What's Happening

So I stopped blogging for like 12 days and since my odd post last night amending my previous declaration, I decided I better give you all a real update.

I joined a "Health and Fitness Challenge" a few weeks ago and it has been great. It was all stuff I pretty much did anyhow, but when it's put in a contest arena, it makes it more fun. My sister Emily is my teammate and so far we are doing great. Anna is heading up the challenge and there are 18 of us involved. Mostly people in Anna's ward.
I also joined a gym again finally and have been getting my butt kicked at their awesome classes. Anna goes with me and she can attest to that. The 5am ones are the most hard core but all of them are great. I had never taken a class before where these were used: Not just used, but used with tons of reps and trying to keep up a rhythm to the music, benching, curling, shoulder press, you name it. It's nuts. And I'm getting stronger. I love it. I've also ran half marathon distances again recently and that's gone well. To top it all off, I've been dieting for almost 3 weeks now and I've nearly gotten all my vacation weight off. That is like record time for me!

And since snow is such a hot topic in Bloggersville, here's a little image I took about 10 minutes ago out my front door. We've been getting lots of this stuff too.

Along the same lines, I have to put these images up. Each morning I drive my kids to school. The school is only 3/4 mile away and in our subdivision, but I still drive them now. I don't want them to freeze their little tooshies off walking. Anyhow, I LOOOOOVE the view we get every morning of the sunrise. Check it out.

That's the lake there too. This image below was taken at the same time, but of the view a little further North. The mountains just stretch all around us. Gorgeous. The school is the buildings you see right in front.

And here is Becca with Santa Claus. Our three oldest children already know the truth about Saint Nick, but Becca is still a believer. So she was the only one patient enough to wait in line to sit on his lap.

This is Eden with her little singing group the "Rising Stars". Anna is their director and she is AAAAMAZING! You should have seen their performances, I was super impressed. Eden is on the front row on the far left. Blythe is 2nd to the right on the front row. Micah is in the middle in the back. (cousins)

We have had a couple of fun Family Fun Days. Here's a couple of shots at the museum a couple of weeks ago at the hats in history station.

And for the remainder of my post I will tell you about the doctors visits we had the last couple of days. If you have a weak stomach, I recommend you sign off at this point.

So about 2 months ago we noticed that Becca had bad breath. It gradually got worse and worse. It smelled like an animal crawled down her throat and died. No kidding! Then it seemed to just kind of emanate from her whole body. Steve would want to give her multiple baths and we'd brush her teeth and she just kept stinking. Other people were beginning to notice it. Behind her back we would joke around and call her "Halitosis Girl" and we would talk about how this was going to be the perfect way for her to stay chaste in her older years. Boys wouldn't have wanted to go near her. We were not being the nicest parents were we? I've repented.

Finally Anna says to me that I should go get her checked out. She said it may not be halitosis. So that very day I thought she was right, I should go get the girl checked out. It has been at least a couple of months now and it did seem to be getting way out of control. So I took her in to the pediatrician on Tuesday and the first thing he asks is, "Does she mouth breath?" Yeah, actually she does. He tried to get her to close her mouth and breath out of her nose. She couldn't do it. My mind was racing. So he lays her down and looks up her nose. Something was in there. He goes and gets some surgical equipment and comes back. Then he starts pulling all kinds of crap out of her nostril. It was NASTY! I was like puking in my mouth. The smell was horrible. He found a huge chunk of this stuff:

That's her mattress pad that she apparently had not only ripped apart, but shoved up her nose long ago and it began to ferment. Then he found clumps of something else. I couldn't tell you cuz I don't know. Finally when he thought he was all done, he took one final look then pulled out a folded piece of either paper, a band aid or something like that that was fairly large too. I was freaking out! So she is all better now and she doesn't stink at all. We are so relieved that is over and I feel bad it took that long before I took her in to see what was wrong!

Lastly, yesterday Jonah was out front playing with a golf ball. He was trying to see how hard he could throw it on the ground. Why? Don't ask me.

So he threw it really hard, it bounced back and hit him in the mouth. He knocked his front top tooth nearly all out. His permanent tooth! I immediately rushed him to the dentist and they tried to put it back in.

His teeth went from looking like this:

Which isn't incredibly handsome, but not as bad as this:

I took this one this morning after he got up. It's pretty blurry, but be grateful, it is worse in focus.

It sucks.