Nutcracker Ballet!

We gave the kids special outings with Kyle for a Christmas present and the girls got to go to SLC to see the ballet with Kyle tonight after going to Seigfried's for a German dinner before hand.  The service was slow at dinner, but they made it to the show on time and had the best seats!  It was the final show of the season, so some things were switched up, but overall the performance was memorable and fantastic-just like this picture!

Phone Case

After the eye dr appointment, Ava and I headed over to the ski shop where I bought my boots last year to get them adjusted.  It took so long to get the boot liners and shells heat molded that Ava crocheted this phone case for her IPhone!  I love the colors and the perfect ombre!  She got so many comments from people as impressed as I am that a 12 year old is crocheting!

Glasses Girl

After Ava got her contacts figured out, she was able to look at glasses.  She is right in between kids and womens glasses, so we steered towards women's for longevity purposes.  She found a few that seemed huge on her sweet face, but when we thought she had decided on the perfect ones, we found these again and decided they were the BEST!!  The clear frames seem smaller than the darker ones, a bonus and they fit into the budget!  She will have them in two weeks, in the meantime she has to wear contacts everyday!

Bad Vision

Ava had an eye exam back in September that gave us some grave news.  She has been surviving with basically half of her eyes!  Her vision is terrible in one of her eyes and the other one has been compensating!  She doesn't seem to notice and was pretty shocked when she failed her eye exam.  I have been worried about her and the possible illnesses she could have, and finally got her into the eye dr. today.

We were quite relieved when the dr. said she is near sighted in one eye and has an astigmatism in the other one, but both can be corrected!  Her eye is so oval the dr. was afraid a contact lens wouldn't fit,  but fortunately the contacts fit great and Ava was able to get the contacts in and out fairly easily on her first try.

Temple Square!

I'm so proud of us for making it over to Temple Square on our second day of Christmas and seeing all the Christmas lights with the freshly fallen and falling snow!  It was way more magical than cold this time!  We asked someone to take the family picture of us and it is so great!  Love this group and the feelings I have when we are in Temple Square being reminded that families can be together forever.

Christmas Snow Walk!

I took Ulli out for a spin while everyone enjoyed their Christmas presents some more.  I finally tackled the driveway around 4pm while Kyle was whipping up some Prime Rib for dinner.  We probably got a foot after it snowed all night and day-what a special first Christmas in our new house with all our old stuff and our new puppy!

Christmas Morning!!

We wrapped the kids into their rooms last night before heading to bed and I actually woke up around 7!!  The kids said they had all been up since 6-but that's fine by me!!  I'm so glad they aren't waking up at 11pm with the Christmas jitters anymore!!  Look at those happy faces!  Everyone checked out what Santa brought them and then we had our favorite Pillsbury cinnamon and orange rolls with sausage for breakfast.

I asked everyone to get dressed before we opened anymore presents and everyone seemed to cooperate!  Such a refreshing change from previous Christmases where it was tired kids and over stimulation all day LONG!  Maybe the beautiful snow falling and covering the ground had a calming effect on us all!  We enjoyed the fireplace and just hung out!  I let the kids play their new video games while Kyle took a nap on my shoulder and I figured out how to work my new Apple Watch!

Christmas is Exhausting!

This morning I got the kids to help wrap all my presents for Kyle, then I wrapped most of theirs.  After that we went skiing at Nordic for 2 hours for $250 (skiing is so expensive when you don't have a season pass)!  Dinner was our traditional raclette meal with so many toppings and cheese!  We tried to do it the Swedish way this time and melt the cheese and just pour it on top of the potatoes and toppings.  I'm beat already and now Kyle, Ava and I are watching A Christmas Story!

Close Up!

Ulli's face is so adorable-and looks bigger to me!

Trip to Lowes!

After the sing along and some hang time with a friend in the slippery parking lot, I ran home and picked up Ulli for his training session at Lowes.  He did great even though everything was extremely new to him.  He was timid as we sat in the doorway and watched the auto doors and open and close as the numerous amount of shoppers walked in and out!

Christmas Sing Along!

Ben's grade sang Sleigh Ride and snapped this picture of him and his buddies in their pj's afterwards.

Norah sang Up on the Housetop and then posed with her teacher afterwards.

Jack and the sixth grade stole the show with another great rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas with Jack on the glockenspeil.

So Many Walks!

It was a beautiful day for a walk in our neighborhood and the National Park next door to us.  I walked the park with my friend for an hour and then came home and walked this pooch!  I am wiped out, but the scenery was amazing!

Fondue!!

For the second week of Advent, Kyle decided to delight our senses with a fabulous fondue!!  We used our electric fondue pot for the first course since we forgot to buy the sternos for the traditional pot.  Our main course was a cheese fondue with some amazing crusty bread and fruits for dipping!  It took us so long to deliver some of the goodies, Kyle and the boys came home and got things started without the girls and we ended up finally eating at 8pm!

Round 2!

I got the kids to help me box of these amazing treats, and it went so much faster!!

The Eagle Magic Bars, Jam Thumbprint Cookies, Gooey Cookie Bars, MnM Pretzels and Oreo Peppermint Bark Fudge made for an amazing presentation in this box I found on Amazon, but the printed kraft-colored envelopes and jute tying our Christmas card to the box was the cherry on top!  It felt good to get back into the swing of our Christmas traditions.

Christmas Pooch!

Kyle snapped this picture of Ulli and it turned out so great with his red ball and the Christmas tree in the background.

Getting Huge! Not Really.

When we got home from skiing today we though Ulli looked a little bigger so we snapped some pictures of this smiley boy!

He is in the 60's now with his weight and still has a touch of his puppy coat around his shoulders.  He is growing up so fast!

Round 1!

When your list of people to deliver Christmas goodies to is super long and some of those people are heading out town in a few days, you whip up some favorites (peanut blossoms, fudge and egg nog snickerdoodles) and deliver them!  We had the kids walk the boxes up to the doors to avoid extended conversations that are fun, but time consuming!  After the kids went to Kyle and I took two hours to deliver two boxes!

Ava's Team Photo

Ava is in the front row and all the ninth graders in the second row.  Good picture of a good player with a good season!

Admitted

Ben was finally admitted and him and I hung out in his room on the pediatric floor until Kyle got there at about 2 am straight from the airport with some clean clothes he bought at Walmart in Bountiful.  Ben had been given some medicine to relax him during the CT scan and was pretty out of it, making it a little easier to sleep in spite of the tubes and IV (to be admitted to the hospital you have to have an IV).

I stayed the night in the bed next to Ben while Kyle went home to be with the other kids who had been home alone since I left Thursday night at 5:45.  Ava got a ride home from a friend around 10pm, about an hour and a half after I asked Jack to put himself and Norah to bed.  It was a miracle everyone was taken care of so well with only one parent and a kid in the ER!

Throughout the night Ben's monitors would start beeping indicated his numbers were off.  Because of the meds, Ben didn't wake up inspite of the struggle breathe, but I was wide awake watching him sputter and sit up like a zombie!  It was a bad night, but in the morning, the steroids had begum to work and Ben was recovering as quickly as he declined!

The on call pediatrician came and checked on us around 9am after a big breakfast.  There was a cart that made it's way to our room and gave Ben some fun parting gifts that he was thrilled with-most notable was the Hershey bar and the dog blanket.  Some friends from our neighborhood had come and given Ben a blessing around 11pm since Kyle was not in town and actually went to the clinic and drove our car to the hospital as well.  Thanks to them, Ben and I left around 10:30 in the and met Kyle at discount tire in Ogden to drop off the Audi! 

X-Ray Time

The dr. was thinking through possible causes for Ben's quick decline and ordered x-rays of both his lungs and neck.  It took some to get the results and in the mean time the dr left and was replaced by another.  The new dr seemed less than excited to be working on Ben and was even more annoyed when Kyle called with some questions from Denver and was on speaker phone talking to the dr about why our 7 year needed a CT scan.

In the end we went ahead with the CT scan and found that Ben's airway was constricted at one point to about 25% capacity.  For some reason the virus that causes Croup (parainfluenza) was really wreaking havoc on Ben's system in spite of his age.  The x-rays and the CT scan ruled out any inflammation in the epiglottis and any masses in Ben's throat.  All we could do now was wait for the steroids to kick in and monitor Ben until he was able to breath easily on his own.

Need Air

When we got to hospital, there was no waiting, Ben was gurney-ed to the first room in the hall and administered to immediately.  The dr. and EMT doubted the epiglottitis theory, but ordered an epinephrine breathing treatment to get Ben relaxed and hopefully allow him to breathe easier!  They also gave him some crushed up steroids that would take about 5 hours to kick in. 

After the epinephrine treatment was over and Ben seemed to be able to breathe with less effort, the nurse set Ben up with an oxygen tube that forced air into his lungs through his nose.  Because Ben is so young, the tube wasn't fitting great and made it really hard for Ben to relax and feel comfortable.  He was so exhausted, he looked very sickly!

Bad News

When Ben didn't respond to the breathing treatment and became even more agitated, the dr. made a call to the pediatric ENT on call.  She came back into the room and said I wasn't going to like the answer she got!  She said we needed to take a ride to the hospital in an ambulance!  She was extremely worried that Ben had epiglottitis, a condition that causes the epiglottis to swell and block the flow of air into his lungs.  If this happened while I was driving to the ER it would be life threatening.  We really needed to be under medical supervision until Ben could be treated in the ER.

The ride to the hospital felt long, but was uneventful!  The EMT was surprised we were in the ambulance at all considering how well Ben appeared.  The only reason Ben's blood was oxygenated, though, was thanks to his shear effort!  Ben was muscling that air down to his lungs and he had been doing it for hours at this point!  We weren't sure why he was struggling so much, but were in the place where we could find out!  It was about 7:30 at this point and Ben was beat!  Poor guy! 

Ava and I left our car in the parking lot of the urgent care and rode in the ambulance with Ben.  We figured we could Uber back to the car later when Ben was doing better.

Back At The Dr.

Ben seems to have gotten worse through the course of the day and in 8 hours has actually started struggling for breath.  He was really agitated about an hour ago when his fever spiked and he kept feeling like he couldn't breathe.  His stomach was really working as he gulped for air.

My friend who is a nurse was bringing us dinner and took one look at Ben and was concerned.  She cautioned me as I headed out to pick up Ava with Ben.  We stopped at the Valley Market pharmacy where we tried to convince our friend the pharmacist to give us some albuterol for the nebulizer.  He said the clinic wouldn't give us the prescription.  Ben stumbled in from the car and Carter thought he looked bad.  He thought it would be a good idea to take him back to the clinic and have him rechecked.

We headed back through the canyon and had to stop once when Ben was really agitated about struggling to breath.  I got out of the car and tried to comfort him.  We sped to the clinic and while sitting in the waiting room, Ben got really upset.  They finally got us into a room and gave Ben a breathing treatment.  He was really laboring at this point and the dr. noted how dramatically he had gone downhill since this morning.

Sick!

These two didn't seem quite right today, so we skipped school and headed into the urgent care.  Kyle is still out of town until tonight, which made things tricky this morning, but I managed to get everyone to school and head through the canyon to the Ogden Clinic.  We were there early enough to avoid a super long wait and were able to see the pediatrician luckily.

Norah has a sinus infection while Ben has a virus that was needing some symptom treatment.  We headed home with an antibiotic for Norah and some OTC meds for Ben including saline solution for his nose and a humidifier.  Neither seemed too bent out of shape about missing school and hanging at home with me and Ulli.

Nice Drive!

This was taken as I was driving over the divide into Ogden to pick up Jack from basketball practice.  It was so clear and beautiful, I loved seeing the sun over the mountains!

Snow Everyday!

It has been snowing a bunch this week-seems like it hasn't stopped since we got home a week and a half ago!  Kyle is out of town now, I've been managing ok with the snowblower now that it's been repaired.  I think I cleared the driveway three times yesterday!  So much powder!!

Ballerz!

Tonight the boys played a fun game of indoor basketball on their mini hoop in the gameroom.  Ben was new Lakers and Jack was old Lakers, it was an awesome match that Jack came away winning. SO much fun to have enough space and the toys to do something like this!  We all sat on the bean bags and watched the boys go to town!

The Tree IS UP!!!

We haven't seen these decorations for two years now and haven't had a Christmas in a house of our own in just as long!  Putting up the tree today with the kids was fast and fun!  So many helpers meant the tree, ornaments, mirror garland and lights were all put up with ease!  It was fun to hear everyone ooh and ahh over everything they had missed! 

JIM!!!

Kyle and I scored second row seats at Vivint in SLC to our favorite comedian tonight!  It was such a funny show, and being so close was awesome-we felt like total VIP's!

He Loves Snow!!

Since getting home it really feels like winter AND like Christmas!  We had our first snow of the season back in October, but we got over a foot yesterday!  Ulli loves to be in the snow and enjoy the cold weather!

Splat!

Ulli has been showing more Berner traits these days, like this Berner splat!  Love it and love those new Lakers shirts we ordered before we left and arrived while we were gone along with some snow!

Bigger Than Ever!

A week away from Ulli and we didn’t know what to expect.  We figured he’d be in good hands kenneling with his trainer, but what surprised us was how much this puppy grew while we were away—59 pounds (a 7 pound gain in 10 days) of freshly washed-fluffiness!  He did great and was thrilled to see us—so glad he didn’t forget us.  He was a bit of handful riding excitedly in the passenger seat back to the house—you could tell he was just as anxious to get back to the comforts of home!

Gross!

We took great care in bringing back these chocolate disks from our chocolate making excursion in Cozumel.  Back in the winter weather of the Northern Utah mountains, we decided to waste no time melting these disks down into some Mexican drinking chocolate…what a disaster.  We’re not sure what went wrong, but these prized chocolate disks and our cups full of Mayan chocolate failure went straight in the garbage…sad.

The Wait is Over

Jack’s new team has been awesome.  Winning record.  Fun, tight knit group of boys. Short commute.  But, man, did it take a long time to get Jack a uniform!  Well, the wait was over, as Jack donned the storied “Komenda” name on his basketball jersey for the first time tonight after a full day of travel home from Miami and back out to the fairgrounds!

Seriously!

We enjoyed our free breakfast at the hotel and made our way back to the rooms to get ready for the beach!  We were right across the street and were excited to actually swim in the water after just walking next to it yesterday.

Ben and Kyle stayed in the hotel for about 45 minutes working, while the rest of the kids and myself went down to the beach.  They were playing with a ball we had bought at beach shop after breakfast.  There were schools of fish swimming in the shallow water near the shore and the kids kept trying to touch them.

When Ben and Kyle showed up Ben immediately ran into the water with Jack and then both immediately ran back out.  Ben was smiling, Jack was sobbing.  It took us a minute to realize what had happened, Jack was stung by a jellyfish!

We had seen a jellyfish in the water yesterday in the same exact spot as we were swimming today and could not believe the bad luck Jack had getting stung!  I took him back to the hotel and asked at the front desk if there was anything they had on hand to treat the sting.  They suggested peeing on the stings.

I thought getting a second gelato in two hours and swimming in the empty pool was a much better idea.  Jack was back to himself by the time the gelato was gone and the other kids showed up to swim with him about 25 minutes later.

We enjoyed our private rooftop pool with a view of the ocean for awhile and then ordered some very overpriced appetizers from the restaurant below.  Dinner was at Shake Shack and then we walked back to the hotel sipping on tasty Holiday flavored shakes!

Kyle and I snuck out again at night and found a store to buy some souvenirs for Christmas presents for the kids that they had liked at the store we visited after breakfast.  We felt so sneaky, especially when our carry-ons got flagged because of our jellyfish encased in glass!

Miami Date Night

With the kids in bed in their hotel rooms, we lounged by the pool and dreamt of our next cruise vacation.  And with Black Friday deals (and free cancellations) abounding that weekend, couldn’t help ourselves in planning our next tropical getaway.

Going Ashore

When we planned our cruise, we struggled with figuring out what we would do with the Sunday we had in Miami.  Given that no churches were nearby (and we had on church clothes), we decided to make the best of it with a “nature walk” down the beach.  How naïve.  The only nature we experienced in South Beach was the rampant nudity and debauchery of the scantily clad sunbathers.  We cut the “nature walk” short and headed for some authentic Cuban food at a nearby eatery—delicioso.

Farewell Cruise!

Our last day on the boat entailed a workout at the gym, some movie watching in our cabins, some swimming in the pool, lunch at O'Sheehans, an escape room activity, a flag knowledge competition, dinner at the Italian buffet, the grand finale show with all the dancers and actors and of course dessert!!  We had been meaning to take the kids to the bakery every day of the cruise, but never managed to until tonight.  The cupcakes were a little dry, but it was ok with us!