October 26, 2008

Wow! How is it that more than a month has gone by since the last time I wrote?!!! I admire the people who are able to post on these more often.

So....the last month in our family:

Erica turned 16 on September 28th. I got together with a couple of her friends and we planned a little surprise party for her. Their job was to get her out of the house while I set things up. She had no idea that we were planning it. She was very surprised and happy.

On October 9th, I went down to the valley for a little surgery at the Mayo Hospital in Phoenix the following day. That was our fall break. We didn't have school on Friday the 10th or Monday the 13th. The surgery was on the 10th and I was released on the 11th (which happened to be my 38th birthday).

I spent my birthday at my parents' house in Tempe. It was great! I had an actual birthday with a cake. I need to mention that this was no ordinary cake, either. It was Godiva chocolate cheesecake. YUM!!!

I stayed through Sunday night, but came home after that. The kids had dentist and orthodontist appointments the next day. The two older kids had to have their braces tightened and then three kids needed fillings. Alex also got to go to Wal Mart and pick out a bike for his birthday. That was pretty much how we spent the day on the 13th.

Alex's 11th birthday was on the 14th. I wasn't feeling very well. It was probably a result of too much activity shortly after the surgery. A nice thing was that I did not need to fix dinner. Alex wanted Taco Bell for his birthday dinner and Erica made his birthday cake when she got home from school that day. He had a nice birthday. He got some tools that he thought were great and proceeded to use them to take things apart.

That was about two weeks ago. I have just been doing normal things since then, but they are things that keep me busy. Alex did have another appointment with the pediatric cardiologist this past Tuesday and things looked pretty good. He said that he thought Alex's chest pain might be a result of pleurisy and instructed us on how to treat that.

Today was the kids' primary program at church. The four younger kids all had parts and they all did a great job! We had practiced during the week and they said each part perfectly.

This week we will be busy with Halloween activities. Our school has a family reading night that is open to the public on Thursday night (Spooktacular Reading Night). I need to come up with something fun to do for that before then. I promised Zachary that we would make homemade ice cream sometime soon and that he could help me so I am thinking that would be good for family home evening tomorrow. I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, Tyler has counseling on Wednesday, Erica and Tyler have mutual Wednesday night, Thursday is the reading night thing, and Friday (of course) is Halloween. The kids are excited for this week. Sometime in there we will have to carve their pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch last week.

My brother and his family moved about an hour away from our house. I'm thinking that maybe I'll see if they want to bring their kids to go trick or treating with mine on Friday. I'm so excited that they live close by now! Maybe we can go visit on Saturday if they cant come on Friday.

Well, I'm signing off for who knows how long. Maybe it will be Thanksgiving the next time I write. Who knows? For those of you who read this, I hope things are going well in your lives.