Haylee funny...

Our lesson in young womens on Sunday was making good use of our time. Since I haven't updated this blog in over a month I guess I am not making very good use of mine! One of the things we told the girls was to take at least 10 minutes per day to write in your journal. I use this blog as mine and I am not very good a writing in it so a quick Haylee funny before I get back to the chaos of the day...

A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning out the van and I had the back open I left it open to come in the house and get my purse -I had to take Haylee somehwere- and she went out and got in the van while I was in the house when I went out to the van she had a sneaky smile on her face and said "uh, the doors were locked in the van so I had to climb in the back." I told her I was pretty sure they weren't locked and she giggled and said "OK, they weren't I just wanted to climb in that way." I told her I wasn't mad that climbing in the back wasn't a big deal. I then proceeded to tell her that even though it was about somthing small she still shouldn't lie to me and that I would be more mad in the future if she lied and didn't just tell the truth right off the bat. She thought for a split second and then said "well, what's the big deal? I am just gonna get baptized in a couple of months." After I was done laughing I told her I was glad she got the concept of baptism but that that wasn't really how it worked - the time before baptism isn't a free pass to do whatever you like while you wait to be washed clean. She is a crack up that girl....

Funny #2 she said the prayer at Thanksgiving dinner at Joe's parents house, her 93 year old great grandma was there with us and somewhere in Haylee's prayer she said this "and please bless great grandma in her old age and that she will live at least a couple more *pause* years..." I was so relieved when she said years I was worried she was going to say a couple more hours so she could eat dinner or somthing like that...with Haylee you never know! :)

Funny #3 on our last night Haylee, Sierra, and I stayed up an extra hour or so with Joe's mom just having some fun girl visiting time and Haylee was sitting on grandma's lap and said "hey grandma, you have a beard!" when Joe's mom laughed and pointed out we all have some hair on our face Haylee said "well, you should shave" out of the mouths of babes I suppose! lol

We have been doing great. We spent Thanksgiving in Missouri and had an amazing visit with Joe's parents and his oldest sister and her family. The kids had so much fun. HD's highlight was driving Joe's old truck that he drove in high school. He was so excited! Sierra got to drive too but I think she better wait another year and a half before she drives again. ha ha ha...she was a little quick on the brake! Haylee got to drive grandpas tractor and had a great time helping feed the cows and playing with the dogs. It was a fun trip to the farm.

Hope you are all enjoying Christmas, we are loving the spirit of the holiday and getting all ready for the big day. :D
Merry Christmas to you all!

This girl....

is EIGHT! WOW! I can't believe it has been eight years! My sweet angel faced baby girl is now my sweet angel faced 8 year old! And she's my BABY!!! New rule in my house NO MORE GROWING UP! ~truth is I've been instituting this rule since she was three and it hasn't worked. *sigh* How blessed we are to have this sweet girl in our lives. Haylee is smart, sweet, precocious, fiesty, funny, and just amazing. I can't imagine our lives without her. I wish I could rewind the clock and do the last eight years over. Anyone have a time machine??? Let me know! Because I want to go back to this......This one is about seven months This one is when she was about one

She is around 14 months I think. LOVE this one!

And this one! TOO CUTE!

How could you not love that face!

Happy 8th Birthday our sweet girl!!!

The first day of school: even though it was almost three weeks ago!

It has been so long since I updated my blog! Everytime I get on here I think I am going to update more often but it doesn't seem to happen! Oh well, onward and upward right? Quick end of summer summary (saying end of summer summary makes me smile) :) Joe is doing great! He is fully healed and eating anything he wants! He saw the doctor for the last time yesterday and he said he is good to go. Hooray! Our trip to South Carolina was FANTASTIC! Seriously one of the best vacations we have ever taken! We spent everyday on the water, fishing, swimming, boating. It was so much fun! School started for the kids on August 24th. HD decided to go back to public school this year. He is LOVING every minute of it so far! He made the varsity soccer team and was voted one of the captains! They played their first game Tuesday and he scored the winning goal! He is doing well in his classes and somehow manages to get up at 5 am for seminary and I don't pick him up from soccer practice until 7pm! That kid is pulling a 14 hour day! He wouldn't have it any other way. Sierra and Haylee are both still homeschooled. Sierra is a freshman and really likes doing all of her school work on the computer. She is doing a high school transcript program through BYU. I love it because I don't have to grade her papers! She is doing really well. She also started seminary this year. She loves seminary but does not like the early wake up call! (I don't blame her!). Haylee is in third grade and loves school for the most part. She loves math and reading but is not too fond of spelling or writing. :)
Here are our slightly out of order pictures:

Daisy at recess on the first day of school.

Haylee opening her new ice cream cone eraser
My fabulous sign in our classroom

Haylee outside at recess

Sierra at recess...5am is starting to get to her!

HD before school

a closer look

Sierra's first day at BYU

Okay peeps, that about does it for today anyway. Haylee has been writing a composition while I've been updating and I have had to listen to her complain the whole time! ha ha I better give her some more structure and look over what she has. She has written almost a whole page and just said to me "this is going to be more of an ESSAY than a compositon" she is so funny. One more Haylee funny...we watched the Presidents speech on Tuesday and when he came on tv she said "I thought the president was black" I was cracking up! She has seen him before but has never paid that much attention I guess. I explained to her that he was bi-racial. It was so cute.

Take care everyone and happy almost fall!

An update....it's not short!

Well it has been a month since I blogged and most of you know how Joe has been doing and all the chaos that went along with his injury just in case you haven't heard the news this is the latest and greatest. July 8th Joe had reconstructive surgery to repair all of the damage that was done. Before the surgery the plan was to put two titanium plates in his face to hold the bones together -one on his orbital bone (above the eye) through a cut just above his eyeborw and one on the zygoma (below the eye) by going in through the lower eyelid (not fun) and to make an incision at his hairline on the left of his head to repair the cheekbone. The day before surgery the doc told us the front of Joe's cheekbone looked like cornflakes so they were probably going to go in through the mouth and explore the area to see if it needed a plate also. After surgery he ended up with three plates and incisions above his eyebrow, in his eyelid and in his mouth between the gums and his lip. The removed some loose pieces of bone that were just "floating around" in there (ew!) and put in the three plates. The surgery went very well. The worst part was that they had sewed his left eye shut so the lower eyelid wouldn't droop and to prevent infection. When Joe came around he couldn't open his right eye either -it was too hard to do that without wanting to open the left one which caused him pain when his eye was moving all around SO they patched his right eye which meant he was blind. Very unexpected and so disorienting for him. I had my hands full those next couple of days. Haylee got really sick too. She was running a fever of 103 pretty much the entire day of his surgery and a couple of days after. There was no way I could let her get Joe sick so she lived upstairs and he lived downstairs. The night of his surgery I was running up and down getting her what she needed and taking care of Joe on one of my trips upstairs Haylee said "Mom, I have been trying not to call you a lot because I know it must be hard taking care of TWO people especially when one of them is upstairs and one of them is downstairs." she was so cute and SO GOOD to just rest and watch TV while I took care of Joe. 2 days after surgery Joe got the stitch out of his eyelid and was able to see again pretty well, he had some double vision which was normal but that cleared up in a couple of days. Besides the follow up doctors visits which all went well, that brings us to now. He is STILL on a soft foods diet!!! Until the 22nd of August so three more weeks, SO NOT FUN!! He is so tired of eating the same food all the time we are trying to find new things he can eat but it is pretty limiting since he cannot chew AT ALL per the doctors instructions that even micro movment of his bones can cause the healing to take longer/not go exactly right. His face gets sore if he talks and/or laughs too much but all in all he has done well. It was very, very hard for him to be blind. Joe is a mover and a do-er and HATES sitting still he is also extremely independent and hates relying on anyone, even me. We made it through and I am so grateful to our friends who are like family to us. I have never felt more supported in my life. The guys Joe works with and their wives are some of the awesomest people I know. They were here every day when he was so laid up just chatting and keeping him in good spirits, they went to the store for me and offered to do anything else they could think of. I am so, so, so grateful to them.
Tomorrow we leave on a quick trip to South Carolina. We are going to meet some friends at a lake there for some fun in the sun and relaxing. I can't wait!!! It has been both the longest and quickest summer I can ever remember! Hope you are all having a wonderful summer too! Happy August!!!

The good, the bad, and the ugly

It's a good thing I changed the name of the blog to Never a Dull Moment because that describes our life to a T!!! :) Now for the title of the post, THE GOOD...Joe is going to be okay.
Now for THE BAD on Monday night Joe was playing a softball game with his squadron. About halfway through the game Joe was on second and the ball got hit out to center field. Joe made it to third and was headed home the catcher was on home plate (he should've been in front of it) I saw Joe running as fast as he could and the thought ran through my mind he better be careful or he was going to collide with the catcher. From my view Joe got to home plate and then there were people kind of gathering and my friend told me I should go over to where Joe was he was hurt -she was sitting right next to me I have no idea how she knew/saw that it was him, so I started walking toward the dugout and he was walking towards me I could see that his face was red and that his eyes were pouring water and he looked a little dazed, my first assumption was that he got poked in the eye. When he got to me I could see that his face was concave on the side a bit. Mione -my friend saw it at the same time and said "that's not good take him to the ER- just go!" about then Joe's nose started to bleed I still wasn't sure where/how he had been hit but we took off. Haylee was there so I ran to her and told her to stay with Mione. As we walked to the truck the pain started to hit Joe and he was freaking out a bit just cussing a lot and moaning -that freaked me out! I am always the spaz and he is so calm no matter what so that was scary. We rushed to the ER -it's only a mile away thank goodness- I pulled right up to the doors (I have never done that before) and jumped out got him out and inside filled out paperwork as quick as I could my hands were shaking so bad, I just kept telling them over and over that he was in severe pain and they needed to hurry. On the drive over I asked what happened and he said he was hit with the ball, basically the ball was thrown from center field it came in so fast -the guys who were standing right there said it sounded like a ball hitting a mitt when a major leauge pitcher throws it to the catcher. A loud smack! They got Joe right back in a room and within 15 minutes or so a doc had looked at him and they were giving him IV pain meds. Things calmed down then, I have never in my life seen ANYONE in that much pain. It was horrible. They did a CAT scan of his face and called the oral maxillofacial surgeon to evaluate him and decide if they needed to do surgery right away. Basically all the bones in the left side of Joe's face are broken/fractured. His brow bone is fractured, his orbital bone is fractured, and his cheek bone is broken - that is why there is an indentation in his face, and his sinuses are also out of whack. After the evaluation from the oral surgeon he said no surgery that night -only 20% of facial fractures require surgery he said Joe probably would need it at least for the cheek bone. They let us go home about 1 am and we saw the oral surgeon again at 9am. He said Joe definitely needs surgery. There are four main places that that part of the bone connects to the skull and Joe's is broken in three so he needs to go in and repair the fractures to stabalize the bone. He said we were very lucky the ball didn't hit him in the temple and that there was no damage to his eye. He saw an opthamologist this morning to check his eye thoroughly and it looks great! His vision is the same in both eyes. That is such a huge blessing. I am so grateful to our friends here. The waiting room in the ER had no less than 15 guys in it who wanted to see Joe and make sure he was okay. I had a ton of offers to take Haylee and help in any other way needed. We are so blessed! JOe will have surgery next Wendesday so I'll update after that he has never been under before and there is a very very very small risk to his vision so send your prayers our way.

And now for the ugly...well not really but here you go!

You can see the indentation on the left side of his face.

The blood in his eye will go away in a couple of weeks

The same picture as above but labeled so you can see where the fractures are.

He was in more pain today than yesterday but the swelling has gone down. He doesn't have feeling in his cheek or his upper lip on that side. Hopefully that will come back soon. I think you can click on the pictures to make them bigger. I'll keep you posted.

No more braces!

Hooray! The best news yet! HD got his braces off today!! He was so exctied! So am I after our four week (actually 7 weeks since D will be in Utah) he gets to go back at 3 months, then every 6 months. Oh how I will NOT miss the dentist/orthodontists office! :) I am ready to spend my Wednesdays doing something else...okay it was only one appointment a month but still I am happy to be done with it! Not as happy as D though! After he got them off he said "Mom, there is only one thing I can't wait to eat. Your caramel. And I can't wait until Christmas!" I will be making him a batch in the next day or two.

Here he is in the car just before his appointment At home and all smiles with those gorgeous straight teeth!

He has his retainers on in this picture...You don't see them? Look close!...still no? That is because his retainer is an invisiline retainer. He does have a permenant metal retainer on his bottom teeth but it is hidden behind his teeth. You can't even tell he has anything in his mouth! It is fantastic!!!
Super smile

So glad we are done! At least with one kid anyway! Sierra is good to go no braces for her, Haylee however is headed in the orthodontics direction. We'll have to see if her mouth can grow big enough for all of her teeth, with as much as she talks you would think it would be HUGE! :)

Our new bedding!

Okay this picture is completely out of order but I need to get Haylee in bed! The armouir (sp?) in the corner used to be the center of our entertainment center now it is our tv/clothes holder :)

I am so excited!! We got this new bedding set this week and I love it! We had Americana in our room and I love that too but I was ready for a change. We rearranged our furniture last week and that made me even more excited to get new stuff. I got the whole 10 peice set from Penney's for 160.00 +free shipping! Joe saw it in a catalog but he hasn't seen it on the bed yet -he has been TDY this week. He gets home tomorrow and I really hope he likes it! I painted the "artwork" above the bed

See? ignore the weird white marks! and the black smudge - that is the spot where our tv sat on top of our old dresser and we would turn it back and forth depending on where we were in the room! :)

from the foot of the bed...

looking in from the door

It is important to note that Joe's dad, my talented and fantastic father-in-law, built every piece of furniture in our room! The bed was our wedding present, the nightstands were "just because", the cedar chest was for our five year anniversary, and we paid him (way to cheaply I'm sure) for the entertainment center. I am so thankful to him for all of his hard work!

Ticket update: I don't think I'm going to get one I have a couple of friends who frequent that intersection and have had the camera go off while doing the exact same thing as me and they have never recieved a ticket. So I'll keep my fingers crossed that that is the case with me as well! Have a great weekend everyone!