Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting by the gate.

The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late!"

The second one said, "There are witches in the air!"

The third one said, "Well, we don't care!"

The fourth one said, "Let's run...

"...and run..."

"...and run!"

The fifth one said, "Isn't Halloween fun?"

Then OOOOooooooo went the wind and OUT went the light...

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

That little poem is from a board book we have.  Since we have five little pumpkins, I thought we'd better by them some pumpkin-colored shirts and take some photos.

This week our five little pumpkins carved/painted pumpkins and tried to look really scary for the photo.  Omar neither decorated his own pumpkin nor did he try to look scary.

 In other news, Liliana and Ruben went with Edgar, Abuelita, and Tia Elia and Tio Jonaton to a program at the Conference Center in Salt Lake.  They looked sharp.  Ruben needs some longer pants.  His birthday's coming up and maybe he'll get some.

 Since the program was only for older children, I kept our three youngest and their cousins.  I traded my two older (and I realized very helpful) kids for two really cute smaller ones.  I had a baby, a one-year old, a two-year-old, a three-year-old, and a four-year-old.  I was feeling like things were going really well and that I was a really capable care-giver.  I was making some mac n' cheese from a box when Ian (the one-year-old) and Ammon (the two-year-old) came out of Omar's room with potting soil on their persons and in their hair.  They had dumped one plant completely upside down and had knocked others partially over.  Edgar had already vacuumed that room too.

Ian, Ammon, Kiara, Marcos, & Omar

We had a great time and so did the performance-goers.

Happy Halloween from our pumpkins to yours!

All Kinds of Stitches, Blood, and Gore

Sweet little Marcos!  Last Sunday as I was creating a new blog post, Liliana came in the house to report that Marcos was bleeding and that he needed a band-aid.  If there's anything Marcos loves, it's a good band-aid (or even a bad band-aid).  He wants them all over himself and probably applies an average of 1.7 band-aids onto his little body every day.  I told Lili to give him a band-aid, and she took one outside.  

About an hour later, Marcos was in the house and I realized there was quite a lot of dried blood behind his right ear.  I removed his band-aid and there were a few jagged edges of skin.  I found out that he had been climbing on a rock jack outside and had fallen from it.  I don't know where the rest of him landed, but the behind-the-right-ear portion of him landed on a barb of the barbed-wire fence.  Edgar was still gone to work and wouldn't be home for another hour.  I needed a second adult opinion so I called Marianne to come over and see if she thought Marcos needed stitches.  She didn't know and I didn't know, but it was nice to have someone not know with me.  She pointed out that behind the ear isn't a real visible part of the body, but we also discussed the fact that Marcos's hair is short and that it will probably always be short.  

I called Edgar.  He thought he could probably superglue Marcos's skin together.  I was relieved.  Edgar is always so careful with our children and their health--more careful than I am.  When he got home, Edgar washed his hands and got the superglue.  When he saw the flaps of skin and that they were rather jagged, he changed his mind and decided we'd better go to the emergency room.  I amended the "we" and decided I'd better take our little Marcos.  Edgar had to leave Monday morning at 4:00 for work.  I took Marcos, Omar, some books and Marcos's blanket.  

We got to the emergency room at about 9:00.  After we got a bed, I started feeding Omar and reading to Marcos.  Our neighbor on the other side of the curtain was friendly and told us a lot about herself and her family.  Her granddaughter also happened to be in the emergency room, just one door down.  I felt like we got to know quite a bit about them all.  The doctor finally came and said Marcos did need stitches.  Then, an hour or so later, he came and stitched Marcos up.  He also put superglue on top of the stitches.  I had to hold Marcos's ear up so that it wouldn't get superglued (Sorry, Spellcheck, I'm going to insist that superglue is a verb and that adding a "d" to it makes it a verb in past tense.) to his little head. Then about an hour later, we got to leave.  We got home after 1:00 am and as I went to bed, I looked at the clock.  It was 1:40 am.  I thought about how Edgar's alarm would be going off in exactly two hours.  I'm glad I'm the one that took Marcos to the ER.  Marcos is his usual happy little self:

I tried to capture his stitches here, but the picture's a bit blurry.  I'll blame Thelma for that.

Monday night we had some more blood.  This time it wasn't a family member--it was Edgar's deer.  Monday was the opening day of his hunting season.  That evening when he came home, he was packing things up to go early the next morning to hunt.  When he went outside to get something, he saw a large buck in our yard.  He shot it.  We don't like venison, but our friends, Alma and Juan love it.  Alma told me once that they love eating deer, but that Juan is too tender-hearted to hunt.  I told her that I have a blood-thirsty husband who loves to hunt, but not eat venison.  Edgar called Juan and he was on his way to come and help cut up the deer (something my house and I will have NOTHING to do with!).  Edgar lamented that the children (who had just gone to bed) would not get to see the deer.  I knew Lili was still awake, but I didn't know about the boys.  So Edgar and I, in a bid to win a Parent of the Year Award, awakened our small children and took them outside in the chilly, dark night and led them over rocks with a flashlight to see a dead deer.  We left Omar in his bed.  Edgar shone the flashlight on the deer.  Liliana, our animal lover, hated seeing it.  Ruben was somewhat interested.  

Edgar said to Marcos, "Are you going to shoot a deer someday?"

Marcos:  "NO!"

"Why not?"

"It scares me!"

Ammon was just bewildered that his parents had gotten him out of bed to go outside and see a dead animal in the still of the night.

We tucked them all back in bed.  Sweet dreams, kids!  Please don't call CPS, dear reader.  Everyone seemed to sleep well with no reported nightmares.  One year I took pictures of Edgar's deer and vowed not to do it again.  I will spare you that image. You are welcome. 

On a much more upbeat note, Tuesday we got a treasure in the mail:  Omar's baby quilt that my mom somehow found time to make while serving a full-time mission:

It is gorgeous!  I don't think these pictures do it justice.  Each block is quilted in great detail.  It's amazing how many stitches are in this beautiful keepsake--many more than are behind Marcos's ear! (Thank goodness!)

As you can see, Omar is thrilled with it!

The final stitch I'll address is the stitch Lili didn't get in her side when she ran her second 5K yesterday.  She has been training some and was a few seconds faster than last time.  She got second place for her category this time.  Last time she got first.  I guess next time she'll get third.  She ran the whole way and did great.

This picture of her running in at the finish line is staged.  I was on the side when she ran in so we took this picture later.

Who knew I'd ever have a daughter who likes to run? 

The race was a the Marina in Spring Creek.  It was a great location.  The boys loved watching the water and the ducks.  There was also a playground nearby.

Lili enjoyed running so much that she and Morgan ran off while we had a family picnic later on yesterday.  She missed our photo.  My 94-year-old grandma came to visit.  We had a nice lunch at my uncle Drew's house with all of my aunts and uncles on my dad's side except one (of course Elder Dahl was not there either).

Today was Stake Conference.  Edgar wanted to take the whole weekend off, but he could only get yesterday off because too many of his work buddies had taken time off to go hunting today. (I guess that work influence is where he gets his blood-thirsty tendencies--I'm sure he doesn't get them from me or from anything I do or dream about!)

We went to the Adult Session of Stake Conference last night and it was so good.  Our niece, Deseret, babysat for us and did a wonderful job.  This morning Edgar got up at 3:40 to go to work.  I couldn't go back to sleep until 5:30.  I had set my alarm, but for some reason it didn't go off and I woke up at 7:50.  Our stake conference started at 9:00 this time and I had planned to leave at 8:00.  There was no way I could do that, but I rallied the children and we ate, packed snacks and books, got dressed in church clothes (except Marcos had to wear his white tennis shoes--we could not find his church shoes on such late notice!), and left by 8:25.  We drove a little fast and made it to Elko and the beginning of Stake Conference at 9:00.  Of course we were sitting in the back of the gymnasium on the folding chairs.  Hyrum kindly sat with us and helped with the children (especially with Ammon, who adores Hyrum).

This post has gotten LONG.  Sorry and thank you if you are still reading!

A Beautiful Fall Day

Today is the most beautiful day in the history of the world.  At least, that's what my dad would say.  If it isn't THE most beautiful, I bet it's in the top 17 or so.  The weather is perfect and the scenery lovely.   I just ate a big, crisp apple, and I think I will start singing, "It's Autumn Time."  The kids and I went to enjoy autumn.  Of course, we took along the camera.

My Parents' House

My Grandparents' Barn and Buildings

The Road to my
Grandparents' House

My Kids

Lili loves horses, and this one proved quite friendly.

When we got home, Omar was asleep, but we took a picture of the others in front of the lovely fall tree picture Marcos made at preschool.  We just harvested these big beautiful pumpkins from our garden.  That's a lie.  We didn't even have a garden this year.  Every year we can either have a garden or a baby, and this was a baby year.  The years we do have gardens, we have never been able to produce pumpkins--especially like these.  The pumpkins were a good price at the grocery store, so I got one for each child to decorate and another to make dinner-in-a-pumpkin (our traditional Halloween feast which nobody likes but me--no matter, I will continue to make it every year!  Traditions die hard for an Olivia.).

And here is a final picture.  Omar is loving is cereal, and since he's only been eating it for a week, everyone is still excited about helping to feed him:

Happy Fall!

A Near Miss, A Hungry Baby, and a CRAZY Dream

I hesitate to post this picture and relay this story because it will worry my mother.  This week our little Ammon was running around the house with a dull pencil in his hand.  He tripped and fell and hurt his eyelid.
He was screaming and had his hands over his eyes.  I was so scared to see what was behind those hands, but thankfully, his eye was still in tact.  His eyelid was bleeding and now he has this little scab.  I repeated tests to assure his vision.  I kept covering his "good" eye and giving him a thumbs-up.  Each time he gave me his version of a thumbs-up sign--an index finger-up.  That was reassuring.

Unfortunately, I can't account for the other scrapes on his face.

  With our last four babies I have been very slow to begin solid food. It is just so messy and time-consuming.  Omar has an appointment on Wednesday and he's almost five months old.  (How did that happen so fast?!)  I had thought I would start him on cereal after our appointment, but for three nights in a row the little love woke up three times each night and seemed extra hungry.  So last night (Sunday) I gave him a little cereal.  He loved it!  He's ready whether I have time to spoon feed him or not.  It is a lot more rewarding when the little one looks like this and is tickled to get a little cereal:

 

And now, for my crazy dream.  This is one of those things that you'll wonder about.  Why did she include that? you will ask.  I'll tell you why:  I think it's fascinating that I would dream something like this and I wonder if it means something.  I would like to extend an opportunity to my vast readership to interpret the dream.  With that build-up, here it is:

I was cooking dinner for my family and my parents (who were here at my house) and also Marianne's three youngest children.  Carolina (Marianne's youngest) was sitting on the counter top helping me.  I was slicing pork from a pork roast and putting it on top of rice.  I realized that I wasn't going to have enough meat for everyone and so I matter-of-factly (which must not be a word because it's underlined in red squiggly) cut off Carolina's hand (which really isn't too meaty) and put it on top of the casserole-like dish I was making.  It sounds disgusting, but in the dream there was no blood and Carolina didn't even flinch.  As I was putting the dish in the oven to bake and using both of my hands, I realized that things might be difficult for little 'Lina without both hands.  I also realized that Marianne might be upset that I had cut off her child's hand and eaten it.  I asked my mom, who was helping with the dinner preparations, what she thought.  She was undecided and didn't think it was a big deal.  I wondered if I should try to salvage the hand and take Carolina to the Emergency Room to try to get her hand sewn back on.  I wasn't sure what I should do with my own children while I took Carolina to the hospital.  It seems like my mom offered to stay with my kids if I decided to take Carolina to the hospital.  I got the dish out of the oven and was going to retrieve Carolina's hand.  Then I woke up.  I was horrified and when I realized it was only a dream I was incredibly relieved.  Now, what do you think of that?

By the way, this week I came across the word "whoa" in several different things I was reading.  Though none of you helped me, I was able to ascertain the proper spelling through my own stumblings (which also must not be a word--more red squiggly).

Au Revoir!  Again, the French class.