September

I hate catching up this way, I wished I had done more to keep up way back when, but I will do my best here!!

School started. Spencer is repeating first grade, we decided to call it his bonus year. In the pictures, it might look like he is trying to scare off vampires, but really, he is making a plus sign to show what grade he is in. I didn't want to just do a "1" again, as that might be confusing when looking back at pictures. Carter started Kindergarten. I didn't have him hold up his fingers.

Even though Carter doesn't go to school until 11:30, he came out in the morning with Spencer to get some pictures with the neighbor kids.


Miana didn't start school, but she really wanted to be in a picture with the boys. We had her signed up for a preschool class (only once a week for 2-2.5 year olds) but opted to take a year off of paying tuition as we have paid it continuously for the previous 5 school years. Note: I'm not sure why Carter was pulling on Spencer's shirt.


Towards the end of September, I took tons of pictures of Tayla. Until I have time to insert a slide show here, this will have to keep it's place. I just love this little girl!!

Photo Credits... because I'm a stealer of things...

In my last few posts, I used many pictures that I did not take myself and have been asked to give photo credits... The picture of my whole family is a picture by Emilie Campbell (a photographer in Utah), I got the picture off Paige's blog. Several pictures from the lake house are from Jaclyn, including the one of Miana close up. The pictures of Paige's kids are from Paige's blog, either taken by her or Matt. The one of Rockstin was presumably taken by Briette, as I stole it from her blog. The soccer pictures are either from Dave or me, I can't remember without looking at them...

It's December, let's talk about August...

In August, the kids and I went to the lake house with Jane and her kids, Jaclyn, and my parents. The kids had a great time with all their cousins and on Papa's new boat.

We came home and spent lots of time at the pool. Then, at the end of August, some wonderful things happened to my family. August 28 started it all...

That morning, my Dad and brother-in-law, Matt flew to Ethiopia to pick up Matt and Paige's new daughter. Anke is a beautiful little girl and just about the easiest baby I have ever met. She is a joy, which is great because Paige got her a little sooner than expected, giving her 4 kids under the age of 4. You can read about it here.

Then at about 1pm or so that same day, my Sister-in-law's water broke. In a matter of minutes, my brother delivered his new son all by himself. Rockstin is a cutie and also a great baby. Congrats to Brett and Briette!!

That afternoon, I started feeling like I was a getting a UTI which wasn't really a UTI, but I will go into more detail in a second.

Also, on Friday night, August 28, Andrea got engaged to an amazing man named BD. Sooo excited for them! They got married on Nov. 7, so look forward to more about that to come...

Back to my UTI... I dealt with it with OTC meds and planned on going to the doc on Monday. On Sunday, Dave left to fly to Detroit and about the same time his plane took off, I had a horrible intense pain hit. It was the 2nd worst pain I had ever had (my gallstone was worse). I left the kids with a neighbor while waiting for my Mother-in-law to come to the house. My sister-in-law met me at the ER (yes, I drove myself). I was in intense pain in the waiting room, but it began to subside as we went back to check in. I described the pain and was sent to get a CT scan. The scan revealed that I had a 5mm Kidney stone traveling from my kidney to my bladder and was currently hanging out in my ureter just outside the bladder. For those that don't know, 5 mm is considered sizeable. The best part was when we were getting my discharge instructions, the nurse tells me that they also found a 9 mm stone in my OTHER kidney. Sounds great. On Monday, I went to the urologist and got an appointment to get the 5mm stone removed in an out patient procedure the next day. (total luck that they had an opening, usually they schedule it a week out, they 9mm stone is a totally different procedure and is scheduled a month in advance, I have to wait for that one.) Tuesday was a horrible day, I was in intense pain and had a horrible, horrible headache. That night Spencer started soccer.

Carter started on Thursday night, which is the night Dave came home from Detroit.

(Carter throwing his ball into the air)

My pain continued until the following Monday. It's good it stopped because the boys started school on Tuesday, which is also the day Dave went back to Detroit. That's coming in the next post... :) That's all for now!