Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like. . .

. . . getting the flu. Blah.

Jenna turned 9 years old on Friday and for most of the day she had a great birthday.  The night before her birthday Britton and I were throwing up all night but Jenna woke up feeling great and was so excited for her big day.  School got out earlier than usual because of a district teacher training and she got to go to Activity Days ice cream party and a group violin lesson and Aunt Kim and Uncle Ben and their 2 kids were staying at our house. Even Uncle Stephen came up and was around for her birthday party!  It was around dinner when we were sitting down to her favorite meal, tortellini, that I realized she wasn't as enthusastic as she was earlier in the day and she wasn't eating.  Finally I just asked her, "Jenna, are you feeling ok?"  She confessed that her stomach did hurt a little. The rest of the evening it just kept getting worse.   I still wasn't feeling well myself, Britton had gone through it all the night before, and within an hour after dinner Adam started not feeling well either.  So, Jenna opened her presents with a throw-up bowl close by.

And while our visitors played, Jenna layed on the floor.

She was a trooper and said that she still had a great birthday.  Instead of playing wii Kids Dance Jenna opted to have us all watch a movie.  Good call.

We have all recovered from our family flu bug and none of the extended family members staying at our house during the ordeal came down with it.

The Streak Has Ended

In 10 1/2 years of child rearing we have never had a single set of stitches, a broken bone, or any trips to the emergency room.  In fact, I can count on my right hand how many times we have been to the Dr. for anything other than a well child visit.  One of the reasons for this amazing streak is that Britton is not the kind of kid who likes to do things that are "unsafe".  He doesn't care what people say, there is no way he can be talked into doing something risky.

Monday our 10 1/2 year streak came to an end and Britton is the proud owner of 10 new stitches.  Yikes.

The only reason he is smiling in this picture is because Adam took him to Zeppes after getting stitches.

This has been the year of no snow so when we finally got 6 inches of the white stuff the neighborhood decided to have a little sledding party at our neighborhood park on President's Day.  Britton and Jenna ran ahead to start sledding with the group while  I stayed home with Jameson and Adam went to the store to get a sled.  Britton arrived at the park and all of the boys his age were going on the bigger part of the hill.  That didn't look very safe to him so he opted for the smaller hill with the smaller kids.  On his first trip down the hill he hit a rock and when I say he hit a rock I mean his HEAD hit a rock.  He hadn't even been gone from our house for 10 min. when I got a call from a neighbor Mom telling me that Britton had been hurt.  She started walking him home and I called Adam and told him to abort the sled plan and come home immediately.  Britton was calm when he got home and was holding a big chunk of snow on the spot where he was cut.  I didn't get a chance to look at the cut since it was under his hair but Britton was sure he just needed a bandaid. When Adam got home and got a good look at it he knew that he was going to need stitches. The gash was deep, very deep. They had to shave his hair to do the stitches and since it is right in the front we had no choice but to shave his entire head.

As you can tell from the picture it was a pretty traumatic day for him.  Knowing Britton he will probably never go sledding again, period.  I asked him if he had anything to say about it and all he said was , "Pleeeeeeaaaasse don't put this in the blog!"  Sorry bud, but it just had to be documented.

This and That

Taylor, Jen, Will and June were in town this week and since ICON was paying for them to stay at the Marriott we took advantage of the hotel pool. It's always a novelty to go swimming during the winter so it was a big hit with the kids. 

This year for Valentines Day it was clear to me that Britton and Jenna approach the holiday very differently.  After receiving the Valentine class list last week Jenna set about to make individual Valentines for each member of her class based on things that they liked.  She painstakingly found a unique picture for every student and then wrote out a To: and From: and Happy Valentines Day by hand on each one.

What was so impressive to me is that she knew something about each student in her class. As she was cutting them out she would say,  "Matthew is going to love this because he loves pineapples.  Gage loves to skateboard so he is really going to like this.  Tess is going to love this because she loves dogs.  Brenden has a pet turtle so he is going to love this Valentine with a turtle on it."  She put a lot of thought into each one and was pleased with the results.  She spent days making sure they were all just right.

The night before Valentines Day Britton looked at me in a panic. "What are we going to do for Valentines, Mom?" I spent approx. 1 min. and 24 sec. on the computer before printing out a simple Valentine on cardstock .  He taped suckers on the back and was done with the entire process in no time at all.  "Mom, you are a genius! That was so fast!"  When it came to decorating his Valentine box he went with a Geography theme because nothing says "Happy Valentines Day" like the planet earth and a map of Utah.

Yeah, he was the only student with a Geography themed Valentine box. . .imagine that.

With Korinne I printed out a simple postcard size Valentine I found on the Internet. It had 4 to a page and was ready to go.  It took me less than 1 min. to print it out and cut them with our big cutter.  I let her fill them out and then her friend Cara helped her tape suckers to the back.  I'm so proud of the fact that I spent less than 3 total minutes doing Valentines and I have 3 kids in school! Boo-yah! (Only a holiday challenged Mom, like myself, would celebrate such a feat.)  Adam and I went out to lunch on Valentines Day and called it good. We're festive like that.

The other night I walked into the family room and found this:

 I guess maybe Korinne does miss being the baby of the family after all.  She sure is a good big sister and absolutely adores baby Jameson.

She still finds plenty of time to be crazy with her BFF.

We were finally able to get copies of Jameson's newborn pics taken in the hospital.

This one shows his birthmom holding him.

Smile!

Jameson is smiling. 

He also has a pretty good, "I've been fed and my diaper is changed" face.  Whatever the expression the tongue is always out and the arms are always moving.  He has grown about 3 inches since he was born.  I have a feeling he might be on the tall side when he grows up.  (Of course it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out since his birthparents are 5'9' and 6'3").

Visitors

We had a few visitors from down south this week.  Since we won't be able to bless Jameson until the adoption is finalized by the courts 6 months after placement Adam's parents decided to brave the arctic north in the dead of winter to meet him.  They always tease us about living in such a cold place and being so far north that you have to have a passport to come here.  Well, this year we have hardly had any snow and it has been very mild.

Gramma made Jameson this darling quilt.  Here the kids (plus Cara) pose for a picture with it.

Look who decided to come and visit-- Stephen.  It only took 3 1/2 years and an adoption to get him at our house.  We've lived here so long we need to start re-painting rooms, but Adam gave him a tour of the house anyway.

Jameson is a month old now.  We had to send our first update to his birthmom, but getting decent pictures turned out to be quite a task. When Jameson is awake he never stops moving and he is always pulling weird faces.  We needed to get some good ones to send but this was what we got:

Oh wait, that's better.

This one kind of looks like a newborn photo because of the blanket, but it was on his 4 week birthday.  His hand is blurry because he never stops moving it.  He loves to stick out his tongue.

This is his "I have great hair" pose. We may be seeing this one a lot, this kid has a LOT of hair.

The kids continue to be helpful which is good because life is still in full swing.  Korinne went to a birthday party on Friday and she and her 2 friends from our cul-de-sac, Cara and Taylor, were in their party clothes and ready to go. Then one of them said, "I think you should take a picture of us" so I did.

Korinne is lucky to have friends who live in our cul-de-sac.  She is our mini-teenager because she is always with her friends or has one of them at the house.