The Holidays

Only a month and a half late, not to shabby!  Christmas was pretty good.  We got a real tree this year.  It was nice and fun but I'm not sure we will ever do it again because it was so darn messy..... But we had to do it because my regular tree wouldn't have fit in Callie and Brian's basement.  It was too tall :-(  Still we did the standard Christmas Eve stuff.  Read the Christmas story from the Bible.  Watched a Christmas movie with the kids, made cookies for Santa, etc.  Then Alan and I watched White Christmas while we "waited for Santa".  In the morning, Kimberly and Zachary wouldn't wake up, as usual.  We had to turn on all the lights and make a  bunch of noise for about half an hour before we finally just went in and woke Zachary  up.  Santa brought Kimberly some boots, Benjamin a baseball bat, glove and balls, Zachary got an elaborate Thomas the Train set and Nicholas got a rocking horse that lights up and plays music.  I got a new temple dress (yay!) and Alan got a baseball glove so he could play with Benjamin.  We had a big breakfast as usual and then spent the afternoon at Dave & Louise's house with all the cousins.  It was a pretty nice day.

For New Years we went down to see Jason and Jared & Families.  We started the afternoon on New Year's Eve at Jared's so the kids could play.  Then we all went to Jason's to hang out for the night.  We actually stayed the night.  The evening itself was pretty anti-climactic.  Ate too much and played some games and mostly refereed a thousand kids.  But the next day was when the real festivity started.  Alan has always wanted to deep fry a turkey, an activity that has been banned from Callie's yard (which I don't blame her for because I was a little worried at first too).  So Alan and Jason made careful plans and watched a bunch of different You Tube videos about how to and how not to deep fry a turkey.  So that is what they spent the morning doing.  And it was well worth it because that was the yummiest turkey I have ever had! Super juicy! It wasn't so scary after they got started.  Obviously nothing burnt down, and nobody burned a hand off or scorched their eyebrows off.

I was going to do a separate post about what has happened over the last 5 or 6 weeks, but lets be honest.  I probably won't get to it until April, so I'll just do it now.  January has been a whole lot of nothing.  Sitting around in the basement and watching too much TV.  Alan is on the computer for most of every day looking for jobs.  He has had a good amount of interviews but nothing that looks super promising as far as a job offer goes yet.  The process of getting a job is just so slow when it isn't entry level. On the plus side, we have both had lots of time to go to the temple and have been going weekly for the most part.  I have also started selling my plasma for some extra $$, which makes us sound super desperate.  We aren't that broke yet, we just feel a little guilty that we spent money we can't replace going on a trip to Disneyland with Jason's family last week.  I've been wanting to go pretty bad and since Alan will probably never get to do a vacation like that with one of his brothers again, we threw caution to the wind.  It was good for us to get out and go to the happiest place on earth. I have been very sick (you know the head kind) and this whole situation we are in has been really hard on everybody this time around.  I'm glad we went, but I have to do something to try and replace the money we blew.  And since tax season is upon us, and we are going to get hammered this year, every little bit helps..... right?

Nicholas Noodle!

Nicholas turned one this week. I can't believe that my baby is one year old.  It's weird to think that this is very likely the last time I celebrate the first birthday of one of my children.  So to commemorate, here is a post to remind my posterity how cute the baby of the family was.

Nicholas is the happiest baby I have ever seen.  He loves his big brothers and sisters and always wants to be playing with them.  In grand tradition of my other babies, he isn't very cuddly, but every now and then when he gets tired he gives me loves and it is so sweet.  He is always smiling or laughing and is very vocal, even though he doesn't have many words.  Just like any other kid, he is really busy and squirmy.  He likes to try and climb on things.

Some milestones: He army crawled around 6 months, but didn't regular crawl until between 8.5 & 9 months.  His first word besides mom and dad was bye-bye.  By his first Birthday he has 6 words which he doesn't use often but it is super cute when he does.  Mom, Dad, Bye-Bye, No, Uh-Oh and Peekaboo.  Like his brothers and sisters he has been a late bloomer in the "teeth" department.  He just cut his very first one in the past few days.  It is barely poking through the gums on the bottom, so if you aren't looking for it, you wouldn't notice it.  Also like his siblings, he was a major baby food snob and getting him to eat solid foods was like getting a kid to clean their room.  And since he doesn't have any teeth, he just recently started eating "real" food.  He had a whole doughnut this morning!  He hates to be fed, he wants to do it himself, so he mostly eats a lot of finger foods.

Nicholas hates the bath tub and the shower! He doesn't just fuss, but screams bloody murder every time we get him in.  So imagine my surprise when we took him to the beach in November and he kept crawling into the ocean!  Over and over, right into the surf.  He loved the sand and was not at all discouraged by the waves lapping up on his hands and feet.  He even got completely submerged once, just for a second because I was standing there to lift him up.  I snatched him in the air and he looked at me like he was petrified and whimpered a bit.  But he didn't cry. I put him back down on the sand and he turned around and started to crawl right back into the water! In the freezing November water no-less.  Hates the tub, but loves the beach.... who'd have thought?

He also loves Disneyland.  He will go on all rides without crying or being scared.  Including Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion!  (which is more than I can say for Zachary).  He is very good at going up the stairs at home but sucks at coming down them.  At least he has now fallen down the stairs enough times that I don't have to worry that he will try to come down on his own.  But he has this funny game where he crawls to the top and then sits at the top yelling "mom.....mom......momomomomomooooom" until I come to get him.  When I show up he claps & laughs hysterically, then I take him down and he crawls right back up to repeat.

In grand baby tradition, some of his favorite past-times are playing in the kitchen cupboards and pulling out all the Tupperware, crawling under the desk and unplugging/eating cords and scavenging under the bar, table and through the 'sweep pile' for left over cereal and other goodies (edible or not).  I'm pretty sure he considers the toilet is his personal jacuzzi. Again, hates the tub, but loves the toilet?

He started walking around the furniture around 9 months old but didn't venture into the middle of the room until 11.5 months.  He started walking pretty solidly a few days before his birthday, but now he walks everywhere and figured out how to stand up in the middle of the room with no assistance this week too.
So far, re-arranging Christmas ornaments hasn't been as big of a draw for him as unwrapping presents and stealing bows off the top so he can use them like a chew toy.

I decided not to find out the gender of the baby during my pregnancy with Nicholas and I really thought Nicholas was going to be a girl.  I wasn't disappointed when he came, but really surprised that he was a boy. But I am so glad that Heavenly Father sent him to us! He is perfect just like he is!

Life Changes

So much has happened in the last 6 weeks. This is exactly why I should be more faithful at updating the blog since it is my only source of journaling. Next year, I will do better. If it's my only resolution I can't blow it right?  All the things that have happened recently are going to get a mention but no detail.  And I guess that is ok, since I won't need a journal entry to help me remember the events.

On November 1st, Alan lost his job with Argosy in CA.  I'm not going to go in to what happened but it was sudden and very unfair, which has made it very hard to deal with.  We considered filing a lawsuit against the company but in the end, we just decided to take the severance and move on.  Since CA was so expensive to live in, and we didn't know where he would end up getting a job, we have moved to Utah and are staying with Callie and Brian in their basement.  I don't know why this particular trial of "joblessness" keeps popping up for us, but I am very grateful that we have such wonderful families with empty finished basements! ;-)

So we packed up our house in Cali very quickly and moved away on the 20th of Nov.  After only 5 months of living there.  We were extremely sad.  CA is beautiful and our ward was amazing.  Maybe we will end up back there.  Alan has been applying for jobs everywhere but for now we are just trying to figure out where the Lord wants us to be.

Before leaving CA, since Alan had free time and we already had the passes, we spent A LOT of time at Disneyland.  That was so fun.  We definitely got our money's worth.  And we had a few last trips to the beach and spent a few last days with our friends the Foates.  Dave and Louise and Matthew came out to visit and helped us pack up the truck and drove up to UT with us. We stayed a day then turned around and went down to AZ for Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving was fun.  All of my siblings and their families were there.  We got a new "whole" family picture, and since nobody is prego, it might be complete! We spent time with Cara and Shane and the kids had fun with their cousins.  On the Friday after Thanksgiving we went to the park and Zachary fell off the monkey bars and hit his face, shoving his front tooth through the inside of his lip and outside the front.  It was very bloody and traumatic, but the doctors didn't stitch the inside and he only got one stitch on the outside.  He knocked his tooth pretty loose.  But the dentist didn't think he would loose it.  His gums have firmed back up and his mouth is healing nicely.  It's a good thing that kids heal fast.  And we were also pretty lucky that this happened the day before our health insurance expired!

Alan's face is starting to get a little better.  He has been using this electro-shock thing that his parents have.  The improvement is mostly just twitching and minor movements, but that is encouraging since he has had absolutely nothing like that for the last 3 months.  His job search feels slow, but it is actually going better than the last one.  He is finally starting to hear back from some of the first jobs he applied for. He's had about 5 interviews, but no second interviews yet.  Job hunting is such a slow process.  We have had a hard time getting AZ to issue unemployment payments.  They are making him wait because of the severance and jump through a bunch of hoops.  I know that is why you have an "emergency" fund, but we are now out of money in the checking account.  Hopefully the unemployment $ comes in soon, because I really don't want to have to dip into our savings.  It would be nice to have that around when he does get a job and we want to buy a home somewhere else.  Or even to cover moving expenses a second time.

It is nice to be around all of Alan's family since we haven't gotten to spend any significant time with them for a while. I am grateful for all the wonderful people we have around us.  The last 6 months have been pretty hard on us and the next 6 months probably will be too.  But we have loving family and friends and we have the gospel and I am doing my best to be thankful for what we have and our blessings rather than focusing on our trials.  I'm doing better this time around with that at least.........

Happy Halloween!

I decked out the apartment this year, but only on the inside because we basically have a really sucky front yard. I wish I would have thought to take pictures because it was really cute.  The kids had fun watching me decorate but were disappointed that I wouldn't let them help.  AS IF!  They obviously haven't learned yet that holiday decorating is "happy time" for mommy, not the whole family.  That is why I do 2 Christmas trees now.  Some things I'm not willing to share and my holiday decorating is one of them. Maybe that is wrong, but at least I let them enjoy the view...... :-)

We went to the ward trunk-or-treat.  Our ward put on a really good one.  Very standard with a chili cook off and lots of cornbread.  It was outside and since we are in CA and not AZ, it was very pleasant instead of unbearably hot. There were lots of games in the cultural hall for the kids and the young men did a "spook alley" in the young men's room.  It was kinda lame, but you could tell they worked really hard on it so we made sure to scream a lot when walking through it.  Benjamin must have been really impressed because he thought it was so cool that he spent like 20 minutes just going through the room and trying to just 'hang out' in there.  The kids raked in the candy.  I sat on the hood of my car and since I didn't decorate my trunk, I made the kids do a trick for their treat.  I tossed the candy in the air and made the kids catch it in their sacks.  The distance from which they had to catch it was proportionate to their age of course.... hehe..... and if they came back for 2nds, 3rds or 10ths (as some did), they had to back up a little each time.  Lame, maybe, but I amused myself at least.

Kimberly was a vampire, Benjamin was an Army Guy.  Zachary wanted to be a pumpkin but there were no pumpkin costumes to be found.  I guess traditional Halloween symbols don't make cool costumes anymore.  You have to be Miley Cyrus or something.  So Zachary settled for second best and went as Thomas the Train.  And Nicholas didn't get a costume, just a cute outfit that said "my first Halloween".  Alan didn't dress up and I didn't really either.  But since I had been doing homework and was wearing a school shirt and was tired and looked like crap, I went to the party as a "tired college student".  Mostly it was an excuse to not have to shower or do something with myself.  Oh, and I guess I should mention that I started school last week.  But I'll save details on that for another post.

On Halloween night, I wasn't sure if Alan would have to work late or not, so I made arrangements with my friend Krista for her and her kids to come over to my house.  (I didn't think I could handle the school trunk-or-treat with all four kids by myself.) We watched a movie and ate pizza and Halloween cookies.  The kids played and we let them stay up too late.  Even though we didn't go out trick-or-treating I think they still had fun.  Hopefully next year we can make it back to the more 'traditional' Halloween night festivities.  Although, I'm kind of glad we didn't this year.  There is so much candy in the house I gained 2 pounds over night.  If we had gone trick-or-treating, I'd be in HUGE trouble.....PUN intended!

Disneyland and Bells Palsy

So if anyone is actually reading this (which I suspect isn't happening), you will notice that there are going to be about 4 or 5 posts in a row on the same date, give or take.  That is because life in CA has been crazy and I just haven't gotten around to updating the blog.  That doesn't mean that some of our life events haven't been worth mentioning, so I am mentioning them now as if I had done it when I was supposed to.

We broke down and got Disneyland season passes.  The kids were so excited!  It has been really fun to use them.  Kimberly, Benjamin and Alan haven't gotten as much use out of them as Zachary, Nicholas and I have, since we have a lot more free time during the day.  We have all been a few times now, but the babies and I go once a week, just for a few hours at a time.  Zachary started praying every night that tomorrow we would "go to Disneyland or Downtown Disney".  It's so stinkin' cute! Since we are limited on the rides when Zachary and Nicholas are with us, we finally got a babysitter for them and took just Kimberly and Benjamin.  Benj is big enough to go on everything except for Indiana Jones.  I think Benjamin's favorite ride was probably the Matterhorn and Kimberly seemed to really enjoy Soaring Over California, in CA Adventure.
Zachary seems overwhelmed no matter what ride we get on, but at the end says "that was awesome" after most of them.  Nicholas LOVES all the stimulation.  We have taken him on all the 'big people' rides he can go on and he has never cried.  He just stares and soaks up all the visual and auditory stimulation.  I love Disneyland.  It really is one of the happiest places on earth!

Alan's face is still a mess.  In fact, it got a lot worse before it started getting better.  After we got back home from AZ, he went to work for a week, but the nerve pain was so bad that he had to take 2 weeks of short term disability leave.  By the end of it he was feeling well enough to go back to work, but he was still uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, he just has to deal with it.  We had a horrible experience with a local neurologist.  They basically didn't believe how debilitating the pain was since Bell's Palsy isn't supposed to cause a ton of pain, usually more like discomfort.  After having a "come to Jesus" with the office manager and firing the Dr. ;-) we finally found a Dr, who would sign off on his medical leave paperwork.  The whole thing has been a nightmare.  Even though the pain is mostly gone he still has zero movement in his face. Hopefully it will start getting better soon.