The Valentines Day Fun Continues...

Jane had an adorable little Valentines Day party at her school that I got to help out with!! It was so much fun. I was in charge of bringing treats so of course I called upon my favorite cupcake shop, The Cocoa Bean, to make mini cupcakes for the kids in Jane's class! Naturally, they were delicious and turned out amazing. They even added the chocolate hearts dusted with pink glitter on top of the cupcakes free of charge :0 I love that joint!!
During the party, the kids did a Valentine's Day craft...
...and played games. It was so darling! And I must add that Jane looked fabulous in her special Valentines Day get-up!
Jane came home with a pouch (that she made :)) full of Valentines from her friends at school. I know she looks pretty grouchy...however, she really was happy!
Here's the array of goodies she is still working on finishing...
And here she is after devouring one of her Valentines Day treats! Don't ask me what she was crying about...I don't remember. However, she perked up pretty quick once she saw this picture of herself with a green mouth :) Hilarious!!
We may have started February off with two awfully sick kids...again...however, this month is shaping up to be pretty awesome. I love holidays!

Best Valentines Ever!!

Since I don't have any Valentines decorations, this year I got creative with decorating and made a few of my own decorations! I got the ideas from the internet, than put my own spin on them and I think they are really fun!

The day started off with Valentine's surprises for the kids after breakfast...Jane loves surprises:)
Beckham didn't care too much but it was still fun!!
Jane loved her new microphone. She LOVES to sing and is so good at it so this was perfect for her.
Beckham got some magnet letters for the fridge since he loves playing with the magnets I already have. Later on in the day, however, I caught Beckham shoving each of the letters under our fridge...so what's left of the letters have been thrown away. His gift was a bust, but at least he had a few minutes of fun with the magnets in his own special way :)
Carrying on with the homemade theme, I made Ryan my very own box of chocolates. I decorated the box as well as made two different kids of chocolate treats to put inside!!
During the day, the kids and I went to the Provo Beach Resort to ride the carousel...they had a BLAST!! And later on, Mae and Christina came to hang out with us...we LOVE when they come over.

Around 7pm, Ryan came home from work and surprised Jane and I with a rose each...how adorable!!
Oh, and my favorite treat from Costco- Macadamia nut clusters. They are so naughty but oh so delicious:)
Ryan liked his box of chocolates, too!
At the end of the day, Beckham was apparently so ready for his bath that I found him like this!! HE jumped right in with his clothes on!!! Crazy kid!!
What a fabulous Valentines Day this was!!

Some Funnies!!

Here's a few funnies from Jane that I really want to remember. This gal is hilarious!!

1. Jane comes out wearing her Belle dress and in her high pitched "princess" voice she says, "I am Belle...and this is my beast" while pointing to Beckham. And for the rest of the day Beckham is referred to as " the beast."

2. Jane loves to join in when I am putting my make-up on and every time she says, "I need to do my wake-up, too."

3. Jane grabs a bra that had fallen out of the clean clothes basket as I was carrying it back to my room and puts it on. I ask her, "Jane what are you wearing?" and she replies, "your boobs."

4. Being near her bedtime Jane was being crazy and giggling. "I am a giggle box," she says. After she is done giggling, she takes a big, deep breath and exclaims, "good night, nurse!"

5. Jane has a little Doctor set and loves to "Doctor me" as she calls it. I usually pretend to cry when she gives me a pretend shot. Jane was going in for the shot, pauses and looks at me and says, "Now don't cry." She thinks for a minute and says, "well, you can cry a little."

6. One evening I was arguing with Ryan about something and Jane chimes in and says quite forcefully, "But, I just love him ok," referring to Ryan.

Thank you, Jane, for keeping me so entertained!!

ER Visit Number 2 for January...

A little over a week ago, this was me...more or less!! I have never had an allergic reaction to anything before. However, this first month of 2011 has been terribly dramatic and pretty much awful...so when this happened I was hardly surprised.

Not too long after Jane got over her H1N1 flu, I started getting a mild case of hives in the morning. Ryan, the genius pharmacist that he is, gave me medicine to block the histamine response in my body. It appeared to work a little. However, the hives never completely went away.

By the second night of my mysterious allergic reaction, the hives started to spread to my face. I was mildy concerned, however they were not terrible yet. Ryan upped the dose of medicine I had been taking for two days at this point and I was sure things would improve by morning.

Well, when I woke up this literally is not far from what I looked like and strikingly similar to the reaction I had as well. I immediately burst into tears seeing what a monster I was. Upon further inspection I could see that pretty much my whole body was covered by one very large hive.

Needless to say, Ryan took me to the ER being very surprised that the high dose of medicines he had been giving me was not stopping the reaction. I wore my sunglasses the whole time I was in the ER being so humiliated by my appearance. They gave me a VERY painful shot and ordered me to be on an extremely high dose of three different medications for a week...

Well, the drugs made me kinda crazy. I was moody, super sleepy, no energy, I had a strange sense that my senses were heightened, anxiety, 1 hallucination, and to put the icing on the cake the steroid I was taking made me break out...I can at least look back on this experience and have a good laugh. I did look pretty awesome as a troll and had to get a shot square in my butt after all...that's funny stuff :)

Pretty much every New Years resolution I had made for myself has been shot by this horrendous month and all its drama. So, good bye and good riddance to January 2011. I am welcoming February 2011 and proclaiming this month to a new start to the year and I just know that it is going to go MUCH better!!

Grateful for the two men in my life tonight!!

Wanna hear a scary story? Well, Ryan saved Beckham's life tonight. We had gone to Macey's and Ryan gave both the kids a sucker to keep them happy...it was getting late :) Beckham has eaten many suckers before and has NEVER given any cause to worry about him eating one. We hopped in the car and were headed to Cafe Rio to grab our dinner...yummo!!

We were nearly there when all of a sudden, Ryan pulled the car over very abruptly. I had no idea what he was doing until I heard a faint gasping sound coming from the back of the car. I had no idea how Ryan caught that small sound...but his super human hearing could have saved Beckham's life. Ryan and I both jumped from the car as fast as we could, realizing that Beckham must have been choking on his sucker. We opened the car door to see Beckham completely gasping for air, tears of fear in his poor little eyes, yet no air was going either in or out.

Being totally useless in situations like these, I began to cry and gasp for breath myself. Ryan, however, yanked Beckham out of the car without hesitation and bent him over his knee and began pounding on his back. Beckham, soon threw up all over Ryan's shoe and along with the throw up was the retched sucker that had been completely blocking his airway. Beckham began to cry...the best noise in the world at a time like that.

I scooped Beckham up in my arms and instantly began crying. I cried because I was grateful he was ok, I cried because I was scared thinking of how differently things could have been going, and I cried because I was so thankful that Ryan was there and literally, like a super hero, saved the day!!

Beckham is now sleeping, peacefully in his bed. And I am left podering how much I love that sweet boy...how grateful I am he is in my life. I love his funny little walk, I love how he "tries" to sings to the lullaby song on the good night show, I love the huge, toothy grin I get whenever I smile at him, I love the way he screams with glee with his goofy little boy voice every time you chase him, and I love the snuggle hugs he gives me every day...whenever I ask for one.

I am also immensely grateful for the amazing, wonderful man I married who is, at this very moment, watching basketball...a habit I usually don't enjoy. However, tonight I find it adorable. I am grateful that he is so strong and brave and I can always count on him to save the day whenever I call him crying about however stupid a thing. I love that he takes such good care of his family, temporally and spiritually. I love how excited he gets about his work and how passionate he is about anything he does. I love that I can never stay mad at him for long. And I love that I am married to my best friend...who is a super hero!

I am a lucky lady tonight!!

Family Fun and Ryan's Birthday!!

Ryan had his 27th birth day on January 13th!! I get really excited for birthdays and always go overboard...but I know Ryan likes it so that is OK. This year Ryan had to work ALL DAY. So. the kids and I decorated his car while he was at work. It was filled with tons of balloons and a card and present from us! His coworkers also, bought him lunch and big cake for his bday. He is so loved :)
Once Ryan got home, we opened presents and ate some of my traditional Chocolate torte I always make for his special day! He loved his presents...yay...you never know with Ryan!
After that we went out to dinner at Red Lobster so Ryan could get some sea food...I'm not a fan, so he doesn't get that much!! It was delicious and I even tried some fish this time :)
That following Saturday, Ryan got another special surprise. He saw Jimmer Fridette (not sure on the spelling) the best BYU player ever, at the mall! Ryan is a big "Jimmer" fan and we got a picture with him!! He was so nice!
Here's just a darling picture of our adorable kids. Jane set up beds for her and Beckham in the middle of the living room and they both had a blast just laying there...haha! Silly kids...they are playing together more and more and I love it! :)
Another night way back in December, we used a gift certificate I got from my wonderful sister for my birthday, and we went to Osaka for dinner! It was such a pleasant night because we sat in out very own tatami and the kids were so good...a rarity!!
It might have helped that we brought Beckham's high chair so he couldn't walk around. He even liked the Japanese food!!
Here's Jane using her very own chopsticks and eating her darling little kids meal...so cute!
We love going to the Bean Museum to hear Discovery Reading Time. It is always so fun! They read stories about the animals they eventually bring out to show. Today it was a snake...I was totally freaked! But, it was still cool.
Jane was totally brave and touched the snake...
It has been kind of a crazy year so far...too many ER visits... but, I am still so grateful for my wonderful little family and love spending time with them!

A Rude Welcome Into 2011...

January 1st Jane got sick...really uncomfortably sick. Exactly one week later, we discovered, Jane had H1N1 or Swine flu as well as a sinus infection (we think)!!! I was completely stunned- though looking over the past week and how awful it was, it makes sense. Here's how our first week of 2011 went...

Last Saturday, January 1st, Jane came to me complaining that she felt sick. I checked her temperature and she had a fever. I gave her medicine and then she seemed to be fine. She ate dinner and went to bed as usual. Then that night Jane woke up throwing up. The poor girl threw up all night. The next day however, she seemed much better. The throwing up stopped but she had a bit of a cough. So, I decided she needed to stay in her room so Beckham wouldn't get sick. I had hopes that she just had the 24 hour flu and would be better by that night. My mom came and played with Jane and the day went relatively smoothly.

I slept on a blow up mattress in her room that night just to keep an eye on her fever. That Sunday night was awful. I had a front row seat, as I watched Jane's cough get worse and worse as the night went on and her breathing became more labored. I prayed that we would make it through the night so I could take Jane to the Dr. the next day. However, Jane woke up because she was so uncomfortable. She had a fever of 104.4 and she couldn't breath. Her crying was making it harder for her to breath as well. So, I took her to the ER at 1 in the morning. They gave her a steroid shot and it seemed to help a lot. We got home at 4:30 am. She slept a little better that night although she still woke up with a fever and cough the next day.

For the next several days Jane would seem better for a while but than her fever would spike again. It was such a roller coaster. Her temperature got to over 104 degrees three different times even with continual medicine being given- and remained pretty constantly high otherwise. I was frustrated that no doctor I would mention her abnormally high fever to ever took it seriously enough to check it further.

Because I was so worried about how high Jane's fever was, I kept Jane quarantined to her room so Beckham would have more of a chance of not getting sick. This in itself was exhausting. I had to run back and forth between two kids to keep them each happy and it seemed that whenever I would be giving attention to one child the other would be crying for something or wanting attention. I also, had to pull put out all the stops to keep Jane entertained in her room for five days!! We built forts, painted, colored, played games, did craft projects etc etc.

Finally, on Thursday after her fever still hadn't broken I decided I needed to take her to the doctor. He wanted to see if her fever would break that evening since that would mark the fifth day since she had Croup and it was common for the fever to last that long with Croup. He said to not give her any more medicine and see what happened. I did as he instructed and put Jane down for a nap without medicine. After a while she woke up whining. I ran in to check on her to find she had her highest temperature yet, 104.5, and a strange splotchy rash on her stomach and back.

Of course, I freaked out and called the doctor immediately (after giving her Tylenol and Ibuprofen right away). He suggested we have some tests run. Ryan came home early from work and we took Jane to the hospital to have an x-ray, her blood drawn, and a nasal swab done. Naturally, she hated every second of it, cried a lot, and was totally traumatized...so awful! We also, were able to start her on an antibiotic for a nasal infection the doctor suspected she had. It wasn't until a few days later on Saturday that we discovered that she had had H1N1 the whole week.

I felt so bad that Jane had that awful of a sickness all along and was super stressed all over again that Beckham might get sick, too! Thank heaven I kept them separate for a whole five days and at least the doctor prescribed him some Tamiflu that should help as well.

Jane is now doing great and is totally normal despite a lot of yucky nose drainage. Her fever is gone and acts totally normal- yay! And Beckham is totally healthy still but we will have to continue to watch him and hope he doesn't get sick. It has been the worst week ever and an awful way to start the new year. So, our new year officially starts now and will hopefully be much better than it started out. Many new, fun, exciting and kind of sad adventures are in store for us this year.

Happy New Year Everyone!!