It's what fun is

we are LOVING Summer at our house, even though it quite often means for later bed times than usual. But thats ok. Summer, its what fun is!

I am so bad at taking pictures of all the fun things we do, so in short in the past 2 weeks we have;

*Gone camping(x2)
*Seven Peaks
*Bonfire in the canyon
*lots of pool time
*lots of splash pad time
*Discovery Gateway(x2)
*The Zoo (x2)
*several play grounds
*Park time at least once a day
*Bee's game (x2)
*long walks up Mueller Canyon

And probably much more. We are busy bodys here. The minute McKay wakes up, after he asks for Daddy he runs to the front door and screams "buh bye" over and over.I can't say it enough, we love Summer!

Where do I start? Ive really slacked off. Let's just say a lot has gone on, but my blog has been negelected even more so than normal. But I am still blogging. In fact, every day I have blogged for a week. Just on my weight loss blog, which no one gets to see until im ready. But beleive me, when Im ready, It will be good :)

Good Enough!

"have you ever realized that when people

say you have changed,

It's just because you decided to stop

living your life, their way."

Pretty much nothing brings me more joy than serving others. Like I have said in previous blogs, when I stopped working, I still wanted to feel like I was doing something.. make a difference in someones life, other than my family. So I have made it a goal to pray daily for help in finding those I can serve I can't tell you the amount of blessings that have come from it. Those people that are brought to me are special. They have never made me feel like I wasn't good enough. That the simple note I wrote, or the cookies I made, or the watching of kids I did wasn't good enough. They have let me know that even though the act may seem small to me, that is was a lot bigger to them. It keeps me going.

I am exhausted. I am not talking about lack of sleep, physically exhausted, but emotionally exhausted. I am so tired of giving and giving and giving until no end, to in the end, not feel good about it, but to feel used. Unappreciated and on top of it, like I am in trouble constantly. Nothing I can do for this person is good enough. I can literally bend over backwards, wrap my legs around my neck and jump up and down all at the same time and they would still say, " that's not enough"

Before I had McKay, I had a lot more free time. I had one less person to have to worry about and take care of, so naturally I had the time to do things for other people pretty much all the time. Now that I have my own family to take care of, not to mention myself every now and then, It seems there are people in my life who have turned to anger towards me. So angry that I can't drop everything and watch their children more often, that I can't come clean their house as I have many times before, so many things. I feel sad that they are so angry all the time, but I feel exhausted from having to apology almost daily for upsetting them by saying "no."

Those that know me, know that it is extremely difficult for me to say no to anyone. If someone said " please chop off your arms and legs for me, just for fun" I honestly would have done it. That is before I seeked counseling. Which I am so thankful and not ashamed of at all. I was really struggling this time last year, and needed help. I was being pulled so many directions, that my little family was suffering from it. It was so hard for me to say no to anyone. If I did happen to say no, I had to then have a made up excuse like I was dying from leprosy,something sure fire that they couldn't guilt me and manipulate me into then taking my 'no' back and saying yes. It took months of work, but I was finally able to learn that it is OK for me to say no. Its actually more than OK. I have now learned to say no, without any excuses and its been freeing... but along with it came the drama, the manipulation and the guilt. " you're don't love me anymore like you used to" I get that a lot. " You used to drop everything for me, now you wont" Yea, these people have families too... bigger families than me. You would think of all people they would understand that when circumstances in your life change, like getting married, having children so do your priorities and although you may not have as much time for the other things in life, you do your best and still make as much time as possible for others without making your family suffer.

This week has been a rough week. Not only am I taking care of my wonderful, yet crazy handful of a child, 18month old, but I am taking care of my husband, my mother and many other people. I love it, no matter how hard it gets I absolutely love it. So for me to get told tonight that I am not good enough, just hurt.

I am exhausted. haven't slept in 24 hours or more, have had several meltdowns, and now dealing with negativity of others who decide what they think will help them, is to put me down and belittle me. It sucks that they don't know better and haven't realized that belittling me hasn't made them happy yet, so why would it now. I hope and pray they can change and that after tonight, I can move past it and realize I am good enough. I am more than good enough and even if i don't get told that from certain people that they know it too. If they didn't think I was good enough, why would they be so dependant on me and need me so much.

Just what I Needed

Mark 10:14

" let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."

When the journey becomes seemingly unbearable, we can take comfort in the words of the Lord:

“I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee.” Some of the healing may take place in another world. We may never know why some things happen in this life. The reason for some of our suffering is known only to the Lord. "
-James E. Faust

Bubbles

McKay has a slight obession with bubbles, and I love to feed into it.It's also his favorite word to say right now. His cousin, Mason got a fun bubble gun for his birthday and McKay loved it. So, of course that's what McKay got for an early Easter present. To say he loves it, is an understatment. We could go through a whole bottle of bubbles an hour, if I let him. So to save some money I found a great way to make our own, and its very inexpensive.

Here’s the simple recipe:
4 cups water
1 cup dishwashing liquid (I used Palmolive but another brand would be fine)
1/4 cup light corn syrup
Mix it all up and then let sit for an hour or two. Then its ready!

we're heading outside right now to test it out.
Let the bubble fun begin!

18 Months

As im sitting here writting this, I'm hearing in the background, the cutest little voice saying "baby" and "bunnie" over and over again. I love my life.
McKay is 18 months next week. The past 6 months have gone so quickky. It sure has been fun. I am loving being home all day with him. Ever since his 15 month mark he is learning so much, so quickly. I'm trying to keep up with him. I think he learns a new word every day. So far, the words he can say
-ball, meow,woof woof, bunnie,baby, mamma, dadda, grandma, eyes, juice, snack, please, thank you, ding dong, this, there, here, fish, Isaac, no, stop, go, vroom (car noise), Jesus, silly, chicken, banana, stuck, up, down. teeth, and a few more ive spaced.
If you ask him, he can show you where his eyes, ears, hair, head, teeth, mouth, tongue, teeth, arms, nose, toes and knees are. He loves to be tickled and chased. he loves helping me cook and plays pretend cooking a lot, feeding me what he made.
McKay loves to jump like a frog and crawl like a dog. He loves dancing, music and pretending anything and everything is a microphone and sings in a adorable way.
He loves to kick and throw balls around. He loves to help sweep and mop, spit,give high fives and knuckles. His favorite things are balls and dogs. He's sort of obsessed with them already.
McKay loves to give hugs and kisses to anyone and any stuffed animal too. We are working on animal noises, but he can say Moo, Woof, Meow, Rar and wiggle his nose like a bunnie. He can full on blow his nose, and does it pretty much whenever it needs to be done, on his own. It's quite nice.
He is now in 3T in pretty much most of his clothes and quickly moving up. He has become more of a picky eater, and is definetly a texture person. Just like me.
McKay lights up the room, wherever he goes. People are drawn to him. He also gets that from me ;) He has a fun, spunky little personality, and it continues to become more fun each day. I couldn't have asked for a better little boy. What a blessing he is in our life.

What have we been up to?

Well, being the awesome Mom that I am, I took these pictures before helping him out. Seem's like this is an occurance almost every day this week.

He has been sitting on everything he can, that you really shouldn't sit on. I promise, I was nice once this week, as just this morning he sat in a basket for some toys and was stuck. I almost grabbed my camera but figured he had enough of being "tuck" as he would say.

Christmas

This Christmas was a lot more fun, than last. McKay is not quite old enough to really open the gifts, but he sure showed a lot of excitment with them.That was the best part, seeing how happy he was. I can't wait for next year. I think the Holidays are much more fun with kids.

Happy New Year to Me and McKay

We had such a fun new years eve. It's our nephews birthday on the 31st so we always have a fun party for him and to celebrate the new year. I definitely will not be keeping McKay up again until midnight, until he is old enough to handle it. He really did pretty well all night and we thought for sure that he would fall asleep on the way home but he didn't. I should have known that was a start to an awful night. None of us slept that night. I thought he must have just been over stimulated and overly tired to fall asleep, I think he finally fell asleep 5 am and didn't sleep very long. It made for a very long day the next day, and that's when it all started.
Sunday, my sister was speaking in her ward and teaching her lesson in relief society, so I went with my Mom to her ward. I wasn't feeling very well, just really sore everywhere and exhausted. I thought it was for sure that I just needed to get some sleep. Steve stayed home with McKay so that he could get a nap in before our ward started. When I got home, I came home to one very lethargic little boy, and I was feeling quite awful by then too. we all stayed home from our own ward and I went upstairs to take a nap. Before long I was throwing up and running a fever and could barely move. The flu again!? We had just gotten over the flu a few weeks prior. Mckay hadn't been throwing up but had a very high fever and wasn't eating, sleeping or doing anything at all. I knew whatever I had, he had too. As soon as we got McKay to bed on Sunday, horrible pain hit. I could barely breathe. I felt like a knife was ripping through my chest. we contemplated going to the Dr that night, but honestly, it was the first time we got McKay to sleep, we just couldn't wake him up. So I tried to relax and had a blessing, and prayed the pain would go away.Between throwing up blood, and coughing up blood, I was finally able to rest. As soon as I got up Monday morning, Steve took me to the instacare. I was still throwing up blood and The pain was so horrible. They did a chest x-ray and said I had pneumonia but with some antibiotics, I should start feeling better within 48 hours. That was Monday. Today is now Saturday and I am barely feeling like I am not going to die. Since Monday I have had 2 antibiotic IM, 2 IV's of vancomyacin antibiotic, and I am currently taking 3 different oral antibiotics. I spent most of the day at the Dr's and the hospital yesterday, as they thought I might now, on top of the pneumonia, have a pulmonary embolism. Luckily, I didn't. They determined that the pneumonia had just taken up more of my lungs. After going back and forth whether to admit me in the hospital or not, they gave me another IV dose of antibiotics and sent me home, hoping I'll get better this weekend. I can say today, I can tell a difference. I am not coughing up or throwing up blood, and I am not in as much pain, there is improvement. ya! I feel so bad for Steve. He has had to take care of me and a sick baby boy who has a bad cough, isn't eating much still, and very, very fussy. Steve took most of this week off to help me and I am so thankful for him. More than he will ever know. I hope I will never be this sick, ever again.

Balloons

I am so glad the dollar store sells bags of balloons. I have now invested in a quite a few bags, because I can't handle any more 2 hour meltdowns from McKay because he can't have the balloon that is on the TV. Yes, it was funny for the first few minutes, but it got old fast! This boy love's him some balloons!

30 years old

Tonight was a very special night. It is my brother Spencer's birthday, and I decided that we should start celebrating that. After all, it is the day he was brought to this earth, even if he only spent a short amount of time here. I made some pretty amazing, yellow cupcakes with Raspberry butter cream frosting and bought balloons and invited my family over. I also invited my family members out of state to participate with us to make it even more special. We sang Happy Birthday, ate cupcakes, talked of memories and our love for Spencer, and then went outside and let our balloons go, sending them up to Spencer. It was so sweet to watch my 10 yr old niece's eyes tear up. She really didn't know him, as she was just a baby when he passed, but she still has an overwhelming amount of love for him. . I am so greatful for my family, that we have Spencer in heaven, watching over all of us.

Happy Birthday, my angel in heaven!

Like Mother, Like Son

Well, it looks like McKay is following the trend of being my little twin. Along with the good things, he unfortunately got my negatives. Like, my stomach problems. Like I said in my previous post, I have been having lots of them. McKay has as well. After months of problems with his tummy, we finally did a stool sample and cultures of it to make sure there wasn't any parasite, or something like it affecting him. Good news, after 3 days of waiting and one phone call from the lab saying " umm... has McKay traveled out of the country?" I said no and she then said "hmmm.. um, OK" and hung up. Really? they made me wait 2 more days to get an answer while I tortured myself thinking he had some weird parasite you only get when you go out of country. Good thing he doesn't but they sure need to change their procedure of asking that question. Maybe explain why there were to calm the parent down.
Anyways, so after finding out there was nothing they could see wrong (story of my life) they advised I need to start trial and error. Just like I am doing for myself. We are starting by taking him off all dairy. Since, when he was a baby, he had an intolerance to it. So far, we have be doing it for 1 day and I already see a slight difference. yay! I am hoping this is the answer and we don't have to go through much more trial and error. I have also decided that since I haven't started the gluten free, officially yet, I will wait and see if this helps him. If it does, well I will just try it with me since he is having the same problems as me. Hopefully we find an answer for both of us very soon.

Gluten Free

I've been having a lot of stomach problems lately. well, really for the past 8 years. Its just getting worse and I have yet to find the completely reason. I had a colonoscopy yesterday and was hoping it would provide me with some answers, but it didn't. So, I am taking it into my own hands now, especially since the Dr. did not seem interested at all in helping find whats making me so sick.
I decided I am going to start by taking certain foods out of my diet to see if that helps. I have gone gluten free before, for about 3 months. It helped a little, but I don't think 3 months is long enough to help as much I need, so I am going to try it again. This time, for at least 6 months. If I see improvement in my symptoms I will keep going and hopefully over time it will get better and better. If I don't see improvement in 6 months, to a year then I will then start over and try taking something else out of my diet.
I have written food journals, keeping track of what makes me so ill when I eat, and pretty much I have come to the conclusion that everything does. I can't pin point just one item or food group, etc. So this will be the best way I know how to solve the problem. I am going to start doing this cold turkey on Monday. I really hope to see some change and that I start feeling better. I am sure tired of being sick all the time.

Halloween 2011

Halloween was so much fun this year. Yes, McKay doesn't really understand it, but after a few houses he did start to realize if he walks up to the door, someone hands him candy and he walks away. It was pretty dang cute, but as cute as his tiger costume. I wish I took a video of him walking around in it, raar'ing at people. He seemed to love dressing up and he was such a trooper. We had such a long day. We first went to Steve's work to show McKay off to everyone, then we stopped by Grandma My's work to trick-or-treat. We then went to Layton hills mall to trick or treat, and then finally home that night to do a few house around us. It really is just for the parents the first couple years. I just loved watching go to doors and try to take handfuls of candy, get distracted by all the cute pumpkins on porches, and of course the best part for him was chowing down on the candy. We let him have a little, afterall, he did all the work for it, right?

The aftermath of a Kit Kat bar.
He sure loves chocolate, just like his Daddy

Caught red handed, or should I say chocolate handed, sneaking a candy while trick or treating

He know's right where the good stuff is

Aw, proud Daddy and his tiger cub

The Friday before Halloween, Steve's family had a party. It was such a fun night, even though I didn't win at the dance off. It must have just been a bad day for me because I have KILLER dance moves.

We had a contest to see who could make the scariest monster face. I certainly was far from scary. Actually, my whole little family was far from scary. We just can't help but be cute, even when we are trying to be mean.

We topped the party off with the classic game of, eat a donut off a string without using your hands. Most of the peoples fell off before they could finish but it was fun. I went home finding donut in my hair and on my clothes. Hopefully this party will be a tradition because it was such a blast!

5K & 10K

Before I had my foot surgery in August, I had been getting into running again. Well, more like jogging. I did a couple 5K's and loved it. I am slowly getting back into it with working out every day. Mostly doing Zumba. For Thanksgiving this year, Steve, McKay and I, are going to do the Farmington Turkey Leg. It's a 5K and I'm super excited for it. What a great way to prepare for the big dinner you will be having that night. Now we wont have to feel as guilty about what we eat ;)
I received a phone call the other day from my sister in Seattle. She said she was going to fly here in June next year and that she was signing us up for the Wasatch Back Marathon Relay race. I said I'd do it. I have 8 months to train for it... I think that is do-able. There are 3 legs. First leg will run around 6.3 Miles (about a 10K), second leg runs a little over 13 miles. ( half marathon) and the third leg runs around 6.3 miles. So I will be training to do the 10K portion. I am very excited. It's a great goal for me to work towards and I know it will only benefit me, and help me even more on my weight loss journey I've been on. Wish me luck!

Dinosaur Park

Last week, McKay and I went to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden with some family. It was a lot of fun. First thing McKay did when he saw the dinosaurs was "raarrr" it was cute. He did it several more times, quietly throught the park. I will definetly be going back next summer. He will enjoy it a little more.

Zoo

McKay loves animals, so on his birthday we went to the Zoo. It was a lot of fun and the animals were very active. His favorite were the Elephants and the Giraffes but if they had dogs there, he would have been glued to watching them. They seem to be his favorite animal right now. I can't get a word in edge wise with that little boy barking all the time. I love it!

McKay turned 1

We had so much fun celebrating McKay's first birthday. I picked an owl theme and I think it turned out cute. Here is the proof

We fall more in love with this boy every day. I couldn't imagine my life without him in it. I have loved watching the cute personality develop over the past year, and I can tell you, he is going to be super funny like his Mom. I can't wait to see all the fun changes this next year brings!

Growing Up

McKay is one week away from turning 1. I can't believe how fast it went by. I am happy it did though. He is so much fun right now, and I know he will be grow to be more fun.. tougher as well, but still fun. I can't believe how much they change, so quickly.

I'm loving the fun personality McKay is developing. This picture shows it.

I'm loving staying home with him now. My Mom noticed that I seem to be a lot happier ever since I quit work. It's absolutley true. Even on those tough days, where you just want a break.. for even 5 minutes alone in the bathroom, it's still worth every second. I'm thankful things are working out for us right now. I am planning an Owl themed birthday party for McKay. I'm very excited, but have left it all to last minute, so I am not sure how it will all turn out. No matter how put together it is, It will still be fun to get together with family and close friends to celebrate the life of my boy.

I am feeling almost 100% back to normal since my surgery. I hardly even notice the pain anymore, and I am able to do most things. I can't wait until I can start really working out again. I was on such a good streak with weight loss. Luckily, I haven't gained in the past 8 weeks, but I haven't lost either. Im at a totaly of 37lbs now and loving it. I'm down 2 pants sizes and loving that too, and so glad I held on to a few pairs of pants that were too small. I just hate having to buy new clothes in the middle of losing weight.

Progress

I drove the car, and went groccery shopping this morning...with a regular shoe on. I thought this day would never come! I haven't been able to drive in weeks, let alone leave the house much. It felt great!