Life

Yesterday morning I was shocked to learn that 2 people that I know, but have not had contact with in many years passed away in a tragic plane crash. I grew up in the same ward as Chad Wade. He was one of my dad's scouts. I could tell you lots of stories about him. The other was Justin Yates. I worked with him 12 years ago when he was a student at BYU. Both of them were good people that had young children. Justin also left behind a wife. This morning I learned that a memorial fund has been set up for Justin's family with the most immediate need being covering the cost of funeral expenses. Both of these men are considered very successful in the business world. I don't want to judge, or to sound like a commercial, especially since my husband sells life insurance, but on occasions like this when we are reminded of how fragile life is I am so thankful to have the knowledge that if something were to happen to my husband or myself we would be okay. I can't even imagine having to deal with pain and heart ache of losing a spouse. To couple that with the financial burden of having to come up with a way to pay not only for burying your loved one, but how you would live with the resulting loss of income would be unbearable. Life is so fragile. You never know when you will be called home. I am very thankful for the small piece of mind I have from knowing that If something were to happen, my family will be okay.

Maggie

I know it is shocking that I am posting something on my blog, but I thought this was probably the easiest way to keep everyone up to date with Maggie. Some of you know what is going on, but we have been getting a lot of questions. Here is the whole story. This week was book fair week. That means I live at the school. That is where I was on Wednesday morning. I dropped Maggie off at a friends house to play before she went to preschool. She was just fine, and acting as goofy as she always does. She went to school and was having fun and acting completely normal. She planted seeds and after she washed her hands, sat down on the rug for story time. During story time she had a seizure. Her amazing teacher, Miss Jennie, quickly got all the kids into the other room to play before they saw what was going on, called 9-1-1, called another parent to come and watch the other kids, and called me. She had what is called a grand mal, tonic-clonic, or generalized seizure. Those are the more dramatic seizures where their eyes roll back, they have very dramatic muscle spasms, foam at the mouth, you get the picture. As soon as I got Jennie's phone call, at came as quickly as possible. I wasn't worried about getting a speeding ticket. I knew that if the sheriff wasn't already there, he would be going to the same place I was. By the time I got there, she had just finished with her 3rd seizure in a 15 min period. Nelson arrived right after I did. She had never had a seizure before. She had not been sick. She did not have a fever during her seizures. We took her directly to our doctors office. by the time we got to the doctor, Maggie had a fever of 103.6. She also had a blood glucose level of 136, which is high, but not high enough to cause a seizure. The doctor thought that it was probably a febrile seizure and sent told her to get her fever down with ibuprofen and acetaminophen. He also scheduled us to come in on Thursday morning for a 2 hour glucose test. After a couple doses of medicine, her fever was completely gone. Later that day I got o phone call from Primary Children's Hospital Neurology department. They told me that they had talked with our doctor and Maggie was on "fast track" to meet with one of their doctors. They wanted me to call and make an appointment after Maggie's glucose test. Thursday morning, Maggie and I were getting ready to head down to the doctor's office for her 2 hour test when I got a phone call from the doctor. He told me that he had 3 conversations with the neurologists at Primary Children's. They think that Maggie's fever and elevated blood sugar were probably caused by the seizures rather than causing them. He wanted us to do a finger prick glucose test instead of the 2 hour test and then call the neurology department and schedule an appointment. Her blood sugar was at 99. We were able to make an apointment for 8:45 am on Friday. The neurologist thought it was a little concerning that she had 3 clustered together so close. She also wondered if she wasn't fully coming out of the seizures and it was one really long one, which is also concerning. While we were there, Maggie had an EEG to see if they can find any abnormalities. Maggie was so good! She sat so still while they attached 23 wires to her head and tried so hard to fall asleep when they asked her to, even though she couldn't. I need to call the neurlologist on Wednesday to get the results. In the meantime, we get to watch Maggie closely. She needds to have someone with her all the time. This has been really hard for her. She is a very independent child. We have to be really careful if she takes a bath, and it is strongly encouraged to have her only take showers. They also sent us home with nasal Versed to administer if she has another seizure that lasts more that 5 minutes. Now we just wait. Hopefully they won't find anything. But if they do, It will be nice to at least have an answer. Needless to say, this has been a REALLY long week and I am very glad that it is Saturday. Book fair is over, and we are done with all the doctor visits. I am looking forward to just resting today because I am exhausted! Thanks for all your prayers. I will let you know if and when we have any answers.

WOW!

I think I can officially claim the title of the Biggest Slacker Blogger! Sorry. I will try to do better. I will spend hours catching up on all the things we have done in the last 6 months. But not now. Now it is 4:30 am and I am not sleeping. I have been up for hours. On the bright side, I have caught up on reading everyone's blogs. Now if I could only find the strength to post the millions of pictures I have taken and explain what is happening in them. It is a little overwhelming. Kind of like the mountains of laundry the seem to accumulate after a vacation or the piles of papers that the kids bring home from school and then put in strange places. I will do it...later. But, just so you know, we are all still alive.

Big News!!!

This was announced at 4:00 this afternoon. The new temple site is about 10 minutes from our house and we are sooooooooo excited! I think this means a change in family night plans. Maybe a little field trip to the temple site?



A new temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to be built in Payson, Utah, it was announced today by Church President Thomas S. Monson.

The new temple will help meet the needs of a growing Church membership in the area and will ease the heavy use of the Provo temple, which is one of the busiest in the Church. The Payson temple will bring to 15 the number of operating and announced temples in Utah.



The property for the Payson temple is located on gently sloping ground at approximately 930 West and 1550 South on the southwest side of Payson, a mile from the 800 South I-15 interchange. The property offers scenic views of the area as well as easy access to the freeway.

The new temple will serve approximately 22 stakes from Spanish Fork to Nephi comprising approximately 78,000 Church members. Temple-going members have been driving to Provo or Manti for temple services.

Artists’ renderings, the size of the temple, groundbreaking dates and other information will be released as they become available.

“Temples answer those soul-searching questions of the purpose of life, of why we are here and where we are going. They are sanctuaries from the storms of life and bless the lives of members of the Church who worship within their sacred walls,” said President Monson.

Latter-day Saint temples provide a place where Church members make promises and commitments to God and where the highest sacraments of the faith occur such as the marriage of couples for eternity. Temples differ from the tens of thousands of local meetinghouses where members typically meet for Sunday worship services and midweek social activities.

The practice of temple building is rooted in both the Old and New Testaments, and from its historical beginnings to the present day the Church has constructed temples.







The first temple was built by the Church in Kirtland, Ohio. The first Utah temple was completed in St. George in 1877, followed by Logan in 1884, Manti in 1888, and Salt Lake City in 1893.

The Payson temple will bring the total number of temples worldwide already in operation or in the planning and construction phases to 152. A letter was sent to local Church leaders today regarding the new temple.

Mike's ABC Book

Last month Mike had to write an autobiography for school. This wasn't just a plain autobiography, but an ABC autobiography. He had to write something about himself that started with each letter of the alphabet. I thought this was hilarious. Hope you enjoy it!

My ABC Book
By Mike Abbott

A is for art. I like to draw. I especially like to draw birds. It all started when I found my dad's How to Draw Birds book upstairs in our bookcase.

B is for birds. Some of my first memories have to do with birds. I have had a bird since I was in preschool. They have all slept next to my bed.

C is for cockatiel, my favorite kind of bird. Besides pigeons and doves, it is the only type of bird I have had. For a while I had the same two birds but then one died then the next year the other one died. But now I have a new bird that likes me more than any other animal I have ever seen.

D is for dog. We got a dog last spring. It's supposed to be a toy poodle but I think it is a cross between a bichon and a teacup poodle. It's nice to have a dog but I hate having to take it out to go potty in my pajamas when it is 7* outside.

E is for emergency. One time when I was little I drank bleach. I know Eating bleach is an Emergency. But you have to understand. I was about 4 years old and I was thirsty, it looked like water in a cup. So I drank it.

F is for flight simulator. I like flight simulators. My favorite three are Google Earth, Flight simulator X, and one in Michigan where if you do a flip the machine makes you do a flip.

G is for gum. When I chew gum I hate to loose flavor. So when I chew I continually add sticks of gum until I get gargantuan gooey globs of gum.

H is for help. I have had to help my brother with some odd thing like today for example. I had to help my brother find his salamander (but the thing is, when I left it was still missing).

I is for icicle. One time when it was getting close to Christmas we had a huge icicle on the outside of our house. It was Massive! It was about 3 feet in diameter. So my dad climbed out the window and hit it off with the broom.

J is for jack-o-lantern. I made the coolest jack-o-lantern for Halloween. It had three coyotes in the desert howling at the moon. But unfortunately a deer ate it Halloween night.

K is for keyboarding. This year just like every other kid in 6th grade. I left the class typing at forty-one words per minute.

L is for Lucky. The name of one of my first birds. It was kind of interesting because when I first got the birds Bucky was mean and Lucky was nice. But when they died Bucky was kind of timid and Lucky would bite your finger off.

M is for Mike. My name. The thing I go by. I know 2 people named Mike. My dad's boss and some kid I met when I was little.

N is for nacho cheese. My dad puts nacho cheese on the weirdest things. He puts it on macaroni and pancakes. I think he even puts it on his hot dogs.

O is for octopi. Octopi is one of those weird plural nouns. They drive me insane. For example: rhombi, octopi, cacti, die and all those words.

P is for poll. When I take polls I fill out the weirdest answer. For example: I took a poll that asked whet I thought the moon was made out of and I answered moldy potatoes.

Q is for quilt. When I was in first grade my mom was making a quilt and I thought she was giving it to someone for Christmas or something. But in the end she gave it to me for my birthday and now it is my thickest quilt.

R is for reading. I like to read a lot. On a good day I get 2 hours of reading. I started Harry Potter 4 in first grade. I was sounding out in preschool and reading is one of my favorite things to do.

S is for scar. I have a weird tiny round scar on my right hand. It has been there for a really long time and I don't know how it got there.

T is for time. If I had one superpower it would be to stop time. For example when I got hungry at church I would go get something to eat and then walk back. Same thing with school. Or if I had to go clean I would do it then unstop time.

U is for university. I want to go to B.Y.U. for college because it is a really good school and they accept only the best students.

V is for violin. I don't want to learn how to play the violin. In my opinion knowing how to play one instrument is enough.

W is for world. When the guy from the Clark Planetarium came he changed my perspective on how small our planet is compared to our sun. Then he showed us how puny our sun was compared to the biggest star.

X is for Flight simulator X. It is my favorite flight simulator of all because you can pick your plane and it has all these cool features like you can see the landing gear come down and you can watch your flight from the nearest tower and you can see inside the cockpit.

Y is for yellow. I like yellow smiley faces but in other places it drives me crazy.

Z is for Zebra. You know how a lot of people say "is a zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes?" Well when I was in first grade I noticed that zebras have white bellies so I think they are white with black stripes. So what do you think?

The End

The Mouse Is Gone!!!

For those of you who don't know, we have had an unwanted visitor in our house for the last couple of weeks. I discovered this on the Saturday before Christmas when I pulled out a pan to make breakfast. Inside the pan I found that lovely sign that tells you that you have a mouse living in your cupboard. You know what I'm talking about, mouse poop. I know it hadn't been there too long because I am in these cupboards regularly and it wasn't there before. Anyway, after that I started finding more of it the more I looked, and believe me, I was looking everywhere to try and figure out the extent of our problem. Luckily, the mouse seemed to be staying in the kitchen and only in the lower cupboards and underneath the stove. So we started setting traps. We put regular traps in the cupboards under the sink and next to the dishwasher where we found most of the poop and glue traps with a little bit of peanut butter on them under the stove where the regular traps couldn't fit and function. On Christmas Eve we had our first hit. Unfortunately I wouldn't call it successful. We keep our cute little dog Millie kennelled at night. On Christmas Eve morning I slept in and asked the kids to take Millie out to go potty. Normally this would not be a problem, however, during the night this sneaky little mouse found the glue trap and decided to escape rather than meet a cruel death. He dragged the glue trap out from under the stove and then when he figured he had no other option, he chewed his own leg off to break free. Since I was not up and in the kitchen like I normally would be, I did not see this problem. Millie did. She quickly found the glue trap with the very enticing peanut butter that was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor and thought she had hit the mother load. I had to cut all of the glue out of her fur. It was not pretty. The kids were disgusted by the fact that Millie was that close to a chewed off mouse foot and refused to get too close to her until she had a bath later that day. After this incident we named our unwanted friend Tripod for obvious reasons. About 2 weeks later tripod found the glue trap again and escaped again leaving a good portion of his fur behind. Luckily I discovered the glue trap in the middle of the kitchen floor before we let Millie out. On Saturday morning Nelson was having a hard time getting the bottom drawer in the kitchen to close so he thought that maybe something had fallen back behind the drawer so he took it out and made quite an interesting discovery. The mouse had hidden almost a half a bag of dog food behind the drawer. I thought it was rather weird that Millie had been eating more food lately and then I found out that I wasn't the only one who had been filling the dog bowl. We spent most of the day Saturday pulling out the fridge and the stove and everything in the lower cupboards. I don't think my kitchen has been this clean since the day we moved in. Mike had the brilliant idea of setting the glue traps around Millie's food when we go to bed and then moving it in the morning. We did this on Saturday & Sunday night with no success. Today was another story. After we were done with family scripture study Nelson went to move the glue traps so that we could let Millie out for the day. He was a little bewildered when we discovered that they had been moved. Then he counted them and noticed that one of them was missing. We were looking everywhere for it. When we couldn't see it in the kitchen, Nelson and I started looking elsewhere around the house when we heard the loudest screams we have ever heard. Morgan and Josh found the mouse. They kept saying it was in plain sight right underneath the hooks in the kitchen. Nelson kept looking and couldn't find it. He even moved the coat that was in the way and still couldn't see it. He asked Morgan and Josh to come and show him, but they were still screaming and refused to come anywhere near the kitchen. I discovered the mouse stuck to glue trap and still very much alive hiding under the coat. Every time Nelson moved the coat out of the way he was also pushing the mouse out of the way.
Upon further inspection, we are pretty sure that tripod is the only unwanted guest. He had 3 legs and fur missing from most of his body. I was very glad that today was garbage day. He was carefully wrapped up in a plastic bag and deposited in the garbage can that was already out at the curb. The garbage man has been by and the mouse is officially gone!! While we are pretty sure that we only had one mouse here, we will continue to set the glue traps around the dog food for the next week or so just to make sure.

October!!

Yeah!!! I am almost caught up!!!
Can you believe that my baby Maggie has turned 4? I sure can't! She is so much fun. You never know what is going to come out of her mouth! This year she got a Barbie bike for her birthday. Grandma was kind enough to send her a barbie to go with it!






The kids had fun with the camera on a Sunday afternoon walk. I love where we live!







Maggie is so funny. I was glad I had the camera nearby when I saw this.
I went with the Beehives to Gardner Village for our own Witches Night Out. We stopped at Arctic Circle where we all got Square Pumpkins and when we were done finding all the witches we all got our free cookies at the Neighborhood Bakery.









I grew up in a great ward and had a ton of great friends that were all the same age. In our stake we earned the name "Killer Bees" when we were Beehives at girls camp. A few of us that live nearby were able to get together for dinner. It was so much fun catching up with each other. I can't wait for the next girls night out! Thanks Jill, Kim, Oakley and Jami!




Morgan is doing her county fair project on Morgan County. Since she had never been there, we took a family field trip to Morgan county and visited ALL of the historical sites listed online. We started with the Morgan train station.




We saw Devil's Slide


The cabin where the first baby boy in Morgan County was born,

the opera house and the tabernacle






and we even stopped at the rest stop where all the trappers had a big rendevous!

So how do you entertain a 4-year-old for an entire week at a book fair? With a camera, paper, pen, and tape!




Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Because I spent the whole week before Halloween at the school running the book fair, I kind of forgot to buy pumpkins. I told the kids as soon as they had there rooms clean on Saturday we would go buy pumpkins and then carve them when we got home. You would think that would be an easy thing to do. We went to grocery stores in Salem, Spanish Fork, and Springville and couldn't find any pumpkins. We went to walmart and they didn't have any pumpkins. We even told the kids that they could get plastic pumpkins and a can of spray paint so they could paint them any color they wanted. They wouldn't go for it. We decided to drive home the back way through Mapleton and hoped that we could find some farmer selling pumpkins on the side of the rode. We passed a sign for a pumpkin patch and corn maze. Some family near the mouth of Mapleton Canyon let their teenage kids plant pumpkins and corn in the front 2 acres of their property. They were done for the season and cleaning everything up when we got there. We found one of the girls who said since it was Halloween we could have any pumkin we wanted for a dollar and then she said we could go through the corn maze for free. The kids thought it was the neatest thing they had ever done! It was great! They all came home with big pumpkins that were a little odd shaped, but they didn't care!






This year Maggie was a good witch for Halloween and told me that I needed to be a wicked witch. She later changed her mind and told me that I could be a good witch with her, so we were both good witches. Josh was a Clone Trooper again, but this year he had a new and improved helmet. Morgan was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I was going to make her costume, but luckily my mom took pitty on me and made it. Morgan thought that she was pretty special to have Grandma make her costume and ship it to her in the mail. Thanks Mom! Mike decided that he wanted to be white trash this year and Nelson went as a train engineer. When we were done carving pumpkins we had just enought time to get into our costumes and head over to a neightbor's house for a "White Trash Monster Bash." It was really fun! We ate lots of spam, cheese, Jello and an assortment of fried foods including fried twinkies. When the kids were done trick-or-treating we were off to another neighbor's house for dinner and another party. I was really glad that we were able to sleep in an extra hour on Sunday!