Chloe's Piano Recital Pieces

I'll write more about the recital later, but these were Chloe's two numbers -- for you, Mom!



And here is a picture of Chloe with her wonderful piano teacher, Shirlene Shaw.  She is amazing and we are SO blessed to have her so close to us.

She had a great recital night.  It was long, as usual (2 hrs. and 20 minutes!), but it's such a great experience.  Shirlene held it in St. John's Episcopal church in Logan and the acoustics were so awesome!

Chloe played 2 pieces:  Fur Ludwig and Edelweiss.  Fur Ludwig is a modified version of Fur Elise by Beethoven.  She was SO nervous waiting for her turn.  Edelweiss has been a particularly difficult song for her to learn - she's been working on it for over 2 months.  Stanton played the duet part with her and they hadn't practiced together enough and I think she felt it.  They made some mistakes, but she finished really strong and did a perfect job on Fur Ludwig.  She told me afterward that she really wanted to just stop Edelweiss and start from the beginning without mistakes.  It was a great lesson for her to learn to just keep playing and finish strong, though.  I was so proud of her.  She's becoming a great pianist.
The video above is from the next morning.  She asked me to record her playing her songs well -- I think to prove to herself that she really knew them.
Proud of you, Chloe.  You're working hard and learning so much.

Lily's Dance Recital & Weekend

Lily had her dance recital on Thursday night up at Skyview.  The night started out a bit sketchy, as she came down with a fever of 102 about an hour before the show.  I texted a few friends whose girls were dancing and put out an APB on Facebook asking for advice on what to do.  We decided to let her dance and gave her a dose of Motrin which helped her perk up enough to do a great job on stage.  She was adorable and really did a fantastic job -- she was right on the beat, remembered most of her moves, and had about the cutest little head bobs you ever did see.  What a cutie.

Top picture is right at the beginning of her dance.
Middle picture is Chloe and her, of course.  We left the boys home with Kiki and had a night out with the girls.
Bottom picture is the gals we carpool with from our neighborhood.  Hali, Lily, Avery, and London.  They are great little girls.  We see a lot of Avery and London at our house and feel very thankful for that.


Here are some pics of Lily before the recital.  She was definitely in a posing mood, but I appreciated that because now I don't have to buy dance pictures.  :)

Any opportunity Lily has to wear makeup, she is super thrilled.  I hate it and love it all at once.  Hate that she loves makeup that much, but love how she looks in it -- adorable!

So, the rest of the story is this:
After the recital, we decided to take the girls to Fredrico's for pizza.  While we were there, Lily crashed out again, spiking another fever.  She hardly ate a bite and went straight to bed with a 103 fever when we got her home.  The next morning, she seemed to be doing better, but I kept her home from school just to be sure.  Sure enough, she was lethargic again in the afternoon, crashing out on the couch for an hour or so.
Saturday was much the same.  No fever, but she'd just seem perfectly fine and then suddenly complain that her tummy hurt, crash out on the floor or couch -- wherever she happened to land-- and take a nap.  It's so not like her, but we tried not to stress about it.

Sunday morning she seemed perfectly fine, so we went to church, but by the time it was over, she was hammered once again and crashed on the floor.  Today was much the same.  This is her this morning.

I finally decided to get her to the doctor today.  No sign of strep on the quick test, so we're pretty sure it's not that.  It must be some weird virus (the same one that has caused diarrhea among other members of our family).  She's done pretty well the rest of today, so I'm hoping she'll be good for school tomorrow.
Love our little LilyLover!

Prepared!

I just went downstairs to give Cannon his medicine and checked in on the girls while I was at it.   I found the cutest thing -- Lily and Chloe both had their clothes laid out for tomorrow-- Lily not only had her day clothes laid out, but underneath those, she had her dance costume carefully laid out.  Hehe!  I think she's pretty darn excited for her recital tomorrow night!

Tonsils Update

Cannon is doing so well with this tonsilectomy.  I'm really proud of him.  He isn't really interested in drinking much (I think the swallowing action hurts his throat), but he's loving Jell-O & Popsicles,  We must be doing okay because he's had 3 really soggy diapers today. 
He's also been great to take his medicine -- we've been alternating between Loritab and Motrin every three hours (so six hours between doses of each overlapped) to keep on top of the pain plus a steroid and an antibiotic.
His little voice is about 4-5 pitches higher than it was before the surgery -- he sounds like a little wind-up doll.  I wonder to what extent that will last as he heals. 
His breath, too.  Hehe...it's not necessarily unpleasant, but it's definitely there!
His energy level has been really good, too.  He's played outside a little, played Trio blocks with Brigham, read books with me, etc.  Yesterday and today both, though, he's crashed by about 6 pm.  Tonight he fell asleep in the car on the way home and then again on the couch waiting to get ready for bed. 

I'm so proud of him -- he's been a little trooper 

Another Surgery for Cannon

A few weeks ago we started noticing that Cannon was "snoring" while was awake -- that loud mouth breathing sound.  When we were at Primary Children's with Brigham, Stanton's mom was tending Cannon and heard him breathing while he was napping -- it was the classic sleep apnea breathing that Lily was doing before she had her tonsils removed.  We knew something was up, so we got him in to see Dr. Blotter and sure enough, he had those same big "kissing tonsils."  Time to get his tonsils and adenoids out!
His surgery was this morning and he did fantastically with it.

On the way to the hospital.  "I'm onna go to da hopital and see Dr. Blotter and get ma tosohs out!"

Getting into character in the tiger jammies.

The bonnet lasted exactly as long as it took to take this picture.

Showing his cool socks.

Chloe had some tummy troubles this morning, so I didn't send her to school.  Glad I didn't...she continued to have problems throughout the day.  She was great at the hospital -- cooperative, self-entertained, and super sweet with her little brother.

Right before he went back.

He was done with the surgery within 30 minutes, out of recovery about 20 minutes later, came to me grumpy, but fell right asleep in my arms for an hour, drank a glass of apple juice, ate a popsicle dish, ate another half popsicle, took a walk, and was outta there!  We went to Wendy's after to get Chloe some lunch (she missed breakfast due to our last minute decision to keep her home).  While there, I got Cannon a Frosty which he gobbled up and proceeded to drink Chloe's chocolate milk, too.  I'd say he was hungry!  His pain has been pretty manageable so far and I'm just trying to keep him hydrated.

Thanks to Judy for taking Brigham, Abbie for taking Lily, and Shaynna for being willing to take Chloe.  It makes it so much easier when I don't have to worry about my other kiddos.

All in all, a great day.  I'm impressed with his chill attitude with doctors and hope that we're done for a while!

That Bruise

Here's a pic of the bruise I mentioned in the last post.  It was an impressive fall.

RVin'!!

Oh, we are LOVING this thing!!!

Thursday late morning we packed up and headed on our first big trip in the motorhome.  Stanton was supposed to be seeing patients till late in the day, but ended up only having one OR case, so we got on the road much earlier than expected.
We met Dave & Judy, Don & Ann and their girls, Katie, Alli, & Rebecca, and Emily and her kids, Eliza, Ben, & Matthew in Hurricane (pronounced HurricUHn, which I find so delightful).  The drive was about 6 hours long and was just fun because the kids were able to sit at the table and do crafts, color, eat snacks, etc., as well as go to the bathroom while on the road.  They ended up only watching a movie the last 2 hours of the drive.  Oh, and did I mention that I cooked homemade pizzas for everyone while we drove?!  How cool is this????
So, we made it to the condos where the fam were all staying and ended up just camping outside the parking lot that night.  Not before the dads took the kids for a walk and we got caught up visiting for a bit.
The first night sleeping in the motorhome was surprisingly great.  Brigham had a difficult time falling asleep, but once he did, he was out for the night.  Everyone else went right to sleep and didn't make a peep the whole night -- including the dog!  We were pleasantly thrilled it went so well.
Everyone was awake by about 6:30, so while Stanton got some breakfast on, I went for a run.  The St. George area is so beautiful.

We spent the day at Snow Canyon about a half hour drive away.  It was gorgeous!  We did a small hike (about 1/2 hour) and both Chloe and Brigham had impressive falls.  Poor Chloe had a 3" diameter bruise on her arm from hers as well as some decent road rash...Brig's wasn't as dramatic, thankfully.  

Snow Canyon is beautiful!  I loved the incredible rock and the vibrant colors.  I was really nervous at first with the kids because everything looks like a cliff until you are right next to it.  We eased up a bit after a while and the kids seriously enjoyed themselves.  I got some great pictures on our morning hike.

 Okay, not this one, but I thought Shauntae would like to see that this is the very moment I was texting her from Snow Canyon.  :)  Hi Shauntae!

 Cannon was so sure-footed on these rocks.  Love that he's getting bigger!

 Lily spent most of her time ahead with the cousins -- these three tended to hang back a bit with us.  I didn't mind that one bit!

 So fun to be with family!

I loved this fun rock and had some fun posing Chloe through it.  Super pretty.

This was my favorite picture from the day.  I love the 4 different landscapes represented. 


We had a picnic at a park in the park (I know, it's late, forgive my terrible writing) and headed over to the sand dunes.  Whew, they were HOT!  And it was a bit of an effort to get to them (mostly because we were hauling kids, but the heat played a role, too, definitely).  The dunes were really fun -- the kids really enjoyed running up and down them...as long as they stayed on the North face and kept their shoes on!  I have to admit, I had fun running down them, too!  Stanton was on a bike ride with Don during this time.

Emily running with the kids.  I stinkin' love that girl.


After the dunes, we headed back to the condo where we spent a couple of hours in the swimming pool.  Lily almost drowned Chloe by accident (because she's a bit of an over reactor), but other than that, it was fantastic.  Cut short only by a pretty gruesome bathroom accident from Brigham ... don't worry, though, no pools were pooped in...only the walkways around them.  That ended our fun and we headed back to the camper for a shower.  By the time we got everyone in the camper and Brigham cleaned up, we decided we should head to the RV park I'd reserved for us so we could hook up and get settled for the evening.  Well, not so much.  The park had no hook-ups, so we (I) learned a $23 lesson and we found one that did.  It was nice to be able to use the generator and water freely and we got everyone showered up.  I cooked chicken enchiladas in the RV oven and listened to the kids complain about how disgusting it was (it wasn't).  They were all sure to eat it thankfully, though, when they learned of our plans to go to Neilsen's Frozen Custard for ice cream.  That'll get me to eat my dinner, too!  We ate ice cream and then headed back to the campground for the night.  Brigham and Cannon both had a hard time falling asleep, but once they did, they slept right through the whole night.

The next morning we unhoooked and met everyone on the way to Zion's.  That was a lovely drive!  Zion's is such an incredible place...I just love it.
We took pictures at the checkerboard mesa.

 The trip to Zion's was beautiful -- I wish we'd had time to stop and do some of the hikes.  It was perfect as is, though.  The scenery there is magnificent.

Is there anything cuter than a girl with her puppy?  She's being SO good to obey our dog rules and be a good leader for Chester/Charlie (we're still wafling on the name -- we think we're going to go with Charlie, but it's REALLY hard to change our habits after a week of calling him Chester!  But we think he looks more like a Charlie...). 

After Zion's, we took the scenic route home -- through Monroe, where we stopped at a cemetery to visit some graves and have a picnic (does that seem like an odd combo?).  We were grateful for the motor home during the picnic because a huge windstorm blew through and forced us all inside.  I was surprised at how comfortably all 11 of us fit inside.  Another thing I'm totally loving about the motor home is how comfortably the kids can fall asleep while driving.  And doesn't Stanton look great in these pictures?  He's lost almost 25 pounds since January.  Slow and steady and changing habits.  It's awesome and he feels as good as he looks.

After Monroe, we headed to Manti to visit the temple grounds.  The same storm was making its way there and made for some pretty cool pictures of the temple.

The temple grounds down there are beautiful.  They put on a huge pageant every summer that's held on the large hill.  I'm thinking we might try to make it down there to watch it this year.  The kids had a blast running up and down the hill.

One more fun picture -- Katie and Chloe-- these two girls are really growing up on us!  With Julie & Scott and family gone to Singapore, these girls are the oldest cousins.  They were delightful on the trip.

In fact, all the kids were delightful on this trip.  We figure we drove over 1000 miles in the 2 1/2 days we were gone.  The kids were really great and kept the fighting and whining to a minimum.  I am seeing a new chapter of life starting and it's one I'm excited to embrace.
Hooray for Southern Utah!

Cardio Check-Up

Brigham had his yearly exam at Primary Children's.  They did a full echo and EKG --
everything looks fantastic!

This is his least favorite part of the whole day every time.  Those stickers hurt coming off!

Around Here Lately...

We've had a couple of very fun and exciting changes at our house recently.

The first is something Stanton and I have talked about for a good 2 years now.  Ever since our trip to Yellowstone in '09, we've been looking, talking, dreaming, and searching.  We finally pulled the trigger and bought a motorhome.  We are so excited about it.  We've packed up the kids 2 Saturdays in a row and just gone for a drive, parked the camper, and hung out for a while.  It has been a BLAST.  I don't know about other parents, but for Stanton and I, it's really hard to disconnect from the million things we need to do around the house and just play with the kids.  Being able to go away from the house has really allowed us to spend some amazing time together.  It has been so fun.
We're going to take the kids out of school for Friday and make a trip down to Southern Utah with some of Stanton's family this weekend.  We're so looking forward to it.
Anyway, it's been a really great purchase and we are looking forward to some really fun family time because of it.

One more super fun addition to the family -- of the four-legged variety...
CHESTER!!!
Chester is our new Australian Labradoodle puppy and has pretty much captured every heart in our family in the few short days he's been with us.  We are in love.

 This was the night Stanton got home from the airport (he flew to us from Washington state).  Chloe was in love from the word go, Lily really likes him a lot, Brigham was on the trampoline, and Cannon wasn't quite sure what to think, "I like him!  He's touching me!  I like him!  Get him away from me!!"

 Had to throw in this picture of my latest French braiding attempt on Chloe.  It's pretty scraggly, yes, but it was also the end of the day.  I'm improving....

He is such a beautiful dog...and I love love love that he looks like....a dog!  Just a cute little Benji-looking pup.  He is really well-behaved, mellow, playful, and eager to please.  We are loving this little guy!!

The Gingerbread Kids

Lily has a marvelous Kindergarten teacher!  Every year the kids get to put together a 10-15 minute opera.  They are responsible for coming up with the story, writing the lyrics, painting the set, deciding the melody, singing, and acting out the opera.  It is in conjunction with the Utah Festival Opera here in Cache Valley and it is such a neat experience!
This year, Lily's class's opera was, "The Gingerbread Kids."  Lily auditioned for a role as one of the Gingerbread Kids (not one bit a surprise if you know LilyLove).  The kids voted and she got her wish.
I don't have a video of the opera yet, as we purchased a DVD of the performance instead of recording it.  I'll try and post the video here as soon as I get it...although my track record with such things is pretty lousy....

Anyway, Lily was absolutely adorable -- she knew every word and every action and performed with gusto.  She was awesome!  We were some pretty proud parents.

I got to help with the costumes this year (as opposed to last year with Chloe's class -- I was barely keeping my head above water back then) and put together the costumes for the 4 Gingerbread Kids.  It was really fun and not difficult at all, which I always appreciate in a project.  Hehe.
As part of the costume, I painted each of the kids' cheeks with Halloween makeup so they'd have big rosy red cheeks.  Fortunately, it really helped them 'pop' on stage and was a great addition to the costume.  Unfortunately, Lily had an allergic reaction to the makeup and ended up with a huge hive on each cheek shaped exactly like the makeup.  Her cheeks were purple, hot, raised, and itchy in that area for a good 3-4 days.  It has since calmed down, although she still has some bumps on her cheeks.  She was a champ about the whole thing, though, and wouldn't trade her starring role for any dumb healthy cheek.  The things we do for the love of the theater....

Fun Freebie

For my friends who have Lego loving kids, here's a link to a free subscription to their magazine -- they have one for younger kids, too!


LEGO Mag

Missons Accomplished!

Two of the huge challenges I was working on in April are complete and I wanted to take a minute to write about them. They've been fantastic.

First is the 100-mile fitness challenge. My friend, Amanda, put together this challenge and it has been so fun.  It started in February and the goal was to accumulate 100 miles of fitness in the 3 months from February to April -- the way to calculate was:  1 mile of biking, swimming, running, walking, etc. = 1 mile...15 minutes of any other activity (yoga, Jillian, p90x, etc.) = 1 mile.
We reported to Amanda every Monday night and she added up our numbers and sent out an email detailing everyone's progress.  It was a great motivator on the days where I felt a little lazy in the exercise department.  We just finished up on Saturday and my final tally ended up being 148 miles!  Whew!  It's really cool to see it in cold hard numbers like that.  That's a lot of exercise in 3 months.  (There were some people in the challenge who came close to 300 miles!  Wow).  I added up the miles of all 22 of us who participated -- we clocked 2909 miles!  That's like going from San Francisco to New York City.  This was a great challenge to be involved in and I really appreciated Amanda's hard work every week getting the numbers out.  I'm looking forward to doing it again.

The second challenge I did was a 30 Day Organizing Challenge.  This was hosted by Michele, the Get Organized Wizard.  Every day of April, she posted a new 5 minute mission to complete.  Some of the missions took me a LOT longer than 5 minutes, but just knowing that I had a place to report my progress gave me to motivation to complete every single one.  As the final bonus mission today, she challenged us to take a minute and write about the successes we had.

Bonus Task: Acknowledge Your Accomplishments

Step 1: Get a pen and notebook, or open a new document on your computer.
Step 2: Write for 5 minutes about the gains you’ve made in your home over the past month. Include:

• The ways things look
• The time you save when looking for things
• Your feelings – perhaps clarity or freshness
• The influence on the kids
• The impression on your spouse
• Anything you’ve learned about yourself
• Any new habits you’re committing to.

Step 3: Make a note in your diary to re-read what you’ve written in a month’s time. It will remind you of your achievements and motivate you to maintain the benefits.
And you’re done!

I'm going to complete this mission on my blog so I have a tidy little archive of my success.

*The way things look -- I still have a few "treasure spots" that are an eye sore, but the improvement in the order of my home is tangible.  My craft room is stocked ONLY with things I love and use.  My jewelry containers are purged and filled with only things I love.  The entertainment hutch thing in my living room is orderly -- the karaoke machine has a home now, as does my exercise equipment (and that home is NOT in the corner where I've learned to just tune them out), my closet has only clothes I love in it, I only have things in my kitchen that I need and use regularly, and my linen/medicine closet only has medicines we use and linens we need.  It used to be really scary to open that door!  It's orderly, nice, and I actually know what I have now!
*I definitely save time looking for things now.  One of the tasks was to organize our car's glove box.  It's been crazy how many times I've benefited from knowing exactly what is in there now.  Some for every other little spot we've worked on.  I am not buying doubles of so many of the things I was before.  And my garbage can has been FULL the past few weeks!
*My feelings--- well, I'm relieved.  It's incredible to see those spots in my house that I have always been frustrated by but never thought I had time to tackle.  Just starting (and having someone give me permission to start) was so eye opening.  I have plenty of time to tackle these projects -- it's just choosing to do them.  Another thing I've gained from this is that I actually THINK about what I purchase and bring into my home more carefully.  I don't want the clutter to come back and I have learned that I do much better emotionally when my home is simple and only has a few things that I love very much in it.
*The influence this has had on my kids is maybe not as clear yet.  We'll see in the long run how this pans out.  Although I do hope they're learning from me that simplicity is happy.
*Stanton has loved this challenge!  Haha.  He's a guy who feels immediate peace when he comes home to a tidy home and the opposite when he doesn't.  He has loved seeing the changes that have been made and has helped me go through some of the challenges.  And he's been motivated to clean up some of his own treasure spots because of what I've done.
*I mentioned before that I've learned I love simplicity.  I read decorating blogs sometimes and fall into the trap that I need to like having a bunch of different decorating projects going on or change my decorations regularly, etc., to be happy/a good homemaker, etc.  I've come to realize that that may be the case for many, many people, but for me, I am much more happy and peaceful when I am surrounded by a few things I truly love or that really inspire me and that when the rest of the space is left to be just space, I can breathe more easily and handle the messes that every day life brings with a happier attitude.  Fewer surfaces to dust relieve me.  Fewer things to be broken give me peace.  A few inspiring pictures and pictures of my family bring me joy.  I don't like having spray painted rabbits, huge vases turned over on trinkets, and vinyl lettering everywhere.  I like simplicity.  Who knew??!!
*I've committed to myself that I will seriously consider every single thing that enters my home.  I will think about its value and what it will bring in terms of peace and happiness in my home and for my family.  Nothing is a great deal if it brings clutter to my home.  I've also committed to implementing the OCI-OGO way of living (One Comes In-One Goes Out).  I am not saying that I will trade one for one every single time something comes into my home (clothes for example) but when it comes to decorations, paper anything, and general "stuff," I will adopt this way of life.  And I will continue to go through my closet every few months (which I was already doing) and pass on the things that I don't love anymore to people who will love them.

I feel FREE!!  I am going to try to keep up with this -- maybe make a list of things I still need to go through and commit to spending 5 minutes every day keeping the junk at bay.
And I'm going to go set a calendar reminder to come back and read this post in one month so I can get back on track if I've fallen off the wagon.

One last thing I don't want to forget.  While I was writing this post, I hopped on Facebook and saw news that gave me chills.  Tonight, President Obama announced that after 10 years of searching, the mastermind and leader behind the attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden, was found and killed.  I am shocked.  I have to admit that I didn't really think this was ever going to happen.  I know this doesn't mean the end of the Taliban, but it certainly has to take the wind out of the sails of those who thought he was infallible.  This is a relief and hopefully brings peace to the many who lost family members directly due to his wickedness.
My gratitude to those who, unlike me, never gave up on the hope that we could find him.  Gratitude to President Obama, gratitude to those in the military working to serve our nation, gratitude to the CIA for their diligence.  Gratitude to Heavenly Father for providing a plan that ensures justice and mercy all of His children.