Basketball Awards

 Laiklie had a great time playing basketball for the first time this year!  We had an end of the year party tonight at Leo's place.

These are the fun girls she got to play with! Ava, Laiklie, Emily, Kia, Addison, Addison, Kaiya, Aspen and Brinley.  It was a little crazy having 2 Kaiya's and 2 Addison's on the team, but so fun!

The coach handed out awards to his team.  What an amazing coach!! Laiklie got the "Young Gun" award.  She was the only 1st grader on the team.  We were so grateful they invited her to be on the team.

 She had a great year and even made a couple baskets!

And just one more picture of the Pink Sparkles in action! Laiklie is front and center in this picture. We can't wait to play again next year, but for now we are switching our focus to volleyball which she starts TOMORROW!! Yay!

Our Baby Calf

This calving season we had two little calves whose mommies didn't want to take care of them.  We think they were both twins (not of each other) and the mom cows only took one baby each.  The kids have been bottle feeding them since they were born.  Just after Christmas one of them got sick and died. Sad! But we have this other little baby that Dallin has kind of claimed as his own and has taken on the job of feeding him daily after school.  This is one of the parts of living on a farm that I LOVE! It is NEVER a bad thing to teach a kid how to work!

Dallin got the stomach flu this past Thursday night and all day Friday, so when Rhett got home from school Friday Dallin asked him to go feed for him.  He wanted a little company and I wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing so I tagged along.  My little Rhett knew just what he was doing! He has watched big brother closely and mixed the milk perfect!

Here is our cute little baby that the kids all love.  He has stayed small while all the other calves seem to grow like crazy.  I think the kids love him more because he is so small.

 The wind was blowing LIKE CRAZY Friday when we headed out to feed and it was COLD so we were hurrying, but I did happen to catch this cute little smile on camera.  The story behind it isn't super appropriate, but it was so funny I wanted to record it.

Our dog Remi likes to go out and chase the calves when the kids go out to feed this little calf.  He followed us out this day and decided to go poop right in the big cow poop pile and Rhett happened to see what was going on.  All the sudden Rhett died laughing and said, "Remi is doing the litter box!!" Covering it like a cat does is apparently called "the litter box!" Ha, ha! I LOVE his smile! It melts my heart every time!

Arrow of Light

Dallin was finally awarded his Arrow of light.  He earned it all the way back before his birthday in November, but was sick for one pack meeting and then they didn't have pack meeting over the holidays, then they did the pinewood derby so they didn't do any big awards.  So we are glad to FINALLY have this award! 

Proud Parents

 Dallin has been going to Boy Scouts now for a few months and absolutely LOVES it! The key I've discovered in scouting is if the leaders LOVE it.....the boys LOVE it and Dallin's leaders LOVE it! What a blessing!

Dallin is a great example of hard work and we are so proud of him!

Skiing

My 3 littles LOVE to ski.  Dallin is such a ski lover that when we go to the mountain I NEVER even see him.  So....no pictures of him. :( I did happen to capture the other two atleast once.

 This pink coat/pants is Laiklie.  Her sweet Aunt Yvonne taught her how to go up the ski lift and come down skiers lane.  She is a good little skier! I LOVE watching her enjoy it!

 And my big guy Rhett.  He absolutely LOVES to ski and has no fear of the giant hills.  He scares him mom just a little, but loves every minute of it and that is a very rare thing for Rhett.  He has a hard time finding anything he loves and so this has seriously been a huge blessing in his life! Thanks again to an amazing Aunt who has given him some pointers since his mommy isn't a skier. :)

This is my favorite picture of all time! My Rhett all alone against that beautiful mountain! The whole thing makes me smile!

Who Knew??

If someone would have told me on February 19, 1999 what 15 years later, February 19, 2014 would look like would I have still married Ryan that day??

TOTALLY!! Best decision of my life!!

Was today the most glamorous 15 year anniversary.  NOPE! It started like every other day, waking kids up at 7 am, and again at 7:10 and 7:15 and then on to correcting homework during breakfast and speedy quick putting together a 100 day (100 year old) outfit. Isn't she the cutest old lady?!

If you look hard you can see the gray in her hair.  So fun!

Then off to drop kids off to school, apparently old ladies don't like to ride the bus. Ha, ha! Then off to my father-in-laws shop. He and my mom-in-law have been in AZ for the past few weeks and I have been working LIKE CRAZY to get his shop painted and cleaned while they have been gone as a surprise to them.  It hasn't been painted in probably 25 years and everybody else is too scared of Stan (he is SUPER PICKY about things) to do it.  I am NOT scared of Stan though. :) I have spent every spare minute there these past few weeks and again today because they come home tomorrow. 

At noon I rushed home, seeing my sweet man I share this anniversary with for the 1st time all day.  Just as he is walking out the door, of course.  He was off to work and I was off to run errands in town and to Oakley's diabetic doctors appointment.  While I was running in town Ryan did my usual Wednesday afternoon running - Laiklie to basketball practice, then to the reading tutor, then Rhett to scouts.  We finally were able to sneak away for a quick dinner just before running Oakley to volleyball and home to get kids to bed.  What a day! I am so grateful for Ryan.  We make a pretty good team! :)

Happy 15th Anniversary Babe I would marry you again in a second!

Laiklie's New Smile

Remember this smile?......

 I cannot even tell you how much I love this little toothless grin! In December though I was into the dentist with her and he asked how long her teeth had been gone and I told him since the summer and he said if they don't come in in a month or two bring her in and we will help them a little.  He said sometimes if the adult teeth don't just drop down after the baby teeth fall out they create kind of a rubberband type effect that won't let them drop down.  So in January I ordered my blog book (YAY!) and when it got here we were reading about last year and we realized that she had lost those teeth all the way back in MAY! Almost a year ago!!! So today we headed to the dentist to get a little help with getting those adult teeth to fall down into place. 

 Here she is with a very fat lip! They had to do 4 shots in her lip to numb it. Thanks to the gas on her nose she didn't feel a thing!

And if you look close you can see her NEW TEETH!! The dentist says within 2 weeks they will be completely dropped down into place.  They just used his laser to clear the gum tissue around them and I can't believe that we already have teeth showing! They did have to cut the little flap between her lip and gums because of the way it was positioned.  He thought it would cause issues with her teeth later on.  It was positioned kind of funny for sure! So now she is crashed on the couch watching some Tom & Jerry and letting her little mouth recover! I am guessing we will have a sore day or two, but we are excited to see this new smile WITH teeth!!

Did I Mention....I HATE DIABETES!

Next month we will have had Type 1 Diabetes at our house for 8 years now, so it is not often that Diabetes makes me cry anymore.  Last Friday though it snuck up on me and GOT ME AGAIN!

We knew Oakley's pump was low on insulin and had intended to change it Friday morning, but with all the craziness of life we totally forgot.  She texted me during school and said that her reservoir was low.  This usually means that she has a good 4ish hours before she is completely out of insulin, so I wasn't too worried.  She texted me a little later and said, "I seriously feel like I am going to throw-up!" (When your blood is high your body fills with acid and the only way to get it out is to flush it out with fluids, or throw it up. THE NASTIEST THROW-UP YOU WILL EVER SEE!) By then I was in town picking up Laiklie's ski's, so I told her I would head straight there, but I was about 20 minutes away.  A few minutes later I got a text that said, "HURRY!!" Which believe me, I DID!

Oakley got into the car, started to cry and crashed! This is the part where I start to cry and could seriously scream to the world - I HATE, HATE, HATE DIABETES!! We made it home just in time for her to throw-up as she walked into my kitchen.  We checked her blood 500+, changed her pump, pumped her full of insulin along with a shot in her thigh and then we start the fluids and just wait.  My problem Friday is that I didn't have time for dumb diabetes! I had paid for Dallin a ski lesson and he had to be on the mountain at a certain time for it.  I stayed home until I knew we would be late if we didn't leave and that's when I called Ryan and told him he needed to come be with Oakley.  I didn't dare leave her alone.  I had pumped her full of so much insulin that I had no idea what her body would do.  I told her to check for ketones (that is the acid level in her body) and text me the result.  She texted that the color on the stick was purple.

You can see from the bottle (that she also had to text me because I didn't know what purple meant.  ha, ha!) that purple means LARGE amounts of ketones.  NOT GOOD!!  Luckily her and her daddy babied her blood until they got it down which also brings the ketones down.  By the time I got home that night she was back to normal.  We say all the time that atleast diabetes is a disease that our girl can LIVE with! But days like Friday make it SO HARD to watch her do it!