So grateful!

So, I wasn't going to blog this story because I didn't want to have you all know that I'm not always a super mom, and also, I kind of want to forget it ever happened, but it's best that I'm reminded of it.  

It always seems like we are one dresser short in this home! So, when my mom "saved" a neighbor's dresser from a trip to the dump, I was thrilled to get a new one! My Dad fixed it up, and brought it down to us. It was the heaviest bugger I've ever tried to move.  We set it up in Lexi's room and noticed it was a bit wobbly because it was so tall.  Mental note to anchor it to the wall and keep Lexi away until we do. 

Not even 4 days later. 

I am folding laundry in my room with Lexi.  She crawls out into the hall.  Maybe 20 seconds go by and I hear a LOUD crash, followed immediately by screams and tears.  I run into her room and find the dresser totally on top of her.  I tried to lift the dresser off, but it had pretty much combusted all over the room.  I had to pull heavy drawers off of her screaming little body, praying that she was all right.  She was moving and grabbing for me, so I picked her up and held her and cried with her.  I started checking her out and only found a goose egg already growing on her head.  I called my sister in Washington and asked what I should do.  (Poor Robin, sorry, I know you couldn't even see my injured baby).  We talked for a while.  I calmed down.  Lexi calmed down.  I decided to watch her for the afternoon. 
I was physically sick about it.  I couldn't even walk in this room and see the craziness that had happened. 

When I finally calmed down enough to try and clean this all up, I realized that I had a basket full of diapers on top of the dresser.  That basket had fallen first, then the dresser fell onto the basket, and the dresser burst all around my baby.  She was under it, but wasn't crushed and killed because of that basket.  I still get teary-eyed thinking about it.  I am so grateful!
Probably the scariest moment I've had as a parent thus far.  I think I got up and checked on her about 10 times through the night.  I couldn't sleep because I kept replaying it all in my head.  As we carried those heavy pieces of it downstairs, both of us were sick, angry, upset, but so amazed and grateful that our baby was alive.

Wordsof Wisdom...

Jeramy is always watching documentaries on just about every subject out there. Most often though, he's watching something about food. Good and bad.About a month ago, he said he was ready to try being a vegetarian.  Hah!  I think I might have LOL-ed a little bit.  But I said I'd give it a try.  We both have kind of high cholesterol, so we both knew it would be good for us.  Here we are a month later, and doing great!  We are by no means strict about it.  We eat meat if we want to, and I do usually prepare one meal a week with meat.  This change hasn't been hard at all!  I really don't like meat anyway, so it wasn't a very hard transition for me.  The kids are loving it.  What do we eat, you might ask?  Well, we make home made pizzas with tons of fresh vegetables. 

We do a lot of variations of taco salads with black beans, corn, rice, and oodles of vegetables.  Spaghetti, loaded with...you guessed it...vegetables.  Soy chicken patty sandwiches (don't knock it until you try it).  Black bean burgers.  Tortellini with vegetables.  I found a killer vegan waffle recipe that we love.  Burritos.  We've been trying out lots of soups, but have found that we are not really soup fans.  We've been dabbling with - gasp - tofu. 

Last year for our anniversary, we took a whole foods cooking class.  That was probably the start of all of this for both of us.  During the class the teacher asked if anyone in the room had never tried kale.  Jeramy and I proudly raised our hands, then looked around and noticed we were the only ones with our hands up!  How embarrassing!  We've since learned how to eat kale and I can almost get through that huge bag of it from Costco in a week.  At that point, we made a few small changes that we were super proud of, and now we've just made a few more.  

For my birthday, Jeramy got himself a Blendtec blender.  Oh, I mean, he got me a blender.  We have had so much fun using it for everything!  I was already starting every day with a green smoothie, but now it' s even smoother.  :)  Some of our random things we've blended would be...Spinach ice cream.  It's sooo good!  We tried Cauliflower mashed potatoes and decided we'll stick to regular ones.  I LOVE that I can grind my own wheat in my fancy blender.  So cool.  Last night we made orange Julius with a yellow squash blended in.  Didn't even know it was there, and it was so good with our french toast. 

Like I said, we still eat meat, so don't think you can't make us dinner or invite us to anything!  I'm worse than Jeramy.  I crave burgers still.  He's like 3 months burger free.  This Sunday I will be making a roast that I've been dying to have.  We've just taken the word of wisdom's wisdom to heart and are trying to "use meat sparingly." 
How to do feel?  Good!  My smoothies start off my day just right.  (orange juice, spinach, banana and strawberries).  I've always struggled with my iron levels and I went to the doctor a few weeks ago and had them checked, thinking they'd be way low with the lack of meat, but they were surprisingly high.  I haven't lost any weight, but Jeramy is down a ton (and he's been exercising). 
I think everyone is tired of hearing about our food, but it's really been fun to try new things!  So, if you run into me and I start telling you about our new random favorite food, bear with me. 

The tooth

One day Macie came up to me and said, "Mom, I have exciting news!"  When I asked her what it was, she let me know that she had a wiggly tooth.  I was shocked, since her teeth were all in there pretty firm last time I checked. 
This wiggly tooth made Macie angry.  A lot.  She has issues with textures, tags, and anything that isn't perfect bothers her.  So, something moving in her mouth was too much for her to handle.  She told her Dad she wanted that tooth out NOW.  She wanted him to tie it to the door, and he tried like 5 times, but the floss kept slipping off before we could get the door shut. 
He finally took her up in the bathroom and just pulled.  She cried and cried and cried.  She didn't want to talk about it.  She would not let me take a picture. 

I finally got a picture the next morning because she had to text a picture of it to Tate, her old friend who had just lost his first tooth, too!

Spring Break!

Since we just got back from Disneyland a month before, we decided to stay home for spring break and do fun things around here.  I had every day planned out...

Day one we hit Liberty Land, I mean Trafalga, I mean, Seven Peaks Fun Place.  Who knows what that place is called these days!  I guess everyone else down in Utah County thought that would be a fun thing to do,  too!  Crazy busy.  Macie was talking big all day about climbing the wall.  We got her all harnessed in, she went up about 2 feet, came back down with that amazing scowl and that was the end of that. 
As mentioned before, we were still riding our "Disney High" and so the rides at Trafalga left most feeling very let down.  Love Lindsay's face on the airplane ride.  BUT, Macie was in heaven on it, circles, just like Dumbo!

We also went to the farm.  Yee haw!

Day Two

We used our Pass of all Passes again and went to Tracy Aviary...along with everyone else in the world.  It was busy, cold and no one wanted to be there but Maddie.  They did enjoy coloring in the gift shop. 

We stopped at Grandma's after that and they all had way more fun playing there than they did at Tracy Aviary.  

Day Three

 We went to Neptune Park on our way out 4 wheeling with Grandpa.  Amy and Maddie got to the top of the pyramid.  I did not.  That thing makes me nervous!  We spent the afternoon riding with Grandpa, then headed home for some fantastic naps. 

We decided to take a break for day 4 and 5 and just hung out at home. 

Day 6

Day 6 was Conference, and my birthday.  We watched conference, Maddie took amazing notes without being told to!  Mine were pretty lame compared to hers!  Jeramy and his brother went to the Priesthood session, so Jen and I took the kids to City Creek and ate dinner and shopped a little...just like everyone else in the world.  Our entire weekend was BUSY!

I think we all had a great time!  I love spending time with my kids!

Lexi at 13 months

 Sometimes a picture is really worth a thousand words...She was having so much fun looking out the window, then she found a dead bug on the window and tried to eat it.  I had to tell her no and take it away.  She gave me "the look" and I knew that the tears were coming soon.  This kid hates being told no.  She doesn't break down immediately when you tell her no, it comes slowly - like you've broken her poor little heart and she'll never forgive you. 

 She is into everything!  I feel like my house is in constant chaos because of all the stuff she gets into.  One afternoon Macie had her friend over who is the youngest.  He walked in and looked around my kitchen and went "Whoa!"  And I totally agreed.  Neither of us had ever seen such a mess!

She loves sunglasses and got those on all by herself in that first picture.  She was so proud of herself that she crawled all the way into the kitchen to show me, then all the way into the front room to show Macie, before she took them off. 

She loves all animals,  but was terrified when I actually put her on the horse.  Horses are cooler from a distance.  She is obsessed with balloons.  Every time we see one she points and says, "Bah...bah" over and over.  I finally bought her one at the dollar store and she held it so tight in her little fist that her had turned white! 
She's having a hard time giving up bottles.  She still gets one in the morning and one at night.  I've stopped giving her milk when she gets up at night and she's finally sleeping a little better.   She's sleeping through the night a few times a week now.  She hates waking up and being given water.  She's learning it's better just to sleep!
She is getting 3 of her molars!  Crazy!  She still only has her top and bottom 2 front teeth. 

 I finally got her a birthday present.  I was feeling a little guilty that we didn't really do anything for her birthday, so I got her this car.  She loves it AND the box.  We have to specify now when we say "Do you want to get in the car?"  I have to say, "Do you want to get in Lexi's car?"  Or "We are going to get in MOM's car."  If we go out and get in my car, she gets upset if she thought we were going to her car."

Still working on actual words.  She knows DAD for sure.  And she says "Bah" for balloons and balls, but that's about it so far. 

Eye wonder...

Who can resist a great pun?  Not me!  At Lexi's 9 month check up, the doctor thought that she was showing signs of having a lazy eye.  He gave us the number for a specialist at Primary Children's Hospital.  I called them as soon as we got home and I was totally shocked when they said they couldn't see her for 3 months!  I felt like "that mom" who didn't really care enough to do what the doctor said when I took her in for her one year check up and had to tell him that I hadn't been able to get her in to the specialist yet. 
And then when I took her to her actual appointment, I felt like "that mom" yet again when I went to pay our $25 co-pay and all my credit cards were missing.  I had no way to pay.  (My sweet Lexi had been kind enough to clean out my wallet for me the night before and I had forgot to check it before I went).  The receptionist whispered, "So, it should be covered as preventative anyway.  If you don't pay the co-pay, they probably won't even charge you."  So I didn't pay - and when my bill came, it was covered.  Thank you, receptionist. 
Anyway, Lexi and I hung out and got to watch Incredibles and play with toys in our exam room.  That cow up there in the right hand corner was about the coolest thing ever.  She kept pointing and oohhing and aahhing at it. 
After about a half hour of testing and eye dilating, she Specialist determined she was fine.  We had never really been able to notice it, but thought that it was because we're the parents and she's perfect to us.  Nice to know someone else agrees with us! 
Can I just say how much I LOVE having a Primaries in Riverton?  They are so great to work with and we never have to wait for anything.  Love it!  AND, they even gave Lexi those adorable "I've just had my eyes dilated" glasses, which she (and I) thought was pretty dang cool!

Field Trip!

My dad was asked to do security at the Capital for this past Legislative Session.  For 45 days he got to make sure all those important people that make all those important decisions were safe.  He had a blast - even if it was hard for a retired man to find time in his busy retired life to work again.  We went down to visit him one afternoon.  He gave us a quick tour and let us go watch these important people at work.  It was crazy to see the simplicity of the system.  Kind of freaked me out a little bit.  I definitely left feeling like I need to be more informed about it all!  It was fun to see our old neighbor Jake Anderegg and our even older neighbor Mel Brown at work! 
The kids thought it was pretty cool, but had more fun playing outside in the warm sunshine.  Might mean a bit more to them in a few years.

Blue and Gold 2013

So, last year I totally got ripped off and didn't get to go to our Blue and Gold Banquet.  (Dang Baby being born!)
This year I found an Angry Birds Blue and Gold idea and kind of swayed all the men I work with in scouts to do it.  There were no complaints from them since the blog I found listed out every last detail of the night.  (Thank you, Pinterest, yet again).

We served Wal mart subs again this year...super easy and everyone seemed to be all right with our simple dinner.  

 We had an actual Angry birds game where they got to build with the boxes and had to earn the balls by answering scout questions.  Crazy good times! 

I had so much fun making the Angry Birds bags for the tables!  And then I just happened to see that green bucket at the dollar store and knew it was calling my name saying, "Heidi, please make me into a pig...I'm sure you'll find a way to use me..."  And so I bought it and I found a use for him! 

We had the boys bring Angry Birds themed cakes.  So much fun to see what they came up with.  So much fun to see the cakes that the boys did and the cakes that the moms did.

Once again, I am amazed at how much I've learned to love the scouting program.  I still don't understand all of it, but I can totally see how important it is in teaching these boys important life skills and lessons!