This past week Jack and I were wrestling in the front room as we do from time to time, and during one particularly complex rope dive, Jack messed my hand up pretty good. As he came soaring through the air at my head, I reached up to grab him before he landed on my nose and the pinky finger on my left hand somehow became entwined in his clothes and felt as though it was almost ripped off. The direction it bent was definitely not normal and the sharp “snap” sound I heard let me know that something wasn’t right (as if the pain wasn’t enough to let me know). After gently setting him on the floor, I then proceeded to clasp my hand and whimper for the next five minutes. The following day it turned a nice shade of yurple (that’s yellow and purple mixed) and was rather swollen for the next few days. Now that it’s been almost 2 weeks since the incident, the swelling has almost gone down, but I’m still experiencing sharp pain when my finger gets bumped. I’ve decided there’s not much point in going to the doctor because they’d just tell me to be careful with it, but I just hope there’s no seriously permanent damage. Cause that would suck.

Jack got into Emily’s mascara… but at least he didn’t try to use it on his eyelashes.

During a conversation about skin care this morning, Emily asked Jack where he got his dry skin. She asked “Did you get your dry skin from mommy?” Jack didn’t like the sound of that and quickly replied “No, its mine own!”

Well, Jack and Annie are 3 years old now. Freakin’ crazy, eh?!

Three years ago today we were at the hospital pointing out the differences between them (besides the obvious) so that we could tell them apart as they lay next to each other in the nursery dolly. Three years ago today we doubled the number of kids we had. Three years ago today we finished up our family. And now, three years later we’re pretty much officially out of the “baby” stage (even though we still refer to to them as the babies). In fact, just this morning as Jack and Annie opened their presents, Emily caught herself telling Annie not to let “the babies” get the small pieces of her new Polly Pocket collection. It was only after it was out of her mouth that she realized what she had said and had to backtrack.

I remember vividly the shock and awe Emily and I felt as we left the doctors after our first ultrasound appointment. Up to that point Emily had had several doctors appointments, but the doctor apparently hadn’t noticed the fact that there were two heartbeats. So as the ultrasound technician mentioned that both heartbeats sounded good, we did a bit of a double-take and I seem to remember saying “Wait, what?!” However, three short years later it’s hard to imagine our lives any other way. We obviously needed both of them in our family and I don’t doubt they needed each other.

We’ve been lots of places and had lots of adventures in the last three years, but we’re still just getting started. It’ll be fun to see what the next 3 years brings.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY “BABIES”!

Over the weekend of the 17th Jack and I were scheduled to go camping with our wards annual fathers and sons outing. I had actually been looking forward to it and had done my best to get Jack excited, but as these things tend to go, he ended up sick with a high fever the night before we were planning to leave. The other kids had had the same thing and it seemed like it was only a 12 hour illness so I was still a bit hopeful and had packed the Jeep Thursday evening, but when I got home from work Friday afternoon, Jack was asleep on the couch after having spent a pretty miserable day being feverish.

I figured that was the end of it and I had resigned myself to stay home, but once Jack woke up, he was still excited to “do (think “go” with a D) tamping”. I could tell he was still feeling sick, but I had gotten him so excited to go camping and sleep in the tent that he didn’t care about his 101 degree temperature. I felt terrible and knew he should probably stay home, but I also felt bad that all that built up excitement would be for nothing. We gave it a couple hours and I just mulled around the house waiting to see how he was feeling, but his excitement would not be pushed aside and he continued to ask if we could “do tamping”.

After some internal debate I decided we could give it a try and if he felt too sick we could always come home (we were only going to be about an hour from home). So we packed up in the Jeep and decided to head out. It started out well enough as we headed for Parley’s canyon, but after 15 minutes of curvy canyon roads Jack wasn’t feeling too awesome. The Jeep had been smoking up the canyon thanks to a small transmission leak so I pulled off as we got into Park City just to check it out and as soon as I stopped the car Jack lost what little dinner he had eaten into his lap. I felt horrible. I could tell he felt like crap so I pulled out one of the camp chairs, stripped him out of his puked on clothes and we sat in the shade of the Jeep in an empty parking lot with a light breeze blowing and cooling us off. I asked him several times if he wanted to head back home, but he wasn’t having it. “I want to do tamping!” was the only response I got.

After sitting in the parking lot for about 30 minutes (and providing directions to a poor lost Asian couple from Alabama) we hopped back in the Jeep to finish the drive to Rockport. He did ok the rest of the way and actually dozed off by the time we got to the camp ground. Once we were there though, he was up and ready to go sit by the fire. He impatiently waited for me to put the tent up and get camp settled and then we walked over and joined the ward around the fire. After about 15 minutes of that we took a walk around the camp ground and even got out our Master Replicas Darth Vader light saber to show off (the kids had been playing Star Wars steal the flag and most had brought plastic light sabers). Jack was happy to be the center of attention with our “real” light saber. He quickly set to “killing” anyone who came in range.

After we put the light saber away, we sat by the fire a bit more and he fell asleep on my lap as we watched the flames and the stars. He was still a bit warm, but other than the single loss of lunch in the car, he seemed to be feeling a bit better.

The next morning he woke up ready to “wock and woll” so we had some breakfast and then set out to explore. We didn’t stick around long, but Jack was happy to be outside and free to wander around camp. We even took our shoes off and waded in the river for a bit, but that didn’t last long cause the water was too “told”. I still felt a little bad for dragging him out camping while he was sick, but I’m glad he’s a trooper and wouldn’t let it drop cause we had a lot of fun hanging out with just the guys.