GoldenGrams

This time we visited the farm at Thanksgiving Point.

Last Monday was one of the craziest days we’ve had in a while.  Allow me to elaborate. 

(Whoa.  I just finished typing this and it’s kind of long.  This means by brother, Abe, likely won’t be reading.  The day involved toilet water, a rainstorm, and lots of blood.  Does that make you want to keep reading?)

As we were getting ready in the morning, I heard dripping.  I soon saw that water was dripping through the ceiling in our hall.  This has happened once before when we first moved in.  Our neighbor’s toilet overflowed in the middle of the night, flooded her bathroom, and dripped down to us.  We suspected the same thing had happened this time.

I called our neighbor who was 30 minutes away.  She hurried home and we inspected her bathroom.  There was some water in it, but not a large amount.  Then we noticed that she had water dripping through her ceiling.  So we trekked upstairs to our third floor neighbor.  We woke him up and he went to check his bathroom.   A few minutes later he came out and exclaimed that his bathroom was totally flooded.  At least we figured out the cause of that problem.  I’m not sure I want to know what kind of water damage we may have between our floors.

I went off to a meeting and when I got back, Dallas was loading the girls in the car for a picnic in the canyon.  He had a hankering to commune with nature.  We drove to Bridal Veil Falls, enjoyed a pleasant picnic, watched the girls play in the water, and started walking up the trail.  However, storm clouds rolled in and cut the walk short.  Dallas wanted to keep walking, but I didn’t want to get stuck further from our car in a rainstorm.

As we were heading back to the car, Brooke fell and scraped both knees.  Crying ensued, as did a mad scramble to find a band-aid.  Luckily, some fellow hikers had a band-aid they donated to our cause.

As we were driving home, Dallas insisted the storm was passing.  He stopped at a park so Brooke could play.  Between her scraped knees, the falling rain, and the blowing wind, not much playing happened.  Finally, Dallas came to terms with the fact that his perfect afternoon in the mountains just wasn’t meant to be.

We went home.  After naps and dinner, Dallas once again suggested a walk.  The bad weather had passed, so I agreed.  We decided to walk along the Provo River Trail until we got to one of the parks. Before we left, Dallas found the first-aid kit that is supposed to be in our car (but wasn’t) and he put it back in the car – just in case.

After a nice, 20-minute walk, Brooke spotted a playground and raced off.  We watched her and Caroline swing and slide and were just about to admit to each other that the day wasn’t a total loss – we were able to have a nice time outside after all – when Brooke fell off a little ladder and hit the back of her head on one of the metal rungs.

Dallas immediately scooped her up and started comforting her.  I packed Caroline up in the stroller and turned around to talk to Brooke.  It was then that I saw blood running down her hair and staining her shirt.  Some guy at the park offered us a piece of gauze to staunch the bleeding.  We took it and held it to her head.  We couldn’t really see the injury because her hair was in the way, and it was all matted with blood.  Of course, we had our first-aid kit waiting for us in the car – the car that was about 20 minutes away.  Curses!

We began walking back to the car.  By this time, the gauze was completely soaked and all of our clothes had blood splatters, but Brooke had calmed down a bit.  It was then that she looked at her hands and saw they had blood all over them.  Another explosion of tears and sobs erupted from her.

We rounded the bend and came upon a fire station.  Dallas said that we should go in and ask them for help.  I didn’t know if this kind of thing was allowed, just traipsing into a fire station asking for medical advice, but why not?  Fire fighters are in the business of helping citizens, and we sure needed help!

We rang the doorbell and they buzzed us in.  A fireman took one look at all of us soaking in blood and asked what had happened.  We explained the situation and asked if we could wash up a little bit.  He took us to a fire truck and called another fire fighter in to help us.  They washed off Brooke’s head (and hands!) and tried to see what was happening.  They said that it looked like the bleeding had stopped, so they didn’t think stitches were needed.  However, they recommended that we take Brooke to the ER to check for head injuries.  One fireman said his son did a similar thing  and they thought he was going to be okay, but it turned out he had fractured his skull.  That wasn’t exactly the kind of story I wanted to hear at the moment.

So, now we needed to get to the hospital and our car was still a mile away.  The firemen offered to drive us, but we didn’t really want the price tag that came along with a lift from them.  The hospital was actually only a block or two away, so we decided to just walk straight there.

As we were walking to the ER, Dallas saw an InstaCare.  He suggested going there, thinking that it would be less expensive to go to an InstaCare than the ER.  We decided to try it.  We entered the office and I’m sure we were a sight to behold.  Caroline was screaming in the stroller (by this time it was WAY past her bedtime), Brooke was sniffling, and there was a smattering of blood all over us, just for good measure.

We related our story, and they said they could help us there.  Luckily, there was only one other man ahead of us, so we were seen quickly.  Dallas took Caroline to go get the car while I took Brooke in to see the doctor.  After cleaning her up a little more, I was able to see what was happening in the back of her head.  She had a huge goose egg and a slit where the blood had been coming out.  He tugged a little on it and said that he didn’t think staples or stitches were necessary.  I was SO GLAD we avoided stitches.  I’m sure Brooke was too.  He checked her balance and her eyes and said that she didn’t seem to have a concussion, so he sent us on our way with instructions to wake her up once in the night.

After baths, putting the girls to bed, and doing a load of laundry, Dallas and I were more than ready to fall into bed ourselves and put an end to our unlucky day.

This is just too cute to not share.

Yesterday we took advantage of Thanksgiving Point’s Two-Buck Tuesday and went to the Dinosaur Museum.  A good time was had by all.

We started off waiting in line for about thirty minutes.  That was a bit of a drag, but Brooke made this face -

and both girls climbed on these rocks -

so the fun had already begun.

Then we went inside and took pictures next to dinosaur bones, played with the hands-on activities, and ended the morning with ice cream!

We had such a fun day together as a family.  I loved every second of it.  I can hardly wait for next Tuesday to come!

It appears Caroline has a new favorite word – one to replace “woof”.

What’s the word we now hear with great frequency?  “Mine!”

I wonder how she learned this word.  Surely not from her older sister saying this word to her approximately one hundred times a day.

Lest you think Caroline is simply parroting this new word and that it holds no meaning to her as of yet, I’ll leave you with this story.

Caroline was lying on the bed next to Dallas.  She had her pacifier in her mouth.  She pulled her paci out, put it behind her back, looked Dallas squarely in the eyes and cried, “MINE!”

Today’s pictures are from my phone’s camera that have probably been on there forever.

Caroline’s favorite word to say is “Woof!”  She says it all the time.  Sometimes the word is warranted, like when we actually see a dog.  Other times it’s a little more mysterious as to why she is woofing.  For example, she’ll be quietly playing with a toy in her room.  All of a sudden, her hand will urgently shoot to her mouth, rip her pacifier out, and she’ll give an enthusiastic “Woof!”  Then she’ll replace the paci and continue playing leaving me to wonder if she suffers from some sort of animal-noise Tourette Syndrome.

Every animal is a woof.  Many people are woofs.  Sometimes even toys are woofs.

I’ve been trying to broaden her repertoire of animal sounds.  We happen to have a little toy horse that is right by where I change her diaper.  During diaper changes, I usually give her the horse, tell her it’s a horse, and that horses say, “Neigh!”  This lesson is not going over very well.  In fact, I may have created a new problem.

The last time we went outside, our neighbor’s dog was on the lawn.  Caroline immediately smiled, started bouncing up and down, pointed to the dog and, for the first time in her life without being prompted, she heartily said, “Neigh!”

Dallas has a grandmother who lives in Las Vegas.  We’ve been wanting to visit her for some time, and a couple of weekends ago, we finally made the trip.

I feel like this road trip was our first taste of truly traveling with children.  We heard countless refrains of “Caroline, stop!”  and “Caroline, no!  I don’t want your paci!” and, of course, “I need to go potty!”

Dallas and I are obviously very inexperienced with this whole traveling-with-a-newly-potty-trained*-toddler business because on they way we stopped at a gas station that had a Dairy Queen in it.  I let Brooke get an icee.  An icee…which consists of flavored ice…which is water…which meant we had to stop for bathroom breaks every 20 minutes after that for the next two hours.  (*I’m using the phrase “potty trained” fairly loosely here.  We’re mostly there…)

Highlights from the trip included playing with Grandma’s moving, oinking pig-

Walking the Strip-

Seeing some friends who live in Vegas, and visiting with Grandma Golden, of course!

Solid foods + a baby =

Solid foods + a baby who loves to run her fingers through her hair =

Add four teeth and you get

Does anyone know how to make a baby + solid foods ≠a big mess?

Brooke loves temples.  She talks about how she wants to go to the temple.  Dallas and I have told her that she can go when she gets bigger.  (We have found we have to be careful when we tell her she’s such a big girl because then she says, “I’m bigger!  I go to temple now?”)

Since she is now bigger and one year older, we decided to take her to the temple and have a picnic on the grass.  It was perfect weather, and we had a great time.

After our picnic, we ran home, put the girls down for naps, and prepared for Brooke’s birthday party.  Stay tuned…

I was planning on posting these pictures last week but, as you might have noticed, the blog was down.

Brooke has enjoyed peeling the eggs that we hard-boiled and dyed for Easter.  She also gets a little bowl and mashes the egg up and then offers it to me or Dallas.

One day I declined the egg.  Brooke took it back to the kitchen and was busy for a long time.  I was happy to have a few moments to myself so I didn’t bother her.

When I finally went into the kitchen to see what she was up to, I saw she had crumbled the egg into a million little pieces.  She had sprinkled these pieces all over the kitchen floor.  She was “feeding the birds”.  It’s funny that she has somehow picked up on the fact that birds eat small, round things that are scattered about…and yet, she hasn’t picked up on the fact that THERE ARE NO BIRDS IN OUR HOUSE.

In other news, Caroline, our nine-month old baby, can finally roll over!  And she can crawl!  And today she even pulled herself up to standing!  It was a big week as far as developmental milestones are concerned.

Caroline’s also been working hard on growing some hair.  One day I decided it was time to put a bow in it.

She looks so cute before her nap.

But after her nap, she looked like this…

…and she was chewing on the rubber band that I had used to secure her hair.  Yikes!  No more hair accessories for her at nap time.

Caroline really loves Brooke’s little baby doll.  She just giggles and giggles when she sees the doll.

A couple of days ago, I took the girls outside to play.  Brooke had some new sidewalk chalk she wanted to try out.  She said, “Mom, I’m going to draw a sun.”

A few minutes later, she showed me this:

DO YOU SEE THAT?  It’s a sun!  My little girl actually drew something recognizable.  There’s just something so cheery about little-kid artwork.

Artist at work

Supervising the progress

While grocery shopping, Brooke snatched my list and started “reading” her version of the things we needed this week.  It sounded like this:

“Peanut butter, suckers, and…marshmallows!”

Now you know what Brooke’s diet would look like if she were left to her own devices.

I was noticing I haven’t posted pictures in a while.  Here are a few:

This was Brooke right before church.  Dress courtesy of my sister-in-law.  (Thanks!)  3D glasses courtesy of the movie Up.

We are at the stage where this happens when we ask Brooke to smile for a picture.

Last night Dallas and I put the girls to bed.  Then we found ourselves lounging around playing various versions of Sudoku late into the night.  You know the feeling of being dead tired but not wanting to go to bed?  That’s what was happening.  As we were finally getting ready for bed I said something like, “I wish we were on vacation without the girls and could just sleep in tomorrow as late as we wanted.”

Then we slept.  And slept.  And slept.  I vaguely recall Caroline squawking, but she quickly put herself back to sleep.  And so did I.

The girls both slept in until 9:30 a.m.  NINE-THIRTY A.M.!  That is unheard of.  I don’t know if it was your fervent prayers on my behalf that were answered or if the girls sensed that my sanity depended on them staying quiet for a couple of extra hours this morning.

In any case, it was a wonderful morning.  Let’s hope for a repeat tomorrow.