and Another one bites the Dust...

I swear, my kids have been off & on sick for 2+ months now.  In December it was pink eye & fevers. January it was ear infections & throat problems.  I guess February is going to be flu month at the Potter house.

Once Taya got all better, Craiger had a fever for several days, but his got better on it's own.  Of course on Cadence's birthday Canyon woke up with a super high fever.  Cadence had a physical on her birthday so I figured I'd have the doctor look at Canyon while we were there just to make sure it wasn't anything I needed to be worried about.

Well, when we went to the school to pick Cadence up for the appointment, Canyon let me know he really was sick.  Poor baby puked all over the van. . . & then it didn't stop.  He was throwing up every 30 minutes on the dot!

We ended up spending 6.5 hours in the hospital on Cadence's birthday.  Canyon had pneumonia in both lungs as well as two ear infections & nausea.  They did a flu test & that came back negative, but he had something going on with his stomach because he couldn't hold anything down.

We were there SO long that Craiger wound up taking a nap in the waiting room chairs.  Sometimes I hate base hospitals.  Turns out they actually FORGOT about us & even though I went to the front desk TWICE to complain & figure out what was going on, they still forgot we were there waiting for the test results & the medications.  The doctor did feel really bad once he realized his mistake though.

They got him some antibiotics for his pneumonia & ears & we finally made it home barely in time to get the other kids off the bus.  Poor Cadence.  What a birthday.  We were still able to give her a wonderful birthday dinner & presents.  She was just happy her baby brother was going to be okay.

Now Canyon is happy as a jaybird & NOBODY in the house is sick.  Let's pray it stays that way.

All Better & Happy as Pinkie Pie

Taya is feeling MUCH better after her horrible experience with the dreaded flu.

It's so nice to see her happy & bubbly again just like her favorite pony: Pinkie Pie.

Speaking of Pinkie Pie. . . my friend Christina who is a wizard of crochet made this for Taya to make her feel better.  How cute is that?

Taya LOVES it.  She wears it every day now.  What a cutie pie . . . . I mean PINKIE PIE!

Trek's 36th Birthday!

Happy Birthday to the bestest husband in the whole wide world!!!

Trek's birthday is the beginning of the crazy birthday month for the Potter family.  January 25th is the start of the madness & we love it.  

We celebrated with an official Potter birthday breakfast bright & early Sunday morning.  Trek's favorite breakfast of all time is biscuits & gravy, so I woke up early so I could make it hot & fresh for him.  He was thrilled.  Biscuits & gravy, bacon, & then we added a Hostess cupcake for tradition.  (Trek likes the cupcakes & the rest of us like ding dongs so this is the one time a year you will see a hostess cupcake instead of a birthday breakfast ding dong!)

36 years young.

Canyon decided he really liked the biscuits without the gravy on them. . . he especially enjoyed making a large ring out of them.

 We went to church, then came home & opened a few of Trek's presents.  Nancy sent him some fun things this year.  He got a candle, a chocolate fish, 2 shirts, & a Darth Vader watch.  SO FUN.

Mamoo sent him a cute card with $ inside to spend on whatever he wants.  I got Trek some floor mats for his new car & the kids got him some stuff for his favorite video game.

At this point in the birthday celebration, Taya started acting like she might be a little sick.  She had a small fever & she just looked sick so I started to worry.  I quickly made Trek's birthday dinner a little early just in case something happened with Taya, & boy was I glad I did. . . 

I made one of Trek's favorite dinners: Mock Chicken, caesar salad, & strawberries.  Yum.

By the end of dinner we knew something was really wrong with Taya.  She wasn't smiling, her eyes were glazed over & she wasn't talking.  I took her temperature only to find it was 104.6.  WHAT?  It went from 100.5 to 104.6 in less than 2 hours!  So, I looked at Trek & apologized for having to leave him on his special day, but our baby girl was in trouble & we needed to go to the hospital.  He smiled & said:

"ALWAYS AN ADVENTURE!"

Yup.  Our lives are always an adventure.  We decided to make a birthday date out of it.  Cadence stayed home & watched the other kiddos while Trek & I took our little angel to the hospital.  Poor little girl.  She was SO sick.

It took several hours, TONS of tylenol & ibuprofen, a priesthood blessing, & lots of tears from me, but Taya's fever finally started to go down.  We were SO scared for a while there.  She wasn't responding to us, she was just lying there burning up on a hospital bed.  When they finally got her fever down to 102.7, they let us leave the hospital.  The poor thing had that awful flu that is killing so many people this year.  We were VERY LUCKY.  I count my blessings every day.  I almost lost my little girl, but Heavenly Father has more plans for her.  THANK HEAVENS.

We got back home super late that night.  The kids didn't have school the next day so we got them up & finished celebrating Trek's special day.  They thought it was SO cool that they got to stay up so late.  We opened up the last few gifts of the night & called my family to let them know Taya was okay & so that Trek could open his gifts from them.

Justin & Cari totally surprised Trek with a Space Monkey (some sort of techie cloud storage thing).  Trek's been wanting one FOREVER, but they're not even out on the market yet.  Justin is just THAT awesome.  He was thrilled.

And my parents surprised him with a blue tooth speaker & phone holder for his car.  He was so excited.

After many phone calls & present excitement, we went into the kitchen & finished the celebration with cake & ice cream all in one.  Hooray for Cold Stone cakes.  I had this one special made for Trek.  It had chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, Butterfingers, Reese's PB Cups, & peanut butter swirls inside.  It was SO DELICIOUS!!!!

So it was a very eventful day for Trek, but he loved every minute of it. . . the good & the bad.  We're so grateful for our blessings, for each other, & for the adventure known as life.

Happy Birthday Trek.  We love you!

Baby It's Cold Outside

So here in VA we get cold, but not like most parts of the US.  I really can't complain because the weather here is wonderful (humidity doesn't bother me).

But it's been pretty cold even for VA the last few days.  We've had to bundle up quite a bit to keep warm.

Canyon prefers wearing multiple hats at all times.

Bladen has been curling up next to the heater in the kitchen
every morning to get the warm air blown directly on him.

Yesterday the kids had a 2 hour delay for school due to frigid temps & lots of ice & this morning we had a 1 hour delay due to SNOW.

And here's what our snow looked like.

 

Being from UT I had to laugh at this, but I totally understand how bad it is when even that much snow is on the ground here.  There's no equipment to take care of snow or ice so any cold weather conditions wind up being really bad here even if they seem like nothing.

The "snow" melted quickly, but the kids sure enjoyed watching the small flurries fall this morning.  They sat at the window for probably an hour just watching it.  It was so sweet.

An hour after that, it was melted again & off they went to school.  But I was happy we got one little flurry just so they could experience it this year.

Lorien's Solar System Project

So just when I thought we were done with big projects, Lorien brings home a huge solar system project!  ha ha ha.  It never ends when you have 6 kids, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

She got to be her creative little self on this one.  I bought her a bunch of styrofoam balls & let her go to town on them.  She used paint, glitter, markers, & all sorts of fun colorful things to color each of her planets.  Lorien has always been an artist so she had a blast with this.

Once everything was painted, I gave her a piece of floral arrangement foam to use as her base.  She glued black felt pieces over it & added silver glitter to make it look like space.

Then she got really technical in the placement of her planets.  I thought she'd just plop them down in order, but NO!  That's not good enough for Lorien!  She actually measured her base which was 29 inches & figured out to scale where each of the planets would be.  She took the number of miles from the sun each planet was & divided it by 29 inches so she knew where to place her sticks.  The first four planets are SUPER close together, but she had to do it that way because that's how it is in space. Mercury was .25 inches from the sun, Venus .5 inches, Earth .75 inches, & Mars 1 inch.

It looked great when she got them all where she needed them to be.  She added rings for Saturn & Uranus & then added the asteroid belt separating Jupiter & Mars.  The finished product was beautiful just like her.

I was so proud of her.  My kids are so great.  I love you Lo!

6th Grade Science Fair

Cadence has been working on her 6th grade science fair project for almost 4 months now.  She knew she wanted to do something with iron in cereal, but wasn't sure exactly what she wanted to do.  She went through several different ideas before she came up with one that she liked, was interested in, & that actually worked really well for a science project.

She named her project:

What an "Iron"ic Breakfast!

She wanted to prove that the iron content in cereals differ from what is what is written on the nutrition labels.  I didn't know how she was going to do this, but that's what experimentation is for right?

She spent a good month experimenting with different ways of pulling iron out of cereal.  It wasn't until we got an industrial strength magnet that the experiment started to really come together.  (That magnet was SO powerful that it couldn't be shipped by plane because it would mess up the instruments!  It's insane!!!!)  Once we got the magnet, she was able to pull ALL the iron straight out of the cereals.  Can you believe there are actual black iron chunks in the cereal we eat?  I had no idea!

Once the experiment started coming together, she was able to measure the levels of iron per serving of cereal.  Sure enough, Cheerios trumped the other 4 cereals even though it's nutritional label said it only had 45% of the daily value of iron.

She put her poster together with all her information, pictures, examples, & her abstract & entered it into the science fair.  I went to the school & visited her.  She's such a doll.  I love my kids so much.

Two days later she came home from school with a blue ribbon around her neck & a certificate in her hand.  My baby girl took 1st place!!!!  I am SO proud of her & all her hard work.

I spent the next two days frantically filling out paperwork while Cadence wrote a 6 page research essay with bibliography on her project so that she could enter the county science fair tonight & apply to enter the regional science fair in March.  There were some crazy late nights (11:30pm is LATE), but she got it done & I am beyond proud of all that she has accomplished.

I love you Cadence!!!

What did you get?

We were very blessed this Christmas.  Everyone got such amazing things.  We are so grateful for all the wonderful gifts we received from those we love so much.

Lorien had a great Christmas.  She got some really fun things.

Cadence's goodies.  She's getting older so she
got less toys & more grown up things this year.

Look at all the dollhouse goodies Taya got for
her dollhouse.  She was so excited.

Bladen was pretty happy with all his new toys.

Poor Craiger was sick all day long.  I felt so bad for him.
But he had a good Christmas & loved everything he
received.

Trek loved everything he got.  My dad got him a nail gun & an
air compressor which sent him over the moon.  Yay for more
projects!!!  He's so excited.

Canyon was in heaven with all his new toys
that light up & play music!

And I got spoiled rotten as well.  My dad bought me new silverware
& dishes since we haven't had new stuff since we got married 13
years ago.  Mamoo got me a Mickey clock & my mom got me a
waffle iron.  I got a craft desk & lots of stuff to organize my
space.  I love it all!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas.  Merry Christmas from the Potter house.

Stockings

My absolute favorite part of Christmas is & has always been stockings!!!  I love waking up super early, opening presents, playing with all our new toys, stopping for brunch, playing games, & then after EVERYTHING else is over with. . . as the day is almost over, going & opening up our stockings.  The kids love it & I love it too.

There's always so many fun things inside stockings.

I made Trek a "date night" coupon book for his
stocking.  I've been collecting gift cards all year
for this gift.  Now that Cadence is old enough to
babysit, Trek & I go on date nights twice  a month.
I made 26 date night ideas with gift cards for us
to use this year together.  I'm SO excited.