Blogging Makes My Brain Hurt

Where has October gone? I had so many intentions of doing a better job of recording our life, but apparently I suck at updating the blog regularly. So, here is a last ditch effort to recap the month.

Conference Weekend we spent in Indiana visiting Scott's sister and family. Nothing overly eventful happened, other than Scott missing all of conference on Sunday due to driving 2 hours home and 2 hours back to transport a table that Kristin was giving us from their house to ours. Oh, and Grace's final stalling measure of face-planting on the sidewalk while riding a bike down the driveway when she was supposed to be loading up in the car so we could go home. She split her lip open, scraped up her mouth, nose, and forehead, and was basically an absolute mess. You've gotta love an exit like that, right?

Here she is a couple days later, and you can still see the damage.

In an example of what I like to call "unrestrained creativity," here is a photo of Grace modeling her hat that she "decorated" on a Saturday morning when everyone else was outside doing yard work. In case you were wondering, this is a recurring theme with Grace. Grace doesn't "like chores," as she says. She also doesn't "like consequences," but thats a story for another day.


Unrestrained creativity indeed. Here you can see that she has glued leaves and stickers to one side...



And colored in the white lines on the other side with marker.



In other news, it is Fall. And boy is Fall in the midwest gorgeous (see below -- you know you want to live here). A few weekends ago, Ethan decided he wanted the family to go on a "date" to a nearby bike trail, so that he could practice his newly acquired skill of riding without his training wheels. Scott ran along beside him, and I pushed the girls in the double jogging stroller and while we were out I snapped these pictures to document the colors.




This month we also were made aware that Sophie is still allergic to milk. This was discovered quite unintentionally one morning during breakfast when Sophie tipped Grace's cereal bowl over, thus soaking the sleeve of her jammies with the milk. Unfortunately I didn't notice this little fact until a few minutes later when she was still fussing and scratching at her wrist. I then noticed her sleeve was wet, deduced what happened, and pulled up her sleeve to see huge red welts all up and down her arm.

It was hard to get a good shot of this because of the flash, but this shows a LITTLE bit of what it looked like. It took a while for it to go down, and she was scratching like crazy the whole time.

In other Sophie related news, she also caused us an ER trip earlier in the month due to some asthma issues, combined with a cold, and a lot of wheezing despite the steady course of albuterol breathing treatments we were giving her every 4 hours. It seems as though every illness always gets worse during the middle of the night, and after keeping us up practically all of one night with her coughing and wheezing and breathing efforts, I took her to the hospital in the early morning. Of course, as soon as we were settled in, she was all smiles and cute as a button, and acting like everything was just fine, and I felt like a total over-reactive, hypochondriac mother. Luckily her chest X-ray showed only bronchiolitis and not pneumonia. Unluckily for us, the doctor instructed us to start up the pulmicort breathing treatments again, and keep those up through November. As a result, Sophie has become a complete TV bug as it is the only thing that will get her stay still and do the nebulizer.

Its a good thing she's so dang cute, because she is one high-maintenance chick!

I also experienced my first foray into field-trip chaperoning this month with Ethan's Farm trip/pumpkin patch visit. Here below is the group I was in charge of, and just so you know, 3 of those boys were named Ethan. That made for a fun time of keeping everyone together. Let's just say I think that is the only field-trip I'll be chaperoning for a while. It was exhausting trying to keep an eye on 4 little boys running all over the place, while the entire Kindergarten population of HIS school was there, along with a couple of other school's as well.

Ethan (my Ethan that is) had so much fun.

Scott got a big kick out this picture of Ethan sitting "Indian-style" next to the pumpkin head.

The Three Ethans

Having a finished, yet unfurnished, basement is providing countless hours of entertainment for the children. In yet another example of their "unrestrained creativity," you can see some "trails" that they decided to make one afternoon made-up of lines and lines of every little toy or object they could find. They were quite pleased with their efforts, and there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, when I finally made them clean it up yesterday along with the MESS OF ALL MESSES unpictured on the opposite side of the basement. It helped to have the threat of no trick-or-treating dangling over their heads.

So, really, nothing much note-worthy has happened in the month of October. It has been a blur of sick kids, sick me and falling into the routine of school, work, and play. Oh, and of course prepping for the annual Primary Program. The actual program was last Sunday, and let's just say that Grace was the funniest non-comedy of the show. Despite the fact that she has had her part memorized for weeks ("We should follow the Prophet because he knows the way") she totally froze like a deer in headlights when it was her turn, and she was the only Sunbeam who wouldn't say her part. It was actually kind of cute seeing her up there staring blankly out into the audience and chewing on the neckline of her dress, before stepping down and sitting back in her seat. But then, apparently, she went on to entertain the congregation for the rest of program by making faces, pulling her dress up over her head, fidgeting, and just being ridiculous in general. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I didn't see any of this from my vantage point and only learned about it afterwards when people came up to me saying how funny she was up there on the stand and how they were just watching her the whole time trying hard not to laugh. So there you have it. My child is THAT child. Her poor primary teachers.

I know this post is kind of lame, but the title says it all. Blogging makes my brain hurt! Especially when the kids are finally asleep, I'm tired, it's been a long day, and I just want to go to bed. So, until next time...

Happy Halloween!