Catch-up!

Sorry for not posting! Evelyn was pretty sick last week, and Jilly is even sicker this week. So hopefully fortune will smile on us soon and grant me healthy kids for a while. Really, they've been sick this whole month. It's getting old, fast. I hope you are all having better luck than me. But things could always be worse. I'm not sick, and the girls aren't in the hospital. And Ben is doing fine in school. Just need to count my blessings.

Update: All right everyone, take a deep breath, because this is a long one. The last 3 weeks went somewhere, sucked into the sick kids vortex and Grandma visiting vortex. The girls are finally feeling better now (going on 4 healthy days!!!), I came to find out that Jilly's ear infection had been going on for a month now, and culminated into a fever lasting four days and more than one trip to the doctor. She's now on a strong anti-biotic to kick the infection out, and hopefully keep it that way for a while. Luckily for me, Grandma Cluff came into town to give Evelyn a little attention while I took care of Jilly. The kids always seem to be sick when she comes into town, it's quite the coincidence. While she was here, we went to see Gardner Village, which is in-between decorating for Halloween and Christmas, so they were still pulling down all the Halloween stuff. I've heard that the decorating they do there is half the fun of visiting. We saw all the cool little shops and boutiques, and Evelyn enjoyed the ducks waddling around a pond the most. We also visited Tai Pan Trading, which is the coolest home decorating store ever. If you visit Utah, you need to visit this store. I also saw Ikea for the first time. It's quite the experience. All the furniture and decorations are in a modern European style (for those who don't know, Ikea is a Swedish furniture company). The store is huge, you can eat there, put your kids into a daycare while you shop, and stuff is cheap. It's fun to look at.

Last Friday, because Grandma was in town, I was able to go to school with Ben for part of the day. I mostly wanted to see him teach, and he did well in my opinion. I wish I could take a Spanish class from him. I am biased, of course. We visited the art museum on campus for one of his classes, and talked about feminism as well. So it wasn't completely over my head. I think that was the funnest date we have had for a long time. I'll do it again if I have the chance.

The weekend before Halloween, we went to pick pumpkins, and headed out to a place called Hee-Haw farms. There were animals to look at, Evelyn thought the bunny village and the goats were pretty cool. They had a whole apparatus for the goats to climb, I've never seen something like that for goats before. Only cats. We saw a giant pig, and they had some cows and sheep.

Evelyn went on a pony ride, on some very little ponies, or miniature horses, I'm not sure which. Then there was a tractor, pulling 50 gallon drums that had been painted into animals that you could ride in. About half way through our little excursion, Ben said,"Well, this is ironic. We just paid $10 to do things we could have done at your parents or Grandma Hill's for free."

The only really cool thing there were the slides. One was just a giant corrugated plastic pipe, which was really fast, and the other slide was a bunch of pvc pipe screwed horizontally between two wooden boards. When you slid down it, the pipes would roll you down to the end. There was some cool ingenuity there. While it was fun, I don't think we'll be going there next year. Much less be paying $10 to get in and not get pumpkins. I didn't think you'd have to pay for them on top of the ticket fees. They weren't even in the patch. They were lined up on shelves. I thought that was kind of lame. Guess I'm disenchanted because of my farm girl upbringing. Or just cheap!

The day of Halloween ended up being a bummer of sorts this year, because Jilly just happened to be really sick on Halloween. She went to the doctor instead of trick-or-treating. She was supposed to be Winnie-the-Pooh. But at the rate she's growing, she may still fit the costume next year.

I dropped Evelyn off with Ben in her monkey suit to trick-or-treat on campus at Helaman Halls. The generous single students gave her plenty of candy. Ben said she would knock on the doors and say," Hi guys!" She knew the routine, except for the trick-or-treat saying. We did get one pumpkin carved, and Ben did most of it because Evelyn didn't want to touch slimy pumpkin guts (truthfully, I don't like to either). She would just look inside the pumpkin with a face of disgust. I'll let everyone guess who we carved into the pumpkin. (And Nicole, if you can't remember who it is, I won't know what to think!)


And I will end this forever post by saying there will be another coming very soon. And that I am grateful to have healthy kids again. If I did not live in this time where we have the blessing of medical knowledge and technology, some of the sicknesses my girls have had in the last month could have ended very badly. I am grateful to a loving Heavenly Father who watches out for my family and has given me patience and comfort when I needed it.