A question I ask myself way too often

Is that normal? You all thought I was going to say something like "is this worth it?" or something else of that nature didn't you? Nope, today I am questioning my normalcy. How often do you do that? Is it normal that I do it quite often? So today's reason for my wonderment is the fact that when the phone rang and I saw that it was our accountant (this year's taxes have finally crushed me into submission) I got jittery and nervous and had to force myself to answer the phone (which is better than yesterday when the heat pump guy called and I let it go to voicemail). So is it normal to get anxiety attacks because of phone calls. The funny thing is that I talk on the phone for way longer than I probably should to friends and family and can chat about almost anything forever (I like to do this while doing chores so that I don't have to think about the fact that I am cleaning yet again) but when it is someone I don't know or a company I have to literally force myself to do it. After talking to my accountant I decided that since I was already in nervous phone call state I should go ahead and call Brock's teacher at school to let him know I didn't receive the forms he was supposed to send me to sign (finally off my to do list). Because once I have survived one phone call it is easier to make more. So my question, is that normal? Anyone else have the same panic attack when they have to talk on the phone to a business or stranger? I have had some problems with amazon.com (not big and they were good about resolving them) and I spent 15 minutes doing their online chat thing rather than calling them and getting it done in 5. Why is the chat different? We are still conversing back and forth, just through typing rather than voice. Why can I be more firm about what I would like to happen when I am typing rather than talking? Sometimes I wish I had majored in Psychology so that I would have the answers to all my "is that normal" questions because I do wonder that quite often, if not for myself then for my children. Is that normal?

Party Pants

Three posts in one day? What is the world coming to? I guess when we see who our new President is we will will know. Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone (me) know that though I fail at motherhood far more often than I will ever admit, every once in a while I pull through. Our family has one boy barbie doll. He is King Dominic/Julian from Princess and the Pauper and he has been missing his pants for a while. I am not sure if they got ripped or lost but they have been gone and I don't enjoy looking at barbie boy bums so I told the girls (the little girls) they had to throw him away. They were heartbroken about losing their only boy barbie and I suggested they ask the older girls to sew him some pants. The older girls have a bag of scrap fabric and they hand sew all sorts of interesting little things. Mia looked at me with her big, innocent (yeah right), trusting eyes and said, "why don't you knit him some, you can make anything." How could I refuse? (princess and the pauper watchers are now congratulating me on that last witty line). I am not a skilled enough knitter to make pants from scratch but I thought I might be able to crochet some so I got out my horn and did some improvising and made the best pair home made boy barbie pants I have ever seen (the only pair too). I was terribly impressed with myself, enough that I took a picture of the new and spectacularly dressed Julian and here it is:
All those years of crocheting have paid off. Now the funny part is that Liam saw the pants and asked me if I could make him a pair of pants he could put on two of his fingers to pretend they were legs (where does that boy get these ideas?). I had taught him to crochet but he wasn't terribly interested so I told him that if he made two squares I would turn them into pants for him. He made the squares, I made the pants and he was doing the can can with his fingers in no time. That is what I love about being a mom. The absolutely absurd but wonderful moments where your son is doing the can can with his home made pants clad fingers.

On the day after Christmas my daughter gave to me:

A stressful day of injury and urgent care.


So I kept telling myself that if I could just get through Christmas I would have week where I could relax for just a bit before getting back into school, activities, and more home improvement projects. My daughter must have heard me talking to myself one of those times and decided to thwart my plans (that is why children are born isn't it (yes I know I shouldn't say things like that)). The morning after Christmas Evie was getting off the bed (jumping off the bed? I wonder) and fell and hurt her arm. She is usually a pretty tough cookie (she has to be considering her crazy nature and inherited clumsiness) so the fact that she was still crying a half hour later and wouldn't let anyone anywhere near her arm clued me in that we had an urgent care visit in our future. I made Aaron take her since he was home and I almost always have to do those type visits and he came home with the expected diagnosis of a broken arm. She broke it right above the elbow which I thought was odd but I guess more common that I knew. Anyway, they splinted and wrapped the arm and I was supposed to go to a pediatric bone guy to get it casted the next day. More bad luck, when we saw the bone guy he said that something had moved (I am not a scientist and cannot say exactly what that something was but I could locate it on the xray if asked) and if she didn't have surgery to move it and then put pins in to keep it there she would not be able to bend her arm more than 90 degrees ( like shaking a hand). If you think about it that means she wouldn't be able to comb her hair, eat food, or pick her nose with that hand so I decided to do the surgery.

I was nervous about the anesthesia because my Mom reacts strongly to anesthesia sometimes but the surgery wasn't too bad other than the fact that it took her a really long time to wake up and then she was really upset for a couple hours. The three weeks after were annoying. The cast was huge and she couldn't get most of her shirts on over it. Her coat had zip on sleeves (thank goodness) so we removed one sleeve. Anyway, I was super excited for her to get the pins out and the cast off last Friday but the excitement wasn't over. Evie had a cold going into the surgery and I think a combination of that and being a redhead (redheads and anesthesia don't mix well) and the genes where what caused her to throw up during the surgery which led to chest xrays and 2 hours of monitoring afterward. Right as we thought she was good to go she suddenly spiked a 103 fever that took a couple hours to control with tylenol and Mydol. She narrowly missed an ambulance ride to a pediatric ER but the fever did go down. The cause of the fever is officially a mystery but I think her body had been through too many shocks that morning and was fighting back the only way it knew how. Anyway, our fun first broken arm experience is almost over (one more doc visit tomorrow) and as long as she doesn't get pneumonia (no sights of it yet, knock on wood) from the throwing up under anesthesia thing I am hoping we are home free.

I'm Back

Well, after a year of no blog posts I figure even the few people who were following my blog have given up so now I am only writing for one person, me. Which means I don't have to worry about being witty, using correct grammar, making cute backgrounds and visually pleasing posts (never did figure that one out), wearing clothes while I write, etc.. Now maybe this blogging thing will be more fun and I will update it more often (or should I say, oftener). Well like it or not I made a resolution to update my blog more often for the sake of those pesky posterity (as if they will ever read it) if nothing else, and since its pretty much the only one I have half a chance at not eventually breaking I figure I had better get started (the resolution was to post at least once a month and try for once a week or so). Did you see how long that last sentence was, I am liking this solo blogging thing already. Anyway, enough with the words, on to the pictures. I figured it was only right that I start with a happy event like Christmas.



We didn't get many Christmas pictures this year, just these two and one of each child holding their favorite gift. It is just too hectic to monitor 6 kids opening presents and I will admit I am a bit ocd about it so anyway, no cute presents of kids ripping into wrapping paper. But we did get these two before Church and even though we had to do it in two pictures since there was no one to take the pictures and I have never had a timer photo turn out well I think we all look rather dashing. Especially Liam, where did he get that smile?


Christmas was a bit too hectic for my taste this year because I was trying to do home improvement projects at the same time and I set myself up for too many late start home made knitting projects. But they all got done and I think they turned out pretty well.



These are the hats I made for Aaron's parents. I just recently got in to knitting with two colors and have made hats with patterns for all of my kids then decided I wanted to do them for parents for Christmas. I really like these snowflake patterns.
My Mom decided she didn't want a hat (if I was sure she would never read this I might say that she enjoys complicating things but since there is a slim chance she will I won't) but wanted a cowl that she could have over hear head plus around her face either loosely or tightly for when she is doing the paper route(yes she still does a paper route and I think she is cool). It gets pretty dang cold some of those mornings so she wanted something to keep her face warm but not be tight. It took way longer than I thought it would and you can't see how it looks on a person but she says it is just want she wanted (and I am sure she would never lie about something like that).

Last, but not least, my masterpiece. I designed a BYU hat for my dad and it just may be the last hat I ever design. I thought most of the trouble would just be making the letters look good but that was the least of my worries. My stubbornness worked in my favor for once and I got it done and think it looks awesome. Now I need to make one for Aaron.

As far as the rest of Christmas goes, it was lovely.