Our Western Way of Life: Busy Busy Busy

I have sat down to blog a few separate times, but Lane has woken up crying each time. The kids (and Jonathan and I) have been sick, but are doing much better now. Lane's breathing got to the point that we felt we should bring him in to the E.R. and make sure his oxygen levels weren't too low and that he wasn't going into respiratory distress again. He had fever, diarrhea, vomiting, coughing, and congestion; classic signs of the respiratory flu. His oxygen was a little low, but they sent us home with a steroid to open up his airways and told us to keep up with the nebulizer treatments. His official diagnosis was "the common cold." I'm not saying I wanted them to admit him, but it was obviously more than the common cold, especially with his past respiratory problems. (I didn't realize that was their official diagnosis until I read our discharge papers when we got home, otherwise I probably would have told them to dig a little deeper; E.R. bills aren't cheap and I would have appreciated knowing what it was for sure. They didn't do anything except listen to his lungs with the stethoscope. We weren't impressed with our E.R. visit, but that could probably make a whole separate post, so I'll just leave it at that.) A few days later my friend, who's a nurse, heard the two of them coughing while I was talking to her on the phone. I told her everything that was going on and she told me that he needed to be on an anti-viral if it was the flu so that it didn't develop into pneumonia or anything else. She strongly recommended I take them to the doctor. They did a chest x-ray on Lane, and sure enough he had some bacterial pneumonia starting. Thank goodness for antibiotics when you need them. They didn't really look at Maggie, but she wasn't ever as bad as Lane and I as pretty sure she was going to be ok on her own. I don't know why Lane gets hit so hard with respiratory sicknesses, but I'm glad the worrying is over, and that he's sleeping better again. I'm thinking I probably need to take him to an allergist and find out if it's asthma or if something else could be triggering it.

I know Jonathan won't appreciate this picture on here, especially since he's cuddled up under a pink blanket, but I couldn't resist. Few things warm a mother's heart more than a scene like this.

I was already emotional from lack of sleep and the stress from kids being sick, so I could have done without this:

Somehow a few crayons found their way into the dryer, and the entire load is now speckled with green and blue wax. Most of the items are easily replaceable (onesies, pants, pajamas) but Maggie's baby blanket that I made her was in the load. I have tried getting the stains out, but nothing has worked so far. I have experimented on the less sentimentally valuable items. I can get the wax out, but I haven't been able to remove the color stain. It just spreads :-/

During all this fiasco our washer started leaking. The leak wasn't coming from any of the hoses and seemed to be an internal problem, so we both planned on buying a new washer. Then I googled "common leaks on washers" while Jonathan was at work one day and I determined that the problem was the drain pump, which could easily be replaced. Sometimes I like to pretend I'm Superwife, so I pulled the washer completely apart and commenced to pull the part off (which was supposed to wiggle right off according to every YouTube video I watched of "how to change your drain pump.") Long story short, when Jonathan got home we had to take the entire motor off of the washing machine and pry the part off of the motor shaft. When I ordered the replacement part I realized what the problem was; someone had put to wrong size of drain pump on the washer to begin with, so instead of it sliding right on, they probably had to hammer it on, which caused us a lot of headache when we tried to get it off. So, I probably could have been Superwife if someone had installed it right the last time it was replaced. Jonathan's always busy enough that I don't like to give him honey-do lists of jobs that I feel confident tackling on my own...but sometimes my confidence is greater than my skill/muscle. The part was 50% less to order it online and pay for shipping, so I had to wait a few extra days. The bad news is I have two weeks of laundry to catch up on. The good news is we only had to pay $17.50 instead of $300+ for a new washer :)

Old vs. New

Speaking of Jonathan being busy, the bull sale is this Thursday, so he's been working pretty much non-stop in preparation for it. It will be nice when the sale is over and we find out where bulls need to be delivered to :)

I've been wanting to try making homemade English muffins for a while now and I finally got around to it one day. I need to make a few changes next time I make them, but they turned out pretty good. It was a little weird to cook dough on the griddle though.

Look what Maggie got in the mail:

Not only did Cinderella sign it, but all of the princesses did. Unfortunately it wasn't indestructible and has already been thrown away. Maggie wanted to tape it to the door, but since the tape is off limits to her, she ran it under the faucet to get it wet so that it would "stick" to the door. Then all the ink started flaking off and it ripped. I guess we'll wait awhile and write to her again :)

Jonathan's brother and mom ended up being just half an hour away from us so that his brother could go to the temple with his brother-in-law who was going through for the first time. I drove down so we could spend some time together while he was in the temple. We went to a local dairy and got yummy ice cream cones and then we fed the ducks and geese some leftover bread that I brought with us. I remember stopping at that same spot when I was just a few years older than Maggie to stretch our legs after my great-grandma's funeral. Isn't it crazy how life flies? Lane ate his ice cream cone and most of Maggie's (we may have discovered his favorite food). Then when we were feeding the ducks he was almost as interested in the bread as the ducks were. I promise I feed him. :) It was a beautiful spring day and it sure beat sitting at home catching up on laundry! :)

This goose had it all figured out. He just stood on this rock the entire time and bent over to pick up any bread that floated by. He wasn't about to work for his food!