May-O !!

Due to my surgery, there is a shocking lack of photographs for the month of May with all its activities.  Here are the few that I have:

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David took a super cool class about fruit tree grafting.  Not only did he learn how to do it, but he was able to bring home two grafted apple trees!  They were amazing!  They grew so well in our home! Sadly, we didn't transplant them properly and they died. Maybe next year we'll try again.

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Here's a picture of a couple of Alison's friends coming over to dye her hair pink.  It was cute for about a week, then completely washed out the first time she went swimming.

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The third grade in Josh's school puts on a huge evening event called Espanolandia The kids worked on elaborate dances and songs for months.  They performed the dances that evening. Then they went around to several stations learning about various aspects of Spanish history and culture.  Unfortunately, it took place just two days after my surgery so he and David went without me.  

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Poor Kristin and Brian lost their dog of fifteen years rather unexpectedly in May.  Sweet Bo, the standard poodle, died on the night before Kristin's birthday.  So, of course her birthday was a very sad time.  Quinton and I delivered flowers and food from the extended family  We had a nice visit, but the saddest part was their other dog, Finn.  He kept looking for his brother.  A week or two later, the Holts got another dog so Finn wouldn't be so lonely.  Percy was his name and we all loved him immediately!

Who Needs An Appendix Anyway?

Who's ready for a medical story?

The morning after Mother's Day, I was awakened by a pain in my stomach.  I recognized it almost immediately.  For most of my adult life, I have had massive pain attacks on a fairly regular basis.  I was initially told that I had polycystic ovaries, that the cysts occasionally burst causing a tremendous amount of pain, and that I should worry about it after I was done having children.  Fast forward 12 years and I was more than ready to do something about it.  I went to the doctor and ended up with a diagnosis of endometriosis. I had to have one of my ovaries surgically removed. I hadn't had any of those pain attacks (at least not horrible ones) ever since the surgery, so I had kind of forgotten about them.  But on the morning after Mothers' Day, it all came rushing back to me.  I was like, "Oh yeah. I remember how this feels."

But it didn't stay that way.  The pain got more and more intense.  I don't think of myself as a total wimp (I mean, I'm not great with pain, but I'm not the worst either) but I could NOT handle this pain. I was in tears.  I was writhing, I was light headed.  David has seen me struggle with these pain episodes in the past, so he figured it would go away eventually.  He helped get the kids ready for school and out the door.  But he had to go to work, so he didn't know what else to do for me.  For my part, I could tell this was worse than usual.  The pain wasn't going away - it was getting worse.  I called my mom and asked her to come over as soon as she could.  She could barely understand me through my tears and thought something bad had happened here at home.  She honestly didn't know what she would find when she walked in the door.   What she found was me trying to get to my bathroom and nearly passing out in the process.  I laid on the cold bathroom floor for a while.  David is a physical therapist, so he was trying to give me assistance.  However, I was not interested in his assistance and told him so rather directly. (Sorry, David!)  I honestly just wanted my mom. I guess the instinct to run to your mom when you're hurt never really goes away.  So David took Quinton over to my amazing neighbor's house and left for work.

Once David left, my mom helped me into her car (which took nearly a half hour - standing up made me nauseated and super light headed) and drove to the emergency room.  I really don't remember much of anything through the pain except that I really wanted to lay down on the cold tile floor and my mom wouldn't let me.  Thank you, Mom.  Looking back on it I can see that it is totally gross and a little bit weird.

Once I was in a room and hooked up to morphine, I felt pretty good!  Morphine tends to do that to people.  I spoke with a bunch of doctors, nurses, technicians and the like and they ran several tests (blood, ultrasound, CT scan). It was clear from my white blood count and temp that something was going on inside me, but they weren't exactly sure what.  Apparently, I had a malformed appendix.  It was only a little one-inch nubbin.  It's hard to tell if a teeny appendix is swollen or not because it isn't normal sized to begin with.  But that was all the docs could figure - it must be my appendix.  So, under the knife I went.  Of course, I was on morphine.  I was perfectly fine with anything they wanted to do.

Meanwhile, David was at work wondering what was happening.  The hospital doesn't get good reception, so he would only get an occasional text from my mom:  "They're running tests."  "They think it's her appendix"  and "She's out of surgery now." I did speak to him on the phone briefly once.  He tells me that in spite of me thinking that I can handle morphine really well, I was pretty slurred and foggy sounding to him. He felt pretty bad being out of the loop and came to hospital as soon as he could after work.

I have to stop and say how amazing everyone in my circle of friends was to me!  Not only did my mom drop everything in her life and spend more than ten hours at my side, but Kristin stepped in for her and took Grandma Church to her doctor's appointments so that my mom could be with me.  Not once during that entire day did I worry about my kids.  Quinton played at two different friends houses throughout the day.  All my kids got rides to and from school, Bronson had a special trip that afternoon which Melanie took care of, and dinner magically showed up at my door. Later I had flowers, dinners, treats, ongoing rides for my kids, and other gifts from so many people.  It really was amazing.

So, back to the surgery.  When the doctor went in to remove my appendix, he found something strange.  He ended up calling the OB on call to have him come take a look.  Apparently, my entire abdomen was filled with puss.  Neither of them had seen anything like it before.  So they cleaned it out of me, sent a sample to the lab to have it tested, and took out my appendix, which did indeed look angry and inflamed. When I woke up, the OB came to tell me what they had found and to tell me that his best guess was that I had some sort of pelvic inflammatory disease which is most often caused by an STD.  Ummmm…. say what?!?!?  Now, even in my drugged out, just-waking-up state, I had a hard time believing that was a possibility.  I mean, I know I'm not cheating and I'm pretty sure David's the most trustworthy person an planet Earth.  Anyway...…

Sure enough, test results came back showing that the puss was from endometriosis.  Duh!  The doctor said he'd never seen it quite like that before.  Test results also showed that my appendix was highly concentrated with endometriosis as well.  Wow.  That's pretty aggressive and invasive if you ask me.
The middle of May is not the best time to be bed ridden.  I missed out on so many important, end-of-the-school-year recitals, programs, ceremonies, parties, etc.  And the most heart breaking part was that I missed the CrossFit games.  I am a HUGE CrossFit games fan.  I watch them like football fans watch the Superbowl.  The games were coming to Salt Lake City for a regional competition and I had been selected as a volunteer.  David took a day or two off so the I could spend a weekend with my favorite athletes!  I was so terribly excited!  Of course, having a surgery three days prior to the games changed everything.  Instead of being there, I had to watch them from a tablet while I lay in bed. Bummer.

Mothers' Day 2018

I'm very behind writing about our year, and to be honest I can't remember too many details about Mothers' Day.  I do know that it wasn't the best day for me.  Something wasn't super great about it, but since I don't remember what it was, it must not have been too big of a deal.

I do remember this: The Smith girls went on their annual Mother's Day dinner.  We ate at Twig's Bistro.  The food was amazing!

 Afterwards wen went shopping at Station Park.  We had a ton of fun.  At one point, Katie was literally lying on the ground in tears because she was laughing so hard at Kristin's high-heeled flower boots (and the leprechaun dance she performed to go along with them).

I remember David taking me to the movies on the night before Mother's Day.  I can't remember what we saw.

Mother's Day morning is also a bit fuzzy.  However, I did take time to write down one conversation that took place during our morning scripture study:
Dave: "Who knows what's different about today?"
Nicole: "It's Mothers' Day."
David: "Right.  And what do we do on Mother's Day?"
Quinton: "We make stuff for Mom! But we never make stuff for mom on other days!"

Pretty much nailed it, Quinton!  I did get some lively presents from my three boys throughout the day.  Things like old toys they didn't want, change they found in the couch cushions, and food from our storage room. 😆 And of course plenty of love notes and artwork.  They really try hard to make me feel special.

The boys Primary presidency did the cutest thing at church!  They sent our kids home with a bag of Peanut M&Ms and a note about how to play a "Mom & Me" game with them.  It let me spend one-on-one time with each of my boys.  We took turns pulling out an M&M and depending on what color we chose, we had to answer a question.  Blue = Name something you love about the other person. Brown = What is one of your favorite places to travel or somewhere you want to travel?  etc.

Spending that time with each of my boys was probably the highlight of my Mothers' Day.  Like I said, I don't really remember much else.  That's probably partly because it wasn't very eventful and partly because the next day kind of overshadowed it.  Stay tuned...

Snapshots From April

Here are a few things that kept us busy in April:

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Nothin' but love for Buddy! He was the greatest dog!  So mellow and easy to care for.  Everyone loved him! Except when it was their turn to walk him.  Ha ha.  Seriously, though.  Walking Buddy was such a blessing!  We paired our four older kids together (Alison with Josh and Nicole with Bronson).  One pair walked him in the mornings and the other walked him in the evenings.  They switched weekly.  As much as they complained about it, it was wonderful for the kids to spend time together like that.  Sometimes they fought, but more often they laughed, chatted, made up stories, told each other secrets, and had a great time. 

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My mom's little brother, Mike was diagnosed with a brain tumor early in the year.  He passed away on April 11th.  It was very sudden and shocking, but a real blessing that he went quickly.  This is a picture of my family at his funeral.  

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One day I decided to make German Pancakes for dinner.  It is one of the few meals that all seven people in the family like to eat.  Everyone was gathered around the table anxiously awaiting for food while David took the pans (yes, I have to cook two pans for our family) out of the oven.  He forgot that he had just turned off the stove after we'd cooked some sausages, so he placed the first pan on a hot burner.  Then he took out the second pan and placed it on another burner.  By the time he realized what he had done, the first pan was super hot!  He yelled something like, "Oh no!" and grabbed the hot pan to put it in the sink (using hot pads, of course).  As soon as he picked it up, the whole pan exploded! It was like a dirty bomb!  Glass shards went EVERYWHERE!  It was crazy!  The kids were freaked out that Dad did something stupid - that never happens!  😉  Unfortunately, the unbroken pan had glass shards in it, so we ended up having a little impromptu Pizza party.

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I went to our county Republican convention in April.  Please try to contain your jealousy.  It was my second time going as a representative for our precinct. I feel like every good citizen should have the opportunity to see grown adults fight over minute wording in documents within the first twenty minutes of what turns out to be an eight hour meeting.  What's more American than crazy people who love to get ahold of microphones at public meetings?

This napping picture is a joke.  I didn't really sleep.  In fact, I listened and participated the whole time.  My good friend's husband who is also a counselor in our Bishopric, Kelly Sparks won the Sherriff's nomination!  It was pretty awesome! And can I say how much more pleasant the whole experience is when your dad isn't one of the candidates?

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I don't really have anything to say about these pictures.  Just that Quinton is a pretty cute little scallywag.  

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Our neighborhood is the best!  There are four or five of us ladies in the circle who are pretty great friends.  As soon as it got warm enough to be outside, we would gather around in someone's yard and visit while our kids played together.  One friend in particular, Virginia Speirs, plays out there with the kids just like she's one of them.  In this picture, she's pushing Quinton and Easton in a car.  She is Quinton's favorite person to play Go Fish with.  She's adorable!

Virginia bought a playset in the hopes that the neighborhood kids would all come over and use it.  And boy! They sure do!  Josh and Bronson are seen here playing some sort of elaborate spy game. Our neighborhood truly is amazing.  Sometimes I think about moving back to Idaho or even to a different home here in Utah, but I know I'll never be able to replace what we and our kids have here.

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The young men and young women of our ward did a temple walk activity in April.  They did it partly to help the youth prepare for trek and partly to have a nice temple experience.  They met early one morning at a church in Centerville, then they walked to the Bountiful temple.  It was only about six miles, but much of it was straight uphill.  They ended with lunch and a fireside by one of their stake leaders about temple and family history work.

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Of course, what would an entry about April be without at least a couple pictures of spring soccer?

Art Auction

The boys' school has one MAJOR fundraiser every year.  It is an art auction.  Each pair of English & Spanish classes makes a piece of art.  Then in April, those pieces are auctioned off.  The event is held at the Davis Conference Center.  Tickets themselves are $25.00, which includes dinner.  Then there is a large silent auction with prizes ranging from special "dates" with the teachers, to jewelry or garden supplies or Minky Coture blankets, to airline or Jazz or Disneyland tickets, to vacation packages.  The silent auction is followed by a live auction of the children's pieces.  A professional auctioneer is hired for the event.  He is outstanding!  Seriously - it's worth the ticket price just to watch this guy! All told, the event brings in thousands and thousands of dollars for the school.  It's amazing!

Of course, I can't afford to buy much of anything.  Just coming up with the ticket price can be challenging.  That's why it's so fun to go with my great friend and neighbor, Melanie.  We are in the same boat, so paying for just one ticket each (instead of bringing our husbands, who don't care that much anyway) and just enjoying the spectacle is plenty of fun for us!  This year, we pitched in together and won a teacher date for our two first graders.  They won a trip to a rock climbing gym and an ice cream with their teachers.

Well, a few months prior to this year's auction I started receiving those guilt-trip emails about how they needed parent volunteers to help each class come up with and create a piece of art. I had no problem ignoring them for the longest time.  I'm NO artist!  But the emails kept coming!  No one in Josh's class would help.  Knowing that I needed to get my volunteer hours in (every family is required to put in at least 30 hours of volunteer time throughout the year) I sent an email basically stating that I would help, but only as a LAST resort!  Surprise, surprise - no one else volunteered so I became the art specialist.

Let me just say that it took hours and hours of planning, photographing, and working on the computer, but I ended up making a very cute coffee table book that I was rather proud of.  It was a book of happy phrases and their definitions in languages from all over the world.  The letters of the words were formed by the bodies of Josh and his classmates.  Sadly, it only sold for around $100 (some of the pieces go for close to $1,000),  but that's because it was pretty specific to Josh's class.  Still, it made a little bit of money for the school and everyone who saw it had to admit that it was adorable!  At the time, I promised myself - and David - that I'd never sign up for an art project again.  But, you know - it's kind of like having a baby.  The more time that passes, the more bearable it seems to do it again some day.

NIcki's Birthday

We sure love Nicki around here.  She is a source of a lot of joy for us (and a lot of sorrow too). 😉 She is just so dang cool!  I think it's fun to have a birthday that almost always falls on spring break because we always get to par-tay all day!

She opened her presents in the morning before Dad left for work.  She got some cool stuff. One of her favorite things was a giant bag of Takis (those super spicy tortilla chip things - ew).

Then we all got cleaned up and went to Baby Animal Days  at the American West Heritage Center in Logan.   It was such a fun way to spend a spring day!  SO many cute babies everywhere!!!  Even a baby zebra and a baby camel!

Next, we drove to Willow Park in Logan and enjoyed a picnic lunch.  I used to go to Willow Park when I lived in Logan as a third grader.  It was fun for Grandma and I to watch all five kids playing together.

The rest of the day was filled with pretty typical stuff like kid's soccer practices, etc.  Nicki didn't have a traditional birthday cake.  She opted for ice cream I think.

The next night, some of her friends decided to throw a little low-key surprise party for her.  How cute are they?  Hooray for super good friends and Flamingo cakes!

Easter 2018

Easter was amazing this year!  Especially because it was also General Conference (and April Fools Day, which doesn't really mean much to me). We had already been to our share of Easter Egg hunts before Sunday rolled around, and the Easter Bunny brought treats, so I tried to keep our "candy conference" tradition, but with a bit of a healthier spin on it. We had dried fruits and nuts, pretzels and crackers, rice cakes, and only a bowl or two of candy.

An Easter egg hunt at Grandma Church's assisted living center.  

An East egg hunt (if you can call it that - more like a broken-piñata-like candy spree) at our local grocery store.

He's ready for the hunt to begin!

Our mostly healthier choices "candy conference" spread.

We watched the morning session of general conference in the basement so Buddy wouldn't be tormented by all the food.  Buddy NEVER went down stairs.  I don't know what happened in his past life that made him terrified of stairs, but he never - not once - not for any reason - went into our basement.

As usual, conference was pretty amazing.  This was an especially amazing conference since our new prophet, President Nelson announced the end of Visiting and Home Teaching as we knew it. Instead, we would be asked to minister to others in a more Christlike way. Young women would now be allowed to Minister at the age of 14, which meant that Alison and I were made partners! Next, President Nelson announced that the Elders' quorum and the High Priests' Group would be combining into one large group.  This was exciting for David because it meant that he would get released as the Elders Quorum President. (His release was short-lived, though.  One day later, he was called as the Elders' quorum president for the combined group.)  The prophet also announced that a temple would be built in Layton!  Woo hoo!  SO awesome!  Immediately after conference, rumors started flying around town about where the temple would be built.  According to several "reliable" sources, it will be about one mile from our home!  We couldn't be more excited!

 As you can see, Bronson was plenty sugared-out.  

 Between sessions, we ate lunch.  Then, I held a little Easter Egg Hunt for the kids. Some of my flowers were already in bloom and my tulips were beginning to poke up out of the ground, so it felt super spring-y to me.  In Idaho, we sometimes hunted for eggs in the snow.

 After the last session of conference, we ate dinner, then went over to my sister Katie's house to celebrate with the extended family.  Everyone brought treats and we had a huge dessert bar.  I made darling Easter sugar cookies.

Those are Lambs, by the way.  In case you couldn't tell.

Jenny and Paige were in town from Chicago, Ashley came up from BYU, and Scotty brought his new girlfriend, so it was a pretty exciting party!

 Scot had just undergone reconstructive shoulder surgery less than a week before. In the lovely pictured below he is sporting his cool ice machine.  By the way, I didn't take this picture.  I accidentally left my camera at Katie's house and when I got it back, I found this gem on it just for me.  And now I'm sharing it with you.  You're welcome!

And I will leave you with a lovely Easter Bonnet Picture from Buddy.  Happy Easter!