Never in my life have I successfully April Fooled anyone. I recall as a tween being desperate for ideas of amazing ways I could prank my family members. The best I ever came up with was putting saran wrap over my parents' toilet seat the night before. It didn't work, and my father was not amused. This year spring break and April Fool's day coincided, and so I swiped an idea from Pinterest and we had "backwards day," meaning dessert for breakfast, dinner for lunch, lunch for snacks, and breakfast for dinner.  It was awfully fun to plop bowls of this in front of the little ones for breakfast. And no one complained. Bryn, our resident health nut, was scandalized and demanded that I slice an apple and that everyone eat at least two slices of it. Truth be told, Addison confided that he was a "feeling a little queasy" after breakfast, and I was right there with him. All day, in fact, I echoed the sentiment. My stomach, for one,...

You may or may not recall that last time Nate had surgery (January '09)he came home, got violently and painfully ill, and had to go back to the hospital and have another surgery to get his ileostomy put in. The doctor couldn't close up the incision because there was infection like crazy (think intestines coming apart and all that food going wherever it could find a place), so Nate was still wide open to the tune of lots of nurses coming to watch every time they changed his dressing because it was pretty uncommon (and pretty horrifying). Then for at least a month after coming home (details are fuzzy here) Nate had a woundvac, which was basically a sponge hooked to a vacuum that slurped the wound closed so it could heal. He had it with him 24/7 and we had homecare nurses coming several times a week to change it. It finally closed up (after shingles and several fights with staph infection) and he had an ileostomy (aka: saved his life, but also a major pain in the bum) until last W...

A few days ago I was struck with a revelation as I nibbled on an Oreo Cakester (I'd never heard of them either - thank you Halloween). To quote the sharks from Finding Nemo, I'm a "mindless eating machine." I realized that I was sitting on my duff eating cream-filled chocolate cake that I didn't even like, just because it was there. I'm proud to say that upon realizing this, I gave the rest to Nate. November begins the most stressful portion of the year - the time when I get spacey. It seems that no matter what I'm doing, my head is somewhere else. My hands are in the middle of a stinky diaper and my head is in the dryer with the towels I still haven't folded, and on the computer searching frantically for choir music for our Christmas program, and down the street visiting teaching, and at the store trying to no avail to find the blasted can of pumpkin I forgot to buy but have to have because I volunteered to bake something for one of the 10 ward activi...

After several weeks of training, I'm proud to announce that Nate and I ran a 5K today! We got motivated to get some exercise a month or so ago, and have been running three times a week since. The kiddies have a great time riding in the stroller, which Nate gallantly pushes most of the time. That explains his totally ripped thighs. He ran cross country in high school, and has been a very patient and kind coach to his slow, sweaty wifey. Some friends watched Add and Bryn this morning while we ran the race. We had a great time. The weather was gorgeous, and we ran the whole thing without walking, which was my goal. Nate stayed with me the whole time and spent the last third of the race telling me all about the book he just read on Frederick Douglass to distract me from the discomfort of trying to haul myself up an enormous hill. The distraction worked, and we finished in 34 minutes and 6 seconds. Not too shabby for a first-timer if you ask me. I'm proud of us for seeing the 5K goa...