::maxie update::

We had a little Max medical crisis on Sunday night. At Max's bedtime of course.
Sandy was in bed, we had just read scriptures and we were going to put the rest of the little stinkers in bed and relax for a while when it all went down.

Poor Max was gargling salt water--which we were forcing him to do--and his throat started bleeding a little bit. He was freaking out and spitting and dancing around squeaking "WHY AM I BARFING BLOOD!?" As soon as I got him to settle down he promptly spat out a big disgusting blood clot that looked like a jellyfish and started bleeding again. Then he REALLY started freaking out. Kris was talking to the ENT on the phone, and he was giving us good advice, but since the bleeding started up again we thought it was a good idea to take him to the ER just to be safe. So they went. After they left I finally got angry Miss Lucy to go to sleep. She didn't think it was cool for me to abandon her in the middle of bedtime just becuase Max's vital essences were leaking out of his mouth.

 Sultan was a little worried about Max and waited by the front door. Max said the ER was super boring and he wished he had stayed home.
By the time they got in to see the PA the bleeding had all stopped and it was kind of pointless. But better safe than sorry I guess.

I set up a bed on our windowseat for Max to spend the night on--one of the things I imagined doing when we bought the house--and they got home at around 10:30PM or so. The bishop and Caryn came over so they guys could give Max a blessing and then we all went to bed.

Thankfully he slept great all night and after I forced him to eat some food the next morning he was back to himself.

By today, Wednesday, he's doing really well. He's been eating well, sleeping solidly and school started today. He was able to enjoy it and have the energy to be himself. So there you go, looks like he's on the up & up and we're so glad about it. He's our boy.

::::

Maybe in yesterday's photo Lucy was thinking back to this particular happenstance:


Wooooah, no dropping babies!
He didn't drop her, and after one more picture I took her and she was a little less scared.  I didn't even realize she was sliming out of his arms until later when I looked at the photos.
Funny funny stuff--only because no babies were harmed in the photoing of these photos.

::::

This is from back in May. Funny for a lot of reasons.

One is that Lucy actually looks chubby in this photo and she was so not chubby back then.

But really the funniest thing is just her facial expression versus Max's. Max looks so proud and confident and Lucy looks so skeptical. Like, "Are you REALLY trusting me with this crazy guy??"

::ouch::

On Tuesday morning of this week I woke up feeling a little off--mostly I thought because Lucy had been up several times in the night.  That'll do me in pretty quickly.  Anyway I was a little sore on one side when I fed Lucy.  Kris went off to work and I got down to whatever it was I was doing.
About an hour later I started to feel really sore and hurt on the left side.  And I started to feel a little bit achey.

I thought the likelihood that I had a case of mastitis was pretty strong, so I emailed our Dr asked if I should come in for an appt.  She said yes, so I scheduled an appointment for noon that day.
We headed out to run some errands and as we drove around I started to feel worse and worse.  It started to feel like the whole left side of my body was on fire, and when we stopped at the office I realized I was really achey when I was getting the kids out of the car.

I kept feeling worse and worse as I was watching the kids at work and trying to get stuff done.  I left the boys there when I went off to the doctor.  While walking out to the car I realized I was super naseous and I was REALLY sick.

Kathy was flying in to watch the boys for us because on Thursday and Friday we had training for the whole office staff in Phoenix.  Anyway, I was supposed to leave to pick her up at 1PM.  I called her on my way to the doctor and told her that there was no way I was going to make it.  I felt so bad!

At the appointment I just kept feeling worse and worse, and it got to the point where the PA told me they didn't want me driving myself home.  I had to call the office and since Kris was still seeing patients Bryce came and picked me up.  I lay on the floor of the doctor's office with Lucy while I waited for Bryce to find the office--it was a while because he got totally lost.

I survived the drive home and collapsed into bed with Lucy.  Kris brought the boys home at lunch and picked up my antibiotics.  I've never been so happy to see a bottle of antibiotics in my life.

The babysitter came popping over at short notice to help with the boys, and Kathy arrived later in the afternoon so I was well taken care of.

The rest of that day I felt totally like a zombie, like I had a terrible case of the flu.  By the next morning though I felt a ton better, and by the afternoon of that day I felt totally like myself again.  I even made it to Phoenix for the work trip which involved getting up at 3:45AM to make the flight out there.

I think that was the sickest I've felt in at least 10 years.  Maybe ever.  I don't want to do that again anytime soon.  And it was just so crazy that it came on so fast and so hard.  And then went away so quickly.  Bizarre.  At the end of this week I felt like it had been a month since last Sunday.  What a weird week.

(Baby and mom selfies from a couple of weeks ago but too cute not to post.)

::::

This one is my favorite daughter.

::morning lucy::

When I was in Utah earlier this month I had to sent Kris home so he could go work and get important stuff done. I sent him some first thing in the morning photos of Lucy during the week just so he'd know what he was missing.

There was an underlying theme in the photos--she's dang happy in the morning. Much happier than me. I could be that happy if somebody fed me milkshakes at 2am, but no, I'm the one making and delivering the 2am shakes.

Good thing she's so stinking cute.





I saved the best for last.

::blackmail for later::

I was trying to take pictures of this cute little thing: when I looked across the room and saw this: loooooook at those rolls!! And this: Yes, he's sitting in the baby seat.

 Those pictures of Sandy are really terrible, out of focus and yucky looking. But the content I think could be pretty valuable to me at some point in the future. I think I'll hold on to them.

If you sit around in my house in a baby seat in your undies I will most definitely take pictures of you. Look out.

::recent sunsets::

We've had some killer sunsets in the last few weeks. The kind that make you gasp a little and then just keep watching until they finally disappear. The kind that make you pull over on the side of the road because you don't want to cause accidents, but you just have to keep taking photos or it will kill you.

The guy who we bought our house from made this big silly statement about how "You'll find your lives will start to revolve around the sunsets because of this house." And while that was pompous overstatement, it's true that our view of the sky from the house is fabulous and we love watching the sun set when we can and when it's interesting. Max took this one for me from our back patio--I could see it from the living room couch but I was just too dang tired to get up and take the picture myself. It's nice to have a slave. For this one I was on the way to the pharmacy to pick up some medicine for Kris and the sky kept getting more and more dramatic. It was gorgeous. I haven't edited these photos at all. And they're probably out of order but oh well.
I love the sky here.

::pianey::

When I was at Murphy and Laura's house in UT a couple of weeks ago I played their baby grand piano. Though severly out of tune it was still fun to play and it reminded me how fun I thought it would be to have a baby grand in our "music room."

When I got home I mentioned it to Kris.  He immediately got on Craig's list and found an interesting candidate.  I emailed the lady on Monday and we went to see the piano on Tuesday.
We were still very non-commital and just felt like we were shopping around for fun.  But the piano was great.  It's an old Baldwin from the 20's.  A lot of the interier mechanisms have been rebuilt in the last 30 yrs and all function well.  It's a warm brownish color.  It definitely has some cosmetic issues but they're not terrible.

Anyway, it was at an old person's house as part of an estate sale.  The house was so stinky and cat infested but the piano played in tune.


So I offered the lady managing the sale a good amount less, she accepted, I paid her for it on Wednesday and the movers brought it to us on Friday night.
It was quick and pretty exciting!

But, when it got into the house boy was it stinky and dirty.  It took a whole week of vacuuming, dusting, air filtering and candle burning to get it to the point where I didn't want to gag just walking by.  But now it's smelling fine and I think it looks amazing in our room.

Kris and I have been really enjoying it and I think both of us has played it every day since we got it--for a few minutes at least.  But Lucy doesn't like lying on the floor and listening while I practice.  She feels like she's not getting quite enough attention.
And I tell you what, it's tough to play a song with two hands while holding a baby who is also actively trying to hit the keys.  But I try.

We were able to give our electric piano away to good friends in the ward, so once it was gone we were inspired to fix up the music room and get it looking really nice.  We got a big ranchero style cabinet for the music books and got everything else arranged nicely.  I'm really happy with how it all turned out.  Maybe some of our kids will want to play piano now.  We'll see.

Oh yes, and it's extra fun because the piano I grew up with in the studio was an old Baldwin from the 20s.  Dad reminded me of that and I thought it made sense that I liked the piano so immediately.  It was like an old friend.  And now it's home!