Throwback

One of the coolest things about having a Wii: the ability to download many of your old favorite video games and play them again (without having to blow on the cartridge every time you try to play). It's also pretty fun watching your six-year-old learn to play Super Mario Brothers. She's already much better than I was back in the day. She'd probably be better than me now, except Tricia let me in on a little secret-the Super Mario Speed Boost (also known as the 'B' button). I never knew he could run so fast...

Merry Christmas Nate!

This video is just for Nate, who's currently suffering through hot and humid weather in Brazil. Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2008

As the year comes to a close I can't help but think of all the wonderful blessings we have enjoyed this year.  Our kids are, relatively, healthy and happy.  We have some money in the bank and food in the basement.  Good friends and family live close and are willing to be here in moments if we need them.  And, we have learned a lot of lessons and grown closer as a family.

Livi is working hard in First Grade.  She has Grandma Sheree for a teacher.  She loves school and despairs when she's too sick to attend.  Helping others is one of Livi's greatest talents.  She helps mom, Anna and Jarom, friends at school, and anyone in need.  We love her very much and are grateful for her presence in our family.

Anna is enjoying her last year home with mom.  In the fall she will be entering kindergarten.  She is so excited!  Her favorite pastime is learning new things.  Be it from mom, PBS, or online.  Anna knows the words to every song she's ever heard and sings often.  Her talent is that of peacemaker.  One night when momma and papa where having a "discussion" she burst into tears and told papa "Stop being angry at my mommy!"  She helps us to be better, how could we not love and cherish that?

Jarom is growing like a weed.  He wanders around the house babbling in his own language.  He is such an easy going kid.  Climbing anything in sight is Jarom's favorite pastime.  We've found him on top of the kitchen table, on top of the girls bunkbeds, at the bottom of the stairs, and on top of the bathroom counter (dancing and watching himself in the mirror I might add).  He keeps us busy, but is a blessing to our home.

Matt keeps busy working hard at Cheetah, learning photography, and fulfilling his calling as Assistant Stake Executive Secretary (or is it Assistant to the Stake Executive Secretary?).  I'm busy couponing, blogging, volunteering at Livi's School, running, teaching Relief Society and caring for my home and family.  We are busy, but we're happy.

May this holiday season find you counting your blessings, looking for ways to do better, and enjoying your friends and family.

Little Pink Elephant

So far, Olivia is our emergency room child. I'm not sure that every family has one, and I feel badly for those who have more than one. It's a little disconcerting when you're trying to decide what to do with your child and "call 911" is one of the options; but that's what we did last night. Liv woke us up around 1:00AM coughing and unable to breathe. After trying to calm her down ourselves, Tricia called emergency dispatch and they sent out the EMTs. And a couple firemen. And a police officer. At 1:15 in the morning. The lovely dispatch girl kept Tricia occupied on the phone while I calmed Liv down enough to get her breathing a little bit.

After the EMTs checked her out they thought that it was probably Croup, and said we needed to get her to the hospital for some breathing treatment. They kindly offered to take her for us, but also suggested that we might just want to take her ourselves and save some money. So Liv and I headed off for her third trip to the emergency room. (Luckily for me, it's been long enough since our last visit that I wasn't getting the stink-eye again, and questions about whether or not they needed to call social services. Like last time we were there...)

When we got there, we did the old "tell us what's happening" routine and were quickly led into a nice quiet room (ER was empty for a change). After checking her out, the doctor thought it might not be Croup after all, as Livi was missing one of the tell-tale signs: inspiratory stridor (I had to look that up on the interwebz--I thought the doctor was saying she didn't have Strider, whatever that was supposed to mean). That's the loudish wheezing sound kids with Croup usually make while inhaling. Anyway, he thought she might have bronchitis, so they had her do some breathing treatment with Albuterol. When that didn't seem to help much, they gave her a shot of steroids (she was very brave), took a couple x-rays, and finally did a second breathing treatment, this time with racemic epinephrine (commonly used to treat Croup). That did the trick. The nurse warned me that in children, the epinephrine usually causes some hyper-activity, but was surprised when Liv fell right to sleep once her breathing started to come a little easier.

The sleep was short-lived though, and Liv was shortly wide awake and ready to go home. The doctors needed to keep us there for a couple of hours to monitor her response to the epinephrine after its effects wore off, so hyper Livi and I tried to keep ourselves occupied for the next three hours. Liv did it by coloring a very nice picture/card for her nurse Julie (I wish I had snapped a picture of that before she gave it away) and reading a Ranger Rick magazine from 1991 (I think the ER could use an updated subscription). Julie made the fatal error of giving Liv the "call" button and telling her to push it if she needed anything. Liv spent the next hour pushing the button every five minutes.

Finally, at around 5:00, the epinephrine started to wear off and Liv fell asleep. A few minutes later the doctor came back to check on her and said she would be fine to go home. Her breathing and heart rate were back in good ranges, and she was getting plenty of oxygen. They walked me through the packet of stuff they gave me (prescription, instructions for treating Liv at home, etc...) and we came home, arriving just before 6:00AM. The last thing Liv said to me was to make sure her alarm was set so that she could wake up for school (in twenty minutes). I let Tricia handle the horrible duty of explaining that there would be no school today, which was probably the worst thing to happen all night.

PS--I guess I could explain the title of the post. When Livi was doing her breathing treatments (see the picture at the top), we joked around that she looked like a little pink elephant. She would try to make elephant noises and blow the mist at me. She really was a trooper.

Rebate Chasing

Some of you are probably aware of the fact that Tricia has taken up coupon clipping/rebate finding lately. It's time-consuming, but can be a big blessing, especially in building up a year's supply of certain items. Well she came across an interesting deal a few weeks ago.

SanDisk (creator of memory cards used in gadgets like digital cameras and cell phones) has an interesting rebate program going on where the more memory cards you buy, the more you get back per card in rebate money. For example, if you buy one card, you get $10. If you buy two cards you get back $15 per card. And if you buy three cards, you get back $20 each, or $60 total. Well, normally that wouldn't be very enticing to us, except that during the "cyber Monday" sales of early last week there were some very good deals on memory cards. They usually sell for at least $40 each, but there were a few online retailers selling them for only $20. Well, doing the math, Tricia figured out that if you bought three cards at $20 each, you'd be spending $60 total, and you'd be getting back $60 in rebate money. That's a pretty good deal.

So, she bought three memory cards, gave one to me for my camera (it stores around 5 times as many pictures as the card I was using before), and sold the other two on eBay for about $20 each. So, by doing a little research she was able to get net $40 and a new memory card for my camera. And that's what rebate chasing is all about.

PS--This promotion is still running, by the way, if you want to try and make it work for yourself. There are a few conditions to the rebate, but I'm sure Tricia would be happy to explain it if you care to try.

Jarom's Phones

At any given time, you 'll probably find Jarom wandering around the house with some random object at his ear, pretending it's a phone. Doesn't matter what it is: shoes, calculators, toys, food from his plate, or maybe even an actual phone. Remote controls, though, seem to be his faux phone du jour, as seen here. He's currently mastering the "hi" part of answering the phone (or the remote)...

The Random Late Halloween Post

Yeah...This post is only two weeks late. But as Livi says: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!"