Sincerelly Disappointed

Well, I can't believe it, but Doug won the drawing contest. I am outraged at the lack of votes for the turkey vs. Indian contest. The story behind it was much funnier if you were there, but I always draw something on my white board calendar for that month: a flower, leaves, jack-o-lantern, etc. I tried to draw a cooked turkey, but it didn't turn out so I went with the Indian drawing and was quite pleased with myself. I drew Doug's attention to it and started to say, "Did you see my...?" And I busted out laughing as I saw his very detailed version of a live turkey. He laughed and said, "Yes. Did you see my turkey?" So we decided to take it to the streets to see whose was better, but due to lack of participation, I'm calling it a draw.

My camera battery died and I left my charger in Indi - so I have NO pictures from Thanksgiving! or Doug's stepsister Brighton's wedding or reception!! I am so upset, but we had such a great week attending the wedding events and Brighton was so beautiful of course and her dress was the most gorgeous I have ever seen. No lie. Also, Doug and West attended a Jazz game with the boys while I saw Twilight with the girls again - better the second time, if you can believe it. So I have a lack of pictures until I receive my charger, but here are some from Lisa's blessing that I haven't posted yet.














And I caught Weston at a later point looking in on the girls in their pack n play and he was talking in a really high pitched voice. I was confused and said, "What are you doing, Weston?" He quickly walked away, embarrassed that he got caught. Then I realized he was just imitating how we all talk to the babies in our higher pitched baby voices! I was laughing so hard and I think he was a little mad at me.















This is Weston's newfound idol, Uncle Adam. He followed Adam everywhere. About a week later, I was talking to Lisa on the phone and Weston heard me say, "Adam". To which his response was, "Ada?" and reached for the phone. At least, now Ada sounds more like Adam and not dada. But car is ca, ball, balloon, and bath are all ba, bottle is now bobble and not ba-ba, and biper is diaper. I bet your kids told you they were stinky, not that they need a diaper change. "Outside" sounds like scooby doo's version "outride", and a "ride" that can be confusing.

Twilight, of course, What else is going on in our lives of importance?

Today, Doug and I walked past a couple making out in their car. Full on, making out, I tell you. I said, "I can't believe they are doing that in broad daylight!" Doug: "I know, they should at least wait until twilight." He thinks he's funny.... and so do I.

Don't read if you haven't seen it! But I don't intend on revealing much anyway. I went last night with my old ward to Twilight. I saw the best shirt: My heart belongs to my husband, but my neck belongs to Edward. I didn't think I liked that much, but then Lisa called me today and we were swooning and laughing and loving it all over again and I realized I did really like it. They left out a couple important (to me) plot elements that I was disappointed about and they could have left out a couple cheesy parts and I thought the diamonds on the skin was REALLY creepy. It bugged. Anyway, I can't wait for the other movies and I'll probably buy this one when it comes out and I want to know what you thought?? Let's be honest, whether I liked it or not, I still walked away daydreaming about Edward didn't I?






Here is some of the crew with the fake cast, I am a nerd. I was really embarrassed to get my pic taken with them, but I wouldn't leave without doing it.

I know, Weston, I know. Three hours of church is WAY too long for me, too.
















A Thanksgiving Poll

Whose chicken scratch drawing is a better representation of Thanksgiving and who is the artist behind each drawing, me or Doug? In case you can't tell, that's an Indian, or Native American, if you will, and the other is a turkey. There is, of course, a great story behind these pictures, but in order to prevent any bias in the poll, I will wait until the results are in to disclose it. See to the right to vote >>>

A Terrifying Tiny Ninja & all his Halloween activities

Tiny ninja in a swing.... We were at a trunk or treat for Lisa's ward in Indi and there were two brothers in the swings next to us laughing and joking. Weston, being the social laugher that he is, started laughing also.









Tiny Ninja relaxing on a tiny couch.
Tiny Ninja next a big witch at Gardner's Village.
Tiny Ninja with some friends at Gardner's Village. We had so much fun, I took Doug back later.









Tiny Ninja giving out candy to trick or treaters with his Uncle Adam, whom he lovingly nicknamed "dada" since his own DaDa was not with us. He followed Adam around the whole time we were there. He loved putting the candy in their bags, and even tried to walk out the door to give them more.

























Tired Tiny Ninja after a fun-filled day at Gardner's Village with friends.









My favorite witch at Gardner's Village - get a witch in an outhouse? Witchy Poo? Hehe happy way belated halloween. Sorry for the delay - I am officially sick and Weston is getting a molar in so I think I'm perfectly justified for being a blogging slacker :)











And lastly, here are sweet Claire and Afton in their Halloween get-ups.

A little bit of random

Hey! Yes I'm back from Indi from visiting my lovelies, my nieces. They are such good babies - I was so impressed. The schedule is so rough on Lisa and she is so strong and I love them all and miss them all so much! I want to go back next week and the week after boo. I took lots of pics and I will post them and halloween excitement of my little ninja as soon as I can - but right now I just need to stop looking at a McDonalds' post - it's making me queasy as we speak to think about.

Happy Birthday last monday to Krissy Poo - that Kristen Michelle - Weston had one job in the party preparations and that was to decorate the cake. He didn't do such a hot job. Don't worry I will never attempt to decorate a cake again. Not to mention how did I overcook my specialty Texas Sheet Cake? Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Texas Sheet Cake, the secret is to put the frosting on while it's hot so that the frosting melts into the cake and it's not so much a cake but buttery chocolatey heaven in your mouth. Only I didn't wait long enough to put my ugly handwriting on the cake Thanks a lot Sandra Lee for cake decorating tips that didn't work so well. Ridiculous I'm so embarrassed.









Guess who else is back?! Ronny and Kristen! That's Aaron and Kristen - I'm so happy their blog is back because if you missed her specialty of costumes for CoCo and Lucy you are missing out! Kristen is crazy creative and I can't wait until she dresses her kids up. It will be ridiculous.


A few pictures to pacify you until I can regain my energy and take on a halloween post.
Funny Face Afton - She makes me laugh so hard









Claire asleep on Uncle Ronny









What I learned from my trip to Indi with Lisa:

1) These twins do NOT make you not want to have more kids.
2) I want to more like my sister - sappy I know - but she is ridiculously amazing. I love the Esplins - even you Adam!

We Need Your Help...

We only have about a week left to win the million folks. Doug and I have gone to Mickey D's three times in the last month, which is three more times than we'd like to admit. It has been awful. Only three times and we're completely sick of it. So we're relying on you to do the rest of the work. Here is what we need:

$50 - Water Works
$100 - Mediterranean Ave
$500 - Short Line Railroad
$1000 - Vermont Ave
$5000 - Tennessee Ave
$25,000 - Ventnor Ave
$50,000 - Pennsylvania Ave
$ 1 million - Boardwalk

That's right, most of these, we only need one! And we realize how much time and greasy calories we have wasted upon discovering you can play online without purchase, so that is Doug's job while I'm gone in Indi visiting the girls this week. I know most of you are cringing at the fact we even went once, I am too. But it was the only justification we could come up with for eating out. I know, sad. In fact, when I suggested other options for eating, Doug replied, "That depends, is that place an investment for our future?" He won the argument, but I can only eat a McDonalds' chicken sandwich so many times in my lifetime. We still have a few years left of school here, folks, so we're banking on winning the million. We'll even offer you .01% of our winnings. I'm not sure what that calculates out to be, but I'm sure it's such a small amount we can afford it.

I'm off to Indi for a week so I'll miss you all and have plenty of pictures to post when I return!

Westsiiiiide

I mentioned all my worries and woes a few posts ago and Heavenly Father kindly swept them out the window for me, just because I asked. He is so good to me :)

I dread the scopes that West has to undergo. Some images will never leave my mind and somethings just never get easier. One is anytime you have to STARVE your baby for a stupid miserable procedure and another is anytime you see your child lose consciousness for the stupid, miserable procedure. He just cries and I can hear his cries echo in the mask they put over his face and tears running down the sides of his face, wondering why I'm not protecting him. :( frowny face is what those days are like.

Weston was such a trooper this time! He did not even cry until the dreaded mask came out. He did the cutest thing though: he saw the blood pressure machine and crawled into my lap because he was scared! It was pretty funny. I prayed all morning that his tonsils had gone down and that the scope would go well. I was kicking myself for not having Doug give him a blessing the night before, just to aid in our prayers.

Dr. Book came out a half hour later, which already was good news, meaning they didn't have to do any injections and we didn't have to stay the night. I wanted to kiss her ha! Then she gave the best news of all, which I'll get to. She said his stomach (the first picture) is completely healed from all his bleeding. The big funky vein could possibly have a clot, which is why it is so big and funky ( you can see it best from the fourth picture). She didn't want to inject it with chemicals and aggravate it into bleeding. However, she said there a few vessels that have grown on top of it and that is how the blood is continuing to flow and operate and all that good stuff.
















Then, the best part: "This is the first time I have felt that he is going to be okay." I asked about his tonsils and she said they had gone down, so she saw no need to take them out and that the EBV (the virus) looked as though it was leaving his body. I told her it was definitely the first time I had heard it! I mean the problems that he has been having are minor in comparison, but that doesn't mean they haven't been a thorn in all our sides. I am so grateful our prayers were answered and we have a healthy, fun boy!

My Mommy & Me














I found these cute pics on Kristen's camera after Weston's transplant. I almost cried. I'm always behind the camera trying to capture how cute he is, so I really have hardly any pictures of Weston and me. Oh I love him and I love who he makes me try to be. A friend told me that she loved her son beyond anything she could imagine and she thought I must love Weston more. I told her I don't think it's possible to love your children more because that love DEMANDS us to give all of ourselves to them, but I HOPE I appreciate him more because of what we've been through.

Once Upon a Friday Night...

Most of you who live in UT have shown on your blogs picturesque views of your homes as the pure white snow coated your lawns over the weekend. Well, we didn't even get a very good snow, where the branches hang so low from the weight and it looks like a winter wonderland in the middle of October. No, here by the East bench even, it was just a wet, cold snow that didn't cover everything. So Doug and I started to stress slightly. What are we going to do now that we can't go for as long walks as we did or go to the park? We live in an apartment, for heaven's sake so it gets really cramped anyways. And we can't afford to go to Applebee's every night, we're not billionaires (I watch too much TV, Kath & Kim).

Well, Thursday night, a stroke of genius visited me as Doug was mentally cursing Weston for hitting a secret combination on our remote and we couldn't get the closed caption off. Most of you who know Doug probably look at the following pictures and think, yes, that sounds like something Doug would do. Maybe he's just rubbing off on me, but I needed to keep Weston happy while Doug attempted to fix the CC problem (which the next day I had to call panasonic, then the cable company for assistance and it really was a secret combination to fix). So I made a small fort out of pillows. The next night, as the cold front crept in, I asked Doug if he would like to join Weston and me in building an even BIGGER fort! He said yes and this came about:
This is the masterpiece we created out of the love seat cushion, pillows and blankets. Our couch and love seat came with about thirty-seven pillows so it worked out perfectly.
I'm sorry for ALL the pictures - this was just so funny. Weston was in fits of laughter all night. Because we push him out and say, "Get out of my fort! No Weston's allowed!" & such clever stuff.










































We took turns being on the inside. Another appropriate title for this post could be attack of the killer Weston. Once he saw I had the camera, he turned on me.




















This particular picture is of his "charge" face. He was on a rampage, in a good way, and was breathing really heavily through his teeth.


I love this picture, but I couldn't get it to rotate and I have far more important things to do with my time.



In summary, I guess we'll just have to be more creative this winter!

I never thought any joy could compare to being a mom, until I became an aunt.

Dear Afton & Claire,

I can't wait to meet you both! I love you so much already. I can't wait to see the wrinkly lines of skin around your bony knees and see you stretch out your itsy-bitsy baby toes. I want to smell your head and kiss your tiny noses. I want to feel your little fingers wrap around just one of mine. I want to hold you until my arm falls off. I am so excited you are here and for Weston to come tease you all the time like an older boy cousin is supposed to do. May you love your sister as much as I love all of mine.
Love, Aunt Stef

P.S. I will always have gum. (Just like Monica on Friends)

Mama and Babies are doing great. I can't wait to not only see thousands more pictures , but to also take some with them at the end of the month. Doug is trying his darndest to hold me off, but these two make me long for a little girl. Lisa does have two, so maybe I'll just tuck one in on my way home. I only hope if I do have a little girl someday in the far far future, she is half as pretty as these lovelies! We love you Lisa and Adam and we are so so happy for you extending your family and now you will know what true love is. I have thought I always knew who I was in this life, until I became a mother and realized one of the biggest reason I wanted to come here was so I could be a mother. It brought tears to my eyes as Lisa told me about the whole experience because Doug and I talked about it as she was in labor - about how excited we were and are for Lisa and Adam to experience this. Words fail to define.










"You were made perfectly
to be loved - and surely
I have loved you, in the idea of you,
my whole life long." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If I want to

Because I have nothing really to blog about lately and I want to do a post, here I go. Not much has been going on lately. A few sleepless nights as of late. Weston has this fascination with his ears so I thought he had an ear infection. Fifteen bucks for a pediatrician to tell me he didn't have one. On the bright side, the doctor did want me to email him ?? His 6 year old has a lump in his neck and mri's and ultrasounds are struggling to reveal what it is. His wife is creating a medical home group where we can report different symptoms for kids with various diseases. So for example, all the liver patients can be in contact with each other and say, "my son won't eat and seems uncomfortable." And I can say, "Oh, he has EBV, my son did the same thing and now we are on an antiviral med." I just love modern medicine. I don't love staying at the hospital, but I am so grateful for the advances that have come about. Especially with my new twin cousins Lauren and Dianna that came over two months early and are doing so wonderfully. Did you know the first liver transplant wasn't until the 80's? If most of us had been born with Biliary Atresia, there wouldn't have been anything they could do! I still have a hard time grasping the concept that my mom had SIX healthy kids!

Weston goes in for a scope next week. And they will probably keep a close eye on anything that may be causing these earaches and headaches that he has. They may have to inject chemicals for his veins depending on how they look. This is what they said about his MRI:
"I don't know how the blood is flowing everywhere. He had two veins that clotted and now one has unclotted, but still has the issue of the one. Somehow, the veins are doing a good job of transporting blood everywhere it needs to go." I know how, doctors and it has nothing to do with you even though you are fabulous at what you do :)

They will also tell me if he needs his tonsils out boo! I'm praying that the EBV will go away, but Dr. Book seems to think it has created a home in his tonsils and they may have to be yanked.

Enough about me though, I want to give a shout out to some friends I have who are going through their trials and tragedies. So many things Doug and I discovered this weekend our friends are struggling with. We are praying for you, we love you, we can't stop thinking about you and wish we could do more. I am so grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows our potential and knows what we need to endure in order to accelerate our reaching that potential. I was so impressed with Pres. Eyring's talk in General Conference this past weekend - he said, "Faith is a decision." I said that back in October after I first found out about West's condition. Sometimes, when Faith does not come so easily, we can decide to trust that path and be more than we are.

Slacker:
I have been a picture slacker. I need to take videos of Weston crawling like a speed demon before he gives it up to walking (he's up to 12 steps in a row woohoo!) So here are a few from the archive.

Modge-Podgerific

I'm really, by no means, a crafty person, but I don't have a job and I have a semi-healthy baby who is so much easier to to take care of now, that I have enjoyed enhancing these non-abilities. I made these letters for Weston's room - sorry it's not a very good picture, I cropped it from another picture.







And these were my gift to Lisa for my favorite twin nieces coming soon - I really hope they don't trick us and come out a boy or change their minds on the names :) I have to say Lisa's letters turned out actually better than mine because I had much more modge-podge experience under my belt.









And this for my favorite mini-pincher coco Aaron's and Kristen's dog to put above her food bowl - and no matter what I did I could not get this pic to rotate blah so I decided I just didn't care enough to pursue it.












And this is my new fall wreath. I'll be so sad next year when I have no wreaths to make only rehang my old ones :( I also made halloween magnets and halloween cards that my siblings will not get until we all meet in indi at the end of the month - I'm not proud enough of how they turned out to take a picture :)