Memorial Day Weekend 2010

I thought it would be easier to just talk about the weekend in one big post.

Friday: S had a field trip to take front runner to Discovery Gateway for a field trip. J took S & Z to that field trip.
M had a "mountain man rendezvous" with the 4th grade at school, and I volunteered with that.

K had a "medieval feast" with the 6th grade. Each child was assigned a role, and they were to dress in an appropriate costume and play the role. She was a lady, and I have spent the last two weeks working on a dress for it. I'm quite proud of how it turned out. It was Simplicity 9891.
After we got done with school, I quickly packed the truck, and took off with K & M. It was raining a bit, and I worried that our clothing would get wet, but it turned out ok. We picked up J and the little kids from Discovery Gateway.

Then, we went to visit J's grandfather Bruce, who recently moved to Utah. He is in a care center here, and is unable to speak at this point. It was his 83rd birthday, and we gave him a bunch of pictures. While there, we hung them up on the wall. It is a little upsetting to see him in this state. He is one of the most take charge, strong people I've ever met, and I can't imagine how upset he must be to be in this state. He cried when I told him that we had to go, and it almost broke my heart. Old age is so cruel.
After that, we made a stop in Springville. We sold our parrot back in March, and had promised M that we would go visit Rudy in May. The new owner was happy to let us stop by his business and see him. Rudy definitely recognized us. For M, that was a good thing. For some reason though, he was very agitated towards me, and actually flew at me from his cage to attack me. He got two pretty bad bites in on the inside of my wrist. Broke the skin in four places, and it's bruised as well. I know it's stupid, but it really hurt my feelings! I can't understand why he was so angry towards me; he'd always tolerated/liked me before. The new owner reported that Rudy has settled in nicely (he is now called Rocky, which is fine with us). However, he no longer says "Hello", "I love you" or any of the other phrases we taught him. He does now say "Wake up!".

We eventually got to Ephraim for our annual trek for Scandinavian Days. There's also a casual family reunion with my Grandma Jane's side of the family that weekend. Normally, there's well over 200 people, but this year was a much smaller event. Jim's parents came, as well as his sister and her family. Yes, I realize it may be a bit odd to invite the inlaws to a family reunion, but J has such cool family that his parents and siblings are invited to this particular family reunion. Jill and her husband and stepdaughter came as well. They ended up buying the most adorable boxer puppy while down there. I'm in love with him!
I usually am ready to leave by Sunday morning because I am violently allergic to *something* in Ephraim that weekend. I was sad to go as well though, because it was so much fun to be with such fun people. It didn't help matters that I knew I was leaving a day early because I had to go work my part time job.

We got home, checked on things, and had a few minutes to unwind before I had to go to work. I was OVERJOYED to see that I have 5 potato plants that have popped up. I am so excited!

Diagnosis: Far SIghted AND Amblyopia

At S's four year old well visit, she had a brief eye exam. She passed one eye with no problems. When asked to do the second eye, she refused because she had "already told the nurse what the pictures were". At the time, I thought it was really funny.

Fast forward almost a year, and eye screenings were done at her preschool. She failed the exam. S had her five year old well visit scheduled a couple weeks later, so I figured we could address it then. At her well visit, she failed the screening with her right eye again, though she could see fine with her left eye.

I scheduled a visit with a pediatric ophthalmologist, and that visit was today. The official diagnosis was that her right eye has has fairly significant farsightedness (she couldn't see any pictures smaller than 20/80), and her right eye seemed fine. Due to the discrepancy in her vision, she has developed Amblyopia, also known as "lazy eye".

I have to admit I'm a bit confused. I always thought that people who were farsighted could see things at a distance, but that is obviously not the case with S. I honestly have never noticed any symptoms. I would feel really guilty, but as I've consulted Dr. Google, I realize that many kids don't have any symptoms.

The doctor has written her a prescription for glasses. The hope is that the glasses will force her eyes to work more equally, and that her right eye will get stronger.

We have a follow up in July, and if the doctor isn't pleased with her progress, we'll look at patching the good eye a couple hours a day.

Before the appointment, I'd prepped S for the appointment, and warned her that she would probably need glasses. From my informal "tests" I could tell something was seriously wrong with her right eye, and I was sure there was *something* wrong with it that would need treatment.

This morning she was pretty nervous about the exam, and was worried that it would hurt. The whole thing wasn't too bad though. We did arrive at the office a bit early, and they were quite late getting to us, so we were at the office almost two hours, and the playroom was "boring", even to Z.

The doctor dilated her eyes for the exam. I asked the tech if the drops were the "fast" drops. She said they were the slower ones because kids are really good at compensating. She warned me that it would last most of the day. I'm a little worried because when I put S to bed at 8:45pm, her eyes were STILL dilated and not responding to light. That's a good 10 hours later!

Vegetable Garden 2010

I got our garden planted today. I was a little disappointed because I bought some seeds for some fun veggies- some purplish tomatoes, and multicolored peppers, but I didn't get them started indoors in time.

So, this year, I've planted:

1 grape tomato
4 roma tomatoes
4 slicing tomatoes
4 eggplant
4 jalapeno
4 celery
1 cucumber
1 cantaloupe
1 watermelon
1 zucchini
1 spaghetti squash
1 crookneck squash
1 packet of multicolored carrots
1 row of red corn
4 rows peas (I DID remember to plant these in March. Go me!)
Adirondack Blue Potatoes

The potatoes are a little bit of a gamble. They are left over from last year. I intended to save them and use them as my seeds this year. Unfortunately, they were kept a little warmer than they should have, and they each had a good two feet of growth on them when I brought them upstairs. I cut the shoot off and planted. 25% of my garden is these potatoes, so I'm really, really, really hoping they grow.

I will be adding a pumpkin or two to the mix, but the garden center I went to didn't have a good selection, so I'll have to go to J&J Nursery to get a couple starts.

At Jerry's, the nursery I went to today, they have an amazing selection of roses. I only bought two, and that was a tough choice. Now that I see how much fenceline I have, I realize I can buy more. I bought a Joseph's Coat and a Hotel California. They had 4 or so yellow roses to choose from, but since I LOVE that song, it won. The yellow is in honor of my Grandma Jane. Yes, she's still alive, and it's her favorite color of rose. When better to honor our favorite people than when they're still alive? The Joseph's Coat is for *MY* mom.

I also bought several herbs to replace the ones that didn't come back this year- I got a rosemary, oregano, chamomile, and dill.

I'm in trouble!

Easter Egger Chicks- 9 days old

So, I bought those 5 chicks last week, when I only intended to buy two. I figured I'd post a KSL ad and sell the other three. Only, I didn't post the ad that first day, like I should have.

Now, I've had them for a week. Sad to say, I'm getting attached. Even worse, with their feathers starting to show on the wings, I'm speculating on what they're going to look like as adults.

The two I had easily planned to give away (Lucky and Spike) look like they'll end up being a rich, dark brown with speckles, which sounds just gorgeous. K is still loving Blondie, who is the cutest chick now, but I think will be the ugliest as an adult. We have room in our henhouse for 6 hens, right? It's more than I planned, and I'd really wanted to get a Copper Marans, but maybe we'll just do this.

Bountiful Baskets- May 1

My engineer husband's geeky ways are starting to rub off on me.

I ordered a Bountiful Basket for today. The basket itself cost $15 + sales tax. Instead of just putting everything away, I measured out how many pounds of each item I got. I stopped at Smith's grocery store on the way home and got prices so I could see how much I would've spent if I'd just bought the stuff there.

If I'd bought that exact basket at Smith's, it would have cost $36.21.

I plan to go do the same thing at Walmart, but not today. We still have our temporary sons, and we let K have two friends sleep over last night. So, I have 8 children running around the house right now. In addition, we have the five chicks (who are getting so big, and still look cute), and we have plans to go camping today. CRAZINESS!