Tappana Times: Smiling the Winter Blues Away

Despite the winter-y month of February with all the grays and rain, we've done our best to keep the seasonal blues away.

We went and saw my sister as a gnome in a play. Ammon, sans-nap of course, crashed where he was while waiting for the show to start.

Just keeping up the trend of falling asleep anywhere and everywhere. I'm going to do a blog one day just showing all the different pictures of Ammon sleeping in crazy places. It might be a long post...

Kendrick, Ammon, and I have gone to continuing-ed religion classes to get more spiritual. (Not to mention my mom is the teacher and she's fabulous). However, Kendrick was being too cute I just ended up snapping a million pictures of his face.

What's new.

Brigham's car died. :( :( However, we knew it was coming since it's had a lose piston for YEARS and we've been blessed it lasted this long. Although I was sad, I didn't feel too stressed. I felt like we would be taken care of and that it would all work out. We were blessed to find a great deal on a great car within the first half hour of looking.

Driving up to Puyallup to buy the car, we stopped at one of our favorite places that we always used to eat at in Provo when we would go for football games or to visit Kyle and Katrina: Pita Pit.


Mmmm, mmmmm. Of course we stopped. I've only ever seen Pita Pit in two places in Utah, and this random city in Washington. Think Subway, but in a pita with lots of sauce choices. I snapped a picture and sent it to Katrina to reminesce about old times.








And now we have a 2006 Toyota Corolla with only 70,000 miles on it. That is a serious miracle for us. May it live long and prosper. Please, please, please, please, please, please.

Please.

All the winter rain = plenty of mud for the puppies to cause trouble with.

And their baths have increased in number dramatically.

Winter also brought the cold and flu season, and unfortunately we were not spared. Not even the baby. With him being about the same age Ammon was when he contracted rsv and was hospitalized with Lydia for a week, I had WAY too many flashbacks with our mucus, long nights of pacing, and coughing, and crying. And by the end of the very long, horrible, no good week, Kendrick and I were both feeling this way.

What baby just sits there with a perpetual glare on his face? This boy. And it's another reason why I just love him.

Despite all the fears and long nights and crying (sick babies are the saddest, worstest!) I was blessed with the know-how of how to administer a good suction (due to our past horrific rsv experience, seriously the doctor made me practice in front of him at the office) and I was blessed with a helpful husband that took him so I could get a break in the evenings.

.If that's not attractive, I don't know what is.

Basically, we survived and came out with only a lingering cough for me.

Once we passed through our ills, we went to the free bingo night at the school.

The older kids enjoyed a night out and I even splurged and bought them each a fifty-cent popcorn. Whew! They take a lot to impress. Kendrick was jealous, but remained half-decent...for the first hour, and then we had to bust out of there before he lost his marbles. No big bingo prizes for us, but the night out together as a family was all we needed.

A few sunny days appeared in February and we made good on them with plenty of walks. When I felt stressed that Kendrick spent too much time in his car seat, we pulled out the back pack.

And if you want to know a good way to convince a five-year old to go on long walks with you, play this little game I created: pick a random number and every time they find that number while walking they get a jelly bean. Suddenly, Ammon turned from dreading our long walks to asking to go and running down streets looking for number seven on mailboxes and houses so he could have candy. I might have to switch to blueberries or something due to the large amount of sugar consumption....but I'm proud of him keeping up with me on three mile walks.

All in all, winter hasn't been too terrible.

But with that smile and those dimples chasing the blues away, how can it be that bad?