The Signs are Everywhere!

Sorry it's been so long. Life happens.

So, recently our Xbox 360 tanked and left us with all this spare time to....oh, I don't know....use our brains and play! The kids have fantastic imaginations. It reminds me of when all 6 of us use to make ridiculous "music videos", build forts, or just wrestle until someone got hurt. (Usually Will, at the hands of Pete dangling a ginormous loogie over his face, swooping it back into his mouth only to let it drop millimeters from Will's face again. I'm so looking forward to the day Ethan learns how to torture his siblings with swinging loogies and dog CPR.)

Which brings us to our post today: Signs.

The kids love the movie "Night at the Museum", so they created a museum of dinosaurs and antiques (toys, of course) for me to walk through. Here are the signs I was told to read before entering the museum.

This one from Nathan reads: CALM PEOPLE ONLY. Even you Ethan. You can only enter if you are calm.

This one from Kate says: Thank you for visiting the museum. And thank you for being nice to our sculptures. From Katelyn and Nathan. And no touchy touchy the stuff.


And then Nate says: No Pretend Hobos allowed at the museum. (I know huh? His obsession with the Hobo thing!)


My trip through the hobo-less, calm museum was quite nice. I saw dinosaurs I thought had been lost for centuries (or at least a few months since last I tripped over them on the floor.)

And then, the mother of all signs. Nathan loves to write. (My boy!). He wrote this to Darrick after Darrick was in his accident. For those who can't quite make it out, it says:

Dear Dad,
I almost thought you died in that car accident in Idaho Streets. But did shuttle come? Is it yes or no, circle one of them. (Nathan circled YES for him). Yeah, you didn't die, that was a close one.

I'm not sure which brother was scratched out of the picture, but I think it may be Alex. Alex likes to torture Nathan A LOT. :-)

It's Time for a Vacation...

As I'm sure many of you have heard, Darrick was in a rollover accident this weekend. He walked away from the accident, but was in the hospital yesterday. He has since been discharged and we await review of his scans and x-rays by the radiologist this morning. Having said that, aside from some extreme fatigue and pain, he is miraculously alive and well. Though I know these people will never see this post, I would like to thank all those who cared for him and helped him come back safe.

To the couple who took care of him while he was in shock right after the accident, a heartfelt "Thank You". He tried to crawl back into the upside-down truck cab, but the snow poured into the cab and quickly melted, filling it with ice cold water. You let him warm in your car for 2 hours until help arrived. Thank you!

To his Grandma in Salt Lake, the doctors said your treatment of that deep gash on his ankle probably saved him a month in the hospital for cellulitis. You win the Best Grandma ever award! :-)

To the couple whose items he was moving, you were very gracious and helpful. Thank you for taking care of him and helping him get back home.

Thank you to TMC's Trauma center staff for whisking him away quickly and calling him an idiot for waiting to be seen and for flying on a plane with a possible brain injury.

And thanks to all of you who were my shoulder to cry on this weekend. I'm not sure I can handle anymore of life's vicissitudes right now. Please, Life, wait until next week or so to throw anything else at me. :-)

P.S. Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa V for covering for the distraught "Easter Bunny" who couldn't function well enough to hide eggs. Though, when I told the kids that Easter would have to wait until Monday, Ethan replied with "That's OK Mom. We know you're the Easter bunny. We can do baskets whenever." lol

Life comes at ya fast...

I'm so sorry I've been absent. Updates...

Nathan had his cast removed last week. Much to our surprise, when the cast came off it looked something right out of a Harry Potter movie. Completely bent and deformed, just as it had looked when he broke it.

This is how it looked when it first broke:


This is how it looks now:



After all the crying and the "Put my cast back on! My arm looks weird!", the doctor says he has to "remodel" his arm. aka Surgery! Rebreak! Poor kid. And it's only cost us $8,000 so far. :-(


We moved into a new house. It's a lot bigger...huge backyard, huge house for the same price as our other home. The owners are PHENOMENAL, so hopefully we won't run into the same problems as our old property manager who now wants $3000 in damages for a house that is completely undamaged. *sigh*

I guess, other than all that, life is going OK. The kids and I are about to have dinner and play Pirates of the Caribbean Scene It (DVD game). It's time to chill out and have a great night with my babies. :-)

I hope everyone else is doing well. I hope Emily decides to give Jami a break soon. lol

Love you guys!

Kirst

WWII, Light Sabers and Morphine

I still can't get a straight story on what happened, but Nate says he was pushed while reaching for something. Kate and Ethan say they were playing keep away and when Nate reached for his toy, Ethan grabbed it before Nate could get it and he fell. Either way, hard cement floors and "Keep Away" apparently don't mix because my little Nate broke his arm on Friday. :-(



The emergency room doctors put his arm in a splint and told him to go back in for his cast in a few days. Right before he got hurt that night, I had told him what a great imagination he had and how smart he was. So, while he was coming to, after being put under with medication, he kept mumbling about what a great imagination he had. And then he started talking about how he was fighting in WWII with a light saber. That's some imagination!



We're managing his pain and he's doing great. He's a little tired of laying down all the time, but he's being a super trooper. Luckily it was his left arm, so it shouldn't interrupt his schooling too bad.

Other than that, all is well here. Hope everyone else is doing well. :-)

Kirst

Just a quick update...

We're good. Thanks. Love ya. Bye.


Okay, maybe not that quick. ;-)

Recently, the older kids had an awards ceremony at school. All of them won the "Perfect Attendance" award for the semester. Yay!

Katie thinks her award says, "You're the best kid in the whole school". I'm glad perfect attendance makes her feel that good about herself. :-)



Nathan recently won the school's writing contest! My boy! He won $25 and promptly spent it on Bakugans. (The new pokemon.) Someone please tell me why these little Transformer "wanna be" toys are $6 EACH!




Alex is doing great at school. He's picked up a new word though. I thought we wouldn't have to deal with the "bad words" until elementary school....but his favorite new word is STUPID. Everything is STUPID. I want to play with my STUPID work bench. I want some STUPID cereal. I want to STUPID water the STUPID flowers. Ride my STUPID bike! I love my STUPID house mommy. Somehow I think the meaning of the word is escaping him.



Ethan is the best 9 year old a mom could have. He is SO helpful around the house and when we're out running errands. He's also great at taking over the role of explaining things to the kids. This morning, Alex took it upon himself to kick over every Lincoln Log house Ethan and Nathan built. Ethan calmly took Alex aside, put him on the couch and said, "Alex, you don't destroy. You build. No destroy. Build!"

Alex seemed to understand and hopped off the couch. Then walked back over and kicked the Lincoln Logs again. This is where Ethan combined all the threats I make to the kids into one, long breath...

"Alex, if you do that one more time I will lick your face, string you up by your toes, take away the Xbox and send you to bed at 7:30! And I mean it!"



Kids make great mirrors. lol

I am doing well. Fun kids. Fun job. Fun weather. Fun, Fun, FUN! Although, the owners of the house I live in have decided to sell it. (Yes, in this market. You're wondering the same thing I am, aren't you?) So, I'm on the lookout for a new pad. We have to move in May, but I'm sort of stuck as to location because my job is on the far east side of the city. Ahhhh....c'est la vie.

Well, we hope everyone is well. I saw that Claire is doing well. (Love the DVD Robot!) ;-)

Love ya!

Kirst

Wild Humans

On the way to celebrate Katie's 7th birthday with Mom and Dad last night, we saw a horse traveling in a horse trailer. The kids were excited and started asking me questions about horses. Being the all-knowing mom with extensive equestrian wisdom, I answered their questions.



Kate: "What kind of horse is that, Mom?"

Me: "A brown one."

Ethan: "Are horses dangerous?"

Me: "It depends on whether you spit at them or not." (Yes, I get enjoyment out of giving them retarded answers so that they question everyone's wisdom.) :-)

Nate: "Nuh uh, Mom. But are some horses dangerous, really?"

Me: "Well, Nate....there are domesticated horses, and some of those can be dangerous but I would think a wild horse would be pretty dangerous if you tried to ride him."

Nate: "What would happen to you?"

Me: "You'd probably get bucked off and stomped on. They're not used to humans."

Nate: "That's just like wild humans. They can be crazy too."

Me: "Wild humans?"

Nate: "Yeah, they're called Hobos."

Me: "Uhhhh..."

And here's one for the Dads!

The Man Behind the Belly