A Very Sick Week

Tuesday morning my work did a tour of the Federal Reserve Bank. We got to go into the money vaults, and were surrounded by over a billion dollars. I brought Zac along because he was interested in seeing the bank. Then we went to where they destroyed all the money. They even gave us a $200 sample each, but it was shredded. Because Zac was at my work, we went out to lunch. As soon as we got back from lunch, I immediately felt sick. I lasted until the end of the work day, picked up the kids and went home. When I got home, all the orders from Pampered Chef arrived, so I needed to go deliver them, and then the Bishop called and wanted to see me. So I ran over to the Church real quick, and got my first calling in the ward. I am the new laurel advisor in the Young Women's. Then I had to run down to Provo to deliver the Pampered Chef stuff to some girls. On my way back from Provo, the sickness hit me again. I was up the entire night. At 4 am I woke up Zac and made him call into work to have him stay home with me. My fever got up to 104.5. AND our thermometer usually runs about 2 degrees cooler. On a healthy day, it says that I am 96 degrees, not 98.6. So I really could have been 106.5. It was horrible. Zac took care of the kids until 2 pm when he had to go to school. The fever peaked to the 104.5 while he was at school. The kids had been fighting, Aubrey spilled milk everywhere, then dropped a glass cup, and it shattered, etc. I was feeling horrible so I started to cry. Eric immediately ran over to me and said. "Mommy, do you miss your mommy? (I do, but that's not why I was crying.) Daddy will come home from school, and will take care of you okay? You will feel better okay?" He then gave me a hug, and from behind comes Aubrey screaming and hitting Eric, Eric moved out of the way so she also could give me a hug. Eric is growing up so much. I told them that they would make Mommy feel a lot better if they stopped fighting. They were good the rest of the night. I stayed home on Thursday and Friday as well. The fever just wasn't breaking. Zac's boss let him take 1/2 days on both of those days, but he then had to leave at 2 or 3 to go to school, and doesn't get home until 10 -10:30 pm. So as nice as it was of his boss, it only helped me out with the kids for a couple hours.

Saturday morning, I woke up and had no fever at all. I ended up going with Bobby to the Women's Conference in Salt Lake. We went out to eat before the conference started at the Blue Iguana. My work is close enough to the conference center, that we parked there so we didn't have to pay for any parking. Bobby didn't wear very good walking shoes, so by the time we got to the conference center, she had blisters. So on our way back to the car, we took trax to the Gallivan Center, so that we would only have to walk a block. Trax was full of the women from the conference center. There were young girls sitting everywhere, and all the elderly women standing!! I told this one lady that she could sit down (Bobby and I got on Trax before everybody else, so we had seats.) and I would stand. She sat down and immediately started to cry. She was so grateful. She had told me that normally she was alright, but for some reason, that day she didn't feel like she could stand at all, and when she walked into Trax and saw that all the seats were taken, she didn't know what she was going to do. Bobby also stood, but there were no other younger women standing!

Zac had this paper due in his Saturday morning class. So Friday night we were at Dad's, Zac was finishing writing it down on paper, and I was typing it for him. His teacher likes to receive assignments via e-mail. When Zac got home from him class on Saturday, he told me that he had written the paper in the wrong style. SO, when Bobby and I were driving home from the Women's Conference, Zac wanted me to stop at home, grab his paper, and retype it that night and resubmit it to his teacher. So I went to Bobby's parents house and retyped it. I got home late that night.

Well, this week wasn't really exciting. I'm just glad that so far the kids and Zac haven't gotten what I had. I start going to mutual again tonight, we'll see how that goes. :)

The Weekend

Thursday at Eric's school/daycare was "red day". So I dressed Eric all in red and he had to bring in a red snack. So he took some strawberries. When I went to pick him up, he ran over to me and yelled "GO UTES!" with his hands making the "utes" sign. His teacher said that he had been screaming that all day. What?! When we got home Eric did the same thing to Zac. So Zac yelled back at him "GO COUGARS!" and put his hands in the shape of a "Y". So now Eric is shouting "GO COUGARS" a lot.

So on Friday we had our progressive dinner. It was suppose to start at 5:30, but we were waiting on a couple from Provo, and they didn't get there until 7:30. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of good food! Although at the end I asked them who's idea was it to mess up EVERYBODIES house instead of just one? We ended up have 16 people in total, 8 adults and 8 kids. Zac made a homemade cheesecake and got great reviews. He is starting to experiment with his cooking, and added a little cinnamon to the cheesecake, and it really made a huge difference. His boss' wife works at a candy store, and cuts caramel, so Zac got some caramel from her and melted it and drizzled it all over the cheesecake. During dessert Eric told me that he didn't feel good, and then he put himself to bed. He was up pretty much the entire night with a 102 fever. He is doing better today, he doesn't have his fever anymore, but he still doesn't really have an appetite. Aubrey was so wound up though. I think she ate some dessert off of everybodies plates. Everybody was leaving around 10:30-11:00 pm and Aubrey was dancing to the music, and running around the couch screaming happily. I have never seen her so hyper. Then we put her into bed and she would scream and laugh at herself. I have no idea what time she finally fell asleep. We are going to do a girls night on Thursday with all the girls that were at the dinner, and all the guys can get together to watch the kids. That worked out really nice for me. :)

On Saturday I had a friend call and say that they were going to stop by to see the house on their way up to SLC. When they finally got to our house, their "stop by" was four hours! Zac was at Kohl's with his sister Barb calling me wondering where I was. I finally kicked them out, and met Zac and Barb at Kohl's. She is having an "Associates Day" next week where she gets an additional 30% off the price. So we grabbed a lot of clothes for the family and gave them to her to put on hold until she can buy them at the discounted price. We finally got the rest of the furniture that we have ordered for the house. We bought it all unfinished, so we could put the stain on the wood to match our furniture, and it was a lot cheaper that way. So Zac and I have been staining our dresser this weekend as well. I got my stuff for Christmas cards this weekend too. I know it's only September, but it takes me forever to get them done since I work. I use get one or two done on the weekend until it's time to send them out, and this way I'm not stressed or trying to hurry to get them all finished in time.

Our yard

Zac was able to rent a back hoe this past Saturday. We only had it for 3 hours so he didn't get as much done on the yard as he would have liked. I wish I would have taken a before and after picture, because he made a lot of progress on the yard. Zac had made a rock retaining wall, and pretty much leveled off the rest of our yard, and then he put a lot of dirt above the retaining wall, and leveled that off too. Eric sat outside for almost the entire three hours just watching Zac work on the back hoe. And as modeled in the picture with Eric, he found his snow boots. We only had one neighbor come over to ask Zac to work on their yard. Zac only spent 1/2 hour on their yard because we had to get it back. Zac almost rolled the back hoe twice trying to get the big boulders for the retaining wall.

This week in volleyball I tore a muscle in my shoulder on my first serve. I didn't bend my elbow at all when I served, and I hit the ball
hard. Right when I hit the ball I heard a 'pop' sound. My shoulder hurt so bad. I couldn't believe I hurt it on the first serve. I still played for the next two hours, but I didn't spike the ball or serve it overhand. By the time I got home, it was throbbing. I couldn't lift my arm at all to even get undressed. The next day I couldn't even brush my hair with my right hand unless I tipped my hair over. It's getting better, but it is still really tender. My friend rolled her ankle trying to get the ball. She also did this within the first 10 minutes. She almost passed out right after she rolled it. It might actually be broken. It is still really swollen, and there is bruising all along the ankle. Zac was making fun of us saying that we are getting OLD because we can't even play for ten minutes without getting hurt. This Friday we are getting together with four families in our neighborhood to have a progessive dinner. This is where you have the appetizers at one house, the main course at another, etc. We are in charge of dessert. It should be fun. We all have kids around the same age, so at least all the homes will be kid friendly. We are all from the BYU married ward down in Provo. It's nice having people that we already know move by us! Eric made his first friend in the neighborhood. This little boy is 2 months older than Eric and his name is Zac. Eric is having a really hard time calling him Zac. When my Zac came home for lunch on Friday, Eric went up to him and said, "Daddy guess what? I played with you today!" He is a little confused. The only problem is that the little Zac is also a little autistic, so he REALLY likes to hit. His Mom was telling me that on a good day, he will only have 30 tantrums, on a GOOD day!! I don't recall Eric ever having 30 tantrums on a bad day! When they were leaving our house, little Zac wanted to keep our book. I let them borrow it. Then later in the day, I took the kids to go get the mail and Eric saw little Zac. He screams across the street "Hey friend! Do you have my book?!" Little Zac screams yes, and runs inside to get it. Before I knew it they were both running up the street into our house, and playing in Eric's room again. Aubrey has been really cute lately. Anytime she hears any music she will stop whatever it is that she's doing and start dancing, even if the music is only playing for 10 seconds. And anytime you ask her if she wants to do anything, go outside, have a bath, etc. She will smile really big and say, "YEAH!" As she is running towards the door, bathroom, kitchen, etc. She has been really happy lately.

In the picture with just Eric in it, our lot goes all the way to where that port a potty is. Eric is standing on top of the rock wall. Zac obviously has a lot of work he needs to do still on the wall. He is going to put in some rock stairs to the top of the rock wall. This was what he accomplished in the three hours. The pictures really don't show just how much work he actually did. Zac also sealed our garage floor this week. And he has started to build cabinets in the garage. He finished two cabinets under the window, he just needs to put the doors on them. And all of the materials have been free. The builder told us that whatever they don't use on the new homes, we could have. So Zac has been over to all of the sites every day trying to see if he can scrap some wood.

Devin's Concert

Last Saturday Devin's band did a benefit concert for cancer. We had Zac's sister Barbara watch the kids for us, and we had our date night. (Thanks again Barb!) We went out to Texas Roadhouse, then went down to Provo to watch Devin's band. I was really surprised to see Nathan there. We got there early enough that we got 2nd row seats, and we could all sit together. I took some pictures of the concert, but I used Dad's camera, and for some reason the pics won't load on his computer at home, so I will need to bring his camera into work so I can load them on. Devin did great! He even had written a song about Mom. They have 5 people in their band, "Red Spectre" and the third Mom just got diagnosed with cancer. The band has never sounded better. Zac was really impressed with them. The last time Zac heard them play was at the battle of the bands when Devin was in high school. Devin had passed out tons of flyers at UVSC trying to get a larger crowd. They were able to donate all the money to the American Cancer Society. Even the owner of Muse Music played during the concert, and he donated his money from the night as well.

On Sunday we went to Jeff and Sarah's baby blessing. I couldn't believe how much hair their little girl has! It was nice to see some people from Idaho. Thad had his 3 year old birthday party on Tuesday. As we were driving to Nathan and Bobby's Eric was telling me who was going to be there, then he goes, "But not Andrew and Madison. They are too far away. They need to come NOW!" He screamed that last part. It was really random, I hadn't talked about Andrew and Madison with him for awhile Usually its right after Justin and Lisa leave that Eric will constantly ask me where they are, but we haven't seen them since Spring, so it was completely out of the blue. Thad's birthday went well. By the time we left Eric had grape soda and frosting in his hair, but both kids had a lot of fun. Bobby had made an individual pizza for everybody there. She put in a lot of work to this party. Eric last night told me he needed to go back to Tucker and Thad's because he needs more cake.

So we finally named the kittens: Buster and Maebe. Zac picked out the names. We got the 3rd season for Arrested Development on DVD, and that is pretty much how we spent our weekend. We had Devin come over on Sunday, and we watched the entire Season. That show is so good, it is all one-liners.