Zion's this summer

I was going through pictures from my camera and came across these from our family reunion this past summer at Zion's National Park:

(Jeff and Nathan hiking the Narrows)

(Nathan and Zach enjoying the Narrows)

(Zach loved the water coming off the rocks)

(The boys showing off their sticker books from Grandma)

Updated family picture

Ok, so there's the latest family picture:

And the whole family:

Blessings and Challenges

I've thought about this post for a while. I know I have been blessed in so many ways. I have a wonderful family, with cute adorable little boys and a wonderful husband. I've been blessed to have a roof over my head and food in my cupboards. I've been blessed to have the gospel in my life and have the knowledge of my Heavenly Father and Savior's love for me. There are times where I am amazed at how blessed I am.

I'm also dealing with some challenges right now. Trying to work while being a mom of too little boys has been a blessing and a challenge. I have an amazing situation where I get to work from home and usually set my own hours. I go into work just on Tuesdays (which are very, very long days), but other than that I'm home. I feel so blessed that I get to be home with my children and experience their youth and watch them grow. I get to be with them for all, but that one day a week. I think it's been a good experience for them, where they get to play with their best friend. I know I've got an amazing situation. However, it has been a challenge for me. Trying to juggle everything has been really hard. There are times where I get so jealous of the other young mom's who don't have to work. Who can sleep in, who don't have the same pressures, and don't have to juggle. Based on what's going on with work, there are times where I have worked into the early hours of the morning, or woken up very early to try to get a project done. However, I know I have an amazing situation and I truly have been blessed. I have to remind myself at times how lucky I am. Thankfully, I'm only working part-time (for the most part). I also know that there are so many people who are dealing with so many more challenges than I am. I also have an amazing job, with an amazing boss, and staff that are wonderful to work with my crazy schedule. With how crazy the economy has been, I'm grateful to have steady employment. I know the challenges that we do face are individualized and meant to develop in us the characters we need in order to live with our Heavenly Father again. However, there are some days that are just hard.

With all that said, I know that I truly have been blessed and I feel grateful for all that I have. My boys (Jeff, Nathan and Zach) are wonderful and I don't know how I deserve them. It's been a joy to spend my life with them.

Memories

So, Jeff reminded me of this story the other day. When Nathan was probably about one and a half or two years old, he was eating spaghetti for dinner. While eating, he sneezed. A little while later, he kept rubbing his nose as if it were bothering him. He kept doing it and it seemed to really bother him. I looked at his nose and it seemed like he had something in one of his nostrils. It kept bothering him, so I tried to figure out what was going on. It looked like he had something in his nose, but we figured he just had stuffy nose. I tried to get a tissue to get it out and it didn't seem to work. He was too young to blow his nose, and so we kept working on getting it out with a tissue. I think I finally had to pry it out (which was really gross) and it turned out it was a noodle that got stuck in his nose. It was probably at least 3-4 inches long, which would really bother me too! Anyhow, it was all really gross, but it's a story that I want to remember for when Nathan starts dating (hee hee hee).

Story Time

As I listed in my first post, I'm trying to use this blog as more of a journal to remember life with my two little boys. I hope this blog isn't too boring, but it's been a great thing for me.

Ok, so we have our bedtime ritual that we try to do every night, though we don't always do it because life can get busy. We try to do read books before bedtime. We've done this since Nathan was a baby. Right now, the bookshelf is in Nathan's room and, when I tell the boys it's story time, they run into Nathan's room and pick out a handful of books. The usual routine is stories, scriptures, prayer, hugs and kisses, and then bedtime.

Right now, Zach's favorite book is "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear". It's a very cute children's book. He'll run into Nathan's room and pick it out. Last night, we had a fight because Nathan had the Strawberry book first and Zach wanted it for bedtime. Anyhow, Zach will kind of "read" along with the story. There have been quite a few days that he'll point to the strawberry and say "big strawberry" on each of the pages as well. Since he's still learning to talk, it's pretty adorable.

Nathan has lots of favorite stories and just loves to read. There are quite a few books that he can quote word for word. He has a book he got from his Uncle Jason called "I'm Dirty" about a backhoe loader cleaning up a lot that he loves to read. It's really cute listening to him quote the book.

I've always loved to read and I hope my children will always have love of books as well. It's been a lot of fun watching my family all sit next to Nathan's bed and watch the boy's faces light up as we're reading a story. One of the joys of family life.

Family pictures

Nathan and Zach
Nathan
Zach sticking his tongue out
My immediate family (all of those boys!)

Jacob, Dad, Mom, Me, Jason, and in the front Chris and Shawn

Jeff took the pictures and I'm still waiting for him to finish the rest, but I thought these were cute and I've been wanting to post pictures. Hopefully Jeff will get the rest done soon we can have an updated family picture.

Nathan's a sponge

So, I think I need to watch what I say around Nathan because he seems to listen to everything I say. Ok, so that's not true. It seems when I ask him to do something there are a lot of times he doesn't listen, which can be very frustrating. Anyhow, We were at the grocery store yesterday and apparently I was complaining to my self about how the prices keep going up. I said something to Nathan about how I was sad, and I think I asked him why I was sad. He told me, "It's because the prices keep going up, up, up!" So I guess I really have to watch what I say around him!

I should have already learned my lesson because, I few months ago, we were at the bank, going through the drive-thru. I usually go about once a week, and I'll just tell them my account number if no one else is around. We had been to the bank and were going to a store, when Nathan, out of the blue, rattled off my seven digit account number and said "Mom, is it cool that I know that number?". I told that it was cool, but then we tried to learn our phone number right then instead. There have been a couple other instances were we've gone to the bank and Nathan will tell me my account number out of the blue.

I really think Nathan has a good memory. There are multiple books that he'll "read" because we've read them so much he has them memorized. He's also memorized some of the articles of faith, when he's done it over just a couple of days. I just need to learn what I say around him because, apparently, he's always listening!

Croup

So, I've heard about croup before, but I've never had to deal with it. Jeff was on a trip a couple of weeks ago and things went pretty smoothly for the most part. Zach started to get a little sick, where he sounded more hoarse than anything, but not bad. The Sunday Jeff was coming back, I felt miserable and laid around the house all day. Zach seemed to feel sick, but nothing really bad. By the end of the day, I started feeling a little better but Zach seemed to get worse. Jeff was going to be home around 8:30 pm, so I let the boys stay up a little late to see their dad before they went to bed. About 1/2 hour before Jeff got home, Zach started sounding worse and worse. He started to wheeze more when he was breathing and seemed to have a hard time. Right before Jeff got home, he sounded even worse and I've never been so happy to have Jeff home. He and his dad gave Zach a blessing and we put him right to bed. I still felt under the weather, so I went to bed a little early that night as well. Zach had a really hard time sleeping and woke up having a hard time breathing. He was hoarse and wheezing when he was breathing. He seemed to get worse through the night. He ended up sleeping in bed with us, but woke up quite a bit. I had a humidifier going, and when he was awake I would take him into the bathroom to do baths/steam or we would occasionally go outside to see if the cool air would help. At about 2:30 a.m. I watched him while he was in the bathtub, searching the phone book to see if there was any Instacare place opened in the middle of the night. We went back to bed where I lay awake listening to him breath. I was so terrified that he would get worse, I lay awake listening to him breath. I kept thinking that I would rush him to the ER if he got any worse. Finally, at 6:30 a.m. I left in the car, hoping that he would sleep better sitting up. We drove around, and I was certain that there would be at least one Instacare place that would open at 7:00 a.m. By the way, most Instacare's don't open until 8:30 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. Anyhow, we headed back home after a drive and Zach's breathing was doing a little better. I called the doctor's office right at 8:00 a.m. and got their earliest appointment, at 8:40 a.m. Zach was breathing better, though pretty tired. When the doctor saw him, he said it was croup (which I had expected) and he said we would need to do a nebulizer treatment in the office as soon as possible and, if Zach wasn't doing any better, we would need to head over to the hospital immediately. The nurse came in a couple of minutes later and did the nebulizer treatment, which helped quite a bit. We then got 3 prescriptions and went home to get him into bed. He took a nap for about 7 hours that day. Thankfully, he started doing much better. He was pretty wheezy that night and we headed back over to the doctor's office before bedtime for another nebulizer treatment. He was a pretty happy kid, and seemed to be back to his normal self. Zach ended up going to the doctor's one last time, where they gave him a stronger prescription since he was still wheezing a bit. It was all pretty frightening.
After Zach was on the road to recovery, Nathan got hit with the same thing. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as bad. The first night he woke up with croup, he had a look of terror in his eyes because he was having a hard time breathing. He was, as he put it, freaking out. Thankfully I knew what to do and we broke his first croup attack pretty fast. It was also a lot easier with him than with Zach because I could reason with him that crying was only making it harder for him. Once we got him calmed down, he did much better. The next morning, he told me that he was scared when he woke up because he was only half breathing. He started to do better and he put the humidifier in his room. However, two nights later he woke up with another croup attack. It wasn't nearly as bad and we got it under control pretty fast. We got prescriptions called in for Nathan as well, and he did much better after that. Very scary. Thankfully, we'll all recovered by now and I hope we don't have to go through that again. I don't see how people can find the strength to deal with children with terminal illnesses. I feel so blessed that we've, for the most part, been healthy and not had to deal with very much. I just hope it stays that way in the future!