Excited for Faith

I am very grateful for the opportunity I have each six months to participate in General Conference.  Every message is so inspired and in tune with needs of the members, I know this because I am such a member, but not just to members to the entire world.  Be obedient to God's commandments - yes!  So simple.  ALL of the commandments!  Speak softly to our children, pray with greater purpose.  Their is nobody so far lost that the Savior can't heal you. . . . .  faith, believe, bloom where you are planted . . . try harder to improve your marriage and being true partners with your spouse . . . virtue, chastity, I could go on and on.  I really loved it all.

I'm grateful for Sister Wixom's talk.  I love her, she has the perfect perspective concerning precious children, perspective that grumpy young mom's can easily lose, they don't mean to but they do.  I hope I can keep her talk fresh in my mind all the time.  Super Nanny is great but she is no Primary President :)  I also loved President Uchtdorf.  His talks hit home every time.  Sooo sooo good.  But I know it's because of who he is speaking for.  I really loved all of the messages I heard, (yes I did miss a few, I really love dvr for this reason, turning on a talk while I feed my baby or fold laundry is one of my favorite things to do)  Anyway I was also inspired by the great stories and messages between the sessions about missionary work.  I am a bit jealous that the missionary age wasn't changed when I younger, but I know that the time is right now, not then.  But the missionary excitement seemed very palpable.   So today I feel like my faith has been reignited, it feels really good, I haven't felt like this in quite a while.  I'm excited to try to be better, stronger, more faithful, to find more peace, you use kinder words, to improve my prayers.  I love conference, I love the Savior, I'm grateful for my testimony and for all of the many gentle nudges and tender mercies I just received.

Yard, Easter, Blake

The boys sure love the days of warm weather.  They are making friends and love playing outside riding bikes and playing in the neighbors yard and our dirt :)  Bronson told me he didn't want us to get grass because he really loves our dirt.  I guess that's understandable since having dirt means tractors in your backyard, and a sweet dirt bike ramp in the back.  He is a pretty good little rider.  Levi wants to be but isn't quite there yet.

Jared has been working to get the yard going doing lots of tractor work, spreading dirt trying to get the grades right.  Sprinklers will hopefully get started in a couple of weeks.  In the mean time I think they are having fun playing tractors in a life size dirt pile.

We got to celebrate Easter a little early this year with Buckley's and the boys had a lot of fun hunting Easter eggs with Arianna.  At Grandma Buckley's house they are the only 3 so things are a little different compared to Grandma Hardy's.  They loved collecting all 90 of their eggs, yes 90 each.  So we came home with almost 200 pieces of chocolate . . . I won't tell what happened to most of it. 

We keep waiting for winter illnesses to be gone but they lingered a little longer than we'd hoped for.  Bronson and Levi ended up with a nasty cold and one morning Bronson couldn't seem to get his coughing under control.  It was pretty bad, he was so mad at me that nothing I was doing was helping him.  We'd done cough medicine, oils, humidifiers, I tried to get him to take a bath because it had helped Levi but he wouldn't, he just kept coughing and couldn't seem to do anything else but cough and be totally miserable, he told me his stomach hurt - which seemed to make sense from the amount of coughing.  Finally I gave him some pain reliever with codine . . .  and it did nothing.  I decided to try the nebulizer, surly it wouldn't hurt and nothing else seemed to be helping at all.  After a few breathes on that finally some relief, the cough started calming down and when he was done it was doing better, at least better enough he could function but still was coughing.

I called the doctor concerned it might be whooping cough, but the dumb nurse, well she didn't seem concerned at all, she asked if he had asthma, I said no.  After the usual no help doctor answers we ended the call with, if it hasn't gone away in a couple of weeks bring him in.  Oh brother!  Why did I even bother.

After a little bit the codine kicked in and Bronson settled in for a four hour nap.  I kept checking on him because his breathing sounded wheezy, but he was still breathing and resting so I didn't want to wake him, I just let him sleep knowing he really needed to rest and at least he wasn't coughing.  When he woke up he wasn't coughing so much but really had no air support to talk.  He could barely get out a few words at a time.  It was obvious something was not good.  He was acting normally he just couldn't talk, it was very forced, his air, and just wasn't good.  Jared came home and went to scouts and while he was gone I knew we were gonna need to take him into the doctor it was getting worse.  After Jared  talked to him to listen we tried to get him to go to the doctor at which point he went hysterical just making it all the worse.  (Ever since his kindergarten pokes he is very weary of doctors)  I'll just say it was no easy task getting him in the car, and all the while he's turning purple crying so hard.

So after a day like this I was still thinking whooping cough or pneumonia, the thought of asthma never even came into my head - I don't know why -  when Jared took him in his oxygen was 84, luckily he responded well to the albuterol and didn't have to go to the hospital.  So asthma, duh!  He was having an asthma attack, and even after the nebulizer helped him, it didn't even register.  Anyway asthma is no fun but there are much worse things.  I do notice he has a hard time if he's been out playing in the cold but other than that he seems to be okay.  We went to the E.N.T. last week and had Bronson and Levi tested for allergies.  We've just had such a horrible winter, and Bronson has had a runny nose for an entire year basically, I just want to make sure we aren't missing a piece to this puzzle (hopefully not Simba).  We should find out in a day or two.  So that's the latest heath news.

 We got Lagoon passes this year and went opening day for a little family date.  Levi was so cute and excited.  Bronson is getting big enough that he has a bit of an attitude issue, he did have fun but Levi wasn't afraid to show it.  The best part is that Bronson is still scared of certain rides, it must be because of his memories from two years ago.  So while Levi and I rode Bom Bora, Bronson rode on Bulgy the Whale - not kidding.  He can go off jumps on his bike but ask him to ride Moonraker and look out!  Blakey was a super cute spectator.

 I convinced Bronson to ride on the lion, he prefers to sit on the bench on the Merry-go-round.

 It was fun to watch Levi enjoy all the rides, last time we tried he was in tears 

 sweet little baby

Grumpy and Happy

Happy Easter

 The boys had a fun Easter morning, finding eggs and their baskets.  They get so excited, Levi is especially fun to watch.  At Grandma Hardy's we had and Easter egg hunt as well but with much more competition.  She also had an easter egg contest that was fun, with prizes and other goodies for everyone.  I didn't get a picture of my winning egg but he was a cute little scuba diver.

the 5 little stinkers

 Tessa loves to stick out her tongue!

 A family photo in a hurry

Blake is growing up so fast.  He can sit for a little bit, sometimes, mostly he just folds in half or tips to the side but I'm sure he'll be sitting soon.  He is rolling all over a lot and manages within a few seconds of putting him down to get himself wedged somewhere in the room.  He is a good little eater (obviously) he gets so excited when he's eating in is chair and excitedly shakes with his mouth wide open waiting for the next bite, it is the cutest thing ever.  He is also becoming quite the little screamer. He is discovering all the loud noises he can make and he quite enjoys it.  He did sleep through the night once this month . . . I'm trying to get this figured without having to make him scream for an hour, I'm also on the fence about nursing.  I would really love my body back but I feel like I'm abandoning my baby or something.  It's hard, I've changed my mind about 20 times in the past two weeks for numerous reasons.  I know after I first had him I was really proud for making it through the first 6 days, and then 6 weeks, and then I told myself I can do it through winter and make it to general conference.  Not that that is the main reason but it's a hard decision.  

 somebody has curly hair

 just before he rolled into the chair

 my little gerber baby

Trying to update a month at a time is tricky because I know I'm forgetting little things so I may just have to do little updates of funny things that happened once in while.   Here's to a bright and sunny April full of 60 degree weather :)