Emma's Birthday and Other Fun Stuff

Our little Emma is not so little anymore, she just turned 5!  Can you believe it.  She will be going into kindergarten this fall and she is the one consoling me.  "It's o.k. mom, I will be home for dinner, you can see me then."  Oh, what a funny kid.  Her birthday fell on a Tuesday so we celebrated with her preschool friends.  She really wanted to get a cupcake cake and our friend Tiffany, who was hosting preschool, was so cute to have some fun decorations and party glasses for the kids to wear.  Emma got a doll house (stuffed animal house for Emma), a fishing pole to go fishing with Daddy, and some new sunglasses from Vivian.  We kept her birthday really low key this year since we are planning on having a big friend party next year.  She wanted pancakes for breakfast, Ramen Noodles for lunch, and for dinner we took her to John's Incredible Pizza.  We had a great day.  Emma brings us so much joy.  She has such a sweet and kind heart.  She is always looking for ways to help others be happy.  She is so full of energy and life.  She loves to play with her little sister and teach her new things.  She helps look after her whole family, and is really good at reminding her mommy to say a prayer and take 5 deep breaths when mommy gets grumpy.:)  We had an Easter party with our ward yesterday and she went around sharing her eggs with those who were upset they didn't get enough. (We did not prompt her on this)  She is such a good example to us and we sure love her!

 We had a preschool Easter party which was fun and everyone got good and messy.

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I am officially 27 weeks and counting.  My due date is July 16th, but we'll see if I get that far.  Hopefully for the baby we will, but mommy's body is not what it once was.  :)  I have sure gained more weight this time around and that never helps.  Oh, well, he sure loves to move a lot and we just continue to hope and pray things will go well. 

We are looking to buy a van.  All of these expensive decisions remind me of how bad I am at making decisions.  I second guess myself all the time!  yikes, luckily my hubby is used to me by now and has been very patient.  Hopefully we'll get that van before the baby comes. 

Craziness with the Cat

So I guess it has been over a month now since we first started noticing Gracie's odd behavior.  She was vomiting frequently and having abnormal bowel excretions.  She just seemed so "off" and we really began to worry about her.  So, we took her to the vet where he figured she just had a hairball stuck in her intestines, so she had to have an I.V. and then we were sent home with some medicine.  Well, after a week she was still not doing any better and was completely refusing to eat anything.  So back to the vet we went.  He decided to do some x-rays to identify any blockage.  After finding said "blockage" they decided she needed surgery to remove whatever was trapped.  We were nervous wrecks by now and every time I went in I was preparing myself to be putting my cat "down".  The surgery went well except for they discovered a thin thread that she had swallowed that had gotten stuck in her stomach at one end and continued all the way to her rectum.  I guess in these cases the intestines get tangled into knots.  Luckily we caught it early enough that she didn't have any intestinal damage, but they had to cut into her stomach and 4 places in her intestines.  Ahhh!  Crazy.  Poor Kitty.  We took her home and ever since have been in the process of her recuperation.  I was so stressed the first couple of days because they tell you to limit their activity so we locked her in our spare room so she wouldn't go up and down the stairs,  but she would continue to jump up to the window sill.


By the end of that week I  was seriously at my wits end with worry and stress.  How could one little pet cause so much drama in my life.  :)  So after refusing to eat her food and really not getting better we were able to let her out of her room and she did better after that. 


A week ago we took her in to get her staples removed and since we were not very smart and didn't enforce her use of an E-collar, some of her incision was not healed and had become infected.  SO HERE WE GO AGAIN.  This past week has been filled with making her wear her collar, cleaning out her wound and making sure to put Neosporin on it.  Problem is, she hurt and hated this process.  Oh, and I also had to continue to force feed her her medicine.  Well the other day during this whole process of cleaning her she proceeded to scratch me up which had become normal, but she got her claw stuck in my nose.  I was so panicked.  I thought for sure she was going to slice through my nose as she continued to tug to get it lose.  I finally was able to pry her paw off my nose, and after everything else I just lost it.  I must be pregnant because I was just sobbing.  I think I had just been so scared and was coming down from an adrenaline rush because I just couldn't stop no matter how silly it seemed. 


Well, after ALL OF THAT it seems as if she is all healed up and back to normal.  Oh boy this has been a stressful, time consuming and EXPENSIVE problem.  I guess we must love these silly pets of ours.  :)

Day at the zoo

A week or so ago I just got the hankering to get out of Bakersfield with my girls.  We love the zoo, but the one closest to us can hardly be considered a zoo and so I wanted to try out a new one.  I'd heard good things about the Fresno zoo and so off we went.  We don't leave Bakersfield very often unless we are going to the Temple or on a family trip, so it was a fun adventure.  It was about an hour and a half away, which isn't too bad since everything is about 2 hours from us. It was a beautiful day, the zoo wasn't very busy, it was small enough that we didn't get too tired out, but had plenty of wonderful animals to see.  We have been to the la zoo and I liked this one so much more.  We had a wonderful time and spent a good 3 hours there.  Vivians favorite thing was the giraffes, they even got to feed one.  Emmas favorite part was taking pictures on all the animal statues, and digging for dinosaur bones:-)  I had too many favorites to just pick one.  I loved the multi colored tree frogs, the tiger cubs, the orangutan who wanted Emmas fruit snacks and the sea lion exhibit, which was great.  Luckily they both eventually crashed on the way home.  We loved it so much we got a season pass.  Hope to make it up there again soon  (O.K., as usual when I put up a post from my phone it cuts off half the pictures.  To see ALL of the photos just click on them)

2013 end of a great year

It is crazy how bad I've been at blogging.  So, going back to Christmas, we had a wonderful day, the girls were very exited and pleased with their gifts.  Emma is so sweet, she kept asking Santa for a doll house, but "Santa" had already got her a bike.  By the time Santa thought to look for said doll house it was too late.  She was so good about it and was just as excited to get her bike.  Mommy got the best present of all, a whole day off, from before the kids woke up to after they went to bed, included was some money to go shopping, as well as a movie ticket.  It was weird taking my day off, but so nice to go shopping by myself, had lunch with some ladies from the ward and went to a movie.  My sweet hubby also got the house clean so we could have friends over to play games that night.  Nice present.  Unfortunately mike came down with the flu on  Christmas.  He had the whole weekend off and was sick for all of it.  Poor boy.  He's feeling much better now.  For new years we kept our tradition of going to Mikes sisters in Vegas.  We went on a fun hike to red rock, ate way too much good and just had a good time with family.  Mike turned a whooping 31 last week.  It was funny when the relief society president called and asked if he was turning 21.  He's a pretty young bishop either way. :-)  it was a fun day and Emma sure gets into our parties.  WE always have to have balloons.  Today was a crazy day at church.  Vivian is in her terrible twos and is overly independent.  She obsesses over doing everything herself and will pitch a fit if you help her at all.  She pretty much just threw fits for most of the day.  Mommy had to put herself in time out.  Tomorrow Emma will go in for another evaluation and hopefully we'll get some more information and get a game plan.  Once I know more I will let you know.  Baby #3 is plugging along and will be 15 weeks.  I am just taking it a week at a time.  I sure haven't missed the crazy pregnant dreams.  Yikes, last night was awful. :-)  anyway life is busy but good.

Unmotivated Catch up Post:)

O.K. so the past month or so I have been COMPLETELY unmotivated to do anything let alone write my blog so for those who actually check, ....sorry. My family has been lucky to get dinner. Oh boy, thankfully my hubby loves me. So here is a quick update of the past couple of months. We had a fun Halloween. We went to a party at a friends home in our ward. They went ALL out with bounce house, mechanical bull and all. Fun family. Emma was so excited about the trunker treat this year. They sang the "chicken dance" and she has been singing it and dancing it ever since. She was a beautiful Cinderella and I was happy that my last minute Minnie mouse ears for Vivian actually turned out. I won an award for "practically perfect in every way". Ha Ha, glad I could get some more use out of my costumes from last year.

For Thanksgiving we went to Las Vegas and spent it with the Andals again. It's nice to have family at least a little bit close by. They were wonderful hosts as usual and were patient with our crazy brood. Emma was having an extra rough week and week prior so it was interesting. Luckily she began to behave more like herself once we got to San Diego so that was a blessing. She had just been so defiant and emotional. Not a good phase. Anyway, after visiting with the Andals and the happy chance of having the Greens in Vegas as well. Woo Hoo getting to see 2 families, we headed down to San Diego. The first day was wonderful. We just walked along the "beach" of a little inlet, we also went to a pier, rode the merry go round and watched the surfers. It was such a nice day and we wished we would have brought the swimsuits to the beach with us since Vivian got soaked by a wave. That night we went to Old Town and had some good food. The best thing there was the Mormon Battalion visitors center. It has changed so much over the years and they completely renovated it. It was amazing. They had these talking "video" pictures that told the story and then you moved from room to room. It was super interactive for both parents and kids. At the end they took an old time photo of the families and then you could also "Pan" for gold. It was so well done and a nice place to feel the spirit of the pioneers. The next day we met up with Mike's brother Matt and his wife Evelyn to go to Sea World. Mike and the girls had never been so it was fun. Things had changed since the last time I had been, but it was still wonderful seeing the animals and the amazing shows.

We had a busy weekend because we turned right back around and headed home so Mike could be there to be sustained and set apart as the new bishop in our ward. It has been an interesting experience from his first promptings that this call was going to come to the blessings he's received since. He is so humbled by this call, but trusts that the Lord will help him. It will be an interesting journey for our family. When I first told Emma that her Dad was going to be the Bishop she just started laughing and then she started to cry. When I asked her why she was sad she said, "I don't want Daddy to be the Bishop because then he will stop making ice cream". It was funny that she thought this would be his new "full time" job. It sure adds a second, but her logic made me laugh. The month of December is always wonderful yet so exhausting. I normally have desires to get out and do, but we have become wimps and it has been so cold here.:) Ha Ha, for most of you the low 20's probably sounds nice, but it is a record cold here. The other day our pipes froze which I thought was unheard of. Too funny. The Christmas party and Christmas concert will be this weekend and I am in charge of the program so it will be nice to get those things over with. Well, that about covers what we have been doing. Oh, Emma has also done some fun things with her preschool, here are some photos of the annual fire station trip. Vivian is old enough to get into this stuff as well.