Haagen-Daaz....you ROCK!

Tuesday, December 16th--Last night we went to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point. They were pretty cool then off to Albertson's to see if they had any fun Christmas-type ice cream flavors. I was on the hunt for a specific flavor I discovered at Primary Childrens Medical Center. After visiting my nephew, a few weeks ago, we went down to the cafeteria and they had a Haagen-Daaz flavor I hadn't seen before: Peppermint Bark. I bought it and it was YUMMY! So I found it last night and also saw another flavor I hadn't seen before: Creme Brulee. So amazingly good too! So here's two flavors I HIGHLY recommend. Creme Brulee is really rich, a few spoonfuls and you're good to go.

And if you've discovered an ice cream flavor that is incredibly yummy please share with me! Like I need it! But hey, ice cream is just one of my favs!

Yes, Elise & Brady, There Is A Santa Claus!

Sunday, December 14th--Yesterday was pure madness! We made plans to got to South Towne Mall and see Santa Claus, then off to Sweet Tomato's for dinner, then downtown to Temple Square to see the lights. Well, all I can say is.......dinner was great! We got to the mall and the line to see Santa seemed not so bad. Nate got in line with Brady and Elise and I headed to "Childrens Place" to do a little shopping for one of the nieces. We got back and everyone in the line looked a little annoyed. I guess Santa had to go screw a new lightbulb in to Rudolph's nose or something like that. We waited in line for 45 minutes and no Santa. Brady was done but Elise still wanted to wait. I bribbed her by telling her we'd go to the "Hello Kitty" store if we could get out of line. She said, "Sure!" So we went there and then off to dinner. We love Sweet Tomato's. It's such a fantastic salad bar buffet. Our tummies were full so we headed downtown Salt Lake to Temple Square to look at the lights. I suggested we take Trax but Nate thought it be best to drive down. How wrong he was!!!! On our way we picked up my niece, Samantha. We circled the square for almost an hour before giving up--no parking! The kids were pretty bummed by now so we tried to think of something to do to cheer them up. As we were driving back to drop off Samantha at her house I remembered a little Santa house in Sugarhouse. It's a 6' x 8' shed-like building that sits outside in Sugarhouse's town center. We drove up and prayed they would still be open, if it was still around at all (it was already 8:00 pm). It was there and the lights on. Nate ran out to see if Santa was still around. He motioned for us to run over. We did and Nate came up to me with a big grin and said, "They close at 8:00 but said they don't turn down any children that are waiting at the door." How sweet! No lines and a wonderfully, friendly Santa that hung around well after he was suppose to. He made the kids feel so special and I was very touched.

SO, if you can't bear the thought of waiting in long lines to see Santa at the mall, go down to Sugarhouse and visit Santa in his little house. He's right across the street from the old "Blue Boutique" (so hilarious!). AND, take Trax if you're going downtown to see the Temple Square lights.

My Little Metal-Mouth

Saturday, December 13th--Elise got her expanders in on Tuesday, December 9th. They went in quite easily and haven't bothered her much--only when I have to crank them. She is still adjusting to talking, eating and swallowing. She doesn't want to try and eat anything, we kind of have to force her. I've never had expanders in but I can imagine it's not very fun to have food caught in the metal. She's constantly trying to pick it out. The drooling gets a little annoying. She wipes it on her blankets so I'm washing them often. We've noticed she's lost a pound or two so it's time to get tough. If she had her way, she'd be happy to drink milkshakes and chocolate milk the whole time! The expanders will be in for about 6-9 months. In 3-4 months she will also have braces put in on the front 4 teeth--top and bottom--to bring the teeth back in to alignment. Once she's lost all of her teeth and the permanent ones are in then she'll get a full set of braces. Oh joy..........not!

Weird Sleeper!

Monday, December 8th--I forgot to post this a few days ago. After we left Nate's parents house, after taking our family Christmas photos, we noticed it was quite late and were certain both the kids would fall asleep on the drive home. Well, Brady did and he made himself quite comfortable!

Happy Birthday Pops!

Thursday, December 11th--Today is my dads 59th birthday. Next year is the big 6-0! Hmm, what to do, what to do? Well, not sure yet but I have a whole year to think about it! Dad, hope you had a great birthday and have a wonderful year. Think positive! Happy Birthday! We love you!

**This pic is of my dad, Cal, and my niece, Samantha in July, 2008.

New Family Christmas Photos

Monday, December 8th--YES!! We went over to Nate's parents house tonight for some fun visiting and for his fabulous mom, Rosemary, to take our family Christmas photo. We send our photos with Christmas cards every year. I'm so happy I can work on getting my Christmas cards out now. I've got a long list! Here's the finished products:

Jacob Be Strong!

Sunday, December 7th--I got an update from my sister, Alishia, about my nephew, Jacob. Primary Childrens is keeping him for 1-2 more days (he was suppose to be released today). While he was doing fantastic last night, as we visited with him, he began to do worse in the middle of the night. The on-call endocrinologist talked with Alishia and explained what the problem might be. Jacobs liver is storing sugar and not releasing it with the response of insulin, like it should. His body seems to be resisting insulin. Little by little, the liver is releasing the sugar on its own, causing crazy glucose highs. The endocrinologist says this is common for people with Type 2 Diabetes (Jacob has Type 1). So does this mean he has both? Is that even possible? What the crap?! Tonight he is being started on some medication Type 2 Diabetics take, in hopes it'll do the trick. Tomorrow he starts a long day of being re-educated on dealing with diabetes. As much as he'll hate it, he needs it. He's been a slacker in taking care of himself (he's a teenager, nuff said).
Hang in there, Jacob! Fight the good fight and have faith! We love you and pray for everything to be okay!

Family & Trials

Saturday, December 6th--Tonight I had plans to start up my Christmas baking. I've been trying to find the ambition to do so for a few days now--it's all in the plan to get everything done early this year instead of last minute (yeah, right, like that's going to happen!). This afternoon, I got a call from my sister, Alishia, saying her 16-year-old, Jacob, is at Primary Childrens Medical Center. Yesterday morning he had his wisdom teeth taken out and the whole rest of the day, and into the night, he was vomitting continually. No medication was helping to ease the nausea. Just like Brady, Jacob has Juvenile Diabetes (diagnosed almost exactly a year before Brady was). Alishia decided to take Jacob to the ER last night. Due to the excessive vomitting and dehydration, his glucose levels were extremely high (400's), his ketones high and he was in ketoacidosis. He was admitted and told he was not able to have any meds for pain due to the risk of cerebral edema (if you need me to explain any of this, please ask). With levels so high, Jacob also had a horrible headache. Needless to say, neither he nor Alishia slept last night. When she called to tell me all of this she also asked if we could make the hour trip to Primary Childrens to have Nate give Jacob a blessing. I didn't even give it a second thought, of course we would go. Christmas baking, not so important to get done tonight and I knew the Lord would bless me with time on another day. We got to the hospital and Jacobs glucose level was back to normal, ketones dropping. Hooray! Nate helped my brother-in-law, Shad, give Jacob a blessing. It was quite emotional, the Spirit so incredibly strong. On the way to the hospital Nate and I talked about how it seems so unfair a simple thing such as getting wisdom teeth pulled can lead to such an ordeal for a person with Type 1 Diabetes. It definitely gave us insight to the possibilities ahead with Brady. It's comforting to know Alishia would drop everything for me as well, just like she did when Brady was first diagnosed.

Today, I also found out my dad was in a car accident last night. On the way home from work, a car passed him and clipped the side of the front bumper while trying to get back into the lane my dad was in. Fortunately, the damage was miner and no injuries. My dad even held his tongue while exchanging information with the idiot driver (the jerk would not have been so fortunate had he hit me!). This accident was on top of an already stressful week for my dad. He was called to be 1st Counselor in the ward Bishopric this past Sunday--his blood pressure was already pretty high from the stress of taking on a huge calling and finding there's a lot to be done to "clean house". And to top off this fun-filled day, my mom will probably be needing surgery in the near future. She's had problems with her galbladder for quite some time. I've had mine out so I know it's a fairly minor proceedure, usually outpatient, but she's stressing out about all the bazillion things she needs to do this holiday season plus my other sister and her family are moving into my parents house this month. I worry she'll overdo and cause more health problems for herself.

One thing I've thought about today is how blessed I am to know that my family would stop what they're doing and be there for me in a split second, if needed. And I feel the same for each of them. While my family is dealing with temporary trials we know we have an amazing support system. Some of my family is 1000 miles away. I don't get to see them very often, 2-3 times a year. It's never enough time but we make the best of it. When we're not together we talk on the phone or through email, Facebook, etc. Whether it be Christmas or any time of the year, family is truly the greatest gift. We're there for each other, not only because we should be, but because we want to be.

Oh Christmas Trees....

Wednesday, December 3rd--YES! Our two Christmas trees are decorated. Nate and the kids decorated the one in the downstairs family room. They did a superb job! You can tell Nate let Brady and Elise do most of the work, since most of the ornaments are at the bottom. And me, being ever-so-slightly OCD (yeah, right! More like major OCD!) has to have my own tree every year. This tree is in the front living room. I think it turned out the best it's ever turned out. I REALLY wanted a real tree this year but I didn't want to risk it drying out by getting it now instead of waiting a few weeks, which I didn't want to do. Oh well, one of these Christmases! These photos don't do our trees the best justice but that's okay, we're enjoying them and that's all that matters!

Christmas Craft Idea #3

Monday, December 1st--I received a very touching Christmas story from my visiting teachers, last year. It's a story called "Teach the Children". Here is a link to the story:

http://www.llerrah.com/truemeaningofchristmas.htm

This link titles the story "True Meaning of Christmas" but the copy I received titled it "Teach the Children". I've seen a couple of versions to this story, with different symbols but I like this one the best.
Much like "The Forgotten Carols" ornament tree, I thought about making or buying the symbols and placing them on a small tree and then giving one of each of these completed trees, with a framed version of the story to family members this year. I decided not to go with the idea but figured it would be a fairly in-expensive project. The framed story would be just the story glued onto pretty Christmas scrapbook paper and then placed in an in-expensive frame (Wal-Mart has them for $2.00). If I didn't like the frame as it was, then I was going to paint it red or green and then paint over that with glitter glue (really cheap to do!).
For the ornaments/symbols I looked at a website called: www.orientaltrading.com This is a pretty popular website and they sell many different kinds of ornaments in larger quantities (assuming you'd like to do this project for gifts). I did a search for each of the symbols/ornaments and was able to find most of them at an in-expensive cost. For the ones I couldn't find I was just going to go to Robert's and see what I could find and then use one of my discount coupons--or go with the cardboard shoebox route and design my own ornament. Robert's also has in-expensive unfinished wooden boxes that would be perfect to paint and use as a storage container for the ornaments.
If this is a project you are interested in doing and need some more input I would be HAPPY to HELP you! I've got the image in my head of how it's suppose to look and I think it would be a very touching gift for any family. I had this thought that a family that received such a gift could read the story, every year, with their children and the children could place the symbols on or around their little tree then put the framed story next to it---what an amazing reminder of the true meaning of Christmas!