100 days!

Joseph has now had 100 days of first grade! It sure is amazing how time flies! Joseph has a great teacher this year who has really helped him improve his schooling! We love you Joseph!

Happy Birthday Eli!

Sunday was Eli's birthday. He has now officially entered the terrible two's!

Here we are getting ready to open presents.


Eli likes playing with Play Doh in nursery so we got him his own set.


See how thrilled he looks? :)


He also got this fridge ABC set.





Eli has started asking to sit on the potty and actually had some success, so we gave him some underwear! He is doing this a lot earlier than all three of my others!


Eli likes Elmo so I made these cupcakes for preschool.


He was very pleased with them.


Happy birthday, big boy! We love you soooo much!

TV Trouble

Just over a week ago, Rebecca and I sat down to watch a movie after getting the kids to bed.  About five minutes into the movie, we heard a loud pop and then a constant whirring noise coming from the TV.  We also noticed that the display was now black and white.

As a gadget geek, I immediately saw this as an opportunity!  We've had this 50" rear-projection DLP TV for about five years now and I don't know how much longer the bulb is going to last, so I saw this as a prime opportunity to get a new TV.  Costco had some nice Vizio LED-backlit LCDs  in the 47"-55" range that were looking mighty tempting.  However, I did a quick search on the internet and found that the likely cause of our TV problems was a bad color wheel.  This part can be had for about $110 and the guides for replacing the part seemed pretty detailed and straightforward.  So rather than spend $1500+ on a new TV, I decided to attempt to repair it myself.

Today the replacement color wheel arrived, so I delved into the innards of our TV and was able to replace it without causing irreparable damage to myself or the TV.  When I finally got to the color wheel itself and lifted off the mount, this is what I found:

Nice huh?  This is what the color wheel is supposed to look like (broken on the left, new on the right):

So after a week without our TV(and Wii Fit and DDR3), it's finally working again!

Quick update

Rebecca took Eli in to our pediatrician for a blood test yesterday to see how he was doing. The petechiae have all disappeared and nearly all of his bruises have faded. Even his black eye is hardly visible! Today, the pediatrician called back with the results: 188,000! Normal platelet level is above 150,000, so he's doing great.

The next step is to taper off his steroid. We'll start doing that in a couple of days and hopefully everything will go well.

Thanks again to all the support and prayers that were offered on Eli's behalf. We really appreciate it!

Ice Skating with the Young Women!

The first week in January we took the Young Women ice skating. It was cold, but fun. (It's a good thing we brought hot chocolate!)

Megan, Sam and Britany


Taylar, Meghan and Amy. These three did not skate but we were glad they came and had a fun time anyway.


The South Jordan library has a fountain just outside it that they freeze in the winter and open for ice skating. They also have The Pie pizzeria right there so we had to buy a giant pizza to share with all the girls.


Shaylee and the friend she brought.


Savannah and the friend she brought.


Madison, Kayla and Kailee.


and last, but not least, two of my amazing fellow leaders. (Lindsay was there too but sat in the car with her little baby)

Richardson's Caricatures

Back in December we went to the mall to see my uncle Owen. He draws caricatures so we wanted him to do one for each of us.

He asked the boys what they wanted to be doing in their pictures and Isaac chose flying without a parachute and Joseph chose to be a Jedi Knight.


Kate wanted to be a princess. (not a surprise)


and Eli loves balls so he was a basketball player.


He even did one of Nate and me! What do you think? Does it look like us?


I love the pictures and the kids do too!
Thanks Owen!

Happy New Year

We had a relaxing New Year's Eve before all the craziness with Eli.

We went to Target for their after Christmas sale and found some fun things. One of them was this pretty tree marked down from $249.00 to $60.00 that we just had to get! (When we got home Nate wanted to set it up to see how it looked, that's why it's in the middle of the family room.)


Then we went over to the Holt's (our neighbors) for a little party and the Hansen's came too.

Nicky and Coulsen were having fun playing the Wii...


and I was tempted to try the chocolate fountain.


As you can see, Kate enjoyed the chocolate fountain!


Eli had fun too.


Kate and Eli doing puzzles with Emily.


Amanda and Isaac playing with Amanda's guitars.


Nate had a little too much fun with the sparkling cider!


We played one of our favorite games: Compatibility, as well as Catch Phrase and Fact or Crap. (excuse me)


and Joseph was so tired by the time midnight came around that he fell asleep on the couch!