2 Years in the Making

Yes, it's been almost two years since we had a family picture taken.  I feel really bad about that because my kids are still so little.  I hate to miss a year.  But, unfortunately, all the little kids are part of the reason for the lapse.  They keep us busy!

But, while we were at Haigler Creek for the reunion, I heard someone mention that Delsy was taking family pictures for Rayla.  Since not knowing who to have take our pictures in one of the hold ups, I figured now would be a good time to just take a few shots while we had a photographer and a nice camera.  In an incredible stroke of luck, I just happened to have coordinating clothes with us.  Arie was the exception, but she was close enough.  Wardrobe choices are probably my number one hold up when it comes to family pictures.  I never know what to have us wear and I'm NOT spending money on new matching outfits for everyone. 

Anyway, I was really excited about the clothes in the same color scheme, a photographer on hand, and a beautiful location.  I think we got some great pictures!  Now, I can't decide which I like best.  Help me out...

Photo #1

Photo #2

I can't decide if I like the picture showing all of our bodies and more of the scenery (#1) or if I like it to be cropped in closer (#2).  The picture needs to be horizontal.  All of the kids are smiling in #2, but the picture was taken vertically. So I don't have the option of photo #2 to be further away--it has to be cropped close in order to be horizontal. 

Photo #3. 
This one probably isn't my favorite, but I like it because it's different.  And because it was a small miracle to get everyone standing in a line, holding hands.

 

 

Individual shots of the kids. 

I'm so glad we did these.  I'm even happier that I didn't let the guilt make me buy expensive school pictures a few weeks ago.

 

Natalie 

9 1/2 years old



Kelton

6 1/2 years old



Damon

4 1/2 years old

Arie

almost 2 years old

Webb Family Reunion

Nate's parents recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  As a surprise, the kids put together a family reunion for them.  We rented the Haigler Creek Lodge, which is a house big enough for all of us to stay in together.  We drove to Haigler Creek on Thursday.  It was a four hour drive that turned into over a five hour drive because we couldn't find the place.  We weren't given directions and the address doesn't exist to google maps.  I don't think the town is a "real" town and it's located on a mountain.  It's close to Payson, AZ mile-wise, but it takes about an hour to drive there from Payson because a lot of it is on a windy, narrow, mountainous dirt road. 

But, we all eventually arrived.  Mom and Dad Webb and all of their children were there, except Tyler and his wife Aurelie.  (They live in Switzerland, so they had a pretty good excuse.)

At the back of the property is a creek.  The kids had fun playing in it for a while on Friday.  This is Natalie and Stevie.

Arie had fun walking along the creek.  She didn't really like how cold the water was.  I am in my running clothes because I went for a run that morning.  It was nice to run in the cooler weather, but I didn't think about how not nice it would be to run on the road there.  I was always either running up or down hills.  I don't ever run hills.  My legs were mad at me for the rest of the day.

There was also this fun little train for the kids.  Uncle Steve was nice enough to take the kids around on it several times.  From front to back is Kelton, Paisley, Damon, Stevie, and Qinsey.

One afternoon some of us shot some basketballs around and then played a little volleyball.  Delsy (Nate's niece) took this picture of her daughter Emma with Arie.  (Arie is on the right.)  They are about six months apart in age.  They don't look a lot alike, but their size and curly hair made us do a few double takes over the weekend. 

Here's what we really did all weekend.  We ate.  Then we talked for a while.  Then ate again!  I think it's safe to say that we are all a little sick of food.  But it was all very yummy.  We just had tons of food!  Here is Nate loading up his plate along with Steve and Lynnette.

Kids eating outside.  Starting with Kelton and going around clockwise:  Kelton, Kirstie, Natalie, Qinsey, Stevie, Owen, and Paisley.

Here is some of the family all ready for the talent show.

Natalie and I represented our family by playing a half learned piano duet.  We didn't know there was going to be a piano there so we didn't practice enough to learn the whole song.

At the end, Mom and Dad Webb accompanied a sing-a-long.  I thought this picture was really cute.

We left to come home around 11:00 this morning.  It was a fun weekend, but we are all very tired from the late nights.  And kind of a sad end note, Laura got sick with a stomach bug on Friday.  By this morning, at least 5 other people had caught it, including Nate and Natalie.  Poor Natalie threw up a lot of the way home in the car.  I very much hope we have it contained!

33

Nate turned 33 on August 30th.  It was a Saturday, which meant that no one had to go to school or work.  In the morning we sang Happy Birthday and Nate opened his presents.  Each of the kids used their own money to buy a present:  Natalie bought Milk Duds, Kelton bought a bag of caramels, and Damon bought Junior Mints.  I got him new sunglasses, Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U, and a magnetic iPad pen (to replace the one he already had that was misplaced somewhere in our house by Arie).

My visiting teacher was nice enough to offer to come watch our kids for us so that I could take Nate golfing after lunch.  We went to a course here in town and had a lot of fun.  I hadn't been golfing in at least five years and had only been a couple of times in the five years before that.  I was worried I wouldn't really be able to do it anymore, but I surprised myself by being able to pick up about where I left off.  Not that that's saying much... but I was at least able to hit the ball and did well enough to get a bogey on a couple of holes.

That evening we went into Tucson to have dinner at Chili's.  I had a genius plan.  Instead of paying $15-$20 on kids meals that the kids never even eat, I bribed them with ice cream.  They agreed to let me make macaroni and cheese at home (which is one of the things on the menu at Chili's that at least one kids always wants to order) and then we would take them to McDonalds after we ate to get ice cream.  They were very excited about the deal.  But by the time we got to Chili's, they were all begging for food and chocolate milk.  We ended up buying two kids meals for them to share.  Then, they still wanted the ice cream we told them they could have!  No amount of explaining could get them to understand that the deal was either food from Chili's OR ice cream.  But the kids lucked out.  Because it was Nate's birthday, he got a free scoop of ice cream which he let the kids share.

I honor of turning 33, I will list three (because I can't think of 33!) random birthday facts about Nate:

1) He has always insisted on the birthday tradition where we wake the birthday person by singing "Happy Birthday" and then the birthday presents are opened in bed.  Since we've been married, this has been done for every single birthday whether it's ours or the kids.  And yes, sometimes the birthday person is actually awake, but they have to wait for the family to "wake" them.

2)  Nate never has a birthday cake.  His birthday treat of choice is a banana cream pie.

3)  Every year we celebrate by going out to eat dinner at a restaurant with the whole family.  This is per Nate's request; he wants the kids with us.

Out with the old, in with the new

Here is a picture of Kelton's cast with his matching shoes on.  Kelton was reading to me as I was cooking dinner.

I took Kelton back to the doctor on Wednesday for a follow up.  They started by taking off his cast.

And then they took new x-rays.  Everything looks really good.  You can see in both pictures where the break in both bones is.  But everything is lined up like it should be.

Dr. Nielson (not in any of these pictures) debated back and forth on whether to put the long arm cast back on, or do a short arm one.  He couldn't decide, so he let me choose.  He said the shorter cast would probably be fine, but you are taking a slight chance that the bones could move.  With the long arm cast, Kelton wouldn't need to be careful; he could run and play and go out to recess without any worries.  So I chose the long cast.  And the techs talked me out of the waterproof cast, telling me that the padding they put on underneath is itchier, and causes a lot of kids to break out into a rash and the cast still needs to be dried with a blow dryer after it gets wet. 

Here they are, putting on the new cast.  It is so much smaller than before because the first cast was put on over the top of the plaster splint the ER put on.  It's nice that it's smaller now because Kelton only had certain uniform shirts with sleeves wide enough to go over the cast. 

And now Kelton has a green cast.  I must admit, I liked the yellow cast better.  But green it is for the next three weeks, until we go back and hopefully the cast comes off for good!

A Really Broken Arm

On the 15th, the kids and I drove to Snowflake to surprise my mom for her birthday.  We had only been there for about an hour when we heard some serious crying coming from the basement.  I was sure it must be Christian because none of my kids sounded like that.  Well, it was Kelton, and I didn't recognize the cry because he had never been hurt this badly.  We don't know exactly what happened because the only witnesses are four and five years old and it's unclear whether or not they were even in the room.  But, Kelton fell, or flipped, or something, off of the top bunk bed.  At first we thought he jumped off, but he says he didn't.  There is no guardrail, and I'm sure he was playing around and went off somehow.  And, unlike Jade, who broke her arm on Grandma's trampoline just a few weeks prior during the 24th celebration (compliments of Natalie who was trying to help her jump higher), we knew right away that Kelton's arm was broken because it looked like this:

Nate wasn't with us, so Rob, who is a nurse, came with us to hold Kelton's arm while we drove to Show Low to the Emergency Room.  We got in fairly quickly, but all kinds of crazy traumas came into the ER that night; head lacerations, car accidents, two helicopters came in... I was glad we were only there with a broken arm.  We were there from just after 7:00 p.m. until about 12:30 a.m.  Part of the holdup was that we were waiting for the anesthesiologist, who was supposed to be in shortly to do a nerve block (around 8:30 or 9:00?) so the arm could be set, but he got caught up with one of the other traumas in surgery and wouldn't be available until after midnight.  So, they ended up doing conscious sedation to set his arm and had to give him four doses of the medication to get it done.  I asked if that was a lot and they said that it was, especially for someone his size.  The ER doctor who did the reduction (putting the arm back in place) had a background in orthopedics and it appears that he did a good job.

X-ray showing the break.  Kelton told us his arm looked like a duck.

While we were waiting, a nurse or tech brought in this little game for Kelton to play.  It kept him occupied for a long time.  The game had a button you push that sends up air bubbles that shoot up little rings that you try to stack on a post.  Sometimes the rings would get stuck.  Kelton, only having one functional hand, would hit the game on his forehead to try to get the rings unstuck. He would be playing, just like in the picture below, and then out of nowhere... Smack!  Right to the head.  It was so funny.

Between it and the morphine, we were actually getting some smiles while we were waiting for the reduction to take place.  Oh, random side note--Kelton is left handed and was lucky enough to break his right arm.

Back at Grandma and Grandpa's the next day with a splint and sling.

The following Tuesday, I took Kelton to a pediatric orthopedic doctor in Tucson.  They said the x-rays from the hospital that were taken after the reduction looked good, and then put a cast over the existing splint.  Kelton told me he was thinking about choosing blue or green for his cast.  But, when they asked him what color he wanted, he replied with, "yellow!"  And yellow it is.  It's more like hello-electric-you-couldn't-lose-me-at-Disneyland-yellow.  I need to get a picture of it when he has his shoes on because it matches the laces and soles of his gray shoes.

Kelton cracks me up.  He thinks that if we are taking a picture of his arm, he must look sad and pathetic.  On day one or two, sure.  But he wasn't even on any pain meds when I took this picture a week after he broke his arm. 

So Dad came over and pulled out the "DON'T smile" trick.  I love this face:

Seriously, DON'T smile...

Haha, Dad wins!

Really, Kelton is doing great, just like the smiling picture.  My biggest problem is that he is still the little monkey who fell off a bunk bed.  I can't convince him to be careful and not try to balance on spinning chairs or walk along the side bars of the trampoline (because he isn't allowed to actually jump), or run up the slides at the park, etc,. etc,. etc....  We need for this reduction to stay in place!  I keep trying to convince him that he really doesn't want to have to have the doctor re-do it.  We go back on Wednesday to take another x-ray and hopefully get a shorter, waterproof, cast that will only be on for about 3-4 more weeks.  So that this poor little boy can finally play soccer with his team.  Because, of course, soccer season started just days after he broke his arm.

Another calling

I received another (because I am still the girl's camp director) calling a few weeks ago.  And, I must say, it is very strange to be issued a calling by your husband.  He definitely messed around with me more than a “normal” member of the bishopric would have.  He started off by telling me he was going to give me a worthiness interview first.  I said, “no, you can’t do that,” which resulted in him pulling out the handbook.  Anyway…

I was called to be the 2^nd counselor in the Young Women’s Presidency.  I am so excited to be able to continue working with the young women.  I was already missing them from camp!  It's funny though, because after talking with the YW President, I was supposed to be called as the 1st counselor because she wants me working with the older girls (our Laurels and Mia Maids are combined) and wants the current 1st counselor with the Beehives.  She has me working with the older girls anyway, so we will see if they actually decided to change which counselor I am.  I'm not sure it really matters.  :)

But, since I am now in the YW Presidency, I was able to attend a regional meeting this past Saturday that included several stakes in the Tucson area.  All the stake and ward YW Presidencies were invited to a specific chapel where Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson, the General Young Women's President, came and spoke to us.  It was a neat experience to hear from her regarding what is important concerning the youth in our wards.  I was really grateful to be able to be there.

60

My mom celebrated her 60th birthday on the 17th.  Rob, Tina and Christian were planning to go to Snowflake for the weekend to surprise her, and I decided to tag along and do the same.  Nate couldn't come with us, but I went with all of the kids.  It was very fun to surprise her!

We had a great, laid back weekend.  (Well...maybe except for the broken arm part.  But that's another post.)  We ate pizza and Mexican food from Eva's.  I brought my good nail stuff and painted my mom's fingernails and toenails.  We stayed up playing cards.  On Saturday night, after Mom went to bed, we decorated the kitchen and set out her birthday cake and cards.  Dad added a card and roses in the morning and Mom added the presents and cards sent from Christy, Chad and Melanie's families.

I brought stuff to make a birthday cake for Mom.  She requested a double layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, with frosting between the layers.  I maybe shouldn't say this because I am the one who made the cake, but it was Y-U-M-M-Y.  Well, I guess most of the credit should probably go to Duncan Hines.  Though the frosting was from scratch. 

 Everyone singing "Happy Birthday" after we got home from church.

Blowing out the six "decade" candles. 

 

My mom and me.

Seriously, I dare you to find me a more beautiful, younger looking sixty year old.  (And even if you do, I probably won't agree with you.) 

I love my mom.  She is amazing!  I am so glad we got to spend her birthday with her!

Yellow Dress

I'm copying this from a post my mom did today because I want to have it on my blog. 

The Story of the Dress My Mother Made:
All three of my daughters wore this cute little yellow dress when they were somewhere between the ages of 2 and 3. But my mother made the dress for my oldest daughter Christy for her 2nd birthday. She was using a pattern that she had when I was a little girl and the dress was taking her a long time to make. She had taken the dress with her to work one day to show her co-workers. As she was leaving work, pulling out of a parking lot, she was hit head-on by a group of teenagers who were driving too fast and lost control of their car. This accident put my mom in the hospital for 5-6 weeks. When she got out of the hospital, she discovered that there was blood spattered everywhere inside the car she was driving, but not a mark of any kind on this little yellow dress and pinafore!!! Each of my girls wore this dress, and I made sure they each had their picture taken in it. I still have this dress! Sure miss my mother!
--Monja Burgess

Christy

July 1976, almost 2 years old

Cherie

Fall 1986, almost 3 years old

Melanie

About 2 1/2 years old

School

Monday, the 4th was the first day of school.  The kids are excited for the year, and so am I.  From what I have been told, both of them have amazing teachers this year.  And... after years of pretty much nothing but navy blue, the kids can wear red now!  We've made it through the first week and it's going well.

Here are the kids on the first day before being dropped off at school by Nate.  He only takes them to school on the first day.

Natalie, 4th Grade

Mrs. Clapper's class

Kelton, 1st Grade

Mrs. Burke's class

Sometimes when I look at them together it is hard to believe that there is almost a three year age gap between them.  It may not be too much longer before Kelton is bigger than Natalie!

 

A picture Kelton brought home on his first day:

 



Last Saturday of Summer

Last Saturday was the kids' last day of summer break.  We wanted to do something fun, so we took them into town and went to a kid's workshop at Home Depot.  They each got to build a pencil box.  The whole thing was a lot of fun.  The workshops are free and each kid gets a kit and an apron.  When they are finished, they get a pin to put on their apron.  Some of the kids there were seasoned veterans with about 20 pins from projects they've done!  Our kids loved it and can't wait until the next one comes around.

All finished with their pencil boxes.

Then we went over to the zoo for a little while.  The tiger is one of my favorite animals at this zoo because it comes right up to you.  It's so cool to be an inch away from a tiger.  Well, one that can't hurt you, of course.  The kids found it scary and exciting.

This is random and doesn't fit with the rest of the post, but this last week, my friend Rebecca came over so I could make carseat canopies for her babies.  Yes, babies.  She has little six week old twin girls!  I got a little glimpse of what life with twins is like.  Those babies are sooo cute but definitely double to work.  At one point I held them both at the same time--one on each shoulder.  If you think holding one cute little newborn is fun, you should try it with two!

Finished canopies.

Brooklyn and Eden.  But maybe not in that order...