Their First 5K

Yesterday Drama Queen told you all about an assignment for Crafty that took them to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. It has been an interesting semester for her and she does homework pretty much every day to take care of these four classes. Thankfully, next Friday is the end of the semester.

Anyway, on Thursday, I was just scrolling through the assignments making sure we hadn't missed anything when up popped an extra credit option for her fitness class. If she ran in a real race, she could receive bonus points. A real race! I know when we were prepping for the Cookie Chaser, the girls had to sign up early and now that this would be the final weekend to count, I was more than a bit stressed that we wouldn't be able to find a 5K here in Utah that she could still register for with the race day being on July 29th.

It was a tall order, but after about half and hour of dead ends, I finally stumbled across one that looked like it might work. It one place it said final registration was June 16, but it still looked like registration was open, so I tried it.


Within a couple of minutes, I had Crafty registered to do the Potter Run in West Jordan, and since she didn't want to do it herself, I also registered Baby Doll.

We showed up on Saturday morning bright and early. There were reportedly 700 runners, but I think some of them were not actually in West Jordan. The girls did a walk/run and they were pretty excited when they crossed the finish line.

They each received these fancy medallions and a banana (I don't know... potassium maybe?) Scout bought herself a cute pair of time turner earrings at one of the booths and it was fun to see all of the people dressed in their Harry Potter attire.

Not a bad experience for our first race (other than the $25 entrance fee) and she got extra credit besides.

Guest Blog: Dinosaurs and Ice Cream by Drama Queen

Crafty has been running around like crazy trying to get her summer classes finished up.  She is such a smarty-pants that she is working to get her Associate's degree by high school graduation.  It's a ton of work, and so while everyone else is relaxing (or rather, going back to school and having football try-outs), she's been working her tookus off to get as many points in as she can before finals week.  So yesterday we did some extra credit!  BabyDoll, Crafty, and I all ran down to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. 

Taking lots of notes!

I've never been down there on a typical week day, so I was surprised by how quiet it was.  We had lots of opportunity to check out all the different exhibits.  First we went to the Discovery Room which is a rotating exhibit.  This week it was all about simple machines.  It was cool to have the room mostly to ourselves, but quite a few of the items were not functioning.  BabyDoll did enjoy seeing how a simple engine works from the inside.  She has so much curiosity. 

Drama Queen would not make a good archeologist...

My personal favorite part was walking through the tunnel of 'stars' to show how we were going back in time.  We had fun playing 'spot the cephalopod' and took some time trying to decide if we would rather have a pet trilobite or a crinoid garden.  Crafty determined that the reason most people at least remember what a trilobite is stems from the fact that the average person's brain only pays attention through the Cambrian time period before wondering where the big dinosaurs are.  I personally like all the ichthyosaurs - see that vocabulary! -  but BabyDoll was ready to move on. 

With the dinosaurs, we had to determine why they were all posed as they were, so I showed Baby Doll the difference between sharp, pointy teeth and large flat molars.  Armed with that knowledge we were able to definitively determine which dinos were going to get eaten. 

BabyDoll made her very own dinosaur!

Talking about dinos getting eaten made us realize that we were getting hungry ourselves, and with our phones starting to die, we zoomed a little faster once we hit the other side of the KT boundary.  We said hello to the saber tooth cats and made sure to pose by the ginormous shark, but really we were focused on the coupons we had been given for free ice cream cones! 

That Finals Week Feeling...

We are just so cute.

All told, it was a pretty fun way to spend an afternoon.  I think it was pretty pricey for just extra credit, but thankfully Momma paid for this time.  Thanks for letting me and BabyDoll go too! 

It's a Boy!

Bossy was so excited to share her good news with us. She had her ultrasound on Tuesday and last night we had the family over for the big announcement.

She had prepared Hershey candy bars for everyone and gave them out upside down. At the appointed time, we all flipped them over and saw that their baby that is due in December will indeed be another boy, which is good. She knows how to mother boys.

Float Preview Party 2017

I had a few more things I wanted to share with you before my life suddenly changed. And since my sweetie won't let me do anything but wander around the house, nothing exciting is happening.

The night before my surgery we went to the float preview party at the Expo Center. We love seeing all the floats up close and Crafty and Sport were marching with the band inside the building. The kids got their faces painted and the boys were so excited to win Utes shirts in the Plinko game.

 I loved watching the marching band and the fact that we were in an air conditioned venue where we didn't have to worry about sunscreen... the only thing missing was the candy! And plenty of the booths had candy.

As it turned out, I ended up watching all of these floats from my hospital bed. 

Summer is Over

Today is the first day of school for Curly and Scout. I can't believe the summer is over already. Baby Doll has an appointment with her teacher today and then she starts school tomorrow.

We also started dance for Crafty and Baby Doll and football for Sport, Scout, and Curly. This is Scout's first try at football. She was a little tired of dance and wanted something new, so here we are. She was pretty tired after her first practice last night, but at least she slept well.

As for me, I am tired.

I can't believe how difficult it is to repair a body at my age. I went with my sweetie last night to Walmart to buy a few last minute school supplies for the kids and just that was enough to have me pretty exhausted. I don't know how long it will take to recover, but I miss my old life. As crazy and frantic as it was, I loved it that way.

Glad to be Home

Good morning, my dear blog friends. I slept in my own bed last night and had a 24th of July celebration with my kids. It feels so good to be home!

Drama Queen has kept you up to date on the happenings with the surgery and then the extra stay at the hospital because of the blood clots or more technically, the pulmonary embolisms. I was pretty groggy through most of the transport and diagnosis, so I didn't really understand what was happening. I just knew I was struggling to take a deep breath.

They loaded me into an ambulance for the ride to St. Marks. It was bumpy and uncomfortable on my poor back, but I already had an IV (actually 2 of them) and the blood thinners were running to keep me from having a stroke.

A visit from Twizlet.

They put me in a room at St. Marks in the PCU which is one level below ICU and then they continued to monitor me by drawing blood every few hours and I stayed on oxygen to help me breathe. I was pretty miserable, but I never felt near death or anything like that.

We knew that the stay would be at least 3 days to get me stabilized; I went in at 4:00 on Friday morning and was finally released on Monday just before noon.

I'm so glad to be home. Life is precious and sweet.

Need a Coupon? Look at Groupon

I watch for good deals all the time. It's one of those things you sort of have to do if you have a big family. But sometimes I have a need and I don't have a coupon. Like when Mother's Day was coming up and I wanted to send my MIL one of these cute Shutterfly books Drama Queen is always putting together for me.

That's when I get on Groupon. I know they will always have a coupon I can use, and they usually have several to make it even easier to order exactly what I want at a good price.
I'm so glad this opportunity to post on groupon came up because my MIL's birthday is in September and since I just got home from the hospital this morning, of course I haven't had time to order or buy anything.

I think this wedding book for Princess and the Frog is what I want to get this time. My MIL loves them all and she is happy to add a new one to her collection. One quick click here, and I just saved 50%. That means I can buy another book for me, right? 

I wonder what Drama Queen is up to...

**I received compensation for an honest review of groupon.**

Guest Blog: Our Little Valentine! by Princess

The Frog and I are so excited to announce we have a little one on the way! We are due on February 4th, 2018 and are 12 weeks along. Here’s to hoping these next 6 months have a lot less throwing up. :)

And, for your enjoyment, a picture of what the internet thinks our baby might look like. I personally think our little guy will be bald but I guess we will see.

Guest Blog: Update by Drama Queen

Hey Blogworld,

Just wanted to let you all know about how Momma's surgery recovery is going.  As you know, she went in on Tuesday to have some work done on her spine.  The surgery itself went very well.  The surgeon said it looked really good.  Mom spent Tuesday night at the hospital under observation and struggled a bit to get her breathing back up to normal.  Wednesday she spent home with us, and while she felt pretty sore, seemed to have more energy than expected. 

Pre-Surgery

Thursday was a lot harder on her.  The pain meds they gave her just weren't working as well and she was really hurting and ended up going up to bed at seven.  Around te,n she was spiking a fever just over 101 degrees, so Dad and I made sure she called the nurse.  They told us to have her take some ibuprofen and follow up in the morning with the doc.  Early this morning, she was having some trouble breathing so Dad ran her up to the ER before the sun came up.

Mom hates getting her blood drawn.

The ER team told Mom and Dad that she had a pulmonary embolism:  a blood clot in her lungs.  Because the surgical site is so new, they started her slowly on an IV-delivered blood thinner.  They then transferred her up to a different hospital where they could do spot-imaging to check out where the clot was.  They found that Mom has several clots in both lungs, but thankfully none near her spine.  The doctors say that if a clot finds its way back to where they just did the surgery then she will have to go back under right away or she would likely risk paralysis for anything below that spot.  The other thing they are worried about is if a clot finds its way to her brain which could lead to a stroke.  So it's a careful balancing act of trying to break the clots down with the blood thinners, while also not traumatizing where her spine is trying to heal.  Dad says we should expect that they will keep her at the hospital at least another three days, if not more.

The ambulance that transferred her.

 We have always known that there were risks with this surgery, but our wonderfully brave Mom has been in pain for so long.  She really needs and deserves to be able to live a good life without the constant fatigue and aches.  Please keep our Mom in your prayers.

Popsicles help her throat feel better.  Intubations hurt!

Guest Blog: The Book Fort by BabyDoll

It stated out as this puppet show and it turned into this gigantic fort.  You see, I got these spoon puppets from the director of that show I was in up at Weber with Prima Donna.  We lost the spoons, so Scout and I made new puppets with plastic spoons.  There were three puppets: one for each of us plus Curly.  We put on a show this afternoon for Mom and everyone else who was home.  We had fun doing the show and then Mom remembered that an activity we could do for the summer reading program was to make a book fort.  Curly got us lots of blankets.  Scout moved the chairs and tables.  I organized things.  And Dog Walker brought down his cool book stuffed animals to decorate. 

Once the fort was made, we played in it and set up more things inside like flashlights, pillows, and a radio.  Then we all read some books.  I read two books, actually: "Let's Go For a Drive" and "Should I Share My Ice Cream?" by Mo Willems.  I thought they were really fun.  If you're bored this summer, maybe you should make a book fort too!

Guest Blog: Halloween Costumes, by the Dog Walker

I know this may sound strange to talk about at this time, but I just want to be a bit prepared to have suggestions before the upcoming holidays are coming no matter when or what. Do you remember those years when I tried to come up with lots of things of what I wanted to be for Halloween. Well, there had been lots of inspirations that have occurred throughout the years. It all started to happen ever since I served my mission. I never thought about coming up with clever ideas of costumes to wear in my life that remind me of some things.
 
You probably remember the time when I was dressed like a Sleepwalker, because it reminded me of my blog name that could be changed a bit for a day. The way I made it was with a pillow tied behind my head with a small fleece blanket as a cape and I wear my pajamas. Some people thought I was a bed when I tried to tell them that I was just a sleepwalker. It was in 2014 when I was dressed like the sleepwalker.
 
Around 2015, when the new Disney and Pixar movie Inside Out came out, some of us wanted to dress up like the characters from it. I was the only one dressed up like Bing Bong while Teach was dressed like Joy, Baby Doll was dressed like Sadness, and Drama Queen was technically dressed like Disgust. We enjoyed the movie, because we thought we could dress up like funny characters from the most lovable movies.

Last year, of 2016, I started to enjoy the musical called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, especially watching the Donny Osmond movie. During a service project at an elementary school, my sisters found an old multicolored balloon in a garbage can and decided that we should keep it for use. I convince my mother that we should turn it into the coat of many colors from the musical. She was a bit hesitant about that, but after seeing the movie, she quite agreed and loved it so much.

Now, for this Halloween of this year, I'm working on a different costume that I thought would be clever. I didn't come up with it myself in the first place, but I found out about it from a Studio C skit that they did. I bought these two clocks from Walmart and turned them into the Daylight Saving time zones. In the video they have two people being the Daylight Saving Twins. I thought that was really clever. I figured since Princess and Crafty were alike, I thought that would be good costumes for them, but everyone suggested to me that I should try being it myself. They way I made these clocks wasn't an easy way, but it does work, the clock hands even move around time.

Throughout this process, I'm still trying to figure out more ideas that can be added to this costume idea for Halloween. I just want to ask if any of you have any suggestions that I can use to make it the best costume that I have ever made in my life.I hope that you enjoyed this and hope that things can work out before October. :)

vvvvvv

Guest Blog: Get Well Soon! By Scout, Curly, and Baby Doll

Dear Mom,
First off, I have to stay I love you so much!  You are the best mom ever. I am really glad you got the surgery so your back can feel better, and I hope you can recover easily and quick.  I will really miss your warm hugs while your back is in pain.  I really, really, really love you. 
Love,
Scout
 

Trying to make a heart

Hugs are better

Dear Mom,
I hope you get better.  I love you.  We have monitor jobs.  Mine is the table.  Drama Queen assigned them again.  I love you so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, very much. 
Love,
Curly

Heart attempt two!

Nailed it.

I love you, Mom.  I miss you.  I'm sad that you can't lean back or tie your shoe.  It's gonna be hard when you can't hug us back when we hug you.  And I'm sad that it's gonna be hard of learning how to do this and not have your stitches pop out or be hurt, but I know that you are happy that your back will feel good.  I love you with all my heart.  I know that you'll be happy when you come home.  I hope you have a good night. 
Love,
Your Baby Doll

Love you!!!

Majesty Diamonds Pendant Review

A few weeks ago I was approached by Majesty Diamonds to see if I wanted to write a blog review. I did my due diligence and pulled them up online only to find that they are a major online diamond retailer out of Montreal, Canada. They had hundreds of choices of high-end jewelry to offer. Of course it had to be too good to be true.

But it wasn't.

If I would have looked a bit further, I would have also realized that they have tons of jewelry in every price range... even mine. Since I am going under the knife this week and I know I will be laid up for a while, all of these August and September birthdays will likely have to be shopped for in front of my computer rather than in an actual store.

So I asked Drama Queen which one she liked since she has the first birthday. Can you believe that she and I both chose the same one? When it arrived from Canada, I knew just from the packaging job that it was a quality place. After several layers of cardboard and foam wrapping, I finally pulled out this beautiful black box.

I was more than a little pleased with what I found inside. 

The picture simply does not do it justice. The stone is not a real diamond, but it is a pale blue topaz. My first thought was, "I don't want to give this to any of my girls... I want to keep it!" Seriously, it is still sitting on my desk, awaiting my final decision.

But just so you can see how beautiful it looks around someone's neck, I'm going to remove it from the box for the first time right now. Hmmm.... I wonder who should try it on....

Sorry, Drama Queen, I may just have to keep it since it matches my hair.

You knew I wouldn't leave you out of the fun! Majesty Diamonds has offered a 20% discount for all of my friends who want to use the promo code BLOG20.


**I received a free topaz pendant for my open and honest review.**

A Quick Staycation

This coming week was supposed to be our vacation week, but because of my surgery, we had to cancel our tentative plans. So yesterday we were talking about a concert Crafty had tickets to see in the Eccles Theatre downtown. She still needed two concerts to finish up for her class, so I suggested to my sweetie that we could go down to the conference center and watch them film Music and The Spoken Word on Sunday morning.

At some point one of us mentioned a possible hotel stay and a mini vacation was born. We took off on Friday night and drove downtown. My sweetie had a couple of free rooms from his travel points at the Marriott so we figured it would be perfect.

We checked in just after 4:00 and the kids quickly changed and we made our way to the pool. We played and splashed for an hour and then went back upstairs to change. The first concert was the Days of 47 Pops and we were pretty excited to see it. If we hurried, we had time to walk to City Creek mall and get some dinner and then maybe even stop at a couple of stores.

The kids all wanted different kinds of food, so I'm not sure the food court was all that cheap, but it was fun. Then we stopped at the Disney Store and another toy store before we walked to the Eccles. We waited in line for a few minutes and then we found our seats. It was a wonderful patriotic concert!

Then we walked back to the hotel. We were all tired from the walking and the kids camping all week, so everyone went to bed. This morning when we got up, we all dressed in our church clothes, grabbed a granola bar, and headed out again.

We had to be in our seats by 9:15 at the conference. It was quick walking for my poor sweetie and his broken foot, but he handled in like a trooper. We arrived and were seated in plenty of time. We even got into the front section. I loved the music, but it was a bit stressful knowing it was being recorded so we had to be silent.

After we left the Conference Center, we caught the trax train back to the hotel where we had breakfast in the dining room. It was nice, but expensive even with the 4 free vouchers given to my sweetie upon check-in.

When we were finally finished, we loaded up the car and headed for home, just in time to take Sport to the church by 12:30. The whole thing was fast and fun and spontaneous, but sometimes that makes for the best times.