Pumpkin Painting

This weekend, after the hectic schedules we have all kept for the last month, we decided we owed ourselves a little hibernation. So, on Friday afternoon after Ammon got home from work, we fixed ourselves some leftovers for dinner, then we settled down afterwards for our annual pumpkin painting festivities. Last year Kadon was too young to participate, but this year he had a great time eating my non-toxic craft paint. He kept putting his fingers in the paint and then sticking his fingers in his mouth, and then making this adorable face and saying 'yucky'. Very cute. Hence, his pumpkin didn't end up being very painted, and he ended up in the bath very first. Jeremy, on the other hand, followed true to form and spent the evening asking for every color in my arsenal, and then mixing them together on his plate before applying them to his pumpkin in kind of a brownish/blackish mess. He also had a great time, and only smeared a little bit of paint on the chair he was sitting in. Ammon took his pumpkin very seriously, and drew a great design of an eagle clutching an American flag on the side. He even painted it all by himself, which I was very impressed with. All in all, the painting took us several hours, but it was great to spend the time together as a family. We then spent the rest of the weekend holed up in our apartment watching conference and sitting around in our pajamas. When we emerged on Monday morning we all felt so refreshed that we might make it through this week after all!

Tickers

Thought I'd post to explain the tickers I've added at the top of my page. My friend Emily introduced me to them, and I thought they were a lot of fun. You can set them up to do any number of things, I think once it gets closer to the holidays I'll set one up to do a countdown for christmas, you can count them down for a pregnancy, you can use tickers to help you keep track of when you're ovulating if you're trying to conceive, you can use them to count down a major event like a vacation or the number of pounds you've lost (hey, maybe I should put one of those up!) Anyway, they're a lot of fun, so they're up for now, but I might get tired of them and switch them around or take them down altogether after a while. Hope everyone enjoyed conference this weekend!

E-Bay Trivia

I found an interesting bit of trivia in my surfing today and thought I would share it with y'all. Prepare to be grateful. Ready? Alright. Did you know that the first item sold on e-bay was actually a broken laser pointer? Yep, that's right. In late 1995, the found of e-bay, Pierre Omidyar, had originally purchased the device as a toy for his feline companion, and when it went kaput, he decided to post it on the world wide web to see if anyone wanted to purchase it. The going price for the broken pointer was an astonishing $14.00. Apparently the bargain hunters hadn't caught onto the trend yet. Soon afer this, e-bay as we know it know exploded onto the scene. I'm not sure where the pointer that began it all actually ended up, but many satisfied buyers all over the world owe the buyer a debt of gratitude. Ah, the call of commerce.

Haircut

Before I could secure Ammon's permission to buzz Jeremy's hair during the hottest part of the summer, I had to promise to let it grow out as soon as the colder air of the winter set in. Well, I let Jeremy's hair grow as long as I could stand, but once the hair around his ears had grown about an inch past the tops of his ears. He had started to look rather shaggy, so while his father was at work on Wednesday, we ventured to the beauty college where Emily's sister works and had her trim Jeremy's hair. He looks so handsome and grown up, and I managed to snap this picture, and even caught him by surprise a little bit, as you can tell by the look on his face. I was really proud of how good he acted, and that he sat all by himself. I asked him at the beginning of the haircut if he wanted me to stay with him and stand by him, or if he wanted me to go over to the waiting area and sit down, and he said 'I can do it all by myself, mommy'. He's such a big boy, that little son of mine.

Asthma

Well, I promised I would post after our doctor visit on Friday, and as most of you have already heard what the doctor had to say about our dear Kadon, I'll simply do a quick recap on here. Kadon does in fact have a form of asthma, although at his young age, the doctor doesn't want to be too hasty and actually diagnosis him with asthma for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that puttting the big red 'A' in his chart at the ripe old age of 18 months will haunt him for the rest of his life, but also that there is a large chance that as he grows and matures, his lungs will also grow and mature, and hopefully he will grow out of his troubles. It appears as though Kadon's trigger for his asthma, which mostly manifests itself in coughing fits during the night, is the cold air that comes around this time of year. Kadon has been waking up several times a night for the past several weeks, usually following a fit of coughing, and has also been coughing whenever he is exposed to cold air during the day. While we have yet to decide how we are going to avoid exposing him to the cold air his poor lungs apparently don't handle very well, we have started doing breathing treatments with him twice a day, which is what you see in the photo. We hook the mask you can see up to a compressor, which turns albuterol, the liquid medicine he has been prescribed to help open up his airways, into a gas, which he then breathes deeply into his lungs. It then forces his entire respitory system to sort of 'unclog', which makes it so that he can breathe much easier. So far we haven't noticed him actually wheezing or rasping at all, and he doesn't seem to have any trouble running or playing like a normal toddler, so we feel blessed. Hopefully we will be able to keep this contained with a simple cough syrup before he goes to bed, and eventually a single breathing treatment before he goes to bed at night. Although he isn't a fan of the breathing treatments at this point (an 18 month old being forced to hold perfectly still with a mask over his face for 8 minutes isn't a pretty picture) the doctor assures us that with time he will grow used to the procedure and stop fighting it. We have noticed an improvement in his attitude even in the short time that we have been doing it, and we have noticed a DRASTIC improvement in his sleeping schedule, so for now we will definetely stay the course. More than likely, we will continue to do the breathing treatments once a day through the winter for the next several years in order to keep him comfortable through the cold months. The doctor is hoping that by the time he is 4 or 5 he will outgrow this unfortunate disease!

September Snowfall

Ammon and I awoke early this morning to a somewhat startling and unexpected sight. We looked out our bedroom window and saw the field behind our building completely covered in snow! It's the 22nd of September, for crying out loud! I mean, it has been slightly cold for the season, and rain was expected for the next couple of days, but when the rumor of snow was circulated last week it was laughed off with disbelief! When Jeremy got up this morning he was very excited to see the covering of white on the ground, and Kadon kept looking at the ground and attempting to say 'snow'. It was really cute, so this morning, as I was cleaning after breakfast I let the kids go outside on the patio to play in the years first snowfall. Kadon thought the snow was a lot of fun until he realized how cold his hands were going to get. I went to the storage closet and fished out our bag of winter hats and gloves (it's so early in the year I hadn't even gotten it out yet! Luckily it has been cold enough that I had gotten out our winter coats last week!) and he was a little bit happier after that, but then we had the inevitable problem of not being able to efficiently being able to pick up the snow with a layer of fleece covering his fingers. Ah well, here's to a season of snow, even if it is two months early! Hopefully it will melt soon, and we'll at least get a reprieve before it sets in for good!

The Time is Today!

September 21st. I have been waiting for September 21st for four long months. Tonight my favorite show, the only show that I actually watch on a regular basis, is returning after the summer hiatus. I am planning to put my kids to bed early and plant myself in front of the television from 8 until 9 pm, and I will allow no interruptions! We also have some pretty serious inspections going on tomorrow, so I have been doing a lot of cleaning for that, and have managed to plan accordingly so that I don't have any cleaning to do tonight and I can veg out guilt free in front of my show. It has been a long and busy week, and I am really glad that today is Thursday and it is almost over. I will be even more glad when tomorrow is Friday and Ammon and I get to go out for a date and we don't have anything planned all weekend long. It feels like we haven't seen each other in at least a couple of weeks! With Ammon's parents being here, and the hectic weeks we've had since they left, we feel like we've barely had time to breathe! It will be nice this weekend to sit back and relax. In fact, I was invited to attend the relief society conference in Salt Lake this weekend, and I turned it down in favor of staying home and spending some much needed time with my family. Anyway, Kadon is sick (again!) and screaming at me, so I'm going to cut this short today, but I'll try and do more tomorrow after we take him back to the doctor. I'm worried about asthma, and am going to get him checked out, so I'll post what we find out hopefully some time this weekend.