Update on Brendon

He had his MRI last Tuesday and then an appointment with Dr. Claypool yesterday to see the results. He crushed one of the vertabre in his lower back. Dr. Claypool said he was very lucky that it didn't do any damage to his spinal cord. Brendon also has 3 bulging disks. He will have at least another 4 weeks of healing to do and then we will see what happens from there based on how he is doing. He will be going to PT for that time also.

Packing continues and I am sick of boxes all over the house. We have made two trips to the new house but it still seems like there is so much stuff still to pack. I'll be grateful when we are settled in.

Our new house and Brendon's mission call

This is a picture the house that we will be moving into at the end of this month. We are very excited about the move. It is just on the other side of town, it means only changing schools for Jensen and Kaden. We will have some redecorating to do. It is currently very 70's.
Here's pictures of Brendon mission call. The video is not great too much noise and Mackenzie didn't realize you can't turn the camera for video's like you do for pictures. But you get the gist of the call.

In case you can't hear he is going to Monterrey Mexico East. It is right below Texas.

Too many visits in too little time...

Sunday afternoon we went over to the Meckers (Brendon's girlfriends house) to watch the afternoon session of conference. While we were watching the younger boys went outside. They decided it was okay to ride bikes without asking. (It's not something we let the boys do at home on Sunday) We'll the next thing we know Nathan who is the same age as Jensen comes running in saying Jensen is hurt. I'm thinking a small bump or bruise. Boy was I wrong, when he fell off of the bike the break handle punctured his left thigh and made a hole about the size of penny. I was pretty sure we needed to head on in but made a quick phone call to Dr. Claypool just to check. Well 4 1/2 hours and 5 stitches later we were home.

The next day I tootled off to Bellingham after getting kids out the door. I was worried since I had locked the front door and was about 20 minutes late getting home. I thought the girls had to find an unlocked window and crawl in. I walked in the house and called for them and said I was sorry I was late and asked what window they had to use. Mackenzie said, "Oh, it was OK, Brendon was home. He broke his back." She didn't even seem very worried.

What had happened was just after Brendon had got to work a wall that they were getting ready to take down fell on him. Luckily it still had part of the roof on it otherwise I'm sure it would have been worse. They had to call an ambulance to take him to the ER. He was nice enough to wait and call his dad after he was done so he didn't get the joy of sitting for another 3 hours like the night before. Strangely enough the wall had be leaning(on a tree) the opposite way that it fell onto Brendon. So they have no idea how it could have happened.

Brendon is now home on his back for a week and is not to return to work for 3 weeks. It's only day 3 and I think he's bored out of his mind. We are just grateful his okay. He has a small chip on one of his vertebrae and is in a lot of pain.

So I wonder what is the record for the most family members in an ER in the shortest amount of time with different injuries? We can say just 12 hours from when we left with Jensen until about when Brendon arrived. Not bad!

I quit.......

my job yesterday! I'm so relieved. I'm not sure that Dr. Claypool felt the same. He has been the greatest boss and has blessed our family so much.

Working for me is a love/hate relationship. I have loved my boss and enjoyed most of my co-workers. But I hate working, cranky patients and long hours. I remember when I got pregnant with Brendon I cried for 3 reasons.

1. I couldn't believe what we had done.
2. The timing was horrible, we were going to move across the country during my pregnancy.
3. I was going to be able to quit working. Although after almost nineteen years later of not officially cutting hair I'm going to start again but in my house this time. More details later.

I went to what I'd call 3/4 time last winter and then part time last spring when I got my new calling. Now with Craig working at WWU I can stay home again. YEAH for me!

Socks, socks and more socks

Why does it seems that socks produce like rabbits? Now minded some of this my own fault when I made a choice to have 5 children....but hello, it's not even that cold and 3 of the 5 kids are still wearing flip flops more the 50% of the time.

The real problem is all my kids hate to fold socks! They do a little, never bother to go get the sock basket to find the left overs and match them. This week I counted and I folded 87 pairs of socks. That is ridiculous! This was along with about 7 loads of laundry. I think we are moving to Hawaii and wearing sandals for the rest of our lives!

Ok, hopefully Brendon will just get his mission call to Hawaii and I'll get my wish for a week!

It's Official

Brendon's mission papers are in! We received confirmation from President Hoyt that they had been accepted from Salt Lake. So now the bets are on. We had a joke that we should take $5.00 for every guess and the winner would get half. The other half would go towards Brendon's mission. Not a bad way to earn a little extra money for the mission. Pres. Hackwell even offered to make an announcement at church for us. Just kidding :o) We really are not the gambling type and would not ever encourage others to do so also.

Although we are welcoming guesses. Maybe I can even come up with a fun prize who ever comes close or even gets it right. We'll take a family poll tomorrow.

We were told that we should know in about 2 to 4 weeks.

Kyla and Mackenzie Celebrate

Mackenzie and Kyla had their friends Heidi and Hannah Hoyt over to celebrate their birthdays. They made their new favorite treat that we had at Craig's parents house in Idaho. I have no name for the recipe but it's good!



1 package of Jo Jo's... these are not the potato kind that you pick-up at your local truck stop. They come from Trader Joe's and are similar to Oreo's but much better.
Ice cream- we used chocolate this time, about 1 gallon
Whipping cream

Crush the Jo Jo's and add just enough melter butter to have them clump together. Put in a 9x13 pan. Cover with ice cream. Whip the whipping cream and top with that. Freeze over night and top with your favorite chocolate sauce.



We plan on making it at Christmas time with peppermint Jo Jo's and peppermint ice cream.




The girls also made their own
individual pizza's and then watched
Becoming Jane.

And they all lived happily ever after....Not

The girls watched Becoming Jane for their birthday with friends. Craig and I had took the boys to a friend house for a barbecue. (Nothing is worse then watching a chick flick with little or big brothers around.)

When we got home the girls were pouting about how they did not like the ending of the movie. Since I wanted to watch it myself I asked them not to spoil it. Well I could see their disappointment because it was not the "fairy tail" ending like her books.

To add to the disappointment Kyla googled Jane Austin and they fabricated the story a bit. She thought if they are going to change the story in the first place why not give it a happy ending.

The next night I took a carload of girls down to Mt Vernon for a best of EFY. The girls started to talk about the movie and how once again they did not like how the story ended. Finally one of the girls, Amanda, said "Well if they are going to change the movie they might as well make it a happy ending and just turn it into a Disney movie!"

I still liked the movie and found it fun to see how the people in her life mirrored the characters in books. Especially "Pride and Prejudiced."

Brendon's mission pictures

So we needed to take Brendon's pictures to send in with his mission papers.

It's pretty cool everything is done on line. We now just have one more paper to sign and next Sunday he has an interview with our Branch President. Once he updates on the church web site it will send an email to the Stake President that he is ready for the next interview. He sould offically have his papers in by the end of September.

He was being pretty silly and his 2 sisters didn't help.









This is the final picture we sent in.

Mackenzie Turns 14

The last day we were in Idaho Mackenzie had her 14th birthday. We celebrated Kyla's with since she wanted brownies and Mackenzie wanted to have homemade chocolate ice cream.