The One With the Snowy Trip to Portland

In November of 2010 we drove to Utah for Thanksgiving. We got stuck on I-5 for HOURS in a blizzard and they ended up shutting the entire freeway down and we slept in Burley. That has stood the test of two years as being the most ridiculous and dangerous trip we have ever taken . . . . until our New Years trip to Portland this year.

Eric had a tooth that needed to get worked on, and we love visiting family for the holidays. So we left on Sunday, December 30th to drive up to Portland with plans to stay and drive home on the following Saturday to have a day to rest before getting back into the daily grind.

Remember that Utah trip I told you about? Ya, this one far surpassed it.

We left our house in Nampa about 9 o'clock in the morning, hoping to hit the Blue Mountains around noon when the sun would be high and the snow hopefully would have melted off a little bit. There was solid fog from Nampa past Ontario, and minimal fog in Baker City. We drove the hour from Baker City and into La Grande which is the city just before you go over the Blues . . . and there we were routed off the freeway. We drove through town trying to get onto every freeway entrance possible and every single one was blocked off. A road worker told us there had been a bad accident on the Blues and that the road was closed, and probably wouldn't be open for 6 hours. That would have put us going over the Blues at 7 at night, which was definitely not a good idea.

After talking to some locals and discussing options with Eric's Dad who has a complete roadmap of the Northwest memorized, we decided that it would be best to drive the hour back to Baker City and then get on a state highway that would take us through Prineville, John Day, and then up and around Mount Hood into the backside of Portland. Going up over another huge mountain didn't seem like an awesome idea, but we were told the roads on the state highway were well maintained and that we shouldn't have any trouble with our heavy cleated snow tires and studs.

For the record, this is apparently what the Oregon Department of Transportation deems a well maintained state highway. That is a sheet of solid ice on the road.




It was extremely slow going. I don't think we ever went over 45 mph and most of the time we had to stay at about 30. Every few hours we'd say something like "really it's not that much farther, John Day has to be just around the corner" and then we'd see a sign that showed we had only traveled a few miles and John Day was still several hours away. We'd say things like "once we break into a city the roads will have de-icer on them" . ..  only there are no cities on this route, just small little towns with weird names where Main Street consists of a post office and a church and everyone drives around on snowmobiles. I felt like for sure we were going to end up on an episode of "I Shouldn't Be Alive". We finally made it to Prineville which is a city of about 20,000 people (which felt like New York City compared to the cities we had been passing through all day) that is still about two hours (in normal weather) from Portland at about 7 o'clock at night.

Call me a wuss, but I was done. The kids were tired and sick of being in the car. We had seen way too many accidents and cars off the road to count. The last thing I wanted to do was try and drive up over Mount Hood in the pitch black at 11 o'clock at night. So we got a room and stayed in Prineville. We were up early the next morning to make the trip up over the mountain. And we finally made it to Portland at about 11am the Monday morning. Talk about a long trip.

I don't want to sound insensitive. I am so glad we made it safe and not the least bit upset that the freeway over the Blues was closed. The accident that happened on the Blues was terrible. A tour bus hit a patch of ice and fell two hundred feet down the mountain, killing 9 people and sending 30+ more to hospitals in 4 states. The bus was so far down the side of the mountain that they literally had to bring in Life Flight to careene down and latch onto people to take to the hospital. It's no wonder that road was closed, and my thoughts and prayers continue to be with those that were affected.

The One With Paxton's First Birthday

I cannot believe that this smiley little boy . . . . 

 

 
. . . . is now a One year old!!!

In reality it makes sense.
I look back over everything that has happened this year and I am surprised that it has only been twelve months. We have packed quite a bit into a year I'd say.

This little smiley man is just what we needed in our house. A loving, happy, sweet little man that is just a light to us!

Paxton's actual birthday being on Christmas Eve puts a little bit of constraint on what we can actually do for a party on his birthday. For the real day we slept in and then went out to lunch at Red Robin. Sadly there aren't many options for restaurants open on Christmas Eve, but Pax likes their fries, so I don't think it bothered him too much.

We decided to do Paxton's birthday on December 29th which just so happened to also be Daddy's 29th birthday! We went with a hobo theme.

There seemed to be a lot of confusion on why we chose that.
I can honestly say I said it as a joke to Eric and then we just kind of ran with it. Everyone is broke after the holidays. Everyone has eaten way too much unhealthy food. Everyone is tired of playing games and seeing each other and basically everyone is just plain tired.
I'm sure when Paxton gets a bit older we will be more concerned about making this a special day and forcing everyone to smack a smile on their face.

So bum party it was.
The invitations were easy. We gave everyone a piece of cardboard with some crazy homeless person sign and a date and time on it. Decorations in the house were easy too. Christmas had left us with a plethora of boxes that we cut up and wrote on. Eric gets most of the credit on the signs, and he came up with some pretty awesome ones. For dinner we did chilli mac, spaghetti o's or hot dogs. The plan had been to let everyone roast their own hot dogs over a trash can fire, but the snow storm that hit the day before made that impossible.

Dessert was lofthouse cookies (which Paxton loves . . . me loving them was just an added bonus), donuts, and muddie buddies. We were trying to really grasp the bum menu when we planned this, so don't think we are just cheap-o's.

Pax got a lot of clothes and a pillow car from us. Many toys from everyone else - he will never need more toys again after Christmas and his birthday.



 

 

It was a requirement that everyone who came to the party had to dress like a bum and bring their own cardboard sign. Ther was a prize to the best dressed and the best sign . . . . it was a can of pork and beans. But here are some of the pictures we snagged of everyone in their hobo finest.

 

 

Paxton's huge monster pile of presents. . . . that he showed no interest in opening.

 

 

No one in our family loves cake. I can at it. My grandma makes some pretty spectacular cakes. We love the huge Costco cake too. But with those as the only exceptions, we don't love cake. Plus we were leaving early the next morning for Portland so the last thing I wanted was a huge cake we had to finish eating, and I didn't much love the idea of buying that big expensive Costco cake and wasting it. So Eric and Paxton both blew out candles on donuts for their birthday.

Pax loves donuts!

 

 

 

This is the pillow car I was talking about. When we bought it I don't think either Eric or myself knew that he was going to love it as much as he does. And we REALLY didnt' think that the other two kids would love it as much as they do. Basically we have been told we have to get Parker and Preslie their own for their birthdays. That should be easy for Preslie since her birthday is only a few weeks away.

 

They run around the house pushing each other on this car four hours!

 

Happy birthday to my adorable little Pax-man!

Mommy and Daddy love you more than words could ever describe!

The one with Christmas 2012 Style

I almost couldn't believe it was Christmas! You know what else I couldn't believe!?!? That I actually made it to Christmas and we still had most of the presents left to open. I am terrible at Christmas. I get WAY too excited to see my kiddos happy and always end up breaking and letting them open everything a week or so early. This year, I actually made it . . . . it probably helped that we had an emergency surgery and a birthday party to plan.

For the first time in our marriage though, we MADE IT! And I don't think we will have a problem making it from now on. I LOVED seeing my kiddos so excited to come down Christmas morning. It was a super late night getting everything ready for Santa to come, and then a super early morning getting up early enough to make it to my parents, but it's Christmas . . . and that's what the fun is all about!

 

The living room after everything was set up. We actually had to wait this year until the kids were asleep to do anything. They are finally getting old enough to understand the concept of Santa Claus and were excited for him to come.

All of Preslie's loot. She got a ton of Minnie stuff! A huge minnie the same size as she is, a Minnie pillow pet, a regular sized Minnie to replace the one she has had since Disneyland that is disgustingly dirty (though she still won't let me get rid of it) a big Lalaloopsy doll, a Minnie's Bowtique shopping cart, blocks, and a Minnie suitcase. There was other stuff too, I just can't really remember it.

Parker was really wanting a razor scooter . . . so he got one. But sadly this is the first year in forever that Idaho has decided to get DUMPED ON with snow! He hasn't even really been able to ride it yet . . . sad day. He also got the full workup of Ninja Turtles - all the turtles, all the bad guys, all the gadgets . . . all the mess! I'm not sure if Parker or Eric was more excited for this. He also got a Wii that he has to share with his sister. The kids each got their own suitcases too . . . it would have been more exciting if the bags were packed with clothes and we were like "And now we are going to Disneyland!" But I didn't think about that until afterwards  . . . . so maybe that's a good idea for next year.

Paxton . . . . that little one year old is hard to shop for. He mostly got clothes, and a couple of new toys. We try to spend the same amount on each of the kids, but I'll be hoens, we fell a little short with Pax. I don't think he'll ever notice. Eric and I are literally swimming in toys! And they get all over the house, and to be put away in the closet and fit they have to be put away just right (which may actually be a symptom of my obsessive need for a clean house). We had also just taken three garbage bags full of toys to DI, the last thing we wanted to do was spend more money on more toys that would be hauled away within a few months. So he got clothes. And some fun toys. And candy. And a suitcase. Luckily he is one so he cared more about eating the wrapping paper than he did about what was in the paper.

Our main present to us was a new 60" TV. We rarely ever go to movies, we always rent a movie on Vudu or from Redbox, and we have been trying to watch more movies as a family so we figured we may as well have a TV big enough to watch together and big enough to make fun. Eric was wanting the 80" Sharp. I convinced him it would overpower the room. Then he was pretty stuck on the 70" Sharp, but when he went in to Costco randomly a week before Black Friday and they had this incredible deal on a 60" he gave up the idea. I think it's better anyways. Our current room is too small for a bigger TV. 

Pax was the only one we didn't have to wake up for Christmas morning.

I debated whether or not to put this picture on here, but decided the kids looked too darned cute not to. Just ignore my crazy just woke up hair and look at them.

Parker was pretty excited that he could tell Santa had come. Santa drank all of the milk Parker left but tapped out halfway into the fourth cookie he gave him.

Apparently a scooter would have been a good plan for Pax too.

Preslie was pretty stoked about her totally Minnie christmas!

We always go over to my parent's house (when we are in town) to open up presents there. For as long as I can remember we have to take turns in order of who is youngest, only opening one present at a time and continuing until everyone has opened all their presents. When I was little, this wasn't so hard. My brother, my other brother, me, my sister, mom and then dad. It took forever since we were pretty spoiled, but we had fun. Now it is just insanity!!! My sister has three kids of her own (currently pregnant with her 4th) and she was fostering two little girls at th time, a 3 year old, and a 15month old. Plus now you have our three kids. This is what Christmas morning looked like there! Needless to say it took us about 5 hours to get through everyone's presents and get everything cleaned up. I got a ton of cute pictures of this event BUT we aren't allowed to put pictures of the foster girls up on the internet so I can't share. :)

We had an awesome Christmas! It is getting so fun to experience these holidays now that our little ones are getting old enough to have fun with them! While on the one hand I can't wait until next Christmas, I also don't want them growing up so fast . . . so Christmas can wait a little while!

The One with Preslie's Surgery Pictures

Some of you may have seen my Facebook post about how Minnie obsessed our daughter is. This was not a joke. And neither the picture on facebook, nor this picture, even do justice to how many Minnies she has. We let her open these on Sunday after her surgery. They were for Christmas, but we felt she deserved a little something after all the poking and prodding we had to do. Sunday was the day we had to remove all the packing from her incision.

You can see that even after surgery here neck was still pretty swollen. Plus they had put a TON of packing in it. Like six inches, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you roll that up in a ball and shove it in a two year old's chin, it atually looks like a ton more!

 

I just pulled all of our pictures off the camera (instead of just the phone camera) and found all these picture from Preslie's surgery. On the off chance that we lose a computer again, and all of our pictures along with it, I thought I better put some of these pictures off in cyberspace where we can always find them!

So Pax went in to see the doctor on Friday, December 14th. And we thought we would get some sleep. He didn't start sleeping well again until atleast Sunday night when his prescription finally started to kick in.

 

Preslie has been talking for WEEKS about her mouth hurting.

But as terrible as it sounds it was hard to take her serious, she only told us her mouth hurt when she was crying, and she only ever cried when she got into trouble. So the conversations usually went a little something like this:

"Preslie, stop pushing Pax"

Preslie, crying "My mouth hurts".

We may get the terrible parent award here, but it was a little hard to believe anything was really wrong. Preslie has had a little button under her chin since she was born. We've talked to several doctors about it, especially her oncologist. This seemed most important during the whole leukemia situation we dealt with, plus I had a lymph node removed from my neck when I was about ten so it seemed like maybe she was having the same thing.

But then everything with leukemia died down a bit.

And her pediatrician hasn't seemed so worried about it since.

And the gastroenterologist told us he thought it was probably a cyst or lipoma (benign fatty tumor) and that the next time our deductible had been met we should talk about getting it removed. Well we have a zero dollar deductible, so that didn't matter. But between Paxton's surgery, and Eric's surgery, it kind of got pushed to the back burner.

BIG MISTAKE.

 

The Tuesday directly after Paxton just started feeling better Preslie got up before work and I thought to myself "Hmm . . . Preslie is getting a little bit of a double chin, she must be getting ready for a growth spurt." May sound weird, but if there is one thing I have noticed with my kids it's that they go through these phases, they beef up a bit and then they grow tall and stretch out, then beef up, grow. . .. and so on. I'm weird because I notice these kinds of things I know.

 

Wednesday it started to look huge. As in this picture here just below. She didn't like me touching it, when I could touch it I couldn't feel her "button" anymore, and it just looked huge and she seemed extremely uncomfortable. Luckily when the pediatrician's office heard about it, given her history and all, they got her right in that morning. Dr Miller put her on a round of antibiotics saying she thought that most likely the cyst had become infected. The antibiotics were supposed to get rid of the infection, and we left with a "Wait two weeks and let me know if it isn't fixed."

FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

 

 

It's always worst case scenario with Preslie.

I just wish I could get our pediatrician to remember that occasionally.

The next day the lump had doubled in size. I wish I had pictures of it, but sadly I can't get the few pictures from my phone to transfer across. But if you want the visual, look at the picture above and imagine it being twice that size. Eric said he thought we better talk to the doctor, I called and left a message, and within 10 minutes they called back saying they were referring her to an ENT and they had already set up the appointment for the next day.

 

Eric's brother, Scott, is in his Maxillofacial (oral surgery) residency in Texas, so Eric called him up and talked with him a bit about what was going on. He was pretty worried, especially considering how fast it was growing. He also said that any infection in the chin could swell so bad it could cut off breathing and that the infection could quickly spread down into the chest cavity.

 

Friday her neck was doubled in size again! Good thing we already had the appointment, we went into Southwest Idaho Ear Nose & Throat. We have stock in that place I think. When I was 18 I got my tonsils removed there, woke up out of surgery having seizures, was transferred to St. Al's for a week, and have had them ever since. Parker had tubes put in his ears there in 2008, and Paxton was just there getting his tongue clipped in October.

 

Our appointment was with Dr. Van der Graaf. Previously we had always seen Dr. Beck - the only pediatric ENT in Idaho, but she is insanely hard to get in to see, and honestly I loved "Dr. Van". The appointment pretty much went like this:

Dr. Van: Oh I see it, when was the last time she ate?

Me: About 10 this morning.

Dr. Van: Awesome, meet me over at St. Al's for surgery.

 

Our appointment was at 1:30, and she was in for surgery at 2:30. He left the room, his nurse came in with St. Al's on the phone trying to get us scheduled immediately. And then we were told to quickly walk over to the hospital and he'd meet us when he was done with appointments. Turned out he cancelled the rest of his appointments that day and came right over. Between filling out paperwork and prepping for surgery there was really no down time. When they want you to move, they get you to move. My Aunt Angel is a surgical tech at St. Al's and was so nice to come in on her day off to help assist with Preslie's surgery. It greatly put my mind at ease to have someone Preslie knew in the surgery with her.

 

In true Marshall child form when Preslie woke up out of anesthesia she was a screaming, freak out mess. They immediately came out to get me to try and calm her down. About 10 minutes later Eric came in to see if he could help. Nothing really worked. Our kids are just never going to be the ones who come out of anesthesia all cute and tired, the just SCREAM!

 

They made about a 1/2 inch incision in her chin and found that the subdermal cyst that had always been in her chin had abcessed and created this huge puss pocket. They lanced it and drained it. Angel told us there was a ton of puss and that they just kept squeezing, every time they thought they were done they would squeeze again and more would come out. They left the incision open and packed it with gauze. We got to take the packing out on Sunday - that was yummy stuff, Eric almost threw up.

 

All in all we had a pretty low key pre-Christmas eve weekend. We stayed at home and tried to relax . . . although we had more time of no sleep getting up every two hours to give Preslie pain pills and antibiotics. Surgery number 2 is scheduled for January 21st, they will go in and remove the cyst that caused it all to begin with, that way hopefully we will never have to deal with an emergency chin surgery again.

 

Good news for Preslie though, she got more Minnie's to add to her collection because of the whole ordeal!

The One With the J-Baum Bomb

We have always called up my brothers to come out and babysit out kids when Eric and I go out on a date. My brothers are good to do it, and the kids get along with them fairly well, but let's be real here - they are late teens-early twenty teenage boys who love video games. They play video games, they mess up the house, they mess up the kids, they put kids down in dirty diapers, and typically it is all sorts of chaos when we get home. Like I said, I love my brothers, but they are boys, and boys just aren't as well trained for these kinds of things as girls are.

You would think in a church as big as ours we would have a plethora of options for babysitters. I think we probably have more options than I realize, but somehow leaving our three kids at home alone with a 12 year-old girl seemed crazy . . . . even though I vividly remember babysitting at that age. But we ventured out into the ward and found a girl that used to be in my Activity Days group and asked her to babysit.

When we pulled into the driveway that first night that she babysat the house was dark, Eric and I started trying to figure out how much you pay a babysitter. With my brothers we just pull a number out of thin air and then tack on some more for gas since they drive so far to get out here. We decided that we would give her $25 (for about 3 1/2 hours of babysitting) if the kids were awake and I said I would raise it to $30 if everyone was asleep and the house was clean. This may seem like a lot to pay a babysitter, but if I find a good one, I wan to KEEP HER!!! And lo and behold, we walked in, the house was clean, the toys were put away, the kids were all sleeping (with clean bums), the dishes were done, and our cute babysitter was sitting on the couch watching Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

HIRED!!!!

We snagged her pretty much every weekend for the next month. It was awesome. And too good to be true, of course we would have a hiccup.

About two weekends ago we went out to dinner with my aunt, my cousin, and their partners. This time when our beloved babysitter came she didn't bring her cell phone, so we needed to leave one with her. We would typically leave my phone since Eric has so many more people who text him, but since we were going out with  my family we thought we had better take my phone and leave Erics.

Now Eric has this one inappopriate friend. The kids call him J-Baum, and that name should clue any Phoenixers who read this blog as to who it is and make this post about a million times more funny. This kid is hilarious!!!! And the whole family loves him, don't think we don't. In fact, I have been told that Eric has it already worked out that if he dies first, J-Baum will be the new man in our lifes. But J-Baum is that one friend that you can always count on to send you messages that say things like "I am never drinking again!!!!" or "I wrote in lipstick on this girls mirror 'You are out of toilet paper'" and those kinds of messages. So it was with great hesitation that Eric left his phone with our babysitter. Add to the stress that J-Baum hadn't texted all day, which means it was a ticking time bomb for when he would next send a text message. We even left saying "Just ignore any inappropriate texts you may get, ha ha ha ha" only we weren't joking.

Honestly I hoped that she wouldn't ever have a reason to read the text messages. But about an hour into dinner I got a text message from Eric's phone from our babysitter just talking about how the night was going. And there went my hopes that she would never read any text messages.

When we finally got home that night, I gave her the money, and asked if she could watch our kiddos again the following weekend for a Christmas party my cousin was having. She was kind of "Oh ya, I'll have to ask" which she has never said before, she just says yes or no. I was thinking that maybe the kids had just been bad or something and she needed a little space.

Boy was I wrong.

When I walk back into the house from taking her home, Eric is laughing at the kitchen counter, phone in hand. I asked him what he was laughing about, and he shows me the only other text that came in that night other than the ones I sent. It was from J-Baum. Now, I can think of about every single text message that this fellow has sent, both to me and Eric, and I can honestly say that pretty much all of them could have been sent to our 12 year-old babysitter without a problem. She would have just looked at them, been liek weird and moved on. But the one that was sent was probably the best example of a text a 12 year-old babysitter should never get.

"Hey, what are you wearing? Just kidding, what are you NOT wearing???"

MORTIFYING.

Well not really. It's actually surprisingly, ecstatically, masterpiece-style funny. But at the same time mortifying. Because there are only two options:
1: We get arrested for soliciting a minor.
2: She thinks we have some freaky relationship that involves my husband getting dirty text messages from other guys.
Neither option seems to fun for us.

What would you do is what I ask my friends?

I ended up calling her, and apologizing profusely! But there is this part of me that wonders if I should have just let it go, if I shoudl have explained to her parents, or how I should have handled it.

Like I said, one of the funniest things that could pretty much ever happen when you think about it. But it's that funny thing that is funny when it happens to someone else, not so funny when it happens to you. Gotta love that J-Baum.

The One with Tai Pan Adventures

Everyone constantly tells me about how much they love Tai Pan.

And by everyone I mean my sister.

And by constantly I mean that every time I point to something in her house and say "I like that" she says "Thanks, I got it at Tai Pan."

 

So Eric and I had to take a little adventure there a few weeks back.

On the one hand I wasn't as impressed as I thought I was going to be.

I guess maybe I was expecting an Ikea, and it wasn't.

Maybe I was expecting SUPER low cost prices . . . and the pricing was okay.

But mostly I was expecting more options.

 

Now to be completely honest, the lack of every day decor options may have soemthing to do with the fact that 7/8ths of the store was filled with Christmas decor. I don't know if that is how it always is . . . . minus the Christmas decor and add whatever holiday is coming up decor . . . or if typically it is filled to the brim with every day decorating and we just happened to go at a terrible time.

 

Although we still happened to walk out of the store spending over $100, so I guess the trip wasn't a complete disappointment, and obviously we found some good stuff . . .  it just took a little more digging than I had anticipated.

Usually I go to the store thinking in my head of a specific spot in my house that I need some decor item and then I look for something that will fit the space and buy it. This time there was no such pre-planning, and maybe that's why it ended up working out so well. I just walked through the store, picking up what I liked, and as long as it was a decent price I bought it and brought it home.

There was some time at home deciding where to put things, but I ended up finding out that I could use most of it ANYWHERE! And I loved that most of it ended up on top of our kitchen cupboards which I have been trying for YEARS (no kidding) to find the perfect decorating pieces for.

 

 

Everything in this picure except for the "M" and the white bowl came from Tai Pan. It's funny cause as I was grabbing things in that store I wasn't thinking "these things would all look good together". And maybe they don't, and maybe it's the fact that they don't actually "go" together, but somehow they "go" together. I feel like Danny Zuko in Grease telling Sandy "We didn't go together, we just went together!" But hopefully you understand what I am getting at. If not the Grease reference should have given you some comic relief.

 



 

Then this picture  . . . . well actually nothing in this picture came from Tai Pan. But I was more looking to show what the top of both sets of cabinets look like. That Morroccan pattern on that wood piece back there, yes I am currently obsessed with that stencil. You may have noticed it is on to pof the entry table I built as well. LOVE IT. The black vases came from Costco about four years ago and I am debating whether or not I should paint them white. And the mossy thing my mother in law bought and put together for me. She is one of those classy decorators who can somehow find good things to put in everyone's houses.

 

And well that Cinderalla doll there is actually Preslie's bribe for potty training.

It's still in the box, so obviously we are still working on it.

But we will get there eventually.