Weekend in Island Park

This last weekend we went to Uncle Brent and Aunt Val's (Roger's sister) cabin in Island Park. It was so much fun. It was beautiful. We filled our days with four-wheeling, sliding, swinging, fishing, star gazing, and of course eating delicious food. I hope I don't overload you with too many pictures. We just had so much fun and there were so many cute pictures and so I had a hard time narrowing them down.
Top left: Arianne riding on the little 4-wheeler with Aunt Val. Top right:Roger helping Malachi ride a 4-wheeler, by himself, for the first time. Malachi was very timid and at the beginning he was going, seriously, about one mile per hour. Once he got a little more comfortable he was probably up to three miles per hour (no exaggeration). Bottom left: Arianne and Roger going 4-wheeling. Bottom right: Ellie and Malachi relaxing on the stairs (gotta love the goggles).

Aunt Val has the funnest swing ever behind her cabin. It is attached to two pine trees. From this picture of Malachi, you can get an idea of how high you can swing. I think I had as much fun as the kids did.

doesn't it look fun?

The kids also loved this slide that is attached to the back porch of the cabin.


Top left: Me reading bedtime stories to all of the kiddies. Top Right: Ellie and Arianne comparing their "owies". Bottom left: Cousin Lizzie and Arianne just playing around. Bottom right" Grandpa Davies (Rog's dad) and Roger taking an afternoon nap.

I didn't have a picture of Malachi looking at stars, so I used this one of him fishing instead. While we were looking at the stars Friday night, Malachi saw four shooting stars and so he made wishes. I thought it was so cute to hear what kind of things he wished for so I wanted to share them. First wish: "I wish Spiderman and Hulk were real." Second wish: "I wish we lived in Utah." Third wish: "I wish I could go to the beach." Fourth and final wish: "I wish I had more Transformers than anyone in the universe."

Our Trip to the Zoo

 

Last week we went to our local zoo. We have lived here for two years now and the zoo is only five minutes away and this it the first time that we have gone. I was really impressed with our little zoo and it made me wonder why we hadn't been before. I guess we're like that, though. We used to live about two and half hours away from Mt. Rushmore and we never went. We had always planned to, but it never happened. Anyway, the kids loved it (and so did Roger and I), so I'm sure we will be back soon.

 

I love the picture of Malachi on the top right. He said that he could see little fish through the cracks of the bridge (not my top pick of favorite positions).

 

Surprisingly, Arianne was my little adventurist. Malachi is my kid that loves bugs and likes to pull them apart, but he wouldn't touch the corn snake or go in with the goats, but Arianne jumped at the opportunity.

 

Ellie loves animals. She just squeals with delight when she sees one, but she likes her distance too. When an animal comes close to her she does this laugh/cry thing, She doesn't know whether or not she is happy or scared.

Rough week...

It has been a rough week (which Is why I haven't posted lately), but things seem to be getting back to normal. A week ago Sunday, I took Ellie into the emergency room, because she had had fevers of 104 degrees and had been vomiting, for a couple of days. After a several few different tests, she was diagnosed with a pretty severe urinary tract infection, to the point that they thought it might be in her kidneys. They gave her about a liter of I.V. fluids, because she was beginning to dehydrate from having a high fever and vomiting. They gave her a prescription for antibiotics and sent us on our way. I thought that it would be smooth sailing from there, but I was wrong. Ellie continued to fever, and throw-up, when she got really hot. On Tuesday, she had a rectal temperature of nearly 105 (talk about scary, but thank goodness for ibuprofen and tylenol). On Wednesday, when I took her into the doctor, the doctor couldn't figure out why she wasn't healing quicker, so they put a catheter in her so that they could take another urinalysis (to see if she still had infection) and they also gave her two antibiotic shots to try to boost her recovery. Luckily, the shots seemed to help because she hasn't fevered since and by Saturday she seemed to be back to her normal self. Since, urinary tract infections are kind of rare in someone as young as Ellie, they have to do a couple of tests to make sure that there is nothing physically abnormal causing the UTI. She had a renal ultrasound last Thursday and everything looked normal and at the end of the month she is going to have a VCUG done, which is when they insert a catheter into her and they shoot dye into her and then take a few x-rays to check for reflux of the urine (making sure that the bladder empties properly). I'm hoping that Ellie's UTI was just some fluke occurrence that will never happen again. It was so hard to see Ellie in so much pain and it was so stressful to try to get her to eat and drink, when if it were up to her she wouldn't have eaten anything the whole week and would have only drank one cup of liquid a day. Anyway, this was one of those weeks that I questioned my desire to have anymore kids, not because I don't love my kids, but because I love them so much and it kills me to see them so sick and feel like I don't have any control over the situation. It was so hard to see Ellie in so much pain and to not know why she wasn't getting better. Anyway, things are feeling more normal now and I feel like I can function again.

Happy Birthday Ellie!!!

Ellie turned two years old last week. It is hard for me to believe that my baby is two. I love my little Ellie so much. She is such a blessing to our home. Ellie is my little mimicker, she will try to copy anything that she sees anyone do. The other day I was walking backwards for some reason and the next thing I know Ellie is walking backwards, too. The only thing she doesn't try to mimic is speech. By the age of two Malachi and Arianne were speaking in sentences, but Ellie isn't quite there yet. But, I decided that she is probably the smartest, because I really think that she knows how to talk but she chooses not to, because she knows that we will expect more from her if she talked more. Right now she really never gets in trouble for anything, because I still think of her as being a baby.



Ellie wasn't in the best of moods and so Malachi decided that he would try out Ellie's new birthday blocks.

Poor Ellie. This is pretty much how she felt for the majority of her birthday. While we were singing "Happy Birthday" to her, I wanted to cry because I felt bad that she couldn't have had a happier birthday.

ELLIE'S FIRST YEAR
This a collage of pictures from Ellie's first year of life.

ELLIE'S SECOND YEAR
A collage of Ellie's second year of life (I don't know if her hair has grown at all this year).

Memories...

Memory Lane...I got this from a friend's blog. I thought it would be fun! I hope you will play along. Here are the directions:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

The Fourth of July!!!

 

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Fourth of July, we sure did (for the most part). The kids, especially Malachi, have been so excited to go to the parade and watch the fireworks, so they didn't mind waking up earlier than usual so that we could get a good spot to watch the parade. We were sitting at the beginning of the parade and so the kids got a ton of candy. I think that I am pretty competitive by nature, so I was encouraging them to get as much candy as they could and when it was all over I wondered why I encouraged them to get so much candy, because I don't really want them to eat it and I'm not a fan of hard candy (now if it were chocolate it would be a different story).

 

In the bottom right corner is a picture of Malachi holding some of the candy he collected at the parade. I tried my hardest to get him to look at me, but this is as close as he got. He couldn't take his eyes off of the parade in fear that he might miss the opportunity to get more candy.

Down below are some pictures as we were waiting for the fireworks to start, we played some croquet. You can't go wrong with a game of croquet...

 

I wish that I could say that our day had a good ending... A few minutes into the fireworks a fight broke out, a little ways in front of us. It started as a verbal, yelling, fight (I don't think that I have ever heard so much swearing in my life) and then it turned into a physical fight with a little shoving and then next thing we know these two guys are rolling around on the ground beating on each other. At one point there was even talk of killing. I don't think that anyone wanted to try to stop the fight out of fear that they might become the target, and so Roger called the cops. Four cops showed up and they were there for less than five minutes and what did they do to the guys that were fighting? NOTHING! They didn't even get their i.d. from them. As the cops were leaving, Roger went up to them asking why they weren't doing anything, and the cops said that the guys that were fighting were family and that they said that it was just a verbal argument (which any of the hundred witnesses around would have said differently) and then Roger asked why they weren't even given a "disturbing the peace" ticket and the cops said that he could do that, but it wouldn't do any good. So these guys got away with ruining every one's fireworks show, not to mention all the kids around that were crying, because they were so scared. Not anything against cops in general, but I have yet to be impressed with any around here.

Vacation in Utah

We were in Utah for ten days (which is why I haven't posted anything lately). We had a wedding, a baby blessing, a family reunion, and more to go to while we down there. I would have to say that the highlight of the trip was when we all got the stomach flu. It started a week ago Monday when we were at a party at my parent's house and Ellie just wasn't happy and she wouldn't eat anything and then the next thing we knew she was throwing up all over my parent's stairs (sorry mom and dad). And then on the way home she threw-up all over her car seat (which was a lot of fun to clean up). Two days later, we were at our friend's, Lindsey and Jay's house, and Arianne hadn't been eating all day and I could tell that she wasn't feeling good and so I took her outside and she ended up throwing-up on their lawn (sorry Lindsey and Jay). On the way home, Arianne threw-up three more times and by this time I was feeling pretty sick and I threw-up once (I am happy to say that none of it got in our van, this time). It took us two hours to get from Salt Lake to Ogden, because of all of our stops. Roger and Malachi got sick during the night, poor Roger got it the worst, throwing up at least ten times. It was only about a twenty-four hour flu so luckily it didn't interfere with anything we were supposed to go to.
One of my best friends got married on the 21st of June up at the Solitude Ski Resort in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful wedding. Kristina and I were roommates in college and we also ran hurdles together for Weber State. Congratulations Tim and Kristina!


Doesn't Kristina look Beautiful? In the top right is a picture of friends that I hurdled with in college. It was a fun reunion to be able to see a lot of old friends.

While I was at Kristina's wedding, I had my friend Cecilee take a picture of Roger and I. It is sad, I don't think that I have a picture of just Roger and I since before we had kids. Thanks Cec.

While we were in Utah, my friend Cecilee's husband, Jeff, blessed their new baby Kamree. They now have three beautiful girls.

I thought this was the cutest picture. Ellie is holding her little cousin Lily (my sister Candace's second girl).

While we were in Utah, we went swimming in my parent's pool. The kids had a blast. They probably won't think that our little swimming pool is much fun any more. The bottom left picture is a picture of Maddie (my sister Candace's oldest), my brother Elijah, Arianne, my brother Levi, and Malachi.


While we were in Utah we had the Davies' family reunion. It was close to 100 degrees, but we were still able to have fun. In the top left is a picture of Malachi and Arianne in the cake walk. On the top right is when Arianne and had just won and she was going with Roger to redeem her prize. Doesn't she look excited?

Here is a picture of Rich (Roger's older brother) and his two girls Kate and Isabelle, Malachi, Ellie, Arianne, and Roger.

Roger showing that he still has some trampoline skills, doing a back flip. I was pretty impressed, I guess I shouldn't be, I mean he was a cheerleader in college.

Arianne and Ellie trying on Grandma Lulla's (my mom) reading glasses.