He's Home!

Jay's finally home. 9 days in the hospital. Being home won't be much better, but he can see the kids more. He can't walk or stand- can't bend his knee. With time I guess. STILL practicing patience.

A Little Longer

Jay's day or two in the hospital has turned into a week just like that. So much fun. I've been up late trying to keep the house under control, and I get up early every morning to go see Jay before the kids are up. Luckily they sleep in. One morning I even came home to them making pancakes. Cindy and Amy have helped with the kids so I could make other visits to take Jay things like his pillow and deodorant- things that become necessary after a few days. He's a trooper. I'm ready for him to be home.

Jay's Knee

Well, we had a different Father's Day this year. Jay has been working in the Chiricahua Mountains (about an hour and a half away) for the past couple weeks installing a swimming pool. Friday night he got home around 6:30 and took a shower. When he got out, he was limping. He put his knees right next to each other and his left knee (the "good" knee) was very swollen. He kept reflecting on what he had done the last 2 days that may have cause him to re-tear the miniscus, which would not have been a surprise. He's done that 4 times already. He took some pain medicine, elevated his leg, and tried to sleep. By Satuday morning his knee was more swollen, red and hot to the touch. He was nauseous, and woke up dry-heaving. He was also in a lot of pain, and after lunch we finally decided to take him to the emergency room. The nurses and doctors there were great. Service was better than we've had before. They got us in quickly, and called in the orthopaedic doctor- Dr. Bryce for a consult, along with blood work and x-rays. Blood work showed inflammation, which we already knew, and x-rays showed nothing. Dr. Bryce came in and immediately knew it was prepatellar bursitis- an infection in the bursa or soft tissue around the kneecap. He said Jay was going to get a trip to La Hotel Mt. Graham- or Mt. Graham Regional Medical Center. He was admitted that evening and has been there since. We haven't been given a discharge date as the knee doesn't seem to be improving. It's still hot and red and swollen, and they started Jay on morphine this morning because the pain was getting bad again.

For Father's Day yesterday the oldest 5 kids and I took him cards and a key lime pie. He hasn't had much of an appetite, but ate a little. He was hoping to come home today, but thay said at least tomorrow. He's not sleeping much with all the noise and constant interruptions. No fun at all. A big thanks to Cindy and Sean and Dad and Patty for helping with the kids. They would have gone crazy waiting at the ER.

Addictions and Stuff

I think I'm addicted to gardening. I love being outside, even when it's hot. We've had great harvests of beets, carrots and onions, and are working toward everything else for the summer. Monday I picked a basket-full of plums and apricots. And I liked them. And I don't even like plums. I wake up in the morning and think about what I'm going to do to help the garden progress that day, and whether or not there will be anything to harvest. I try to get out before the kids wake up because it's a lot easier that way, but they have been helping too. We've been pulling weeds like mad with help from Cindy's family, Amy's family and Dad and Patty. The weeds are almost under control now. We had to replant corn as most of it didn't germinate, and lots of what did got eaten by the squirrels and the geese. Looking forward to homemade salsa and fresh corn.

I'm still sick with this pregnancy. I had an appointment Monday and told my doctor, who thought I should be over it by now. I'm not at all. I threw up outside our office on Saturday, and kept hoping nobody saw, then again before church the next day. My doc gae me a prescription to help, but I can't find it. So, until I find it I guess I won't know if it works.

And, we got a puppy. She's an Australian Shepherd named CJ, which stands for nothing in particular. We thought she had run away once already, but she was hiding under a cart asleep. The kids are enjoying time outside with her.

James My Helper

This morning I had a beautiful batch of whipping cream mixing in the Kitchen Aid, and I sat down at the table to cut the tops off the strawberries. My kids love strawberries and cream. A minute later I heard a banging noise in the mixer, and wondered what it could be. I ran over to shut it off, and found James watching the mixer intently. I thought maybe he had thrown in a toy or something. Nope. It was a whole onion. It smelled terrible. Unfortunately, the entire batch of cream was ruined. Fortunately, I had enough to make a new batch. Thank you, James. You're such a helper.

Janna's Writing

Going to Disneyland
By Janna Curtis
05/10/10

Disneyland is so much fun. Disneyland here we come! We play, and play them my mom looks at her clock, "It's time to go" she says. So we walk to our car and go home.
I slap my mom she turns around. I diden't ride dumbo. So she takes me to dumbo and I get on.
Then we walk to our car. Our mom goes then I slap her. I diden't ride the roller coaster. So we go back and I ride the roller coaster. Then we go home for good.

P.S. This never really happened, and it's been 4 years since we've been to Disneyland.

Janna's 9th Birthday

So, there were lots of reasons I was relieved on the day of Janna's party.

#1- I didn't feel sick.

#2- We put up some SHADE out by the pool and it was SO NICE to have in the heat of the afternoon.

#3- Janna invited her primary class AND her entire school class. I was really worried, and way overplanned on food, but we ended up with about 7 friends plus lots of cousins. It was great.

#4- Sparky gave all the kids pony rides, and Trixie was a good sport about it all.

The kids all had fun, and I think Janna was happy with her party.

We played the potato game and baseball, and swam, swam, swam. Janna has a crush on the boy in the back with the long blonde hair. His name is Levi. He was also her dance partner for their end-of-the-year program.

Cheetos Face

Lilly and Katelynn

Busy

Well, as usual, we're busy around here. I'll post pictures soon, but some happenings were Janna's birthday party and her turning 9, and the dedication of the Gila Valley Temple. It was wonderful.

News

Even though I'm relieved a bit to find out this baby is a singleton, I'm a little sad too. A rough morning puking after finding a sippy cup full of rotten milk and trying to wash it out was enough to make me consider this my last prenancy. I said CONSIDER. We'll see how things go from here.

Garden Update

The garden is producing our "winter" crops. Over the weekend Cindy and I picked maybe half the beets, and with Sean's help canned 37 pints of pickled beets. No thank you for me, but they look pretty in the jar.

More Kittens

Jay and Dustin each found another kitten yesterday in random places in the store. So Bobbi had 5 kittens, she just moved around in between.

Kittens

Bobbi had her kittens this morning. 3 of them. 2 with bob-tails just like her, and one with a regular tail. Kind of cute even though I don't like animals. Sophie is still pregnant, but we have no idea when she'll have hers.

Could it be a Sign?

The morning of Abbey and Emma's 10th birthday, I was cracking eggs, and out popped twin eggs. Even though I threw up because of this, I thought it was cool to happen on their birthday- or maybe it's a sign of something else.

10th

I cannot believe Abbey and Emma are 10. That seems old, which means I'm getting old. Time really does fly. The Friday before their birthday we had my parents and Cole in town to go to the Temple open house. The Temple is beautiful. Saturday my parents took my 6 oldest to the school "Spring Fling" carnival type activity. They left early to go home and get Rachel off to prom. That afternoon the girls had a friend party. I was worried about swimming because it had been windy, but the afternoon really warmed up. 10 of their friends came, and they were so happy, because last year didn't turn out as well. Cindy took my youger kids minus Suzee out to Amy's house, and it was nice to not have to worry about them. Bob hung around and was the only boy at the party. I think he liked it.
We swamand bowledand played Twisterand opened presentsthen Cyann asked is she could sing the girls a song, and she didthen had fruit pizza and swam some more.

Derailment

Saturday, April 17 Jay called me in the morning to tell me that as some of the guys were coming in to work from Pima, they saw that a train had derailed in Central in front of the Temple. I had to see this. We drove by and I had my camerawoman take some action shots as I paid attention to the road.

Did I Really Think

I was going to be able to slow down? Abbey and Emma turn 10 today! and it's Bob's first baseball game. To say he's excited would be an understatement.

Update

Just a few quick things I wanted to write down before I get on with my busy little life.

Tuesday morning I went to the dollar store for table cloths for my ward party, which is tonight. I saw some cute butterfly nets and thought the kids would love chasing butterflies with them. I imagined going out with my camera to take amazing colorful pictures of them frolicking through the meadow with their winged friends- or something. After school they grabbed up the nets and headed outside. Such fun. Until I heard screaming. I ran outside to find Janna screaming and hitting her head. She had bees in her hair (luckily we had straightened it that morning or it might have been a curly tangly mess). I pulled two bees from her hair, then pulled out the stingers from her scalp. Bob was stung once on his arm also. I asked them why they were chasing bees when these were butterfly nets. They showed me the tag on the nets, which show pictures of butterflies AND bees. Really? "The picture says they're for bees too, mom" stated Bob. I guess I can't blame them completely for stirring up a beehive. Janna was in pain the rest of the night, and now Janna and Bob are very itchy. That night (Tuesday) we were going to drive to Willcox to meet Shauna and kids on their way to Texas. I was a little worried about Janna having an allergic reaction to the bee stings, but I watched her for about an hour and gave her Motrin and Benadryl. She slept the whole drive (about 45 minutes) to Willcox, and was lethargic until the medicine wore off. We got to McDonalds where the kids were dying to play on the playground, and I got in line to order, behind 2 bus loads of high school track kids who had just finished a meet. One coach is in our stake young women's, and I talked with her while waiting. She told me she and her husband had lived in San Angelo (where Shauna and Justin are living) for the 5 month training as well. Her husband is Air Force and had done the language program like Justin is. She said they liked the area, and housing was very affordably priced. Anyway, the kids had a blast. They were allowed 2 privileges they never get: Happy Meals and playing on the playground. I felt bad that we had to wait so long for our food because that put Shauna driving on to El Paso late.

Tonight- Ward Party
Tomorrow- TEMPLE!
Saturday- Abbey and Emma birthday party

So much fun!

Oh- and last night there was a massacre at our nursery. Two very large dogs have been killing our chickens- usually a few at a time. Jay got to work this morning and found 58 dead chickens. That's a lot of chickens. I called animal control and they came to set traps, and gave us permission to shoot the dogs if necessary. These dogs are brutal.

That's all for now
Tami

Animals Galore!

So, just for fun we added a goat named Georgia and some koi fish in the pond to our collection of animals. Can you collect animals? Anyway, we now have:

2 cows
1 pig
1 goat
2 cats (one of whom is pregnant)
1 horse
? fish
19 ducks
60-80 chickens

It's getting busy around here. I'll post a picture of Georgia later. She's actually kind of cute.

I've Been Here Before

5 Signs You're Almost 30 and Pregnant with Your 9th Child
(without taking a pregnancy test)

1- Gained 6 pounds in 3 weeks
2- Extreme fatigue
3- Nausea
4- Stomach muscle pains every time you sneeze or bend over

Baby #9 due Dec. 10