S'mores

Last weekend, me, Neil, and baby Bear went to our apartment's club house and made s'mores.  S'mores are one of my favorite things in the whole world and I could eat a million of them!  Since the weather was still in the 80's I could only stand to be by the fire for so long and I only ate 6 (that's probably a good thing).

 Here's Neil roasting some marshmallows.  We obviously don't have real marshmallow roasting sticks, so we had to use these little shish kabob sticks and that made it even hotter since we had to be so close to the fire!

Bear had fun because he got to eat graham crackers for the first time!

Now that it's (occasionally) cold enough that Barrett needs to wear socks and shoes, he thinks it's the funniest thing to take off his socks and eat them.

Hall Pass

Neil is a huge fan of Olivia Munn (she's famous in case you didn't know).  One of his friends just happens to be Olivia Munn's little brother and he got this poster signed for Neil.  

This isn't the greatest picture of the poster, but she wrote "Mr. N. Johnson- Hi! One Hall Pass"  Neil was so excited when this showed up at work the other day!

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's allowed to give Neil hall passes, but whatever...

Admiration

Bear LOVES looking at himself (really though, who doesn't love looking at him!?)

He also loves waving to himself and kissing his reflection.

Can ya blame him?

Fruit Salad Friday (on a Wednesday)

We occasionally get together with my play group to have "fruit salad fridays" (apparently they still call it that even if it's on another day of the week). It's just hanging out, feeding the kids fresh fruit, and playing with tons of toys.

Here's Bear, Anthony, and Fint.

Here's Anthony, Bear, and Fint again (and Allison and Irie in the background).

Bear loved playing in Anthony's motorcycle walker thing.  Irie liked pushing him around in it too.

I'm so glad I found this group of stay at home moms that need to get out of the house and play as much as I do!

Skeletor

Barrett got a very exciting letter in the mail the other day.  Pops and Lala sent his this cute skeleton card.  He was so excited when I pulled it out of the envelope!

He's been having such a fun time playing with it.

And it's a great addition to the 1 other Halloween decoration we have here!

Until Bear pulls it off the fridge to play with it.  It is his though, so he can do what he wants with it.

Thanks for the great toy/card/decoration Pops and Lala!

Baby Signing with Miss Joy and Bebo

While we've still been going to our usual library story time on Mondays...

We've also added a baby signing class at another library on Fridays.

The first week we got there too late and the class was full, so we just played out with the books and some of our friends.  

This is Helen, her baby Ziva, Arabella and Barrett.

Arabella, Bear, and Ziva.

The next week we got there extra early to make sure we'd get a spot.  Bear was so interested in all the kids I couldn't get him to look at me for a picture.

He also loved Bebo the bear.  Miss Joy uses Bebo to help teach the signs to the babies.

We went again today and Barrett had tons of fun as usual.

And he got to play with Bebo again.

Bear doesn't really care about the sign language, he just likes to play with the toys and the other babies. This class has been really interesting and fun to go to.  I think the most interesting thing is that we are definitely the minority when we're there.  There's been 1 other white mom and baby in 1 of the classes, but each time we go, all the other families are Asian or Indian.

Oktoberfest

Last weekend we went to Southlake for their Oktoberfest celebration.  Every year we want to go to an Oktoberfest and it's just never happened.  This year, we finally went to one, in fact, we went to it twice!

The first day we went the weather was so perfect!  Here's the family.

We only saw one person dressed up, I don't know if people generally do this for Oktoberfest, but she was rockin' it!  I wish I could've been sneaky enough to take a picture of the front of her.  She said something to me about how I should"surprise my boyfriend" when she walked past me.  She's a spunky one!

The second time we went it was FREEZING cold weather- we had to get all bundled up!  Bear looks unhappy, but he actually had a good time.  There were millions of dogs that he really liked watching.

Neil got a disgusting Bratwurst with sauerkraut- I didn't try it obviously, but looking at it made me want to puke!  I made a better choice and bought deep fried oreos.  Nothing German about them, but holy crap, they were GOOD!

Thunder Onesie

Neil graduated from Thunderbird when I was about 6 months pregnant with Barrett.  He was super excited for the baby to wear this Thunderbird onesie one day.

Here's me and the onesie when we were in Arizona for his graduation.

Here's Barrett at 10 months finally big enough to wear this odd fitting onesie.

Neil was pretty excited!

Leapin' Lizards!

Remember how I said we get lizards in the house sometimes?  Well, I saw one last night and took a picture.  I know it's not a great picture but I didn't want to get too close in case he started running at me!

Can you see him?

They're really small but it still freaks me out having them in the house!  Neil was going to squish it (YUCK!) but I had him catch it in a cup and take him outside instead.

We're getting excited for Halloween around here!

Fidelity Fair

Yesterday, Barrett and I went to West Lake to visit Neil at work.  Fidelity was throwing a little fair type thing and wanted families to come too.  They had balloon animals and face painting for kids and a guy dressed as spiderman.  It wasn't particularly fun and the food was really disgusting (except for the popcorn).  Oh well, now we know and we can skip it next time!

It's a Christmas Miracle!

After 25 days of being in the hospital, Shelley was released from St. Mark's yesterday and was at home when her kids returned from kindergarten. 
She's been able to eat a little, but her stomach is sooo small and she's as weak as a kitten. 
She says thanks to everyone for their support and prayers and sacrifices in her behalf.  
It'll take months to regain her strength and this may prove to be a recurring problem for her, but for now there is much celebrating and tears of joy at the Young house.

Longest Week Ever

My poor little man has been SICK for a week!  He started throwing up Monday night and didn't quit all week.  I have never done so much laundry in my life!
Our insurance doesn't cover us anywhere besides Utah (thanks Fidelity), but we finally went to the doctor on Thursday and then to urgent care on Saturday (SO expensive!).  One of the doctors we saw was really great and I'd love to see her again if we're still here when our insurance changes over.  Anyways, she thinks it's just some virus he has.
We are all completely exhausted around here.  To make it 10x more fun, Neil has been sick since Friday!  Luckily, he's still been able to help clean up the mountains of puke.

Here's my boys at the urgent care facility.

We took Bear out for a walk to get him out of the house.  I know you can't tell by the picture, but he really enjoyed being outside and looked adorable in his jacket :)  The fact that he's not smiling even a little bit should alert you that something is seriously wrong!

He's been on nothing but Pedialyte for a few days now and he feels like he weighs nothing at all!  He didn't throw up at all today though so fingers are crossed that he's finally getting over it!!  If he doesn't continue to get better, we'll be on a plane to Utah to see our own doctors and let the insurance pay for anything he needs!


On the plus side, it sounds like Shelley is really doing better.  She's unhooked from all her IVs and last I heard was keeping down water and chicken broth and feeling really good!

Shelley Part 3

Here's the latest with my sister.  At least, this is the latest of what I know.

Like I mentioned before (scroll down a bit if you don't know what I'm talking about), Shelley was transferred to St. Mark's last week.  When she got there, they did the endoscopy and were able to get the scope through the obstruction in her small intestine.  Since they could get the scope through, I guess they felt they didn't need to remove anything or insert anything. They also removed the NG tube that was going through her nose and down her throat because it was causing ulcers in her throat.  They'll do a biopsy of the tissue and test for different things like Chron's disease or IBS, etc.  
Sunday she was throwing up bile again.  Since then, she's been throwing up bile occasionally and dry heaving pretty often too.  She's very nauseous and super super weak.  She's lost a lot of muscle too so she just has no strength to do anything. 
Monday they did a cat scan and found that the small intestine (I think the same spot that was causing trouble last week) was swollen and I guess not letting anything through.
I don't know what the docs are waiting for, but at some point, they're going to decide if they need to do surgery again and remove that part of the bowel.  My opinion is that they just need to hurry and do it so she can start getting better, but I'm kind of out of the loop here in Texas, so I'm sure there's plenty that I don't know!
My mom says she thinks Shelley is improving. Today (day 20 of her hospital stay) she's getting 2 ounces of water every hour and keeping that down. Hopefully the bowel swelling and stricture are beginning to resolve. We will know more this weekend as they try to ramp up her intake.

I'll keep ya'll (I do live in Texas, after all) updated when I know more info.
Thanks for being so concerned!  She's been very lucky to have so many friends, neighbors, ward members, and family members to help with everything!