Read-a-Thon

A few weeks back, our school had a read-a-thon.

At the end, there is a prize drawing for those who participate. They also had a prize for the top reader in each grade.  That kid would be allowed to go to lunch with the principal and the nicest restaurant in town.

Roman came home absolutely determined to be the top reader in his grade.

He pretty much read every waking minute for 6 days straight.

I've never seen him try so hard at anything in my life. It was great!

Marisa, who usually LOVES to read must have thought that lunch with the principal sounded pretty scary and she WOULD NOT read any more than she had to. Funny.

Roman was so nervous. The only way he had to gauge if he was winning was by asking the other kids in his classes. Of course I'm sure he got some stories. But he would come home and get right to it.  One day he read for 500+ minutes.

You can imagine his relief when he came home from the assembly where they announce the winners and had won!

Ezra and I went to lunch at Magleby's to take a picture and have a yummy lunch too.

Honestly, I think the best  part for Roman is that he got out of school for almost an hour and half.

I asked him if he thought it was worth it and he said "yeah, I guess."

I asked him if he thought he would do it again and he said "probably not."

Oh well, I was happy to see him try so hard and be successful.

A Bad Bad Day

I have so much to blog about. SO MUCH!

But I'm going to skip a whole bunch and jump to this one thing because we are in the thick of it.

So...while we were in the middle of doing all this stuff that I need to blog about later, we went up to Heber Valley Camp to spend the night and go sledding with Shane's siblings and their families.

Saturday night was filled with fun sledding, playing and well....not so much sleeping but that's what happens when you have a 13 person sleepover.

Sunday morning after breakfast we all kind of picked our activity of choice, some went sledding, some went for a ride in the Ranger (pictured below) some played card games etc. . Those who were sledding discovered a new exciting hill so the parents basically told the kids to hit the hills and we all ended up outside sledding.

The hills are long so we would all sled down, then we would pile into the two six seat Rangers and get a ride to the top again.

After a few runs I needed to go to the bathroom so I walked down to the pavilion. On my way back I could see the two ATV's heading up the hill so I pulled out my camera to take pictures of everyone as they came down the hill. Only they didn't come.... and didn't come... and didn't come. I could sort of hear Ezra screaming... then screaming some more so I started walking up the hill. He's a pretty dramatic kid who can really scream so I just figured he was really mad,  or got hurt but I never imagined....

Finally, Shane came down the hill in the Ranger, Greta was in the back with Ezra, who was lying down on a sled crying. "Get in... we think he broke his leg!"

UGH!!!

At the top of the hill, the Rangers and the Rhino would make a tight U-turn so that they could go back down the hill to pick up everyone. I guess as the Ranger was turning, he just wasn't holding on, or was getting ready to get off and was not expecting that last bit of gas, but he flew out and just landed on his leg wrong.

We took him to the pavilion where I took off part of his snowsuit and knew that it was time to go to a hospital. He was really hurting and wouldn't move his leg.

After a quick priesthood blessing, we loaded him into the back of Grandpa's SUV and down the mountain Grandpa, Ezra and I went. Luckily we knew where the hospital was.

We got there and they just kept him right on that sled and brought the X-ray machine to him and  X-rayed his pelvis.

I was absolutely praying for a dislocated hip. But we weren't so lucky.

Broken femur and just awful too. Well, it probably looks worse than it really is. It didn't get the growth plate or anything.

Another bummer was that he was wearing the snow suit that is older than me and just so retro and some of his favorite jammies. They are all goners now! :(

So, that meant that we needed to get to Primary Children's Hospital. Which also meant a lovely ambulance ride. The ambulance people were so nice though. They let me ride with them and were so good to him. However, because it was a traumatic injury, he had to wear the fun collar on the ride.

Shane showed up to the Heber Valley Hospital just as they were loading him into the ambulance so he followed in our car.

 After we got to Primary Children's, it was just wait, wait, wait. There aren't exactly a lot of staff at the hospital on a Sunday so we had to wait for the orthopedic surgeon to decide from home what needed to be done. Then we had to wait for a time slot in the surgical room, after he was treated we had to wait for him to get interested in eating, then wait for the car seat lady to come to the hospital to get us a car seat (more like a parachute harness) etc. etc.

Ezra was SO good the whole time though. He was mad, and didn't want to talk to anyone but he was being really tough and brave and patient.

Ezra is at an age that is just in between two different procedures for this type of injury. For babies they put them in what is called a spica cast, for older kids they do surgery and then a less crazy cast.

The surgeon decided on the spica cast because it is far less invasive and works well and he is technically small enough to carry.

So... Here we are. For the next six weeks.

Poor kid. I just feel so bad for him, but he is really handing it SO WELL. He doesn't like to be moved. But it keeps getting better.

I brought his bed out into the living room because that is where he wants to be all day and it's too hard for me to get him into his bottom bunk gracefully.

Today I decided it was time to get him off his back so I got out the beanbag. It's perfect. It molds to his crazy shape and I can position him in lots of different ways so he doesn't get bed sores.

As for me... I dealt with all the hospital stuff fine. Yesterday I was a wreck. Totally overwhelmed and frustrated. Today... I hit the ground running. I imagine the next six weeks will be a roller coaster of feeling confident and capable and balled up in the corner rocking back and forth, but we'll make it.

So far, it's really been not too hard to take care of him and he has been mostly pleasant. But there is just one little cloud hanging over our head. We're not sure how it's going to go down, but it could be ugly. Yes, I'm talking about the bathroom. #1 is easy pee-sy. #2 might not be as fun.

Anyway... here we are. What do you do but laugh about it later? Right now... I laugh so I don't cry.

And really, we are just so lucky that it wasn't worse. He could have been run over by the ATV, or hit his head or any number of bad things. It's just something to make life interesting I guess.

I've Been Busy

Sometimes I wonder what I'm thinking.

I like to do too many things. Seriously... I have a list a mountain high of things I just love to do. So much I couldn't possibly do half of them.

Then there is the mountain of things I have to do.

Then the mile long list of things I should be doing.....

It's overwhelming.

Honestly, most days I'm lucky if I get in exercise, laundry, dinner, sewing and maybe one or two rooms picked up. Not cleaned mind you, just made to look clean.

Anyway, I've been trying to not be overwhelmed by it all.

I did get one thing crossed of my "should/have to" list. I finally made a "blog book" from my website that I had before I had my blog. This has all the happenings from Roman's birth until Marisa was about 6 months old.

It's far from awesome. But it's something, and has so many fun pictures from Roman's first three years.

Here are just a few favorites:

                     I miss those little babies. But I would never want to go back. Man time flies!

Basketball

Roman did basketball again this winter.

I can't believe what a HUGE difference a year made in his ability to play the game.

Last year he was goofing off all the time, could hardly dribble and made a few baskets the entire season.

This year he made tons of baskets, is much better a dribbling and was pretty focused on the game. It's amazing how much those things improve my attitude about it.

I think he had a good time.

Next... baseball. SIGH!!

Presidents Day on the Mountain

So this past Monday a while ago (that's how long it's taken me to get around to my blog) was Presidents Day and we decided to go up to the Heber Valley Camp to visit Grandma and Grandpa and spend some time sledding.

There hasn't been any fresh snow in a while so everything was ice, but we managed on the well packed roads.

These hills don't look like much but they go forever and you just get faster and faster. Then, someone picks everyone up in the ATV and hauls them back up to the top.

The tiny black dots on the top of this picture are people, that's how long this hill is.

See, I was there.

We attempted a family photo but Ezra was in no mood.

 



 
We sledded down this hill a few times, then Roman found a sign that said... No sledding past this point. :)

It was really pretty fun.

Ezra crashed into a snow (really Ice) bank and scratched up his face. He was pretty mad about that and took a few turns just hanging out in the Rhino.

He recovered quickly though and was back to riding down the hills until us old people put an end to it.

We roasted hotdogs and marshmallows, Marisa made cookies with grandma, we rested and watched T.V. then headed out for more sledding fun.

Look at that face :(



By the end of the day, we were exhausted. All the adults were stiff and sore. Actually I didn't get sore until Wednesday but boy did I get it then. I'm not sure whether to blame the soreness on sledding or Tae-bo, but I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

It turned out to be a really fun day. I'm glad that we could go, and glad that we decided to come home to sleep because my bed was SO nice.