Wassail

Tonight, I'm grateful for Stephen's wassail and my awesome insulated mug that Nathan got at his food convention.  It's the only thing that soothes my throat.  Plus, it also has 110% of vitamin C, so I can get my vitamin C without swallowing a horse pill that doesn't feel great in my throat.

I'm also grateful that the three appointments that I had to cancel today were understanding.  I hate cancelling appointments.  Hopefully I can fit them in in the next week.

I'm also grateful that Nathan and the kids cleaned up the kitchen.  It's hard to get feeling better, then have to recover your house.

Thanks, Mom!

Today I was super flu-ish.  I felt like I was hurting all over, it killed my head when the kids even walked through the living room, and I couldn't get warm.  It didn't help that my kids' school started 2 hours late because of freezing rain.  Normally, I love my kids being home, but today I was just praying that I would make it until they went to school.  Jo had a project due and she wanted to get new contacts because she ripped one on Friday, so I drove her to school and stopped at the eye doctor on the way.  When I got home, I really couldn't get warm.  I piled on the blankets and turned my heat up.  Nothing worked.  Then, I remembered these, put them on and was able to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.  Thanks, Mom!!

Fire!

While the kids were playing outside with Nathan, I decided I wanted to cook.  It started out craving Seven Layer Bean Dip while thinking about the Super Bowl, even though we had other plans during the game.  So, I made that.  Then, I made chili for our little FHE today (for the first time with dried beans).  Then, I wanted to redeem myself after my last pie (it was too soupy and the apples weren't quite done) so I decided to make another pie, which made it so I had leftover crust to make tarts.  I got a tart pan a few years ago and decided to use it.  But then that made me want to have something to fill them with.  I had talked to Owen about chocolate pudding, but realized we didn't have any, so I found a recipe for chocolate pudding from scratch.

The first two things turned out okay, other than my pan of bean dip was overflowing, and I ended up with too much chili.  I made the pie.  I heard that you could make your lattice ahead of time and keep it in the fridge.  That worked great until I tried to get it back on the pie.  After finally just flipping it on there, then fixing the mistakes; I put it in the oven and didn't put a pan under it, so it overflowed and smoked up the kitchen.  Then, I had to turn the oven back up to do the tarts.  When I opened the oven, it was on fire!  Nathan put it out, cooled it off and scraped it out so I could cook my tarts.  Yep, he's awesome.  That was while I was dealing with the pudding.  The recipe said it was supposed to take about 10 minutes.  Forty minutes later, I declared it done.  It was a crazy cooking day and we didn't get done until 11:30, but we have lots of good food now.  My kitchen was a mess and it's a good thing that today was fast Sunday because we didn't have any clean dishes, but an hour and a half after church, my kitchen was put back in order and we still had lots of yummy food.

The Culprit:

Playing in the Snow

Yesterday was such a fun day.  It was warm enough to play outside, but there was still snow on the ground, so Nathan hitched up Mel and pulled the kids and their friends around on the inner tube.  It was perfect and everyone had fun.

Lattice pie

I just downloaded an app for my tablet for blogger.  I'm not really sure how to use it, but I promised my mom a picture of my pie from today.  So this is my attempt at a lattice top caramel apple pie.  Hopefully it tastes better than it looks.

Christ Centered Christmas Weeks 1 & 2

Nathan and I were asked to help out with the Ward Christmas Party this year.   We are in charge of the program.  We were talking as a committee how we would like to work hard to bring Christ into the program.  One day, my mom brought up a book that had been recommended to her.  It was A Christ Centered Christmas by Emily Freeman.  I had heard Emily talk at Time Out for Women and was impressed enough with her to try out the book and see if it gave any ideas I could use for the party.  I looked it up and found out I could get it on my kindle.  It was a quick read and I finished it in two days.  It did have some good ideas for the program, but even more than that, it had some good ideas that I decided I wanted to use in my own home this year.  It also got me excited for Christmas super early this year.  I put up my decorations at the beginning of November.  Usually I try to put them up the week of Thanksgiving, so the last thing we put up is our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving.  This year, I'm loving having them up longer.  I've decided that it's not skipping over Thanksgiving, it's getting in the mood for the holidays early.  I've felt excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas all month.

Anyway, back to the book.  It has a chapter on seven different nativity characters and what we can learn from them today.  It also has a tradition that you can incorporate into your Christmas traditions that will help you remember what that character teaches us.  When I read the book, I looked at the calendar and realized that we had seven Mondays until Christmas.  I decided that we will take one of the characters each week and learn about them in FHE, then we will do the tradition some time that week. 

The first character I chose was Joseph.  I chose him because reading through his chapter reminded me so much of one of my favorite Christmas stories, The Last Straw.  I've always wanted to do the tradition in that book, but it seemed like a lot of work.  And a big mess.  But I loved what the kids in that story learned from the tradition.  So, two Mondays ago, we learned about Joseph.  From Joseph we learn about service and one of the traditions they recommend is to have a jingle bell that gets passed from pillow to pillow in the house.  If you find a jingle bell on your pillow, you get to do service for someone else, then leave the bell on their pillow.  I didn't have huge hopes for this starting out.  I always feel like stories are that, stories.  Nothing ever works out like it's supposed to.  Nathan was late getting home that night, so we started without him.  We talked about Joseph, what we can learn from him, and the tradition.  I didn't have a jingle bell, but I printed one out on the computer and told the kids I'd color it and leave it on a pillow.  Nathan got home when we were having treats.  The kids were so excited to tell him about the tradition and that he got to do service if he found a jingle bell on his pillow.  We sent the kids to bed and I colored the jingle bell.  Nathan suggested I laminate it, so we decided to wait another day.  Zoey came flying into my bedroom the next morning looking all around.  Apparently she had been in everyone's room looking for the jingle bell.  I told her to keep watching for it.  It was actually a few days later that it finally got started, but the kids have been doing great with it.  We've decided to continue with the tradition clear until Christmas.  And the attitude in our home has totally changed.  It is just like the story.  I'm not going to say that no one ever fights, but there is plenty of service going on.  Even when people don't have the jingle bell.  I'm LOVING it!!

There are poems at the end of each chapter that summarize what that character teaches.  I also printed off the poems to hang up to remind us what we're supposed to be learning that week.  I hung Joseph's up for his week, but when I went to change it, the kids begged me to keep up all of the poems, so Joseph moved up and we put a new one in the page protector.  Our wall is going to be covered with nativity poems by Christmas.

This one is for Joseph.

And here is my jingle bell.

 

Last Monday, we learned about the lamb.  It also incorporates Simeon and Anna.  I was so excited to see them in this program!!  I love their stories and they are not usually brought into the nativity stories.  From them, we learned about recognizing the Lord in our lives and being immediately grateful.  For this tradition, I put a picture of a lamb on a box and put some papers and pencils inside.  When we recognize something the Lord has blessed us with, we can right it down and put it in the box.  Our box becomes a gratitude box.  I chose this one this week because it is the week of Thanksgiving and it seemed to fit well.  Once again our family has taken to it amazingly.  Our little pile of papers is growing.  And our attitude is changing again.  We are often talking about "jingle bells" (acts of service we've been prompted to do) inside and outside our home and things we're grateful for.  It really is hard to have a bad attitude when you're thinking about others and what the Lord has blessed you with.

Here is our poem that is up this week.

 

 And our gratitude box.

One more thing that the book talks about is having a nativity and putting each of the characters in the nativity as you learn about them.  I only have one nativity with all of the characters we'll be talking about.  A magnetic one my mom made.  It has a few other characters, so I put up the stable, donkey, cow, camel, and star to start.  The kids noticed immediately and asked where everything was.  I hadn't told them what we were doing yet, so I told them I'd tell them all about it on Monday.  When we learned about Joseph, I introduced it by showing them Joseph from the nativity.  They recognized it immediately and were excited.  I put his character on the poem for that week and we put him in the nativity scene last Monday after our week of learning about him.  Now we have our lambs hanging on our poem and we'll put them up on Monday.  The kids are excited to see each character as we learn about them.  It's working better than I ever hoped.  I feel like our attitudes are different, the feeling in our house is different, and we are able to focus on Christ this year for Christmas; not Santa, what presents we're getting, etc.

Our magnetic nativity on our door.

A God of Miracles

It's taken me a little while to write this post.  It's personal and was hard to write, but I felt like I needed to.  This is a long post, and it's mostly just for me, but I feel the need to share my testimony of miracles.  I was going to on Fast Sunday, but we were in Nathan's brother's ward for his baby's blessing and I have a hard enough time standing in front of people I know.  So, I'm going to share it on my blog. 

Last Tuesday, my testimony of miracles was strengthened.  I know that Heavenly Father can do anything and he has the ability to heal, but I felt it very personally.  I was down in my living room and heard a thump from upstairs.  Owen and Zoey are known to fight and sometimes I just have to let them work it out.  I listened for a minute and didn't hear any crying, so I continued on with what I was doing.  About a minute later, I hear a panicked Owen calling me, telling me that Zona had fallen off her bed (the top bunk).  I still wasn't super concerned.  How many times had I fallen off my bed?  One of my sisters had even landed on a rocking chair and still not been hurt very bad.  I was all ready to comfort, kiss hurts, and continue on with the day.  I saw her coming out of the bedroom.  See?  Walking and fine.  She was crying, pretty hard, but she is known to be dramatic.  So, I picked her up and carried her downstairs to sit on the couch.  I was trying to get her to calm down and she wouldn't (couldn't?).  She said that it hurt to breathe.  I was sure it was because she wouldn't calm down.  Owen mentioned something about her trying to climb up in the net they keep their stuffed animals in.  When I asked Zona, she said she was trying to sit in it.  I later saw that she had pulled one of the screws out of the wall and the stuffed animals were all over the floor.  After talking to her, I started reading her a book to try and get her mind off of what happened and to try and get her to calm down.  After a few pages, there was a picture.  She said she couldn't see the picture.  I was sure it was because she had been crying and had tears in her eyes.  I kept reading to her. 

A few minutes later, Nathan came home.  The kids were eager to tell Nathan what had happened.  He took her from me and decided to assess her.  He got out his EMT bag and took her vitals.  Then he went up in the bedroom and shut the door.  Jo was getting ready to go to with a neighbor and I was trying to do other things, so I let Nathan take care of her.  I got Jo out the door and went upstairs.  Nathan asked me if I knew she couldn't see.  I mentioned what happened with the book.  Then we started asking her who people were in the room.  She named Nathan and me, but squinted as she looked at Owen.  She couldn't tell who he was.  Nathan scooped her up and told me he was taking her to Community Care.  As he was putting her in the car, he handed her her ducky.  She couldn't tell what it was.

Owen and I were concerned and came inside to say a prayer.  I then called our parents and siblings to let them know what was going on and to ask them to pray for Zona.  I also posted on facebook to keep people updated on what was going on.  My mom and Nathan's mom called Zoey's name into the temple prayer rolls. 

Nathan called on the way to the doctor to tell me that Zoey was having a hard time staying conscious and he was taking her straight to the emergency room.  He later told me that he kept doing sternal rubs on her to try and keep her awake.  She would be holding ducky and ask where ducky was.  As he turned on to the street the hospital was, he looked over and Zoey's face was drooping and her had was twitching and at an unusual angle.  He said it reminded him of someone with cerebral palsy.  He was VERY concerned.  When they got to the hospital, he said they didn't have to wait at all in the emergency room.  Once they got back in a room, Zoey started throwing up.  The staff told him to let her go to sleep to see if it would calm her down.  Every time she woke up, he would try to assess her so he could give information to the doctor when he came.  One time, he asked who she was, and she answered, "Zona."  Then he asked who he was, and she looked at him for a minute and said, "Someone."  She wasn't sure who Nathan was. 

The doctor told Nathan that he wanted to do a CT scan and see what was going on.  About that time, Nathan gave Zona a blessing.  Zoey started to come out of it and wasn't excited about doing the scan, but Nathan says she did a great job and did everything they told her to do.

When the results came back, the doctor said that there was no sign of trauma, no fracture, or anything to be concerned about.  He said that she could do anything she felt like.  He said she would probably have a headache for a while, even up to a few weeks, and might be nauseous the next day.  She stayed home from school on Wednesday, but was SO excited to go back to school the next day.  It was the first thing she said when she woke up.  I gave her ibuprofen for a few days, but she only complained about her head a few times and her neck once or twice.  She threw up on the way home, and that was the last time.

She was a little more cautious for a few days, but not anymore.  We can also see little things that are a different.  She takes a little longer to figure out things that used to come so quickly.  And she seems a little disoriented some times.  She has told us the same story over again a few times.  But after seeing what happened in just a few short hours, we are very grateful to have our happy, fun little girl back. 

I am so grateful that it was just a concussion.  With all of the symptoms, it could have been so much worse.  They could have had to do more drastic measures to relieve pressure on her brain.  I'm so grateful that the doctors didn't see anything to concern them.  I'm grateful that she is healing and healthy.  I really do feel like we had a miracle in our family. 

I'm also grateful that if this had to happen, it happened when we were still covered by Nathan's old job's insurance and before the month started when we would be un-insured before his new job's insurance kicked in.  I'm grateful that I didn't realize how bad it was until Nathan got home.  Usually I'm the one that thinks of the worst thing it could be.  I didn't this time.  It didn't even cross my mind until after Nathan assessed her.  I'm also grateful he came home soon after it happened.  He is much more level-headed, plus he's an EMT.  I'm grateful he was the one that took her in.  He was able to decide to take her straight to the emergency room, talk to the doctor on a good level, and make good level-headed decisions.  As much as I would have loved to be with her, I'm also grateful Nathan was able to focus on her, while I focused on our other kids (who were having a very hard time) and made sure they were okay and updated.  I know I could have handled it before he got home, but I'm grateful I didn't have to.  I'm also VERY grateful for where I live.  I love the people that live around me.  On Tuesday, I was having a hard time that I didn't live close to my family, but my friends and neighbors called, commented on facebook, and stopped me in my yard to see how we were doing.  They were concerned and I felt very loved.

I'm not grateful for this situation, but I am grateful for the things I learned in just a few hours.  I'm grateful my testimony was strengthened of miracles and of a Heavenly Father who loves us and is very aware of us.  I'm grateful for friends, neighbors, and family who love and support.  I'm grateful for a level-headed husband and a brave little girl.  I'm grateful for a patient first grade teacher.  And I'm grateful that I can appreciate her fun, bubbly, energetic personality more.