Something Bad and Something Good

Yesterday was quite a day for us.  We spent the night in the ER to get Jazz through a kidney stone passing.  The attack came on at about 11:15 p.m., about 1/2 an hour after I had fallen asleep on the couch while we were watching our favorite show together, Smallville.  He had had stones about 4 years ago, so he recognized the signs and we acted quickly--asked our our neighbor upstairs to come down to watch the kids so we could rush over to the emergency room.  For about an hour and a half he was in excruciating pain, before the pain meds finally did any good.  In the end we were there for about 4 hours, which included them doing a scan and finding out that this was the only stone currently invading, and none others are in sight for now.   Poor Jazz...my opinion is that this is worse than baby labor, because you DON'T get a baby in the end!  He's doing much better now, just living in fear of the next one, that's all.  The doctor confessed that since this is his 3rd or 4th time, he can be affectionately known now as a  "stone former".  Not something you want to be remembered as, you know? 

    But something good happened yesterday, too.  I got to go to the Portland temple for my first time.  I was really excited, because we've lived here 4 years and I hadn't been inside yet.  I got to do baptisms with our Relief Society sisters.  I was worried about going since I had only had 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before, but it was great. 
    The coolest part for me was getting to be a missionary while I was there.  There was a man inside the temple with his little girl--visiting a very pretty atrium room inside the temple waiting area.  He stopped to talk with me, as I was also alone in there looking around.  He said "This place is amazing!  Are you having worship services here right now?"  I explained the difference between a temple and a church. 
    He told me that he's Glen Beck's #1 fan and that he just found out that he's a mormon, so he came to check out this temple that he had seen before.  He said he wants to learn more about the mormons.  --Can we say, "Music to my ears?"  Or, we could say, "asking Jenna if she'd be willing to share what she believes is like asking her if she'd like some chocolate chip cookies".   
    So I told him about the missionaries, and he gave me his phone number and I gave him mine, and then I grabbed a passalong card (with a number for the missionaries) from the temple's front desk for him, and I gave a temple schedule to his daughter since it had a picture of the "princess castle" on the front.   It was really cool!  He also told me that his wife is having a baby next week : ).  I told him I'd call him later to see how he's doing, and he was really appreciative of our conversation.  I was very excited about it, and look forward to talking with him again.   I love being  a missionary.

Fieldtrip to the Farm

I got to accompany Tootie on a fun field trip with his preschool class this week, to a real farm (more "real" than a pumpkin patch--as proven by the cow pies we had to dodge the whole time).  We enjoyed picking and eating as many raspberries as we wanted, along with apples right off the tree--yum!  And each child got to choose a pumpkin to take home.

Raspberries, yum!

Walking with Farmer John to see the cows (if you zoomed in you could see 2 or 3 black ones laying down in the grass ahead of them).

It was a full class of preschoolers and their parents.  I'm so glad I got to go too.

"There's poop on my pumpkin, Mom!"  (it was just mud, really)

"I like getting on the tractor today!"

On TV

"Hi, this is Shark, reporting for 'Something to Talk About'."

Shark has a very cool elective class at his elementary school whose teacher has created some awesome journalist opportunities for him.  Last year Shark got to interview the head coach of the university's football team (which interview ended in tragedy instead of on TV, since the sound guy messed up and there was no sound on the recording), and this year he got to interview one of the key university players.  It was a really fun experience for him, and he did a great job!  It was fun to see him on TV this time!

Here's the interviewer and the interviewee (who did have more clothes (his full uniform) on during the interview, but I wasn't able to take a picture until after the interview was over and we caught him on his way out).

Here's Shark with his friend, who has played football with Shark the past few years, and who also got to interview a university football player that week.

This was a really fun time for us four, as we hung around during Shark's interview.  I was very grateful that Tootie was happily engaged in his preschool class at the time, so we could relax and not be playing chase to keep him away from the cameras, etc.

Sharing My Creations

The challenge for this design was to make something "add shimmer to a dark color", and the one above it was a color challenge (make a design with those 3 colors).  They're featured with the designs of 3 of my other talented stamping friends on our stamping challenge blog:  http://craftycatwalk.blogspot.com/

These are the four  cards we made at my embossing stamp camp.
They each use a different embossing technique.  Fun stuff.

This is one of the cards we'll make at my Christmas Cards stamp camp in October.

Just wanted to show you some of the fun cards I've designed for my stamp camps and such.  I really enjoy the designing aspect of my hobby business : ).

Back to School

Although I thought he might be sad, Tootie was great about seeing the big kids off for school on their first day.  It reminds me of a story of my youngest brother who one morning asked my mom, "Are they gone?  ...Yippee!"  But nevertheless, I was also happy to see his excitement the other day when he saw the bus roll in after school and he came to me shouting, "Mom!  My friends are here!  My friends are here!", meaning his older siblings of course. 

Here are "the big kids"!  Off to start the new school year in 1st, 4th, and 5th grades.  I don't know who was more excited--the kids, or their mom : ).  Hooray for school!

Shark is in his element now that football season has started again.  He prefers to play wide receiver, but I think he might be playing tight end right now.  This is his second year of tackle football.  I just think it's so cute to see these young boys in their full uniform like this. 

"Before" Goldie's golden locks were trimmed.

Goldie's new look--just in time for the new school year.

Tootie is now in preschool, and everyone is happy about that!  Especially him.  He LOVES all of the structured activities and of course all of the supervised playtime in a child-safe environment (no computers or other electronic equipment around for him to explore and destroy--thank goodness!).  He's pretty young for a 4-day a week class, but he's probably at the top of his class activity-level wise.   

Didi had success in growing this lemon cucumber plant this summer in our small garden plot, despite the non-green thumb-ness of her mother.  

We had a great summer, but we're sooooo glad that school is back in session!