Blessing weekend

Okay, so this last weekend we had Daniel's blessing. Thanks to all who made the effort and came up for it! We really appreciated it. You all made the weekend lots of fun. I think the boys liked the waterslide with their cousins the best. Last night after everyone had gone home and we were getting the boys ready for bed, Chris found a swim diaper and put it on over his pajamas and walked around saying, "swim suit." I think he really wanted to go again.

We had lots of good food at the brunch on Sunday and have lots of leftovers, so we get to eat well for a while. I had a good breakfast of watermelon and cinnamon rolls this morning.

I've been having problems putting some of the pictures from the weekend on this post, so I'll come back later to edit it and try again. I do have a few pictures on below, so make sure you check them out! You may notice that I also had a bit of a camera problem. In a lot of the pictures, it appears that one of the boys had touched the lens, so they're a bit blurry.

Okay, I'm having problems still. I don't think it likes me. So here's the link to the pictures I have on picasa, where they get saved when I try to post them. And I'm going to delete the post after this on the page that had the pictures. I think with my deleting some of the extras on picasa, it messed them up on the blog. Enjoy!

Bryce Toronto Family Blog

These two worked!

A stitch in time...or maybe five.

Yesterday was an eventful day. Well, at least an eventful afternoon. Ben came downstairs yesterday around 4:00 and he was crying. I assumed that he and Alex had been fighting, so before I looked at him, I asked him what had happened. He told me that he had been "on the purple bed" and fell and hit his head on the "table." What he meant was that he was jumping on the twin bed in the guest room and fell and hit his head on the corner of the metal file cabinet that's between the two beds. I looked over at him and saw blood dripping down his face and jumped up and grabbed a wet paper towel to clean him up. The cut wasn't very big, but it was pretty deep. And surprisingly, especially for a head wound, it wasn't bleeding a huge amount. He didn't even get any blood on his shirt. I noticed his pupils were small and thought that with concussions that the pupils dilate, but couldn't remember for sure, so I called Bryce to ask him and to tell him what had happened to his son. Bryce kept asking questions about the cut and I told him that it looked pretty deep, but it was a horizontal cut at the end of his eyebrow and it was gapping a bit, about an eight of an inch, maybe more. We decided he was probably okay, but would need a butterfly bandage, none of which I had with me (I thought, anyway. We found some in the first aid kid when Bryce got home), so we'd wait until Bryce got home from work. Of course, while we were waiting, Chris had decided to play in the sink in the bathroom and fell off the toilet and gave himself a bloody nose and cut his lip. So it was a fun day.
Bryce got home around 5:30 or so and took Ben in and looked at the cut and was saying that it didn't look too bad. I told him he needed to clean it again (it was still seeping blood) and he'd be able to see how deep it was. So he started cleaning it again and looked at it and said, "Okay, we need to go to the doctor. I can't do anything about this." He decided to try to butterfly it anyway, but unfortunately, our butterfly bandages were too big to work. So Bryce and Ben were off to the doctor. Ben ended up getting 5 stitches. The doctors asked him about 5 different times how it happened and after about the second time, he would say, "I already told you. Dad, you tell them." And he really didn't like having to be strapped down to get the stitches. He kept yelling to Bryce, "I hate it when you do this! I hate this!" But he was still pretty brave and did fairly well. After they left the doctor, Bryce took Ben to let him get a Coldstone ice cream. We had a coupon for a free one for Ben's birthday, so this seemed to be a pretty good time to use it.
Now we get to clean the wound a couple of times a day and put a new bandage on it and we take him back to the doctor on Monday. I'm actually really surprised we haven't had to do this before, with as active as our boys can be.

Here are a couple of pictures. The first one is of the cut before Bryce got home and took him to the doctor and the others are of the stitches:

My stupid dog

Our dog Ozzy (Curiosity is his full name)is an escape artist. He got out of the yard twice this past weekend, the first time going into some lady's house after he saw her cat. The second time he went over to our neighbor's house across the street, probably trying to visit their dog Holly, who is a basset hound. If you don't know, Ozzy is a English Mastiff/Great Dane mix, so he's pretty big and could be a bit scary just running into someone's house. The first time he got out, he was on his chain in the back and managed to undo the chain again. Then he went into our neighbor's backyard via the 2 foot opening at the back of the yard where we need to fix the fence and out into the front when he saw that their gate was open. The second time, he just broke the chain and went out the same way. It's a good thing our neighbors are nice and a lot of them know Ozzy, or there could be some trouble there. It's also a good thing that Ozzy is rather friendly and a little bit on the wimpy side.

Also, for those of you who have read previous entries, I actually ended up not going to church yesterday, so I didn't teach my lesson. Apparently they didn't expect me to show up yesterday, since they had someone else all lined up to teach already. That was a good thing. I tried to call the Sunday School presidency to find out if they had been planning on that or not, but never could get a hold of any of them. So I worried a bit about what was going to happen at church yesterday, and was relieved to find out I didn't need to.

Ben's birthday

Okay, Cindy...I'll tell about Ben's birthday.

Ben really had a lot of fun at his party. We had invited Kyle, Kyle, Sabrina, Keishawn, and Christopher and they all came. We ate pizza and then they went out and played in the pool for a bit before we got out some water balloons. They really had a good time throwing water balloons at each other. Our Chris didn't like the water balloons popping, so he went back in the house for that part. After the balloons, we came back in for some cake and to open presents. Ben had wanted the ice cream cone cakes, so that's what he got. They kept getting tipped over in the decorating process, usually by Alex, so some were a little flat. The kids all seemed to like them though. And it's kind of funny watching kids watch another kid opening presents. They all wanted to help and to tell him what the presents were, like he couldn't see that. After presents, they all just ran around playing and had a good time. Bryce and I were definitely glad when it was over, but the kids had a good time.

So here are some pictures from the party:

Pilate and Peter

I've been preparing my lesson for church on Sunday. This week's lesson is on the crucifixion of the Savior, so I've been pondering a lot about Pilate and about Peter.

First about Pilate, how he almost seemed to believe that Jesus was who He said He was, but still gave in to the crowd who was demanding that they free Barabbas instead of Jesus and crucify Jesus. He seemed about to disregard their wishes and release Jesus anyway until the Pharisees and chief priests said that Jesus had committed sedition when He proclaimed himself to be King and that they would report him to his superiors and he would lose his position. I wondered how often we don't stand up for what is right (even if we may not believe the position another takes) because we are afraid to lose our position or maybe to lose friends. It's not always easy to stand up and do what's right.

Second about Peter, who had denied knowing Jesus 3 times during the trial. I still like to think of the denials more as following counsel rather than being cowardly. Because maybe when Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him 3 times before the cock crowed, it wasn't prophecy but a command. Peter became the leader of the church after Jesus was crucified and then resurrected. Perhaps something would have happened to him as well if he had admitted who he was during the trial. I do like a thought I read recently though about Peter that if it had been cowardice or weakness, then who else has shown a more complete repentance and a better ability to overcome a weakness than Peter did? He boldy testified on multiple occasions afterward about the Savior.

So anyway, that's just what's been on my mind these last couple of days. I kind of wish I had a few more days to ponder and study about this before my lesson on Sunday. And I really hope I've been preparing the correct lesson, since I've been away from church for the last 4 weeks since I had the baby (4 weeks ago today. That's crazy).

Crazy days of summer so far.

It's almost the middle of July already and it's been an eventful summer so far. We haven't really done all that much, but it's amazing how adding a new baby to the family will make it seem eventful. Especially when that baby is the the 4th boy and when the oldest will just be turning 5 in two days. Yes, sometimes I really think we were a bit insane to have our kids so close.
Daniel was 7 pounds, 5 ounces when he was born, making him our largest baby by one ounce. He was also the fastest delivery, which definitely made me glad since Chris was the longest despite being the third baby. He looks just like his brothers, so it's a good think we think they're so darn cute. The labor and delivery was actually kind of eventful, at least it gave us a couple of things to laugh about. I was supposed to go in to the hospital at 5 am to be induced. They got the pitosin started at about 5:30. Then I sat there until about 10 with nothing really happening besides the contractions I had all the time anyway, nothing regular or anything like that. The doctor had come in and broke my water around 7:30, but that didn't help anything. Shortly after 10, the nurse came in and changed the pitosin, since they had had a problem with it not being mixed correctly in the recent past. After she did that, I had a nice contraction that lasted about 5 minutes. I was definitely ready for the epidural after that one. Of course, the epidural took 2 tries to get and the first one was rather painful for me. To the point where I was almost ready to say, "Forget it, I'll stick with the labor pains." Having a big needle stuck inbetween the bones of your spine can be quite the experience, even with the 2 doses of numbing medicine the anesthesiologist gave me. The second try was much better. But a little under 3 hours after they changed the bag of pitosin, Daniel was born. He had come down the birth canal so fast that he bruised his face on my pelvic bones. That panicked a couple of nurses until they realized it was a bruise and not him turning blue due to lack of oxygen. My blood pressure had been getting rather low during labor and after, getting down to 94/38 at one point, so of course it made me nauseated and right after they brought us food while they were checking Daniel out, I threw up all over myself. That's always a pleasant experience. Then the bed fell back apart after they had put it back together after the delivery, and since I still couldn't feel my legs from the epidural, I had to hold on to the arm rails to not fall off. And I was holding Daniel, so that would have been a nice one. After that, things did seem to get better, but I was sad when I was in the mother care unit and realized that I had left my book in the delivery room and they never did find it.
These days we're busy planning a simple birthday party for Ben and trying to figure out the best day and time to have it so that his friends can come. Since he's just turning 5, we really don't have to do a lot and will probably just have them play in the little pool and with the water balloons and have food. So nothing big, but I'm sure he'll have fun.
Alex is always our one who keeps us on our toes. He's got a lot of energy with a relatively short attention span, but since he's 3, that's probably normal. When he got lost in the mall for about a half hour a couple of weeks ago, it was just another reminder of how we really need to keep our eyes on him.
Chris keeps us busy too. He's at the stage where he thinks it's fun to do things that get a reaction, like pushing the buttons on the computer and things like that. He's also a climber and gets up on the counters all the time.
I'll finally be getting back to church this next Sunday, which means I get to also start teaching my Gospel Doctrine class again. That one can be a bit intimidating to teach. I like it though, since it makes me study more, so I get to learn more about the Gospel. Hopefully I'm able to pass some of that learning on to those in the class through the Spirit. I know I can't do it on my own. Well, that's what's been going on here so far. See? Nothing too exciting or profound.