Tired of Cleaning . . .

I'm going to try to go back and catch up on some of the things that our family has done since I last posted! Here is one of my favorite pictures of all of my children. Two of them you may not recognize, but they are definitely my children! The boy in the blue shirt is Cameron's best friend, Jeremiah Ward. The two are almost inseparable. He's a year older than Cameron, and unfortunately, is in junior high while Cameron is still in elementary school. But there's always after school, weekends, etc. We took Jeremiah with us Labor Day weekend to the White Mountains of Arizona to visit the little boy in yellow, Kaiden. He and Cameron have the same birthday and are 10 years apart. He's the son of two of my students who are very special to us. Kaiden's mom (Karen) used to be Cameron's piano teacher until Kaiden's dad (Rand) got a teaching job in Eagar and they had to move from Thatcher. We were very sad, but it gives us an excuse to go visit and one day we'd like to build a cabin there.


Since my blog is the "Furry Menagerie", I thought I'd better give you a sampling every now and again of our furry friends. This is Creamy. We raise rats to sell to the pet store as pets and reptile food, but we decided that we wanted a couple of rats as pets for us. I know what you're thinking. . . but rats really do make great pets. We take them from their mommies as soon as they get hair (even before their eyes are open) and then bottlefeed them so they will be tame. We have another one named Butterscotch and they live together to keep each other company. Amy and Cameron absolutely love them. Missy likes them, but she's not as interested in them as the others are.


This is Creamy before her eyes were open! She's much bigger, now!

Everything seems to get put on hold during the semester, so lots of work piles up for when I'm home. So now I have to tackle it, but I'm tired of it, so I guess I'll post some more. Two more days until Christmas vacation! Missy is VERY excited for it this year. She's been my present scout this year -- checking everything under the tree, keeping track of how many presents everyone gets, especially her. I finished her fur coat yesterday. We saw a coat that someone made in the fabric section of WalMart one day, and she wanted that so desperately! She kept talking about it until finally, Nana gave in, and gave me the money to buy the pattern and fabric. But she was too scared to make it! So I had to. But it was really pretty easy and I'll post a picture of her modeling it after Christmas. It was fun to make for her and I can't wait to see her face when she opens it!

Well, back to work! Make it a great day!

A Whole Semester . . .

I can't believe that an entire semester has gone by without a post! Sorry about that, but it's been a very hectic few months. Here's one of the changes:





After:

Before:

I know this should have been the other way around, but I still haven't figured out to upload pictures to my blog in the order that I want them to be displayed. I hate that, and I REALLY hate Moon Sand. Don't buy it! Yes, it doesn't dry out, but it also doesn't stick together and gets everywhere. The good thing is that each time Amy plays with it, less and less returns to the container. One day it will have all been vacuumed away . . . .

Amy was getting very tired of having it hurt every Sunday when we tried to comb her hair for church. The reason why it hurt so much was that she'd only let me comb it on Sundays before church. So we cut off the dreadlocks and I have a new girl! I miss the long blond hair, though. It's darker now but I'm hoping it will lighten in the summer.

I guess for now this blog is going to be about Amy or it will be too long. Amy has had a time in the past with seizures as she wakes up in the mornings. She had her first in June of 2006 and we did tests with a "wait and see" from the neurologist. They came back with one in March, one in April, one in July, and one in August. So we're doing more tests and currently have her on medication. It's always scary to have your children on maintenance meds, but she hasn't experienced any side effects or seizures. The doctor said we'll try it for a year and if she can be seizure-free for a year, we can take her off of the medication. So, we're four months and counting. I hope she'll outgrow them. I've heard of lots of cases where that has happened. We're keeping our fingers crossed!

Now that I'm out for the semester, I will keep catching up on our lives! Have a great day and congratulations, Jeff! We're all so proud of you!

My Beautiful Girls

Here are my two little beauties! It sure has been fun being home with them this summer. I really don't want to go back to work on Monday, but duty calls! Missy starts 4th grade on Wednesday in the elementary school. She's a little nervous about going to the new school with the big kids (4-6th). She'll be fine, though.



My tiny will be sad to have the kids off to school, but she and her Gampa will find lots to do. The last year home . . . don't know what PaNana will do without her next year. Amy, unfortunately, has started the seizures, again, and last week she had a real one that we caught on video (with the wonderful camera I got for my birthday, thank you very much). I won't post that, because it's a little disturbing, but it comes in handy when you go to the doctor! So now she has to go back to her neurologist and we'll end up putting her on some sort of medication. A sister in our ward has a granddaughter with a similar situation, and she outgrew the seizures after being on medication for a couple of years. So we hope the same for Amy. She's such a precious spirit in our home. Cameron took this picture of her in Wyoming on our vacation this summer. I think he did a great job!

I don't have anything about Cameron; I'll do him later, since this is about my GIRLS! We're looking forward to Tony and Kevin's visit in a couple of weeks. The following weekend (Labour day weekend) we're going camping in the White Mountains. Our very special friends moved there this summer and we really miss them.

I'm sure I'll post more once I get back into a regular routine. Take care of yourselves and we certainly are missing out on the fun in Houston!

Our House

Ola wanted to see our house and suggested that I put it on my blog. Here's what we hope it will look like if we ever get it started, and finished, of course.

We've had the plans and land for a couple of years, so hopefully when Rob is finished with school and gets a job, we can start construction!

I've been Harry Potterized!

Well, I finished it. I even made myself finish what painting I had to do in the girls' room before I started it (pictures to follow). I think I was averaging 75-100 pages an hour. I'm satisfied. I need to go back and reread the wand thing, and go back into the Half-Blood Prince, too, but for the most part I really enjoyed it. The eavesdropping with Ted and Dean, et al., was a little contrived, but how else were they going to find stuff out? Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!!!

Here was our very fun day of fishing at Dankworth Pond. Kevin had a VERY good time. They also went on the 4-wheeler with Rob and I don't think that he wants to go home. Everyone caught at least one fish.



There is also an artesian spring at Dankwork pond that the kids played in. It was about 95 degrees.

Here's Amy's fish. She needs a little help with casting, but reels it in pretty good!

Sorry about the little April Fool's day thing, but I just couldn't let the day go by without something! Tony and Kevin got here safe and sound last night. Cameron slept over at Grandma's so he could wait up for them. I understand the two of them are now over at my house playing basketball. Doesn't surprise me! Haven't seen Tony, yet. I'm still at work for a couple more hours. But my house is all cleaned up (except my bedroom and no one needs to see that) so I don't have much to do this weekend. We have a ward pancake breakfast and easter egg hunt tomorrow morning. Then we may go fishing. I'll post a picture of C and K together this afternoon. It will be kind of funny! Have a great day!