YAY! A POST!

YAY! I'm writing a post! aren't you all so very proud of me....
Maybe it took a bit of a good old fashioned guilt trip and an incredibly sick household to do it but I am writing a blog post! So everyone can thank Lindsay for guilting me into writing again :-)

We have been so busy the last few weeks I don't even know what stuff to talk about.
Week of the 5th-11th:

Alayna's battle wound. Eliza and Alayna were playing in the van, Alayna in the drivers seat Eliza outside. Eliza opened the door while Alayna was leaning on it to look out the window. The obvious consequences of this choice was that she landed face first on the curb below.

These are from 'the' snow storm this year, it was big, and wet, really really wet so we made a fort!

Planking... I think.

The day after, everything was really icy so Eliza kept finding and breaking up huge pieces to add to the fort, much to her dismay nothing would stick.

snow angel on crunchy snow... haha!

That was a week of pure insanity. I feel like our family mostly saw each other in passing and that's it.
The 7th we had playgroup at my house and had all the Mott kids over to play with us. That went really well all except the part where someone had an accident and then had a good hour long tantrum because I didn't have time to wash her cloths... little girls crack me up!
The 8th Ben got to go to the temple with the youth to do baptisms which he said was an awesome experience except for the part where he lost his voice and got to take the long way to dinner... but it was a fantastic night overall.
the 9th was spent going to Costco with my mom just for kicks and giggles... plus some of those things that I really needed to pick up for my food storage
Friday through Saturday was spent doing Dance stuff:
 I survived the Valentine's Dance with a bit of effort. It was an incredibly exhausting weekend and I think I was most grateful when it was finally over with. We spent two days setting everything up for a few hours of play and fun then it took about 2-3 hours to tear it all down. Sometimes that is a little disappointing to me that we put so many hours into making it so nice just to take a fraction of the time tearing it all down again. Boo. But I was thankful to get it over with. By the end of the night when I no longer wanted to be there and my contractions were getting steadily closer together I was very thankful when they finally stopped around 2am and let me get a few hours of sleep before church the next morning! All the pictures below are of the decorations! sweet huh!?

Oh and Happy 20th Birthday to my little brother Eric on the 11th!! and a HUGE thank you to the Merritt's who took care of the girls two nights in a row for some seriously long nights while I stole Ben for the dance stuff! We owe you big time!!

Week of the 12th-18th:
14th was Valentines day. Ben and I have had a standing agreement since the first year of our marriage that we don't actually do anything for Valentines day. Usually I try to have something nicer for dinner that night but this year nothing happened. We were lucky we didn't eat food right out of a can that night for dinner. Good thing he is so patient with me when it comes to that! I had a baby appointment that morning and everything seemed fine other than the little bit of spotting I was having. The doc did an ultra sound to make sure I wasn't having preterm labor or anything more serious that might land me on bed rest and the end result of everything was that I apparently had a yeast infection and that was probably the root cause of the spotting. I could give you a more detailed description of why that happens but I don't think anyone really wants that much info on my body at the moment! Let's just say that the little man looks healthy and doesn't look like he's in a huge rush to get here.

The rest of that week was spent catching up on rest, and house cleaning and such as that. Ben was a rock star all the week before with all the time he had the girls so I felt like I should keep the house at least half as nice as he had it!

Week of the 19th-25th
The 19th I taught the RS lesson... It could have gone better. Mostly because I don't really appreciate all the hormones raging through my body that make me loose control of my emotions so easily. It's a very vicious cycle you see... I start crying for no reason then I get mad that I am crying so I cry harder and then I just feel really stupid. Thankfully the other sisters were very empathetic and participated very very well so it made my job easier and gave me time on numerous occasions to 'pull myself together!'.
Not much happened the rest of the week until Thursday

23rd was funny, I was suppose to have friends over to play but the youngest started throwing up so we decided for every ones benefit we would not be making that happen. That evening Ben and I dropped the girls off at the Waite household so that we could go to the annual family meeting in Greeley for work. Much to my dismay when we got there I was the ONLY wife who had come. All the rest just said they weren't going (smart girls) thankfully this year was not as hard to sit through as last year. That might have just been because I actually understood most of it this year and last year I did not!
We also had the privillage of being there for Eric to open his mission call that finally came! He will be going to the Santa Rosa, CA mission leaving on April 18th. This means A: he gets to meet his first nephew before he goes, B: my poor mom only has 6 weeks to get everything together and most imporatntly C: I will now be forced into writing once a week in the blog to make sure that he is getting a weekly letter! (Everyone cheer now, I know my blog is that importnat to you!)
24th was the Lori Depew wedding reception and that was wonderful. They had a nice location and everything looked beautiful!
25th was an odd day. Ben had a Youth leadership meeting in the morning then we went to Home Depot to walk around and get some things for Ben to finish his snow shoes. After that Laural came over to play a game with Alayna for her school class... that was very entertaining for me and reminded me that Alayna is one smart cookie! After that Alayna layed down on the couch and went to sleep. Funny girl hasn't really been napping often anymore so I thought it was a bit odd but then we couldn't get her to wake up and stay awake... turns out she was one sick baby! We played the tylenol/advil game for two days with her trying (and failing) to control her temperature.

See where her foot is... because now we can see it everytime we look up! hehe footprints on the ceiling!

Dance party with daddy, the Saturday morning that Alayna got sick.

upside down!

Week of the 26-TODAY (29th)
26th was spent switching back and forth of who was at the church. Ben went early I went next with Eliza then Ben went back. It was an interesting day. Alayna mostly layed on the couch, slept and wanted to cuddle. Actually that was all she did. Even when we went to Grandma's house that poor kid just slept on Grandma's couch the whole time and ran a fever. The lowest we could get it down to was 100.3.
27th I called into the doctor to see if we could get in. Sadly I got to really motivate them by explaining that at 5AM that morning her fever hit 105.3 and that I needed her to be seen sooner than later. I had a baby apt for me at 9:15 that morning and Abby kindly watched my sick kids so I wouldn't have to take them too! The appointment went well. I have kind of stalled out on weight gain which is a little funny at this stage of pregnancy but Dr. Finnegan said he wants to wait a few more weeks and then maybe do another big ultrasound to measure everything and make sure he is growing like he should. That afternoon I took Alayna into the dr for her fever and all around yuckyness. He checked her out said nothing was wrong but sent us for chest x-rays and a nasal wash to test for influenza. By 8 that night we got the results. Alayna has bronchitis and influenza. We are now all on tameflu to treat all of us having the flu
28th I woke up with a fever of 103... and body aches and a cough. SO did Ben and Eliza. It broke the bank to get the prescriptions filled but we officially hit our deductible for meds this year and it seems to be helping at least some of us. Mostly the last 3 days have consisted of movies and sleeping. and somehow making a mess of the house even though we can barely move! Ben came home early from work on Tuesday and stayed home all together today. We seem to be on the mend but 8pm bedtime and no wake up call until almost 9 has to help!!

quick update

It's been too long since my last post. life has been fun for a few weeks and I really don't know what all we have been doing in our day to day stuff but here are some of the highlights of the last few weeks.
We'll start with Ben, he's been busy as usual with work and Young Men's stuff for church. Work has been going well and he has been quite a bit happier with things since his last vacation, I think he really needed a little bit of a break from all the stress he was feeling. He probably doesn't appreciate me saying things like that out loud but that's too bad. Maybe he should write the blog instead :-)

I have been doing well. The baby is growing just like he is suppose to and measures exactly where he should at every appointment. At my most recent appointment we did another ultra sound to see if he had managed to turn himself around since the last appointment and thankfully he has done exactly that. In fact I remember the night he kept me up all night long making the effort to turn around, he sure made me very uncomfortable that night but thankfully he is now getting big enough that it is a LOT more difficult for him to turn around again and be the wrong direction. I feel pretty good and keep dreaming about getting a memory foam mattress topper for my bed so that I might enjoy a whole night of sleep again even if it is only temporary before the baby comes.

Eliza has been going through what feels like an entire personality change as of late. Maybe its just my hormones fluctuations that make me feel that way but she sure seems to be growing and learning so much faster! I have to be so careful about the things I say even in phone conversations that I didn't realize she was paying attention to! I forgot how much of what I say comes right back at me from her little mouth... sometimes I regret saying a lot of things. Eliza has also started asking when she gets to go to school, I think that next fall is going to be really hard on her when all of her friends are in kindergarten and she's still too young to go, preschool might become a necessity at the rate she is going! She has also been begging to get back into a 'tumbling class' I need to get her signed back up.

Alayna has been having a rough go of it the last few weeks. We can't seem to figure out what is going on with the poor kid but she seems to be sick all the stinking time! Shockingly she is still a very happy little camper so I can't complain too much. If you remember back at the end of December she got croup again, she had this little cough before that and then the croup and then she spent the next month coughing all the time. During the day she would fall into these occasional coughing fits that stopped all play and sounded like she was just struggling for air. At night, ever. single. night. she would wake up with the same coughing fits that would last for hours at a time. I was exhausted as the mommy who had to get up with her and no one was getting much sleep because of it. Grandma Waite suggested that it might be asthma I did a little research and it appeared to me that might be the problem as well so we visited the doc who also agreed. So now she is on an allergy medication that we can't afford and we're hoping that it helps! Since starting the medication we have seen some improvement definitely during the day and the night wakings are becoming less frequent that she ends up in our room!

So there is the quick update on us!