The things you say when heavily medicated . . .

Baby Dillon is two weeks old today. A major milestone for all new moms because it is the official end of all the impossible restrictions that the nursing staff from the hospital give you. Honestly, who can possibly keep from driving a car, climbing stairs, or picking up only ten pounds or less for two weeks!?? In fact, when going through my release paperwork, I laughed hysterically at the idea of not driving for two weeks and the attending nurse said that she would leave that up to my discretion. Wise of her . . .

All that being said, Adam spent the first six days of Dillon's life trying to stop me from doing any and all housework, child-care, or errands. I give him chops for being the only man in my life that I would actually listen to on that topic; but I still did more than I probably should have. So when day number 13 rolled around I was all set and rearing to go to tackle the accumulated grime, dust, etc. that I had impatiently been watching for nearly two weeks. I told Adam that I was going to clean ONE level of the house (we have four levels), just one (showing great restraint, right?). Adam responded with ONE ROOM. And I came back with NO, ONE LEVEL! And so he diplomatically suggested that we compromise and I do half of one level (that is ONE ROOM). Aw come on!!

So I did one level! But I ran out of steam before I finished it, so I guess we both won. Anyway, the next day I was all set to tackle the next level, but I didn't have the time or energy--Sabrina, Moira, and Brayden are all sick with the flu. At the end of the day, when Adam came home from work I proudly announced: "Honey, you'd be proud of me. I didn't clean a single thing today!!" He beamed and patted me on the back. Five minutes later I burst out laughing when I realized what I'd said. I think that was the first time in our marriage that such a conversation took place. And it will likely be the last. How many women can receive such an accolade from their husband after doing as little as possible all day long.

Dillon Isaac Bowers

Dillon Isaac Bowers was welcomed into this world at 2:36pm on 3-1-11. He was definitely done baking in the oven. He weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs 12 oz. Wendy chose not to have an epidural. The nurses were quite impressed with how well she handled the pain of labor. At 2pm the doctor suggested she rethink the epidural choice, but she insisted that her pain was only at a 6 from 1-10. The nurse gave her a little pain medication in her IV and we were off to the races. The doctor came rushing back into the room at 2:25 and was rushing to get his robes on before the baby came out on his own. Wendy did fantastic and was ready to be done, as you can imagine.

We brought the children over to see their little brother. They were SO excited. We couldn't get a picture that showed their excitement, but this baby is all they could talk about for a week. In their prayers last night they each asked for Dillon and Mom to be OK in the hospital. Babies are the only time they have spent a night without her.

People always seem to ask so here is my answer, "I was done having children at one, but we have four now so you can tell that it is Wendy's decision as to when we are done having kids."

Brayden's first RC car

For his birthday Brayden got a remote-control car. We knew he would love it because, come on! it's a boy controlling a race car that tears through the house and crashes into stuff and chases his sisters! What's not to love? Well, everybody loved it! Including the big "boy-at-heart" Daddy who is anxiously counting down the years until he can justify buying a "real" RC car/truck/helicopter for them both to play with. This RC car was designed with little boys in mind. Built by Tonka it has soft tires and a soft body, flips over to run on both top and bottom, and has a two button remote that's easy to hold. I am especially grateful for the soft tires and body because otherwise I'd have holes in the walls of the stairwell. Brayden will frequently drive it down the stairs and keep going without a hitch (thanks to that handy flip-feature).

The other day I overheard him talking to the car, bossing it around when it wasn't going the right direction. Apparently they've named both sides of the car! The red and yellow side is named "Arnold" and the blue side is named "Stinky". What? I finally figured out that Arnold must have come from a character on the Magic School Bus series, and Stinky--well, your guess is as good as mine but I'm pretty sure a lively imagination could come up with several possibilities.

Pictures coming soon. . .

Christmas with the sickos

Not Christmas with the Kranks, because we have loads of holiday spirit around our house, except for Adam who practices great forebearance with my four Christmas trees, garland bestrung railings, and Christmas music turned on full blast the day after Thanksgiving. But definitely Christmas with the flu. For those of you who were wondering about flu shots this year. YES totally worth it--hindsight is 20/20. And I was just informed by last night's NBC nightly news that this years vaccine matches up perfectly with the active flu strains running amok among the populous. AWWW, now you tell me! I lost my bet against the Russian roulette of flu season this year. So, I have been sick for three, count them 3, weeks of December. Not little hack, hack, runny nose sick either. But full on can't breathe, can't move, can't taste anything I put in my mouth sick. The kind of sick where you desperately want to sleep, but can't seem to get comfortable enough and then you find yourself drifting off during episodes of cartoons at 9 a.m. with your kids sitting on your lap. Aww, sleep at last!! To make matters even more fun, all three of our children came down with it on December 23rd. So Christmas morning at our house was not filled with the shrieks and squeals of excited anticipation being gratified, but rather a fairly lethargic, quiet affair punctuated by hacking coughs and noses being blown. I knew that in a few days they would recognize their gifts and begin playing with them, but at the moment No. In fact, we opened all our presents, Adam took us into the kitchen and fed us something (tasteless), then we all climbed upstairs and back into our respective beds. How pathetic is that? Brayden, who seems to have a fairly tough little immune system, was one of the first to recover and so kept Adam occupied while the rest of us spent most of the Christmas weekend in a drug-induced haze. Did I mention that Adam was the only one to get a flu shot and therefore was not ill and became the official nurse? He even made up a batch of homemade chicken noodle soup; very chunky and delicious. What a guy!

Now it's been a week since Christmas and the kids have pretty much recovered. Sabrina still has a cough, she has medication from her doctor to help her deal with that. And I, being seven months pregnant, seem to be somewhat immuno-compromised and therefore weaker than normal and still sick. To add insult to injury Adam came down with a head cold. I think it's all part of the plan. We were supposed to travel to Washington to visit Grandma the week after Christmas, but being sick we decided against it. Good thing, I guess, because a series of nasty snowstorms came through that week and we probably would have been trying to drive through snow-filled passes instead of hunkered down in our beds. But so much for a nice, restful Christmas vacation.

One great highlight of all this sickness: I was so ill I lost three pounds over the holidays! HA!! All that junk food was unappetizing because I couldn't taste it.

To recap: We had a nice, quiet Christmas. Everbody got what they wanted and we spent a lot of our time just hanging out together. Sweet.

Halloween 2010

Although many things have happened in our life over the past few months we failed to post them here. At any rate let me tell you about the past couple weeks. Today, we decided it was time to take down the trampoline for the winter. As Wendy and I were in the backyard we sent the girls to decorate the front door with little pumpkins. All of a sudden we hear a thump and Brayden (who was supposed to be taking a nap) crying. As we ran to the front of the house we quickly discovered what the fuss was about.

Braden had pushed the screen out of his bedroom window and took a head dive to the ground - 8 feet below! Wendy and I both said quick prayers in our hearts and checked him over. Considering we have a concrete flower box under his window we were extremely concerned. We count it as a miracle that he has nothing more than a couple bruises (and a whopper of a goose egg) on his head. Can you imagine, falling 8 feet from a window and falling through a bush with no sprained wrists, broken bones, scratches or even a concussion? We put an ice pack on his head and knelt down and said a humbling prayer of thanks. Brayden must have something important in his life to be spared such a fall.

Brayden decided it was time to take a nap at that point. We checked on him regularly to make sure he was still doing well. Miracles do happen. Quite humbling when they happen so close.

Since our neighborhood was doing its annual trunk-or-treat we dressed up and shared our breadsticks at the potluck. Here are some pictures.

Brayden is butt naked which is why he is not standing - potty training in progress.

Since we are sharing here you might as well know we are expecting an additional boy to the above photo round about March 1, 2011.

And Murphy strikes again. . .

Adam mentioned that we just bought a tramp for the kids. They LOVE it! The wonderful thing about having a tramp in the backyard is that when I tell the kids to stay in the backyard they actually obey! Phenomenal! For this reason alone it was worth the money, though we still got a great deal on it. It pays to shop around and watch ksl classifieds.

But life goes on and "Murphy" paid us a visit. (Not meaning any disrespect to my wonderful and adored cousins) For the past year or two I had noticed a hard-water bloom on the foundation wall of the house under the kitchen sink. So we watched it to see if it grew or subsided, it didn't do either. Then two weeks ago when my parents were visiting, my dad rested a hand against the wall of the downstairs guest bedroom while he put his shoes on and the wall just collapsed under him. Oooohhhh, that can't be good. Yeah, it wasn't.

We had a plumber over last week and he diagnosed the problem. We had two hairline cracks in the kitchen drain pipe. And apparently they're pretty old judging by the ruined insulation, wet drywall, and hard water deposits inside the wall. We had a few bids done by reclamation companies who treat mold, and a few calls into our insurance agent, to discover that the cost for said repairs is going to be at least over $1000 out of pocket, possibly more. One bid came in at over $2000. And mold repairs are not covered by most major insurers--those *%^#$*@ insurance companies and their fine print.

I'm reminded of an episode from "The King of Queens" where the Heffernan's find mold in the basement that would cost $12,000 to repair. And apparently Doug was informed of said problem by the agent/seller before closing on the property. When Kari confronts Doug about his "stupidity" he responds with the excuse that mold sounded like a good thing because mold makes excellent gourmet cheeses!

So now, I'm cursing the trampoline and the money we spent on it. Though honestly we didn't pay anywhere near that amount and we did promise the kids we would get them one when our family reached certain milestones. But it always works that way! Just when you save up and buy that more expensive item you're so excited about, "Murphy" sideswipes you with an emergency that hits you in the gut. Not that I'm complaining, it really could be a lot worse. Fortunately, none of us have symptoms from toxic mold, so I'm hopeful that the repair won't be too bad. Here's to calling in the plumber sooner than later.

In a Jam . . .

Our local grocer had a spectacular sale on red raspberries and blackberries so we picked up a couple flats and made about 18 pints of freezer jam. Some raspberry, some blackberry, and some mixed. All of them are good, but the blackberry is outstanding. I never realized how good blackberries are. We are looking forward to the raspberries in our yard to ripen. I can see that they are loaded this year.

By the way, this is what our backyard looked like a couple weeks ago. I will take another picture in a few weeks. With all of the rain lately our garden has been growing quite well. We also added a trampoline at the kids repeated request.