The One With the Ear Infection

This little man is sick.

Why, you may ask?

Because he is almost a year old and that is when EVERY one of our kids start to break down.

He was up all night on Wednesday, then again on Thursday.

Long and terrible nights.

It is so tough to see this little boy who is usually so happy and content be so upset. And I feel like a terrible mom when no matter what I do it doesn't change anything.

Friday we called the pediatrician and took him in.

 

DOUBLE EAR INFECTION!

Like bad!

I was like, "WHAT?!?!?!?"

The kid hasn't tugged at his ears once.

And we are pros at the Marshall house with ear infections. Parker had 10 seperate ear inefections before he was a year old. So many that they put tubes in his ears at 14 months old. So I would have thought surely we could have found out what was wrong with him.

 

The doc also said they are seeing massive amounts of influenza rolling through their office. She said she thought it was possible that is what caused it all . .. . only Pax hasn't thrown up, which I am grateful for.

 

In any case, he finally slept an okay night Saturday to Sunday. Today he stayed home from church with Daddy while I went and did my librarial (?) librarian (?) duties.

But when he gets really upset and grumpy I find that it helps to calm my 7 hours of sleep in the last four days brain to look at pictures like this one where he is happy.

 

About a week ago Pax had is first Lofthouse Sugar Cookie.

This kid doesn't eat, pretty much ever, hence the oral therapist, but look at that he slicked up that cookie real quick.

I understand, Pax, those cookies are my kryptonite too.

The One with the Lamp Update

With the new arranging of our family room, and my sudden urgent need to have our house actually look like someone lives in it (rather than just being staged) I have decided to add some decor to the rooms. I love lamps! They are so awesome, there are so many options, you can change them up so many ways. They add light. They take up space. Somehow they even make your room look complete. Seriously. Think about it. Can you imagine a nighstand without a lamp on it? I think not.

But I HATE how expensive lights can be. Especilaly since I have this ever evolving style. And too often I buy a lamp (or really any decor) that is crazy specific to a certain decor style. I'm learning that I need to go a little more neutral with stuff. We started decorating our house when we first bought it SUPER MODERN. Straight lines, lots of stainless steel, sparsely deocated, the works. There is something I love about those clean lines and lack of clutter. But let's be real here, we have three kids, there is no way NOT to have clutter. And our house wasn't built to be a modern house, so our decor probably kind of clashed with the actual architecture of our house. Time to change that up.

Back to the lamps. I have recently become very obsessed with decorating in white. Or off-white. Or very light shades of gray or yellow or blue that are so light they are basically white. I guess I have come to realize that it makes the space seem light and airy. In looking for lamps for our newly arranged living room though, I wasn't having much luck. Not that I didn't find anything, I totally did. But even Target was trying to sell their awesome more substantial lamps for $50+ and then I needed to swap out the shade anyways. Sad day. I'm not wanting to pay that much to redo the rooms in our house. If I am smart about this, I can redo every room for the price I could redo ONE for.


Enter Deseret Industries. The one by our house we send stuff to ALL the time, but we only have been in it once to see what the prices of their new mattresses were. And I was scared to go in there. It's in downtown Nampa. 'Nuff said, right? Not to mention I feel awkward in most of those places anyways. People look at us funny. It's like they don't think it's fair for us to be in there to save money instead of shopping in there because we have to. But this time we sucked it up and ran in and ran back out REAL fast. And we found this beauty.

Actually I found a lamp that was probably three feet tall (but was a table lamp) that I tried to convince Eric to let me buy, and when he said no I had to improvise. . . . I dug a little deeper and then I found this beauty. It didn't come with a lampshade, and I would never in a million years put that color of bronze in any room in my house. But the overall shape and design of it I knew woudl be great after it was painted.

 

Lamp:    $9
Paint:     $3
Shade: $14

TOTAL: $26

I'm in love with it. At least right now I am. In another couple of months when my style changes again I may want to change it. But here's the good part. I feel a lot less guilty changing out this $26 lamp than I would changing out some holy dang expensive one I bought at Target.



The One With the Power Tools

Eric and I have this love-hate relationship with our house right now. I absolutely love our house. I love the set-up, I love the upgrades the builder did, I love the upgrades we did . . . . but man I HATE that it is starting to seem too small (the downside of buying a house when you only have one kid and then bringing home two more) and I HATE how far away we are from everything we do.

Being far away doesn't even really make sense, we actually have a GREAT location. Close to the freeway, close to a new shopping center, close to a church, right next to a school, yada yada yade. But we are about 20 minutes (on a good day) from Meridian where both of us work. And although 20 minutes doesn't seem like much when compared to my father-in-laws 75 minute one-way trip to work every day, it seems like a lot any time we want to see family, get to work quickly, go to other stores that aren't right by us. . . . you know, all of that stuff. Really we just need to venture out and explore Nampa, I am sure there is all sorts of awesomeness here just waiting to be discovered.

I don't know if it's because we are approaching five years in this house (which is about three years longer than we had planned on) or if it's because we are just becoming more daring (tht must be it), but Eric and I are finally starting to REALLY decorate this house. Do things we want to it. Invest a little bit in furniture and builder details so that we like them for longer - and they last longer, and then we don't have to do it again. It's probably my recent involvement in pinterest. . . . . but MAN we are getting on top of adding things to this lovely house and decorating it up the way WE want. Not the way that works with some randome piece of furniture or art work someone gave to us, but the way WE want it. You  may not guess this if you walked through some of the rooms upstairs just now given that Parker and Pax's room has nothing but bookshelfs hung on the wall, and Preslie's room is looking a little scarce as well . . . but that's just because we have finally purged ourselves from all the stuff we have inherited over the years that just becomes that "I guess we will put this here for now" stuff and consistenly gets moved around the house.

Eric and I are also probably slightly weird when it comes to presents. For example . . . . this year for Christmas I asked for and got (early) a miter saw, a table saw, a nail gun, and a sander. Kind of crazy, yes?!?!? Maybe I'm nuts for thinking it is crazy, but I was ecstatic to get them all. And really, I have put them to some pretty good use already.

Our front entry way is huge! Seriously, it was one of the first things I noticed when we walked into tour the house. It is also the priority entrance to our house since both the front door AND the garage door empty into this space. It's been mostly blank, there was this little mirror/key hanger thing that was up on the wall for pretty much the entire time we've lived here so far . . . . remember that story I said about using things we were given just because? that mirror/key hanger falls into that category. I've always wanted an awesome entryway table, one that I could decorate with the seasons and put right behind the door. But the space is awkward, it really isn't big enough for a BIG table, and it seems like most of the tables we found were either TOO narrow or TOO deep, and I don't know that we found a single table that was wide enough without being too wide for the space.

So I found a tutorial for how to make an entryway table on one of my favorite DIY blogger websites. Seriously guys, I RELIGIOUSLY follow two diy blogs: thriftyandchic.com and thehouseofsmiths.com. Love them, love their style, love their tutorials, love everything about it.

But at Thrifty and Chic she gives this great tutorial on how to make an entryway table. Mine ended up a little bit different, my legs are wider set than hers, but I thought it fit our space better. And not to be completely copy-cat-ish of her, but I loved the stenciling she did on top of her table, so I had to do it to. I guess I am a copy-cat then. So be it.

For Christmas we as a family got a new 60" TV. We like it. We have been having at least one movie night every week with the kids. It's nice to sit down and spend actual family time together for a bit. Sometimes we have a picnic, sometimes we don't, but regardless we always have a good time. Right after we bought the TV we also cleaned our carpets (did you know you can rent an industrial one at Tates Rents for $40???) which required us to move everything out of our family room, and in the process we decided we liked our front room set up completely different than it currently was. Switching our couches around meant we had to move our TV as well. And since we moved our TV, and the set up of all the furniture, we ended up needing to build a cabinet to house all of our electronics, AND a cover for the subwoofer. The sub is too small to be a side table in and of itself, but it's too ugly to not be covered somehow. I wish I could take credit for these, but I can't. . . . Eric did these ones. They have worked perfect in the space, and I just love them.

Don't you love how our office got turned into the project room? It's nice since it is curently SO COLD in our garage, but my office is now pretty much always trashed with some project we have going on.

I can't get these two pictures to pull apart. BUT The top one is the table built to house the sub, and the bottom one is for the electronic rack. Don't mind the cords you see, we are working on getting those all hidden . . . . which is another long process.

The MOST recent project (as in we finished it last night) was this little mirror hanging wall art piece. The idea once again game from Thrifty and Chic, except hers is dark brown, and ours for obvious reasons needed to be white - there is too much dark in our room alreday with the wood planking wall treatment we did before. This has a two fold purpose. First it puts some art on teh massive wall that I haven't decorated yet. BUT it also covers up the previous holes for where our TV was hung before. I'm not lazy guys, I swear, I just know myself well enough to know that in another six months, I may decide I want to put the TV back on that wall, and I didn't want us to have to cut out new holes, so this gives us the ability ti EASILY change things up again without having to do anything too crazy.

 

 

Yes. . . . I love me my new power tools! 

The One with Winter Family Pictures

Did we just take family pictures six months ago? YES.
Did we need to take more? Maybe not
But did we anyways? SURE THING!

And why? Because Paxton now has hair and is moving around - which he wasn't before, and I am now almost a year post-baby which means in much better shape. . . .  as in I might actually be okay with people looking at the pictures with ME in them. Yes, yes, I am the normal woman who is self-concious . . . . strange, I know.

We had Katie Hardy a good friend I went to school with take these ones - she also took the last ones in May, the ones I loved so much I made canvases of and put up on our wall. They are that good! I think she does a great job, and I love these ones, and we had a hard time narrowing down the pictures to only four for our Christmas card.

The one with Mary J

Mary J. Marijuana. Hey Juan will you marry me?

Interesting that the legalization of Marijuana was one of the biggest things that came out of this last election - second, of course, to the re-election of our president. I think what concerns me most is this: with all the poverty, failing economy, people without jobs, people without health care, starving children, etc, how are we really SOOO concerned about marijuana?????

Is there anyone out there that will have the money to buy it anyways? Or am I really going to be paying for a family to be receiving food stamps while Mom and Dad use what little money they do earn buying pot to release their frustrations and hot box in the bathroom?

I've never used the stuff, I can say that. Partly because I'm not an idiot (ha ha). But mostly because it's against the law and because it alters your mental status, and my parents would kill me, and Jesus said no, and there are really an entire list of reasons.

I have absolutely heard all of the "PRO-Marijuana" arguments. My husband is from Portland, okay, it's not like we haven't gone this round with a million people. And while I am all for people doing whatever they want with their own body, I think too many people fail to recognize that almost nothing (maybe even nothing) we do actually only influences ourselves without affecting others.

I've heard this argument: "People smoke it anyways, we might as well make it legal." SERIOUS? You are absolutely right! My child craps in her diaper even though I tell her not to, I might as well not potty train her. People drink and drive even though it's against the law, we might as well not throw them in jail for it. People shoot up heroine anyways, we might as well give them a clean and sterile needle to do it with. This is known as the fallacy of perfection. And it is one of the biggest fallacies (bend in reasoning) we all depend on - seriously, just think about how much this example comes up in your life. If we can't stop all of it, we may as well not do anything at all.

Another one. "There's no way marijuana use will kill people like driving drunk does." Really? Is that something we can accurately measure? Are there actually polls out there that show that people who drive while high don't ever have an accident? Here's the most obvious counterargument for that one. Say someone you love, maybe even a child was in a car. Say they were hit by another car, and this person died. You are grief stricken, and upset, then the police tell you the person driving the other car was high. I have a hard time believing that is NOT going to make you upset. I have a hard time believing you would not push for that person to go to jail for driving while under some sort of mind altering drug. Because that's what it is. YES it absolutely slows your reflexes - the whole purpose in smoking it is to feel like you don't have a care in the world. Does that sound like a person attentive at the wheel to you? And the idea that the number of people driving while under it's influence won't increase is absolutely nuts! Marijuana consumption of ANY kind was illegal before. OF COURSE PEOPLE stayed at home when they were high, it was the easiest way to conceal the fact that they were doing something illegal! I guarantee the number of people pulled over under the influence of marijuana increases in these states.

I think the thing that honestly makes me the most sad is seeing where our country is going. I am now starting to see what our grandparents talk about when they say things like "In our day, that would never have been acceptable." Why is it that things that have been inherently labled as wrong from birth are now changing. Now I'm the bigot because I believe in the sanctity of marriage, and preserving life, and God in our country! Fifty years ago someone having an abortion was abhorant, and now I'm supposed to be okay with it because why? What changed? Some years passed?

I have many family members who are in same-sex partnerships. I love them, and I love their partners. Its a tough one for me for sure. But I am just finding it depressing that now because I carry the same values and beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation, I am a terrible person. Why have the tables all of a sudden turned?

The One With the Election

Well this is it! Yes, a ranting political post - only slightly less ranting, and maybe less political so much as my personal beliefs. Why can I do this here? Because here you come to hear what I have to say, not what a milion friends have to say like on Facebook . . . . and you know what, for the most part I kept my views off Facebook statuses. Why you may ask? Because I hate that every person uses it as a way to say every dang thing that is on their mind. Tell me about the truly awesome (and sadly terrible) things that happen to you! PLEASE! Tell me in quick, short, succinct sentences about those things . . . . but really, I don't need to see pictures of your dinner, or hear detailed stories about changing a diaper on facebook - that's what I stalk your blogs for.

Soap box done.

Or at least that soap box.

It is Thursday. The elections were on Tuesday. Honestly, I'm not surprised with the outcome. If you like Obama, this is probably the part where you should stop reading. I don't mean Obama as a person, as a person I think he's great, but as my country's leader.  . .eh not so much. Eric and I were talking about the elections (forever) last week and he was asking me who I thought would win.
"Obama."

WHY? He asked me.

Because as members of the church we know that things are going to get ape crazy before the second coming. I didn't see things getting too crazy under Romney, so I figure it's gotta be Obama who makes it into office. I don't even so much think this was a win for Obama, as much as I think it was a win for the MEDIA. Seriously! Can they swing things anymore? Can there be just one single station who can report BOTH sides of the equation instead of picking and choosing the stories they want that paint their party in the best light?? I mena come on! I posted a status on Facebook about two weeks ago that pretty much sums it up.

We were watching Fox News when "BREAKING" news came out about how the Obama administration knew what was happening in Benghazi the entire time the ambassdor was missing, the entire time two Navy Seals killed 88 of 200 terrorists before they were killed themselves, and the entire time that it was indeed a terrorist attack and NOT the result of some stuipd YouTube video (don't even get me started on THAT one, how stupid are we the American people to fall for that one?). I am well aware that Fox News, though strikingly less bias than other stations, has a bias. So Eric and I, after watching what they had to say for a few minutes, switched over to CNN to get the "other" side of the story. You know what we saw? DL Hughley (a black comedian) talking about why he hates Romney.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? That's all CNN can come up with, a comedian to tell me who I should vote for based on his personal preferences not at all founded on political beliefs???? What makes me more upset is that I know too many American citizens fall for this kind of crap. Stop being sheep! BAAAA!!!!! Stop going someplace because some comedian, actor, friend, parent told you to. And that includes Republicans. I don't want republicans voting republican because their mommy told them to, find out for yourself. It's just like in church - be TRULY converted! Don't base your ideas and practices off your parents, have them because you KNOW them to be true.

Anyways, back to the media. They did a bang up job of covering what they wanted to, glorifying the minor things, and painting anyone they didn't want elected as a terrible, woman hating, mogul tycoon tyrant. Good job media, I'm glad to know that Matt Lauer who makes 10 million dollars a year has dooped all the people in this country making less than $40,000 into believing he knows what's best for them. And for the record, I am a subjective enough person that I am not saying these kinds of things because the candidate I wanted wasn't elected, I'm saying them because I want the media to be unbias, and report both sides. Even if there are things about Romney that aren't favorable (which we heard of) and even about Obama (which apparently there was nothing).

I keep thinking, was that it? Was that our warning? We know what the pride cycle is, are we now going to get a smashing humbling experience thrown down on our entire country? I look at New York and wonder, MAN is that what this is about? Is there so many unrighteous people or people who need humbling that this has to happen? I'm not saying everyone is, I know TONS of people on the East coast who are amazing individuals, I am just starting to wonder if the amazing peopel are being swallowed up by the idiots.

I can say that I am acutely aware of how incredible the resolve of the American citizen is. Even with unemployment rising, and terrible things happening, even with a President I don't personally believe is fit to run this country, I do not believe we will topple to the earth. This land is full of incredible people, with amazing work ethic and beautiful spirits, I am grateful for all of them that help to keep this nation moving and producing regardless of the financial bind we find ourselves in.

For that I can say, I am excited for the next four years. No doubt there will be some large trials, but once I am on the opposite side of four years, I know I will be able to look back, and will have grown so much, matured ten fold, and have experiences that make me a stronger mother, a more compassionate wife, and an incredible person.

The One with 200+ Kids

Two Sundays ago (I'm falling way behind in the blogging world) Parker had his Primary Program in church. One of my good friends is the Primary President, and it wasn't until that program that I realized HOW big of a calling that was. I mean, it's always a big calling, but we have over 200 children in our ward - that's a lot of kids to put into a program, herd all over the place, keep quiet, and teach. I was VERY impressed with what a wonderful program it was, and Parker did AMAZING!!! He is turning into such a little man - complete with singing through barely moving lips. He is pretty cute!