Read the fine Print

Last week I went to renew my Drivers License. I was in a hurry (as usual) and finished filling out the paperwork while standing in line. Needless to say I didn’t read the questions very well. When I got ready to get my picture the lady asked me to look over all the stuff and tell her if everything looked ok. I looked it over and asked her why the expiration date was one year instead of 4 years away. She said that was because I had answered yes to the question about me being registered as a sex offender! I quickly cleared up that I wasn’t and that I had not read the questions carefully enough. When I looked at it again it had asked if I was honest in my answers to the following question. I assumed that it was asking me if I had been honest in my previous questions and that’s why I had answered yes. I never even read the following question. So, I thankfully caught the mistake before it went on my records and I learned my lesson to not skim important documents! Needles to say, I was a little flustered and my picture turned out terrible. It was wonderful that I could ask her if she could redo it. She must have thought I was a dork. I felt like one.

Taking care of the esophagus

Lynn had to go get an endoscopy yesterday because he has a disease called eosinophilic esophagitis (EE) which causes him to get food stuck in his food pipe. This can be really dangerous if it were to get stuck bad enough to tear the esophagus. So, Lynn consensted to my insistance that he get it taken care of. When we were checking in I asked the lady if this was the same place that they did the colonoscopy's. She answered yes but assured me that they were really careful to work on the right end! I thought that was really nice to know and would recommend coming to Utah Valley Hospital if you ever need an endoscopy and don't want to take a chance of getting a colonoscopy.
The Dr. said they were able to stretch 2 out of the 3 rings (or areas) of the esophageous to almost normal but the upper area they couldn't get it stretched as much as they wanted so they want to do the procedure again in a couple of months. They have him on acid reflux medicine along with an asthma medicine that he swallows instead of breathing it into his lungs.
Ironically enough Lynn's first cousin (Jeff's) son has just been diagnosed with this same problem.

Have you ever been treed before?

The picture above is of five trees that were placed on our front yard a few days after Christmas. Lynn thought it would be funny to go out and torch each one. As you can see he is on his last tree. He didn't let us know he was going to go be a pyro we found out from the neighbor who thought our house was on fire. Men are so weird. I guess Lynn's thinking was that it will be easier to get rid of tree stumps instead of the whole tree. I think it was just an excuse to play with fire.

Jazz game at its finest

Wow, what a fun night we had last night at the Jazz game with tickets from Craig. We were so close you could see the players sweat, hear what they said, and read their tatoos. I had Lynn take pictures of Kyle Korver and had fun yelling for him when I knew he could hear it. The girl we went with yelled with me and we are pretty sure we got a smile out of it. I'm wondering if it is just me who thinks he is cute or if the selection of cute players is so bad that we think Kyle is cute? Comments?

A game will never be the same again after being this spoiled. Check out the laminated tickets hanging on Lynn's neck. From the price tag I thought we might go home with furniture or something but we just went home with candy, a really full stomach, and a fun night.

Joanna

Joanna's Young Women's leader made each of the beehives a darling hat. We don't know what her hair looks like anymore because she loves to wear it. She is enjoying her club volleyball team that she is doing, but is sad she has to miss church ball for it.

Growing up

Dallin lost his front tooth. If it would have happened a little sooner we could have used it to replace Robert's front tooth. Dallin was thrilled that the tooth fairy showed up the very first night!

Christmas magic

We had a fun Remund Christmas party at our house with the usual present swap game. Everyone seems happy now with what they got now but it was traumatic for some. We kind of forgot to explain to some of the litle boys that what they might open could be a girls gift. You can image the surprise to open a girls gift when you are all boy!

Here is a copy of our song we performed at the Shields family Christmas party. It was sung to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree"

Oh, Lynn wants more hair to grow,

and Lisa wants less gray to show,

Oh, Robert hates the word no,

and Joanna still goes with the flo,

James can grow a wicked afro,

and Taylors weight is way too low,

Dallin is a rock band pro,

and Kyle likes to eat the snow!

We had a great Christmas. Here we are lining up getting ready to run in and see what Santa left. Everyone is holding their new blankets that Grandma Shields made for them and gave them at our fun Christmas Eve party at her house.

Bedroom swap

Taylor got a new space blanket for Christmas with a lamp and glow in the dark stars. We then redid James and Kyle's old room into a "space" room and Taylor moved in. James got to move downstairs in the "Football" room and though I don't have a picture you can imagine he put our new BYU flag right above his bed. He has wanted to move downstairs for awhile now and already thinks he is a teenager. Joanna is loving not having to go downstairs alone anymore since Robert never goes to bed until later.

For some reason this picture wouldn't turn the right way but this is the planet we painted on Taylor's new bedroom wall and the border is stickers and paint. The kids had a lot of fun helping me do it.

Kyle got to move into Dallin's "dinosaur" room and is liking it!

Dallin is the only one that didn't get to move somewhere new but he is still happy with the volcano he helped paint. On the dresser you can see the banks that Lynn worked hard on making for the kids with 3 separate sections for giving, saving, and spending. They have a lock so we can hopefully manage the money a little better.

Winter finally came

The kids have had a lot of fun playing in the snow this year. I can't believe how much more they have played in the snow since having a dog. Emma follows them everywhere and is so fun to play with. She runs in snow that is deeper than her and it looks so funny. I wish I had a picture of Emma when she went on the sled with Lynn. She is such a good dog. We have been able to let her come inside in the evenings when it gets really cold and she will stay right on her bed. She knows if she gets off she has to go out. So far it has been a good system and Joanna hasn't had an allergic reaction. We sure enjoy our snow blower that we got for Christmas. We had around 18" of snow on Christmas day.

Oldest and Youngest

This is Robert's latest look. Church ball is getting a little too rough. A foul by Robert's best friend was made against Robert which caused him to smack his tooth on the gym floor.
Fortunately we have a dentist in our ward who went and glued it back on at 9:00 that night. He said it still has a 50/50 chance of the tooth dying but since we found the piece and got it glued on before it dried up we might have a chance of it being ok without more work done. I know it wasn't Robert's fault but I couldn't help notice that most people don't chip their front tooth 3 times before they are even 18!

My baby is officially four years old.

He enjoyed making a cake and having breakfast served in bed!

Bad mother moment

One of the reasons I don't update my blog or write e-mails as much as I should is because of the neglect my kids get when I do. Tonight I had Joanna take the Costco cordon bleu chicken out of of the oven and told her to start feeding everyone as I was at the computer. The kids were half way done eating before I realized the chicken wasn't done and they were eating raw chicken. Joanna ate the most because she was trying to be nice and not say the dinner was gross!
So, now the waiting game begins to see if any of my children get sick because I'm a neglectful mom. So, what do I do about it? Go write the experience in my blog and spend more time at the computer. I am weird.