Valentine's Day

My boys LOVE holidays. They make me go through them outloud, in order, around and around the year. I've actually gotten quite good at rambling them off without thinking about it too much. Valentine's day was no different. They jumped out of bed and couldn't wait to see what surprise I had gotten for them. Toby, seeing how excited they were, couldn't help but bring home his own Valentine's Day surprise for them. They were in heaven. Nothing could have been more exciting.

We also had fun doing some Valentine's day activites. Naturally, we decorated sugar cookes.

I made some dough and then realized that I didn't have a single heart shaped cookie cutter. That would not do, so I loaded all four kids up (I babysit once a week) and ran to the store. Unfortunately, they were all sold out of cookie cutters! Well, I wasn't about to drag four little kids to every store looking for them, so I did something I have never done before.

I bought a package of pre-made cookies that comes with frosting and sprinkles and brought it home. The cookies were disgusting, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They had a great time decorating and eating. I eventually just made some round cookies with my dough and put some pink and purple frosting on them and called it good.

The best part of my day... spending time with Toby. He got a hold of the Christmas special of Dowton Abbey for me to finish off the third year (yeah, I'm a little ahead of the game) and we watched it together. Not to mention he brought me a bag of my favortie candy. A party sized bag. I am spoiled!

Strep Strep everywhere... except in our throats

So, what have we been doing since Christmas? Dealing with crazy things like this!

 

Zeke had a hangnail or something for a while and his finger turned a little red where it was. He showed it to me once, or it caught my eye but I kind of forgot about it and he didn't ever complain about it. Until one Sunday night. He started telling me that his finger was hurting. I looked at it and it had turned red all the way around the fingernail. I told him that we would go get some epsom salt in the morning and start soaking it. Then he went to bed and was up every 30 minutes to hour complaining about his finger. I put a bandaid on it told him to go to sleep. At 11pm when he was still crying I took the bandaid off thinking maybe I put it on too tight and noticed that the finger was even more swollen. Well, we made it through the night, barely, and looked at his finger the next morning. It was huge! Poor kid. The picture doesn't even do it justice. That is a huge blister on the side and it was swollen everywhere it shows red. I took him to the doctor and the blister popped and he took a sample of the puss. They put him on antibiotics and called me later in the week to tell me that he had strep. I didn't know that you could have strep other than a strep throat.

And then there is Porter. Porter has not been himself since Christmas. At least that's when I noticed it. He ran a fever for a few days when we got home and still is acting weird. He lays around and tells me he is too tired to do anything. Sometimes he acts like it is too much work to even get in his chair at the table to eat. He's taken to laying across my lap during meals and only getting up to take a bite... which he wants me to feed to him.

I've tried to get him more active hoping that will get the energy pumping, but when I take the boys to the church gym to play, he spends most of his time following me around wanting me to hold him or laying on the floor. He also had a sore bottom for a while that I tried treating with cream, but it didn't go away. Then I got really worried when there was blood in his stools. I took him to the doctor and they found that he also had a strep infection and that was what was causing the problems with his bottom. He went on antibiotics and all that cleared up (only finally when we made it through the whole round of antibiotics) but he still hasn't had any of his energy return. The doctor had me take him to get some blood work done, but it all came back normal.

Now he is sick. He has a nasty cough and a runny nose. So does Zeke actually. I'm hoping that this is a crazy weird year for my kids and we are just going from sickness to sickness and there really isn't anything to worry about. Otherwise somebody better figure out why my Porter man is so stinkin tired all the time!

Christmas 2012

Toby and I are pretty sure that we are done traveling everywhere for Christmas. Hopefully we can keep getting together with family, but it just might not happen. All I know is that when you get used to having a ton of people, you get used to seeing a tree as packed as this!

 

 Porter is a game lover, just like Zeke and his dad. He got a couple new games for Christmas that he plays ALL the time.

 Zeke saw this dart game at the store and insisted that this was the perfect gift for Daddy. He would not let it go, so that is what he got him. He was so excited to wrap it up and could hardly wait for Toby to unwrap it. It was so cute!

 Zeke kinda loves Legos right now. Porter got him this lego set and Santa also got him a big box of legos. That boy is in heaven now.

 Anytime you asked Porter what he wanted for Christmas, he would say Captain American. Then he would talk about how you push the belt and he talks. Good thing Santa came through for him this year.

 I found these batman pajamas and just had to get them for Porter. As soon as he opened them, he started taking off his other pajamas so he could put them on.

 The snowman was for Zeke and Porter. They had to dig through everything to find the present at the bottom. When they finally found it, they unwrapped a Wii. Or "le wii" as Zeke calls it. They were so excited!!

 

 A vacuum and a laptop. This is one spoiled girl. If you know me, you know a vacuum is the perfect gift and Toby is the best husband. Then my parents fixed up my mom's old laptop and gave it to me! I was stunned.

 And this is how we spent the rest of Christmas :)

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was as perfect as ever. My mom made assignments for everyone so everything came together. We all made dinner together and Tyleen and Kendra decorated the table.

 

Don't you just love our place settings?

 We had a special visitor. Porter wasn't quite sure what he thought about the whole thing.

 Don't I have the cutest grandma that you have ever seen. I love her so much!

 I was in charge of the games for Christmas Eve. I put together a bunch of challenges. First I would show the prize and then the people that wanted to compete, would enter the challenge for that prize. I love this picture of Cortney. She said Trent gave her a bruise with his hips. Toby ended up winning musical chairs so I guess his hips are the toughest.

 The girls were all in this challenge, but Kendra came out the winner.

 

 Don't mess with me when it comes to blow guns. I blew Jess away! Haha... who knew.

Janiece and Connor had to battle it out at the end with the bell shake. We taped kleenex boxes to them and filled the boxes with bells. The first one to shake out all their bells won. It was close, but Connor pulled out this one.

We had a few other challenges that I didn't get pictures of, but I think everyone had a lot of fun. Before that, we had a great spiritual lesson. We were each assigned a person to think of an attribute and scripture for and be able to share that. Then we were all able to add stuff on afterwards. It was great and had most of us in tears.

Christmas festivities

For Christmas this year we headed over to Idaho. Like every other time the Limbs get together, we went bowling. There are a few "professional" bowlers in my family that show up with their own shoes and balls. I decided it would probably be best if I stuck to the lane with bumpers.

 I didn't put a ton of pictures up from bowling, but everyone was there. Porter thought it was great. Don't you love that he wears his snow boots everywhere?

Devin and his cute family.

 Sunday evening, Janiece and Connor made sugar cookies for everyone to decorate. The kids especially loved the sprinkles.

 

 Don't you love where they put Cooper so he could be right in the middle of everything? He thought it was great.

 Saturday night, we all went over to the church to play games. Trent and Jess were in charge of games and they brought the best stuff. They brought a few insanely long jump ropes which we played with for probably 2 hours. Everyone brushed up on their double dutch skills and of course we had to throw in a few contests in there. Then we played a game of volleyball with a larger than normal blown up ball from Jess's school. It was so fun. The only bad part was when my mom somehow jammed her wrist. We think she hit the ball at the same time it hit the wall and slammed back into her wrist. I think it was her plan to get us all to make Christmas Eve dinner for her and help her not stress out so much. :)

A few random December pics

Here are just a few random pictures from December. I spent most of my time at the Snow's house helping them get ready to move. Zeke and Porter didn't care because they got to play with their best friends the whole time. Here are Porter and Sammy just hanging out together.

 I don't mind shoveling the driveway. I actually kind of like it. Most of the time anyway. There have been a few days where I have had to go out and shovel multiples times in a day and that usually gets pretty old. This time Porter decided to come out and hang out while I was shoveling.

This is how my boys watch a movie. It doesn't matter how they start, they always end up on top of each other. Always.

Classes at the Rec Center

I signed Zeke up for a basketball skills class at the Rec Center. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. I tried to get some on my phone, but they turned out horrible. There were a ton of kids and I wasn't super impressed (it was hard not to be the one in charge). The next class was a t-ball class. Zeke has been begging to play t-ball so I signed him up. It was a much smaller class and this time Porter wanted to play.

 So I signed Porter up for the class too and they had a blast. They worked on hitting, throwing, running the bases (in the right direction) and catching.

 Overall it was a much better experience than the basketball class. The boys loved it and were always excited when I told them it was a baseball day.

 Zeke was by far the hardest hitter in the class, but there was one other boy that could really throw the ball. Zeke throws well, but wow, that kid can throw!

 For some reason on the last day, Porter decided that he was too tired to play and sat out. He ended up making a little bed for himself and resting the entire class. What a funny boy.