HANDS, FEET & MOUTHS

Would that be the correct way of making it plural??? That’s right, folks, we are now dealing with THREE children who have it! September is the only one who doesn’t have it yet, and I’m sure it’s only time before she does. I’m keeping her home from school today too, just in case. She’s devastated! Not only because she loves school, but also because they’re doing testing this week and her teacher is doing a contest between the “early birds” and “lator gators” of who can have the most people present for testing. So Ember thinks she’s letting her class down. She’s been crying all night and was only a little relieved when I told her that I’d email her teacher and let her know what’s going on. She also left her homework for the week at school today…of all days. Once again, tears! Bless her cute little school-lovin heart!! Kya on the other hand is fine with missing school. She just said, "Yay, it's like another Spring Break!"

So if anyone needs to find me in the next week…I’ll be at home! Aughhhhh!!!! I’m sure you won’t want to find me though. Please, just stay away!!

Goodbye cast - good riddance!!!

So we got Logan’s cast removed yesterday. Hopefully it was his FINAL cast for the rest of his life! He did NOT want anything to do with the cast saw this time. He hasn’t minded it much in the past, it was only the scissors he was scared of. But this time it took me and a male doctor to hold him down while one of the interns sawed and cut it off. Whew! The good news….even though he tiptoed out of the place, we got home and he started walking flat on his foot and just said, “Look Mom, I can walk flat!” He’s still tiptoeing around when he’s not thinking about it, but flat when we remind him. Now this is more what we expected the last time we took off the cast. So it looks like we’re out of the woods. No physical therapy for him! I am SOOOO happy!!!!!

Note: This post and any following posts are written in"real" time. Because of the way that blogs are published....ya know, showing the most recent post first....you may not know what I'm talking about. If you don't, go read the "disclaimer" a few posts down.

Here's Logan contemplating which color cast he should get next. I think he was a little disappointed when I told him we were DONE getting casts!! He just said, "Oh, man!"....one of his favorite things to say when he doesn't get his way.

He was not liking it very much.


I love how both of them have their heads cocked to the side. Who trained these kids??

Kya's 6th Birthday

As I mentioned earlier, it was Kya’s birthday last Thursday. She turned 6! When did she get so old?!? I keep telling all of my kids to stop growing up but they won’t listen!

I’ve already posted about how crazy and frustrating her actual birthday turned out, but we also celebrated with family the Sunday before. It was a last minute decision to do so, but it turned out all right all things considered.

Here’s a funny story. We had wanted to get Kya a new bike for her birthday. Not only had she started to outgrow her old one, but it had a flat tire. We figured that she was going to need a new one soon anyway, so instead of fixing the flat on the old one, we’d get her a new one. Well, we didn’t want to buy it too early because we didn’t want to have to store it any longer than needed because of her possibly finding it. But when we decided at the last minute to celebrate her birthday on Sunday, I had to run out on Saturday night and get her bike. I got to the store and as I tried to find the one that Matthew and I had decided on earlier, I couldn’t find it. It looked like it was sold out. So I needed to talk to an employee, but the one there in the area was already helping someone. When he was done, I went over to talk to him and lo and behold…it was my long-lost cousin that I hadn’t seen in like 9 years! I wasn’t positive it was him, so I said, “John?”, and he gave me a weird look. So I thought I’d just made a fool of myself and that it wasn’t really him. So I said, “Is your name John?” He pointed to his name tag and sure enough it said John, so I asked him if he knew who I was and he did. So we chatted for a few minutes and I told him that I was buying the bike for my daughter’s birthday that we were celebrating the next day and I invited him over. He’s only met Matthew maybe once, and has never met my kids. He ended up coming and brought his 2-year old son, who I of course had not met. He was too cute! (His pic is below. He is all boy and just LOVES trucks, trains, you name it. So he went and found one of Logan's biggest trucks and adopted it for the evening.) His wife wasn’t able to come because she’s a teacher and she had school she needed to prepare for the next day. So I still have yet to meet her. Someday….

But anyway, things turned out really fun. We opened gifts and then had an ice-cream sundae bar and cake. Nothing too crazy, but it was fun. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KYA!!!

(Here's Kya in the robe my parents gave her. You can see the matching pj's on the floor. I think she wore this whole get-up around for about 5 days straight if you don't count going to school.)

(Here's Logan "helping" Matthew record the event. I'm pretty sure he was more of a hindrance!)

(Here's Kya blowing out the "pretend" candles on her birthday cake. I went to put the candles on and light them....um, we didn't have any. Oops!! So I made her pretend.)

Logan playing dress-ups....

O.k. so that last post got me thinking about all of the times that Logan plays dress-ups. I think he enjoys dressing up more than my girls do. A few weeks ago Kya went to a friend’s birthday party where the theme was “fairies”. So when Kya came home she was on a huge fairy kick. She was a fairy for Halloween last year so she made me get out her old costume so she could wear it around. Well, Logan really got into the fairy kick with her and decided that he needed to wear the wings…a LOT. In fact, he ended up wearing them to bed one night. The pics I have are of him the next morning. I wish I could’ve gotten some while he was sleeping. It was too precious! He is such a character!!

Here he is as "Super Why"....a cute, little not-very-well-known show that he LOVES!

Pretty as a princess!

Here's the "fairy" pics. If you look close enough, you can see a big bump/bruise on his forehead from pulling Matthew's nightstand on top of him. He sure is a clumsy little fairy!

This one just cracks me up for some reason. I guess he's not technically playing "dress-ups", but it still fit in well enough. He just put on this hat of Ember's one day and was walking around practically bumping into things because he couldn't see where he was going. Maybe the picture doesn't do it as much justice as the memories I have in my head, but I just LOVE this picture.


He's ALWAYS getting into the girls princess pj's. These pics are from about a year ago and the girls have pretty much outgrown them. I guess we can hand them down to Logan. He'd love it!



Strutting his stuff in his high heels. I had the BEST picture of him in the high heels and it got erased along with a bunch of other great pics of Logan. But this one does enough justice I guess.

I don't think he's ever been able to figure out how to wear sunglasses correctly. They always end up upside down.

What a stud!


Here he is for Halloween last year. I was so excited to have him wear this costume I put together because it was so appropriate....well, what do you know, the one day that it's perfectly normal and even encouraged to dress-up, he did NOT want to! This is about the closest we ever came to having him in his costume.

And last, but not least, here he is attempting to get all "made up". I was so mad, but I couldn't stay mad for long before I had to go grab the camera. This pic is from about a year ago too. Look at his young, chubby face!

My FOUR princesses!

Yes, that’s right, I said FOUR! You may think I have just three girls, but that doesn’t mean that Logan can’t dress up like a princess. A couple weeks ago the girls were dressing up in their princess dresses and Logan was very insistent that he wear one too. So what did the girls do? They dressed him up of course…and Peyton, too! When they came up to show me, I just grabbed the camera and thought, “Dad’s gonna love this!” Plus, it’ll make great blackmail someday. (Like we need any more blackmail pictures. This kid’s got plenty.)

The "secret" park

A couple weeks ago my brother, Chuck, and his wife, Ginger, and their kids came down. We hadn’t celebrated my dad’s bday yet, so we decided that since they were going to be down that we should all meet up at a park and have a picnic and celebrate. Well, Chuck and Ginger wanted to come down and check out Ikea for things to furnish the cabins that they’re building to rent out up in Bear Lake, so we decided to meet at a park near there. My Dad ended up finding a nice little “secret” park hidden at a dead end within a neighborhood. It was perfect because there weren’t a whole lot of people. We probably bothered the people there because they are probably people that live in the neighborhood and knew that we weren’t, but oh well, we had fun. Afterwards, we took my niece and nephew home with us so that Chuck & Ginger could go to Ikea without having to worry about the kids. After all, Ikea is quite the adventure! It was crazy having our 8-passenger Pilot loaded with kids. Yikes! Their daughter, Zailey, is just three months younger than Logan, and their son, Zenick, is just two weeks older than Peyton, so it’s fun. Logan and Zailey had a ball together!

Here's the Pilot loaded with kids and carseats! Aughhh!!!

Happy one second, sad/mad the next. Funny kids!

Teeth!!

A couple weeks ago Kya lost her first tooth! It had been wiggly for a few days, and then one morning she and Ember came bursting into the room at 6:45 am…TURNED ON THE LIGHTS…to tell us that Kya had lost her tooth. She had just woken up and felt it in her mouth. She’s lucky she didn’t swallow it. It took a while for the tooth fairy to come because we tried to find a book like Ember has where you write letters to the tooth fairy and it has places where you put all of the details in about each lost tooth and so on and it has a pocket in the front that you put the tooth in, etc...but we couldn’t find one anywhere. (BTW, this was one of the errands that I was out doing on one of the days that Logan decided he couldn’t walk anymore, so I was carrying him with one arm and Peyton in her carseat in the other because places like Barnes & Noble of course does not have carts. Not fun!) But anyway, finally we had her write her own note to the tooth fairy and lo and behold, she came! What a happy day!

We have been saying for weeks now that Peyton is getting teeth. Isn’t that what parents always do once their child hits about 6 months and are ornery for no reason? Why not blame it on teething! Anyway, we thought it would’ve been funny if she would’ve finally gotten her first tooth on the day Kya lost hers, but no. But only about a week later, on Kya’s birthday no less, we did our daily mouth check, and sure enough, she had a tooth! I’m going to miss her toothless grin!!

Give it up for the "THL Ladies"

This past year I have spent my Wednesday mornings volunteering at the Take Home Library (the “THL”) at the girl’s school. It’s great….because I can take my kids. It can be a little frustrating sometimes…because I have my kids! Sometimes I wonder if I’m even any help because I’m constantly distracted by Logan getting into some kind of trouble. He has a little friend there, Davis, who is almost his same age and is an angel child. I hope Logan didn’t corrupt him. This poor kid would just watch Logan getting into mischief and look at either his mom or me with this look of either, “Do you SEE what he’s doing. He’s being naughty. Make him stop!”, or “Do you SEE what he’s doing. It looks like fun. I’d like to join him, but I need to make sure you’re not watching.” They are funny together.

Anyway, our volunteering is over for the year and I’m both relieved and bummed. It’ll be nice having my Wednesday mornings to myself, but I’ll miss being forced to get out and be around adults. I made some great friends this year and in fact, they’re the ones that inspired me to start this blog. I’ll miss you Heather and Deborah! We need to get together and do something. But if not, we always have our blogs to keep up on each others lives, right?

Quietly eating pretzels for the time being....

Logan & Davis didn't like having to go back and forth to get pretzels, so they decided to just hop in the cupboard WITH the pretzels. Good thinkin' boys!

Here's just part of the room, which doesn't show near what a disaster it turns into by the time we're done. You can however, see Logan and Davis peaking out from the pretzel cupboard. :)

Hard at work!

Here's Heather! :)

Here's Deborah!

The Saga of Logan...

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted and a LOT has happened, so I have a few things I need to catch up on. So prepare for a novel! ;) It has been a very long past couple weeks!!

First of all, we got Logan's cast removed about three weeks ago. Yay! Oh wait, not so fast....we went back a couple weeks ago and got ANOTHER one put back on. When we went a few weeks ago and got the last one off they were a little undecided on whether or not he needed another cast. It seemed to heal faster than expected even for a kid, but the x-rays looked so great they decided not to. Well, we expected him to go gentle on his foot for the first day or two, and they told us to expect it. But he did more than go gentle….he would NOT walk normal on it even after 4 or 5 days, and it just went downhill. He would walk around with his foot pointed down the way it was in the cast. This put pressure on his right foot and made it start hurting as well. He got to the point where he would just stop walking altogether and either beg to be picked up, or just crawl….and he was crying all the time and saying that it hurt. After having it off for 6 days he started begging to go back to the hospital! O.k. this is a kid who has a pretty high pain tolerance. He’ll pout a little, make you kiss it better, and off he goes. So this was weird. So I called and made the soonest appointment I could which was three more days away, and just hoped that things would actually get better before the appointment and I could call and cancel it. Nope, they only got worse. But when I took him in and the dr. checked him she was pushing on the top of his foot, pushing it to make his foot flat, etc… and he just went along with it. Isn’t that how it always is? So they took x-rays and everything looked good….even better than the day he got the last cast off. The dr. probably thought I was just overreacting. Then she saw him walk on it. Whether it’s all in his head, or there really is something going on, she decided to put him back in a cast so that she could put it flat so he’d be forced to walk flat on it. So she said that he’d have to have the cast on for two weeks and if he still wouldn’t walk on it they’d put him in physical therapy which she said is just mean and that we really wouldn’t want to do that. So the first few days went o.k. He began to walk a little more flat on it. But after a few days he just started saying that it hurt and we couldn’t tell if his foot was still bothering him, or the cast. But he just got to the point where he was just whining ALL the time again.

(These are pics of the "second" cast removal.)

Then, last Thursday was Kya’s birthday. We only do big parties with friends on certain years and on the other years they just get to pick a place to go and invite one friend. This was just a “one friend” year and Kya decided she wanted to go swimming. We realized that Logan wasn’t going to be able to come because of his cast, so my friend Kristi offered to babysit, bless her heart. So Thursday morning I went up to the school to volunteer. I usually go on Wednesdays but I decided to do Thursday this week because I’d have to go take birthday treats to Kya’s class anyway AND I was going to be picking her up to take her out to lunch. After being at the school for about 45 minutes Logan just started whining and crying and saying “it hurts” and “I don’t like this”. I of course just thought he was talking about his foot again, but then he started getting a fever. I was worried about taking him out to lunch with us but I had some medicine in the car that I gave him and it seemed to help pretty fast. On our way to pick up Matthew so that he could go with us it started SNOWING!!! It was April 24^th for heaven sake!! Suddenly the thought of going swimming didn’t sound so fun anymore. So Kya decided that she wanted to go to Kangaroo Zoo (no, it’s not a zoo with kangaroos as the name may suggest…it’s a place with a bunch of blow-up slides and bouncehouses). Well, we really debated back and forth about whether or not we should take Logan. He seemed to be feeling better, but we thought it would be too mean to take him to a place that he couldn’t participate in the fun. So we were just about to take him over to Kristi’s when he suddenly started getting another fever….then turning purplish….then getting the chills. My niece had just spent a night at Primary Children’s a few days earlier with similar symptoms and they still hadn’t completely figured out what was wrong with her, so I started freaking out. So Matthew stayed home with him and Peyton, and I took Ember, Kya, and Kya’s friend. Well, we get there and because of our last minute change of plans I hadn’t really been thinking about what the girls were wearing. Well, you have to wear socks at this type of place and the girls didn’t have any on! Aughhh! They had some that you could buy there but they were $2 a pair! I’m used to buying a 6-pack for that price, but whatever, it was Kya’s birthday and I didn’t want to disappoint. I decided at least to let Ember wear MY socks and just buy a pair for Kya. Well, they were both in capris, and let’s just say….they looked ridiculous! But it worked. So we spent about an hour and the girls had a lot of fun, while I was bored to tears and worried about Logan. We had originally planned on going to McDonald’s afterwards, but we had a change of plans again (for a variety of reasons) and decided to grab pizza on the way home. We got home and opened the pizza and it was the most disgusting looking pizza I’ve ever seen. Kids don’t care, right. Wrong! The girls hardly touched it. So all in all, it was a very disappointing and frustrating day. I felt so bad for Kya. I really wanted to make it such a fun day and nothing seemed to work out. Thank goodness kids are a lot more easy to please because she seemed to care less than I did. She said she had a great day and I truly hope she did.

To make up for not going swimming we decided that if the weather would cooperate (and it didn’t snow again!) that maybe we would go swimming in a couple weeks or so for Family Home Evening, once Logan had his cast off. Well, after more whining from Logan that night we decided that we were going to call and see if we could get his cast off early, like on Monday, and as a bonus we’d then be able to go swimming THAT night. So I called on Friday morning and got an appointment for Monday. He whined more and more throughout the day and I just kept thinking to myself, “It’s just a few more days….you can handle this.” But then he started complaining about his mouth and wouldn’t really eat. And THEN he started getting a rash on his foot. O.k. this was getting weird. Matthew suggested the possibility of Hand Foot & Mouth. Ember and Kya had both had it a few years later so we knew what it looked like, but I still decided to check online for more info. After researching it for TWO minutes I was convinced that’s what he had. Oh, sure enough, within a couple hours he started getting the little blisters all over his HANDS...FEET....and MOUTH! Oh good grief!!! It has been such a stressful past few weeks dealing with him and his cast and I was so ready for it all to hopefully be over, and now this. I just keep trying to remind myself that there are worse things, right? So anyway, stay away from us for the next week or so!!

DISCLAIMER!

O.k. so I haven't posted forever and I finally sat down on Saturday to blog about all of the happenings of the past few weeks. Well, between the blog site having problems and my internet going in and out, I couldn't post anything. So I finally decided to write everything in Word and I'd just copy and paste it over into the blog once everything was working. So hopefully the heavens will be working in our favor today and everything will work and I can finally get some stuff posted. But just realize that things will seem out of order....well, not so much out of order, but showing that it was posted today, but look as if it was written a couple days ago...and that's because it was. Hopefully that all made sense. :) Enjoy!!

Update: O.k. I'm back a half hour later....aughhh!! Apparently the heavens are frowning upon me today. :( My internet is finally working, and the blog site is working EXCEPT for allowing pics to load, so......

Oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding me...and what timing....just as I was writing "so" on that last paragraph, the pics that I was trying to upload for my other post finally showed up in this post as I'm editing it. Maybe I'll leave them in this post for now and see about getting them switched over to the correct post later. In fact, maybe I'll just copy and paste all of the posts over for now and add pics later when the site decides to be nice to me. Bear with me!!!

Another update: I was finally able to get the pics loaded in the next post. They took about an hour to load. So I might not be able to get all the pics for each post loaded today, but we'll see.

FHE....is it worth it???

Family Home Evening is a major struggle at our house. We try to have it every week, but most weeks it is so frustrating that by the end I'm ready to ground the kids! Logan is OBNOXIOUS and he gets Kya all riled up, and September tries to get him to listen and only makes matters worse. Matthew and I really struggle with the question of whether or not it's worth it!

Anyway, frustration was no exception tonight. I decided to do the lesson on testimonies. Logan was being a maniac as usual, Peyton was screaming, Kya was distracted by Logan, and September was TRYING to help calm everyone down. After about 45 minutes of chaos, we finally got things mostly under control, I finished the lesson and bore my testimony. Then Matthew bore his testimony and then asked if anyone else would like to bear their testimony. September piped up and said, "I want to, but it's really little." We told her that it was o.k. and encouraged her to share it anyway. So she bore her sweet and simple testimony and it was like everything just went silent and the spirit was there so strongly. I of course cried! What a beautiful end to a frustrating night. I just love that girl!! Then, to top it all off, Matthew asked Logan if he wanted to bear his testimony. "My testimovie...yeah!" So Matthew helped him and he was just grinning from ear to ear so proud of himself. Both of those moments made the whole night completely worth it! Can Family Home Evening be frustrating? Yes! Is it worth it? Absolutely!!

My sleeping babes!

O.k. I just had to post these pics because they're both too funny! The first one is of Kya. This is how she fell asleep on our way home from Conference. How is that comfortable?! We of course couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture. The pic is hilarious, but it still doesn't even do it justice. What a funny girl! She falls asleep in the craziest places/positions ALL the time. She is the soundest sleeper I've ever met!

Then, there's sweet little Logan. This is how we found him when we took Peyton in to put her in bed tonight. He sure does love his Elmo! And yes, that is a pink blanket he's sleeping with. The girls lent it to him a few weeks ago, and he became attached!

Conference!!!

I had an AMAZING weekend! Every session of General Conference was just wonderful, and I GOT TO GO to the Sunday morning session!!! I haven't had the opportunity to go to a session since I was about 10 years old, and I've never attended anything at the Conference Center. One of my Young Women (Marissa) who is not a member (I have three girls who come pretty regularly to the activities who aren't) is taking the missionary discussions right now and as an investigator, the missionaries gave her tickets. They asked me if I would like to go with her and of course I jumped at the opportunity! They gave her an extra ticket for her mom, but her mom didn't want to go so a friend of hers came in her place. Then, we were given three other tickets for any of our other Young Women. One of the other girls that came (Dani) has only been to church once since I've been the YW President, so I was so excited that she wanted to come. In order to get her to come though, one of my leaders had to surrender her ticket so that her friend could come with us, because she was staying at their house while her parents were in Hawaii. Needless to say, she was more than willing to give up her ticket if it meant that Dani would come. We had such a great time! I hope all of the girls felt the same spirit that I felt during it. One of the most amazing parts for me was when President Monsen walked in. Everyone stood and it was COMPLETELY silent. I have never witnessed anything like it. You could literally have heard a pin drop! I felt the spirit so strongly and started tearing up. Dani saw me and just said, "Sister Cluff, are you ALREADY crying!" She knows what an emotional bawl-baby I can be!


So anyway, it was a great weekend. All of the speakers were just amazing. I enjoyed having the opportunity during the first session to stand and sustain our new Prophet, President Monsen. I cried as I stood and sustained him. I miss President Hinckley immensely, but I KNOW that the church is in good hands with President Monsen. He is an amazing man. It was nice getting to know him a little more personally this weekend through his talks. You can already see such a change in him as he has gone from 1st Counselor to President. And his cute little talk about his wife during the last session was hilarious! "What do you know about trouble?!" They are too cute!

We also got to sustain a new General Young Womens Presidency, and it was awesome to be able to be there at the session that Sister Tanner gave her "farewell" talk in. I guess the new 2nd Counselor is President Monsen's daughter, so that's cool!

A big thank you to my parents for watching September and Kya while I was at Conference. It turned out to be a last minute thing. We were originally supposed to go up to my parents on Sunday to celebrate my dad's bday, and when the opportunity came up to go to Conference, those plans changed. Well, the girls didn't know this until Saturday and when they found out, they were extremely disappointed. Ember started crying! So when I realized that I would have two extra seats on the way up, I decided to take them with and drop them off. It worked out great because then we also had Joey and Nicky take us back down to the Conference Center and drop us off, so we wouldn't have to worry about parking or walking. It turned out great. A big thank you to them for doing that! Love ya guys!! (I look like such a dork in this pic! We took a bunch of pictures because I kept making weird faces. The girls kept making fun of me! This one was the best of all of them, and it's still horrible. It looks like my eyes are blinking, but I'm not!)