Now that Thanksgiving is over, I think I'll do my Halloween post!
Getting costumes together was a challenge this year. I've never been this busy before, AND Jason's surgery was a week before Halloween!
Mandie picked an easy one: The chocolate chip cookie costume I made 8 years ago for Natalie.
Jessica's was the only one I actually made, and I didn't even make the whole thing. We found the skirt at a yard sale. She's an Indian girl, and she wanted her costume to look like the doll she got for Christmas last year. I didn't have time to add the cool beads and feathers I wanted to, but I still like how it turned out.
(note in the very last photos that she actually had some cool boots too)
Missy wanted to be Orphan Annie. (They're all about Annie stuff these days since Nat and Jess were in the play.) Her costume came together so awesomely. We had the dress from Nat's Pippi costume, and we found the perfect boots and sweater at DI. She's been wanting a haircut for a while, and we made sure to cut it in time for Halloween (just below her shoulders) to help her hair turn out. This hair was accomplished with sponge curlers; we were pretty psyched about how it turned out.
Heh, her glasses make her look more like a solemn grannie than an overworked orphan.
Josh made his costume all by himself. He's not just a robot, he's a candy-receiving robot. There are two tubes sticking out at the shoulder area that lead to buckets inside the box. That's where he had people put the candy when he went trick-or-treating. It was pretty impressive.
Nat took forever to think of a costume, and hers was totally last minute: she's Miss Hannigan!
Jason felt well enough to go out trick-or-treating with us in his new power chair. The weather was great and the kids had tons of fun and got tons of candy. Grandma Anderson was here and got to go with us too. It was really nice to have here here helping the kids get their costumes together, and it was great that Jason and I could go home a little early and she could stay with the kids till they were thoroughly worn out.
It has been a crazy couple of weeks! Most of the kids started school on Aug. 16th.
It was Nat's first day of HIGH SCHOOL!
So far, she's doing great. She likes the A/B schedule with only 4 classes a day. She's taking child development and Spanish for her electives and like them both, and she's enjoying seminary too.
Josh is in 7th grade!
7th is a big change from 6th even though he's in the same school. Last
year he stayed with the same kids all day, this year he's on his own!
He's doing awesome. He gets to take wood shop this trimester and loves
it. Josh and I were psyched to find the shirt he's wearing here. It says "Ninja monkeys stole my homework." Josh was also ordained a Deacon this summer and today he passed the sacrament! I can't believe how grown-up he's getting.
Jessica is in 5th grade!
She's the oldest in her school now! Jess really learned to buckle down and work hard at school last year and got excellent grades. I'm sure this year she'll be just as awesome.
Missy's a 3rd grader!
She's super excited to learn cursive and her times tables and she wants to get every possible award this year.
I walked to the bus stop with the girls on their first day. I love the kids at their stop, I'm so pleased that they have really good kids to hang out with every morning.
It was funny trying to get them all to smile for this picture as the bus pulled up. "We're not even your kids!" But I almost feel like they are! All these kids have been in my ward since we moved here-- I remember when they were born!
Amanda got to go see her teacher and do an assessment on the big kids' first day, but she had to wait and wait and WAIT until the 28th for her first day.
Here she is-- my baby's a kindergartener!
Notice that her shirt is yellow-- her favorite color-- with a dog, her favorite animal!
Hamming it up for the camera
Mandie has morning kindergarten, which means she gets to walk to the bus stop with her 2 big sisters. Here they are showing her the ins and outs of the bus stop. The stop is at an empty lot between two houses, and that's their "clubhouse" tree behind them. You have to have a password to get in and get warm in the winter. And don't worry, they always post a watchman up at the sidewalk to yell when the bus is coming.
The kids let her go to the front of the line, but she waited for her sisters to go on with her.
Amanda absolutely loves kindergarten and she's really coming out of her shell this year.
So then there's me! I should have gotten my picture taken on my first day too! I went to Salt Lake for the first weekend of my masters degree on the 24th. Most weekends we'll do live video classes, but 3 times a semester I'll be heading up there. Navigating the U of U campus was a little trying, but other than that it was pretty fun, and it was really exciting finding out what grad work is going to be like. I am really looking forward to it. The program is much smaller than I thought it was. I thought there were 30 spots in Cedar and similar amounts at the other 3 distance ed sites, but there are only 22 of us all together. 5 in Cedar, and 2 more who will come up from St. George and do classes with us at SUU. I'm hopeful that this will greatly increase my chances of getting the practicums I want later on.
Added to the recent craziness has been the play "Annie" that Nat and Jess were in, which finished up with daily 3 hour rehearsals the first week of school (and which will get its own post) and me getting a second job! I now work with the school district "Youth in Custody" program, mentoring all the kids currently in foster or proctor care. I'm cutting back my hours at the detention center and trying to make it so that more of my working hours are during the kids' school time. So far it's been super stressful, but I really like the new job.
On this, the 10th anniversary of Jessica's birth, I think it only fitting that I write about her beginnings. There are a couple of good stories there.
Story 1: The story of finding out.
December 15, 2001. It was a snowy Saturday morning and Jason and I had gotten a sitter and ventured out early to go help clean the church. As we drove along Jason turned to me and said, "I hate to bring this up (he hated to because he knew I'd be instantly crazed and obsessed with knowing for sure) but I'm pretty sure you're pregnant."
In fact, he'd "known" for a couple of weeks but had refrained from saying anything for the sake of my sanity. I was totally shocked! He had never before (and he's never since) had any kind of premonition about our babies. As we talked about it throughout the day, he told me that not only was he 90% positive that I was preg, but he knew the sex of the baby and what it's name would be. He wouldn't tell me because he wanted to see what I felt like it was, but little did he know, the name thing completely gave it away. I had known since before we were married that his favorite girl name was Jessica and that he wanted to name one of his daughters that. We hadn't given our first girl the name, but I already had it pretty set in my head that the next girl would be Jessica.
I managed to wait to whole days to take a pregnancy test, and of course he was right on all counts.
Story 2: The birth story.
We finally went in to be induced when Jessica was 6 days overdue. Before starting pitocin and such, they like to get a baseline on contractions and the baby's heart rate, and that's where we hit a snag. Jessie's heartbeat was all over the place. We spent a good 4 hours before they even started the induction while the nurses consulted our midwife, the midwife consulted the OB, and they both consulted the pediatrician, puzzling over what could be going on with our little girl's heart. I came very close to getting a c-section because they were worried about how the baby would handle labor. I found out after the fact that I was lucky I didn't know just how worried everyone was. Jason, unfortunately, did know. In the end they decided to just get the baby out as fast as possible, so they broke my water, pushed out as much of the water as they could, and got going on some serious pitocin. My labor only lasted 4 hours, by far the shortest of all my babies. We were incredibly relieved when Jess was born, big and pink and crying hard before she was even all the way out.
Even though she looked great and seemed fine, they kept checking her heart and it was still doing funny things. She came home from the hospital with a heart monitor on, and when she was 3 days old she got an echo-cardiogram (an hour long ultrasound of her heart.) The echo was quite the experience. I was absolutely exhausted and wanted so bad to put my head on Jason's shoulder and go to sleep as we sat in the dark room watching the monitor, but I felt like that would make me a terrible mother. The ultrasound tech also unwittingly freaked us out. He was pointing out what the colors on the image meant-- blood flowing in and out, etc.-- and kept saying things that made it sound like he was seeing some major problems. A few days later we found out the results of the echo were completely normal. She got a chest x-ray that day too.
The results of the echo and the heart monitor were sent to a pediatric cardiologist at Primary Children's. The cardiologist was worried enough that she wanted to see Jessica in person, so when Jess was 9 days old we drove her to Salt Lake. There we got the official diagnosis of Atrial Tachycardia, "a little electrical problem" which seemed to be resolving itself. The cardiologist watched Jessica nursing and said that the heart thing obviously wasn't affecting her, so we were just going to keep an eye on it, but she didn't expect any problems. We were very relieved after that. Our pediatrician continued to listen long and hard to Jessie's heart every time she went in for a check-up, and she had fewer and fewer skipped beats every time. At 7 months they did another 24 hour monitor like the one she'd worn home from the hospital, and declared her completely better. Of course, that didn't stop me from taking her right in to the doctor when she was about 7 and mentioned mentioned her heart "felt funny," and I reserve the right to do so in the future too.
So those are Jessica's stories! And now she's TEN! She's a great girl, I love her so much and I love having her around. She has so much zest for life, she wants to do everything and try everything. I love the way she goes into everything with confidence and doesn't worry about failing. Just this week she made her first banana bread and learned to crochet. She LOVES horses, she LOVES martial arts (at the moment it's Tae Kwon Do), she loves nature, she plays basketball and writes stories, she sings in the school choir and she's in her second play. She wants to be a cowgirl and own a ranch when she grows up, and she loves all things Native American too. She also loves art and she's getting pretty good at drawing horses. She wants to be tough and be a tomboy and get muddy and climb trees, but she's also incredibly tenderhearted and kind.
We had our family reunion at Bear Lake again! And this time, Jason came! He and I were pretty stressed about how well it would actually work out, but thanks to my amazing family, he managed to have some fun! We got a rack for the back of the van that would fit his scooter and his folded wheelchair, and we made some plans for him to try to do some fun things around the Salt Lake area while we were up there.
The first thing he got to do was go to a supercool shooting range in Springville. It was about halfway to Bear Lake, so it was the perfect place to stop and take a break. While he was at the range, the kids and I went a couple blocks to, ahem, the grounds of a chemical factory, and had tons of fun! It had a huge stream with fish in it! We fed them lots of pieces of our sandwiches, and we fed the birds too.
We also stopped in Salt Lake at one of Jason's favorite tool stores and he got to spend time looking around there too. Jessica stayed with him while the rest of us went to Carl's Jr. and ate cookies and played games and tried not to be too loud.
We finally got to Bear Lake that evening. We stayed at the same fabulous cabin/mansion where we stayed last time. Eric built a ramp so that Jason could get in and out on his scooter.
The next day we went to the lake! Jason was completely wiped from the day before, so he wasn't able to get out of bed that day. The rest of us had fun at the lake though, it wasn't too hot and we all did pretty well at not getting sunburned!
This is Manda and her cousin Annie
We had 2 waverunners and some tubes to play with, and a very kind random stranger let the kids play on this floating trampoline for a while.
That day was also Missy's birthday! She is EIGHT!!! We had already done cake and presents for her and Josh at home a couple days before we left, but we also stuck candles in the peanut butter cups we were having that night and sang to her.
The next day we did our videos! The girls decided to do one of their own this year, and Natalie brought lots of costumes and helped them all get ready.
Here's their video, which was mostly filmed and completely edited by Jana:
And here's our video, again edited by Jana. Also scripted and directed by Jana!
Here are all the grandkids!
Natalie holding Carter, Josh Madeline Jessica Jaren Emma Tanner Melissa Jackson Allessia Taelyn Wyatt Sophie Amanda Logan Chase Blake Eli Cohen Annie!
Jason felt a little better the third day and got out of bed a little. He was able to stand up for a good 15 minutes and play frisbee with Rob.
And THAT day was Josh's birthday! He's 12! His cake was rice krispie treats.
That evening we played the "minute to win it" games that Natalie had planned.
We had two teams, and a player from each team volunteered for each game. Here are Emma and Tanner competing in "find the bubblegum in the whipped cream without your hands and chew it up and be the first to blow a bubble." I think Emma won.
And this is Annette and Cam playing "be the first to get all the ziti on the spaghetti"
Annette won!
Then Jackson and Wyatt played "get the most steps on a pedometer strapped to your head" Wyatt won.
We also played quite a few rounds of "be the first to get the oreo from your forehead to your mouth" but I can't remember who won any of them. Here's Kimi:
Josh won his round of "bounce the ping-pong ball across the floor and get it to stick to the peanut butter"
Eric and Jana playing "be the first to suck all the Jello out of a cup with a straw." Eric won.
Cherise and Rob playing "get the penny from the toe of the nylons" Rob won.
A couple more awesome oreo pics-- Here's Annette
And Jasper
I think the games were a success! It was super fun. Oh, and "Team Voldemort" won.
On Saturday Jason felt good enough to go out on the waverunners, and the guys were so awesome and went to all the trouble of hauling them back to the lake so he could have some fun. And they even took some pics for me. Jason loved it! He love the whole vacation, he said it's the most fun he's had since our cruise in 2008!
On Saturday night we drove back to Salt Lake and Jason got to do yet another fun thing-- go to a closed captioned movie in a movie theater! And not just any movie. Batman! Jason loves going to movies but we haven't been to one forever because he can never hear what anyone's saying. We can't wait till they bring that technology to some closer theaters. Also the movie was really good, it was my fave of all the Dark Knight movies.
That night Jen and Jasper treated us to a night in a lovely hotel right by their house with an exceptional continental breakfast. I think some of the older kids have stayed in hotels before, but none of them remember doing so, so it was very exciting for them. Then on Sunday we drove home!
I haven't posted about me in a long time! So let's see, I graduated in December, then spent the next 3 months writing my grad school essays and looking for a job. I found a job near the end of February, working for Youth Corrections. I do shifts at the youth detention center and at the local youth crisis center. All in all I like the job. I work with awesome people, and working with the kids is surprisingly low-key. The hours are random and can be cruddy, but at least it's up to me what shifts I take. It's only part-time, about 30 hours a week, so I'm still looking for a full-time job in the social work field, but this job is a good stepping-stone in the meantime. (also, this job has a TON of downtime . . . I'm writing this post at work.)
So far I think my kids are surviving fairly well with a working mom. During school it was hard sometimes when I'd say goodbye to them in the morning, then leave for work at 2 when they were still at school, and not get home until 10 when they were already asleep. It's better now that it's summer and I can spend the half of the day that I am home with them.
Natalie is continuing to be the little mama of the house, she's so great about babysitting the kids so much. It stresses me out a lot worrying about parentifying her, but mostly she likes it. She's a little homemaker at heart; loves to cook and organize and do fun activities with the kids. And then of course we do still have a dad at home. There are quite a few evenings when he's able to help out at least a little bit.
I found out a few weeks ago that I got into my master's degree program, which means I'm starting school again in August! The degree I'm getting is called a Master's of Social Work. The program is through the U of U (I'm a Ute! Now I need to hate BYU.) and they do distance ed broadcasting all around the state. They start every 3 years with a cohort of about 30 students (in Cedar), so I'm feeling lucky that the timing was right and lucky that I got in. Especially since doing this program has been my plan ever since I decided to go into this field in 2009! The program is meant for people who are working full-time, so it's spread out over 3 years instead of 2, and classes are held Friday evenings and all day Saturday. I'm super curious what it's going to be like. I registered for my classes this week-- stuff like human development and social work ethics-- and I bought my books too. I can't wait to get started!
This is the movie I made for Jason for Valentine's day. I'm so proud of it, and he totally loved it. I'm glad I did it too; it has some of clips of our wedding video in it and the tape it's on is starting to die! Rescued just in time.
I think it'll show up better on YouTube, so here's the link to it there:
Christmas Eve-Eve activity: Gingerbread houses! We used hot glue and graham crackers, which meant the kids could do super creative houses:
Jessie's Reese's Factory
Josh's house-- took forever, but totally worth it
Natalie architecturally stunning house
Missy's house. Yes, she's still obsessed with the color green.
Mandie decided to build a bridge!
Christmas Eve in newly-opened jammies!
Some favorite presents......
Mandie-- Sit 'n Spin!
Jessica-- Indian doll! It's SUCH a pretty doll,
I was so excited to find it.
Missy's frog slippers
Josh-- Robotic Arm! He even gets to build it with his dad!
Nat-- Cell phone! She was completely shocked. We got her a pay-as-you-go phone and a bunch of minutes, but after they run out she's responsible for buying them herself. Perfect plan for a teen, right?
The day after Christmas the kids and I went to Flagstaff. We got to see everyone but new mommy Kimi and her little fam. We spent a good chunk of time making the video I posted, that was so fun. We loved having the guys and kids participate too. I took a couple of the kids ice skating, but I'll have to save that for another post because I can't get the photos to transfer from my phone!
The only other thing I took pictures of was Manda and the kitty. She spent so much time under chairs and tables and Christmas trees snuggling with Skittles. It too cute.
