K, I have several things that still need to be posted to finish up 2012, but I am going to attempt to finish them up in post #6, lets see how well I do. I need to get on to 2013, so I don't get to far behind for 2014. I am glad that I have remembered as many things as I have it will make for a much more fun blog/journal book.
So right before school started Tay enter Juab's got talent with her hula hooping. She wowed everyone and took first. This last year she went back and performed as well as the previous years winner. She tells us she wants to do Mona days one more year and try to go for the gold. I am glad she found something that she enjoys so much.
At the end of October we brought home 2 little puppies. I had a hard time deciding to do this again after Taylar's dog Hershey disappeared about 10 months earlier, but I decided it was time. These 2 dogs were cockapoo and were way cute and fun, but in Jan. we took on my brothers boxer that was 2 years old and realized we had to give up something. We put all the dogs up on KSL to see which which ones would go first. It is no surprise that the cute little puppies went fast. Though it was overwhelming with 3 dogs in the house it was still hard to see them go. They went to an older lady that had lost her cockapoo a few months before, she was so happy to have found these two.
This is Buster, this is what he spent most of his time doing when we were home. He was sweet, loved to lounge around and sweet face the kids into giving him food. The kids loved to wrestle with him and play fetch, or maybe a better explanation was keep away since he would get the ball then act like he wanted you to take it then take off just before it happened. Unfortunately there was another side to Buster that was not as enjoyable, that we eventually had to give him up for. Buster hated to be left alone, we we first got him that didn't happen very often, but it got more often as the warmer weather came. A couple of time he got out of his cage and he would knock things off the wall, and just mess things up everywhere. But even in his cage he would knock his cage until it got him places and then pull tings in and ripe them up including rugs. We lost to many things, so we had to find him a home too, but supposedly he is doing great. He went to a home that had another boxer, this one being female. I guess that was enough to calm him down. We like to say that he is now living happily everafter with his girlfriend.
The other dog in the photo is my sister's Great Dane. The played great together and yes I realize friends is spelt wrong, that is what happens when you don't spell check things before you finish the project. :)
Some random picture and happenings to throw in.
Josh came home from his Mission in July. He served in Peru. First missionary Grandchild to go. We have 2 more out right now.
I found another picture from my time in YW. This was from our service scavenger hunt, we had just got done cleaning up garbage.
Knightin is a little bit of a magnet for wasp stings. I think this was his 3rd and he has has 2 more since. Poor guy. :( We also have to watch them cause each time the swelling is a little bit worse. I hope he doesn't end up getting anaphylactic.
When I was taking pictures of my sister Carry's family, I happened to get this shot of the Provo temple. I have to say I am not a big fan of the looks of the Provo temple, but I do love this picture, it turned out great!
Ki, got to go to his first BYU Pow Wow. You can earn up to 3 merit badges. He had a lot of fun and had a lot of homework, but scouts isn't suppose to be all easy. They had an airplane toss, and if you got your plane on the targets, then you won a shirt, Ki was one of the lucky ones, his plane just glided right down to one of the targets. How fun is that for your first time going. I didn't take any pictures of this last pow wow but Kelten got to go to it as well. He is loving scouts just as much as Ki and is well on his way to getting through his ranks. Kelten has earned his scout rank, and has earned 4 merit badges and in the process of earning 5 more. He has been in scouts for 4 months. Ki is a life scout and is currently working on his Eagle. He has 28 merit badges and is also currently working on 5 merit badges and will have his last 2 eagle required merit badges in a couple of months, they are both time sensitive, Ki has been in Scouts a little over 2 years. We have excellent scout leaders right now and they just are constantly working with the boys and encouraging them to keeping working and earning. It helps if you like scouts though and my boys are their daddy all the way in this area.
Ki kept us hoping in 2012 medically. We went through a couple of months were he would black out or pass out on us, we had him go through various testing and he even wore a portable EKG at home for 24 hours. What did we find out through all of this? Absolutely nothing. They did go away and we still have no clue why he went through it. Weird
The next hospital adventure was a choice. Ki had always had a slightly funny gait, but until disneyland we didn't think as much about it. I would make comments off and on to Todd, but never went anywhere with it. Disneyland was really hard on him. Ki had never been on his feet that much, he was in some serious pain, limping, walking even funnier to compensate for the pain. As we talked to him he told us the pain had just become part of his life and that someday were worse then others. So after we got home we made an appointment to see a specialist, we had taken him into a regular doctor about a year earlier and they didn't seem to think anything was wrong. He diagnosed Ki with flexible flat foot syndrome and guess what he gets it from me. So I knew I had flat feet, and I definitely get really sore and sometime radiated pain if I have on going long lengths of time on my feet, but I don't remember having so much of it when I was younger. Also, we did find out that none of my other kids have it, thank goodness. So basically what it is in a simplified version Is the bones in the arch area of the foot collapses on top of each other, which in turn starts to make the big toe bones grow out wrong. This causes the body to try and compensate and then if to much time is spent on the foot it can cause pain, yeah what fun. They gave us a few different options. One was supportive orthopedics (so weird for me, in my mind that is something my grandmother wore) and or foot surgery. He told us sometime the orthopedics are enough, but that you never know. That the surgery has had great success and as many things kids heal faster and react better. We actually did both. He told us that it is beneficial to wear the orthodics with he surgery while he is still growing to give the extra support, but that he should be able to eventually not have to wear them. So we had him fitted and scheduled the surgery, which we did in Orem the first weekend in December, Merry Christmas to Ki. Also, we were told that they normally do one foot at a time, but we could have the choice. The recovery from it is about 2.5 moths. 5 months? No thank you, we went double surgery option. So after his surgery he got double cast on and was in a wheel chair for 5 weeks. He got pretty good at working that thing. He could get in and out of it his self and could pop wheelies. Though his friends did like to push him around. After that he got to be in double walking boots for 4 weeks. It took him a little over a week to get the hang of those things, but at least now he could take a proper bath and have his feet breath once in awhile. We also did about 5 weeks of physical therapy after that. His tendons were really tight cause him to be really pigeon toed. He is still a little bit and we have him were high top hiking boots which help a lot, but his tells us his pain is so much better, that is what it was all for. :) We have about half of his bills paid off, but I think we will be working on it for a bit longer.
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Ki after waking up from surgery, he gets to eat his crackers to make sure he can keep stuff down .
It was the Christmas season, so of course we had to get Christmas themed cast on him. Though not any convincing he choose it himself.
A week after surgery they took off the cast to make sure there was no infection and that the swelling was going down and incisions were healing nicely, they were so the next set of cast got put on.
All wrapped up again!
We didn't get any pictures after this, I really have split on my picture taking, oh well at lest I have some.
During his recovery phase while still in a wheel chair, Ki turned 12. He birthday plans were put on hold. He wanted to have a big party with friends, and he had a small party with family. It is a good thing he loves us all. When boys turn 12 in our church they receive the Priesthood. Ki was so excited about this. The Sunday after his birthday which was a only 2 days we all came together and he was ordained by Todd to the office of a deacon. With this ordination they have some new responsibilities, one of which is passing the sacrament on Sundays. He would have to hold off on that for about another month or so. We didn't have him pass with his boots on because he was not very steady, but he got out of those boots and I think the second Sunday after that he was up passing and hasn't stopped since. He love doing that and the other stuff that goes along with it. We are so proud of you Ki!!!!
December had it normal craziness of getting ready for Christmas and school programs, ward parties and family get togethers, but we decided to add a little more to the pot then the average year, The home that we had been living in had been up on the market for over a year.. It was technically my parents though Todd and I had complete control and responsibility over it except have our m=name on the mortgage. When the economy went upside down about 4.5-5 years ago it made it really hard for us to upgrade to something bigger that fit our family. You may say why did that effect us, since it wasn't our house, well that is a long story that I will not write about, but we had obligations. So the house was not salable with out losing money, the house was worth less then what my parents owed. We tried to figureout how to be happy there, how to add on, but it never felt right. We looked at other option, then would present it to my parents, but there was always road blocks. Finally a solution came towards the later part of 2011. We were going to buy my sisters second home, my parents decided that the falling apart modular wasn't worth keeping and that they didn't need to buy anything so having their credit ruined through the sale and loss of the home was going to be OK. So the processes started. We found an agent the specialized in the potential short sales, which is what it ended up being, since the appraised value of the home was $80,000 less then what they owed on it. It was an ugly year, of the bank being nasty, them continually losing paper work, showing the house, and trying to figure everything else out in the process. I got to be the in between guy for my parents, they didn't think they could handle it so wrote over power of attorney to me to speak for them, fun for me. Also during the whole process, Todd and I didn't end up feeling good about buying my sisters house and so started looking elsewhere, plus the renters of my sisters home, were being kind of nasty, but that is a whole other story and not mine to tell. We end up finding a house, the owners of that house found them a new house shortly after. both buying the home processes went as smooth as a babies butt, but the moving out and moving in of the 3 properties didn't run as smoothly but ended up working out. the 3 home were all finalized within a couple of weeks of each other. The people that bought the home we were living in wanted us out the night of closing, well we hadn't quite closed on our new house yet. that was to happen a few days later. But, we were a little nicer to the people in our house they hadn't closed yet, that would be a week later, so we had to juggle things a bit. So the people in our house cleaned out the basement and we moved all our boxes and furniture in there, they took all their stuff and moved it into the basement of their future house( thankfully we all new each other, that is why it all worked out so nicely), Then they took another week while they close on their house to move the rest of their stuff out. Then we moved in that following weekend. While that all went on we stayed in my parents place and they stayed in their trailer in Manti. I would love to say that the family that moved out so we could move in got to move in shortly to their new house, but they had to wait a few weeks. They stayed in her parents basement while waiting. The people moving out of their new home asked if they could stay until after the holidays, so they got to settle in after that was all done. We were excited we got to spend Christmas in our new house, and that was the best Christmas ever!!!!
Our new house!!
We also bought my sisters Ford explorer in the mess of all this . A much better match for our families needs.
Here are a few pictures from Christmas Morning.
Look we have stairs. My kids have loved these. Sliding down them on sleeping bags happen often in our house.
We didn't have a christmas tree, (still don't actually) so I had this brilliant idea why don't we buy a real potted tree, then we can plant it in the spring. It would have been brilliant too if we hadn't have killed it before we got it planted, oops!!
We got lots of games that year, so we could have more thigns to do together, and guess what? In spite of the fact that they are in a locked cabinet, the 2 little ones still find ways to get into them and we have lost most of the pieces. I can't wait until they are old enough to not do that anymore so we can actually have games that last more then a few months.
They were fun while they lasted though!
We have a couple of small hills in our back yard, and we got some decent snow over Christmas break. The kids took full advantage of this fact and enjoyed some sledding.
Do you like Todd's hulk hair ski cap? He is so proud of it. :)
I think last but not least is to tell a little bit about Tays Christmas/ Graduation gift from her Aunt and Uncle. Mindy and Roger's kids have all had cousins that are the same age. So they decided when their first kid graduated from high school that they would take her and her cousin that was the same age on a trip. They did this for the next kids as well. Then they decided that this was a really stressful time of life for the kids to go. They are dealing with job schedules, getting ready for college and all the other things right after high school. Mindy and Roger decided at that point that they would take their remainder kids and cousins ( which was 4 extra, since Austin has 3 cousins his age)on one really big vacation but really early. They decided to do a southern and central CA tour. They did Disneyland, magic mountain, Cool forest and caves, whale watching, and a bunch of other stuff. But my sister doesn't ever give a gift simply. On Christmas morning all the kids received at the door a mission impossible type letter, that if they choose to except the challenge they had to meet at a certain place at a certain time to get their next task. Tay didn't know what to think, because of course not a clue had been whispered about it and it was way to early for a graduation present. They met at my sisters and went on kind of a scavenger hunt. Each clue gave then a task they had to figure out and accomplish before they got the next clue. They made the clues and task based on the things that the kids were each good at. So for instance Tay love hula hooping so one of the clues and task was dealing with that, and it was made in a way that they all had to participate or they wouldn't be able to finish it. It took a couple of hours and it was very fun to watch them go through it. The very last task had them put together a puzzle I had made that was a collage of all the places that they would be visiting. They were 6 happy campers and They all had a blast.
Here are some highlight picture from the morning hunt! Tay took some pictures from the trip but I couldn't find them. Oh well!
Oh, I forgot I some some cool winter-scape picture that I took when everything was so frozen. Last year we didn't get a lot of snow, but it was still one of the longest winters because it stayed down in the single digits for so long. Though it was miserable it made for cool looks!
Yeah, 2012 is all wrapped up!
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