Zach's back

A couple of years ago, a man that we managed storage units for asked Zach to sweep the drive way for $10. Zach was excited for the money but really just wanted to help out. The driveway was about a 1/4 mile long and full of little rocks. It was July and the weather was over 100 degrees. He worked for 5 hours straight, was paid double because he worked so hard and the man felt guilty, and then laid in bed for a week because his back hurt so bad. Since then, every time Zach does anything that strains his back at all, he ends up in bed for a couple of days. This is frustrating because he is only 13 years old.

On Saturday, the school had a service project where the kids went out and cleaned up 3 miles of a highway. I was asked to drive so Zach and I went out to support and get our hours in. We had two other kids that rode with us and we were assigned to work until we met up with another group. 3/4 of a mile and 12 bags later, we finally met another group. Then we were told to cross the highway and do the same distance on the other side. We couldn't just walk across the road, we had to be driven, so the lady in charge picked us up, drove 3 miles until she found a spot she was comfortable with turning around at, drove us back 3 miles and dropped us off on the other side of the road. Whatever!

So we worked hard and fast, filled only 8 bags this time, and made it back to my car. The four of us cleaned up almost two miles (out of six) and we did it in under 2 hours. When we finished, I was dusty, tired, hungry, grouchy, and my back hurt!Problem: my car was on the other side of the highway! We were supposed to wait for someone to come get us and then drive us across the road to my car. I was completely out of patience by this point and I broke the rules! We took of our reflective orange and yellow prison jackets, hid them under our shirts so that we looked like normal citizens just out for an early morning stroll along the highway, waited until there were no cars coming, and then ran across the road. Looking back that was a careless decision because I really was responsible for someone else's kids and I may not have appreciated someone being that careless with my child so next time I'll follow the rules better. At that moment, I was no longer thinking like a mature, responsible adult. Moving on...

We raced home, showered, and headed out to my mom's for her birthday/Halloween party. My brother is in the process of moving into his own place so Zach and Justyn went with my brothers to see the house and help unload some boxes. While they were there, Justyn was playing in a little play house with his cousins and they were teasing each other and one of his cousins kicked a window and it broke. My brother was good about it and sentenced the boys to service hours around his house until the window is paid for.

Zach was not involved in this little incident because he was on the floor moaning in pain. His back was hurting!

It's now Wednesday and he is still unable to move. We took him into a chiropractor on Monday. He felt better, came home and instead of going back to bed, he joined us for dinner and FHE and apparently over did it. He is now on some heavy pain medicine and can't get out of bed at all. We go back in today for another adjustment and more therapy.

Side note: He needed to go to the bathroom on Monday night and his legs were numb and he was unable to support his weight with his back being so sore. I was the only one up because I was waiting for him to fall asleep. He's alot taller than me but weighs only about a 100 pounds. I had him drape his arms around my neck and lean on my back while I drug him to the bathroom. He did his thing and then called me and I drug him back to the couch. Then I went to bed because my back hurt. I think the bending down and standing up on the highway cleanup was just way too much movement for both of our backs.

I'm a little concerned. I don't know what is wrong with his back. He's missed school all week with no sign of improvement yet. He's way too young to be in this kind of condition. And I think we are done with participating in highway clean up service projects!

Funny Kate...

Kate stepped on the scale and ran squealing with delight.
"I'm twenty-five cents! I'm twenty-five cents! I always wanted to be twenty-five cents."

Kate was laying on the couch with a stomach ache. Suddenly she took off running to the bathroom screaming, "My baby is coming! Mom, hurry! My baby is coming!"
A few minutes later she called from the bathroom. "It's okay Mom. It wasn't a baby after all. It was just my poop!"

Blogging...

It's my 300th post and I'm having an identity crisis.

Why do I blog?
Is it for you?
Is it for me?

What do I put on here?
Do I write what I want you to read?
Do I write what's going on inside my head?

Is this my journal?
Is this my travel log of my daily ongoings?
Is this a picture gallary for my family and friends?


I know I'm private but I still feel so public...
Do I share my weaknesses?
Do I fake my strengths?
Do I just post and let you decide?

But then that brings me back to...
But am I posting for you?

Or for me?


Why do you blog?

Conference Weekend

Okay, this post is really late but I'm really far behind. It's been a rough, emotional month for me. I've been in this weird funk for the last few weeks.

So, over General Conference weekend, Ken worked security at Octoberfest and the kids were out of school for four days. Without church to break it all up, it felt like four Saturday's in a row. I printed off some activities for the kids to do during Conference. It worked! The kids were angels. It was such a relaxing weekend and I loved every session of conference.

Justyn working on filling out his booklet where he summarized each talk and set goals to improve himself.

Kate glued a picture of the speaker and then colored the color of each speakers tie. Basically the only colors she needed was red! and a little blue.

I loved during the second Saturday session when my kids sang along with the children's choir.

Some slept when they shouldn't have...

And some it was a complete relief when they finally did sleep, gooby face and all!

I could do four day weekends like this more often!

Tomatoes

A couple days before it snowed, the air was really chilly outside. I decided to pick the tomatoes out of the garden. Okay, I have to tell about my garden for a minute. I planted this big garden full of green beans, carrots, peas, corn, tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers, herbs, rhubarb, zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkins. NOTHING grew. Not even weeds!! In fact my neighbor told me that she enjoyed driving past my yard because my garden made her laugh every time. Okay, I had 5 stalks of corn that grew, three at one end of the row and two at the other end. I had a row of green beans that all popped out of the ground and then all burned up and died. I had one plant the survived and I picked 5 beans off of it. I had on cucumber plant grow and the ants ate all the leaves off it so it died. My rhubarb did good but not good to eat the first year. Some of Justyn's sunflowers grew and did pretty good, but what do I do with sunflower seeds. I know we will roast them but seriously, if only one thing was going to grow, did it have to be sunflowers? My pepper plant grew a couple of scary wilted little peppers with "spiders up the butt" according to Kate so we didn't eat them. So when I discovered that my tomato plants had hundreds of unripe tomatoes on them (we only had a couple that ripened on the vine), I decided to not let them go to waste. I froze my fingers off as I picked every one of the tomatoes and then brought them into my kitchen to let them ripen in the windows. My mom said it would work... and it is.

My only problem is that Henry thinks they are balls...

so most of them end up in the garbage. Oh well, I tried!

Early snow

October 11th we woke up to a blanket of snow covering the ground. It was beautiful,and I didn't get a picture. (Go to Amy's blog for proof of how much snow we really got.)

This picture was taken after most of the snow had melted. The kids made a snow man with the neighbor kids over at their house.

Open House/ Art Fair/ Cross Country Banquet

The school had an open house/art fair. Of course it was the week Ken was out of town so I was on my own. I felt like I was off schedule all night but we made it to everything and had a fun night.

Alexys with her teacher, Mrs. Stevens.

Alexys made hair accessories for her art project. She made ribbon pony tail holders, flowers on pony tails, and some ribbon barrettes.

Shaelynne made some folders out of place mats. She uses them to take her quiet activities to church in. (Somehow I missed getting a picture of her teacher.)

Justyn grew giant sunflowers this summer in our garden. He also made an Airwolfe helicopter out of legos and a poster to represent his latest obsession.

Justyn with his teacher Mrs. B

Zach made a poster of his running.

After the open house, we hurried over to the Cross Country banquet, totally missed the dinner and all the awards, but got there just in time for Zach's award. He received the "Zach Attack" award because even though he struggled with asthma, his coach was impressed that he never mentioned it to anyone. He just kept working through each practice and race, and never getting discouraged with his results. He actually was a little emotional when he told the group that Zach had ran the last race without stopping once. He was proud of Zach's perseverance and determination. We were surprised because we didn't know the coach even knew about Zach's asthma. We didn't even know about it until this year when he started to run so it was all new to us also. I'm thankful they let him run with Robert Stuart this year. It was a good experience.
Zach with Coach Harper.