Ew.

So, Brandon started complaining about a smell coming from our room a few weeks ago. I didn't really smell it, but then I started to. It smelled like someone hid a poopy diaper in our room months ago. So I started hunting around. I concluded that the smell was coming from our closet. I assumed that it was somebody's shoes. So Brandon's tennis shoes that he's had since bootcamp went outside. But the smell stayed. Then the other day Henry was in our closet and got into this travel bag thing that we use when we go on road trip to put snacks in. I wondered...so I checked it out, and found a half a loaf of banana bread that had been in there since CHRISTMAS. Gross, gross, gross. The weird thing was, it that it still looked pretty normal. No mold or anything. But the middle looked kind of shriveled. The scientist in me almost wanted to slice the thing open and see what was inside. But instead I threw it out and put the travel bag that also reeked outside to air out. Next time, that thing is getting checked and double checked when we get home from a trip.

What a weekend...

So it's been pretty stressful around here the last couple of weeks, Brandon's had tests and projects and papers galore and I've been with the kids 24/7. We did manage to go on a date, but we went to dinner with some of our Chinese friends, who took us to a Hot Pot restaurant, where they serve meat and veggies. Not my fare right now. So I spent parts of it trying to not vomit. Anyways, my neighbor, Deena suggested that we go get manicures and pedicures soon since the weather was getting better and we would (hopefully) soon be wearing sandals. (no such luck, it snowed on Saturday) So I asked Brandon, ever so nicely, if I could maybe get a massage too. He one-upped my of course. (He loves to do that!) We went online to the spa website, and he picked out the biggest package they had, which included: a 1 hour massage, a European facial, a spa Paraffin pedicure, and some sort of scalp treatment. He also told me that I could come home afterward and take a nap. I think that getting a massage or anything like that done early in the day then coming home to fight with your kids is somewhat counter productive.

I was so excited for my Saturday (yes, the day it snowed) spa day! I left the house and 9:40, kissing my kids and husband good-bye, and headed off for my "me-day". I spent 4 1/2 luxurious hours at the spa getting pampered, then I picked up some Arby's (one of my favs right now) and a milkshake for Brandon, and headed home to take my nap.

Then the trouble started. Halfway through my nap Brandon busts into our room and says, "Henry's puking". Great. I'd like to mention that Brandon does not deal with vomit well. Usually, if someone it vomiting, he vacates pronto. If it's me, he'll yell from our bedroom door while I'm in the back in the bathroom, asking if I need anything. Heaven forbid someday I do, and he has to come back there.

So I go back to Henry's room to survey the damage. It looked horrible. Now, I'm still in the nauseous stage of pregnancy, so things that wouldn't normally phase me make me run for the toilet. This was one of them. The thing is, is that one of us had to man a bucket for Henry, (he won't puke in the toilet) and the other had to clean his bed with the huge pile of grossness. I don't know what Brandon fed him, but apparently he stuck the rest of the cookies I had made, along with other various sweets during the day. Brandon thought that was probably why he was sick. So I had bucket detail and Brandon cleaned the bed.

Usually when Henry is sick, we put the mats we use for under their chairs at the dinner table (our table is on carpet) and lay him on the couch (thank goodness we have leather) and he watched movies while I hover, waiting. Luckily Henry gives me at least one cough before he vomits, so I can get there. So we did this for a few hours, (kind of) fed Haylie some dinner, and put her to bed. Now, the thing that makes me really sick when I'm pregnant is having an empty stomach, and I didn't feel like cooking, so I sent Brandon out for some mexi-fries and a slurpee. Around 9, we hear Haylie coughing, and my worst fears are realized. My 19 month old is having her first bout of the flu. Luckily, Henry is asleep and is mostly only dry heaving by this point, so Brandon can handle that. I now get to hold Haylie on my lap and hold the bucket for her. It's so sad when a kid pukes for the first time. They don't know what's going on, and it scares them. So she's crying and trying to push the bucket away. Oh, and she doesn't give me a cough or two before she blows, she just blows. But since I have the reflexes of a panther, I managed to not get vomited on.

So this is how our night goes. And early morning. Basically everyone except Henry pulled an all-nighter. The next morning, Brandon snoozed on the couch and I got to sleep in our bed for a little while. When I woke up around 10, guess what? I was sick. Wonderful. Luckily the kids slept most of the day, because I would have felt so bad if Brandon had to catch vomit for all of us. So much for my relaxing weekend.

But, we're all better now (I hope). Somehow, Brandon has not caught it yet, and we are praying that he doesn't. Haylie is still asleep at 9:30 in the morning. I'm hoping she's just catching up on her beauty sleep. I am so looking forward to dealing with things like this for years to come...

New Beginnings

This month is a big month for us here in the Allen home. Brandon starts a new semester with the hardest Chinese class he's ever taken. Henry starts Primary! (I would like to apologize to his teachers ahead of time) And Miss Haylie starts Nursery. Now Brandon and I will actually have to pay attention in class! J/k, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm the only one who isn't starting something new. Maybe I'll take up pottery or something in my spare time (haha).

I'm so excited to be done with last year, it was not the best year of my life and I'm ready to start fresh and see what tomorrow brings. That sounds so cheesy, but it's true. Brandon and I have been discussing options for after he graduates. We're looking at the NSA, and possibly him getting his PhD. I think he may be a little burnt out on school right now so I think the only way he'll do the PhD is if the NSA offers to pay for it. Everything is kind of up in the air right now, but we're using this time to enjoy each other and enjoy Brandon being home more, even if he does have a lot of homework most of the time. That's all I've got for right now...

Called

So, being that we're in a new ward, we've been waiting for our callings since early September. We found out that our Ward has a major shortages in nursery staff, probably due to the fact that they are only allowed to call women. Anyways, Brandon and I got to sub in nursery a two weeks ago, and later that week, I got a call from the Bishop's clerk to arrange a meeting between myself and the Bishop. Also, a few weeks before that I hear the Ward Nursery Leader saying that she's going to be released soon. Awesome. So I totally go to this meeting thinking that I'm going to be called as the new Nursery Leader, and I'm called as...RS Missionary Committee Member. At first I am so relieved. Now I'm nervous. I am not a good missionary. I'm totally the person who figures they must have left the Church for good reason (not really) and who am I to bug them relentlessly? So obviously this is a calling that I need to help me be a better missionary and I'm looking forward to it, but I think it may just be a bigger challenge than nursery would have been. We'll see...

Reality

The kids and I are driving up to Washington tomorrow. I've never not wanted to go and right now I can't even explain how much I don't want to go. I think it's because every time I go back it makes it more real. The reality that she won't be there to greet us when we park in the driveway. My step-dad is going to be in Pullman for the WSU homecoming game so he won't be there when we get there. Maybe that's better. Maybe I can still just pretend that she's at the store, which is what my subconscious has kind of been doing ever since it happened.

I'm going home to do a job. Her things need to be gone through and her rooms cleared out. To make room I guess. Room for what? For who? Why does her space need to be filled up so soon? I guess if it were my house, I would probably leave her room the way it is forever. Or at least a long time. I guess I'm just not ready because I feel that when her stuff is all gone, then she'll be gone too. There won't be any place I can go and smell her, or see her things, just as she left them. I mean, why am I even going? It's not like I can fit into her clothes anyways. I don't want them. But I do. I want to take all of them so that they won't get scattered to the wind. Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe if it were up to me I wouldn't have let them harvest her organs because I wanted to keep her whole. We just watched Snow White the other day and I think if I could have I would have stolen her away and put her in a glass coffin because she was that beautiful to me.

It makes me so mad. That she's gone, that "she wouldn't have wanted" to have a headstone for me to cry over. Well I want a headstone. Since all of her things are being packed or given away, I want a place to go to think of her, to cry over her, and to show my kids. I don't care what "she wouldn't have wanted". She never told me these things. That's me being selfish again. I feel like I'm losing her all over again when I think about it. So I don't. But this trip home is forcing me to think about it. To dream about it when I don't want to. I don't want to go home. I'm not ready to end this chapter in my life. The chapter on my mother. But everyone else seems to be ready, and so tomorrow morning I'll pack the kids up in the van and head home.

It's been awhile....

This summer has been crazy for us. Shortly after my last post, the kids and went to Washington to visit my family and to attend my cousin's wedding on June 27. The visit was great at first, the kids and my mom and I went up to our family's cabin on Lake Coeur d'Alene and spent an entire week there. The weather wasn't the best, we only got one beach day, but it was so nice and peaceful just to have some quiet time without having to do all the normal daily stuff. The kids were absolutely filthy the entire time, and since there's no bathtub at the cabin, just a shower, they got to take baths in the sink. They had a blast and got to have so much needed Mimi time. From the day my kids were born, my mother's heart has been broken because we didn't live close, so getting to spend an entire week uninterrupted with her only grandbabies was wonderful for her. We came back on Saturday to spend some time with my dad, since it was Father's Day weekend. Then we went back to my mom's on Sunday night. The week started off pretty normal, then suddenly, very early Wednesday morning, my mother passed away. The doctors still haven't told us what actually happened, her death report just says that she died of natural causes. We found out that she did have atherosclorosis, which is hardening of the arteries. There was no way to know, because she didn't have any symptoms, but apparently heart disease runs in my family, so that's great. We ended up staying in Washington for almost a month, Brandon flew in to be with us. Then we came back to Utah to pack up our house.

We decided to movefrom Lehi to Provo to be closer to campus, and because rent was too expensive. We figured it would be easier for one of us to take the kids away for awhile and the other would stay in Utah and pack up the house, so since I really, really needed a break, Brandon took the kids to Arizona for 10 days and I got to stay home alone and pack.

Since heart disease runs, in my family, I decided to go get my cholesterol checked and get some other tests done. Turns out my cholesterol is off the charts, so I also used the time that Brandon and the kids were gone to go on a major diet. I lost 15 lbs!

So now we're renting a 3 bedroom apartment, and as weird as it sounds, I like it better than our house in Lehi. It's a much better layout, the kids are at the other end of the apartment from our bedroom and the living room, so we can watch movies at night without worrying about waking them up. And there's a random door that we can close if their rooms are messy so we don't have to see the mess! I've been trying much harder since we've moved here to be a better mom and housewife. I've been trying to keep on top of picking up after the kids, and even trying to make healthier meals. We try to go on daily walks with our new neighbor. Our ward has a walking group, but we can't do it every day because the don't leave until 9 and they take anywhere from 2-3 hours. But we try to do it a couple of days a week.

Brandon and I are also trying to get up early and actually make and eat breakfast together, I don't love it, but I'm trying to get my workout done in the morning so that I can be done with it.

So that was our summer, and I'm going to try to post regularly on this thing, but you never know if it's actually going to happen.

Hide and Seek

We played Hide and Seek with Henry for the first time this last Monday for FHE. We started off with just one of us hiding and the other helping Henry find them. He wasn't really getting it. When Brandon would hide I would day "where's Daddy?" and Henry would reply "I don't know. He went to school" and when I would hide he just had no idea. (because Mommy is never gone) Anyways, so it's finally his turn to hide, and as soon as I come out and say "where's Henry" he jumps out and says "I'm right here!" We'll have work on this game....