Brooklyn's Montage

Brooklyn is Born

Are there any lurkers out there?

I'm inspired by a post on another blog. When it comes to the blog world, I have an extensive collection that I check pretty regularly. Most of them are blogs of people that I, at least at one point in time, know personally. For some of these people, their blog, and mine, are the only ways we stay in touch. Some of the blogs I check are from people that I have met online, but still feel like I know them, and they know me. Other blogs? Blogs I have found through other blogs, blogs I found on Google while searching for something else, and blogs listed on the 'Blogger' mainpage. The people that write these blogs don't know me. They don't know that I am reading about sometimes intimate details of their lives, but I feel as though I know them well. In a strange, Internet sort of way, they are my close friends. This makes me wonder: are there any such lurkers out there? As far as I know, I've made this blog fairly hard to find if you don't know it's already here, but I'm wondering if somebody managed to find it anyway? I'm hoping if you're one such blog-reader, you'll comment and let me know. I don't mind if you don't use your name, or if you want to tell me all about yourself. I'm just curious.

Winter at Last

When we woke up this morning, the roads and driveways were completely dry. We had one short spell of snow a couple weeks ago, but as of this morning there was nary a trace to be found. In fact, on Thursday it was almost 60 degrees, and the boys had a wonderful time playing on the playground after Kadon's nap. As Christmas is rapidly approaching, Ammon and the boys had planned to venture out to Target to finish the last of the shopping. When they opened the door to go outside I noticed that it was snowing, but thought nothing of my family bundling into the minivan to go to the store. I happily set to cleaning and organizing my house while the snow continued to fall outside. I continually glanced outside as the snow continued to pile up outside. After two hours this:
is what it looked like from our front door. Over an inch of snow fell in two short hours, and I was starting to get nervous that my boys hadn't returned from the store yet. I tried to convince myself that Ammon is a very capable driver, and that they were simply out shopping and having a good time. However, when Ammon and the boys finally arrived home this:
is what the front end of our minivan looked like. Ammon had been on his way home, and because the roads were so completely iced over, he was unable to stop at the stoplight, and rear ended a car in front of him. Her car sustained minimal damage, but as you can see, our van is slightly worse for the wear. They exchanged car insurance information and phone numbers, and continued on their way. However, the morning wasn't over for poor Ammon. As he rounded the last bend before our house, he saw five cars piled up in the intersection. Every last one of them was stuck, and every last one of them sat warmly in their cars as Ammon and one other gentlemen dug them out and pushed them on their way. After Ammon spent an hour pushing vehicles, he grumpily made his way home only to spend more time on the phone with the insurance company to report the fender bender. We're grateful to have good car insurance, and a kind agent. Although this is a terrible time of year for something like this to happen, especially since we're already short on money because we just moved, we're hoping that it won't be too big an impact on our finances. Hey, at least it's still drivable, right?!

Flu

The flu found our house this week. Poor Kadon came down with it on Saturday night. Ammon and I had been out for the evening enjoying a gift certificate given to us by Jan, when Kadon woke up crying at about 9:30. Ammon went in to settle him back to sleep, when he started throwing up. Ammon yelled for me, and when I arrived in his bedroom I was given the joyful opportunity to hold a towel beneath his mouth in order to catch the huge amounts of vomit he was emitting. Once we got that cleaned up, we dropped exhausted into bed, only to be awoken at about 1:30 to clean up diarrhea from the clean blankets on Kadon's bed. Never have I done so much laundry in the middle of the night as I did this night. Between Kadon being up at least three times between 1:30 and 7, and getting up with Brooklyn at least twice during the night, none of us were up to attending church on Sunday morning. None of us, perhaps, except Jeremy, who had slept through the entire ordeal, bless his heart. By Monday, we were patting ourselves on the back, congratulating ourselves on making it through another illness. Patting ourselves on the back, that is, until Kadon started vomiting again at about 6:30. After cleaning up yet another mess, and doing still more laundry, we again collapsed into bed. By Wednesday night, Ammon had missed half a day of work, and Jeremy spent the night awake with the same glorious combination of vomit and diarrhea. We spent Thursday lazing around the house, and doing several more loads of laundry in an attempt to stay ahead of the towels we had been using to mop up the various messes. Here we are, 10:45 on Friday night, and it appears as though Brooklyn is now coming down with the illness. So far no vomiting from her, and it's almost impossible to identify diarrhea on a strictly breastfed baby, but she does have a very pitiful "I feel yucky" sort of whimper, between her many naps today. I'm hoping we all recover sufficiently to attend the ward Christmas party tomorrow night, but I'm not holding my breath. Holding my nose, yes, but not my breath. Hopefully I can continue to avoid the plague this time around.

Hello out there?

I've been woefully absent yet again. We have all spent the last three weeks throwing ourselves into getting settled into our new home. After six months of feeling like a visitor in someone else's home, it feels so good to have a place of our own again. Our new ward is warm and welcoming, and there is even a nursery for Kadon to attend, a luxury we missed in our small Dayton branch. So far our neighbors seem nice, although we've only met a couple of them. Our apartment is starting to feel more and more like home, and my parents are planning a visit in January or February. Ammon's job is continuing to go well, and the kids are adjusting amazingly well to their new surroundings. I knew we were 'home' when the other day a small child showed up at my front door asking my children to come out and play. Such a small thing, but something I took for granted when we lived in Utah. In our old apartment complex, there was a plethora of children Jeremy's age and older to play with, and he had constant companions when he went outside. In Russ and Mary's neighborhood, this friendship was sorely lacking, as there were no small children nearby. I'm grateful to be settled again. I am finding it an adventure to locate simply things like a grocery store, a library, post office, and fabric store. I'm sure this year here will fly by, and then we'll be starting over again somewhere completely new, but for now, I'm happy to be right where we are.