Future gymnast?

I am always wanting to do crazy gymnastic moves with anyone who will participate. I have mostly recruited my siblings and Brian. I like to see what kind of crazy moves we can do. We usually end up on the floor laughing so hard we almost pee our pants, but it is great fun. Well, Leah has started to do the same thing. She has a few tricks she can do with Brian. Her latest one is running and juming up onto to his shoulders. It is quite impressive. I think that her skills are better than mine. Brian just told me that Annie has also attempted this trick, but basically just runs up and slams into Brian's back and then yells out "Up!" Her midgetness is really hurting her chance to be a gymnastics super star.

5 months and 6 years

On Friday (the 13th), Lucy turned 5 months old and Brian and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Lucy is doing so much better. Those breathing treatments are really effective. She is back to her happy, smiley self. She can roll over from her back to her stomach and then over to her back again. She would be a fierce competitor at steamroller. She is so fun and we love her lots. Brian and I managed to sneak away and get some dinner (the Cheesecake Factory is divine!) and go to the bookstore-somewhat nerdy I know. Our life together has been quite a whirlwind, but it has been filled with goodtimes. I can't wait to see what other adventures are in store for us.

Cheese

Watching Leah and Annie dance around like maniacs
Impressive skills-holding up that gigantic noggin

Mid-roll

Big time stinging

My dad use to love to go to stores when they were having a good sale, take in a bunch of coupons and "sting 'em." He would drag us along, so that he could use multiple coupons. We would each have to take an item, the coupon, and then the money needed to pay. It was quite a process. Well, Ron would have been proud of me today. Poor Walgreens really got stung! Here is the breakdown of my sting operation:

Total money spent-$31.82

Total savings-$44.44

MFG coupons-$31.00

WAG coupons-$13.44

Walgreens was having a great sale and I had excellent coupons. I had to do three different transactions, but it was all worth it. If you can't tell from the picture I got three packs of Huggies diapers, a Gillete Fushion razor, 2 boxes of Ziploc freezer bags, 2 cans Cream of Chicken soup, one can of pineapple, 3 packs of Orbit gum, 2 bottles of Ajax dish soap, and one tube of Sensodyne toothpaste. It was awesome!

Sick

So the health gods have been pretty good to me. My girls have been relatively healthy. Sure there has been a cold here or there, but no ear infections, no tonsil issues, no real life stopping infirmities to speak of. This is quite a feat with little ones. The weather here started to warm up and cold and flu season was winding down, or so I thought. I got a little cocky thinking that I had made it through another winter unscathed. Well, I was wrong. My luck has changed and it all hit the fan yesterday. Annie started out with a cough early last week that just keep getting phlemier and more rattly as the days went by. Lucy started in with a cough the day after Annie started with hers (It is near impossible to expect a 2 year old not to touch her baby sister when she is like a walking petri dish. I try and explain contagious, but she just looks at me like I have three heads.). Needless to say, things went downhill pretty quickly. Lucy's appetite decreased dramatically and she was lethargic and sleeping more than usual. Annie coughed so hard she threw up. Obviously some type of intervention was needed, so Saturday morning the entire family wound up at the doctor's office. The result: Annie has bronchiolitits and an ear infection (caused by the build up of snot in her sinuses) and Lucy has RSV. Fabulous. I am now a regular Florence Nightingale. I give antibiotics (only to Annie because they would do nothing for Lucy and I am glad my doctor recognized that) twice a day, breathing treatments for each girl every 4-6 hours, Tylenol every four hours, and extra loves during the times they are awake. The breathing treatments are quite entertaining. Annie does pretty good about holding the tube in her mouth or close to her nose, but she wanted to give her toes some medicine and then her knees. My mom told me that some kids get hyper from the steroid and so of course, Annie falls into that category. She is like a midget on speed. She keeps us quite entertained for about an hour and then she crashes. Leah is starting to get the cough that Annie has, so I think I will just start giving her the breathing treatments too. I wish I could isolate them in their own bubble in order to avoid the cross contamination. Brian has been a huge help this weekend and his parents are coming to visit tomorrow, so I'm grateful for the extra adults to help maintain control. Hopefully, we will all be feeling better soon and the health gods will smile on me once again.

The drug regime Annie holding her own treatment tube and Brian holding the receipt from the pharmacy showing that we didn't have to pay anything. I love health insurance!!
Annie being such a good girl.
We tried the mask first and she really wasn't a fan.
Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever seen?
Lucy having a go with the tube

This might actually be the saddest thing

Cutting babies out

On Friday, Leah had a doctor's appointment to get caught up on her vaccinations in order to be ready for Kindergarten registration (gulp!) On the way there she was asking me questions about the doctor because this was her first visit to this particular office. She wanted to know her name and what she looked like. Then she blurts out "Is she a doctor who cuts babies out?" Apparantly, this is how my child thinks that all babies come into the world. In her mind, it's not a beautiful, spiritual experience, but more of a gory, messy procedure. Technically, I have my babies cut out of me, but I felt that I explained things a little less bluntly to her when Lucy was born. Obviously I was wrong. I told Leah that her new doctor was not one who cuts babies out, but one who focuses on keeping kids healthy. Needless to say, I am going to have to do some damage control, but I just didn't have the energy at that moment to correct her twisted conception on the miracle of life.

It's about time!

We moved into our house the first week of October. Our garage has been filled to the gills with stuff since we moved in. We have managed to get most of the boxes unpacked and out of the house, but the garage was a different story. We weren't really in a big rush because we have a nice long driveway where we parked the van. Well, we had some friends in the ward, who moved in across the street from us the last weekend of January. They too had stuff in their garage and parked their van in their driveway. Last week I look out my window to see my friend return home, open her garage, and pull all the way in. What was that all about? Well, I got a little case of keeping up with the Jones', or in this case the Dayton's. Yesterday Brian and I spent most of the day going through our crap in the garage. The goal was to be able to pull the van into the garage before dinner. Well, we did it, and it only took us just under 5 months to accomplish. Now I just have to worry about not slamming into my house as I back out.

Lucy hanging out in the garage while we sorted through things.

Brian standing proud of his accomplishment

(Please don't focus on the left side of the garage. Remember,

the goal was to get the van in, not to completely

get rid of all the stuff).

A better view in the light of day