Crazy Sicky week!

I've had a big slab of wax for about 10 years and I had only used a little bit of it for making candles. I decided to bring it out again and try making candles again. They actually turned out really good!

Still struggling with Abby eating, but one thing that she will eat is Spaghetti! She loves it!

We've had the stomach flu hit our house! Jacob started throwing up late Tuesday night/Early Wednesday morning and ended up staying home on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday he returned to school and Abby woke up throwing up. She started throwing up around 7 a.m. and never stopped, so around 2 I called the dr and left a message and at 4 they called me back and said to take her to either a Pediatric Urgent Care or an E.R. because she was probably dehydrated. I took her to the Phoenix Childrens Urgent Care, which turned out to be amazing! I've never been to a Pediatric Urgent Care, and they were so fast at getting us back and getting started. They gave her some Zofran, which she gulped down, she was incredibly thirsty, then 20 minutes later they gave her a popsicle, 20 minutes after that they had her drink apple juice mixed with pedialyte and she gulped that down. Forty minutes later they let us go because she had kept it all down! Phew! She was a much happier camper after that, although Saturday she woke up with a fever and she still has it today. This is a rough sickness! Saturday afternoon after playing outside all day Ashlyn says that her tummy hurts and 20 minutes later starts throwing up. :(

Poor Abby, just wanted to rest all day on Friday because she was constantly throwing up...

She would get restless and start walking around and then she would get exhausted and just lay down wherever she was...broke my heart.

When she will lay down and not get back up, you know she's sick...

This is after her popsicle at the Urgent Care, she was starting to smile again...

This was Saturday, with her fever...

Since Rick and I were so worried about getting sick, we decided to celebrate his birthday a day early and I made him a Boston Cream Cake. It was delicious!

Luckily, both Rick and I woke up feeling good. We are holding out hope that we won't get sick! Haley is feverish today, but hasn't thrown up yet, fingers crossed she won't! Happy Birthday to Rick! Haha, we will have to do a re-do for sure!!

Week in Review...

We had some sprinkler issues last weekend, so I ended up digging out a bunch of our grass and then refilling it. We were testing out the sprinklers to make sure they were working good on Monday night and the kids decided to go through them. Abby Jane was in heaven! She thought it was the funnest thing ever.

On Tuesday night Ashlyn and Jacob were in their schools choir performance. They sang all of the songs that I grew up listening to on television. They sang the Brady Bunch theme song, Jacob was actually a "son" as you can see from the pics. They also sang the Addams Family theme song, the Love Boat theme song, Fraggle rock and manamana. It was really cute.

On Wednesday night I was talking with Rick about how much I hate this cactus that is right in front of our house. It's right in front of our walkway and front door and it's very prickly with thorns. Every time that we prune it we dread picking up after it because we always got cut up. I have just always thought of it as an eye sore. So anyway, Rick left for scouts and so I took Abby outside and I just decided to start digging around it to see how deep the roots went. I started digging and found that they weren't very deep, so I started chopping at the roots and digging further and further below the cactus until it actually started rocking! By the time that Rick got home from scouts I had it about 90% out! He started trying to help me haul it out, it must've weight about 2-300 lbs! Pretty soon our neighbor saw we needed help and grabbed some rope. We wrapped rope around it and hauled it out. I was so happy! We also have the same cactus in front of our big tree that you can just barely see in the right of this picture. I took that out the next night wile Rick was gone and when he came home we both hauled it out. It feels so good to have them out! Here's a before shot, this was actually taken about a year ago, but you get the idea of what the cactus looked like...

Here's an After shot, cactus is gone!! The other cactus was right in front of the big tree, having them gone makes the yard look so much bigger!

We also had a cement pad put in a few months ago and I forgot to post pics of it. We love having a nice walkway to the backyard for hauling the garbage and recycle out every week and Rick parks on the extra pad. Here's a BEFORE shot...

Here's an After shot of the extra pad and walkway to the gate. We love it!

Looks so much better now! Much more kid friendly and open:)

On Saturday we decided to take the kids to the tennis courts at the high school to play tennis. They had lots of fun learning how to play and Abby Jane loved climbing the bleachers over and over and over again. I think she ran the whole time, she was just so happy to be outside and free to run.

Week in Review....

Last week Abby came into the bathroom with me and started pointing at my toes and then pointing at her toes. She is learning how to talk very slowly and has learned other ways to convey what she wants. I took this interaction to mean that she wanted me to paint her nails. When she laughed and smiled when I pulled out the nail polish, I knew that I was right! She was so patient and so happy that I even did her fingernails. They look so cute!

Ashlyn and Jacob and the kids from the neighborhood put on a little carnival yesterday down at the park. It was so creative and cute! They made all of the games out of cardboard boxes and even had tickets that they sold out of their ticket booth and had prizes at the end! It was incredibly creative!

Ashlyn is holding up her air hockey game and Jacob is showing his 'flying disc into the box' game. There was also golfing, hopscotch, rockets and flying frisbee games.

I love when they have fun outside, we have to soak it all up while we can before it gets too hot!

This week has been a tough week for Abby and eating, I broke down into tears several times this week because she would absolutely refuse to eat all day long. I felt like such a horrible mom for not being able to figure out how to feed her. After having a really rough night of not sleeping at all from worrying about her, I got up one morning and inspiration struck! I could puree some black beans and put it into her hot chocolate in the morning, because I make it with milk. I tried this and it worked! Now we have also tried putting blended up bananas and yogurt into her milk as well. So at least she is getting a few basics, and hopefully we can just keep trying to get her to eat. It's frustrating but I'm trying to be positive and continue trying new things. Here's hoping we have a great week of eating!

Easter!!

I reupholstered this chair for the living room. It took me over a week just to get the old fabric off because there were literally thousands of staples. It was a nightmare! I still need to finish it up, but for now at least we can sit on it and it looks pretty.

I made this St. Patricks day cake for our annual St. Patricks Day feast with our neighbors.

Abby grabbed this hat and put it on this way, it was so cute!

We got a yummy treat in the mail from Grandma and Grandpa Hahn! So sweet! Abby couldn't wait to dig in!

On Friday the kids had the day off, so our neighborhood had it's annual easter egg hunt. Abby didn't quite get it, she was excited just to find an egg and then wanted to just hold it in her hand, she didn't want to put it in her basket or keep looking for more eggs.

She loved holding her basket though, she thought that was really cool.

She thought it was super cool when we opened the eggs and discovered what was inside!

Easter morning before the hunt!

Abby thought it was so fun, although she didn't care to much for looking for eggs.

Rick got Abby dressed and did her hair! She looked so darling!

We also went to the Mesa Easter Temple Pageant which was wonderful as always!
Abby loves to skip everywhere she goes, which reminds me of Ashlyn. I couldn't get her to skip for the video, so I had Rick remind her of what skipping is. Subsequently because of this video we had to take the pool down because Abby figured out how to pull herself up on the pool and almost got it in! She knows how to open the back door, so it was too much of a risk.

Abby loves this Easter bunny, she squeals and dances with it. So cute!

Rick had to fix up the Scouts go carts because the tires were old and needed to be replaced. So once he was done, the kids wanted to try it out.

He also had to fix up the Scouts bottle rocket launcher, so they had to test out that as well:)