2012 In Review

2012 was mostly awesome. Of course, there were aspects of 2012 that I could have done without as usual, but for the most part, I can't think of any really clear, glaring awfulness in 2012...so....score! I don't think that I really have the time to update month by month in separate posts, so I'll give a blurb for each month. Here goes...

January: We went to Vegas for New Years as a family and to have an early celebration for our anniversary. It seems so long ago. Well, I guess that was a year ago so it would make sense that it seems like a while ago.

February: Mr. Will started pre-school through the school district when he turned 3. It's awesome for him! The program is mostly for kids who have communication/cognitive issues but there are some kids who function developmentally normally as well. He's in class for his speech issues but it seems that there are some behavioral issues as well that they are helping him with. So come next week, he's going to start going four days a week. He loves riding the bus everyday that he goes to school!

March: We had a super fun St. Patrick's Day party with kids in the neighborhood and ward. Not much else to report other than that.

April: DC was a blast and I'm actually going to do more posts about it in the coming days.

May: It was Arthritis Walk time! Siobhan and I were on the planning committee and we had a great time being involved again! I also got started on a project that is actually taking longer than planned but that's not all my fault. People move away and that makes it hard. Anyway, I have organized a parent/peer network for families whose children have Juvenile Arthritis.

June: The kids and I took a great trip down to Arizona to visit Molly, Meredith and their families. We had a great time but I think that that warrants it's own post as well!

July: Again, this will get it's own post...we had a great time going to on a small family reunion with Carson's side of the family. We went up to Flaming Gorge and had a great time rafting on the river and hanging out with family!

August: I had the great opportunity to go to Las Vegas with the Arthritis Foundation to get instruction on how to plan events and raise awareness and funds. It was a awesome and it more than prepared me to plan the 2012 Jingle Bell Run/Walk. I'll do a post about my trip. It will be short.

September: School started!!! Audrey started afternoon Kindergarten, Siobhan started 1st grade and Mr. Will went back to preschool. They all love it and they are all excelling in their classes!

October: No kidney stone! If you didn't hear about the epic kidney stone battle of  '11, then that probably doesn't mean anything to you, but that's okay. Just know that that was a big deal! We also had a fabulous Halloween! Siobhan was a cat, Audrey was Merida, Mr. Will was Thomas, Ethan was a lion, I was Rosie the Riveter, and Carson was a Jazz super fan. Fun times.

November: Thanksgiving happened. Siobhan turned 7!!! We had a fun birthday party at Chick fil A and instead of her friends bringing presents for Siobhan, we asked them to bring donations for Primary Children's Hospital. Everyone was so generous!!

December: Jingle Bell Run (Holy Moly-I will post about that in detail later), I had a birthday, Carson was called as Elder's Quorum President and Christmas! It was awesome! I love Christmas!

One of my New Year's Resolutions, in addition to losing weight and cooking more, is to blog more. So I'm going to blog at least once a week, hopefully twice. I would like to do something from 2012 and then something current. Sound good? I think that sounds like a good plan!

I Know Right???

Hey....remember me??? It's been a while but a few have mentioned to me that I should update my blog and I think they are right! I haven't updated since April!!!! I only got through one day of our trip to DC! So much has happened since then so I'm going to try to slightly play catch up and update on recent happenings. But it's Christmas time and I can't promise much for this time of year but it's a good lead in to new years resolution time so I'll hit the ground running at that time. For how, here's a family picture....

Heading to Washington DC!!

Last Saturday Morning (April 14th, 1 am) Siobhan and I headed out to the big city! Washington DC that is! :) Siobhan and I-well mostly Siobhan-were chosen to represent Utah at the Arthritis Advocacy Summit. While there, were tasked with talking with Congressmen and Senators about various legislation that is relevant to Arthritis Patients. I'll get more into that later. But for now here is the first part of the trip!

This is Siobhan and I on the airplane leaving SLC. Our flight left at 1 am and headed for Atlanta for out lay over. Siobhan decided that she was going to be brave and not be scared when the plane took off. Also, the tooth fairy payed us a visit while we were on the plane! Siobhan lost a tooth on Friday afternoon so the tooth fairy had to come while we were flying! It was great incentive to get Siobhan to sleep. Right before we took off, I was so tired, so I told Siobhan, 'I don't care what you do as long as you're quiet and stay in you seat, but I'm going to sleep. Before I knew it, she was sleep on my shoulder!

After our layover in Atlanta, which was not very long, we hopped on the plane for the final leg of the journey. She was so excited to have a window seat! And boy was this girl tired! After sleeping for two hours before we took off for the first flight, sleeping through the entire first flight, I wasn't sure she was going to sleep on this flight. But boy, that girl was sleep with her head in my lap before we even took off!



Once we got into Reagan, we were HUNGRY! Good thing there was a McDonalds right at our gate! so we stopped for a quick breakfast before we got our baggage. You can tell from the picture that Siobhan was very excited! I hear that Uncle Joe gets a similar look on his face when he gets his McDonalds breakfast! LOL!

We were worried that since we got in so early, like 9 am, there would be no rooms ready at our hotel. So we planned that we would check the suitcase with the bell hop and go do some sight seeing. But we were lucky because our room was ready to go as soon as we got there! So we got all checked in and changed clothes and headed out get me a swimsuit. I found the nearest Target but we walked for an hour before we found it. My navigation skills are completely lost outside of Utah.

We finally made our way to a mall in Pentagon City and found me a swimsuit. We made our way back to Arlington for some fun in the pool. After an afternoon of swimming, we decided to head down town to DC for some dinner. We hopped on the metro train and headed to the Hard Rock Cafe. After some walking around, attempting to navigate the city, a small brush with the white house and making our way through the crowd at the Cherry Festival, we finally found the HRC! And there was a 45 minute wait. So we put our name in and went to go buy some souvenirs. Got into dinner where Siobhan promptly fell asleep! Who falls asleep at the Hard Rock! Such a cutie!!! On the train ride home, we both fell asleep. Thank goodness we (I) woke up before our stop! The great part was that our stop was right under our hotel! How cool is that? The subway system in DC is awesome! Needless to say, we were exhausted when we got into bed! The next day we planned our sight seeing adventures....

 To Be Continued!

Yeah, It's Been a While

Hey, remember how I have a blog? Remember how I used to update it fairly regularly? Yeah, me too. So I'm back, but I'm not going to promise the [blogging] world. Things are busy and facebook tends to be fast, but kind of more a time suck when you add it all together. I don't know, I'm torn and apparently in a stream of consciousnesses kind of mood....moving on.

Thought you all might enjoy an update of what's been going on. One child is off to school and the other three are still asleep, so I'm going to listen to vicious wind outside and ruminate and reminisce.

So we've been up to a lot of things. I'll start in December...

Jingle Bell Run/Walk for Arthritis....We had so much fun at this event! I am continually impressed with all the wonderful work that the Arthritis Foundation does in this community and the events that they put on are amazing! Siobhan was the youth honoree for the event and she did a great job! She gave a speech that was very articulate and moving. Video will come soon-it's on Carson's phone. We had a misshap of illness though. Right after the kid's run, she had a spell of violent throwing up! So sad on her special day! But she was a trooper. We had a great time that day-vomiting aside!

Festival of Trees....Audrey and I both performed in the Festival of Trees with our Irish Dance school. We had a blast! As a result of her adorable performance, Audrey was even picked to dance on a kid's DVD which should be out in the next few months.

Christmas happened and so did my birthday-the Christmas post at least will be at another time when I can post all the pics and videos. Christmas really should be it's own post anyway, not thrown into the mix of a run of the mill update post, don't you think?

Jr. Jazz....Siobhan played basketball this winter. She had a great time and no problems with the JIA! She was the only girl on her team, but totally held her own! She was also the tallest. Favorite memory of the season, after a girl on the other team stole the ball from her, she came over to me on the verge of tears because someone 'just took the ball' away. I told her to steal it right back. She did!

Preschool for Mr. Will....Mr. Will started speech therapy back in November. He has been very delayed in the his speech and vocabulary and after a lot of testing we found out that he has concentration/attention issues and memory problems as well. So we started having a speech therapist come into our house twice a month to work with him. Now that he's three, he ages into the school districts preschool program. He goes to a 'special needs' preschool two mornings a week and he loves it! He gets to ride the bus which is the high light of his day! Oh, and he's improving so much with his speech! It seems like everyday he has new words that he can say. We are so happy! I plan another post about this very soon!

Standing Man...So Ethan can stand against anything and it's so cute! He's starting to cruise too which is so fun to watch! He still won't crawl on his knees though. The other day I put him down on the floor of the living room to play and went into the kitchen. About two minutes later, i couldn't hear him. Yeah, he was upstairs. So I put him back in the living room with more toys and turned my back. Two minutes later, he was upstairs again! Fast little guy!

Carson's Amazing!....Carson has been working out a lot over the last year and has lost 40 pounds! His BMI is down to 16.9!!!! I'm so proud of him! He's been working hard! He's also kept busy with his responsibilities in the Elder's Quorum presidency.

Vegas...We took a short trip to Las Vegas on New Years Day and stayed overnight at the Excalibur. The girls loved being able to stay in the Castle! It was nice to get away and do something fun as a family! Carson's mom met us there and stayed with the kids so we could go out. It was a very quick trip but lots of fun!!!

I'm doing some fun work with the Arthritis Foundation which is keeping me busy. I'm helping to organize the upcoming walk in May and Siobhan is helping also. We are planning on attending the Foundation's gala in a few weeks where Siobhan will present an honoree with the platter that she made. We're super excited for that! Siobhan and I were also chosen to attend to Arthritis Foundation's Advocacy Summit in Washington DC in mid April and we are really looking forward to that! Well, I'm looking forward to that, Siobhan doesn't know. We're surprising her at school on Weds at their weekly assembly!

Soccer....Siobhan just had her first soccer game on Saturday and scored 2 goals! But then she got wicked hurt and couldn't play the rest of the game. It's all good though. She's excited to keep playing!

St. Patrick's Day....Me and Audrey both marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade down town and performed in the Siamsa. It was so fun! We also had a super fun party the night before with all the kids friends! It was so much fun!!!

So there you have it, a comprehensive update of what's going on in our family. I hope you enjoyed the read and lack of pictures. I have a reason for that. I got a new phone for my birthday and the camera on my phone is better than our digital camera so I use the phone for all of my picture taking needs. I just don't know how to get them from the phone to the computer. I know there are ways like emailing them to myself and then copying and pasting them into my picture library. But that's a lot of steps and I'm kind of lazy. I need to find an easier way. Love ya'll!

Who Do You Jingle With?

We're nearing the home stretch on the fundraising for the Jingle Bell Run/Walk for Arthritis! All things seem to be in order as we prepare for Siobhan's big day...practicing her speech, getting out costumes together for the costume contest, gearing up our legs for the run, lot's to be excited about!
We're doing our best to make Siobhan and our team the top fundraisers. So have you donated yet? Are you planning on joining our team? Click here if you would like too contribute. If you would, please make the donation directly to Siobhan-just click on her name!

On Today's List

Before, you read any further, Have you headed over to join our team for the Jingle Bell Run/Walk? After tomorrow, registration goes up to $30 so do it now!!!! There's also a kids 1K and the price is always $10. And, of course, you can donate any amount you like until the day of.

Now, since it's Monday and I haven't blogged in a years(!!!!!), I'm going to create my to do list so I have some ownership over how I spend my day. And just FYI, this post will probably be boring. So here's what I hope to accomplish:

*Do one more load of laundry and then fold and put away all the loads that I've done between yesterday and today. If I do anymore today than what I've already done I'll get overwhelmed and it won't get completed. After falling ridiculously behind on my laundry, I need to pace myself.
*Come up with something to feed my family dinner. Pancakes? Maybe-We're having leftovers from last night, done!
*Acquire birthday treats to take to Siobhan's class and then deliver them-1/w way done
*Attend Jingle Run planning meeting at the Arthritis Foundation this afternoon.
*Get dressed in clothes other than sweat pants-done!
*Figure out our clothing for family pictures this weekend. I would like my brain to stop keeping me up at night thinking about color/texture/print combinations and the disasters that are possible.
*Take books to library.
*Vacuum Mr. Will's bedroom so he'll stop eating sequins (it's a long story) -That one's done
*Blog something interesting this evening.

I need to bare in mind that I'm giving myself until the end of day to get this all done.

Whenever the Arthritis Foundation has a big event, they always choose a child with JIA to be an honoree-sort of the face of Arthritis and 'voice for hope' to show that life can be normal. Back in June, we were able to meet James Light who was the honoree for the Arthritis Walk. He was super sweet and very inspiring. You can read it here. Siobhan even sees the same Doctor!

Well, we were given the opportunity for Siobhan to be the honoree at this years Jingle Bell Run/Walk so we jumped on it and we just got word last week that it's official! How exciting is that!!!! We're so happy and excited to be able to share her/our story with everyone who is struggling with arthritis and to bring awareness to the fact that there is a huge need for more research, but ultimately, what we need, is a cure!

For this event, our family will be able to help in some of the planning of the event, work with local media, share our story with the community and Siobhan will be able to start the race. We also started a team just like we did for the walk back in June.

Now, I really don't like to solicit people for money or ask a lot from people, but this is obviously something that is really close to our family so I am going to put it out there. So here's where you come in....

1)We need team members to fun with us! There is a $25 reg fee which goes toward our fundraising goal of $1500.

2)If you don't live close, you can still donate to our team. A lot of very generous people donated to us for the last walk and I definitely don't expect that again. But the option is there. If you've never donated before, just know that any amount helps.

3)Come and cheer us on! There is going to be a lot of fun stuff going on at the Jingle Bell Run/Walk so come and get into the holiday spirit and cheer on 'Siobhan's Secret Weapons'. Through this whole arthritis journey, the moral support has meant just as much to us! Surrounding ourselves with people who want the best for Siobhan has been awesome!

If you're interested in helping us one way or the other, here are the event details:

When: Sat December 3

8.30-10am : Registration

9.15am : Holiday Costume Contest!

9.40am : Kids 1k Run with Elves

10am : Timed 5k Runners Begin

10.10am : Untimed Joggers/Walkers Begin

5k Results + Awards Ceremony to follow.

Where: Trolley Square-Southwest Plaza

How: You can run or walk, timed or un-timed

So if you want to join our team head on over here and find our team. This go around, we've called our team 'Siobhan's Secret Weapons'.