Lyme Disease Scare!!

So last week, Hanna's legs and arms looked like the above picture!! NO, this is NOT Hanna's arm, but I forgot to take pictures of her. I guess we always tend to take pictures of the good, not the bad don't we??? Anyway, so last Sunday I was looking at insect bite pictures trying to see what spider had bitten Hanna (six times, I thought) and I came across these pictures and that sent me quickly to the clinic. After three hours of doctors and nurses looking at her, they concluded with the same diagnosis and preceeded to give her a blood test and treat her with anitbiotics. The doctor actually called our house Friday night to tell us that her test was not back yet and then a nurse called on Saturday evening and told us it was negative. Whew!! Actually lyme disease is not that bad if you get it treated early, so not so terrible, but it did have us worried! Well, this morning I was looking on the internet again and it said that if diagnosed within the first month it is not uncommon for you to get a false negative. I suppose I'll call the doctor Mon a.m. to make sure! We do have ticks around our house, so I guess I'll be watching a little closer from now on with all the kids...

Next week we are starting swim lessons with the kids. I'm having an old gym coach who now works at the pool teach the girls at a neighbor's pool. The Aquatic Center is so big now that Hanna goes her own way and I figure it's about time she learned how to swim. We have gym class Mondays-Wednesdays in the summer so our Thursdays and Fridays are full of Aquatic Center time. There is also Spanish Camp at the gym, so when I'm working, the two younger girls will be learning spanish. We are also in a heat wave at our house. Our air conditioning broke and we are DYING!! We just don't even attempt to go upstairs which is already reading on the thermostat over 100 degrees. Hanna's little neighbor friend came over today and she opened the door and said so pathetically, "Don't come in here, we don't have AC!" It was so funny, we're all a little spoiled. I'm just not sure what we'll do when it's 110 degrees outside! AHHH!!

Alizah was so excited to take her friend from gymnastics- Halie to church today. She was beaming the whole time and never left her side. Alizah spends a lot of time with Halie and sometimes let's just say, they have "differing" opinions. It was nice to have them play so nicely together and run through the sprinklers and play dress-up. Of course the dress-up that they played was "gymnastics" dress-up. I have all of Alizah's clothes all over the house because they changed so many times! It's crazy that Alizah is getting so old that she's having her own friends over now, it's usually Hanna's friends, stuff, games, etc. that she has to play.

Oh, we do have Hanna's science camp pictures and stories that we'll post as soon as dad downloads them from his phone. My camera broke! so, Sad!!
We'll see what surprises next week brings and we hope it's not any more scary bug bites!!

Hanna's Broadway Jr. Performance

Hanna finished her Broadway Jr. Week with a performance at a Retirement Center on Friday. She sang a few numbers from "The Sound of Music" and "Wizard of Oz". She even had a few speaking solos that she did amazing! She didn't hesitate or forget her lines and she was loud so everyone could hear! She wrote her lines on her hand, "Just in case!", she said. She was pretty nervous, but her first mini production went smoothly. We were all so proud.

Yea Hanna...you are a star!

Beautiful Girls!

I think my girls can be so pretty when they want to be! Usually, I call them "rag-a-muffins", because they don't like to be clean, have their hair brushed, or wear matching clothes all the time, but AT TIMES they can be so beautiful I think!! It's so nice when Aunt Korbi shows up at our house at hair brushing times because each girl lines up-including me-and Korbi plays girly dolls with our hair. We all come out looking so cute and people at work wonder what got into me, and my girls don't lie they blurt out "Korbi did it!" Nothing else new has happened since yesterday except one mountain of clothes is gone and two are left...My sister Jakobi commented "Why do laundry, won't there just be more?" That is the truth. I think that is the hardest part of being a mother, I guess working mother I should say, the things that never seem to be caught up or finished. I always catch myself thinking, "If I only had five more minutes!" I'm always so embarrased of my dirty house, but never seem to get enough energy to get it clean!! Well, in five more minutes, or maybe five more years that will happen RIGHT!! OK, off to clean before the kids wake up...HURRY, one is stirring!!! Everyone cross their fingers that she stays asleep.....

Grandma Marsha

I haven't ever posted about our latest family trial and it's almost over. But I had a feeling today as I was looking through old pictures, that I should post about our Grandma Marsha, Brandon's mom and what she has been going through. Right after this picture was taken, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and has now gone through chemo treatments and is a month away from being done with radiation. We've only been able to see her once and it has been so hard on all of us. The kids don 't truely understand why, they just know that Grandma has no hair and is sick and that we pray for her every day. We are so excited for the summer when we are able to do a family vacation with them. I've never been so closely affected with cancer before this year. My Aunt Debbie also went through and survived it this past year. You never really think it can happen to your family. Many things this year have sent me into "real life". I'm not so sure I like "real life". I want to go back to being seven and thinking nothing bad really happens. This does help me with the kids though. I've tried to put down what I'm doing and go on walks, read books, or just dance with the kids more. There has been alot of stress on them lately and I hope their carefree smiles continue. We were watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" the other day and Raymond was stressing out over having to talk to his little girl about "why" we are here. The girl was asking and he thought she was asking about babies and she wasn't, she was basically asking about the purpose of life. Brandon looked over to Hanna and asked her why we were on the earth. And she simply answered, "So we can learn. We make good choices and then we get to go live with Heavenly Father again." How grateful I am in these times of chaos, we know that we just have to keep on going and it's how we handle the hard times, not IF we have to, that determines what kind of life we live. Ok let me wipe away my tears, now I'll tell you about what we've been up to. Hanna has gone to Broadway Jr. camp at the gym this week. The group will be putting on a small play at the end of the week with parts from Sound of Music. She has come home every night and practiced on her little stage that she has made. She also goes around saying, "Alizah pretend to hit me, then I'll be like this.... (acting like she's hurt)" Then she'll say, "THAT'S ACTING!" She loves "acting" sick, hurt, sad, etc. We've all learned what acting is this week! They are doing an amazing job with them. Alizah has been doing her Hot Shot class and is counting down the days until Thursday for the Aquatic Center. She can't wait!! She's my "very scheduled" child to say the least. Every day when she gets up, we have to number the events that will happen throughout the day. Get up is 1, eat breakfast 2, play is 3, etc. Then she feels comfortable knowing what will happen next. Piper just follows us all and seems happy to do!! I guess you can tell I've a had a little more time on my hands by the length of this post. I should probably go fold the mountains of laundry I have!!

Hanna's last first grade day!!

Hanna is officially a second grader now! She did ask if she could repeat first grade next year, but she excelled and is moving on! Way to go Hanna! She is reading at a third grade level and her teacher did such a great job this year. I loved the first picture where she is looking at Mrs. goodrich with such an adoring smile....She presented her teacher with a "Starbucks card" for the end of the year gift because when I told her I was going to get her a gift, Hanna yelled after me, "make sure it's a coffee card!" Beck, Paisley and Aunt Kiki came with us to pick her up on this special day and we got to play on the playground afterwards. The next pictures are of our brave Piper climbling all the way to the top of the big slide!! Mom had to scramble to get there before she fell and broke her other leg (if you don't know, she's already broken one leg back in January climbing on something way to high and falling). i'm going to have to keep an eye on her better~!! I'm sorry about some of my typing. A few of our keys are missing on the keyboard. Piper has figured out how to pop them off, and some come up missing sometimes...Well schools finally out-summer here we come!!

Hanna the Girl Scout

Hanna was a Brownie Girl Scout this year. Yes, another activity. Well to my defense-the meetings were held in our gym and it was during while I was at work, so Hanna wanted to do it and I thought it was better than watching TV!! She enjoyed the activities and earned 15 patches for her vest this year. She did community service wrapping Christmas presents and caroling, star and planet watching, planting flowers, learning to play racquetball, ice skating and many more. I have never been involved in girl scouts before and think the program is great. I don't think we are going to be involved next year just do to the meetings being held elsewhere, and it would involve more effort on my part! But , I do truely think she learned a lot and enjoyed herself and we love those cookies!!

REAL ASTRONAUTS!!

My friend e-mailed me a better picture of the astronauts that are in Moses Lake right now. See how cool it was!!

Life on the "moon"!

The kids and I have been going out to the sand dunes here in Moses Lake to watch NASA (no, I'm not kidding) test robots/land rovers for their trip to the moon in 2016!! You can kindof see in the first picture the "real life people" in the astronaut suits (Alizah says). They actually waved at her while they were driving! The second day we got there too late to see the astronauts, but we got to get up close to Chariot-the big yellow and white robot. It is so interesting that they chose Moses Lake to do their testing. The guys were from Houston and they told us that the robots were being controlled by their people clear over in Texas! They gave us stickers, tatoos, and brochures. I was so impressed by the way they let us look around and gave us information. It was fun to see and Hanna seemed so interested about the science stuff. She can't wait for science camp this summer...

Boys will be boys and lead the girls to trouble....

Please refer to Korbi's blog for more details on the above picture. I'll just be quick and write that I truely believe boys are different than girls. This is a tub of butter that I had put in the garbage (not understanding that Beck gets things out of the garbage) and the kids painted the window, themselves, my lovely curtains, and the carpet with it! My GIRLS don't think of these things-not that they are perfect-I just think it's not in their wiring!! Along with they don't think of running straight for the creek, across the road to the field of sagebrush, to spray the rugs with bleach, to eat cleaning supplies, let snakes in the house, pour bottles of glue out, or write on EVERYTHING with markers. You would think that I don't watch Beck when he visits. I admit it's a good thing I was blessed with girls!! Oh wait, I just remembered the toilet water that my innocent Piper scooped out all over the bathroom. So maybe girls incidents are just farther and farther apart then boys. Sorry that wasn't short-just watch the video on Korbi's blog!!

Class Field Trip

Hanna's field trip to the "Surf 'n Slide Water Park" (aka-Aquatic Center) was today in the freezing cold weather! They went back and forth between huddling under blankets and diving into the water. I've never seen so many shivers and so many blue lips! The Aquatic Center has added a lazy river and the surfing ride this summer. I look around and wonder how I'm going to keep an eye on three kids running around here all summer! Hanna talks big and says she's going to attempt the surfing ride-we'll let you know when she braves it! I think the hour she spent here in the picture just watching kids biff it might have scared her off for the entire summer! It's fun to be a part of her class and one parent commented how neat it was that I knew every single kid's name and could talk with them. I am thankful for the times I got to substitute and volunteer for her class and hope I am always able to be a part- so I can "keep an eye on her friends" AND those boys......I wonder how long it will be COOL to have mom as a teacher????

Flip Flop Finale Fun Meet

Here's my gymnasts again! My friend, Erica e-mailed me these pics last night from our Fun Meet a few weeks ago. Piper is actually NOT competing, but always THINKS she is!! She does follow in her older "Hot Shot"'s sister's footsteps. The girls competed on all the events-bars, vault, beam, floor- and even got medals and a score card from the judge. Of course they got all 10's! Coach Amy (in the pic) is one of Alizah's favorite people. She does an amazing job with the little ones. They go to class for 2 hours at a time and she keeps their attention and keeps them busy. She's great!! Amy actually just joined me in coaching our Level Fives & up also. We're very thankful to have her! It's a funny story how Amy came to our gym. She actually worked with Brandon years ago at Stokes Brothers in Logan, Utah. That's where we met and her and I choreographed gymnasts floor routines together so long ago!! We didn't even know we were living in the same town again until she came to a Fun Meet a year ago and she realized she'd been bringing her daughter to gymnastics for a year to our place! Crazy how our stories all go together and we cross paths again!

Moses Lake Spring Fest Performances

Here's my little performers! Well, minus Piper! I need to post one of her pictures when she marched herself up into the middle of the dance and copied the whole thing. I didn't have my camera, so I'll have to wait until some mom gives me one. Hanna is the cheerleader first, then Alizah the Hot Shot, then Hanna the gymnast. They got to perform at the outside Amphitheatre down by the lake which was really fun and interesting with the rain! We aren't able to show much because we can't bring all of our equipment, but the crowd always seems to like the flips....especially the tiny kids. Our cheerleaders our new to us this year. Hanna loves cheerleading and I hear even Alizah and Piper chanting the cheers around the house. I wonder when they are involved in so many things, what they are going to want to do when they are older. They want to do everything now, but they aren't going to have enough time when they are older. I always tell them they can do anything they want (within the limits of our building-ha ha..). Good thing we do so many different things!