My pantry runneth over . . .

And my refrigerator, and my freezers, and a few cupboards.

I'm still loving Coupon Sense, because how else could I get 5 boxes of Eggos, 6 boxes of Capri Suns, 4 jars of Smuckers ice cream toppings, 3 boxes of baby wipes, a loaf of French bread, 3 packages of paper plates, a Powerade, 5 bags of Wacky Mac, and 5 boxes of Ronzoni pasta for a whopping $4.63?

Pictures from my amazing New York City trip coming this week, so stay tuned :)

Still Alive

It's been so long since I've updated that some of you might have presumed this blog was dead forever. But alas, it lives again! I have been super busy and there is no end in sight to that.

I do not claim to be a great photographer, but I have been enjoying the new camera Joey bought me for my birthday. Our old camera was purchased in 2003 and only had 2.0 megapixels--about the quality of a cell phone camera. It was definitely time for something new.

Here's what we've been up to:

Hannah took 4th place in the Arizona State Spelling Bee. We are so proud of her. (old camera)

Kendall looks so grown up with her new haircut. She's all registered for kindergarten and I am only having slight anxiety (mixed with choruses of "Hallelujah") about all three of my kids being in school. (old camera)

We recently had a great time celebrating the 25th anniversary of our old grade school (and our kids' current one). Joey and I were in the first kindergarten class the year the school opened. We saw lots of old friends and the memories were fun. Here we are with our 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Huskison. She was the best teacher ever. I was so flattered when she looked me up in the phone book the next day because she wanted to chat some more and didn't feel like she was able to talk with me enough that night.

We enjoyed a brief visit with my brother Nathan recently. Here is much of the family after attending a memorial service for a dear friend. Noah is missing from the picture; he was at a birthday party that night.

Hannah and Noah were honored at the school's Honor Roll Night last week. This was the first year that Noah was eligible, hewasexcitedto get his first trophy that he actually slept with it that night. They have both done really well this school year, although it's been a challenge to keep up with two kids and all their assignments. I don't know how people with lots of kids do it!

Here's a picture of Hannah after her first piano recital. She has been taking lessons since September and she's doing so well. I love hearing piano music in the house all the time. (And I do mean ALL the time, she is constantly playing). I'm glad she's loving it, it will be a great skill. I quit after about three piano lessons when I was about six years old.

I was able to chaperone Noah's field trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens this week. It was a hot day but we had a good time. They have these amazing glass sculptures on display.

They also had a fun butterfly exhibit.

I'm also excited to say that I've lost 25 pounds in the past ten weeks! I'm doing Weight Watchers and I really love the program. It's so easy to follow and I have made a lot of changes in my habits that will hopefully be lifestyle changes. I'm even exercising. I am feeling good and excited to lose even more, especially since I don't really think it's that noticeable yet. It will be awhile before I am done but I am off to a great start.

Hopefully we will update more frequently since we have some fun adventures coming up.

Family Treasures, Lost and Found

Yesterday, as I was picking up Noah from school, his friend Sam was trying to give him a paper and he was refusing to take it. Sam threw the paper on the ground and walked away, so Noah finally picked it up. As we were walking to the car I asked him about the paper and he gave it to me. It was a letter that he had written and given to Sam, and then Sam was giving it back. Here's the text of the letter, including his spelling:

"Dear Sam,
You should be nice to evrewon (everyone). It would be nice to stop fighting Sam. You're mean to evrewon okay. You should be nice to Jalen, Josh, Kaidin, and me. We are all children of are parentes we should lisin and obay. Sam, Dr. Marten Lothe King Jr. said, We shoulde'nt figt with hands We shou fight with words. he said, to all of us. Sam you neve now whos wachen you boy you are in jail. lesen to me okay sam. You're hungrey arent you Sam. I know youre hungrey Sam okay.

Sincerly,
Steve Nash=
Noah"

So I was dying. My first grader wrote a letter telling another kid to be nice and quoted Dr. King!!! Where does he get it? And I thought it was going to say, "We are all children of God" but instead "children of our parents"! And what the heck is up with the hungry part at the end? (By the way, Noah LOVES Steve Nash and always calls himself Steve Nash.) For the record, Sam is actually a pretty good kid, although I think he's a little bit physically aggressive. Noah said he wrote the letter on Sunday when I made the kids go in their beds and take a quiet time after stake conference. Aside from the letter being completely hilarious, I am really proud of him for standing up for himself. This letter is definitely going to be saved, and I now consider it a family treasure. I'm just glad that Sam gave it back so I could have it.

This morning, Kendall was sitting on my lap at the desk and she sliced the letter with my paper cutter into about five different pieces. After freaking out I found all the pieces and put them back together. I am going to put it away now so nothing happens to it.

Where's Your Voice?

I don't know about you, but throughout the last year I've spent a lot of time watching politics. It was the first time I felt like I really figured out my own political beliefs. Knowing what I believe in has made me want to do more. I've been considering starting a blog dedicated to all things political. But to be honest, I probably won't, becauseI typically avoid confrontation at all costs. All of this might just be a result of listening to way too much talk radio these days.

Anyway, I'm sure we all know about the budget crisis facing Arizona's schools. This is MAJOR. Now since Arizona doesn't have the ability to just print up our own money like the federal government, I guess we won't be passing any stimulus package to send our great great great great great grandchildren into debt. So we have to find another solution. I don't think our legislators are looking hard enough to find feasible solutions. I don't want to see teacher salaries cut (let's go ahead and put them below the poverty line, why don't we?), class sizes double, half day kindergarten, a shortened school week, etc.

I was impressed to read this editorial the other day, describing a local superintendant who is speaking out and gathering the masses to say "Enough!". He says the legislature doesn't even have an idea of what these budget cuts will mean for our kids. He started a website, respectforregularfolks.com, to try and make a difference. He has a link to all of the state legislators email and phone numbers. I know I'm going to start emailing.

How about you?

So Far in 2009 . . .

Hannah won her district spelling bee, so on to regionals it is.

Noah learned how to ride without training wheels.

Kendall and I had a great time at the Phoenix Children's Museum.

Joey celebrated his birthday (no he's not three, that's just how many candles I had!)

We celebrated by spending a weekend up north without the kiddos. It was great. Even standing in the snow it really wasn't that cold, but the scenery was beautiful.

I think we're off to a good start.

Shocker

For those of you who follow the Arizona Cardinals, you may say that the fact they are going to the Super Bowl is no shocker. They've worked hard, they had a good season, they deserve it, it's their time, yadda yadda yadda. Personally, I have enjoyed mocking my hometown team's losing record for many years now.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they usually only play on Sundays, or the fact that my husband has always been a die hard Dallas Cowboys fan (picture this: his bedroom growing up had the Cowboys star painted on the wall), or the fact that my dad was never really interested in NFL football, or maybe just the fact that they were always losing, but I just never got into the Cardinals. I could not grasp those die hard, face painting, jersey wearing, tailgating fans of NFL football. I love baseball, enjoy the Suns, don't mind going to a Coyotes game, and I'd watch ASU football any old time, but I scoffed at the use of taxpayer money to build the Cardinals a state of the art stadium. (I mean, the Cardinals? Come on.)

But then, something weird happened. First, I like the respect that the stadium brings to the West side. And then, yesterday, I was checking the score online before church, and even turned on the radio in the car. I forgot something at home and so I went home during Sunday School, and when I got back to church, I didn't want to leave the radio because I was dying to know the end of the game. I was actually happy for the Cardinals. I wanted them to win. I cared about the outcome. That's the real shocker here.

Call me a fair weather fan if you will. I don't care. I just say that I didn't waste all those years paying attention and being disappointed by a losing team. I read a fan quote in the paper last week that summed it up well: "A lot of people have been trying to find a reason to love this team for a long time." So I'll root for the Cardinals in the Super Bowl with my typically low expectations, because they finally gave me a reason, and whether my love will continue past this season is yet to be seen. I make no promises.

Remembering

When I realized the date today, it took me back twelve whole years to when Hannah had surgery as a baby. I thought I'd write down the story.

She had been sick for a few days, with a fever and just not acting quite right. She was 8 months old and just starting to crawl. She all of a sudden stopped crawling and when she would sit up she would lean to one side strangely. I took her to the doctor and of course she acted fine while we were there. The doctor went ahead and ordered x-rays of her leg and hip just to make sure nothing was wrong. That was on the 13th. The next day she seemed a little better, and the doctor told us that the x-rays were normal. That night, she had a raging fever all night and didn't sleep, it seemed like her hip was hurting, and my mom and I knew that something was definitely wrong. We took her to the doctor as soon as they opened (January 15th) and they did some blood work. They did a test to find her "sed rate" which measures inflammation in the body. A normal range for her would have been 0-15, and hers was 40. They also reviewed the x-rays again and realized that the x-ray technician had not done the hip, just the leg. They immediately sent us to the hospital.

I was supposed to start a new job at Wells Fargo that day, and I had to call them and tell them what was going on. I was worried I would get fired, but I obviously didn't care about anything but Hannah at that point. When we got to the hospital they did some more tests, including a spinal tap. They did not let me come in the room and I just stayed out in the hall crying and completely freaking out. They determined that she had a bacterial infection that had settled in her hip joint and needed to be cleaned out through surgery. Some time that evening, they took her into surgery. I cannot describe the feeling of having your child taken away on a gurney and realizing that you have no control over their life at that point. I'm so thankful that she received a priesthood blessing.

The surgery went perfectly and they were able to completely clean out the infected area. We still to this day do not know exactly what caused the infection. It could have been an injury that we didn't realize she had, or just an infection that thought her hip would be a nice place to live. We will never know. She stayed in the hospital for nine long days after that. I would sleep in one of those reclining chairs each night next to her metal hospital crib which looked more like a cage. At some point she would end up in the chair with me and I would fall asleep nursing her. My mom would come to the hospital every morning so I could run home and take a shower, and then come straight back. We had a great medical staff that took care of her, from nurses to our pediatrician to the infectious disease doctors and her surgeon.

She had to have a pick line put in her shoulder so that IV antibiotics could be administered to make sure that the infection was completely taken care of. We had to learn how to do that and keep it clean Amazingly she has no scar from the surgery and just the slightest scar from the pick line. My mom had started a new job right before this happened and she was absolutely hating it. When Hannah was sick she called and quit her job, which turned out to be one of the biggest blessings. Being a single mom I already relied on my parents a lot, but I would not have been able to work or go to school if my mom had not quit her job and taken care of Hannah during that time. I also think about how young and uneducated I was about everything that was going on. Thank goodness I had my parents to ask questions and keep up with the medical side of everything.

We had to follow up with the surgeon for several years after that, because there was a chance that Hannah could have had one leg shorter than another or other permanent damage from the surgery, but by the time she was about 4 they determined that she would have no side effects from the experience. That was such a relief as well.

I know many of you have experienced traumatic moments with your children and can relate to how scary it is. I'm grateful that we were so blessed. (Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that while all this was going on, my brother Chris found out that he was going to have brain surgery! When it rains, it definitely pours. Thankfully there was a happy ending to that story too.)

I wish I had a scanner so I could post a baby picture of Hannah!