Spring Birthdays

Aliva turned 12!

 This is one great girl.

 She's been so excited to go into Young Women, and she looked fab in this new green dress.  The YW have been so excited to have her!  She got to do baptisms up in Twin Falls the Saturday after her birthday, something she had been counting down to.  And green is her color, dontcha think?

Scarlett is 6!

Scarlett had her GOLDEN or should we say GOULDEN birthday, turning 6 on the 6th! She wonders why her birthday is during General Conference every year...but we tell her she's lucky to share a birthday with the Savior and get to listen to FOUR hours of His apostles every year on her big day!

 Donuts n' More in Elko is the bom diggety.  

Since she had a Conference birthday, we invited some families with kids her age from the ward over for pizza and partying the night before.

 These kids know how to party.

Raegan turns 17!

 Raegan, Sophie, and Romney leave at 6am for seminary, so Raegan opened her gifts after school.

And she wanted a strawberry shortcake for her birthday cake.  We all appreciated that.

Romney turns 18.  (Did I really just type that??)

 Romney wanted a fruit pizza for her "cake".  The best part of her evening was that Tyler came over to have Brent style his hair.  It's a little part-time gig Brent is doing on the side.

They had a dress rehearsal that night for Bye Bye Birdie--something I'll post about next.

Wendy is Born (this section deserves it's own title)

The week of Romney and Raegan's birthdays I started feeling sick.  Like a brick was sitting in my stomach.  I took the advice I give my kids all the time and just tried to buck up and tough it out.  Romney's birthday was the only day that week that I felt even well enough to eat much, then the next day the pain became twice as unbearable.

Finally, after two days of excruciating pain and not even being able to turn over in bed, I called Romney home from school to take me to the ER.  It HUUUUUUURT.  This was May 9th.  Brent met me there as soon as he was back in town after his deliveries and they x-rayed my abdomen to find massive infection.  So bad that they couldn't even tell if it was from a ruptured appendix for sure.  

They ended up doing a 6-inch "exploratory" incision below my belly button to remove the appendix and all the infection from my stomach.  I spent five days in the hospital, throwing up the entire time.  I didn't like it one bit.  Usually a hospital visit is somewhat enjoyable for me--I push out a baby, then get to hold it and have delicious food served to me.  This wasn't one of those visits.

 Happy Mother's day in the hospital!

 When Brent called to tell me that he and the kids were coming to see me after church on Mother's Day, I said, "NO!"  I have never felt so crummy.  I didn't know if I could even pretend to feel okay.  The night before they had put an NG tube up through my nostril and down my throat into my stomach to drain the bile so that I wouldn't keep throwing it up all the time.  It was not pretty, and felt even worse.  So I took pictures from my bed of my great family and my room.  I think I looked at myself one time in the mirror in the full five days and decided not to do it again.

 But these are some precious people!  They said they offered me chocolates, I don't even remember that.  It would have made me feel sick anyway...

I went home on May 13th only feeling slightly better, and having a wide open incision in my abdomen.  It was so big they could fit three feet of gauze inside.  We began the process of changing the rolls of gauze twice daily.  It leaked, it felt like it was on fire when I moved, and it seemed like it would never close.  Bless Brent's heart for taking on the task of being my nurse!  The first night home as he looked at the gaping wound after pulling out the gauze, he said, "I can't believe you can be at home with a wound like this!" 

My sisters helped me name the wound Wendy.  Wendy became another person in my life demanding constant attention, and crying uncontrollably if she didn't get it. It was a long summer toting around gauze and medical supplies for Wendy.  The surgeon said it would eventually close, and it finally did, about exactly 3 months later.  Now Wendy is just a long purplish/pinkish scar, and a distant memory.  I have to say, I won't miss her.