our little sickie...

tanner has had a rough winter...to put it mildly. we all have had more than our share of illnesses this winter - i'm blaming it on the sub-zero temps that mankato stays in most of the winter. tanner however has had many ear infections, strep, pneumonia and a nearly constant cold/runny nose/cough. this past weekend aaron took him to the e.r. because i was sure he had pneumonia again (his breathing was clocked at 45-50 breaths/min.). turns out it was just a severe ear infection (which by the way, is not getting better - he had his "well" check today which ended up with more antibiotics, 2 shots, a referral to the ent and early intervention for speech therapy - gaaahhh!!)

anyway, last week (before the ear infection) he got hives all over his body...random!! they were gone within 24hrs. whatever!!!Y

wisconsin dells

okay - time to play some catch-up with blogging. does life ever get any less chaotic? i didn't think so...

here are a few pictures of our wisconsin dells trip with the mcpheters. we sayed at the chula vista resort and was the perfect place for a family getaway in the middle of winter. we didn't get very many pictures, probably because we were having too much fun. the kids loved the water park (okay, so did us grown-ups) and aaron and i especially enjoyed the free fancy-schmancy dinner we had with justin and katrina - not to mention the separate bedroom without kids...

like i said, i wish we took more pictures...but oh well. it was fun!Y

it's been a while...

i know, i know...feb. hasn't been a blogging month for me for some reason. maybe i just can't get myself out of this winter funk that is eating me alive!!! we just got a huge snowstorm yesterday - i just curled up with a book and read while the kids did what they wanted. so now today it's a clean-up-after-a-day-off day.

valentine's day was nice. the kids thought their little dollar hearts full of chocolate truffles were the cat's meow. aaron and i got to go to dinner (well, we tried to go out - but the only place in town is olive garden and the whole population shows up for that. so we settled for dinner to go - aaron got noodles and co. and i got jimmy john's) then we watched mall cop (hillarious!). he bought me "hunger games" (a book that i've been dying to get my hands on - he knows the way to a nerdy girl's heart!!) and i got him the "fireproof" dvd (the way to a marriage and family therapist's heart). pretty mellow v-day this year...

other than that, it's the same old stuff. girls on the run started (yippee!) but we didn't have enough girls for the number of sites we had, so we consolidated them into one site. i bowed out from coaching (we *only* had 16 volunteers!!) anyway, that's fine with me because life has been insanity and i don't think it's going to get better anytime soon. kaylee is in it though, and that was my whole purpose with getting involved. she loves, loves, loves it! she has to wear her bandana (just like her mom) and her running outfit and she gets out there and runs her little buns off!

in a few weeks we're going for a couple days to wisconsin dells (indoor water park capitol of the tundra here). we're meeting the mcpheters who are in chicago (and wis dells is the halfway point between here and there). should be fun.

i really, really, really can't wait for spring. oh, for it to be in the 40s or 50s would be great!!! i'll try to be patient...Y

emma's 7th birthday

well, emma-cheeks is now 7! we had a fun breakfast birthday party with some of her friends. unbeknownst to us, she had told her friends to wear their pajamas - which was fine - but half showed up in pjs and half in regular clothes. it was a lot of fun (minus kaylee's toe fiasco - see below). jon and tara even came and helped out a lot. she got lots of fun gifts (especially the coveted webkins that she has been begging for!) i think we will be doing the breakfast idea again - it was a success!

the next morning she got breakfast in bed, got to open more presents and picked hot dogs (yum...) for dinner. i think she enjoyed her wonderful weekend!Y

kaylee's tosies

during emma's birthday party, things got a little crazy with the girls running around crazy and kaylee mangled her foot. aaron is still working on replacing all our trim in the house and she caught her toes on one of the exposed corners. kaylee somehow managed to slice open the bottom of her pinkie toe and the bottom and top (what?!?) of her 4th toe. anyway, tara was over and helped to get the bleeding under control (she's an x-ray tech), but we really couldn't tell how bad it was until later that night when the bleeding totally stopped. we had bandaged it up and kaylee was saying it was fine (i'm sure she was not swayed at all by the fact that kaylee, kammy, katelyn and i had plans to go up to the twin cities for a mother daughter stake activity that she was looking forward to all week!) we did go and by the end of the night she couldn't walk on it at all and wasn't eating or wanting to do anything fun. when we got home we took the blood-soaked bandage off - i will spare you the specifics, but we did take her to the e.r. where they tried to dermabond it shut. i say tried because 24 hrs later the glue was totally gone (i guess the medical superglue has a tough time staying stuck to hamburger). anyway, what an adventure. kaylee and i stayed home from church the next day and slept (and i enjoyed every minute of it!)Y

my cute girl scouts

here are some fun pics of the girls at their girl scout cookie rally on friday. we are new girl scouters (if you couldn't tell by the girls lack of patches) - it's been quite the adventure.

the event was less than stellar (maybe i'm too picky - but it was chaotic insanity with about 200 girls there and not enough adults and the activities were more appropriate for pre-school age kids). the girls had fun (though they clung to me most of the time), but i was relieved when it was time to go home! now we have selling cookies to look forward to (as well as eating them! mmm...samoas.) Y

a quiet afternoon of checkers...

the other day rita and i had a meeting with sam's club to talk about sponsorship for girls on the run and she brought ada over for aaron to watch while we were gone. this was the scene when we left - they play so cute together!!


it takes quite a bit for dallin to sit down and do anything for long...Y