Just a Few Pictures

First day of school! So maybe that was a month ago, at least I posted it, right? Notice what hams my children are.


[T] in the hospital with her big splint on. This is while we were waiting for them to open up an operating room for us so they could decide whether to do surgery or not. She looks pretty happy for a girl who wasn't allowed to eat from 8pm Friday night to 3pm Saturday.

Here are my "twins" at the welcome shower for [T]. [K] did most of the unwrapping for her. I think [K] is trying to remind me that he never got a birthday party this year. Neither did the other boys. Poor boys. :(



Finally we have a family photo! It's not the best photo ever, but it took us forever to just get this one. We brought both of our cameras with us to this location and both ran out of batteries trying to get a few pictures. Luckily one turned out okay, because we weren't able to take any more.

[I] is Amazing

[I] is in 2nd grade this year. He is 8 years old. The other night at bedtime, [D] was talking to the boys about random things when [I] starts this conversation:

[I]: When do you start doing math with letters?
[D]: What do you mean?
[I]: Math with letters like a+b?
[D]: (After a moment of shock, he explains the basics of algebra) Are there kids in your class doing math with letters?
[I]: No, I just saw some kid.

**The conversations continues, leading to college. Can I just add that I didn't know what college was until I was in high school--[I] is 8**

[I]: Are there good colleges and bad colleges? (You should know that [I] decided about 2 years ago that he is going to design games when he gets older. He has already made us do quite a bit of research about it, found websites to create his own game, and designs games on paper all the time.)
[D]: Yes. For example if you go to MIT you could get a job almost anywhere. But you have to get good grades to go there.
[I]: Do I have to go to MIT?
[D]: No.
[I]: How do you find out if a college is good or not. Can you find out about colleges online?
[D]: Yes.
[I]: Can we look now?
[D]: No, it's bedtime. We'll have to do that later.

This response worked until after school the next day when [I] asked me to research colleges for him. I answered that we needed to homework first and I needed to make dinner, so we would have to wait until later that night. [I] did not forget and when [D] came home, [D] and [I] researched different colleges that would be good if you wanted to go into designing games. Yes, [I] has a plan and he amazes me all the time that his brain works this way.

K-Bomb Cutie

K-bomb is just one of [K]'s many nicknames.

It just so happens that [K] has this super cute pouty face that I've been trying to get a picture of for ages because it just makes me laugh every time. I thought I was finally getting a picture this time, but the camera was set to video. Here is the result. It is only a few seconds long but I hope you see why it makes me laugh--he's really just too cute!

On fire

So... as you may be able to tell it has been an interesting week. After so much stress we decided to go on a short hike and Geo-Cache as a family. We went to a trail that we knew of and enjoyed our time by Lake Barcis. After this we decided instead of driving around the mountain back home again, to dry over the pass through our local ski town (Piancavallo). When coming down the other side our breaks began to over-heat. At that time I remembered what my Mom said when I was a kid about overheating breaks and pulled over. The was smoke billowing out from the front tires. We got out and looked and the drivers-side brakes were on FIRE!!!!! Looking for our fire extinguisher (no where to be found), evacuating the kids quickly, and then looking for some water (none found at first), we found some lemon-aid and doused the flames with a some crystal light. It worked and our van was saved. After 20 minutes we came the rest of the way down the mountain in low gear at 15 mph. What a great family outing.

[T] --NO SURGERY-- Yeah!!!

So after a night of waking every two hours, when the nurse would come in to check on [T]'s blood supply to her hand, we found out that the scheduled surgery was postponed due to emergent surgeries that took up the operating rooms. Then, waiting until noon we found out that we had a new Orthopedic Surgeon now on managing our case. He was much more conservative than the one the evening before. He said that she MAY need surgery if after attempting to reduce the fracture under anesthesia it does not set well. Then we had to wait for an operating room to open up. The new Surgeon decided that because [T] had been fasting already for 18 hours he was going to try to work some deal with the surgery room in the ER and their Anesthesiologist to do the procedure down there. Everything went well with just a little IV sedation. The fracture was set with just casting and we were able to go home 2 hours latter. A good ending to a long week (after a stressful climax.)

[T] is in the hospital

Poor little [T] has quite a tough time when it has come to the medical side of things since she has come to live with us, and now she is in the hospital! So . . . I had told her and Kimball that they could not have any more popsicles (I felt the 2 they had already had that afternoon, plus the one in the morning really was enough). I guess they felt this wasn't a good answer so when I wasn't in the kitchen, they decided to try to sneak some more. It did not go well. [T] fell off the chair she was using and broke her arm! Of course she did this Friday evening, on a 3 day weekend, right after the base hospital had closed down for the evening. So we had to take her down to the Pordenone Italian hospital--they do things a little different there. What isn't different is that she broke the joint in her elbow and needs surgery. They were going to do it immediately, but Dan had fed the starving girl a snack while they waited in the emergency room. Now it is scheduled for some time today (Sat). In the States this would be an out-patient surgery, but we are in Italy so we hear she will probably be in the hospital for a few days. We'll post more when we know more--it's hard to get information out of the Italians.

Updating

So I have heard from many people that I really need to update our blog. There is just so much that has happened this summer, it almost seems too daunting a task to even try to complete. But I have decided that a few minutes a day can go a long way and I will do what I can. We did write a bit--preparing to blog--while we were in Ethiopia, but at some point even this fell to the wayside. So you will probably notice a big difference in what was written before as opposed to now. But, I am going to post them as to the correct date when they SHOULD have been posted, so you will have to look back at older dates to find the newest information. Just FYI! Here is a picture to tide you over until I get more done!

Here is all of us outside the Washington DC temple.