It's gonna get real now... real sick

November 2017

Ok fans, our November got real yucky real quick. And at the worst time! My parents and sister and her family were all planning to drive down for Thanksgiving which I had been so excited about for weeks and months! I even went garage sale hunting and found a perfect "new" dining room table with chairs so we would have something we could all sit around. The one we got twelve years ago at BYU (can you believe it's been that long?) just doesn't fit more than four comfortably, five uncomfortably.

So, I've invested in new furniture, we've cleaned the office so company can sleep in there which was a HUGE investment of time - haha - and then one kid threw up! Augh! It was still over a week before Thanksgiving, so I thought, maybe we had enough time to squeeze in a little illness before company came. I kept everyone up-to-date on who was sick now and how sick and how quickly they got better; we were all watching our health like people watch news during a tornado warning. The illness made its happy little rounds through the family until I finally got sick the Monday before Thanksgiving. My family was planning to travel on Wednesday and I called Tuesday in tears to tell them not to come because we were ALMOST better but still too sick to subject them to our home. I couldn't help crying. I love my family, turns out. I had really looked forward to them coming to our FIRST home and seeing how cute we were... so I cried pretty hard to my daddy. He's a good man. Someone you can really cry to. Haha! Well, they came anyway! The turkeys! I was not sure how wise it was but I was SO RIDICULOUSLY happy, I just accepted the good news! Here are the pictures of that fun time. (The end of the story, yeah, some of them got sick after they got home, but really we don't know it was from us, right???? I'm not taking credit anyway...)

So here's an honest dose of my life. Enough of the fake beautiful, Pinterest homes you see on Facebook. This is what it's really like. This is a picture I took to go with a plea to my fellow Moms of Multiples group on Facebook asking how to wash stuffed animals as my kids are not old enough to contain their sickness. Don't worry. The picture is not graphic. :) But go ahead, notice the background: dishes in the sink, laundry all over the kitchen floor, piles of stuff all over the cupboards. This is real life. The internet can't lie to you with this picture! And that's why I'm sharing it. Maybe it will take a little pressure off some of you today. :)

Putting a little reality out there

So while the kids were ill, they didn't act ill really. I mean maybe a little more clingy but really, that's what was confusing. Their behavior lied to us multiple times about whether or not they were better and ready for solid food again. Tricky illness. Well, here's Abi (hair pulled back just in case!) with her adorable tea towel monkey tail. I'm not sure where she got the idea, but she decided she needed a tail and ran around for a couple days with a tail tucked in her back pocket. She loved it!

Some of the best toys aren't toys

Here's Audrianne not acting sick. She's wearing Hyrum's shirt which is a nice and terrible thing about boy/girl twins. Haha! They can wear each other's clothes which is convenient but sometimes shouldn't be done. Hyrum hasn't pulled off the pink as well as she pulls off the camouflage colors. :)

Audrianne

Would you see that smile and think, "I bet that kid is sick!" Nope! He's happy as a lark being buckled in the front seat of Daddy's car. Don't worry, he didn't go anywhere; just got to sit there and look cute.

Hyrum feeling so grown up

James's work does a big Thanksgiving dinner donation and part of that is the huge pick-up day. This is where over 1500+ families came to pick up their donated meals. Can you believe that?! This took over 250 workers to man and so James volunteered to help and took Abi with him. It worked by having about ten cars at a time drive through the delivery area; once they all stop, one at each station, several employees bring the boxes of food to their car and load it in their trunks. This takes literally a minute or two. Then all ten cars drive off and the next ten drive in and it starts again. It's so well-coordinated. Well, I don't know how she managed it, but Abigail got to be the stop sign holder at the front of the line. After I finished some errands, I went to pick her up so James could finish his shift and she was having the time of her life! They had a couple people in turkey costumes running around and music blaring! It was truly a party and she enjoyed every bit!

Abigail helping with the food delivery

She got to run the stop sign!

These kids think getting buckled in new seats is a right of passage I guess. They love it and look so proud!

Audrianne feeling so grown up

Abi watched out the window for quite a while, waiting for our family to arrive! We were all SO EXCITED!

Watching for family to arrive

...because of this! Life doesn't get better than this!

Cousins on the swing together

Hyrum and Audrianne hunting the neighbor dogs

The beautiful thing about Thanksgiving at my house is that the weather is still nice and the grass is green. Kids can actually go outside and get the wiggles out. We loved it!

Climbing trees

Preparing Thanksgiving dinner

Eating Thanksgiving dinner

You can't even see my nice "new" table which I love so much because it's hidden under this table cloth I bought to fit it. See? I was so invested in this event! Haha! I'm glad they came. I hope they are, too.

Behold the awesomeness!

The whole crew

They are stinking adorable!

Grammy reading to the grandkids

We had a great time taking the family out on the town. We went to the Riverwalk and enjoyed that for about five minutes before we realized it's not that relaxing with six kids age-six and under. There were way too many visions of kids jumping in or pushing each other in. Haha! We also went to the zoo to see all the Christmas lights twinkle in sync to music. I think that was Abi's favorite part!

Granddad and Grammy (and Daphney) on the bridge