A whole lot of random Craziness!

The past few months I have sure put my blog on the back burner.  As I am nearing the end of this pregnancy there are just so many things that have gone to the bottom of my priority list, BUT you are all in serious need of some updates.  I hope that I can get my pictures to work for this one because I have a ton to share.  So, get ready for a really long post. :)  (Also I was able to finally get some pictures put up on my last post if you want to see those beauties)

O.K. first, for Easter
 weekend we decided to take the opportunity to go and visit the Andal family in Las Vegas.  Emma had been begging to see her cousin forever and we didn't know when we'd get a chance to see family with the new baby coming so off we went.  There was a van we wanted to check out there that didn't work out, but we ended up finding our van at the next place we checked.  The Andals were such a great help since they watched our kids for us the whole time we were gone.  What a LONG process.  We love seeing family and wish we lived closer to everyone else as well.  We took them out for lunch the next day as a thank you and I was CRAZY ornery.  As we were driving the van I started to notice that my seat dug into my leg and I was just pregnant stressed with everything that I was a BEAST!  So embarrassing.  I was not fit to be in public.  :)  Hopefully I will be forgiven.  Anyway, the kids had a great time with their cousins and we always enjoy our time as well, such great hosts.  It was a short, but sweet trip.  When we got home we found that someone had "Egged" our home and the girls were so excited to be able to come home t an Easter Egg hunt.  We don't usually do more than an egg hunt and coloring eggs because we want to celebrate the true meaning of Easter, but it was fun.

So, as I was saying about the van.  I was so upset because every time I got in the van to drive it the seat would just dig into my leg and I couldn't find anyway to fix it.  I would get ornery and irritated at everyone and thing and I was just getting ridiculous.  Mike was not so pleased either since it's not like we could just take the van back or trade it in for a new one.  We had been saving up for a long time to get it, and it was just so disappointing.  Anyway, after a couple weeks of this, my patient husband took some time to just brainstorm with me.  We eventually discovered that by putting a raise under my foot of just a couple inches it really helped with the problem.  So, a slab of 2 inch Styrofoam later and all was well.  Oh, what a relief.  It seemed so silly, but to me and my pregnant body, I was pretty beside myself.

Oh, that reminds me that I never talked about my blood clot scare.  So we were going to be leaving on this trip to Vegas and I started having shooting and throbbing pain in my leg.  I have varicose veins and just decided that this was a side effect of them, but wanted to be safe since we would be in the car for a long time.  My doctor advised me to have it checked out and after 4 hours waiting at urgent care they took a blood test to discover that I had an elevated level or blood clots.  Because of this I was then sent to the ER to have an ultrasound performed on my deep veins in my leg.  It was a little scary at this point, but to make this story shorter everything turned out to be fine.  We got the go ahead and continued with our trip plans.  It was a little hairy for a bit though.  Just thankful I didn't end up having deep vein thrombosis.  Wow, I feel like I am getting old.:)


Vivian is pretty much potty trained. It was a pain to start out with, but luckily she has finally caught on.  She still has accidents at night, but that's not big deal.  I'm just glad we got her trained before the baby comes.  Hopefully she won't revert:)

We are getting fruit.  We sure need to prune our trees this coming year because they are huge and out of control.  We are getting a lot of plums and nectarines.  I made my first batch of jam for the year, plum/nectarine, and it turned out pretty good if I do say so.

Emma is so excited to start Kindergarten.  She is very creative and loves to use scissors and make things.  She made this cow.  She just grabbed some scissors and glue and went to town.  I was very impressed!  How Fun!

Rust finally got a haircut.  He gets so mangy, but nothing a good cut can't fix.

 O.K. so on to more fun things.  We went to Murray Family Farms again for our traditional blueberry pancakes and fruit picking.  We just got a few berries, but the pancakes are worth the cost in and of themselves.  Yummy

 We finished up preschool for the year and had our last field trip to Round table pizza.  It's fun because the kids get to go back and make their very own pizzas.  It's a big hit!  Every year preschool has a different dynamic, but it is always fun and my kids love it.  Vivian can't wait to be in preschool FULL TIME!

 We were able to celebrate our 7 year anniversary last month.  A sweet sister in our ward watched our girls while we went to the temple and out for lunch.  It was such a nice day.

We got butterflies again this year.  It is always fascinating watching them go from caterpillars the size of ants to these huge caterpillars that make a cocoon and then emerge as butterflies.  We just love it.  Emma was very brave this year and wanted to hold all the butterflies.  She was in charge of finding them flowers and she loved her job.

 So technically we have 6 more weeks left before Baby Brother Sharp is due, but at my last doctors appointment they said I was measuring small again.  I went in for the ultrasound and supposedly he is measuring right on target for his gestational age.  My uterus usually stops growing at this point so we'll see how it goes.  We'd love for him to stay in as long as he can and grow some more, but we are kind of used to whole being induced a month early scenario.  Either way we just want him to be healthy and safe.  The kids are so excited, especially Emma.  She is going to be a BIG help, or at least she wants to help in a BIG way.  I may have my hands full, but she sure LOVES babies.   Good times.  Here are some cute pictures of my kids.  They are getting so big.  I love then to pieces!!!!

Irked

O.K. I began this really long and juicy detailed post with some great pictures, and AGAIN my stupid computer will not let me upload them.  Sorry that this is not the juicy post you were wanting, but I am so annoyed at this situation I may give up for today.  :)  I unfortunately erased all my photos from my phone or I would just write a post from there.  Anyway, we'll see what I can figure out. 

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)