time

roughly 8 years ago, my father got sick. sick enough that he couldn't hardly walk, he would get exhausted to the point that he would collapse. he was sick enough that he could no longer drive himself to work. my parents used to keep a wheelchair in the back of the suburban because he would inevitably need it whenever they went out. he would end up needing to go home part way through church. he was extremely ill. there was no diagnosis. he was unable to work, and was denied disability.

about 7 years ago, he was referred to a chronic disease specialist. just listening to him tell her about his symptoms, she diagnosed him with lyme. the blood tests later confirmed that.

7 1/2 years ago, we moved me, taylor, and elizabeth out to help. my mother had had to go back into the workforce to make ends meet, and they needed someone at home to help take care of my father and younger brothers. while we were there, he reached the point that they could get rid of the wheelchair, and he started driving on his own again.

years of therapy and numerous rounds of antibiotics later, he was cured! there is no known cure for lyme. but the last time he had bloodwork done, they couldn't find any trace of the lyme left!

today, he gained full-time employment!

binx

we had a friend bring us a gift for michael not long after he was born. it was a red dog with a pacifier attached to it. it turned into the only pacifier that he would take. we named it binx.

binx is rarely lost. it's hard to lose a bright dog. yesterday, however, he really did vanish. we turned the house upside down, and still couldn't find him. at one point, i had gotten a couple of spare pacifiers. they weren't attached to the bright red dog, so they were lighter and not as soft. i dug one out, and thankfully, he used that.

this morning, when i went to take shannon to school, i pulled my purse down to grab my keys, and there was binx. sitting in the top of my purse. we felt pretty dumb, cause that was the one place we didn't look!

another sicko

yesterday, elizabeth said she wasn't feeling well, that her stomach hurt. i started trying to figure out what was going on. i thought it might be her appendix, but i couldn't get her to cooperate enough. so, we just watched her. at one point, we got her a blessing.

after throwing up 3 or 4 times, she was fine. it appears to be the same bug that the babies have also had. it doesn't last very long.

thumb

the wind has been so bad the last few days!

the other day, ashley's thumb got slammed in the screen. the screen doesn't close on it's own anymore. it's on the list of things to repair and replace. 

her thumb didn't get as bad as shannon's did that one time, but she's still going to lose her thumbnail.

still sicky

michael is still feeling sick. he's still running a fever, she still wants to be held but doesn't want to be held. last night he woke up crying around 4, and wouldn't calm down. shaun finally got up with him, and he didn't go back to sleep, that i'm aware of until around 8 or 9.

improvements

we went to the DI the other day. we didn't find a whole lot, but we saw a ceiling fan. they only wanted $5 for it. shaun talked to a worker and mentioned that he wondered if it worked. the worker pulled out an extension cord, and stuck the wires into the plug end to see. the lights turned on, and then they pulled the cord to see if the fan functioned. it worked! and it was only $5, so we got it!

we got it home and got it cleaned up inside and out. then we discovered that the pull cord for the lights was missing. when shaun opened it back up, he found that the entire pull cord device was broken. he went to go do something, and stopped in at a hardware store. he found the part for $5.

after dinner, he put it up. for $10 and a few hours time, we have a working ceiling fan in the dining room!

ouch

i woke up this morning with a headache. i took 2 aleve and laid back down to wait for them to kick in. an hour later i was still waiting and discovered that it was a migraine (the whole lights making it worse thing.) i had shaun get me a mountain dew, and was functional, but just barely. my mind was still only half with me. i made my drink, and tried to focus. anything that required any brain power was (and still is) difficult.

4 hours later, i had another mountain dew and the fog lifted. i can still tell i'm not normal, but i can now function at least more normally.

it's funny. my grandma posted a recipe on facebook two days ago. the recipe is labelled as a migraine reliever. my sisters suffer from migraines a lot. so i tagged them saying they should give it a try. then i come down with one.

bleh!

michael was extra fussy this morning, so i tucked him next to me, and tried to get a little bit more sleep. it worked for a few minutes at a time. and then he threw up. on my bed.
it didn't get much better after that. he's still crying most of the day, and he's running a fever. i gave him some ibuprofen earlier, and it seems to have helped a little bit. it's hard to get things done when you have sick babies.

cell phones

we haven't had cell phones for over 2 years now. and, for the most part, we haven't missed them.

however, i realized the other day that i don't talk with the majority of my siblings. sometimes it seems like the only thing they know how to do is text. and as we don't have phones, that's not possible.

*sob* i miss my family!

housing

january of 2010, we applied for idaho housing assistance. it's a program that helps low-income families find decent, affordable housing. they assist in paying rent, and have a utility allowance as well. when we first applied, the waiting list was roughly 24 months. in the end, it ended up being 37 months. we were informed this february (2013), that we had finally made it to the top of this list. because of the trial, it took us a little longer than anticipated to get everything in order and finalized.once you find a place, they come in and do a safety inspection. we were pretty sure that the house would easily pass. we ended up with a list of 10 items that needed "fixing" in order for the house to pass.

1. the garage wall attached to the living spaces needed a firewall installed.

     this one confused us all. the garage is an add-on. meaning that wall that needed a firewall installed was the original exterior of the house. it should have already had a "firewall".

2. the upstairs needed a working fire alarm.

   it worked, it was just over sensitive. i couldn't cook bacon without the stupid thing going off.

3. the basement needed a new fire alarm.

   it also had a fire alarm, it was just too old.

4. the open electrical box in the laundry room needed a cover put on it.
5. the wiring hanging out of said box, needed to be placed in the box or removed.

   we're not sure what the electrical box in the ceiling of the laundry room was for. we removed the wiring that was hanging from it, and put a cover on the box

6. the gas line to the water heater needed a handled shut off valve.

7. the gas line to the furnace needed a handled shut off valve.

they both had shut off valves, but neither one had a handle for easy use. and, as we discovered later, they were drip water shut off valves. replacing those was a MUST.

8. the gas line to the furnace needed to be stabilized.

the pipe was not attached to any surface for stability. 

9. the light in the furnace room needed to be attached to the electrical box. it was hanging by the wires

when they put the furnace in, the pipes made the space too tight to attach the light. we moved the box up a little bit, and screwed it in.

10. the extension cord transferring power to the back shed needed to be removed.

the back shed has power. they ran pvc pipes under the ground, through the yard, to the shed. but they didn't get the power from the breaker box on the back of the house. they attached an extension cord to the wiring from the pvc pipe, grounded it to one of the metal piped on the house, and used and exterior plug as the power source. since the shed is only being used for storage, we removed the extension cord, and put a cap on the pvc pipe to keep out moisture, dirt, and insects.

a fairly easy list. the thing that took the most time (and money) was sheet-rocking that garage wall.

all the work paid off though. the house passed the inspection, and they informed us that they would assist with almost all of our monthly rent! it was a huge weight off our shoulders. 

we moved out of necessity, not because we could afford to. now we just need to get one final piece of paperwork fixed and then we are set for the next year!

wait!

ashley took a late nap yesterday. that always throws off her bed time. last night, after the other kids were in bed, she decided to try and change her own dirty diaper. she even went so far as to wipe, and throw the diaper away. (but not the dirty wipes.)

i think it's time i potty train this child.

food storage

i have started to slowly change over some of my food storage to the #10 cans of dehydrated food.

these are now staples in my regular cooking and storage:

eggs

strawberries

onions

shortening

milk

blueberries

raspberries

potato shreds

celery

tomato 

honey

orange drink

carrots

i am still working through my current cans of tomato sauce, and will soon switch over to the powder. the carrots and celery i only use for soups, so they are lasting a LONG time. we love to just eat the fruit plain. i'm also using up the rest of my cream soups. i now use this instead.

dinner

yesterday, the kids decided they wanted a perry traditional sunday night dinner. that translates into cake and popcorn.

now, i've had problems with my homemade cakes lately. they are flat, dense, and dry. in speaking with my mom about my cake woes, she told me that the process is just as important as the ingredients. so, i followed the process to a t yesterday.

the differences in the cakes was amazing! this one was tall, light, fluffy, moist, and tasted like a cake should!

i'm lazy. so i've just been throwing all the ingredients into the mixing bowl, and calling it good. i also no longer use regular shortening or real eggs, i use dehydrated. that being said, you can't cream powdered shortening, and you can't whip powdered eggs into egg white peaks. so for this recipe i had to use butter, and real eggs. the extra work was worth it though!

laundry

last year, i taught taylor how to sort the laundry for washing and how to use the dryer. over spring break, i taught him how to use the washer. he did most of the laundry over spring break! i turn the buzzer on to tell me when the load is finished, otherwise i forget i'm doing it. every time the buzzer went off, taylor asked me what the load needed now. 

it was fabulous! 

new vacuum

our vacuum was having problems. serious ones. it sucked, in the bad way. so we bit the bullet and got a new one.

 this is a section of  the front room carpet. you can see the goldfish pieces in the carpet.

 this is the canister after half of the front room and the hallway.

this is the canister after the rest of the front room. 

we hadn't realized how badly the vacuum was doing until after we got the new one.

easter

i almost didn't do anything for easter this year. the easter bunny visits our house friday night, because we want to keep easter sunday about the savior.
in the last 3 moves, all of the easter baskets have disappeared. not permanently, but it's going to require going through all of the boxes and organizing them to find them all. that was part of my lack of desire to do anything. i already had all treats and things, but i didn't know if it was going to be worth it.

on thursday, i "boiled" eggs.
saturday morning, the ward had an easter egg hunt. since we couldn't find the easter baskets, and i wanted the kids to have something more than grocery bags, i ran to the dollar store to find some buckets. the hunt would have been more fun if 3 kids hadn't found the majority of the eggs. taylor, my angel, shared some of his with his little sisters. otherwise, they wouldn't have gotten any.
saturday afternoon, we decorated the eggs using these.

it was fun and fairly painless. these are the little girls' hands, and this was the worst of the damage! i had gotten 3 packages, and we only used one. i'm putting the others up for next year.

 shannon

 ashley

 all of our beautiful eggs.

 ashleys'. she had a little help with the blue and pink striped one.

 elizabeths'.

 taylors'. very minimalistic

 shannons'.

mama's. there was one extra eggs, and i decided to it.

sunday morning, elizaeth came into my bedroom first thing, and complained that the easter bunny didn't come. 

we got everyone ready for church and raced out the door. after sacrament, shaun decided that he and ashley should go back home. he wasn't feeling great and she still had a cough. when i brought them home, i put michael in bed, and put the baskets together. then i went back to church .

snowman!

the snow we got earlier in the season wasn't really snowman snow. that, and it got really cold. we had an early spring storm that dropped about 6 inches of new wet snow. shannon convinced her dad to help her build a snowman.

i didn't realize at the time that she was wearing 2 different boots! in this picture, his face is carved in. later the kids found part of the snowman kit and put the nose and hat on him. shannon named him frosty. frosty stayed with us for about 4 days before he got chopped apart.

blue and gold

we didn't go to the scout blue and gold banquet last year, probably because i'd just had michael. and possibly because half of the ward we were in made me feel uncomfortable. but, we did this year.

 the theme was "knights of the round table". this ward has been amazing. once they found out shaun was an artist, they ask him to do all sorts of things for events. he drew this as a backdrop for pictures. (the only thing missing is the dragon!)

they had these little scooters, and pool noodles, and they had jousting! it was fun to watch!

silly sleeping!

 not sure what happened here, but all of a sudden, she got really quiet and this is how and where i found her. in the middle of the walkway between the front room and dining room.

 she was watching a movie, and apparently really crashed!

this is shannon. for christmas 2 years ago, she got a rapunzel tower that breaks down into a table and chairs. one night, she put the tower top on her head and fell asleep. i think she did it to shut out the light and maybe the noise.

court

as it was a long week, i didn't think to take pictures when the curls were still fresh. she was absolutely adorable, and we were told by many people that she did wonderful. i have an awesomely brave girl!
not only that, but she won! she told her story, and he was put away, for how long, we don't know yet.

brownies

this is what happens when you leave the brownies out where everyone can get to them. they decide to try and help themselves. (i think this was taylor, but i'm not sure)

waiting room waiting

while sitting at elizabeths counselling one day, the little girls decided they wanted their hair done. i put 2 braids in their hair, and then tried to get a picture of the boy.

speaking of hair.....

these pictures don't quite do it justice. ashley has a few locks of hair in back that ringlet just after baths, and only if not brushed out. but, her hair always looks beautiful, even when it hasn't been washed all week.

party

elizabeth was invited to a birthday party for a friend sometime in february. they went to one of the beauty colleges, and had "makeovers". she had an absolute blast! they did their hair, makeup, and nails. i didn't know about her nails so i didn't get a picture.

 beautiful makeup. (why is it that she can't take a picture without tilting her head? and poking her tongue through her teeth...?)

gorgeous hair!

at 7, she's a heart throb. i'm terrified for 16!

birthdays

we celebrated taylor's and shannon's birthdays together. we did that because we didn't have any money at shannon's birthday.

 this is taylors cake. he wanted a cars race track. those are his cars.

shannon wanted a rainbow cake. i didn't have any food coloring alternatives, so hers is made with normal coloring.

 we invited some friends and nana over. apparently, we didn't snap a picture of nana, but she's around the corner from the high chair in the bottom right corner.

taylor got his new scout book, a couple of new books, a toy we kept out from christmas, and a couple pairs of pants.
shannon got some new movies.

we kept it pretty low-key.

updates

so, i have a bunch of posts i want to do, but i dont' want to put them up without the pictures to go with them. my computer died about 6 weeks ago, and my means of transferring photos from camera to computer along with them.

need to figure out how to get them from the camera to shauns computer soon though. the card is starting to get full!