Straight from Africa, Just for Us

(Thanks Becky, they love the animals. My computer and camera have a been acting up so sorry for the late evidence)

We came home from our trip to Utah a few weeks ago exhausted and with super whiny, tired kids who fell asleep in the car on the way home from the airport.

How lucky then, were we, to have a package with these fun animals waiting for us in our kitchen? The kids perked right up and were even agreeable and fun after getting a new friends that evening. Becky, our greatest friend in Africa (actually, our only friend in Africa but still our greatest) sent these to the kids via her man in New York, Ymir, who went to visit her a few weeks ago. They traveled all over Botswana and saw so many freaking animals that me and the kids couldn't even begin to keep up. We've been supplementing our lives with a daily dose of African animals supplied by Becky's blog for the past few months.

Our kids were in heaven with their new friends and Ava quickly adopted each one and added them to her "auction" that we get to attend most afternoons. But we've never been able to bid on a gazelle before, that's for sure.

Nathan decided the giraffe was cool cause it had a long neck that could double as gun, as does every other toy in our house currently. BOOM - his super loud sound effects go with each shot scaring poor Lias half to death.

And Becky even got Lias the right gift. She ought to be happy to know this is only Lias' second stuffed animal he can claim as his own (poor third kid) and our first stuffed hippo in the Genho household, if you don't count Lias himself. He was way more interested in eating all the paper tags that came on the animals, but Ava has adopted his hippo for safe keeping till he's old enough to carry it around himself.

Becky doesn't know this, but all those cool pictures of animals on her blog has created quite the stir over here between John and me too. One late night after blog reading I ended up on hers and had the crazy whim to look up airline tickets to Botswana. I came to bed that night with the thrilling idea that I should go visit Becky in Africa this summer. What are my chances of ever knowing someone in Africa again that would show me around and I'd have a blast with? So what that I have a nursing baby - I'll take him along. $2000 bucks?... A small amount to pay for that kind of adventure. It's dangerous in Africa and I shouldn't travel alone? Then I'll bring you along too, John. Geesh, just let me dream for a little while ok!?

But none of this really won him over so here I sit, watching my kids play with cool stuffed animals and daydreaming about elephants, hippos, lions, and giraffes.

But if one day I post a blog from Botswana, you'll know what happened. Thanks for inspiring us Becky. Keep up the good work.

Evil

Ava (while dancing around): Nathan, when are you going to be done on the potty?

Nathan (with an evil little sneer): In about 2 hours. Hehehe.

Does a two year old even have a sense of time or does he just like to annoy her?

Utah (Part 1)= Great-Grandparents, Family and a few Blasts from the Past

Utah was short and we packed in a lot, but it was fun.

We started with a trip to Great - Grandma and Grandpa Donovan (my dad's parents) in Ogden. Their house still has that same cozy feeling that it had when I was a kid, complete with homemade grape juice, pink peppermint candies on the kitchen counter in the little wooden bowl, cabinets full of Hummel figurines, and Grandma and Grandpa sitting in their recliners looking out the window onto the elementary school playground.









We talked, tried to play in the snow with homemade snowsuits (garbage bag and tape work quite well), sledded down the small hill in front of their house and had dinner with our Utah cousins.



Uncle Spencer made the trip up from St. George to see us, or rather to see my kids and played in the snow with them too.



I finally convinced Lias to crash about 1 that afternoon and he gave us a beautiful 3 hour nap. It must have something to do with all the comfy quilts that Grandma has everywhere in that basement room.


I gave my Grandpa a quick lesson with the digital camera and this is the shot he captured.

Ava found the most sought after spot in the house - laying on Grandpa's belly. This is one of my earliest memories of my Grandpa - laying on his belly while he watched TV and asking him when his baby was coming cause he had such a big belly.


Eventually the cuddling evolves to tickling and I'm not sure who got who better.






But we all had a great time and can't wait till they make their yearly trek east in the fall.


We spent the majority of our time with Papa (John's dad) in Bountiful, watching the snow fall and the kids play with his arsenal of toys in the basement. John's family is over run with little kids (24 grand kids and 17 of those in the past 4 years) and most of them used to live in the Utah area so he's really got the stock pile of all types of toys that will entertain and amuse grand kids of all ages.

But eventually even those toys got old so he also took us out the SLC Children's Museum, a place he frequents often when all those grand kids come to visit. Nathan finally got to get up close and personal with a "hell-e-cock-er" and he was in heaven. He was even kind enough to let us sit in it for a second but pestered us galore with all the "why" questions about a helicopter you could ever dream of. He's into the why stage pretty hard and doesn't even wait for an answer before he asks why again. Sometimes it's cute but usually it's pretty exhausting.




Papa oversaw all the activities at the museum. That is, until he felt the need to go shopping at all the tantalizing malls next door to the museums. I tried to beg my way along but he had already taken me to Kohl's that morning, where we had fun spending my 30% off coupon. I got new jeans, a shirt, and a new jacket, among other things.


Nathan and John had fun building towers.....



....and then pushing the button to make the floor shake so everything came tumbling down.
Check out Nathan's clenched hands - a sure sign he's excited.



He wasn't too excited to dress up though.



Somewhere along the trip we also stopped and saw a ton of family. We could easily spend a month in Utah and still not see all the friends and family that we'd like too, so I know we missed more than a few of you, but I'm glad for the few we did see.

My mom has 9 siblings and I think all of them live in the Utah area, so I thought I was doing pretty good to stop and see 3 of them here and there. I got to see my newest cousin on my mom's side too, who is only 9 months old and a complete surprise to our family since the oldest cousin is somewhere near their 40s I'm sure. Joshua McKean Racker was a complete surprise to his parent's too, who already had 3 teenager daughters and are in their 40s too. Aunt Stacey and I had a fun visit comparing our little babies (who share the same middle name) and catching up. She took pictures but I was too lazy to get the camera so I have nothing to show for it. I also got to visit with my Uncle Dave and Aunt Alecia and my Aunt Annie and her hubby Uncle Gary.

We also took the kids over to the old stomping grounds of B-Y-U to let them see where we used to be cool and walk around campus like we owned the place. If you ever want to feel grown up and old, take your three little kids and walk down memory lane on your old campus. It felt so surreal to be actually using the couches to nurse a baby in the bathroom at the Tanner building, reading the sign in the ladies room that said "Please respect the privacy of nursing mothers". I can't tell you how many times I used those couches in there for a long nap or to kill a lazy hour in between classes. We only stayed about an hour and met with one old professor, but it was pretty fun to relive it all.

And would a visit to Utah ever be complete without seeing someone about to pop and someone in a big white dress? (not the same person, of course!) We stopped by to see a great old friend, Alicia Wall (shoot, can't remember her married name now- sorry Stan) who was just weeks away from having her first little baby. We reminisced all about Block and Bridle Club, where we ate, danced and partied our way through BYU Animal Science. We wished her well on turning her little baby, who has decided to give her mom and dad complications and come out feet first, and headed over to crash a wedding.

One of my families closest friends, the Jay and Nancy Rollins crew, had just married off their 5th kid, Mary, so we went in our our finery (we hadn't packed a single peice of church clothes) and ate all their cake. I had a blast showing off my kids and reconnecting with Jaymie, Mary's oldest sister and one of my best friends in high school and at college.

We met up with Jeff, my little brother at the wedding reception and then headed out to his house afterward. He tried to tell us his place wasn't very nice and I had to set him straight. He lives directly south of campus- I mean directly south of campus. His house backed up to the parking lot where I spent way too many hours circling and circling hoping to get a spot to park my car my senior year. And the inside of his house? Lets just say that I'd live there with all my kids, it's that nice. I think I convinced him to stay another year there or maybe I just convinced him to get out and give someone else the posh deal. The kids had fun seeing him and crashed on the way home so me and John actually got to talk and laugh all the way back to Bountiful about our BYU days. Oh so fun but glad to be done with them too.


Part two tomorrow night....maybe.

Papa. Papa. Papa

We're at Papa's house in Utah, watching the snow fall and eating all his yummy food. Ava's in heaven, sleeping in his bed each night and playing with all his cool toys. John's kinda working but mainly playing, Nathan's being Nathan and a little contrary and Lias wants his own bed to sleep in. I'm waiting for Papa to get out of the shower so he can take me on a shopping spree to Kohl's, since I have a 30% off coupon. Then we'll come home, load up the kids and head to SLC to the kids museum to play. And the rest of the week? Who knows???

Set the Night on Fire

I've come to realize something in life since living on the farm out here. People in agriculture are a little different from the rest of us. To anyone not from an ag (or pyromaniac background) this picture above would be quite disturbing, something you might see on the news, but not something that happens in your own backyard (or the dry field next to your backyard).



Most normal suburbia wives will never have to see their husbands walking through a 30 ft fire or standing with a shovel next to the dry waist high grasses that surround the backside of the fire, waiting to put out anything that might catch.


However, I'm no longer a normal suburbia wife, so I now get to see this scene played out at least once or twice a year, with my own family as the eager participants. Last year, about 3 weeks before I had Lias, we bounced 15 minutes into the depths of the farm to a big, huge 25 ft deep pit the guys had dug to push stumps into after clearing the fence line. There were also all sorts of household items (couches, beds, junk) from the delinquent tenants that left all their trash in the houses when they moved. John jumped into the pit, along with 2 jugs of gasoline and promptly commenced in lighting it. I almost had a hearth attack as I watched from the truck with Ava and Nathan. I saw a ball of fire shoot up and then John jump out of the pit about 2 seconds later. John swears he wasn't even close to the fire but all that ran through my mind was "how in the world would I, obesely pregnant, ever get John out of that massive pit and bump all the way back down that dirt road that already almost put me in labor to the main road, and get 30 minutes to the dinky local hospital with a burnt husband and two screaming little kids?" John still thinks I overreacted but I'd like to see how anyone else would handle that situation.





Luckily, I seem to be passing on my fear of the huge fires onto my offspring. They all thought the fire was really cool until the wind started whipping it up. Actually, I don't think they were a bit scared of it but they were really hungry and cold, even though you could feel the heat from about 40 ft away. I hope Nathan retains this healthy fear of flames until well past his teenage years. John tells me that one of the scariest situations he's ever been in has been when a field he's burning turns directions and is coming straight at you.





The fuel for this fire was all the old massive trees that have come down around here in the past few months, one dried up Christmas tree and 2 months worth of boxes and papers from our own garage.


This big stump in the fire was about 4 ft wide and 20 ft long so it burnt nicely--- for about 2 days. John kept going back later that night to check on it and make sure it hadn't gone anywhere. Next time we light one of these little campfires I'll make sure and let all you suburbia friends know so you can come on out and feel the heat of our country bonfires. They're quite the rage.

Nathan Update

So anyone who follows this blog or has the personal joy of knowing Nathan knows that we've been struggling for some time with how to, for lack of better words, parent him. He's so different from Ava and nothing that worked with her works with him. Here is a small excerpt from a report I sent to the FDA after struggling to control his asthma and figuring out the Singular was definitely not working for him. It's long, but I've put it in here for posterity's sake.

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My son began taking Singular (Montelukast Sodium) once a day pills for pediatric use in Oct of 2008, following an asthma attack that resulted in our visiting the emergency room for 2 consecutive days. He was on the pills for over 2 months, along with daily Pulmicort Respules and occasional Xopenex treatments, both taken by nebulizer. His symptoms cleared up and he did not have any significant asthma attacks during the time was on the Singular.

While using the Singular we experienced severe mood issues, much more than related to the normal "terrible twos". He stopped sleeping at night, waking for up to 3 hours in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep, even if we laid by him or tried helping him settle. He also had extreme rage and aggressiveness, constantly scratching us and the baby, headbutting and biting occasionally. We visited our pediatrician concerning these behaviors and she discussed several restraint holds we could use with him, none of which were effective. He also had extreme agitation and jumpiness and seemed like he was crawling in his own skin. He wasn't able to sit still to read books or watch a movie. He also suffered from an outbreak of some sort of hives or bumps, which were severely itchy and seemed to bother him most at night. He scratched them until they bled most nights. We treated them with a steroid creme and also for scabies but they remained for over 2 months.

He also exhibited unusual fear and anxiety over normal things, such as the cars in the parking lot and had terrible meltdowns and tantrums with extreme screaming periods. In short, he was almost unmanageable and a severely different child from the one we had before he began taking the Singular.

We went to see his asthma specialist (independent of the pediatrician that placed him on the Singular) and when we told her these symptoms she told us to take him off Singular immediately. The results were amazing. That night he slept the entire night through and his behavior the next day was markedly different. He stopped headbutting, scratching the baby and biting. He became much more reasonable and we were able to logic things through with him. His fears seemed to vanish over the next few days and the meltdowns and tantrums turned much more typical for a 2 yr old. Over the past month his behaviors have drastically changed, and while he is still a 2 yr old boy, he is definitely more like the child we knew before the medication.

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I'm so happy to say, Nathan has done a total change for the better and he's so much fun to be around now. He's happy, he's playful, he's cute and he's potty trained. Yep, in the past week, he's decided that he does want to go in the potty and he's pretty much done it all himself. This may be why I'm feeling like writing about him right now since he's definitely on my good side.

His favorite pasttimes are singing, cutting with scissors, riding his tricycle, playing pretend animals and cars with Ava, and eating anything and most everything. Today on the way home from church he was singing " Cun-tee (country) Road's take me home, to the pace I belong - West Aginia (virginia), mama rock me, Cun-tee Boy, take me home". This is a mix of his three favorite songs (Country Roads and Thank God I'm a Country Boy by John Denver and Wagon Wheels by Old Crow Medicine Show) but it's the cutest thing to see him belt it out in the backseat. Another favorite song is "Jingle Bells, oh it's too fun to ride in a one horse sleigh". And today at lunch he ate almost an entire avocado by himself. Weird, but cool by me, and definitely Nathan.



He's quite a introspective little guy and has the greatest insight into life's mysteries. If we ever lose anything he's quick to bring us the item, although most of the time it's just an imaginary one that he's conjured up to hand us so we won't be sad. He's very sensitive and cries when he thinks anyone is mad at him... but he hasn't figured out that if he listens and does what we ask when we ask it then we won't need to get upset with him. He tells me frequently "Don't be fus-tated with me, Mama".



I've started calling him buddy and he thinks that's pretty cool, unless he's pretending to be something else that day. Tonight it was an elephant and I got in trouble if I asked the real Nathan anything, I needed to address the Elephant. He's also started calling me "Mommy" in a whiny voice I can't stand so I call him " Natey" back in the same voice. He tells me constantly that he's not my little boy, but he is Dada's big boy. And he loves telling Lias that he's his big bruzzer. Every morning he runs into my room, climbs on my bed and announces to Lias that "hea's you big bruzzer. did you sleep good last night baby boy?" May the terrible twos be over for good!! Welcome back Na-ten!!!

Look for an Ava update soon too, in case anyone was starting to think that I'm playing favorites.

Fabulous Friday

Me and Jayme (the mom to all these adorable boys) worked our tails off on Friday, searching my house high and low for good lighting to try a Valentines Day photo shoot with our kids. I think we did a pretty good job considering that between the two of us, we've got 6 kids under the age of 4 1/2. I realized the other day that I liked hanging around these guys so much cause with a 4 1/2 yr old and almost 2 yr old twins, their lives are just as crazy as mine, if not more. Now if we actually use the pictures for the cards we'd like to make then I'll really be impressed.



















I'm trying to use my Photoshop Elements that I got for my birthday but I think there's a little bit of a learning curve. I'm not quite happy with these yet but it's about as good as I think I'll get in the 30 minutes I steal here and there to play with them. Does anyone know of any good online Photoshop classes? And does anyone know if Photoshop Elements will support any actions that you can download free online? I've found a bunch for the CS2 version of Photoshop but, alas, I just can't justify or afford that yet. However, I just signed up for a digital photography class next month at the local highschool and I have high hopes that I'll actually learn how to use my fancy camera. Then maybe I can talk myself into the real deal Photoshop.

Life as we know it (this week at least)

The mighty fighter of the cold and provider of heat...



......kinda. The stupid furnace keeps shutting itself off so John has to get up a few times each night to push a button so the heat will come back on. But he and his guys have been working on it all week - they're learning a lot and haven't blown us up yet (even though there was a VERY loud bang down there yesterday). And it's the coldest week in Virginia in like 20 years. Go figure.


The messy and twerpy eater of vanilla wafers...



.....Lias. He's 7.5 months and 24 lbs and the kid won't eat anything yet. He snacks on like 9 cheerios every morning and thinks that constitutes a meal. I'm getting sick of being this kids main source of nutrients. But I found something he will eat the other day - he snarfed down 3 vanilla wafer cookies in like 2 minutes and now he's got a rip, roaring red bum to show for it. I guess we'll go back to trying the normal baby foods.

"I'm innocent, I swear.."

The builder of handmade boxes and no hardware -only joints and pegs -tables and such......




....John and Dan (John's bigger little brother) who visited for the holidays. John and he had fun working in the woodshop until the wee hours of the nights and made some pretty cool stuff for us. Here's my new sewing table that got utilized for a kitchen table for awhile and Nathan's new toy box to hold all his airplanes and cars.


The maker of yummy pies and bigger thighs....



....me. I actually made this a week ago but just found it on the camera so thought I'd show it off. I don't really love pie but John does. I like cake instead but must admit that this pie didn't live to see the morning light. We ate it all that night. We also just joined a gym so we can hopefully get rid of all the extra holiday/baby/old age weight that we've gained. And it has 2 hours of daycare every day so I'll be there hiding in the locker room just so I don't have to change a diaper and maybe I'll actually exercise sometime too.


The eaters of snow and makers of snow men and wishers of more snow than we got......





..... Ava and Nathan. We got a good little snow shower the other day and everyone got so excited but by the time we got ready to go outside it was pretty much over. Nathan was just a little overdressed for the occasion and decided the snowsuit just isn't as fun as it looks. Ava is still convinced that winter won't be here until it really snows. I keep trying to convince her that we live in a place where it might not snow much but she's sure it will. Patience is a virtue...

The owner of the hottest body in the house and the wearer of many rolls but no clothes.....






....Chunka munch again. Sorry, I can't resist putting these naked shots on here, especially since you all now know that I'm the sole source of his chub. Wouldn't it at least be fair if he took it from my thighs to put onto his? Really, have you ever seen such lushiousness before? And these were taken before the heat went out, lest anyone think that this little walrus is getting cold. He had just blown out of his diaper of course and I wanted to get these rolls on film cause he's on the brink of crawling and hopefully he'll be slimming down soon.

Still cold

4 days later and one fired (no pun intended) heating company, John and his guys are still working on the heat. We've been off and on for the past few days and right now is off. my fingers are numb. arghhh.....

Baby its COLD inside

Winter 2007 - No snow yet this year but it's cold enough

Virginia (actually the whole Northeast area) is going through one of the coldest snaps we've had in like 20 years and man, oh man are we feeling it.

We went to bed warm last night but woke up a little chilly and realized that our brand spanking 2month old new $6,000 furnace had decided to stop working sometime in the night. And the thermometer was reading -2 outside which doesn't make for a very warm house. Our house is heated almost entirely by hot water baseboard heaters moving very hot water through these incredible annoying pipes that cover every baseboard all over the entire house. They buckle and moan and clink and clatter all night and day during the winter, but they do a good, if not a very expensive, job of keeping our monstrous house nice and cozy. One of the reasons we just replaced our furnace is cause our heating bill last year tallied up to something near the $10,000 range. We were hoping this new one would be just a tad more efficient and also reliable (this isn't the first time we've sat in the cold in these old farm houses).

Anyhow, the kids and I went to a birthday party this morning, leaving Lias and John to fix the heaters. When we got back at 2pm they were still working on it, thinking it would be fixed any minute. After 2 more hours and poor Lias' fingers and cheeks all red and icy, me and the kids ditched the cold house for our friends Beth and Robert's house down the road. We enjoyed our 4 hour stay there and warmed up quite nicely until the guys (Robert works on the farm with John) showed up for dinner and deseret, having gotten the heat going again at last.

John hates the landlord part of his job and hates it even more when his whole Saturday is spent dealing with his own cold house and cold family. Whenever it's freezing like this he's guaranteed a few hours of dragging heaters around to rentals to unfreeze all the pipes in this old uninsulated houses. He was outside all day and just wanted a warm shower when we finally got home tonight.

But just as a big house like this doesn't loose heat quickly, it sure doesn't heat up quickly. The heaters have been back on about 3 hours now and we're still only at about 60 degrees. Unfortunately, since the house got so cold during the day, a bunch of our water pipes for the showers and such (not the pipes that push the hot water around the house but the other pipes - the plumbing is quite confusing around here) are frozen so we have to wait for the house to heat up enough to take showers and flush toilets.

But everyone is now bundled under three layers of blankets and hopefully the temps keep rising during the night. All I can say is - man, I'm glad we don't live in the days when this house had to be heated with just the fireplaces (even though there were about 8 of them)! Oh and I'm especially glad that we don't pay the heating bills either.

Winter 2007

Blah, Blah, Blah

Could we have more of a blah day? Or a blah week? It's gray and raining outside, the kids are STILL semi-sick so we're STILL sitting around the house in our pajamas and it's just blah....

Luckily Ava and Nathan aren't bugging me entertain them at the moment so I'm surfing uninterrupted. John is sleeping with a feverish Lias, who was in our bed all night since he's so sick. I'm not sure what he has but they've all had colds and coughs this whole week with little fevers thrown in here and there. Ava, my one that never gets sick, even got it so it must be yucky. Nathan, my one that always gets sick, has the cough and cold and the asthma that's triggered by it all so he's all out of sorts. And poor Lias, who is still smiley even when he's sick, has had something (nose, cough, fever) on and off for the past 2 weeks which makes it hard to get much done around here. And John and I, the ones who it doesn't matter if we get sick or not cause we're not getting a day off anyway, are also sick. I don't think I'm a fan of the winter.

On a better note, we got our car and it's quite fancy. We got a great deal on it and only had to drive about 2 hours to pick it up. It has the stow-n-go seating in it so the first time the kids got in they were very confused about why we bought a van without any seats in it. We shouldn't need a van for a long time but when we do we'll probably buy on Ebay again.

Nathan and Ava - isms

Nathan today (in a mean voice as he smacked me):

"I KILL you, Mama."

Me (grabbing him roughly):

"We don't talk mean like that Nathan. It's not nice and hurts people's feelings."

Nathan (still mean and grumpy): "BUT I WANT TO."

Me (trying the higher law rule):

"But Heavenly Father told us not to be mean or kill people."

Nathan in a sad, teary little voice as he lay huddled on the bed cause he's super sensitive to criticism lately:

"No Heavenly Father be mad at me, Mama."

Ava to John while sitting at the computer:

"DAAAADDDDAAA, where did the fox with the world around it go???!!! I can't find it!!!"

(Somehow the Mozilla Firefox shortcut disappeared from the desktop and she couldn't figure out how to get on to play Elmo. We were thoroughly confused though since the fox hunters had hunted in our backyard today.)


On another note: We just bid on a used minivan on Ebay and won. We seem to have gotten a good deal but it was kinda a spur of the moment thing so hopefully it turns out well.