September

     The month of September got off to a pretty great start. On the first day of the month Joel and I were able to sneak off for a date to the temple. Then we went to Tuff's baptism. The kids love getting to spend some time with their cousins and it is always great to watch them make good choices. We are glad we got to be a part of that. 

      The kids got the day off of school for Labor day so we went to Kids Again and I let everyone pick out their own Halloween costume. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be but they all got a costume they were excited to wear. Joel spent the day helping his dad and then we went to grandma's for some hamburgers and hot dogs. Can you guess what Kyla is going to be? That pink wig goes to her costume.

Joel took Annalyn on her date night early this month. They went to Wahooz and Annalyn came home with a bunch of prizes and it sounds like she had a great time. 

 

     Whenever Brynlee and Annalyn are in school the little girls and I like to go on walks. We have walked to grandma's house a few times and one morning we spent a long time picking blackberries at her house during the middle of our walk. Sometimes my friend Lisa and her little boy Maddox come with us. I am glad we have still had so many days with nice weather. We will sure miss getting to play outside all the time when it gets colder. There were a few days where the air quality outside was pretty bad because of all the fires in the mountains so we had to stay inside even though the weather was beautiful. The kids had indoor recess at school and came home pretty restless.

 

     We babysat a lot this month. We watched Emma and Carlie one day and we watched Kyla's friend Eden once and her friend Maddox a couple of times. We watched a little girl that lives down the street named Lyvie another day and we watched Beckham and Gannon once. We also had a few friends over.

     We started going to the library for music, story time, and art every Thursday again. Kyla can go to art with Annalyn and she loves going. The lady who used to do the art class, Miss Joanna, had a liver transplant over the summer. She has been sick for a while but came to the library whenever she could. She has been there since Annalyn was a baby and my kids love her. She was one of Annalyn's most favorite people and Annalyn had been counting down the days until Miss Joanna would be back at the library. Due to some complications with her transplant surgery, Miss Joanna died sometime in September. It was on a Wednesday night and I hadn't heard about what had happened until after I got to the library. Annalyn had talked about her all on the way there and when she saw her picture on the door her face lit up, "Look!" She exclaimed. "It is Miss Joanna. She is looking so much better. I think she is going to be back soon." I didn't tell her what had happened until we got home but I could tell that everyone at the library was just so sad. Joanna was only 27 years old and she was such a huge part of the library. Annalyn, Brynlee, and Kyla both cried and I cried with them as we talked about Miss Joanna. Kyla wanted to drive to heaven and go get her. It is amazing to me to see the impact that she had on our family and on our little community. She will be missed by many. Annalyn still talks about her every time we go to the library. To me that just shows how much of an impact each of us can have on those around us.

     We had stake conference this month. Brynlee threw up the night before and tried to play sick so she wouldn't have to go but eventually admitted that she was feeling fine so we all got to go to stake conference. Brynlee went to her friend Rori's birthday party this month and had a ton of fun. We almost missed the party because we forgot about it but made it there just a little bit late thanks to a text from Rori's mom. Brynlee also made it to her friend Katianna's party and had fun. The kids played a lot and played hard. We did crafts and played outside as much as we possibly could.

     Joel finally got all of the weeds taken out of our backyard and we put in sod. Yahoo! It is so nice to have grass back their. The weeds were getting so bad that Kyla was referring to it as our weed garden. We were getting a lot of goat heads so the kids had a hard time playing back there. Brynlee was the best helper at putting in Sod. She worked hard and the yard looks nice. Jake Hirtle stopped by and helped for a few minutes since he was in the area but it was mostly just our family working away out there. It only took us one afternoon to get all the grass put in.

     Brynlee and Annalyn both had a part in their primary program and they did a beautiful job. I got to sit on the stand and help with the program as well. We have been bringing my sister's kids Jakobee and Remi with us to church sometimes so Jakobee got to be in the program and he did a good job too. Heather was a little worried but he did great. My girls love taking them to church with us and they are usually all pretty good but it makes things a little crazy when you have six little kids at church.

Summer has been super busy lately. She wants to be doing whatever the big kids do. If they are painting she has to do it too. She climbs up the biggest slide at the park and slides down with no fear. She insists on sitting at the table with the big kids and I let her sit in the booster some days. She keeps climbing on the table during the middle of dinner so then she gets put back in her high chair. She loves to get into the pantry and dump out the cereal all over the house. She can push the chairs all over the place to reach things that are up high and she has opened some of the doors a few times. Pretty soon she will be getting into things all over the house. 

     The last week of September was the week full of sickness that ended with Joel's car battery exploding. Brynlee had to miss the school Jog-a-thon and talent day in music so she was pretty bummed. Annalyn missed share day at school which was also devastating for her. Kyla kept trying to deny that she was sick but you could tell she felt miserable. Summer was whiny as well. I sure am glad that week is over. I would not want to redo it.

We went to the park a few times and spent a lot of time in the backyard. It sure is nice to have grass back there. The kids dug for worms and spent a lot of time in our sandbox. I went to my book group which was a lot of fun. Next month I am going to actually read the book before I go. Haha!

We had a few wet and rainy days and the kids had fun playing in the rain. Brynlee loves when it rains because then she can take her umbrella to school. She almost missed the bus one morning because she thought it might rain so she ran home to get her umbrella. All of the kids have their own umbrella to use and they love playing with those things. I am not sure why they are so magical. After the kids come in from playing in the rain they usually request a nice glass of hot chocolate to warm up with. 

Joel had a work party that he had been looking forward to this month. It rained on the day we were supposed to go so it got reschedule to the week when our kids weren't feeling well. We debated staying home but it seemed that everyone was feeling better. At that point no one had a fever and seemed to be fine. Brynlee had missed school that day so I thought about just sending Joel with Kyla and Annalyn but Brynlee begged and begged to go. Kyla ended up falling asleep on the ride over and when she woke up she was grouchy. I could tell she wasn't feeling well again which was weird because she had been fever free for over 24 hours. She didn't have a fever until we got home later that night so hopefully we didn't infect everyone there with our sickness. Brynlee woke up with another fever in the middle of the night too but she was fine at the party. I kind of feel bad that we took our sick kids with us but they seriously had so much fun at that party. At least Brynlee and Annalyn and Summer did. Kyla made Joel or me hold her all night. We ate great food, Brynlee and Anna got to go on a pony ride, we ate ice cream and churros, and all three of the kids got to compete in a stick horse race. Annalyn was so proud of her face painting and bawled for a long time when it came off. She wanted to keep it there forever.   

 

A Battery Explosion

     The week before conference was pretty rough. All four kids ended up getting sick with fevers and Annalyn threw up once. They were all super whiney and needy and I spent most of the week holding and taking care of sick little girls. The kids would seem to be getting better and then the fever would start up again. Brynlee missed two days of school and then on Friday she came home from school right before lunchtime just bawling that her throat hurt. Annalyn complained all week that her stomach hurt and had a fever on Friday so she had to miss school that day. I didn't get enough sleep because I was up so much with sick kids and I was really looking forward to conference weekend. I love getting to listen to all of the uplifting messages from leaders of our church. Brynlee seemed fine that morning but then cried again and begged me to take her to the doctor. I waited until after the first session of conference at 12 and then rushed Brynlee in to see about her sore throat. We got in pretty quickly and found out Brynlee didn't have strep throat. Thank goodness. We made it home in plenty of time to watch the last session of conference. 

     It was the last day of the month and Joel needed to get an emissions test on his truck so he wanted to hurry and get it in before it closed so he would have time to make it to the priesthood session of conference. As soon as I got home he went out the door. I tried to turn on conference but the channel wasn't working. I ended up having to turn it on my ipad and the kids were super full of energy and begging to ride bikes in the front yard. I decided I could watch conference outside and let the kids play. Annalyn headed out right away while I went to Summer's room to grab her some shoes. I was in her closet when I heard a pretty loud BOOM! I didn't think much of it until I heard Joel yell my name. I could tell by his voice that something was seriously wrong and my heart kind of dropped. Joel ran in the house while I ran outside to check on the kids. One of the neighbors had run down the street and was in our garage. "Is he okay?" he asked. "Do we need to call an ambulance?" That's when I realized something had happened to Joel. I told the guy I didn't know and ran to Joel who was at the kitchen sink rinsing his face off with water. I asked him what had happened and he told me that his battery had just exploded in his face. I could see blood all over so my first thought was to call someone to watch the kids. I got my grandma on the phone and asked her if she could come watch the kids cause Joel was hurt. She said she would be there in a minute. Joel seemed coherent enough so I went and told our neighbor that I was just going to drive Joel in and I thanked him for coming to check on him. That guy was working on his truck from a ways down the street and I heard he ran as fast as he could over to check on Joel. It is nice to know that we have neighbors like that. 

     Joel's truck had been having issues with the battery not staying charged for a while. He kept having to jump start it but with a jump it worked fine so Joel didn't think much of it. Before he took it in for the emission's test he charged the battery just a little bit in his battery charger so it would start and then went to put the battery back in. As he did the battery literally exploded in his face. There were several pieces of plastic that came out and hit him in his face, he had a really loud ringing in his ear from the explosion, and the battery acid was all over his face and in his eyes. His left eye was what hurt the most. He said the power of the explosion threw him back a little and he kind of tripped down the driveway but then jumped up, looked at his truck and realized what had happened and that his face had acid on it so he ran for the sink and called my name. He spent a while just rinsing the acid off in the sink. I could tell he would probably need stitches on his chin. I got him a cloth and a bag of ice and got things gathered up and ready to leave while he rinsed at the sink. Grandma was there about two minutes after I called her. She said she ran out the door and didn't even turn her TV off. By the time she showed up we had several neighbors out in our driveway who had come so see what had happened so Grandma was pretty worried when she drove up. One of our neighbors came in with her to see if he could lend a hand but Joel said he was fine so I kissed all of the kids and we were off. Annalyn had been outside when it happened. I don't think she really knew what had happened but she knew her dad was hurt and when I left she was in her room just crying her little heart out. I gave her a big hug and assured her that dad and I would be home soon and that dad would be okay and then we were off. 

     As we were in the car heading to the ER Joel told me to take it easy and that there was no need to drive crazy. We were about half way there when his eyes started stinging and hurting really bad. We came to a stop sign and the car in front of us didn't speed up that quickly. Joel told me to pass them. It was a double yellow line but our little mini van passed that car and we made it the rest of the way in record time. Joel's eyes were hurting so badly by this point that he could barely see. He had the cloth and bag of ice over his eye and I guided him into the ER. We were the only people there so I rushed over to the check in desk and gave the lady Joel's name and birth date. Then they asked for his address and the lady there was not treating this situation with the urgency I felt it deserved so finally just told her, "he just had a battery explode in his face so can we please get some help in here for him." The lady just waved the computer away and said we would take care of the check in stuff later. Someone ran out and looked at his face and rushed back to prep a room for Joel. They got us back pretty quickly and had Joel rinse his eyes out in their wash station. They called poison control to try and see how long he needed to rinse and they were on hold with them for quite a while. Eventually they brought him back to a room and had him lay on the bed. 

     The main concern for the doctors was to make sure Joel had all of the acid out of his eyes. They wrapped towels all around his eyes and then stuck these contact like things in his eyes that had a tube sticking out of them that put a liter of liquid into his eyes and flushed them out. They wanted to do both eyes at once but it was extremely uncomfortable and his eyes were in so much pain, he told them he wanted to do one eye at a time. They gave Joel some numbing drops for his eyes and that helped a little but his eyes were hurting him so bad. It was extremely difficult for me to watch him hurt so much. I was able to get him some blankets and make sure he was comfortable but I really just had to watch. I am glad I was there to help him out where I could. 

     As soon as Joel's eyes were washed out the doctor turned to his chin and gave him five stitches. Joel said compared to his eye the chin didn't hurt much at all. The doctor numbed it first and they gave him some pretty heavy pain killers and then cleared him to go with instructions to call the eye doctor on Monday or sooner if the pain was too severe. We were in the ER for about three hours total and at that point Joel couldn't see at all and he was still in an extreme about of pain. The doctor didn't see any extreme permanent damage to his eyes or eye sight but we would not know the full extent of all the damage that was done until we saw the eye doctor. They diagnosed him with an eye ulcer and an eye abrasion as well as chemical conjunctivitis. His face was sore, swollen, and hurting. His shirt was also soaked from all of the rinsing he did but he put it back on for the ride home because it was the only shirt he had. Joel's parent's and brothers were on their way over to give him a blessing and almost there at that point but they got Joel a wheelchair and pushed him out the doors. He couldn't see at all so I had to walk behind him and guide him to our van. I wasn't super great at that cause I totally walked him into a parked car. Whoops! By the time we got to the van Joel's family had showed up. Joel sat in the front seat of the van and his dad and brother gave him a blessing. Joel was a little emotional during it but I think we both felt that he was going to be just fine after it was done. They told us to call if we needed anything and then I ran in to pick up Joel's medicine and take him home. 

     The first place where we went to get the medicine was closed so we had to drive to another store and get it. Joel waited in the van. It was at that point that I realized I had lost my debit card. Luckily Joel had cash in his wallet. I just had to walk back to the van to get it. I helped Joel walk in the house and make it to the bed. The kids all came to check on him briefly and then I kicked everyone out so I could help Joel get changed and into bed. My grandma and mom were both there with the kids and they had bought a pizza so we got Joel some food and settled him into bed. 

     While we were gone my mom and grandma had vacuumed my house and picked up all the toys. My mom washed all the windows and they had swept and fed all my kids. They had plans for the evening that they changed so they could help us out. My dad came over and helped clean up all the acid and he took care of the old battery. He washed out Joel's truck so nothing else was ruined from the acid. We were so grateful that they were able to step in and help at a moments notice. They lifted a small part of our burden and made life a little easier for us. As soon as my mom and grandma left one of my friends texted me and invited me over. I told her what had happened and that my kids had been sick but she came over anyways and took them to her house where they all had a blast decorating sugar cookies. I kept Summer and she was tired so I put her to bed early and was able to take care of Joel. I got him his medicine and it was quite enough that he could try to sleep. I spent most of the night taking care of Joel and looking for my debit card that I didn't find until the next morning. It worked out perfect because my friend Lisa brought Kyla over a few hours later when she was done making cookies and getting tired and then I was able to talk to her and tuck her into bed. Then she brought my other girls over a little later. Annalyn told her on the way to her house, "I thought my dad was brave, but I don't think he is." She talked to me about it later the next day and I really think it shook her up to know that even her dad could get hurt. She asked me how that could have happened since she thought dad was brave and strong. I told her even brave and strong guys can get hurt sometimes. I think the time making cookies and playing with friends was just what my kids needed to help them cope with what had happened. I am so grateful for good friends that were willing to take my kids even when they had been sick. My friend even brought dinner over to our family on Monday. 

     The next morning Joel was still in a lot of pain. He was up several times that night and I had to help him get his medicine and walk to the bathroom. It was a long night for both of us. His eye was hurting and his face was finally starting to feel the pain. He spent most of the next day on the couch with a cloth over his eye and with some heavy pain medicine in his system. I did my best to keep the kids quite because Joel's ears were still ringing. The kids made him a card and had a plate of cookies set out for him to eat that morning when he woke up. I took a picture since he couldn't actually see the cookies. I took the kids to grandma's for an hour to eat lunch so he could get a quiet nap in and then my sister took the kids for a little longer so I could take care of Joel some more and have some quiet time while Summer took a nap. Joel's brothers both stopped by at different times with some treats for us to share and they checked on him. Joel was still in a lot of pain that whole day and night but that next morning he was able to make do with just the ibuprofen. He could even open his eyes a little and look around. His right eye almost felt normal again but the left was super sensitive to light, super red, puffy looking, and painful. The picture below in the blue shirt was taken that day and the picture in the red shirt shows how red his eye still looked on day four. He had a weird circle thing on his cheek that was sore and tender; we don't know what that was from, he had cuts on his nose, lip and chin, but overall he looked okay. Honestly at this point we were feeling pretty lucky that things weren't worse. Joel couldn't shave for about a week. He doesn't usually bruise at all so none of us are used to seeing him with cuts or scrapes.   

     On Monday morning I called the eye doctor and they were able to get us in that afternoon. Brynlee woke up in the middle of the night with a pretty high fever so I had to keep her home from school again. It was another restless night for me. My sister had agreed to watch the kids but I didn't want her to have Brynlee since she was sick so I took Brynlee to grandma's house and she watched a movie in grandma's room while the other three played with Remi and aunt Heather so we could get Joel's eyes looked at. Joel took a cloth with him and covered his eyes for the trip but he was able to walk in to see the eye doctor with just a little help from me. I had to fill out most of the paper work but Joel could sign his name. The eye doctor finally looked at Joel's eyes and told him he was one pretty lucky guy. His eye was super red with a lot of bruising and he could see damage to the eye with some scar tissue but none of the damage was in his direct line of vision. At that point I was able to heave a huge sigh of relief. I am so grateful he can see again. That whole thing was pretty scary. We had to get more medicine for Joel's eyes and then we headed home and got the kids. Joel spent most of the day on the couch with his eyes covered but by the end of the night he was feeling better and was ready to go to work the next day. He didn't wake up needing medicine the whole night. I think he got a lot of questions about what had happened but he survived the whole day at work the next day. It hurt to use the computer so he had to wait and do all of that stuff on Wednesday. Tuesday was a pretty good day for our family until that evening when Summer threw up all over me. At least both my older girls went back to school and Joel was back at work. Summer had a fever on Wednesday but by Thursday everyone was back to normal. Just in time for Brynlee and Annalyn to have a four day weekend with no school.

     All things considered we feel pretty blessed that things turned out okay. Joel is just fine. He took his stitches out himself later that week and was able to shave before church on Sunday. Just one week later and the circle on his cheek was almost gone. His eyes doesn't look bad at all if you look at him directly but if he looks up or to the side it is still a little red. Now he is already back to working on his old truck again. I think we were both a little nervous and Joel took a lot of extra precautions this time and made sure to wear his safety glasses. We had so much help and little tender blessing during this trial. Several people texted to check on Joel and our families were a huge help. Things could have been so much worse. I am grateful everyone is healthy and feeling good right now and I can't thank everyone enough for all of their help.