Tonsils Part III

Yes, Tonsils Part III. This time it was Meagan. She got an ear infection while we were in UT this summer and it took a long time to clear up. The pediatrician suggested that she go see the ENT and have her tonsils and ears looked at. He decided that she didn't need tubes in her ears, but just like with Tyler, took one look at her tonsils and declared that they needed to come out. So, Wednesday they came out. She did really well and was really brave to go off to the operating room on her own. Here she is modeling the finest in hospital gowns and her special bracelet.
These are her tonsils just before they were taken out. She wasn't sick then and look at how large they were. I will spare you the after shots, these are bad enough.

Just like with Tyler, after he was wheeled away they sent us to the waiting room with a restaurant-like pager that would go off when she was in the recovery room. When the pager went off we had to drive down to the other end of the building and go in the back door to meet her.

She did really well the first day after she got home. Since then, she has had her ups and downs. Today was her first day eating something other than popsicles and Jell-O. We are hoping that she will be on the up-swing from here on out.

Erin

It was brought to my attention that I never posted any pictures of Erin when she was born. I wasn't keeping the blog up to date and I was too busy with life. So, seeing as how she is almost 9 months, I thought I would give you a few pictures of her as she has "grown up".

1 day

6 weeks

2 months

3 months

4 months (eating rice cereal for the first time)

5 1/2 months

7 months

8 months

9 months (almost)

Pest Control

Every home in the desert has some sort of problem with bugs. Most people have the bug man come to their home to spray insecticide to kill the bugs. Not us, we use a more natural approach. We leave the front porch light on which attracts all the little bugs. Then the bigger bugs come and eat the smaller bugs, and so on and so forth until you get to the top of the insect (or arachnid) food chain. Here is our form of pest control. We have a tarantula that comes and visits our front porch and gets his fill on all the little bugs.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the picture to give a relative size comparison. If I were to judge, he is slightly smaller than my flat hand. It is the biggest of the tarantulas that I have seen on our front porch over the years. I didn't tell Michelle about him because she made me kill the last one that she saw.

Monsoon

On Saturday evening we were just getting ready to run some errands. We had eaten dinner, got the kids ready, shoes and socks were on. We were just about to walk out the door. Then the rain came. And it came hard. We decided to wait until the storm passed to go run our errands. We all ended up sitting on our bed looking into the backyard through the window. We started to count the seconds between the flash of lightning and the thunder and it was getting closer and closer. Then came the 3/8 inch diameter hail. Then there were a couple of times when the thunder and lightning were simultaneous. The whole time the wind was blowing. The kids got to see the effects of a good windstorm as the tree fell over. I love the monsoons in the desert.

FHE

Last night our Home Teacher came over. Then some other good friends dropped by as well. Both times our kids did or said something that was inappropriate or embarassed us or something like that. So, tonight for FHE we decided that we needed to teach the kids how to behave when adult friends come over. We talked about some things and then had the kids role-play what they learned. When it was Rebecca's turn to be the friend and Tyler's turn to welcome her into our home he showed us just how smooth he is going to be. She came in and sat down and he was going to ask her some questions about how her day was. He couldn't think about what to say, so we prodded him a little and here is what he said. "Well, if it's a girl and we don't know her really well we can ask her for her name and then her phone number, and then we can call her up and ask her to come over and then we can do stuff with her." We didn't teach him dating 101, but that is what he came up with on his own. He spent our week at Fish Lake holding his 18 yr old cousin's friend's hand and now this statement from him. Should we be worried?

Back to School

It was the first day of school today. It is hard to believe that the summer is over. It went by really fast. The kids were excited to go back to school. Rebecca couldn't go to sleep the night before, she was so excited. It is going to be a hard year for Meagan. She wants to go to school, but isn't quite old enough. However, all of her friends at church started kindergarten this year so she won't have anyone to play with during the day. We are going to need to find her some new friends to play with.

Notice the bags full of supplies that Tyler's class asked each student to bring. Paper towels, Kleenex, copy paper, crayons, folders, markers, etc. Rebecca's class had a similar list. I don't think that there is any money in the budget for supplies so they are asking the parents to provide.

Erin on the Tile

It seems that we have always taken a picture of the first time that each kid scooted off the carpet onto the tile. Well, it was finally Erin's turn. She didn't make it far off the carpet, but she did finally touch the tile. It took a little encouragement by placing her plug just out reach, but here's the proof that she finally made it.

Climbing

I am going to make an effort to try and keep current on the blog.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to go climbing with some good friends. We went to an area that had just recently been opened and no one in our group had been to before. The weather was perfect and it was a great day. Michelle was great to let me go and have a good time. She took the kids to go see Shrek the Fourth while I was out playing. I don't think she had as much fun as I did. Meagan was scared by the movie and so the two of them spent a lot of time in the hallway outside the theater.

This is me struggling to get up a route that is much harder than my current ability.
This is Rik...

...and this is Ryan.

I would take a day out climbing with these guys over most other things that I have to deal with. They are patient with my while I am trying to learn and they make for an enjoyable day. Ryan's wife was also with us, but I didn't get a picture of her.

Ride 'Em Cowgirl

I am not sure exactly what the kids were doing here, but they were being creative.

Kindergarten Graduation

Tyler graduated from kindergarten. Some might call it celebrating mediocrity (name that movie), especially when you see how the kids spelt kindergarten on the board.

100,000 Miles

This probably isn't blog worthy, but as you can tell, I am updating with everything that has happened in the last several months. I went climbing with a friend and when we stopped to park I looked at the odometer of the truck and it was exactly 100000 miles. I just happened to have my camera (in a hope that I would take some climbing pictures, but didn't) so I took a picture. The truck is now almost 8 and half years old. It has served me well so far. Let's see how many more miles I can get out of it.

Gila Valley Temple

In May, The Gila Valley Temple was dedicated. It is near Safford which is about 2 hrs and 15 min from our house. We met my sister and two of her boys there for the Open House in early May. The temple was decorated very nicely inside. The attention to detail was obvious. It was smaller than I thought it would be. It was much smaller than the meeting house that they built next to it. For size reference, the building next to the temple is the same floorplan as the building we meet in and the building across the street from Grandma and Grandpa. It was a good experience to take the kids through the open house and talk with them about the importance of temples.

President Kimball was from Safford. Supposedly one of these two houses (or maybe both, they are next door to each other) was his house. There is a marker at the church building next door, but it didn't indicate which house was his.

When we left Safford, after having a picnic lunch at a part with my sister, Tyler and I went to the Father's and Son's outing. I had driven the truck half way to Safford and left it in a Wal-Mart parking lot and finished the drive with Michelle and the kids. When we got back to the Wal-Mart, Michelle and the girls continued on the freeway and Tyler and I went and spent the night next to a dry wash in the desert. The only saving grace was that because of the wash there were lots of trees. Tyler had a great time playing with friends and sleeping in the tent.

Catalina State Park

This spring before it got too hot, and while there were still some wildflowers blooming, we took the kids for a hike in Catalina State Park. We did a loop trail that ended up being along the creek for about half of the hike. There were several places that we had to cross the creek. The kids eventually gave up on trying to keep their feet dry and walked around with "squishity" feet. There are places where the desert really can be beautiful.

Yetman Trail

We had such a fun time on the hike at Catalina State Park that we took the kids out again about two weeks later. The Yetman trailhead is less than a 10-minute drive from our house. It is an easy hike with a real gradual elevation change.


I wish that I had video of Meagan hiking. It is more like a model on the catwalk than hiking. She is always swinging her hips and throwing her arms around. She is definitely a girly-girl.

We had a lot of rain this spring and so there were wild flowers everywhere. We were at the tail end of the season when we went.

We forgot a bottle for Erin. Yes, I know what good parents we are. So she drank out of the lid of a Nalgene bottle.

Our destination was this old ranch house from the 1930s. A guy who ran the newspaper in town lived out here with his wife. They thought it would help her health by being out of the city and in the desert. They eventually moved back to New York City.

The kids all wanted to climb the walls.