Temporary

I am going to temporarily leave my blog this way so that you can see the entire video screen from Weston's concert. I know it looks a little funky, but I couldn't figure out any other way to get the video to show. Weston had this concert a week and a half ago, and I meant to post it sooner, but life got the best of me. Evan choked, then Brian got sick, then Evan got sick and his croup was bad enough to warrant a trip to the ER. We are finally on the mend (I hope!) so I am able to get this up!!! :) Weston is playing the french horn and you can only see the back of his head. He is the one on the end. :) I must say that for a 6th grade band, having only played for one month total, I was pretty impressed. For some reason the sync of the video and the sound are slightly off. It appears that the band is ahead of the conductor, but they really weren't! :) I hope you enjoy the video!!!

Weston's first band concert

Terrifying

Last night I had one of the scariest, most terrifying moments of my entire life. The day was normal enough. School for the kids. Then we went to Weston's very first ever band concert. :) They did awesome. We went for FHE. Then we came home to have ice cream sundaes for treats. I dished up the bowls of ice cream and gave them to each child. As I was at the fridge to get the chocolate syrup, I heard a strange sound behind me at the kitchen table. I rush over to find that Evan has slipped under the table and that he is the one making a strange gurgling kind of sound. I quickly pull him out from under the table to find him choking. Like really, really choking!!! He was blue all around his mouth. And he was foaming, bubbling ice cream out of his mouth. I immediately start to give him back blows, hoping that it will dislodge the ice cream that I figure he must be choking on. ICE CREAM!! Who knew you could even choke on that?!? The back blows don't work. I then try the Heimlich. Nothing. He is turning more blue and frantic by the second. And the thought runs through my head that I am going to need to call 911 in just a second if I can't get him breathing. And I am fully aware that my precious child's life is hanging in the balance. And it is up to me to help him and make it possible for him to breathe again. I give more back blows. Nothing. I do the Heimlich again and still nothing happens. I am beginning to panic. I am terrified. And Barth is still not home from the concert yet because he made a quick stop at the store. All of the children are watching the whole thing transpire. I have a steady stream of silent prayer running in my head to my Father in Heaven to help me. I am afraid that if I do the Heimlich much harder that I will hurt Evan. But if I don't try it harder, he could die, right there in my arms. And I cannot even stand the thought of that. And so, I give one more Heimlich. And out pops an enormous hunk of ice cream and Evan gasps. And sputters, and cries! It is the best thing I have heard in a long time. He continues to cough and choke and spit up chocolate ice cream. I finally am able to give him a drink to help clear his mouth. All he wants is for me to hold him. I call Barth to tell him what has just happened. He hurries home. I am shaking. Like a leaf. I offer up more silent prayers of gratitude for saving my child's life. And I hold Evan. For the next hour. And he is content to be held. No surprise, he doesn't want any ice cream. At bed time I hug all of my children extra tight to me and make sure they each know how much I love them. Who would have thought at this same time yesterday that Evan was choking and could have died? No one. Each moment is precious. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father that Evan is okay. I am ever, ever thankful!!

Carter Caves, part 1

in other words, the pictures from my phone! :)

This last weekend was Fall Break for us. We don't get a full week for Thanksgiving like lots of other places, but we do get a fall break of a 4 day weekend over Columbus Day weekend. We had perfect weather!!! The highs were in the upper 70's and the lows in the upper 40's for the entire weekend. With nothing but blue skies and sunshine!! It really was perfect. We headed out to Carter Caves on Friday after Barth put in a half day at work. The place was only 2 hours aways, so it was perfect. We set up camp that day and had a yummy dinner of hot dogs roasted over the fire. The next day we headed out to explore the park and to purchase our cave tour tickets. The park itself was so lovely! Since it is bear country here, and since you have to keep your food in a tight container (like a storage tote) and keep it in your car, we had our food handy to stop at the picnic area after getting our tickets (for an afternoon cave tour) to have our lunch. We all had a great time playing and eating our lunch. We had the place to ourselves for most of the time.
The boys had fun swinging on the swings. And guess what? Brian finally learned how to pump!!!! He never wanted to learn before, but figured it out on his own on this day and spent most all of his time on the swings on this particular afternoon!

Aaron enjoyed climbing this log cabin. If you make the picture big, he is sitting on the roof part. :)

Evan and Amber enjoyed going down the slide. Poor Amber fell on our driveway the day before we left and scraped her hands, knees and chin quite bad. That is what you see on her chin in all the pictures. :(

"Mommy get a picture of me pumping!" says Brian! I am so proud of him! Way to go!!!

Amber wanted a turn to swing. Weston, being the nice big brother that he is, hopped off his swing and then offered to push Amber while she swung.

Evan was just busy! He mostly liked to collect sticks and rocks and carry them around, telling me that they were for the "fireplace" or campfire. :) Most of the pictures of Evan from this trip are of the back of his head. He was just too busy to be bothered with looking at the camera.

"Check out my sticks Mommy!"

Later that afternoon we headed over to the cave parking lot to wait for our tour. Obviously 2:30 was a popular time for the tour and so we went with about 40 other people. They said that was their biggest group of the day. Oh well, we still had fun seeing the cave. While we waited, the kids found this huge caterpillar!!! They enjoyed watching it crawl all over the picnic table for a while. Before we went on our tour, we let him go back in the woods.

Here we are on the tour, inside the cave. Not that you can tell, but we are standing in front of a huge indoor pool. It was from the natural water table and rises and falls when the water table has more or less water in it. This particular cave was used during the prohibition time as an "indoor dance hall" as a front to their actual whiskey business!!

We exited out of the cave to enter another part of the cave and were able to see this. This cave that we toured had 3 entrances. This was looking out from the entrance. So pretty.

And this is looking in toward the entrance. We entered through a man made opening to the cave. That is up where you see the stairs going. But this hole here is one of the 3 original entrances to Cascade cave.

We saw lots of cool formations (that didn't come out well at all in the pictures) and a few bats! Most of the many caves in the area are closed because lots of the bats are being killed off due to white noise syndrome. Because of this, if you want to see a cave, you must go on one of the tours they offer. You can hike to lots of the caves in the area, but they are all closed off.

As part of this tour, they took you to another cave that has a 400 ft indoor waterfall. :) Very cool! Here we are in front of that!

Looking down toward the bottom of the waterfall. There wasn't tons of water, but it was sure a long way down!!!

Here is the camp grounds that we stayed at! I think we got the best spot. We camped in the spots with water and electricity which meant we were in with all of the millions of campers. The sites on the inside of the loop were on top of each other. I was glad we were on the outside of the loop!

And here is looking down at our campsite. We seriously had tons of room! It was kind of sloped where we were, but that was fine for the dry weather. If it had rained, I think we would have been flooded out though!! The hammock that you see is ours too!

My handsome guy! I am so glad that he likes to camp just like me!! :) He had so much fun playing with the kiddos. I am lucky to have him!!!!

My 3 big boys!! They had tons of fun playing Frisbee, swinging in the hammock, and kicking the ball together.

I had brought some glow in the dark bracelets for the kids to have while we were camping, but Barth, being the fun guy that he is, decided that it would be a lot more fun to pretend that they were light sabers, and have battles with them!! Here he is fighting with Aaron.

Weston and Brian battling it out!!! :)

Daddy, Aaron and Amber! I think that it is funny that Amber is fighting with her eyes closed. By this time, Evan was already asleep in the tent. We would put him to bed a little earlier than the others so that they could poke in the fire without having Evan do the same thing. Evan had no fear at all of the fire!!! He wanted to throw everything in it and wanted to be very, very close to it. Since we put him to bed (and I laid with him till he went to sleep) early, Barth was able to let the kids have fun with their poking sticks and making s'mores!!

Stay tuned for more fun!!!

Fun fall afternoon

Last week we had some beautiful warmer weather and so we headed out to the park after school one afternoon!! We had a great time! :) The boys started out climbing the big pine trees at the park.
While Evan......

......and Amber swung on the swings!!

Weston pretended to blend into the tree for a bit.

Amber and Evan climbed up the equipment. Evan follows where ever Amber leads. :)

Look closely. Do you see who I see up there?

It's Brian!!!! He was a first class climber that day. (and there is no poison ivy in these trees!) He got way up there. He must take after his Mommy! ;)

Yep, my little climber went to town climbing at the park!! :)

I am not sure what is up with blogger putting the pictures like this, but anyway, Amber had some CRAZY hair after sliding down the slide!!

What a handsome little Bri Bri!!

Look at this sweet little monkey in the tree!! He climbed almost the entire time that we were there.

I love this one for some reason!

And my big 6th grader!! What a great afternoon with my fantastic little family!

Brian the Wolf

This past week at the September pack meeting, Brian got his Wolf!! :) He had been working very hard on his requirements and was so excited to get his badge and move on to the Bears!! He got his wolf badge as well as 2 gold and 6 silver arrow points!! Way to go Brian!! He loved Sister Ison from our ward as his leader. He will be sad to be leaving her den but is excited for all the new and fun things that will be happening in the Bear den! Congratulations Brian!!! We are proud of you!!!

Happy Birthday Brian!

On September 16th, my sweet little Bri-Bri turned 9!!! My oh my! How did he get so big?!? He had a great day. :) He had a good day at school and then came home for fun at home. Daddy got home a little earlier than usual and we had pizza for dinner.
Following a yummy dinner, Brian opened his presents. He was so excited about all the things that he got. And so was everyone else. :) Amber and Evan enjoyed "helping" Brian with his presents, and Brian is such a sweet boy that he actually encouraged them to help him! I couldn't ask for better kids!

I think that the hit of the party was a remote controlled Star Wars ship that you can fire missiles from the remote too. They thought that it was so cool to fire those things at me and Daddy!

After cake was presents. Brian's request was that it was chocolate!! :) It was yummy!! I love this sweet picture of Brian and Aaron! It was a great day. I am so thankful to have Brian as a member of our family. He is kind and generous. He is quick to forgive and forget. He loves to help others. He loves the gospel and the scriptures. That is evident by the fact that he bears his testimony every single fast Sunday. Without fail! He is smart and loves to read. He loves to do whatever Weston is doing! He loves to write and draw. He loves music and to play the piano and sing! I am so thankful that my sweet little Bri-Bri the fry guy came to me 9 years ago! Happy Birthday Brian! I love you!!!