Night Games

One tradition I remember every summer as a child is 

NIGHT GAMES.

(aka Kick the Can, Sardines, Capture the Flag, Toilet Tag, Steal the Bacon, Hide & Go Seek, German Spy, Red Rover, & many more)

We played night games 3 times a week all summer long for as long as I can remember.  I remember playing them even when I graduated high school.  They were SO FUN.  So, since we were in UT for the summer, night games sounded like a fun thing to do.

We started the first Wednesday night we were there.  We were randomly knocking on neighbor's doors hoping they were up to playing with us.  That first night we had a total of 6 kids... three of which were my own.  ha ha ha.  My kids were worried nobody would play, but I assured them that as we kept going, other kids would hear about it & would come.  

Taya was always a mess every time we played.  She'd go outside clean as clean could be, & then would come back in looking like she had rolled in the dirt for an hour.  Silly girl.

My theory proved to be right.  Each night we got more & more kids to play.  The entire neighborhood was really getting into it & we were having a blast.  We even had cousins & friends from other towns coming over just to get in on the fun.

While they were having fun, I was getting to know the neighborhood better.  I made great friends there.  My parents have the best neighbors in the entire world.  I fell in love with all the wonderful kids.  Deacon was my little buddy.  He lived 2 doors down from us & by the time we left, he'd just walk into my parents house & start playing with the toys.  I already miss them all.

Every night we played night games, I'd provide popsicles for the whole crowd.  (That was my incentive to get them to play.)  One of the nights, the neighbors broke out their snow cone machine & we made snow cones.  We had SO MUCH FUN.

On the last night we played night games, we had 30 kids playing.  (the picture below was taken before everyone showed up)  We couldn't believe the WONDERFUL friends we had there in Utah.  They were great & we will be friends forever.

Good-bye Utah friends.  We love & miss you dearly.

Father's Day

I know my mom will someday kill me for posting pictures of her like this, but this is my personal journal & I need pictures like this.  I need her to see what she's been through & how amazing she really is.  For those who didn't know, my mom has been through a LOT in the last 3 months.

In April she had some problems with her colon.  It just decided it didn't want to work anymore & after 3 times going into the hospital, the doctors finally said they needed to do surgery.  They did surgery to remove a small part of her colon that wasn't working properly.  Everything was going well until about a week after the surgery.  Mom's blood pressure dropped & one by one things started turning south.  

My dad called & after praying about it, I knew I had to fly home.  I flew home to UT for 1 week.  Mom was in a coma & on a respirator.  She looked awful.  The day I flew in, the doctors took us all aside & told us to prepare for the worst.  She was NOT doing well & she would most likely die.  She got a kidney infection that took over her entire body.  Her body went septic & she filled with fluid (she gained 40 pounds in 2 days).  Her body was crushing itself from the inside out.  They rushed her to the Provo hospital & everybody was baffled as to what to do.  Her doctor (my dad's best friend) ran into the hospital about 2 hours before she was going to pass away screaming that he knew what it was that was killing her.  She had developed Abdominal Compartment Syndrome.  He opened her up again & LEFT HER OPEN.  (yes, she had a gaping hole in her stomach for 4 days.)  All the fluids were sucked out over 4 days.  When they opened her up, some of her organs were turning black (dying) from all the pressure.  They didn't know if they would heal on their own or not.  When they closed her up, the bowels had died so they had to remove most of them.  They had to do an illiostomy which is attaching a bag on the outside of your body to what was left of her intestines to catch her waste.  She will now have to change out this bag every two hours for the rest of her life.  :-(  

Things started to improve for a while, then on Memorial Day she suddenly threw up buckets of blood & flat lined.  My mom passed away for several minutes.  We thought it was over with.  We thought we had lost her.  But my mom is a fighter.  They revived her & got her heart beating again.  They had to do a full body blood transfusion (she had already had 12+ transfusions so far) & they had to research where the internal bleeding was stemming from.  She had SEVERAL blood clots & ulcers between her stomach & her intestine (as in over 10).  She was bleeding to death.  They had to cauterize the inside of her stomach to stop the bleeding.  At this point I knew I had to go back to UT for the summer to be with her & the rest of the family.

They FINALLY stopped the bleeding, but in turn completely closed off her stomach.  Nothing could get through.  She would never eat again.  :-(  She was still in a coma, still on a respirator.  I was losing hope at this point.  I drove in the day after school got out with all 5 kids hoping to help in any way I could.  I spent a couple nights in the hospital with her & went every day to visit.  Amazingly she started to improve & they even brought her out of the coma & took out the respirator.  Next they battled with inserting a feeding tube through the sealed off stomach opening.  It took 3 times, but miraculously they were able to get it through in the end.  She could now eat via feeding tube through the nose.  She was now able to gain some strength again.  On Father's Day she was able to get into a wheelchair for the first time in almost 2 months & was able to see her grand babies for the first time since all this happened.

The following pictures were taken on Father's Day.  Though mom will kill me for posting them, I wanted to share because they are pictures of my absolutely beautiful mother.  She is a fighter.  She is amazing & she can do things that I never could.  She has endured more than any human being should ever have to endure & she has endured quietly & has come out even stronger in the end.  My mom is my miracle.  My mom is my hero.

It was a great day for my dad.  Mom was outside with the family enjoying time with her grand babies.  Cari & I made a Father's Day dinner & brought it to the hospital for the family to enjoy (my dad & grandma were living at the hospital so that mom had someone with her 24 hours a day 7 days a week.)  It was the best Father's Day ever.

Dinosaur Museum

The first week I was in UT, I got to babysit my cousin's kids so that she could be with mom in the hospital.  (She's a nurse & would do much better than I would there.)  I enjoy having kids around so I loved having them.  Friday Naomi & I took all the kids to the Museum of Ancient History at Thanksgiving Point.  I had never been & since Bladen is a dinosaur fanatic, I thought it would be fun.

I loved this museum.  It was completely hands on & the kids had a blast touching EVERYTHING they could get their hands on.

They had some fun exhibits where you could use your imagination to help create your own dinosaurs.  My kids spent almost an hour here creating their own dinosaur by sticking Velcro dino parts onto this big fabric blob.  By the end we had a 2 headed spiky guy.  Bladen supplied all the dinosaur sounds for us.  They were SO funny.

The museum has a HUGE amount of dino skeletons.  I've never seen that many in one museum before (& I've been to dinosaur museums all over the world.)  Bladen loved it.

Another fun exhibit was the magnetic wall.  Kids could put together their own dinosaur skeletons by themselves using magnets.  Lorien loved this area more than any other in the museum.  She was SO cute.

They also taught the kid about erosion & what happens when water & sand meet.  The museum had a whole room dedicated to erosion & they allowed the kids to get their hands right into it.  There were tables full of sand, plants, water, & dinosaurs which allowed the kids to experiment with erosion & how water can change the landscape of an area.  They loved this.

Taya wasn't necessarily interested in the sand, but boy did she enjoy washing her hands in the automatic hand washing sink they had in the room.  Naomi & I were laughing at her because she washed her hands for 30 minutes straight.

My favorite exhibit in the museum was the giant shark room.  ha ha ha.  The kids thought it would be hilarious to pose in front of it screaming.

And I thought it would be hilarious to put Craiger in front of it.  He didn't think it was such a great idea.

(I know I am a horrible mom for taking a picture of him freaking out, but it was HILARIOUS.)

The last room of the museum was a GIANT SANDBOX where the kids could dig up dinosaur bones by themselves.  All my kids enjoyed the hands on fun.  Bladen just liked playing in a giant sandbox.

I have to admit. . . I was unsure I'd enjoy a little dino museum in UT County.  After being all over the world & seeing some of the best of the best museums, I forget that sometimes 

the greatest treasures are in our own backyards.  

For anyone living in or visiting UT, this is a MUST-SEE for any dinosaur lover in your family.  We had a BLAST.

Disney Store Fun

Since Opa & Oma gave the kiddos $20 when we visited, they couldn't get to the 

Disney Store 

fast enough.  They have been saving their money for what seems like forever, & that $20 just put them all right where they needed to be to get some FUN stuff.

The movie Brave was just coming out into theaters so the Disney Store was playing a Brave game in their stores to help promote the movie.  They picked Cadence & Taya to play.  They both won little Brave gift sets.  They were SO excited.

Cadence had been saving her money FOREVER & she decided to spend her money on two Harry Potter lego sets at Walmart.  So she didn't get anything from the Disney Store.  Bladen chose Bruce the Shark (from Finding Nemo) & Craiger couldn't leave the store without Perry the Platypus.  Lorien likes to save her money so she spent only half of it on a Merida doll & Taya spent every last penny she had on a Merida barbie with Angus her horse.

Even I walked out with something fun for myself.  I bought some adorable Mickey Mouse pajamas.  It's been YEARS since I bought myself some pj's & we all know I can't say no to Mickey Mouse.

It was SO MUCH FUN.

Summer Space Camp

Since I was going to be in UT for 5 weeks, I decided to try to do my 

Summer Space Camp 

with my kids while we were there.  We didn't fully finish all 20 lessons, but we were able to get through 11 of them.  The kids had a blast learning about every planet, the sun, moon, starts, & many other wonderful things in space.  We learned some letters & numbers (for the little ones), did LOTS of crafts & science experiments, & we will be going to the planetarium soon to learn even more about space.

We loved it when our cousins could join in on the fun.  We had a BLAST.

Days 2 & 3 of our 3 Day Journey

So on the 2nd day of our journey, we first went to church with Trek's parents.  I'm a big "go to church where no matter where you are" person, so it was fun visiting their ward in Santa Clarita. 

After church we hopped in the van again & they opened their 2nd present:

BOOKS.

We drove the 4 1/2 hours to Las Vegas where Trek's 2 brothers live.  We stayed the night at Talon & Carolyn's house & visited with their ONE cousin on the Potter side: Emery.  The kids love being around cousins, Auntie's, & Uncles.

We woke up bright & early on Monday & they opened up their last presents.  Craiger got a little superman action figure, Bladen got a monster truck, & the girls got Polly Pockets.  They were in heaven.

6 hours later, we had FINALLY arrived in good old UT.  It was nice to be at my home away from home again.

Day 1 of a 3 day travel adventure!

I still can't believe I decided to drive the 15 hour drive to UT by myself with all 5 kids.  I must be thick in the head or something. . . ha ha ha.

School was out & since my mom was in the hospital fighting for her life, I felt like I needed to be in UT with her & with my family during this extremely difficult time.  Poor Trek had to stay behind in Monterey so he could work on his thesis & go to school.  The trip would be for 5 full weeks so we were sad to say good-bye to him.

The drive really wasn't THAT bad.  I made a snack bag for each of the kids with 15 snacks & 3 juice boxes inside.  The kids got one juice box for each day of travel & then I let them eat one snack every hour on the hour for the 15 hour drive.  It kept them quiet & their tummies full, but with minimal bathroom breaks.  It worked out great.

Then I wrapped each of them a "present" for each day of travel.  I bought some cheap things that would help occupy them on the drive.  On the 1st day they each got 

coloring books & crayons.

We drove 5 hours from Monterey to Los Angeles where Trek's parents live.  Sure enough, they had Camp Potter

all set up for the kids.  In each tent on top of their sleeping bags the kids found a pack of M&M's & a $20 bill.  They all started plotting what they were going to buy with their new money.

It was SO nice getting some one on one time with each of my kids.  I enjoyed every minute being with them.

For dinner that night, Auntie Tarrish took us all to IHOP for some breakfast for dinner.  The kids LOVE breakfast for dinner so it worked out perfectly!

It was nice having family every 5 hours of our journey.  It's fun visiting with them & it's nice to not have to drive 15 hours straight.  I love my family.