Sadie Three Already?

I feel like yesterday's post was about Sadie's 2 year old birthday and how we celebrated at Build-A-Bear. And here we are a year later already, my little girl!...cheesy motherly thoughts I know. We prepared for the day by making cake, taking pictures, making dinner, shopping, and singing to Sade.She picked out the flavors. Not my preference really. She loves pink so she went with strawberry and she is a chocoholic like her Daddy. So it was a strawberry chocolate Dora cake. Her and Lucy love Dora and they frequently watch it together...probably too frequently.

Sadie and LucyJust a few of the wonderful people we celebrated with. Thanks Uncle Ben for loving Everett aside from all his slobber. For the record I don't dress my child with his shirt half undone, I was getting him into jammies, but was distracted by something or someone.

Sadie we love you!

Feeling Small in A Big, Big World

So my brother Adam called me a month and a half ago and asked if I wanted to meet him in October at Zions National Park in southern Utah to hike the Narrows. He had to do very little convincing. We had to do more work on my dad, but he finally bent and started training for the 16 mile hike through the Zion Slot Canyon. He passed through the canyon in better shape than Adam and me for sure.

For those of you who have not heard of this hike, it's amazing. We contracted with a shuttle service that took us up to the trail head at 6:30 in the morning. The ride up was very interesting and provided plenty of entertainment for the rest of the trip. The 40+ year old driver had an obvious love for the outdoors and a love to talk about it...constantly. The drive from the Zions Visitors Center to the trail head was about 1 hr 20 minutes long...he must have talked about 1 hr 15 minutes. I had the pleasure of sitting in the bench seat right behind the driver while Adam and my dad sat behind me. They couldn't hear much of what he was saying so I needed to be the polite one and respond to his monologue...much to Adam's amusement I might add. The guy was actually very informed and I learned a lot about everything from ring tailed cats to coned nosed beetles. Apparently the driver's been bit several times...not sure how he's been stung, but when you live in a remote cabin that has ring tailed cat claw marks on your kitchen cabinets and heat your home with a wood fireplace, coned nosed beetles may be living with you.

Anyway, the hike starts in a mountain cattle ranch. For the first 3 miles the trail follows a dirt road that leads toward the slot canyon. The canyon slowly encloses on you to the point that you can almost touch both walls at the same time. About 8 miles into the hike you run into a 20 foot waterfall that has been created by logs, dirt, and rocks that have logged between the two walls.



Fortunately 20 feet to the South of the waterfall there is a narrow passage through the rocks that provides a way down without ropes.

After the first 3 miles, you hike in and out of the water and cross the Virgin River hundreds of times throughout. A tributary, Deep Creek, joins up to the Virgin River about 9 miles into the hike and the rocks become slippery. Dad was the only casualty of the slippery rocks. He claims that the Narrows website states that "even expert hikers slip and fall in the narrows," so he must be an expert. As you can see, we wore special dry suit pants in the river since the water was very cold. They gave me 2XXL size pants. The crotch was around my knees when I wore them appropriately around my waist. I called them my maternity pants.

The narrowest portion of the hike, where the water is wall to wall most of the year, is called wall street. Since it's late Fall, the water was fairly low and only came up to our waists in the deepest spots.

Right before entering wall street, there are two large natural springs, called Big Springs, coming directly out of the wall of the canyon. The springs are adorned with beautiful ferns and apparently flow 365 days a year. It's pretty impressive.

The walls in the deepest and narrowest sections are 1500 feet. Not much sun gets in there and you truly feel very small.If you're not up to doing the full 16 miles, you can start from the bottom up and go up to 5 miles up the canyon, without a permit, and see some of the impressive narrows. This picture of Adam and my dad is less than a half a mile from the end of the hike.

Hudson actually came on the trip (he didn't hike) and Blake came with Adam. They hung out with Grandma while we hiked for 10 hours. Thank you Mom for watching them. Hudson had a great time with you and Blake.

On our way back, with stopped in Las Vegas for lunch with my old roommate Blake and his family. I had a great time catching up with them. Hannah and Blake are great people and obviously very good parents.

This final photo has nothing to do with our hike, but was impressive anyway. From Las Vegas to Phoenix, we crossed the Hoover Dam. They are constructing a new bridge right now to get highway traffic off of the top of the dam. You can see the new bridge at the top left. You can't see it, but there is still a 300 or 400 foot gap in the bridge and is thousands of feet above the bottom of the canyon. Thanks for lunch Hannah and Blake.

So, I have never played this blog tag game, but I will do ANYTHING for my sister. So the tag was to take the fourth picture from your fourth file and post it. This explains the below photo. This picture is from a case study I did in OT school on a patient that had an "AVM" or arterio-venous malformation, or something like that. I had to do a presentation to the staff at MGH and I was pretty nervous. Anyway, I didn't want to be dishonest, so here it is... So I skipped the AVM case study file and moved to the next file to the fourth picture and this was much more fun to post. This is Hudson at 2ys and Sadie at 3 months, oh so cute.

Will Work For Scooter

Several months ago Hudson and Sadie started begging me for scooters. Hudson wanted a specific scooter, a Red Flyer like one that his friend got at a birthday party. I told them if they saved half the money ($20) I would pay for the other half. They would receive a quarter for making their bed, getting dressed, and picking up toys. And extra money for other chores around the house. The first day we started Hudson pretty much cleaned the whole house with me. After adding the four or five quarters to his jar he said, "can we get the scooter?" Not quite.

3 months later...we counted up the money and Hudson had $14 and change and Sadie had $6. I told them if they combined they could get one scooter and share. They went for the deal (and I saved $20 bucks). I was happy for them.

I take no responsibility for Sadie's outfit choices.

Top 10 Theories on Why Everett Does Not Sleep

So my cute little Everett...innocent looking isn't he? I love him to death and could kiss his squishy cheeks all day long, but why oh why does he not sleep?

10. He's teething

9. There is mold in the basement and he is allergic to it

8. He's cold

7. He has food allergies and he gets an upset stomach at night

6. He has reflux and gets a burn in his throat from it

5. He has post nasal drip

4. He has gas

3. He's uncomfortable

2. He doesn't like sleeping with his siblings

1. He has allergies

What's your theory? Night terrors? Allergic to dogs? (our landlords have one). I think I have heard them all, but please add to the list if you have one. His symptoms are frequent runny nose, occasional cough, throwing up randomly throughout the day (but generally happy during the day), about an hour after you lie him down for bed he wakes up screaming (9/10 nights). Back to bed after being calmed (trust me we have tried more than 5 times having him cry it out, you can only tolerate so much in a basement 2 bedroom), again wakes after a few hours screaming, calm him. Drink. Food. Movie. Bed. Sometimes wakes again, same routine. Wakes for the day between 6:30-7:30am. One crazy piece to the puzzle is he slept through the night in Colorado for 2 weeks straight. He was in his own room. Who knows.

He has been to the doctor more times than any of my other kids put together. And we have never figured him out. You ask, what about the soy thing? Well, several months ago we reintroduced it slowly and he was fine. For the past 2-3 months he has not thrown up with soy. And now all of the sudden he is puking again.. I know, I know take him off soy. It's not that easy. He's just complicated and very opinionated (as far as food goes). There is only so much he will eat. I thought I was a perfect parent until I had him. Just kidding. But I sure am appreciating the mom's who struggle because now I am one of them. My child does not sleep (like an 18 month-old should) and he's a picky eater. The two things I always thought I could train kids on. Sleep train them and let them starve if they don't eat the good stuff, they'll eventually eat healthy if they are hungry. My opinions have changed. Some kids are special. Everett is one of them. I realize many moms have it much worse, but thought I would vent and get a few more opinions. You never know when the right one will come around.

Right now I am trying to just give him fresh foods with no preservitives, eggs, milk, or soy. It's been 2 days. I'll let you know how that pans out.

HUDSON16

In school Hudson has learned how to write his name. We had a party for the MBA program in our backyard and everyone had name tags. I saw Hudson walking around and had a puzzled look when I saw his name tag...

Hudson what? Then I remembered they taught him to write his name and cubby number at school and he has taken the 16 on as part of his name. I thought it was cute, but told him he only needs to write the 16 when he is at school.

It's Affirmative.

Steve accepted a job with Intel Corp. in Portland, OR beginning July 09!