Grandma and Grandpa Come Home

On Monday I drove to Colorado City and picked up 10 gallons of milk for Haylee and 3 gallons for me. I’ve been feeling like I need to get my kids on raw milk and used this as the perfect opportunity to start. After getting the milk and stopping by Heidi’s to pick up the quilt for Haylee that she had sewn, the boys and I headed to Mesquite where we met up with Haylee and swapped her stuff for Wynn and Phyllis. They had flown back early from their trip to California and we were very happy to pick them up as my boys get a little disoriented when they can’t see G-ma and G-pa on a daily basis. Tuesday I watched my neighbor’s boy most of the day and then Wednesday Adam traveled to Page and Flagstaff Arizona to check on a job and do an estimate. We enjoyed watching the BYU vs. UTAH men’s basketball game that night. On Friday Adam went to a job over in Torrey about 3 hours away and worked hard and fast to remove snow and dry in a roof that was a 12/12 pitch. He was really sore on Saturday and didn’t have much drive to do anything since he had maxed out the day before. From my 2/21 and 2/28 posts I didn’t note my goals for the previous weeks because I hadn’t finished them due to hectic traveling and sicknesses, so yesterday I caught up and finished them. Washing all the cupboards in the house (just the exterior and all the collected dust on top of them), cleaning the microwave, and hanging the clock I bought back in December. These catch me up so I’m excited to pick another goal to accomplish this upcoming week. We spent the rest of the day at the flat and enjoyed visiting with Adam’s sisters and their families that were in town, Monica and Monterey. Adam’s nephew Dallin had some rugby games in St. George over the weekend and I found out that BYU and UTAH were having a rugby game broadcasted on BYUTV, so after finding out more about this sport from Doug and Monica earlier in the evening, since I don’t know anything about it, then Adam and I watched the game that night. Very interesting. I’m impressed with Dallin for being so brave to play it. My brother Vaughn and Royce, and Adar (our two exchange students from home) came into town late that night. I got a call this morning to substitute in a primary class this afternoon so I had Vaughn bring Tyson and Lincoln home after sacrament meeting since Tyson was having some bowel movement issues and Lincoln still wasn’t feeling that well after having a fever since yesterday morning. We spent the evening at the flat and made plans to go 4-wheeling tomorrow. I didn’t get any pictures this past week, but will be sure to this next week.

"Grandpa Won't Help Grandma"

I don't have a picture to post with this yet, but I did want to document some pretty funny phrases that Tyson shared in observation of a few things. First, I watched my neighbor's boy, Tate, this morning until 2:30 this afternoon and spent most of that time at the Flat as I had arranged with my mother-in-law to help her clean out and defrost her deep freezer on the deck. She needed to do it, but needed some support and push to do it and after she was so kind to pretty much end up bottling a bunch of peaches for me two days ago while I had my phone strapped to my ear all day and wasn't much help, I felt like putting a good part of the day aside devoted to very worthy cause. She unplugged the freezer last night so it would thaw out and everything worked out great except for........the blasted cows! Be glad I don't use my father-in-law's words to describe them :) Anyways Phyllis (MIL) said she needed to go help Wynn get the cows in and so I continued to work to put the somewhat frozen items back neatly in the freezer when Tyson came up to me and said, "Mom, grandma's trying to get the cows and grandpa's not helping her. We need to go help her." I assured him that grandpa was probably getting something or finishing something up before going to get the cows. I yelled out to Phyllis to see if I needed to locate a 4 wheeler to help round them up as it didn't look from the deckside view that it was going very well. There was one 4 wheeler that was a possibility but I could not find the key so I headed out to see what I could do to help. We were running around and trying to circle them together and as Phyllis and I had a majority of them cornered, Wynn was tromping off into the field cussing away at the stray cow. I thought that cow better hope that Wynn doesn't catch him or he'll have wished he had stayed on the other side of the fence. Wynn got that cow back over by us by way of chucking rocks and dirt clods at them. We closed in on them and managed to get all but one in. The same dumb cow that Wynn had cussed out headed would not go in and managed to get by our cornering and took off across the road into the watermelon patch. Phyllis was saying to leave him, that he's not worth it, but I volunteered to run out into the patch through the high weeds and steer him around towards the fence line. I chucked a few dirt clods at him as well and we managed to get him in and head back to our reloading of the freezer task. As the last cow went in Tyson said, "Good Job!" I looked back and with his beat red face, and hands loaded with dirt clods he had a look of satisfaction and 'We showed those cows who's boss' expression on his face. At one point in the confusion of gathering the cows up Tyson was standing with a cow on either side of him as he had focused at yelling at the one in front of him and not paying attention to what was behind him and an instant look of fright and terror came over him as he noticed the position he was in. Grandma Phyllis yelled for him and after registering in his mind that he could run to her, he quickly did. He's growing up so fast and quite the helper to grandpa on the farm. He wandered down to the shop to help grandpa with the bailer without telling me where he had gone and he just always wants to be helping grandpa out with whatever farm tasks and chores he has to do, no matter how hot it is outside. After Tate went home I told Tyson I needed to go to the restroom and after getting sidetracked on a few things and then heading to my bathroom I found him at my toilet. I told him that I needed to use the toilet and he needed to go to his bathroom to go potty. He quickly informed me that, "Daddy said I could use this bathroom and that you need to share." I said that is fine, but right now I will use my bathroom and if he wanted to wait he could use it after me, otherwise go to his bathroom down the hall. It was a little bit of a shock to have him pull the sharing bit on me with my toilet, which I don't like to share.

Domestic Day

This morning I decided to take Tyson to story time at the library, as well as return his two tractor books and let him check out a few more. He didn't want to have much of anything to do with the story time, the activity they had planned outside, and pretty much wanted to just pick out books from off the shelves. After trying to encourage and help him along I finally gave in to letting him pick whichever books he wanted, checking them out and leaving. We headed to Susie's so he could show her his new books, but no one was there, so he wanted to go to grandma's and grandpa's. After arriving out there and planning to visit for a short time, we ended up staying as I made some butter from the other 4 whipping cream containers that Phyllis had, but didn't have time to do anything with. I had her take a picture of me being so domestic. I also helped Phyllis with peeling and de-coring some green apples for her to bottle into pie filling. I did have a little apple peeler/de-corer contraption to help. Wynn was out on the tractor spreading fertilizer over a field that he is preparing for planting wheat, so I ran Tyson out towards the end so he could ride with grandpa and snapped a picture of them when they returned. I stayed until 6:20 tonight and then left the kids with Phyllis while I headed to Lin's to finish off some food storage purchases from their last day of the case lot sale. Phyllis had asked me to pick up some more lemon juice for canning the pie filling and when I asked the guy there where to find it he said that you aren't going to find any anywhere around as apparently something happened to the lemon crops and they were told to not expect any anytime soon. He mentioned that he had seen 3 bottles towards the back of the top shelve and when we went to see they were still there so I snatched the last of the soon to be sought after lemon juices. I could sell them for a high price to a very needy lemon juice consumer huh! After quickly getting what I wanted I had to get to mutual. Adam had left around 5:30 this morning with Stuart to the Grand Canyon to help him finish a job and didn't get home until 9:30 tonight, so it was nice of Phyllis to watch the kids and to have Ben bring them home. I am so blessed to have wonderful family nearby that are always great help when I am in a bind. I couldn't ask for better in-laws. Oh, the picture of Lincoln is of him yesterday after I returned from going down the hall real quick and found him having decided to get out of his bouncer and kneeling into it. This was the better footage than when I had to quickly bathe Tyson from a poopy pullup and came back to find Lincoln having somehow ejected himself from the bouncer and on the way to lying on his back knocking over his breakfast off of Tyson's stool. He wasn't too happy on that one. Growing up fast! He turned 6 months on Sunday.

Cloth Diapers and McDonalds

This post will mostly be about Tyson as that is what everyday of the week has consisted of. Two Saturdays ago he woke up throwing up, spent the day through Thursday with diarrhea and occasional throw up sessions and after advice from a very knowledgable and experienced aunt was able to have most of a normal day Friday and Saturday. Basically I pulled out the cloth diapers that I had used for burping him and such when he was a baby and turned them into actual cloth diapers. This all came about as I found myself not only being sick of what I was constantly changing (I'll spare everyone of pictures of that), but watching diaper after diaper being thrown away and thinking of the expense this was going to be, so when you banish yourself to your house all week then the cloth diapers can be managable, but not my choice of preference. Just when I thought it was getting better and switched back to normal, convenient diapers, I found myself going back to the dreadful cloth diapers as Tyson was not improving. I really can say that it was quite miserable, probably more for him than me. I was advised over the phone by those at his pediatrician's office to only give him pedialyte, which only caused him to have that come out as diarrhea and to be starving for food, so when I called Aunt Beth on Friday morning to get a second opinion she said, "That boy needs food. Take him to McDonalds and get him some greasy french fries." Of course that would be after we eased him back into eating with slices of banana and pieces of buttered toast. Tyson was so excited for those that his hands just shook with delight when Susie brought him his plate of food and of course when he scarfed it down (as I tried to have him eat it slowly), he took off to find Susie and give her his plate and signal for more food. It was a sad but funny site. Sad, because he was starving so bad. After going to bed that night and waking up around 11:30 p.m. he threw everything up again that he had just eaten that day, but we did have great progress in the frequency of changing diapers and with much joy went back to the normal diapers. Saturday morning I consulted with Aunt Beth again and then tried the same routine of easing him back into eating and letting his stomach adjust to eating again. It was quite successful and I have great hope that he will be back to normal soon. He spent Saturday evening dancing with g-ma Stout, eating her food, and enjoying her touch of rubbing his belly. When she would stop he would lift his shirt back up, grab her hand, and put it back on his belly. Pretty entertaining.

We switched to 9 a.m. for church this new year and are really enjoying it. We came home from church, put dinner in the oven and while everyone else is napping, I'm catching up on posting. Adam was funny after church as I found him bringing me all sorts of bottles of natural herbs that he could find in the cupboard along with a peeled orange, ordering me to take them. He had a "healthy" conversation with his sister Monterray and later on with Lolly about nutrition and although we both know that I do need to eat better and probably purchase some other vitamins and herbs to try to replace what I am lacking, his quick Sunday solution was pretty funny. But now that I am seriously thinking about it, it is not so funny that it is close to 3 p.m. and I have had half of a Nature Valley granola bar and that orange that Adam comically forced on me today to eat. Signs that I really do need to eat better or actually eat. So after a a quick snack, short nap, and then a yummy Oregon potato dinner (Thanks to the Petersons), we'll probably head out to the flat to make sure that Wynn hasn't gone inactive after having to switch to the 1 p.m. church meeting time.

Marvelous Monday

I didn't make it to the computer to post yesterday, but here is a picture of Adam and Tyson taken yesterday of their haircuts from Saturday. Aren't their calics so cute! We comment how you wouldn't know that Tyson was Adam's son if he didn't have that trait from Adam. Although I'm set that he is where the cuteness came from.

As for today I woke up early around 5:30 with Adam to do payroll with his partner. After doing a few more office tasks of opening and invoicing jobs, Tyson woke up. The problem with this early morning things is that it seemed like Adam and I were up all night with Tyson struggling to sleep. He didn't have a fever or anything, but he just kept crying. I think he still has teeth coming in, at least that is what I tell myself the reason for his cranky behavior is so that I'll have sympathy for him instead of being frustrated. I finally motivated myself to make a list of rooms that needed cleaned and organized and spread them out through out the week. Unfortunately I'm going to bed not quite having the rooms done for today that I had planned on, but I made some progress. I did call last minute for a hair cutting appointment and was able to get the one open time slot this afternoon, so that made me feel much better. A funny thing that happened just now was that I yelled to Adam, who was in our bedroom, and told him that our sheets needed to be put in the dryer before we would be able to go to bed and Adam said, "What?" (not hearing me the first time), so Tyson felt it his responsibility to yell at Adam in his jibberish language what I had just told him. It was quite funny. I need to go change Tyson's diaper for the gazillionth time today due to him experiencing some frequent bowel movements that burn his bum.