2017- Week 25(June 19- June 25)

Every year we get a family of ducks that roams the neighborhoods near my house. They are so cute with their little babies all in a row. One day this week we were coming home and the traffic had stopped. I couldn't see why at first and then here comes a mother duck and her babies following right behind. It was so cute and I am so glad people stopped for them. That road is a five lane road with a speed limit of 45- so we get people driving down it at freeway speeds and to think what could have happened to this little family makes me shudder. Speaking of ducks one of my neighbors stole two of the babies to keep as pets. It has been a source of contention for some of us. It makes me mad because they don't intend to keep the ducks indefinitely- they will just raise them until they get big and stinky and messy and then release them into a wild that they will not even know how to navigate. Not to mention I am pretty sure it is illegal in the state of Utah to take birds like this from the wild. It's hard because I want to tell them it is wrong what they did but three of their kids are in Primary with me and I don't want to become the mean lady who took their precious pets away. 

What a dilemma.

Ashtyn and I decided to update the bench to her vanity. This vanity belonged to her grandma Sharon when she was a girl and she got it from a garage sale so who knows how old it is or who owned it first. It has been painted lots of times. Ashtyn uses it every day. When I took the fabric off the bench it was disintegrating. There was straw used as the padding and it fell right apart. We replaced it with thick foam and new striped fabric. It was a bugger to get the fabric to work and still leave the holes needed to attach the seat to the bench. I also replaced the board with something more sturdy. It turned out super cute.

 

  I went to visit my friend Alissa this week. She just had to have a total hip replacement. She is only 38 but she has really bad arthritis in her hip and the bone had basically disintegrated. She said she feels like an old lady. I completely went to the wrong house at first. She use to live in one area of Herriman and that's where I went. I was so confused when it was not her house because I couldn't think for the life of me where else she could live. I kept thinking did she move and not tell me? Then I remembered she had moved and that I had been to her new house several times but still couldn't remember where it was so I had to text her husband for the address. After that I was thinking that I am the old lady not her- ha ha. We have been friends since we were first married and lived in the same apartment building in South Salt Lake. I adore her! Her mom actually lives in my ward. I took her lunch and we had a nice visit catching up.

Wednesday I had to take Ashtyn back up to Primary Children's to get her stitches removed. It was already covered in the cost of our first visit or else I wouldn't have bothered to go that far to do it. In fact I was tempted to do it myself. I have removed stitches before when I was working for IHC as a CNA so I know how to do it- but Ashtyn did not like that idea so we went up instead. It didn't look too good that first day but by the end of the week it was looking great and hardly noticeable. 

Jeff, Ashtyn and Whitney went to Youth Conference this weekend. They had a big luau at the park by our house the first night and played games and ate a big feast. Then Friday they met at the Stake Center for breakfast and then headed up to This is the Place where they camped overnight. After they set up camp they went downtown and played the Amazing Race. There were 18 locations they had to try and get to on foot or riding TRAX. At each stop they had to perform different tasks like finding graves at a cemetery, solving riddles they had to find in books, sing primary songs on a kazoo, send a nice text to a friend, watch a meet the Mormons movie, use a compass to find a location, hike a mountain, etc. Jeff's team won the most points and all got $5 gift cards to Nielsen's Custard. That night they had a devotional with Larry Gelwix- the famous Highland Rugby coach from the movie Forever Strong. He talked to them about learning to recognize the spirit. He also told them that in the movie every story you see was 100% true- which I thought was awesome. I was jealous. That is one of my very favorite movies and I would have loved to hear him speak. Saturday they packed up and then went on a hike and wandered around the park before they came home. They had a great time.

While they were gone Ethan and I went with Melinda and Liz and the kids up to the church office building where my mom serves her mission. We rode TRAX downtown and then she took us on a tour of the building. There are some pretty amazing views from the observation decks. Afterward we went over to City Creek to grab lunch. When we got home Ethan wanted to try a recipe to make fidget spinner cookies. They turned out looking great but they didn't spin like they were suppose too. I think the royal icing I made just wasn't strong enough. They would spin with the cookie insert but not the round tabs attached. 

The cookies themselves were pretty good but not with the icing- way too sweet.

Whitney's friends and Ashtyn decided they were going to get dressed up and go out to dinner at the Olive Garden on Saturday night. Whitney wasn't feeling well so she didn't go. I thought it was a super cute idea. Afterwards they had me take some pictures of them to remember the night. Then I took them to Baskin Robbins to get ice cream and they took some to Whitney. 

Then they had a late night at one of the girls houses.

 Ashtyn, Kennedy, Ashley, Macy, McKell

Sunday night my family came over to celebrate the June birthdays. Greg, Regan and Jeff all have June birthdays- it's actually a month full of birthday. My grandma, dad, uncle, aunt, cousin, niece and nephew all have birthdays too. We had pizza and pie for dessert.

I feel like Summer is being robbed from me with how fast it it going. I wish we could pause it for a while and enjoy what is left slowly.

2017- Week 24(June 12- June 18)

I discovered after the Shaw party that Maddie had broken my laundry rack. I was very mad- there was no reason the kids needed to be in the laundry room but my girls had taken them in there so they could look out the window and spy on the neighbor kids. She and Hallie were leaning on the rack that sits under the window and ripped it out of the wall. What made me the most mad is that no one came and told me. Even my own girls didn't tell me. GRRR!

Monday was Jeff's birthday. We gave him some golf clothes, a fun backyard game, new work shoes and a new watch. Shopping for him is always so hard because he sees the credit card statements and he doesn't like to spend money. I got some awesome deals and was pretty proud of myself. Of course he had to go to work and he was feeling a little under the weather so when he got home I picked up some Cafe Rio and we called it a day. He is the BEST husband ever! He makes me so happy so his birthday means a lot to me because it's the day heaven gave him to the world. He does so much for our family and we are so thankful for him!

Tuesday I took Ethan and Ashtyn to see Wonder Woman. Whitney was working with a friend at her grandma's house. WOW! What an amazing movie. It was fantastic and actually pretty darn clean compared to most movies nowadays. Gal Godot is awesome and to think she was pregnant while filming this movie makes her even more amazing and tough. We will definitely buy this movie.

Wednesday was the annual Dorsey party that Jeff's office is always invited to. It was at the zoo again this year. They served a yummy dinner of pulled pork sandwiches, salad and watermelon. Ethan was excited to go but the girls don't love the zoo so there was a little grumbling to get them to come. After dinner we walked around to look at the animals. They were having a contest where they had hidden seven pictures of different attorneys from their firm around the zoo and if you found them all you could win a fidgit spinner so of course Ethan was all over that challenge. Ashtyn and Whitney entertained themselves by making a vlog of their visit. We'd been there about an hour and a half when we found ourselves in the small animal building- the one with the four different climate zones. In the reptile hall we ran into our neighbor who is now in the other ward. His 14 year old daughter has been in and out of the hospital for the last four months so I was asking him how she was doing. Ashtyn and Whitney were standing with me. Now something about Ashtyn is that she is very sensitive to medical procedures and even speaking about medical procedures. Well my neighbor was going into great detail about his daughters diagnosis of EDS- which had effected the nerves in her stomach and she basically is nauseous 100% of the time and nothing helps it so she has lost 20 lbs. I was listening intently and didn't notice Ashtyn walk away. She went up to Jeff and asked him if there was somewhere she could sit down. He turned his head to look and while his head was turned she passed out and hit her head on the concrete floor. I heard a crash and looked over to see her lying on the ground. Blood was gushing from her head and Jeff was trying to lift her off the ground. Our neighbor is skilled in medical first aid so he jumped in and started assessing her and told Jeff to leave her on the ground. We didn't know how badly she was hurt so he asked someone to call 911. I sat there kind of helpless and was fumbling through my phone to try to find the number of the zoo security. I couldn't find it and then one of Jeff's co-workers came over and told me to ask Ashtyn some questions to see if she knew her name and where she was. Then I remembered that our other neighbor is an attorney at Dorsey so I called his wife who was there at the zoo and asked her to send security. I looked over to see where Whitney had gone and she was sitting next to me bawling her eyes out. So I was trying to comfort her and then turned my attention back to Ashtyn. The paramedics and fire department got there really quickly and they started doing all sorts of assessments on her. They checked her vitals and blood sugar and were asking her memory questions too. They determined that she was stable and told us that we could drive her to the hospital because he was going to need stitches and may need a CT scan. We started to get her up so that we could get her into the golf cart for them to take us to our car but as soon as she sat up her vision went blurry and she became nauseous so they told us that they needed to transport her by ambulance instead. Jeff took Whitney and Ethan to his car and I rode in the ambulance with her. It was crazy! When I worked as a CNA before Jeff and I got married I was trained to remain calm in a situation like this so I was able to keep it together the whole time and not freak out. Ashtyn was alert and she was answering all of the medics questions so I wasn't super worried about her but it was still surreal that this was all happening. They took her to Primary Children's so it was a short ride and the ambulance driver was super nice and his brother actually was on the track team with Ashtyn this year. When we got there the doctor assessed her for a concussion and he didn't think she had one so we didn't need the CT scan. He did do an EKG though because Jeff and I both have family histories of heart problems and that can be a reason someone passes out. We told him about her history of passing out when she's had warts removed, blood drawn and heard about someone elses medical problems so he diagnosed her with Vasovagal Syncope which is just a fancy way for saying that you have a known trigger that makes you faint. Her head was cut right in her right eye brow and required two stitches. Her head was caked with blood and she looked like she'd been beaten up but she was doing very well considering. Whitney and Ethan were both pretty shaken up and were troopers sitting in the hospital all night. The nurse was nice and gave them drinks and we were all together We ended up being there until about 10 or 11. Then we had to go back to the zoo to get our other car and found all of the gates locked so we had to call the security guard to let us out. We didn't get home until almost midnight. We babysat Porter and Fischer this weekend while their family went to youth conference so they were waiting with Miles at our house when we got home. It was an adventure we won't forget very soon. The next day Ashtyn had a nice black eye beginning and slight headache so we had her take it easy. She wan't allowed to shower for 24 hours so I washed the blood out of her hair in the sink and boy did it smell awful and there was so much of it. It's crazy that an inch laceration could bleed that much. She was feeling much better by Saturday.

 She thought it was pretty cool to get to ride in an ambulance.

 That's blood all over her face and hair.

She has a nice black eye that has changed colors every day.

Ethan was in heaven having his cousins over all weekend and they are such great boys. We just played and had fun the whole weekend. Saturday was our ward golf tournament and I took the boys to Porters volley ball game. They have a few older kids on their team so they play in the upper league. Only the four seventh grade boys were there because the rest of the team was at youth conference. They played older high school girl teams. It was pretty funny how excited the girls got when they won- I don't think they realized they were playing little boys ha ha. Later on we went geocaching. It was our first time. Ethan needed to finish a few requirements for the geocaching merit badge. He made CITO containers- that have a garbage sack inside to collect garbage at the site. Its stands for CASH IN, TRASH OUT. We tired to find six or seven and were only successful in finding four of them. Some of them were really fun and clever and others were kind of boring. It was hot and the kids didn't really love it- so that's probably it for us.

There is something wrong with the screen protector on my phone it makes all my selfie pictures blurry ever since I got it put on.

 We found a birds nest in a tree we were looking around.

 This one was hard to find because the sprinklers were on.

Daybreak has started their Summer concerts again and I love to go- my family not so much. On Saturday night it was a Beach Boys tribute band and I really wanted to go. I grew up listening to the Beach Boys with my dad and I love their music. Jeff had to prepare his talk, Ethan hates concerts so it was just me and the girls and they weren't too keen on the idea. When we got there it was so crowded. We had to park way down the street. I thought I had found a spot but it was next to a fire hydrant- when I pulled up I pulled up onto the curb and there was a man walking by that was starring at me and when I got out he said you had better pull up further because you are right next to the fire hydrant. It really bugged me- I hate when people are quick to correct others. I couldn't remember how far away you have to be parked from them and it looked like I might still fit- but we googled it to be safe and then just ended up moving the car. It was packed and there were not very many places to sit but we found some grass in the park strip. The girls were complaining and bugging each other the whole time. A family came and sat down next to us and their little girl came and practically sat in my lap. She talked my ear off the whole time- which I don't mind because I love little kids- but between that and my girls bickering we didn't hear much of the concert and then Whitney's stomach started to hurt so we just packed up and left. There were so many people with their dogs and cats in strollers- it was kind of hilarious. I felt defeated when we got home so I dropped the kids off and just drove around for a bit. I always picture these outings going so smoothly and us all getting a long and enjoying each others company and it is never like that. No one in my family likes the things I do so when I try to get them to come with me it always backfires. Next time I think I'll just take a friend or 

wait until Jeff can go with me without the kids.

Sunday was Father's Day. We got Jeff a golf push cart that he has been wanting for years but never wanted to spend the money on. When he opened it the first thing Whitney said was "Why do you need a stroller for your golf bag?" It was hilarious. I actually got a great deal on that as well and we also got him three golf swing analysis sessions to help him improve his game. We went to church and he had been asked to speak. He gave a great talk and it was fun listening to him. After church we made him lunch and let him relax the rest of the day. For dinner I made homemade wantons and fried rice and we just enjoyed the day. We called both of our dads and talked to them as well. We ended the night playing games. It was a relaxing way to end a super crazy week. 

Ethan is obssedded with saying the word "Triggered"- he says it when he is mad, sad, happy- basically all the time. He even spelled it out on the table with the game pieces. It drives the girls nuts! I don't even know where he came up with it.

2017- Week 23(June 5- June 11)

Ashtyn had an ortho appointment this week. She was really hoping to get her braces off- but alas she still has four to six more months. She wanted to get them off before Junior year starts but it's not going to happen.

I took Julia to check our her grandson Trent's food truck. It's called Shylo's after his dog. They offer sandwiches with fresh meats like pulled pork or Philly cheese steaks, salads with edible flowers and homemade dressings, fresh potato fries, homemade soup and fresh homemade pies. Most food trucks use frozen meats and ingredients because it's really hard to keep food fresh on a truck- but not Trent. He picks up fresh local ingredients every day so that the food is fresh and it sure does taste like it. His food was so so good! Julia had the beef on weck with regular fries and I had the kalua pig sandwich with truffle fries. He also gave us free berry pie that was amazing. He came out and visited with us for a bit too. He is the nicest person I have ever met. He cares deeply about doing the right thing and not cheating people with undesirable products just to make a profit. He hopes to have a real restaurant one day and I hope he does because he is a very talented chef. Before he did this he was an executive chef- but decided he wanted to make his own food, his own way. 

It was really fun to learn about the food truck world.

Whitney had a physical this week. I hadn't taken her to the doctor for about three years. Of course she is doing great. She struggles with anxiety so we talked about that and her doctor recommended taking everything off her phone except calling and texting. She said they are having kids come in that are struggling with the same symptoms as an alcoholic because of phones. They cause anxiety, depression and addiction. They cause the exact same reaction in a child's brain as a glass of alcohol does. I have struggled so much with this over the years because I have always felt like they were negative but at the same time they use them so much in school and teachers ask them to look things up online and I also want them to learn to navigate this world while they still live in my home because I know that they will have to face these things always. We decided to take everything off for the summer and see how it goes. So far it's bee great and they aren't on their phones nearly as much. I miss the days when phones didn't even exist. It's a scary world out there today.

My high school friend Kathryn was in town this week so a few of us went to dinner at FAV Bistro. It is a new Thai place and the food was awesome. We ate family style and ordered three things to share. We had fish taco's- which I have never tired before and I actually loved. We also had massaman poutine which was steak over french fries with carrots and onions and a creamy sauce and then the Tom Kar soup that had coconut, mushrooms, onion and a whole lot of spices and is served over rice. It was great. The waitress knocked over one of our glasses when she was serving us and it got the table wet. She went to change the table cloth and we told her that we were all moms and use to a little spilled water and that she didn't need to go to the trouble but she insisted and said you are not moms tonight you are goddesses and you deserve the very best. It was so sweet and she's right we needed to be ourselves that night. Only four of us were able to go this time. It was me, Allison, Tristan and Kathryn. Most of our friends now live out of state so we don't get together that often but we are always able to pick right back up where we left off. Love these girls to death!

Jeff and I went on a movie date with some of his co-workers for his birthday. It didn't start out as a birthday date but when I saw it was this weekend we changed it to that. We went to see the Mummy. It was a good movie- but not great and we won't buy it. It was entertaining but I miss the old Brendan Fraiser versions. After we went to dinner at JCW's. Great food but way too messy for my liking- I'll have to ask for the sauce on the side next time.

On Sunday we had a Father's Day/Birthday Party at our house with the Shaw's. Tom and Sharon are going to be in Chicago for Father's Day so we celebrated early. We also celebrated Jeff and Fishcer's birthdays(wish Ruby was here to celebrate her too). We had cake and ice cream and hung out. We got Tom some golf shoe's and a driver cover. I don't think he loved the shoes too well- ha ha. Definitely all the boys in this family take after Sharon because Tom could care less what he looks like.