Eli is 2

On Valentine's day we celebrated the February birthdays with the Bartlett's. We ate Hawaiian haystacks and then ate cake and ice cream.

I got Nate to decorate this beautiful Elmo cake! Didn't he do a great job?


Lydia's cake was made by her mom and it turned out so cute!


I love that smile!


Two little two-year-olds!


So sweet!


Neither one of the birthday kids wanted to blow out the candles so we had to help them! Maybe next year!

Utah Gymnastics

They boys brought home from school a free coupon to take the whole family to watch a meet of the gymnastics team up at the U of U. We decided to take the kids as an off track activity. The day we picked to go happened to be a free day to ride TRAX.


Kate


Eli


Eli with Daddy


Mommy and Kate


We stopped at Chili's first to have some dinner.


Eli enjoyed the chips and salsa and didn't seem to mind they were spicy!


This was the restaurant Nate and I went to on our first official date!


Here are my boys drinking water and chocolate milk at the same time! Weird.


Eli told daddy to put his hood on, so the two of them matched and then said, "Take a picture mommy!"


Isaac and Joseph had a fun time dancing to the music at the meet.

We brought our binoculars and the kids had fun watching the girls do their tricks. Once they saw the cotton candy man they couldn't rest until we bought some. Eli tasted a little and would have nothing to do with the stuff! We rode the train back to our car and drove home. It was a nice night.

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)