Vaccinations a la Commando

Bless his little heart.

Aidan needed his Kindergarten shots and had an appointment yesterday.

He grinned with pride as they weighed and measured him.

He was in the 75% for height and weight, so that's good.

She checked his eyes- he can see.

She checked his ears- looked good.

She checked his mouth- HUGE tonsils and a narrow pallet (thumb sucker).

He had a clean bill of health and then she said, "You'll be brave for your shots won't you?"

YIKES!

You see he had blood drawn a few months ago and it scared him quite a bit.

So he cried and begged to go home.

It was so sad.

The nurse arrived with 3 shots.

He got up on the table and I had to pull down his pants to get to the top of his thigh.

I accidentally pulled down his underwear.

Or so I thought.

He had no underwear on.

Captain Commando!

Oh man, I was so embarassed, for me, for him, and for the nurse.

We got it all done and after an ice cream and a warm bath at home he proved how well he was doing by showing me how fast he could run.

Love that kid.

What?!

Me:  sitting @ the computer working on photo editing

Aidan & Cole: somewhere in the house playing (or so I thought)

Cole enters the office with hair like this:

Me:  Cole what happened?

Cole:  It's glue.

Me:  Glue?  You mean hair goo? (it smelled good)

Cole: I make a big mess.

OH well, at least Aidan had the presence of mind to take it from him eventually and hide the hair goo in Chloe's room.  

We had bookclub last night and discussed Someone Knows My Name, a book about one woman's journey from Africa as a little girl, to America as a slave on a slave ship, etc.  It spans 6 centuries and was an eye opening book to the horrors of racism and slavery and just mistreatment of each other.  It led to some great discussions on racism,  the bounty in America, the way Americans are perceived by other countries, the value of hard work, war, teaching children how the rest of the world lives, etc.  It was great. No new book yet, but she will be sending out an e-mail soon and I'm excited.  In the meantime I'm really enjoying Discourses of President Gordon B. Hinckley.  It's fun to read his talks and think about what I was doing in my life, where I was at.  Anyhow, have a great day, and enjoy AMERICAN IDOL.  OH wait... I need to get this off my chest.  I love David Archuleta.  (If your not an Idol fan (and I'm a newbie) then he is the 17 yr old from Utah currently on Idol).  He was so amazing on Tuesday night.  I absolutely adore him.  What a voice, and so humble and sweet.  I hope he wins this thing.  

Check this out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDWs2sqE3nQ

Earthquakes, Floods,....

I was one of the few ( I believe) that felt the earthquake the other day that shook Wells, Nevada.  It gently rocked me in my bed, but my head went, "what...was...that."  I waited for a moment then hopped out of bed and went merrily on my way.  Well, today we have flooding.  Because of all the snow and moisture we've had the field behind my house soaked up all it could hold, and with this warmer weather it sent it, naturally, down hill.  I'm glad that means away from my house, but I'm sorry to say it means it sent it across Redwood Road into other homes.  I took pics with the kids today.  It's a bit crazy, and I'm thinking about making a layout for an ark:)

He is Registered!

Aidan is officially registered for Kindergarten.  Can you believe it?!  I'm so excited for him because he is so social.  He loves to play with friends, talk, make-believe, build forts, ride bikes, and on and on, but I am sad for me.  I really love having him home.  He is so funny and sweet.  I'm just glad they break us parents in easy with only a couple hours a day for the first year.  When we got to the school to sign him up (it is the elementary school where Chloe and Asher go) he asked if he would be starting today.  I had to remind him several times that he didn't get to actually go to Kindergarten yet, that he would have to wait until all of summer was over.  I also had a touch of nostalgia as the 5th of 8 children, by the time I went through the school system most teacher's knew who I was and what my lineage consisted of.  Well, Chloe and Asher's Kindergarten teacher saw me signing Aidan up and said, "Oh, you have another one ready for Kindergarten?"  We like to keep those teachers guessing, because not one of my children has the same personality or disposition as the others.  So that's it for me today.  Enjoy my shelfari book shelf.  I thought it would add a little color & interest to be able to see the front of the books. I'm working on my own review of each book as some I enjoyed much more than others.  Book club is on Wednesday, so I am looking forward to reading something that someone else recommends.  

A Public Apology...and Explanation. (for Johnny)

As Scotty and I were talking today we got on the subject of growing up and such.  I started talking about the time I was laying on Dad and Mom's bed and side kicked John in the head and sent him flailing into the wall.  Then Scott reminded me of the time that I "attacked" Johnny and made him bleed.  Well, I want to apologize for the brutality Johnny.  I'm sorry I injured you a time or two.  

And now for the Explanation.  I think the above paragraph provides some explanation as to why Johnny didn't have (or need) brothers.  I provided that physicality if you will.  I am not alone in this endeavor, oh no, I recall Emily's viciousness seeping from her eyes when she'd go after John.  He'd revert to the couch kicking his legs and she'd wallop him.   She doesn't hold back when she's out to inflict pain- pain will be inflicted.  And I do believe Miss Molly had a serious attack mode. I had opportunity to witness it first hand.  

  

So that's it for this blog.  Love you Johnny-sorry for the pain.

He doesn't like the Pot!

He is at the stage where he will alert me to his bodily functions, HOWEVER, he does not like to sit on the potty.  He cried and screamed.  I do love that once he is on there though, he doesn't think he can get off. (he, he, our little secret).  So I sit there and make promises of treats and fun and he sits there with this  look on his face.  A little toot and he's ready to call it a day.  I made him stick it out.  Until I was tired of it and got him down with no progress.  I've done this before- come one now, shouldn't I get some kind of tax deduction for this?
 Grape Hubba Bubba anyone?

Back from Boise

We're back.  What a weekend it was.  I'll start from the end, which is Sunday, November 17th.  We celebrated Scotty's 31st birthday.  Mom & the kids got a Dairy Queen ice cream cake (sorry you weren't there Willy-know you love 'em).  It was a good time, and Mom's roast beef dinner is always a winner.  Scott got the first 2 Bourne movies, pens, pencils, and an ITunes gift card.  He was happy with that.  Easy to please.

In Boise we were able to visit Jen's family.  I even gave Miss Anna (aka Miss Nervous) a haircut.  She was worried about falling off the stool, and late worried about the blow dryer on her ears.  Her haircut turned out really cute, and she sang me all the words to "Fabulous" from High School Musical 2.  Paige presented me with a felt witch that she had made (think she'll take after her Mom?  We could use another seamstress.)  Zander kept me laughing in his pink shirt saying, "I'm Sharpay".   Jen and I went to Jamba Juice and they gave us a complimentary shot of wheatgrass.  Tasted like I stuck my head in the lawnmower bag, but it was sweet, not bad.  Tonya Jarvis(Clark) was in town for a wedding and so she stopped by Jen's.  We visited for a while, and had some laughs as we talked about old times growing up next door to each other.  I love having friends that I've had since I was 5 years old.  It just feels so comfortable--they know all about you.  I only wish she lived closer. (She lives in Texas, and really loves it.  You know that whole Texan pride thing?)


Scott and I stayed at Karen and Jeremy's.  This is a pic of there little one, Colton.  Kooper was out of town with his Dad.  Colton is so sweet.  I just love his big blue eyes.  He loved to play ball with Scotty and play with the cat.  Oh, and copy the sounds his Mother would make when she played tennis on the Wii.  (By the way she wooped me at tennis AND boxing, and I thought I was so good!)  Compliments of Karen I had a 2 hour massage.  That's right 2 HOURS!  It was fantastic, except for the knots in my neck that were quite painful.  We also went downtown Boise and did a little looking around and met a real scary dude at the Pie Hole restaurant.  His smell drowned out the pizza smell.  He was  noticeably drunk and talked to us about catfish?
At Molly's we had a photo shoot with new baby Sophie.  These are a couple of my favorites.  It was no small task to get her to sleep.  It took about 2 gallons of milk :) and shipping the other 3 Thorne's off to the kind neighbor's house.  You see, they all wanted to be in on the photo shoot.  I obliged and took their cute  photos too. Sophie's hair is amazing.  It's so long and when you get it wet it is super curly!
What you don't know about this photo is that Molly is under the black backdrop suffocating.  Oh the things we'll do for a photo.  Molly was holding Sophie and got her to sleep, so just in case this was the only photo we'd get we had Molly just hold her and hid Molly with the backdrop.
Bailey immediately asked to see my purse when I got there.  She was disappointed that there was no gum or candy, but seemed happy to use and reuse the hand sanitizer.  Dawson sweetly snuggled by me as I read him a book, and Ethan nearly beat me at air hockey and I was REALLY trying. 


All in all it was a great trip.  I also met a girl on the flight there, who's son  is @ Primary Children's.  She is from Salt Lake.  Her 4 year old son is battling Stage 4 Neuroblastoma.  We talked the entire flight and found that much of our thinking and the things we've learned through our trials is similar.  I only wish I'd gotten her phone number.  Well, I hope all is well for everyone out there.  Thank you all you Boiser's  for the good time.  Everyone, please feel free to comment.  

True Story!

Last night about 6ish Mom starts calling me to see if Scotty's home.  I say no, he left at 4:30, but he'll be here.  She continues to call and see if he's home.  I became a bit frustrated.  You see, we really didn't have any extra snow on the driveway, sure the wind blew like crazy, but other than that it looked good to me.  I hadn't been out in the car though.  Well, then I made some calls to finish up the ward bulletin for Sunday.  I called the neighbor guy who told me it took him hours to get home from Orem, there were accidents everywhere and they were setting up sleeping arrangements at many churches.  Huh?  So I turned on the news.  Sure enough, as I'm sure most of you know, there was a huge storm and high winds that caused major accidents and road closures.  Well, the roads that were closed happened to be the road out to Eagle Mtn. and the road to my house.  Well about that time Binh (Scotty' Mom) calls and asks for Scott. Chloe tells her that he is stuck because the road to Eagle Mountain is closed.  She translated that to him being stuck on a ledge of a mountain and perhaps freezing to death.  So we straighened that out and then Scotty calls me around 8:30 to ask if I"d bring them food (joking of course).  He said they were actually parked on the road.  He finally made it to Smith's (the one 5 miles from our house) around 10:00 pm and they waited in line to get some food.  Then it took another hour for them to get home as snow plows plowed the road and they opened it back up.  He left the U @ 3:30 and he got home last night @ 11:20 pm.  Now that's a COMMUTE!  He had some great stories of abandoned cars covered w/ snow, but no driver, people setting up tents in Smith's planning on spending the night and eating, people sitting in the dentist office @ 10:00 drinking water and wondering where they'll be staying, kids stuck on school buses, too many accidents and slide-offs to count, etc.  What an adventure.  So we fly out to Boise in the morning, thus my blog will be blank until Mondayish, but I'm sure I'll have some great stories to share!

Amy

Oh the things they say!

I'm sure you could guess from the title that this is a blog about our kids.  

We'll start with Cole.  Today he was sitting on my lap with his face really close to mine and he said, "I right there," as he pointed at my eye.  It took me a minute to realize that he could see his reflection in my eye.  How cute is that?

Secondly, if you did know there was a blizzard that blew through these parts this afternoon.  Chloe had invited a friend over before the blizzard hit.  So she called the friend to see if she'd still be coming over (because she lives close and so they always walk).  Her friends said she'd like to come, but it was blowing so hard and so snowy.  Chloe said, "Would you like me to walk over to your house and walk you back to my house?"  And her friend said yes.  Chloe hung up and said, "And that's what friends are for."  Here is a pic of her in her Daddy's coat (it's yellow) on her way to pick up her friend.  

A few minutes after that I had an older neighbor lady over to help me with something.  She walked, because she's a walker.  It was blizzarding.  As she was about to leave Chloe came up to me and whispered in my ear, "Mom, ask her if she'd like a ride home please."  I'm so glad I have her to help me with my manners!

Last night Asher wrote Scott & I a note and delivered it  to my room.  Here is a small quote from that note:

"I love you and you are the best mom in the hol intire world.  And so is dad.  I wode not do or trade enything for you or dad if my life deapendid on it!"

Love it!

Lastly, 

Aidan was laying on the couch today just a watchin t.v.  I passed by and asked if he was feeling ok.  He said,  "I am feeling kind of old today."  

How's that? I said.

He stood up all crooked like with one leg bent and one leg straight and said,"See I'm old and crooked".  

Hope you all had a great day full of laughs!

Amy

NO thanks, we'll pass!

Have you ever had the experience that it seems all your neighbors around you have got "something"?  There are fevers and coughs and colds and flu-like symptoms floating around my area.  I serve my children hot oatmeal, vitamins, and orange juice on those mornings.  I remind them 5 or 6 times to not hold hands with friends, don't share food, wash their hands often, don't touch your face and wear gloves at recess.  I'm not certain if any of this helps, I hope it does, but I don't want sick kids.  It stinks!  Plus, Scotty and I are leaving town this weekend.  We're headed to Boise to visit family and celebrate his 31st birthday.  We always have such a great time when we're there, and much thanks to Karen it's only a 45 minute flight away!  We're very much looking forward to it, SO if you're sick stay away! 

 no offense

AMY

Sink like a ROC!

Ok.  here's the deal.  I've been using my ROC faithfully every night.  When Mom saw that I had some she said, "Oh I have some of that but it just burned my skin."  Not mine.

Until..

now.

Last night I washed my face and began rubbing my miracle cream around my eyes.  Then the burning, oh the burning.  OUCH!  Right around my left eye was just burning.  I washed it off.  This morning I got ready for my TRI class and headed out. 

We learned flip turns in the pool today.  I was excited, but my skin around my eyes w/ my goggles pressed tightly kinda hurt.  So we started working on the flip turn.  Water shot up my nose and felt like it was burning my brain.  I kept at it though.  I would miss the wall at first.  But then I finally made contact with the wall.  Unfortunately all through class I would push off the wall to the FLOOR OF THE POOL!  "Not a time saver", as Jen says.  This one time I pushed off the wall straight to the bottom of the deep end.  Problem was I didn't get a good gulp of air before I started the flip so I was OUT of air.  I hit the bottom of the pool and pushed off the bottom with my feet , shooting myself straight out of the pool like a cannon.  I was sputtering and such and was pretty much embarassed.  Then we did laps and had to do the flip turn every time we got to a wall.  I headed out hoping practice would help.  I headed toward the shallow end.  Didn't think about that "shallow" part.  I flipped and S-c-r-a-t-c-h!  My back scratched the bottom of the pool.  Needless to say I left the pool this morning feeling like I'd been beat about the face with a pair of chlorine filled brass knuckles, and with pool "road rash" on my knee, back and hand.  I thought some moisturizer would help my burning skin when I got out of the pool.  WRONG!  More burning and more splashing water on my face.  Off to biking!

3rd Party Laughs!

So tonight Dad came to my house to pick up Mom after work.  (He had a job down this way) The woman's house he was working on is his boss' daughter's house.  She has a 3 or 4 year old (Dad was unsure) named Ryan or Rino as they call him.  I guess he is quite a character.  He says some quotable things and tonight was one of those.  

We were asking Dad about his day at the dinner table.  He said, "Ryan hung on my back today".  Dad was working on a low outlet and so Ryan just wrapped his arms around Dad's neck and hung there.  While Ryan was hanging there he said to Dad, "Boys get depressed too you know."  Dad said, "Are you depressed?"  And Ryan responded matter-of-factly, "I've been watching t.v. all day!"  

We had a good laugh at that one.  

In other news (bragging news) I went to Aidan's Parent Teacher Conference and he's reading at the first grade level.  Yahoo Bamboo.  

So I"m off to the Stake Center to learn how to do some family history stuff online.  Should be interesting.  

I love pancakes for dinner.

bye.

Wrinkly Old Bag?

 So, I was chatting on the phone with my sister Wendy the other night.  And as we talked and talked I was perched with my nose nearly touching my bathroom mirror waiting to wash my face.  I examined every inch of my skin.  I quickly became discouraged and felt......old. 

 Well, Wendy asked if I used a wrinkle cream.  What?  Oh, now that would make some sense wouldn't it.  So I went wrinkle cream shopping.  I called a few sisters (Molly/Em) to ask what would be best and surprisingly after I came home and did some looking of my own, they were both right on.  This is what I found online:

  What factors promote wrinkles?

-Smoking

-Light skin type (people w/ blue eyes and easily burned skin are more prone to sun damage)

- Heredity (some families wrinkle more)

- Hairstyle (some styles provide cover and protection against sun damage)

- Dress (hats, long sleeves, etc)

- Occupational and recreational habits (farming, sailing, golfing, using tanning booths, etc)

So, good thing I don't smoke.  Light skin- check, heredity- um, not sure on that one, hairstyle- who wears their hair in front of their face? Dress- poor wrinkly nudists, Occupational, Recreational habits- YARD WORK, oh yeah and that one summer when I was dating Scotty and I went to the tanning booth faithfully and was so much.....frecklier!

So, this is why I have age spots (or as their sometimes disgustingly called Liver Spots). And also wrinkles.  Now, don't get me wrong I'm not going to run out and get Botox and I don't need to look 14 when I'm 50, I just want to "age gracefully" as Wendy said.  I don't want to look like I "slept in my face" as Dad says.  So here is what you should look for in your wrinkle cream:

What to look for in a wrinkle cream?

Retinol- An antioxidant that neutralizes free radicals (which cause wrinkles) 

Hydroxy Acids- These are exfoliants which remove the upper layer of old dead skin and stimulate growth of new skin.

Coenzyme Q10- Regulates energy production in cells

Copper Peptides- Stimulate production of collagen

Kinetin- May improve wrinkles and uneven pigmentation, but it's unclear how?

Tea Extracts- Contain antioxidants

And with that I purchased ROC Retinol Active Pur Night Cream.  It was reasonably priced and it had retinol of course.  I've also decided to buy one of those cheesy big straw hats for yard work.  Other than that, the damage has already been done and I must move forward from here.

Here's to miracles!!!  

I'm back

I'm back.

It's been a while since I've posted. Busy weekend.  Can you believe the snow?!! I love 

it. Yesterday as we were leaving church we passed this awesome green house with yellow 

windows. I said, "I want that house!"  Scott said "With what money?" I quickly responded 

"We'll sell the kids and buy that house!"  After a few moments of silence Aidan said (in a most 

sad voice) "I like you Mom, I don't want to be selled."  We all had a laugh at that one and I 

assured him I would never sell him.  This weekend was great what with Sophie Ray being born, 

Asher being baptized and President Hinckley's funeral I felt like we covered a little of 

everything.  Thanks to all family and friends who made it to the baptism and joined us 

afterwards for soup.  I love spending time with you all and it was wonderful, especially 

Terri's macaroons 

1 c. chopped pecans

2 2/3 c. flake coconut

4 T. flour

1/4 t. salt

2/3 c. sugar

Mix dry ingredients together.

Stir in 5 egg whites and 1 t. vanilla

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets.  Bake @ 325 until browned on bottom.

Melt chocolate chips and dip top half of cooled cookie into chocolate.

enjoy!