Building, Snow, and Singing

Well its been a while since I had a minute to post so I have a lot to catch up on. I thought about saving some of it and posting one thing a day for the next few days so that it wouldn't be so long between posts again but just in case this is the only time I have to post for the next few days I want to be sure to get it all in. Anyway, here goes.

snow, Snow, SNOW!!!

We have had an unusually warm autumn and relatively snow free December until a few days ago. I guess all good things must come to an end. We have just been pounded with snow over the last few days and we're expecting more snow over the next few days. It wasn't bad at first but yesterday was unbelievable. It just kept coming and coming. I was out shoveling the walks and had the girls get a ruler to see how deep the snow really was. We had 7 inches at 1pm but the snow didn't stop until a few hours later and by then there was at least 2 more inches out there. Normally I wouldn't mind too much because I don't have to travel in it but this time I was hating every inch. I may not have to travel in it but CJ does. He has to go 30 miles south to Payson every day to build. I worry about him on that highway with all the other drivers who forget how to drive in the snow. Anyway, here are some pics of our snow.

This is the first day of snow. I thought we had a lot then. I didn't know how much we were about to get.

I let Megan touch the snow to see what she would think of it.

She didn't like it at all.

I went to take out the trash and was met with a happy stranger.

Rebecca and Dakota have made me promise not to shovel the sidewalk while they were at school because they wanted to do it. I thought they were doing it because they thought it was fun. Turns out they were doing it because they wanted to earn money. Oh well. I'm going to take advantage of them while they actually want to shovel the walk.

Here is the ruler. I know it's hard to read but it says 7 inches. That was before the additional 2 inches.All the neighbors made ginormous snowmen with the abundance of snow. My girls decided to make a snow fort/sledding hill.

School Holiday Sing.

Last Friday was the last day of school before the winter break. It is a tradition for the kids to have a holiday sing for the parents. Each class gets to perform a song or two. I was really tired and CJ had the morning off so he got the kids off to school. I forgot that I wanted to fix their hair real cute. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Building Week 1:

Last week was the first official week of building for our home. The construction supervisor decided to build our house first since he knows the plan better than the others. I'm okay with that now that I know what his plans are. We are going to frame our house first. When everyone is done with our house (the training house) they will frame all the other houses at the same time. The interior work will be done simultaneously so that all the houses will be done at the same time. Our house won't be done any earlier than anyone elses. CJ was out at the house every night last week. He is having a good time building and getting to know our neighbors. The biggest problem he has is that it is cold at night and they have to shovel all the snow away before they can start to work and that takes time away from the build. I was amazed when I went out on Saturday at how much work they had done. They had the basement wall done, the stairwell (minus the stairs) done, and the floor almost done. It only took a few hours on Saturday with everyone there to get the floor all the way done and start on the outer walls. By the time we left we had our first wall erected. It was so much fun to see the wall go up, I almost cried. CJ came back tonight and said that we have all four outer walls up. That is great news. We are way ahead of schedule. If we keep going at this rate we will be done way before August. It helps that a few of the families have people in them that know what they are doing and don't need to be trained. One of them just graduated from school with a degree in construction. It really helps having him there if we have a question.

This is the floor half way done.

The only time we will have 2 inches of snow in our basement...I hope.

How many people does it take to lift a wall?

The wall is almost up.

We have a wall!

CJ holding up the wall (that's our bedroom window by the way)

This is the view from our bedroom window. At least until a house gets built in the empty lot behind us.

I will be going out every Saturday so I will have more pictures every week.

The Many Moods of Megan

When my parents came to visit for Thanksgiving we took some drives. My dad who loves to take pictures was sitting behind Megan (who is still in a rear facing car seat) in the car so he took lots of pictures of her. I thought these pictures were so funny because they really capture Megan's mood swings. These particular pictures were taken in about a 3 minute period and as you can see her mood changed constantly from super happy to playful to frustrated and back again. What the camera didn't show you were the times she yelled at Grandpa for making her look at him and smile, lol, but I think you get the point. She is so much fun but she can be very stubborn at times (she gets it from daddy of course.)
I will post some pictures of the other girls as soon as they let me take some. I want you to see how beautiful they are too. It may take some bribing and maybe a few stolen camera shots but hopefully you can see them soon too.

Missed a photo

Sorry Dad. I don't know why I didn't post this one. It's a great picture. I love the pictures you took and I am so grateful you took them. CJ has them posted in his locker at work so that he can see them everyday.


Here we are with my parents (and a neighbor girl) in front of our big, wonderful hole.

Building: Day 1

Our house is evolving. The hole is now a basement. The small room in the front is the cold storage room that is directly under the front porch. Next to that is the garage. Pretty cool.

We got an email on Wed. that we were expected to be at the building site today, bright and early, so that we could put in window wells in the three homes that have been started. CJ and I were there and way excited to finally get started. Window wells is kind of a "get to know" you activity. It is not part of our 35 hour requirement (which technically starts when we begin framing) but is still mandatory. If all goes well with the weather we will start framing, and our 35 hour a week plus mandatory Saturday morning requirement, next Saturday. All 5 families that we have so far in our group were there and we all worked very well together. We had a lot of fun doing this assignment. We got to know the other families better and think that we have a really good group. This will make the very long build process much easier to deal with. Our home is scheduled to be finished by April 15, however, don't forget that we can't move in until all the homes in our group are finished. They are all scheduled to be finished August 31, with a move in day about a week later. That will be the hardest part to me. I will hate seeing my house every day for months and know that we can't have it yet. I don't want to think about that now though. I will just take it one day at a time and today was a great day.

Thanksgiving Cooks.

It was so nice to have my parents here for Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful time with them. Time always flys too quickly when you're having fun though. For dinner my mom let me cook the turkey and the pies. They turned out pretty good if I do say so. The rest of the dinner she let the girls cook. I was amazed. She told the girls what to do and then let them do it. I would have been a basket case, having to watch their every move, but she didn't even think twice about it. The girls had a blast making the food and I loved watching them cook with Grandma. That was more special to me than anything else. I would love that to become a tradition. I found out that they are pretty good cooks. The food was fabulous! I really need to give them more time in the kitchen because they do really well. I am very proud of my girls.

Megan helped by making sure the floor was well swept. I had to buy a new broom so I let her play with it and she would not let it go. She took it everywhere with her.

It's a really, really big hole!

I have never been so excited about a hole in the ground. We didn't even know that they had started digging our home yet. My parents were in town for Thanksgiving so we took them to see the lot that we are building on. To our surprise we saw a big pile of dirt and a big digger on our land. At first I thought it must be someone else's plot but it was indeed ours. I screamed in excitement. We have finally started!! We should have footings poured by the end of this week. We should be able to start framing by the end of this month or beginning of next month depending on the weather and how fast the foundation can be poured and cured.

View to the north.

View to the south.

The kids had so much fun just climbing on the piles of dirt and in and out of the hole. It was a great Thanksgiving surprise. Two other homes have been dug with footings poured so we know it is going as fast as they can go. We are so happy and our prayers have been answered.

My musical baby : )

On Saturday we went to see High School Musical 3 because CJ got some tickets from work and we thought we would surprise the older girls since all they can talk about is High School Musical. As usual I wanted Megan to sleep during the movie so I kept her from going to sleep at her normal nap time so that she would fall asleep as soon as the lights went out at the movie theatre. She was really tired so I figured she would be asleep before the lights went out. Boy was I wrong. From the beginning she just sat and watched the movie. About half way through she got the bug and started to dance to the music and by the end she was singing, dancing, and cheering. She was loving the movie, and CJ and I were having a blast watching her. She started singing in church again on Sunday but this time she added the dancing and cheering to the music. She kept looking around and wondering why no one else was dancing and cheering too. It was funny. She tends to sing and/or dance any time she hears music. We may just have the next star of High School Musical 13 on our hands. Watch out Vanessa Hudgens.

And Then There Were 4

It has been so much fun watching the older girls go ga-ga over their baby sister. They have been so happy with her in our family and have shown no signs of feeling like mom and dad were "starting over and replacing them" like I was told to watch out for. They kept asking if we were ever going to have a baby brother or sister for them to play with. In this way they think that we had Megan just for them, and they keep asking for another baby because having Megan to play with is so much fun. They absolutely love their little sister. I don't have as many pictures with the four of them together because all of them are camera shy. We are working with them and they are letting us take some pictures now...with smiles included. The best example is the Halloween pictures. Here are some of my favorite pics of the four of them together.
I know you have seen some of these before but like I said these are my favorites so I just had to post them again because I love looking at them.

Three Musketeers

I just love looking at pictures of my three older girls. Almost all of them are pictures of the girls together. These three did everything together. They still do most of the time but as they get older their likes and dislikes are changing and so they don't hang out as much as they used to. They also don't like having there picture taken anymore. I have to bribe them to get a decent picture now. But its all good. They still love each other and that is what matters. I have soooo many really cute pics of them together that it was really hard only being able to share a few. My girls are my pride and joy. I love them so much. Enjoy the pics.

Elizabeth 2, Rebecca 1, Dakota 1 month.

It's too late at night to think of a title.

So I just realized that it has been way too long since I put up a post. I have been busy lately, its just been with nothing post worthy. I guess I could at least go through my old photos and put another one up. Hopefully I'll do that tomorrow (technically that would be today since it's after midnight.) Anyway, here is a short update on the house. We've been delayed AGAIN. I no longer think we are going to start building this year. I am beyond frustrated but since I can't do anything about it I will just sit back and wait for the word, go. The construction supervisors have put in the build permits to the city of Payson and we are waiting for those to come back. Once they come back...this week or next...we technically could start building. That was our last hurdle. However, since the process is taking so long we had some families drop out of our build group and now we don't have enough families to get started. We need 6 families to start building and we have 5. We are just waiting for one more family to join our group. Since they don't advertise and just rely on word of mouth this could take weeks. Ahhhhhh!! Okay, I got that out of my system and I do feel better.

As for the girls. Megan's fingers are looking really good. It has been two weeks. Her cuts are almost completely healed and the bruising is minimal. She is still wearing her splint though just to protect the healing bones. The older girls all got their report cards today and they were great! All of them are doing really well in Math, Science, and Social Studies. Elizabeth got A's and B's, Rebecca got A's and one B (she even got 116 out of 100 in reading, no surprise there though since she is always in a book), and Dakota got all A's. This is a significant improvement for all of them and we are so proud of their hard work and great achievements.

We are getting ready for a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Tanquary next week for Thanksgiving and are soooooo excited for them to come. Other than that there isn't much to report. I guess that means I get to go to bed now. Thanks for reading and I hope to have something else soon.

Dakota's Big Day!

I am late getting this post on the blog, but better late than never, everyone always says.

Dakota turned 9 on Oct. 20.

She was so excited for her birthday (can you tell.) It wasn't because of the presents though, it was because of the cake. She couldn't wait to make her own birthday cake. She loves this new tradition and was counting down the days from her sister's birthdays until the day that she got to make and decorate her own cake. She has had this all planned out for months. She picked chocolate cake, chocolate confetti icing, and blue decorator icing.

She wanted a two layer cake (I think because it makes the cake look bigger.) Again I just left the room and let her go to work and do what ever she wanted. She had so much fun decorating her cake. I think that the cake turned out great! I think the girls really do a much better job on their cakes than I ever could.

As if making and decorating the cake wasn't enough to look forward to Dakota made up another tradition that she wants to do on her birthday. This tradition was looked forward to even more. It was the reason that she picked chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Dakota thought that Megan had so much fun eating her first cake with her hands that she wanted the same privilege on her birthday. She asked if she could eat the cake with her hands. I told her that eating cake with your hands is for babies. If she wanted to be different and really have some fun for everyone, she would have to eat the cake with no hands. She liked that idea even more.

She tried to make as big of a mess on her face as possible. She had so much fun and we had fun watching her eat (and occasionally pushing her face farther into) the cake. I don't know how many years this tradition will last (Rebecca absolutely does not want to eat cake with her face) but I will let Dakota enjoy having her cake, and eating it too, for as long as she wants.

Megan update and other stuff.

Thank you to everyone for their love and concern for Megan. I was reminded of many stories of Mom mishaps with their children that ended in bad injuries that it really helped me feel normal and not so horrible. CJ and I took Megan to her doctor on Friday for a follow-up and a second opinion. CJ had a hard time helping the doctor "hurt" his baby girl (CJ helped the doctor re-wrap Megan's hand.) It was not his favorite part of the day. The doctor said that he was concerned about infection because of the combination of broken bones and open wounds. He put her on an antibiotic to be safe. He said that he could have given her stitches but the benefits did not outweigh the pain it would have caused her. As long as we clean and dress the fingers everyday she will heal just fine. She does not like it when we have to touch her fingers but doesn't fight too much. Her fingers are black and blue but the cuts are healing well. The guts are back in the fingers and the cuts are getting smaller.

On another note, Megan has been making me laugh so much lately. Here are just a few things she does to make me laugh and smile.

Yesterday at church she was sitting on the pew next to me and playing with her toys. I reached for one of the toys to show her a new way to play with it. She quickly snatched it out of my hands, gathered all her toys and held them as close to her as she could. After a some serious thought she then gave me a very nasty look, put her hand up to me and very sternly told me NO!
During the rest hymn she looked around at all the people and heard them singing. She must have thought it was a good thing because she started to sing too. It sounded more like a dog howling but it was soooo cute. She sang almost the whole length of the song.
She folds her arms (and sometimes bows her head) for prayer.
She can say please, more, and thank you in sign language.
She tickles her own belly button...and laughs!
When I pick her up she jumps into my arms and gives me a great big hug.
She blows raspberries on arms, legs, tummies, cheeks, etc.
She loves to dance.
She loves to read and be read to.
She gives me love pats when she hugs me.

Like I said these are just a few of the things that she does that I just love. She continues to amaze me. I love each and every one of my girls. I also love watching my other girls play with Megan and see how much they love her. I am so blessed with four sweet little angels.

Poor baby (warning: very long post)

So here is what happened to Megan on the trip to Santaquin. As I was going through one of the basements Megan was just free to walk around and enjoy herself. There was very little in the basement so I didn't feel that it would hurt anything to let her walk around. As I was getting ready to leave I went to get Megan and she came up to an unfinished wall. She peeked through the wall and looked around. I could almost hear her think to herself, "look, I can walk through walls." I thought it was cute so I let her do it. She decided to walk through the wall instead of go around to the doorway. About 6 inches in front of the wall she was walking through was a large plank. It was standing on it's side so it came up to her thighs. It was very long and I just assumed that it was leaning on something so it was sturdy (I know, I know, you should never assume because it makes a you know what, and so on...but I did it anyway and look what happened.) Megan came to the plank so I just watched to see what she would do. There wasn't any room to turn around and I don't think that scooting sideways has been learned yet so her only option in my mind was for her to back up. She had started to back up (which is still a very new concept to someone who has just learned how to walk) and I thought she was very smart and brave. Then she changed her mind and came back to the plank. She looked at it as if she was sizing it up. She grabbed a hold of the plank and started to lift her leg over it. I thought she was being very brave and smart finding another way over this plank. I knew that she was not tall enough to climb over it so I started to go toward her so I could help her achieve her goal. That's when it happened. I didn't get over there soon enough. She lost her balance and started to fall. She was still holding on to the plank as it fell to the ground. I noticed that the plank had landed on her fingers and she had landed on the plank so I knew that she would be hurt and upset. When I picked her up I noticed some blood on her fingers and thought that maybe she had gotten a pretty big splinter or something. Then her face went purple and when she finally did let out her cry I knew that it was her hurt cry but with more intensity. I looked at her fingers to see if I could get the splinter out but there was too much blood coming from 3 of her fingers. I immediately felt that something was very wrong. I rushed upstairs to the kitchen and washed her fingers under the water to see how bad the cuts were. Her middle finger, ring finger, and pinkie on her right hand were all bleeding. I couldn't tell how deep the cuts were but it looked like very large splinters had gone in deeper than I felt comfortable pulling them out. They were bleeding pretty bad so I started to panic. I realized that I didn't have anything to wrap her hand in. The lady that owned the home happened to come back right then and asked what had happened. She was very sympathetic and went and got a roll of toilet paper and I wrapped Megan's hand a few times so that she would not get blood everywhere. Then she went and got a paper towel and some painter's tape. I folded the paper towel and put it over the TP then the lady wrapped the whole thing with the blue tape. After that I asked her if she knew where the closest Urgent Care was because Megan was in a lot of pain an needed to get help right away. I was so relieved to hear that there was a brand new clinic right down the street. The people at the clinic were a little amused to see that I had wrapped it with so much paper product and tape for what they thought would be some small splinters in the fingers. When they got all the paper stuff off and looked at the fingers they realized that it was more serious than they thought. The Doctor shot some numbing medicine in to her fingers to try and ease the pain so that he could get some x-rays and a better look with some tweezers. Poor Megan was just in so much pain and there was nothing I could do. I just kept telling her how sorry I was that I let it happen. I should have never let her try to climb the plank even for a second. The x-ray revealed that she had bone damage. She had spit the top bone in her middle finger right down the middle and the tip of the bone on the ring finger was crushed. That made me feel even worse. He poked around in the fingers to see if he could find any splinters but said that he didn't see any foreign materials. What I thought were splinters was just the guts of her finger sticking out of the cuts with dark blood just below the surface. He said she didn't need stitches (although I trust his training I still think differently) but she would need to wear a splint for the next 2 to 3 weeks to help the bones in the fingers heal. Getting the makeshift splint on to a screaming, squirming one year old proved difficult. I just couldn't wait for it to be over so that Megan could just go to sleep and be out of pain for a little while. They did finally get a splint on and Megan started to settle down. I just held her tight and kissed her gently so that she would know how sorry I was. She took a good nap that day and I worried about how much pain she would be in when she woke up. Thankfully, when she woke up she was completely back to her normal happy self. She didn't even think twice about her splint. I thought she would at least try to pull it off but she didn't. Actually she kept biting it but that was easily stopped. I am afraid to take the bandages off because the guts of her fingers were still sticking out when he wrapped them and I think they may be stuck to the bandage. I am waiting until Friday when she goes to her regular doctor to check on the progress. I will let him be the bad guy. Every time I see her splint I feel pangs of guilt, and it doesn't help that Dakota keeps saying that she wishes she had a time machine so that she could go back in time to save Megan. I know that accidents happen and that she will heal but it will take some time before my guilt goes away.

I do tend to go into waaaaaaaaaay too much detail when I tell a story so I hope that you are not so bored that you are afraid to read any more blog posts from me. I just have this flaw of making everyone else live through every single detail of the stories I tell. So next time I say "long story made short", you'll know that I am serious. Anyway, I thought I would add a picture of Megan with her little splint.

As you can see it hasn't dampened her spirits at all and I am so grateful for that.

A Great and Terrible Day!

Yesterday was an eventful day for us. It was truly a great AND terrible day. First is the great part of the day. I went to a Rural Housing open house for some homes that were finished in Santaquin (a city just south of where we will build.) They had two homes there that have the same floor plan as ours so I was excited to see how our house will look when it's not just a drawing. I'm definitely looking forward to that kitchen! I talked to the families that just went through the building process just to get their thoughts while the difficult process was still fresh in their minds. I don't know that it helped. They all said that it was almost more than they could take. I know it will be hard but the more questions I asked them the more scared I got. For a brief moment I entertained the idea of dropping out of the program because I didn't know if we could handle it. In the end I just walked through the home picturing life with our family in the home and my fears were quieted and I knew that we are doing the right thing. So later that afternoon CJ and I went to the Title Agency and finally closed on our home. It is so weird because I expected the closing to have a lot more paperwork, stress, and anxiety involved. There was a lot of explaining but it was over fairly quickly and we are now able to start construction (when the other families have closed their loans of course.) The other great part of the day came right after closing. We went right over to the school and cast our votes in this historic election day. Even though my one little vote wouldn't make or break the election I knew that I had made my voice heard and that I had a say in the future of our country. Now for the terrible part of the day. It all started with the van. I went to back out of the driveway and had a hard time as if there was something on the ground that was blocking the tires. I checked and didn't find anything in the way. After a few more failed attempts to get out of my own driveway I realized that there was a serious problem with my van and it was going to have to go to the shop. Next was an accident that happened in the basement of one of the homes I went to see. While I was surveying one of the basements Megan had found a plank and wanted to climb over it. To make a long story short there was blood and she was injured. I will post more about that accident in another blog. While Megan's injury will heal, the last terrible part of the day will take many years to recover from, and it will be even harder to handle than a grueling year long build process. The election results came in and my worst fears were realized!!! I am too upset to talk about it so I will leave it at that. So there you have it. November 4, 2008 will forever remain as a great and terrible day for our family.

Halloween Pics

We had a pretty fun Halloween. CJ had the day off so he was excited that he was able to go to school and see the Halloween parade and Rebecca's 5th grade Wax Museum. This was a first for him. He also came and helped me out in Rebecca's class with her class party. I am the room mom so I was in charge of the Halloween party. I was so glad that he could come and help me and Rebecca loved having both of her parents there. We started trick-or-treating around 6pm. After 2 1/2 hours, and a few attempts at rain, the girls were getting tired so they decided to call it a night.

Elizabeth was Ella Enchanted.

Rebecca was Tinkerbell.

Dakota was a bat witch.

Megan was a teddy bear.

They really enjoyed themselves and can't wait to start designing their costumes for next year.