Yellow jacket sting

Will snuck outside to play in his pool, but there was a yellow jacket inside. So, he tried to get it out, needless to say the yellow jacket didn't really like that idea and Will received his first sting :( 

I looked it up on our pedi's website and apparently aluminum based deodorants help neutralize the venom. So here he is with Danny's deodorant all over his finger watching Dinosaur train.

Life experiences :)

Long Days of Summer

Mrs. Black Widow

I was mopping my kitchen yesterday and decided to take my mats out to hose them down. While I was washing them up, I noticed a big spider web it the bottom of the kid saucer we have outside. I figured while I had the hose out I'd spray it down. Then, I saw this giant, ugly spider. I decided to take a picture of it so Danny could see, and we could check to make sure it wasn't anything scary. That's when I saw her lovely red stripe!

 I grabbed the bug spray and sprayed the heck out of that toy! She naturally ran away but I was hopeful that I had nailed her and/or she would get covered when she crawled out of her hiding space. Then, I emailed Danny and told him I thought we had a black widow, or the even worse Australian redback spider.

He totally thought I was exaggerating, and being girly over a spider.... until I showed him my pics :) She crawled back onto her web while we were floating our boats for FHE (yeah if Nephi can build a boat so can we, of course ours were paper...).

Danny captured her in barefeet, with our BBQ tongs. She is now sitting in my fridge so he dies without shriveling up so that she can be the inaugural part of the boys BIG bug collection.

Um... let's just say in my house growing up we didn't save spiders, particularly poisonous spiders, particularly in our refrigerator!

Reason 1,000,000 Why little boys need Dads and why we love ours tons!!!

Nephi and his Gun

I pulled out these toy soldiers for the first time today while I was making dinner. We started hearing Nephi this or that... Danny and I both looked at each other and asked if he was saying Nephi. Not sure but that's what it sounded like. Then he turned to me and said, "mom, these are the Nephites and they are come to help the other guys up." Lol out of the mouth of babes :)

Clark Kent who?

So we have a tradition this summer that whenever Danny rides the who way into work or home me and the boys ride halfway with him. It's been a great way to get some extra miles and time with Dad.

Well we were about 7 mi away from home today when I rode over some junk in the road. I was concerned I might have flatted a tire so I looked down to check. While doing this I drifted over and hit the bike trailer that was attached to Danny's bike. 

I recovered didn't fall, but couldn't pedal and could tell my chain had been knocked off. We stopped and Danny says, "we'll that's a new bike". I was super confused since when does dropping a chain mean I get a new bike? Yup, that was till I looked down at my rear derailer...  

 Hmm, not functioning! My chain had a crazy crimp in it to. Fortunately, my frame was fine so aside from a couple new parts my bike will be as good as new. The only problem... We're 7 miles from home. We had Danny's cell phone, but no good numbers to call right at dinner time, in an emergency we would have been fine though just for the record. So Danny comes up with this great idea! How about I just hold onto the bike trailer with the boys and he pulls me home? Um... Yeah .... Right. Well he convinced me to try, and it totally worked! I kept thinking the whole time that I wished there was a way I could take a picture of him towing me down the road. 

The moral of the story Danny is superman! Really, he pulled Will, Ben, the bike trailer, me, and my bike home 7 miles! We were going a pretty good pace too like 11-14 mph. I got a great bike handling skills workout too.

Oh yeah and another moral, eyes on the road :)

Danny got promoted!

Yay! All of Danny's hard work and effort has paid of and he got promoted! Unfortunately, it came around the same time as a corporate wide letter stating there would be no pay raises this year, but were still REALLY excited for him. So send some love his way, cus he definitely deserves it!

Here's the email his boss sent out to his team.

I am pleased to announce the promotion of Daniel Rich to Staff Software Engineer! 

Daniel  first started at NI in August 2009 with the Timing and Sync Software group.  Daniel immediately began contributing to our two major projects, NI-Sync and NI-TimeSync.  Over the years, Daniel has taken on more and more ownership of NI-TimeSync.  He currently is the main support contact for our NI-Labs releases. Because of his efforts, NI was able to win several key opportunities such as Hydro Quebec and Centerpoint.  Daniel is also a key developer and architect of our next generation NI-TimeSync release that is underway. Daniel has leveraged his extensive customer experience and knowledge of our old NI-TimeSync architecture to help improve and focus the design of NI-TimeSync 2.0.  This new architecture will make it easier for customers to synchronize their systems, as well as make it easier for internal clients to enable turn-key synchronization with their technologies.  In addition to being heavily involved in NI-TimeSync, Daniel has also helped out on significant development/debugging tasks with NI-Sync 3.4.  This was a very tough and protracted release, without Daniel's help on these larger/more difficult tasks we would not have been able to release NI-Sync in time for NIWeek 2013 with the quality level we needed.  Overall, Daniel has done a great job and has been a difference maker on several key Timing and Sync products/features in a way that exemplifies a Staff-level engineer. 

Please join me in congratulating Daniel on his accomplishments and contributions to NI. 

Impromptu Camping

We decided around 3:30pm yesterday that we were going to go camping, so I loaded up the truck drove to the campground. Then we jumped on the bike with the boys and rode to meet Danny on his way home from work. 

We had so much fun! My favorite part was Will. He kept asking me in the drive over where we were going when I would say camping he'd cheer and say, "thanks Mom! Say it again... say camping again!" He was so excited! We also went on a couple adventures, aka walks on the trail, we even went on a dinosaur hunt! Super fun for no planning. I love having a corps of engineers park 10 min from the house with tent camping for $6 a night!

Btw the lantern is led, we don't let Will carry around fire just yet.

Oh and kudos to Danny for getting up to put the rainfly on. It was thundering, but weather.com had 0% rain and it was so hot that I didn't want it. It started pouring right about the time the boys fell asleep. Yes, yes definitely kudos!

Danny's nature lesson on snails. Until Ben scared it, and the snail excreted "liquid" all over ;)

Will's prize a snail shell, he carried it around the entire rest of the trip. :p 

Bike crash!

We've been watching the Tour de France lately and I can say wow inspiring! I figured it wasn't likely I was ever going to be able to race or handle a bike like these elite pros, but there was one thing I might be able to do just as well... Crash! 

So on the Fourth of July Danny and I raced our third criterium race. For those who are not familiar with bike racing a criterium, or crit, is a race where the track is usually a mile or so, you race around for a set amount of time 30 min in our case, then they announce 5 more laps. That's it you take five more laps and the first to cross wins. The only catch is if you get lapped you're out. It's fast, really fast the second time we raced I got dropped by the pack while I was going over 25mph, and on a bike that's pretty intense for a beginning race.

So on the fourth, I was actually doing decent I hung with the pack for several laps before I fell off the back and the pack had just barely caught me when I heard the 5 more lap bell. Well with 2 to go, I saw a girl go down about 3 or 4 riders ahead of me. You are in really tight drafting so in the split second I panicked, having never been in this situation before, I smashed into the rider in front of me.

It took us all a bit to orient ourselves. There were about 8 of us with our bikes in a mess and our tushies on the pavement, water bottles we everywhere! I picked up one that looked like mine and took a swing, it was some sort of sports drink I brought water today. I set it back down and look again for mine. I managed to get myself off the road and realized I was in better shape than some. One lady's seat was bent completely sideways.  

I put my chain back on and still can't pedal I'm not sure what's up with my bike so I start to walk it back to the start. Then, I decide I. Don't really want to walk that for so I stop to figure it out. Something was caught in my wheel so I fix it and soft pedal back to Danny and the boys.

I take my bike to the mechanic and learn my wheel is slightly bend and I need a new spoke,  $30 worth of repairs. Really good looking at some others, but too much work for today. I'll have to take it into the shop next week.

I walk my bike back to the truck with the boys, and start to feel my shoulder hurt. It's a deep sort of pain that kind of freaked me out a bit so I head to the medic to see if I should get it X-rayed or something before we drive to Houston.

My shoulder look as good as can be but he warned me it was going to be really sore, if it was so bad I couldn't sleep I should go get it checked out later.

Sounds good to me so Danny went and grabbed his bike for his race. My last minute advice to him, "Don't crash, it hurts". I looked for some ibuprofen to get in my system before my shoulder started to swell, but couldn't find any so I walked back to the medic to see if he had any. He gave me three and I mentioned, "oh btw, I'm starting to feel a little fuzzy. Is that okay?" Hmm, apparently not. He sort of freaked out checked my pupils and asked me what I drank before the race. I answered water thinking he was concerned about electrolytes, but now I realize he probably was talking alcohol. He said I needed to go get checked out and asked if I was here by myself. I told him my husband was racing. He went away and came back to tell me they had 2 laps left in the race and asked if I really wanted Danny to finish. 

I told him Danny wasn't actually in the race but lined up for the next one. I went to go get him, but the medic insisted he go. I found out later he told Danny to take me or they were going to call an ambulance...  Haha my boys would have loved that but... No.

So a freaked out Danny whisked me away to the ER. The intake doctor looked at me when I told him I crashed and couldn't focus and said, "we'll we can't do anything for that, but we can keep an eye in you for a bit if you want." Um okay? They whisked me back and the  nurse practitioner was more concerned about my quarter size road rash, that the medic had already cleaned than anything else. The boys weren't allowed back so I hung out in my room by myself.

They patched me up again and got everything ready to discharge me, then I really start feeling terrible. I start getting sick, but I haven't eaten anything so it was just miserable. The lights were so bright. I kept fluctuating between too cold and too hot, and the bed incline for whatever reason was really bothering me so I curled up on the end so I could be flat. 

The medical assistant came to get my paperwork, and decided she better get the nurse. The nurse came in and decided she should talk with the doctor. I didn't know at the time but I then graduated to a full doctor in lue of the nurse practitioner. He decided to go ahead and do a cat scan. That was pretty quick, but I did feel sick in the middle, so I ducked out of the tube and freaked the nurses out. They were really nice though and gave me a wet wash cloth and said it was a good thing I was small because most people couldn't duck in and out like that. Honestly, I couldn't imagine it feeling any smaller. Yikes!

Anyways, they finally gave me some more anti nausea meds, and a shot of pain killer for my headache. When it occurred to me that it felt very much like a migraine. I asked the nurse if it were possible that it could have triggered a migraine. She thought it might, and the doctor agreed so with my clear cat scan and new migraine, mild head trauma v.s. scary major head trauma diagnosis, and meds that finally kicked it I got to go home. I tried to convince Danny to go ahead and drive to Houston, but since I couldn't help drive and he had such a long day we decided it wouldn't be the nicest either to make his parents stay up till 1 to let us in and went home.

My bed feels super nice, but I can't sleep to much adrenaline today I think. So, I wrote out my little story for ya'll. The boys did get a great view of fireworks over the Capitol for the waiting room, Will said they were, "amazing!" Danny's been the perfect husband and the boys were super patient. Especially, Will about delaying our trip to Grandpa's and fishing.

I feel very hard core now but mostly, I thank my Father in Heaven that I was only minorly hurt! However, I think I 'm turning in my racing shoes and sticking long rides in the country with Danny. I was actually terrible at racing, and well getting hurt is just no fun and the thrill just doesn't make up the difference for me.

Puff Puff Wars!

Sometimes kids' toys come from a toy store... and sometimes they don't. The boys found these pom poms in my craft supplies awhile ago, and they have never been there since.

Best idea though, because I'm convinced that it is physically impossible to throw a pom pom hard enough to hurt someone. Here's some pics from our morning's adventure!

First Annual Blanket Fashion Show

Slow, cold day at home... Meaning 70's. so the boys started carrying their blankets around but the kept tripping on them so I tied them up. Well they kept requesting they be "fixed" whenever they fell down. Anyways, they were so cute prancing around in their blankets and blowing kisses than I had to take a couple of pictures.

Of course they only wear the latest style from France ;)

Boys and Bluebonnets

I was hanging out with Benjamin and realized he is a stink'n cute kiddos with the most contagious smile and eyes that sparkle when he looks at you. It just melts my heart! Well I realized I haven't been very good at documenting his growth and sweet spirit. I decided to do better, because when I'm 90 years old I want to be able wake up to this face every single day!
Wildflower season is in full bloom here in Austin, so we headed to a nearby park for the classic bluebonnet pics.

Beware of Butter knives!

Ben was helping me do the dishes this morning and fell down. I scooped him up,gave him a cuddle didn't think much of it until I noticed my shirt was spotted with blood and his hand was covered.
Silly boy sliced his thumb right on top of the knuckle with the butter knife he was holding. I gave him a bandaid and some ibuprofen and we hung out for an hour or so until he pulled the band aid off. That was one deep cut now that the bleeding had slowed. I wasn't sure how deep was too deep, but it was more than I was comfortable with so I called the pedi and the told me to head to the children's hospital ER. I thought that was a bit extreme so we took him to the insta clinic down the road. A friend gave me a tip just last week that a guy from our stake was a doctor there. We ended up seeing him, and he was great. By the time we were seen it had sealed up again so all we needed was smoke glue to keep it closed. Oh and some green ice cream on the way home!

This is officially our first trauma visit with the boys...unfortunately I doubt it will be the last. However, I keep thinking.... Really? A butter knife?

One of the reasons I don't buy cereal.

Yeah, I bought that box of cereal 3 hrs ago... :)

Baby chickens

This morning at breakfast Will was talking to Danny. I wasn't paying much attention until Danny said, "why yes we are eating baby chickens." Apparently, Will came up with this idea all by himself.

We finished breakfast to the chant of "baby chickens, baby chickens".... I think I'm done with the eggs and will just eat my pancakes thanks!

Lol life with little boys :)

Will's First Day of School

The elementary schools in our area pay for a program called parents as teachers. As part of that they have preschool academy. Its one day a week for one hour and they provide childcare for Ben. So its just Will and mommy for an hour a week until he starts school. Super fun! Here's a glimpse of our first day.