what we talked about, and all 3 of us cried the whole time we were there. She said she wanted to deal with this once and for all and didn't want anyone to bail her out. No one was going to bail her out anyway but she was sent to the county who issued the warrant on Monday and they released her. She said it was for good behavior. Her video court date was just 2 days away! I really wish they would just keep her until this was all dealt with! The jails must be over crowded because they keep letting her go and she never shows up for her court date and they have to issue another warrant and the cycle continues. As soon as she got out of jail the games began again. Her poor daughter needs more stability than this and it puts so much stress on the family, especially my in-laws! I hope it all gets settled soon!

More Fun!

We have been busy enjoying the summer! We have a HUGE cherry tree in our back yard. I spent about 7 hours one day picking the cherries and this is what I could reach with an 8 foot ladder. There were still a bunch more that we left for the birds that I couldn't reach!

We have also been helping Jacob do as much for scouts as possible while he his out of school for summer break. He has earned his Whittling Chip and is over half way to earning his Bear Badge. He has worked so hard! We had fun playing outdoor games for family fun. First we played Croquet:

Well Morgyn wanted to do dishes instead. "Chores before play" she said!

Then they wanted to play Horseshoes, allthough they had much more fun with Croquet!

Jared thought it was funnest to throw both of the horseshoes at the same time! WATCH OUT!

And I get to teach the lesson on the temple this week to my sweet little sunbeams. There are 6 in my class and I made each of them this cute picture frame to hang on their wall to remind them to strive to go there! I am going to make one for each of my kids as well. They are so excited!

Learning Fun!

We have had a busy week! Morgyn made it home from girls camp at the Heber Valley Camp. She had so much fun and said she wanted to stay longer. She made some more friends and is really happy here! Jacob also went to day camp at Camp Fife. He had a lot of fun as well. He got to ride a BMX course, go rock climbing, shoot bb guns, shoot bow and arrows, as well as a bunch of other fun stuff! The next week Jared spent a bunch of time with the boys teaching them about safety. Jacob got to shoot his own bb gun as well as learn how to whittle. Both him and John whittled a polar bear out of a bar of soap! They had so much fun and Jacob has now earned the Whittling Chip Card in cub scouts! Go Jacob!

Then they learned how to fix their bikes. Jared helped them patch their tires and taught them how to inspect their bikes for safety before riding it. He also took of John's training wheels and John got on the bike and took off without any help! Go John!

Then we had some Independence day fun! We walked to the parade. (I'm soooo happy we live close enough to walk!) The kids had so much fun. One of our old neighbors was there give flags to all the kids and he gave each of the kids one and then we were able to find a spot right on the curb that was not taken. In Kaysville people start reserving their spot at 12:00 am on the 3rd, so we really got lucky. The boys each got a ton of candy as well as a Frisbee, some balls, and a stuffed animal. The missionaries were in the parade and throwing out ties, but we weren't lucky enough to catch one of those! We did see some pretty awesome cars and stuff. The Davis High marching band started off the parade. Little Jared loved the tuba the best! He also loved the motorcycles and the firetrucks with the sirens!

Waiting for the parade to start.

They had all sorts of veterans, I think these were the oldest group!

Later in the day we watched A More Perfect Union. An excellent movie on the writing of the constitution. We grilled burgers out on the grill and the kids played with some cousins until it was time for the fireworks at Davis High. We are lucky enough to be able to see the fireworks right from our back yard! We could even hear the announcer and the music. It was almost a good as being there!

The fireworks were better than the pictures turned out. We sure had fun!