Lil' Brudder!

Jameson is mine.  Two weeks shy of my fifth birthday I went to the hospital to see my new baby brother.  When my dad handed him to me he told me he was my birthday present.  So he really is mine.  And then a few years ago Jimmy and I decided we would just be each other's favorite sibling. 

So, to be honest I started the post in April and then forgot about it.  But now James gets home in less than two weeks and I'll be happy to have him around again.  I've missed the random witty texts from him and his one-liners.  I miss his crazy moods and secret sweetness.

Some favorite stories....

-He sleep walks when he needs to use the bathroom.  Dryer, Popsicle, Bed-making chair in Sun Valley, Spoons for towels.

-I once chased him and forced some hair from the brush in his mouth (You see why I'm his favorite?)  He threw up.  And very recently I learned that it was not because he was grossed out, it was because he was afraid there might be lice and he would get it in his mouth.

-When he was home alone and didn't want to be and so he came and hung out with my friends when I was in high school.

-When he got to come to New York for my birthday.

-Falling asleep in his high chair and trying to feed himself graham crackers

-"Hi, I'm a young mother"

-He probably doesn't remember but I taught him all his times tables

-The poopy bum chase

-"Ahh Whiskey"

-Indiana James

-"Gunther, go get me some whiskey."

-The kid was fearless, he'd do (and probably will continue to) just about anything.

-When the man nearly killed us on the freeway and then pretended to shoot us-I flipped the guy off because you don't threaten my baby brother

-"Ya Sharli, shut the hell up!"  Probably the best mother's day moment of all time.

-He got to be one of my efy-ers and he was adorable.  He even played his own song on guitar for the variety show

-I was just reminded that once when Stef was being too powerful, she sent him to bed without dinner so I was super nice and brought him a bowl of butter to eat.  He told me just barely that he loved it.

-He once kissed my friend Mikell when we were in second grade

-He was the only one I'd let come up on the roof with me.

-The Bountiful Temple is definitely his

-Uh-Buh-Buh-Buh-Buh!

Ya... He ate the snow...

 

This is the haircut he gave himself.

We were being sad about the first day of summer and nothing to do after work.

 Then creepily our hands brushed just in time for the timer to go off.

I'm pretty sure he cut his ugly hair just for my wedding because he likes me.

 Jimmy jumped off a bridge just to save my necklace!

This is the staple Jimmy photo face

 

 

Taken just for James

 Aren't we adorable?

 

 

 

 

 See how much he loves me?

He and my dad are nothing alike.

 

#38

 We love efy!

 "Fabio"

Tate idolizes Jameson

 

"Who the heck is Uncle Al?"

  Here's his bum.

Probably the best looking one.

 Jimmy is a great wakeboarder.

This move he refers to as "The Wipe".

Mostly he's adorable

"Hey Cowboy, nice shiner!"

So once upon a time I went to a friendly little game of stake softball.  I was the only girl playing plus we were short a team member or two so we forfeited.  Well church ball is for fun right?  Especially when one team has technically already lost, right?  Well, you would be wrong to think this.  The team we played were very grumpy.  Complaining about the lack of girls on our team, mocking our not-professional-level playing, and yelling at the little old men from the high council acting as umpires over every little call.  I was playing catcher and could hear every little annoyed comment they would make.  I thought it was pretty funny and somewhat ridiculous.  There was one kid in particular who was mad about everything and was not about to be quiet about it.

Well a few innings in, the extra grumpy boy decided he needed to bat two times in a row.  Because that makes total sense.  He had a good hit but when they were throwing the ball in to me I figured he'd stop at third base.  He didn't.  I caught the ball at home and ran over to the third baseline so that I could tag him out.  A normal 260 pound man playing a friendly game of church softball would think oh I better slow down and let her tag me, or at least try to dodge her.  But he was already super angry I was the only girl on the team and I guess figured he might as make it so no girls would ever want to play again, and so he put his shoulder into it and kept on running.

All I remember hearing was a crack and suddenly I was several feet behind home plate, flat on my back.

He had hit me smack in the eye with what I assume was his shoulder.  The first thing I remember hearing was the dumb boy saying in an annoyed tone "Well we're not allowed to slide so I had to slam into her".  He then interrupted the old man trying to check on me to ask if he was safe or not.  That happened to be when Dan made it in from center field.  He heard the kid worrying about whether he'd scored or not and in an appropriate reaction asked the stupid boy if he was kidding and threw his mitt at him.  Well angry boy didn't like that too much and decided to take a swing at Dan.  Luckily a few guys from his ward jumped on him to hold him back and for the next five minutes or so all I could hear was boy and his wardies yelling at each other.

Luckily a cute little RN from another ward came over about then so I could stop paying attention to that.  Eventually she was able to get me into the nearby church where I rested up for like an hour trying not to cry or throw up.  In the meantime, word-I-shouldn't-say-boy was just hanging out outside, eating the dinner the stake served up and acting like he hadn't just done anything to be embarrassed by.  In case you all were wondering, no he did not ever ask if I was okay nor apologize and yes, I got him out.

About an hour or two after it happened.

So RN girl said I should be fine and we went home.  Only to discover a few hours later that I was seeing double.  Like two completely separate Dan's several feet away from each other.  So off to the hospital we went.  At the ER Dan decided to be real cute and when they asked how I got hurt, he responded with, "She talked back".  Adorable huh?  They gave me a CAT scan and such and determined that I had two fractures in my ocular cavity.  One below my eye and one that went into my sinuses.  Then he sent this info on to a plastic surgeon/facial reconstructive surgeon and made me an appointment with him just in case.  Can I just say that CAT scans are hard!  You have to hold your breath for 30 seconds which I laughed about because it seemed pretty easy.  But you can't exhale at all and there's no way to keep track of the time so I got to the point holding my breath that I thought, maybe he just forgot to tell me it's okay to breathe now... He hadn't.  Then I had to hold it again and that was harder because I was on my stomach with my face propped up and I couldn't swallow either plus the whole time it's sticking me through the scan in jerky motions that make me want to swallow/breathe.  I nearly failed.

Dead in the E.R.

Anyway, already super long story made longer, plastic surgery man called me the next morning (a Friday) and said I definitely needed surgery and I needed to meet with him Monday for a pre-op.  Because no I did not have two little fractures that may heal on their own.  I had a complete blow-out of the bottom shelf of my ocular cavity.  Basically the bone that my eyeball rests on was no longer there.  My muscle was trapped up inside it, pushing my eyeball upward and causing the double vision.  My surgery wasn't until Wednesday so in the mean time I got myself an eye patch and determined to scare small children.  Dan was a super husband though and wore an eye patch with me to church so I wouldn't feel so dumb.  Oh and side-note, even though we went home from church early that day I heard the bishop had a little talk with the Relief Society to assure them that this kind of stuff usually didn't happen and encourage them to play.  Hilarious.  We also found out that the bum-head boy who broke my face has tourettes.  A few people told us this to try to make an excuse for his non attempts at not shattering my face but I'm sorry, tourettes does not cause aggression and according to the special ed teacher at my school, wouldn't even cause a child to be taken out of a regular classroom as he would be harmless.  Sorry if I sound all mean there.  I'm just confused by why everyone thinks tourettes gives him just cause for the particular behavior he displayed.  Besides, even if it did happen to cause aggression in this boy, shouldn't he be responsible enough as a grown-up to think, hey maybe I shouldn't play?  There's nothing I can do about it now and luckily, I'm doing pretty well but I feel they should maybe ban the kid from playing after this.  Especially since the stake informed us this boy has already had a few warnings about his overly aggressive behavior in church sports.

I'm a pirate.

 Sick of lying around.

 This is when it started getting super pretty.  (The bandana made a much more comfortable eye patch.)

So anyway, I had me some surgery.  It went well.  They had my eye sort of sewed shut for the next couple days until it started cutting into my upper eyelid.  That was fun.  Dan had to cut the suture and pull it through my bottom eyelid and nearly lost his lunch doing so.  He also went nuts staying home with me for the next two days.  I didn't have to take any pain pills, I assume because of my numb face.  Did I mention my numb face?  Apparently I got hit so hard that it stunned a main nerve in my face.  The same one the dentist would numb up and so pretty much the entire right side of my face was numb. I'm still seeing double just because the muscles are still inflamed and such.  They said it would last about a month.  And while most my face has un-numbed itself, I still can't feel three of my upper teeth, my upper gums, half of my top lip and up into my right nostril.  Mostly that's the worst part.  

I'm so sexy. 

(This is about two hours after my surgery.)

 I miss my pretty eye.

 

Four of Seven

Basically I hadn't been done with school for a day before I missed having kids around so I promptly called up my sister and told her she needed to start shipping her kids up here.  

First came Morrissa and Kyndi.  Morrissa is 13 and Kyndi is 6.  They came up the night their parents got married.  Did I mention Stef and Kamron got married?  Well they did.  It was adorable.  So anyway, they came up and we basically swam for three days.  Morrissa got really good at doing some tricks.  She taught me how to do an underwater backflip and she even did it without plugging her nose.  I am not a swimmer and nearly always have to plug my nose.  Kyndi started out with a life jacket and not even daring to go passed the three foot mark, to jumping in with no life jacket and doing the breast stroke underwater, coming up for air and going back down.  The girl swims better than me.  

We spent half of one day shopping it up and being girly-like and visiting Dan at work, but other than that, we were seriously at the pool.  We spent the nights making stove s'mores, looking up funny youtube videos, learning songs on the piano, and watching movies.  One of the funnier moments was when Kyndi burst into our room in the wee hours of the morning due to a bad dream and made Dan scream in fear a tiny bit.

  Morrissa spent half her pool time like this.          

 This was before perfecting her breast stroke.        

They were looking right into the sun.

  Stove s'mores are the best because it's a lot easier to get the chocolate all melty.

 Dan serenaded us at our "campfire". 

 Dan taught Morrissa Heart and Soul and I taught Kyndi Mary Had A Little Lamb.

This week Tyson and Tate.  Tyson is 15 and Tate is 9.  They were, in a way, slightly harder to entertain.  15-year-olds bore easily and it was a struggle to get Tate off the computer.  We still swam quite a bit but they played lots of video games too.  (And by they, I mean Tate.)  The second night I had to go to Bountiful for a wedding so Dan took them rock climbing with our friend Jake Mabey.  From what I hear, Tate was hesitant and at times panicky while climbing but did pretty good for a nine-year-old.  Tyson, I am told, rocked it.  (No pun intended.)  They went on, I think four different climbs.  The first one was a super easy one but they ended up doing some that I would consider a bit tricky even for me.  Anyway, Jake is Tate's new best friend as he stayed at our house that night and played video games with Tate.  The  best though was the last day.  Nicole and I took them to The Fun Park where we played some serious skee ball amongst other things, but then we played laser tag.  Just the four of us.  And oh my, funniest thing of the summer.  Girlfriend and I would scream in terror every time one of the boys got us.  She ended up hiding out in the same spot for most of the time.  At one point Tyson scared me so bad that I fell over and couldn't get back up from laughing so hard and he just stood over me mocking me.  It was so much fun! (Tyson actually scared me into falling over a second time as well.)  Loved it.

 

Tate on one of the easier walls and then him climbing/hanging from another on.

 

 

 Tyson did awesome.

It's tradition to kiss the chains at the top.

Tyson sank every shot. Nicole and I declined his challenge.

Tate had about a million tickets.

 We were hardcore!