Daniel's follow-up

I took Daniel this morning to the doctor for his follow-up appointment from his last ear infection. I was impressed because they actually took me back to the examination room a couple minutes before the scheduled time for the appointment, but then I had to sit there for over 20 minutes waiting for the doctor to come in. Luckily, Katie was very nice again and watched Alex and Chris, so they weren't sitting in the room bored and Daniel was having a good time checking everything out in the room.

When the doctor came in, he looked through Daniel's chart at his past ear infections and with this last one, counted about 5 in the last 8 months. I thought it was only 4, but I could definitely be wrong about that. It all blends together.

He then looked in Daniel's ears to check on how they were doing and could see a kind of crusty scab in his right ear, left over from the infection. He also thinks there is still some fluid in there, but it should go away on its own. He said it looks good otherwise and the other ear looked fine.

Because he has had so many ear infections in such a short time and it is the beginning of the cold and flu season, he thought it would be best to refer us to the ENT office and have tubes put in. So I get to take Daniel there on Friday morning to see about getting tubes. Daniel also got a flu shot today and I'm supposed to take him back in about a month to get a second one. So no, these doctor appointments will never end.

Here are a couple pictures of Daniel waiting in the doctor's office:




Ben and Alex decided to put on their Cove Fort shirts last night and Ben made little signs that said Cove Fort (Alex is holding "Cove" and Ben is holding "Fort") and wanted me to take their pictures and show people, so here they are:

Family Visits

My mom and dad came up to visit us on Wednesday and stayed through Saturday. It was a lot of fun to have them here. The kids really enjoyed being able to spend time with Grandma and Papa. I did feel a little bad that they ended up babysitting for us for some of the time they were here, but the kids loved it. Chris even keeps asking where his Grandma and Papa are and when I tell them that they went home, he'll say, "They went to our home." Then I have to tell him that no, they went to theirs. When we were getting ready to go to church this morning, he ran to the front door to look out to see if their car was here so he could ride over with them and was a little disappointed when it wasn't here.

Mom and Dad first got to tend for me on Thursday when I had to go to the dentist for my crown preparation and to get the temporary crown put on. They were a little nervous about how Daniel would be for them, since he doesn't know them, but he really liked hanging out with them, especially when they'd take him outside on walks. On the up side, I should only have one more dentist appointment and my crown will be finished. Almost 8 months after the first visit. Unfortunately, I have another cleaning appointment for 2 weeks after I get the crown. I'm thinking about changing it, just to give myself a break for a bit. But maybe I want to keep it just to try to prevent having to go through all this again.

The second time they got to tend was on Friday when I took Alex over to his speech therapy session. He did a bit better this time and talked a lot more than he did last time, although he still had a few minutes of refusing to say anything. It's usually the hard 'g' sound when he refuses to say anything. For some reason he really doesn't like to try to say it the right way at the beginning of words. He gest frustrated and feels bad. When we got home from speech therapy with lunch, Mom and Dad had Chris and Daniel out on another walk. Daniel gets pretty mad if we go out the front door without him now.

The third time Mom and Dad got to tend was when they offered to let Bryce and me go out on Friday night and get to spend the evening by ourselves. I thought it was very, very nice of them to offer. It was actually pretty nice to be able to enjoy a nice dinner at a restaurant without the kids. After we had dinner, we went to see a movie. It wasn't a great movie, but it was nice to actually be able to sit through the whole thing and not have to take one of the kids out. So THANK YOU, Mom and Dad, for letting us go out. We really appreciated it. You're the best parents ever! :)

Mom and Dad got to see Alex score 3 goals in his last soccer game of the fall season and got to see Ben start his game before they had to leave to go home on Saturday. Alex was very excited that they got to see him play so well.

It was really nice to have Mom and Dad here to visit. It seems like we don't get to see them nearly often enough, even though they live only a short 5 hour drive away. So thanks for coming to visit, Mom and Dad. We love you and we miss you already!

What public school will get you...and your little brother

We don't know for sure where he got it, but we assume that he picked it up at school or on the bus, since he hasn't had sleepovers and isn't in daycare or anything like that. Wherever he ended up getting it though, he decided to share with Alex, so they both had lice. Ben definitely had more, but Alex did get a few. Luckily, none of the rest of us have seemed to have gotten it. And with the 16 loads of laundry I'm doing or have done in the past 3 days and all the vacuuming and spraying, hopefully none of us will.

These pictures show what coming home with head lice will get a boy. Yep, buzz cuts.

Ben with his buzz cut:



Alex with his buzz cut:

Another zoo trip

Since Ben didn't have school today and everyone was feeling well, we took a picnic and went to the zoo to see their new exhibit. The new exhibit is really nice and was done well. The boys loved seeing the new additions to the zoo and loved seeing their old favorites (mostly the komodo dragon). It was fun for me to watch how excited they were and to see Daniel getting excited to see all the animals now too.

We made some sandwiches and took some drinks and some chips along with a blanket and had a picnic at the park adjoining the zoo after we saw everything. The boys thought it was really a lot of fun to sit there and eat. Ben and Alex chased a couple of squirrels and ran around the park for a bit and just really had a good time. Ben said that he's pretty sure that his teacher will ask if they did anything fun over this long weekend they had and he's going to tell her that he got to go to the zoo and have a picnic there.

Here are some pictures from our outing.

This picture is of the boys in front of the beginning of the new exhibit:


Ben, Alex, and Chris in the hut:


The next few pictures are of some of the new animals:

The male lion on his rock:

One of the female lions walking away from us:

The giraffes (it was too muddy to let them out):


The boys by the elephant statues:



Looking at the India Crane:


Alex by the red pandas:


The boys playing by the turtle shells (Alex had scraped his back on it, which is why he was frowning):


The boys hatching out of their eggs:


And just for fun, I put in these two of Daniel trying to climb inside the kitchen cabinet:

New Post

You may have noticed that I said before that I was going to try to do a post every week with some thoughts on my Sunday School lesson, but I haven't done that yet this week. It's because of General Conference this weekend. I actually get a week off of teaching, which is always nice. I've continued to study and prepare for my lesson as I usually do, I just have an extra week to do it. Not that it will really help the lesson be any better. This lesson actually covers my favorite part of the Book of Mormon, which is when Christ first appears to the Nephites. I really think that if I were to ever leave the Church, I would still have to believe that He visited the people in the ancient Americas. It just makes sense. So anyway, I'll probably have more thoughts on that sometime next week.

Ben has had the last two days off from school and has Monday off as well. He keeps saying how glad he is that he got an extra long weekend, despite the fact that he and Alex have spent half the time fighting. We haven't even gone to do anything fun with him being off because Daniel has been sick and I think has finally succomed to getting another ear infection. I'll probably take him to the doctor tonight just to see. Hopefully he'll be feeling better by Monday so we can do something fun with Ben on his last day of vacation. We're thinking of taking a picnic to the zoo since they have a new exhibit opening this weekend.

Alex had his weekly speech therapy session today. I feel bad for him when he gets frustrated because he can't say the words correctly. Today he wouldn't say anything for 5-10 minutes because he was frustrated. It's going to take a lot of work and practice, but he'll eventually get it.

The other day as I was online, Alex was typing his name on the computer and Chris wanted to do it too. As Alex was typing his name, Chris would say, "C-h-r-i-s." He then hit the 3 on the keyboard and said, "That's me!" I said, "But you don't spell Chris with a 3." He said, "But I'm 3, so that's me."

Daniel has been talking more and more lately. He and I were going out the front door the other day and Ozzy started barking (as he always does...it gets rather annoying sometimes). Daniel looked at me, grinned, and said, "Shup dog!" He grinned at me again, then said, "Ozzy!" and started heading towards the fence. I guess "shup dog" is a phrase he hears often.

So that's my new post for the week. Nothing too exciting and rambled quite a bit, but at least it's something. :)