I miss President Hinckley.

Here is my little girl after her eye surgery. She looks like Rocky Balboa after the first fight with Mr. T.

WARNING: The following is a political rant. Proceed with caution.
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The environmental effort has me continually perplexed. On some levels I agree that we should take care of this planet we have been given. What I can’t stand is the eco-hypocrisy of the environmental extremists. Take Al Gore for example. He fly’s all around the world telling people that the debate is over and that global warming is for real. While burning extraordinary amounts of fuel that puts carbon in the atmosphere and burns through enough electricity to power 232 Tennessean homes, he tells us to stop driving so much and “reduce our carbon footprint”. When confronted with this hypocrisy, he tells critics he maintains a “carbon neutral” lifestyle by buying “carbon offsets”. The only problem is that he buys them from himself. Huh? He buys them from a company called Generation Investment Management which he part owns and is the chairman.

HUH?!

He has essentially setup a green money making machine capable of generating millions if not billions of dollars of revenue. How inconvenient is that truth?

I digress. The reason for this rant is I follow a company called Archer Daniels Midland on the stock market. They produce bio-fuel that they sell to Europe. Because of subsidization, the company can sell it for way cheaper than European companies can produce it, thus causing a perceived economic imbalance or unfair trade practices. The EU has decided to place a tariff on bio-fuel imports thus affecting this company. The reason I bring this up is because at the end of the news release I read the following:

Biodiesel is usually mixed with mineral fuel to power diesel cars, trucks, buses and trains. It can also be used as a heating fuel.

The EU plans to use far more biofuels in the coming years, setting a target to replace 10 percent of transport oil with biofuel by 2020 — or 33 million metric tons of oil.

EU biofuel output in 2006 was 6 million metric tons and it will likely have to increase output rapidly and import far more to meet its goals, part of a strategy to cut back on the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

Great right? The environmentalists have said we need to reduce our oil consumption and use greener methods and have effectively impacted how governments think about energy consumption. Right? That’s the goal … let’s go green! Woohoo! Party! Think again…
I then read the following sentence in this article.

This biofuel target has come under fire from environmentalists and others who claim that it will see land taken away from food production and put pressure on natural reserves — especially in developing countries.

WHAT!?!

How short sighted are these people? Anyone with a modicum of common sense knew that if you take the corn you used to plant for food and turn it into bio-fuel, that you wouldn’t have any food to eat. I mean really.

How do you spell hypocrisy?

< end of political rant … now back to our regularly scheduled programming. >

Let me first start by sayin: Glad this day is OVER! Whew. I am exhausted. So today was Joslin’s eye surgery and through out the day as things happened I made notes in my new iPhone. Gosh I love this phone. All the pictures came from the phone as well. Bonus! Anywho, here goes:

5:16 – Woke up and got ready to take Joslin to the hospital. Primary Childrens in SLC. Forgot to wake up Juli so she could give Joslin one more little drink of juice.

5:51 – Woke Joslin up and put her in the car.

6:00 – Out the door, heading to the hospital. Wouldn’t ya know it there was no gas in the car. Fortunately, there wasn’t any traffic either so we did ok.

6:40 – Arrived at the hospital and found a parking spot right next to the entrance. Tender mercies of the Lord there.

6:45 – Checked in at the pre-op desk

6:59 – Finished registration and took Joslin to the first waiting room. I could tell that she was starting to get nervous. She recognized this place from the last time she was here for her MRI.

7:16 – Nurse came and got us and took us back to the physical room. Jos is really getting nervous now. Asks for her “baby” for comfort. The nurse took all her vitals and said that another nurse would be in with instructions. She left some hospital jammies for Jos to wear during the surgery.

7:19 – Jos is in new pajamas and we are waiting for the next nurse.

7:22 – Next nurse comes in gives us instructions of what was going to happen next. Asks if Joslin is going to be ok going with the Anesthesiologist when the times comes. I ask Joslin if that will be ok and and without skipping a beat she answered with a resounding ‘NO!” We talked about giving her medicine that I call ‘the silly juice’ (great stuff by the way). I agree to it.

7:29 – Nurse takes us to the 3rd waiting room before she goes into surgery. Jos immediately sees where the dolls are in the room and takes off for them. I let her play as long as I could.

7:34 – Yet another nurse comes and administers the silly juice. This time I need to hold her because she was going to get pretty wobbly. This hospital has red wagons that they take the kids back to surgery in. I declined because I wanted to hold my little girl.

7:45 – Jos is a riot! She is laughing and we are rubbing noses. She can’t stop laughing and finds everything funny!

7:56 – Doctor Larson comes out and gives last minute instructions and asks if I have any questions. We talk about what to do in case of vomiting or coughing, bright lights, wind, etc. He goes back in and says that the anesthesiologist will come out next and take her back. This whole morning I have been feeling nauseous, not sure if it was breakfast or if I am getting really nervous about this.

8:10 – Jos is somewhere between la-la land and the hospital waiting room. She is in and out of sleep and being extremely cute. She trusts me so explicitly.

8:11 – The anesthesiologist is here. Instead of taking Jos from me he asks me to follow him down the hall for surgery. As we talked I got the distinct impression that he would take care of my princess. I knew it. As we approached the final door before he had to take her, I gave Joslin one last kiss (I had been kissing on her all morning I realized) and handed her to the doctor. She thought that was pretty funny. I watched her go away in his arms.

8:12 – I cried.

8:14 – Found yet another waiting room to wait in. As I sat down, I saw parents who looked as everything was right in the world and were there for routine procedures and I saw parents that were there who looked like their world was about to come apart. I just wanted to run and take Joslin with me. I am so grateful that our kids have been so healthy. What a blessing.

8:22 – I called Juli and texted my mom that she was in surgery.

8:34 – Juli calls me back with additional questions.

8:58 – Still waiting. The doctor said that the operation would take about an hour. Realized I had brought a peach mango flavored drink with me. Woohoo.

9:11 – Dr. Larson came in and said that everything was fine. The surgery went off without a problem. He then told me that he couldn’t believe the anesthesiologist he had. He said that he was good. So good that he was a head of schedule for the day. I knew he was good because Heavenly Father was watching out for her. I was told that in a few minutes I would be taken to her and help her wake up.

9:23 – Nurse finally calls my name to take me to the post-op area where Joslin is. She is laying on her side that didn’t have the surgery so I couldn’t see how bad it was. I was told I could pick her up and hold her. As I did, I could see that she looked like she had been on the business end of a baseball bat. Poor eye was blood red and pretty swollen. The nurse found us a recovery room to go to and so we made our way there.

9:25 – I am still holding Jos. The nurse gave her a sippy cup of juice which I then asked if we could have a bottle. Joslin still doesn’t drink from sippy cups and the nurse very kindly told me how to get her off of bottles. Gee thanks. Her instructions were that if she could stay alert for 20 minutes or so and drink all the juice that she could go home. Well she doesn’t know my daughter.

9:27 – Juice is gone.

9:27:47 – Juice is screaming for more juice. (Juice is my new nickname for boo-bear)

9:28 – More juice arrives along with a popsicle.

9:31 – Juice is gone again. Can we get a refill please?

9:45 – Nurse comes by, says everything looks good and gives me final instructions. She calls a nursing student over to take off the monitors and take out the IV. I say that my sister is in nursing school too. She asks where and I say ASU. And she says, ‘Oh, Arizona State’ like it was some kind of backwater school. I say yes and she rolls her eyes. See that Hanny? It’s on between University of Utah and ASU. Represent well girl!

10:24 – We are cleared to go and Joslin is dressed and ready to leave.

10:40 – Find the pharmacy and pick up eye drops for Joslin. That’s going to be fun!

10:59 – Texted Juli to let her know that we are on our way home. That was quite the ride. The hospital gave us these arm braces to put on so that she would not scratch her eyes. I decided that I was going to put them on for the ride home because I was by myself and didn’t want to crash trying to keep her from scratching. Well that wasn’t too well received. As evident by the pictures I took. I guess I didn’t put them on tight enough because she found a way to get them off. As soon as I gave her a bottle though she held that and forgot about her eyes. She was pretty miserable though. I had just enough juice and peach mango flavored water to get us home.

11:28 – Arrived home to momma’s lovin arms.

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And that was just the morning! We struggled today putting in the eye drops. She obviously didn’t like us messing around with her eyeballs. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. We had to watch her through out the afternoon and she did pretty well. She sneezed one time though and that about killed her. After the sneeze this look came on her face and it stayed. I think she was wondering if her eyes were still there. It was the most pathetic face. (picture below)

Well it’s over now and I am exhausted. For all those that kept us in your thoughts and prayers, thank you! We felt it. Thank you.

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Before:

After:

At home finally:

the “Sneeze”

My cousin Amy has been doing a blog for 4 years now, she had a book with all her pictures and posts made into a hard bound book. So basically she will have a journal with pictures of all the cute things the kids have done. It’s a journal, scrapbook, family history and blog all in one. My sister in-law Alisa is also doing something similar. She has been writing a post every day for a year about what her day has been like with a picture to go with it. She is also going to have it made into a book or a photo journal. Great ideas. I’ve decided to steal their ideas!!!!

Because of this and what I plan to do with these entries, I want to be very specific. I’ve been realizing I haven’t posted really anything about Hailey’s school. I would feel ungrateful if I didn’t get this written down.

When we moved to Utah in August I was really nervous about how the transition would be for Hailey. We have felt so blessed through everything that happened when we made the move. Our first Sunday at church I talked to the Primary Presidency (not in front of the kids) about how normally, we have a helper at church with Hailey. I told them I would go in with her. I was trying to be proactive because our experience with moving into our last ward, ended up with Hailey escaping from primary and being lost with most of the ward looking for her for 20 minutes. I didn’t want this to happen so I was trying to explain without making Hailey sound too bad. That’s what is so hard. I feel like I want her to lead as normal a life as possible so we try not to make things a real big deal or make her look too different. Yet when I don’t explain good enough or people kind of take what I’m saying lightly like ” Oh she’s just an overly protective mom”. Then we have problems like loosing Hailey.

Any way, I told them and they were awesome. They showed us to Hailey’s class. Her two teachers walked out and I introduced us. One of them, Kim Weston said she already knew all about us. I was surprised. She said yea, I’m going to be Hailey’s resource teacher, I will be at the meeting at the school tomorrow. To say the least I was thrilled (my mother’s word). She came out and talked with me. She said to not worry that I didn’t need to come in she would handle everything. I was so relieved to think Hailey was in good hands at church with someone that really knew what she was doing. I didn’t have to explain anything. That was a definite tender mercy for us from our Heavenly Father.

Hailey is doing fantastic in school. I give credit to Mrs. Weston or Sister Weston on Sunday. She says it’s not her, but she has blessed our life so much. Just having an understanding teacher is amazing. She and I will throw ideas back and forth about anything to better Hailey’s educational experience or social/ emotional situations. It has been so rewarding and fulfilling to see the good changes that have come. Mrs. Weston treats Hailey cool, and normal yet understands everything she deals with and knows her limitations so she doesn’t push her to melt down mode. It’s really hard to think about moving on. We are renting this house from my cousin and he needs to sell it. We knew this was only temporary but everyone and all of this has really grown on us. We really need to pray to find out what to do next.

I have been researching 5 different school districts and found out what they offer. The Nebo School District offers a lot of important things. Highly trained Para-professionals (one on one aids) that have weekly training meetings under the direction of their Autism team. They provide ABA therapy (Applied Behavioral Analysis) something that I have studied and really believe in. So, for the future they are the school district that could promise the services for long term if Hailey continued to need them. Anyway I could explain way more but I’m tired. It comes down to- is it the right thing to do? Should we move to Springville Utah where the Nebo school district is? What if we end up with a power hungry Inclusion Specialist and have battles with Hailey again. Are we crazy to leave an area where things are going great now, but in the long run will not be able to continue to promise us an aid? The church will be moving all their IT guys to Riverton in June or July so that changes things too. I guess we’ll have to pray and have faith that we will buy a house in the right place for our family.

Hi, I just wanted to let everyone know we finally have new phone numbers. Sorry if we didn’t call you directly, there are so many people to contact we didn’t want to miss anyone. Our old number and our new number are both working right now but that will change soon. Brandon’s cell- (801) 739-6161 Juliette’s cell (801) 448-2928. These are our only numbers until we move to a permanent residence. Thanks Peeps.

No really, go a fly a kite … with your kids. The other day we had a really windy day here in the SLC and so after work we took the kids to a park and pulled out the kite we bought. It is a dragon kite that has a 6 foot wingspan! It’s pretty cool. Anywho, I think this was one of the most enjoyable times we had as a family.

I liked this picture because of the expression on Joslin’s face!

More pics from the day:

This expression says it all.

On our recent trip this past weekend to Hardware Ranch, Joslin made a very interesting friend. No worries, the big guy had been tamed.

For a long time now I have wanted to take the family up to Hardware Ranch. It is a wildlife management area where they grow hay all summer long and feed it to the Elk that come down out of the mountains in the winter months. During the winter, you can take a sleigh ride out among the Elk. So we packed up the kids and made the trek to the mountains. It was quite a drive. This ranch is located near Logan UT which is about 2 hours from Salt Lake.

We arrived and they had a visitors center where they had all sorts of animals from the region stuffed and mounted. The kids had a blast looking at all the animals and feeling their coats. The visitors center had an over look and down below you could see the herd of elk.

We bought tickets and headed down to the sleigh ride area. The kids were excited and thought this was the coolest thing. Off we went and we actually rode into the middle of the herd. The driver would stop every once and a while to explain what they were doing and why. As we were leaving he took us by where the bucks would congregate. Those were some big antlers!

Afterward we tried to find somewhere to go sledding but much of the snow has already melted. Much to Noah’s disappointment, we could not find a place to sled at. Instead we headed back down the mountain and decided to go into Logan for lunch and to walk around the Logan temple. On the way down we scored a dozen tortillas. I know, kind of a random statement. Since moving to Salt Lake City we have not been able to find a good tortilla. Outside of Logan just happened to have a Tortilleria! Thus we scored a dozen tortillas! Woohoo!

Anywho, once in Logan we ate and then headed up to the temple. It was really amazing. I didn’t realize that it sat up on a big hill overlooking the entire town. When we pulled up Noah said, “Look at that castle!” And it kind of looked like one!

I wanted to write about Valentine’s day because Brandon was so sweet. That morning he told Noah to come with him and the guys were going to do a special surprise for the girls. I told Hailey and Joslin we were going to do a special surprise for the boys and make them homemade heart shaped sugar cookies and frosting. To anyone else this would not be a big deal but I’ve never attempted homemade sugar cookies so it was for us. (Thanks Melani your recipe turned out great!!) Noah and Hailey always say “the boys with the boys and the girls with the girls.” When Brandon and Noah walked in they were holding 3 pink roses. Noah gave one to Jossy, one to Hailey and one to me. It melted my heart to see how special Hailey felt because of this. They gave us a Valentines card where they had recorded there voices saying “we love you gals, Happy Valentine’s” then the song “I’m Walken on Sunshine” started playing. sooooo cute. They also gave us chocolates, and the rest of the bouquet of roses.

That night after the kids were in bed, (no I”m not gonna get personal lol!!!) Brandon made me dinner while I was reading a book in the bedroom. (he totally pampered me) he said “ok it’s time to come out.” There was a heart projected on the ceiling above the table. Candlelight and a delicious meal he made from a new recipe we had never had he found online. Delicious desert also. He has always been so good at giving me the best gifts and being creative and thoughtful about special occasions. His family is the same way. My mother in law is such a good gift giver, always knows what to give as well as my sister inlaws. They are all very thoughtful. That must be where Brandon gets it. Thanks Lover for a great day!!!

On Friday I finally met most of the guys Brandon works with. Hailey was at school, Noah was at Joy school Pre-school, so I decided to take Joslin and meet Brandon for lunch and meet his co-workers. We got up there and Brandon started introducing everyone. It was funny to me that every man I shook hands with was LDS. I am so grateful for Brandon’s work environment. All of them were so nice and funny. I still, after almost 6 months of living here forget that most people I come in contact with are of my faith. The kids and I count church steeples when we drive. When we lived in Tucson before they built our church in Rita Ranch, we drove 25 minutes one way to get to church. I know others drive a lot further in other areas. I am grateful for a church close by. There are so many great things available to us and I feel lucky. I am an Arizonan born and raised with the stigma of Utah Mormons and I am saying I like Utah lol!! Arizona will always be what we call home though.

After we were done eating Brandon wanted to go to the Apple store. We were looking around, when we were done I told Jossy it was time to go. She came running full speed not knowing the whole front of the Apple store was glass windows and doors. Yup, she ran smack right into the glass store front and fell back hard. OHHHHHH! yes that’s what everybody said. Everyone that was walking outside saw, and inside. I saw the looks on their faces. It was a mixture of poor little baby to oh my gosh that was hilarious that should have been on funniest home videos. We consoled her as she wailed while smiling on nodding our head at everyone. BLESS HER HEART. She got a huge goose egg and added to the one in the same spot she already had, from running into the corner of the junk drawer the day before. The eye doctor told us she probably would run into things until the surgery and it is happening.