Bryn was super pumped for school a few Fridays ago. It was "sports day," where you get to wear a team jersey for school. I had gone digging and found her soccer jersey from when she played soccer at age four, and it was a perfect fit. She gave me a kiss and bounded out of the car behind Addison, turning around to close the sliding door. And then she kept standing by the car. Because her finger was closed in the door! I jumped into action and opened the door to release her finger and then had her come around to the passenger side and climb back in the car. Then we went and parked in a parking space so she could scream and cry and we could assess the damage. The finger was still straight, which was a relief, but the poor girl could not stop crying. It hurt SO BAD! So she skipped school that day and we applied lots of ice and tylenol and kept it elevated. We could tell that she'd definitely be losing a fingernail by that point. I wasn't sure about whether to take her i...

Yep. Another broken arm. If I'm not mistaken, the third in six months. But who's really counting anymore?  On Wednesday, the kids were all coming down the stairs from Addison and Bryn's room to have lunch, when Bryn tripped or slipped or who really knows what, and started to tumble. I was right at the bottom of the stairs and watched it all happen. She fell probably about six stairs, face-first, and then caught herself with her hands. And then she started to cry. Our Bryn is a pretty tough cookie, and she doesn't whine-cry. If she's crying, it hurts. So I ran over to her to check things out and saw that her arm looked just slightly crooked. My heart sank, but I tried to be brave for her, so I hugged her for a few minutes and then said we'd just go to the doctor to have them check it out and make sure everything was okay. And it just so happens that Grandma was at our house at the time! She'd been planning to leave about three minutes after it happ...

Here's a hodge-podge of "our summer was great" photos and videos. Coppertone baby. Addison finally let everyone sign his cast the night before he got it off.   Bryn's masterpiece just before she got it off. Addison just wanted to sign with an A. Our kids like each other. We grew and preserved a ton of food this summer. For the record, 20 tomato plants is an overwhelming amount. We canned salsa, tomato sauce, raspberry jam, strawberry jam (neither of which set, but we're using them anyway), green beans and peaches. And we froze peaches and a ton of shredded zucchini. Still to come: apples. This was just a great afternoon. I tossed the kids in the pool and let them go nuts with too-big squash. It was a hit. Leah definitely did her part to ensure that our abundant peach crop did not go to waste. We'd pick a peach off the tree and wash it off in the hose and she'd eat it, in its entirety, at least once a day....

Here is our cute little girl in her cute not-so-little cast. Things went well at the surgeon. It was very straightforward. They didn't have to set anything, which I was relieved about. They said the crookedness of her arm will straighten out as it heals and totally fix itself because she's so young. She is thrilled about the color. They had a poster of all the colors you could choose from and we talked about all of them and she deliberated for a while but she thought the blue one was so pretty. So that was the one for her. All three of the people helping put on the cast were extremely surprised that it wasn't pink. That's our girl! She'll wear the cast for three weeks, if all goes well. I think it's because she needs to be able to move her elbow so the tendons don't shorten and give her troubles. She's in pretty good spirits and doesn't seem to be in pain, although she's been up in the night for the past two nights. Unfortunately though, ...

We play hard around here. It is, indeed broken. It happened this afternoon when she decided she wanted to practice riding on Addison's bike. So we did. And I gave the bike a little shove on her second try and over she went. She cried and cried. The arm looked crooked and I asked her to wiggle her fingers, which she couldn't do because they were "so easy." (A Bryn-ism for "asleep," as in, "My foot is asleep.") I called a friend who took Addison and Leah for me, called Nate to give him a heads up, and we headed to the doctor where she cried and cried and wanted to "get out of here!" and absolutely did not want x-rays or a cast because it hurt too bad. But luckily the right people (and green suckers and Sleeping Beauty stickers) were in the right places and we somehow got it done, bless her heart. And bless the x-ray lady's heart who simply brought me a box of tissues and stood there like it was the most natural thing in the ...

Check out this cute kid! He broke his arm last night! It had been a particularly chaotic evening. We had four people over helping to hang the sheetrock in our kitchen, dinnertime had come and gone (at 7:00) while Nate and the guys were in there working. The kids were tired and in desperate need of baths. We were all sweating our faces off because the doors had been open all day to cut down on dust inhalation. The house looked like an explosion or two had gone off, you know, that sort of a day. My friend Melissa had come over earlier to bring some tools to her hubby, and seeing the amazing state of things (and, I'm sure, of me), she stopped by again later with some toys and cookies for the kids. Seriously, I've said it before and I'll say it again, we have the best ward and friends on the planet. We were outside and the kids were playing on the swingset. I was in the process of thanking her profusely and reassuring her (okay, mainly myself) that we'd be just fine...