Day 2: Upper Calf Creek Falls

We decided to do another "easy" hike on day 2. My brother-in-law, Erik, is our family hiking expert, and they weren't going to arrive from Ohio until the next morning. Upper Calf Creek Falls is 2.5 miles and has pools that you can swim in at the end. Sounded great! Well we got there and got started, and it was really steep, so my dad took Lincoln and I took his CamelPack. The hike was harder than we expected, and it was a million degrees out, but we divided into a fast group and a slow group and we made it! I was in the second group with Savannah and the other slow people. Toward the end the trail split into 2 trails, the upper falls trail and a super hard trail that went through a slot canyon to the lower falls. Everyone knew that we were doing the upper falls this day and the lower falls another day (you can also reach the lower falls by another trail, but more of that on day 5) Well, we arrived at the pools and they were gorgeous! But it took all of about 5 seconds for me to realize that my dad and Lincoln were not there. I tried to remain calm, but secretly I was freaking out. We asked the first group, and they said that my dad had gone ahead of them. We tried to reach him on the walkie talkies, but soon figured out that he didn't have them. My biggest worry was that I knew my dad didn't have food or water and although I had put a sippy cup and some snacks in the back of the carrier for Lincoln I didn't know if my dad would have checked or not. After a quick lunch and some fun at the pool we decided to send the men down to look for them and we would let the kids cool off for a bit longer at the pools then head back to the car. The pools were gorgeous, and the kids had a blast. Savannah's swimming suit was in Lincoln carrier, so she had to swim in her panties which she wasn't thrilled about. There was a small waterfall that the older kids and adults clif jumped off of, but I was too stressed out to take any pictures of that. After a bit it started to sprinkle, and I started to really worry since the trail my dad had taken went into slot canyons, so we headed back to the car and sent Chalee and Bret, my 13 year old niece, running ahead with instructions to radio back if my dad and Lincoln were at the car. After the longest half hour of my life they radiod that they were at the car. They said that Lincoln drank a whole bottle of water and ate like he had never seen food before, but that he was happy as could be and didn't even seem to know that he had been lost in the desert without food or water. When we finally made it back to the top we headed home and relaxed for the rest of the day, and of course that night we had smores and fun. When Erik, Camille, and Cosette arrived that night they said that yes, Upper Calf Creek Falls was short, but that it was not an easy hike. That was information that we could have used before doing the hike.

Day 1: Are We There Yet?

I was up until 2 am Wednesday night getting everything ready to go. I was told to be at my mom's house at 7:30 am, so I got up and 6:30, finished packing the car, got Starsky ready to go to Jesse's parents house, woke up the kids, loaded them in the car, and we were ready to go. As I was pulling out of the driveway I decided that I should call my mom and ask if I was supposed to feed my kids breakfast or if we were eating together. Well apparently I was told wrong, and we were all meeting at 8:30. So I ran back in the house to make sure we didn't forget anything, then we stopped at McDonalds and arrived at my mom's house 45 minutes early. We helped my mom finish gathering everything, loaded the truck, waited for everyone else to arrive and loaded all their stuff. We headed out around 10, in a caravan of 3 cars. As we were pulling out I realized that I didn't have my cell phone with me. I guess when I went in to see if I had left anything I sat my phone down and left it. Stupid! I won the car arranging lottery, and was assigned to drive the truck with my sister, her 12 year old son, and Lincoln. We had 2 empty seats and no whiners! The drive went great for the most part. We stopped in Nephi for lunch. When we got to Scipio we realized that no one in our car had directions and that my other sister had gotten too far in front of us, and my mom was no longer behind us. So we stopped and tried to call them. No one was answering. We finally got ahold of my sister and got directions, but we couldn't find my mom. We were starting to get worried since she had a bunch of little kids with her, but since she wasn't answering we just kept going. Mapquest told us the drive would be 5 hours, but it ended up taking us 7. My mom had missed the exit, but she still beat us by an hour. When we got to the cabin we unloaded the truck, then headed to the Petrified Forrest for an easy (2 mile) hike. It was gorgeous. Tanner, my 11 month old nephew, screamed until his mom finally stopped about half a mile in, and he kept screaming the rest of the time. We saw a beautiful sunset, but it got really dark before we finished. After that we just hung out at the cabin the rest of the night, and stayed up way too late. My sister, Chalee, her husband, Jared, and my dad arrived about 2 am the next morning.

Family trip 2008

My family takes a big trip all together every year. Its been 6 years since I've been. but since the kids and I are back in Utah we got to go this year! We just got back from 6 days in Escalante in Southern Utah with 24 people, 5 of which were under 2. It was insanity at its best, and we had a blast! I'm going to do a day by day rundown just because way too many crazy things happened to put it in one post, but I don't plan on getting it done tonight. So, for a recap, here are the top 10 things I learned in Escalante:

10: Road trips take WAY too long with 4 cars caravaning.
9: Even with the fridge, freezer, and pantry overflowing, you will need to run to the store, and in a small town the store closes at 7 PM.
8: Never take small children and babies into slot canyons, especially if the small children outnumber the adults.
7: Stay together at all times!
6: 3.5 bathrooms sounds like plenty until you have 24 muddy people all wanting to shower at once.
5: If you let grandpa take your one year old on a hike, make sure they have plenty of food and water, they may get lost!
4: It is easier to take a newborn baby through a long, wet, narrow slot canyon than it is to take a fat out of shape adult.
3: Dehydration really does cause loss of bowel control (thanks for the lesson Chalee!)
2: My kids are tougher than I though. We hiked 13 miles in 4 days, and Savannah did it all and Lincoln was carried without any complaint.
1: You can actually spend 6 days in close quarters with your extended family and still have fun!

Savannahisms.

Savannah has been hilarious lately! Here are a few things she has said in the past 2-3 days that I can remember.

Savannah on Sandwiches
We were eating lunch (a picnic that I had made) at Heritage park. She had eaten at least 3/4 of her sandwich at this point.
Me: Savannah, are you going to finish your sandwich?
Savannah: No, its crap!

Savannah on babies
Savannah: Aunt Cayt, I love all our babies.
Caytie: What are our babies names?
Savannah: Well, Noah is the littlest, then Grayson.
Caytie: Who's next?
Savannah: That's all, no more.
Caytie: What about Tanner? (Tanner is my 11 month old nephew)
Savannah: He's not a baby anymore, he has teeth. (yelling at Tanner who is about 50 yards away) Hey Tanner, come show Aunt Cayt your teeth!

Savannah on Mothers
Savannah: Hey mom, why isn't Caytie Arianna's mom?
Me: Well, Arianna is really lucky. She has a Mommy named Trina, and Caytie is her step-mom.
Savannah: Caytie is her step-mother! Caytie is an evil step-mother!
Me: No, Caytie is a nice step-mother. There are nice step-mothers and mean step-mothers, just like there are nice mothers and mean mothers.
Savannah: Just like sometimes you are a mean mother?

Savannah on Safety
Savannah: Mom, why don't you like to be safe?
Me: What do you mean?
Savannah: You don't ride in a carseat.
Me: I wear a seatbelt to be safe. Carseats are just for kids. They don't make carseats big enough for grownups.
Savannah: But you are just a little grownup. You should sit in a carseat like me, so you can be safe.

A bit of this, a bit of that.

First, Jesse has made it safely to Iraq. We are lucky in that he has an office job there. He has a satellite phone and a laptop that he can bring back to his barracks at night, so we've stayed connected really well so far. Despite the fact that he has spent the past few years trying to get over there, he is not liking it. That's putting it mildly. And he really hasn't done anything yet. If you want to know how to reach him just ask and I will e-mail you his e-mail address.

We've been going like crazy the past few weeks. We've been swimming about five times, to lagoon (amusement park) twice, to a drive in movie, fireworks twice, plus tons of just handing out with cousins. We've done something every single day, and usually its a big something. Apparently it got to be too much for Savannah. She was fine when I put her tp bed Tuesday night, then I was woken up Wednesday morning by her throwing up, hallucinating, and with a fever of 106.1. I called my mom in a panic at 5 AM, but she was very nice and came rushing over. We ran her to the emergency room, but by the time we got there her fever had come way down. They ran a bunch of tests, and then concluded that it was a stomach virus. They said if anything changed or she wasn't better in 12 hours to bring her back in. Well, even with alternating Motrin and Tylenol every 3 hours all day her fever never got below like 102. I decided to wait and see how she was on Wednesday morning.

We Wednesday morning her fever was 104 even with the Motrin and Tylenol, so my mom came and sat with Lincoln while I took her to the urgent care clinic. The dr looked at her and said that based on her blood draw he agreed that it was probably just a virus, but that he didn't like how lethargic she was and how high the fever was even with meds, and that she has been getting fevers like this a lot lately. He said to bring her back in if anything changed, or if her fever wasn't gone by the next morning. Well a few hour later I took her temp, and it was 105.7. It had been 3.5 hours since her last dose of Tylenol, and 30 min since her last dose of Motrin. I called the dr and they said to bring her back in. By the time my mom brought my sister to watch Lincoln, (she wanted to come with us) and we got almost to the doctor, her temp was back down to 102, so we called the dr, and they said not to come, but if her temp reached 105 again I was to immediately bring her in. They also told me to up her doses. So I started giving her almost twice the amount listed for her weight on the bottles, according to the amounts the dr recommended. At 8 PM, her fever reached 105.3, and we headed in again. By the time we got there her fever was 101, and she was the most active she had been in two days. She seemed fine, but they ran a bunch of tests anyway. Everything came back normal, and her blood counts actually looked better than the day before, so they sent us home with the same advice, bring her back if anything changes or she isn't better tomorrow.

Luckily she is doing much better today. She is exhausted, and still really pale and says she doesn't feel good, but her fever is all but gone. This was definitely the weirdest, most unpredictable illness I've ever dealt with.

So, it seems that lately this blog has been mostly about my kids being sick. That's not what I intended it for, so I thought I'd tell one recent funny story about each of my kids.

The other day I was getting Savannah dressed and I put her black Capri length leggings on her with a cute little pillow case dress over them. As I was putting the dress on we had the following conversation:
S: Mom! My dress is too small!
Me: No it isn't it fits just fine.
S: Yes mom, my garments are showing!


Lincoln doesn't talk much lately. Much less than he used to. My mom stayed with us last night just in case Savannah's temp spiked again. We bathed the kids this morning and as soon as we got them out my mom had to leave to take my little sister somewhere. She said she was leaving, and Lincoln ran naked to the door and started whining and trying to open it. My mom told him that he couldn't come because he was naked. So her grabbed his blanket, wrapped it around himself, and stood at the door waiting for her to take him with her. He's such a little problem solver already.

Jesse is gone.

Today is one week since Jesse left us here in Utah but he just left for Iraq yesterday. He didn't want us there when he actually left, so we moved a week before he left, then he flew back to San Diego last Monday. He just called tonight to say that they landed in Kuwait. I don't think its really hit any of us yet that he is gone. We are used to him being gone for weeks at a time. Today Savannah was talking about when Daddy comes home like it would just be a few days. Obviously she has no concept of time since she is only 3. Lincoln has suddenly gotten extremely attached to me. I'm not sure if its the move (he had a REALLY hard time with the move) or Jesse leaving, or a combination of the 2. Plus we have been crazy busy since we got here. We haven't had a single day in 2 weeks that we weren't with my family.

Before Jesse left we video taped him reading a bunch of the kids books, and I let the kids watch a few of them tonight. They LOVED it! Lincoln was jumping on the bed yelling, "Dat, Da! Dat Da, right there!" and Savannah just giggled the whole time. It was so cute!

Here's a picture of Jesse with the kids the last day that he was here with us. We went to this really cool pool. Also I have about a gazillion new pictures on our dropshots site if anyone wants to check them out (the link is on the right hand side under favorite websites)

We are all moved in!

We made it here with only the usual complications. We got here Monday night and left the kids with my mom while we went to look at a few houses. When we got back my mom said that she thought he felt warm, and that every time Lincoln started running he would cough so hard that his lips would turn blue and he would panic trying to catch his breath. I took his temp and it was 102. So at 11:30 PM I took him to the urgent care. They sent him for chest x-rays. It turns out that he is fine, they said it was "just a cold." But we were at the hospital until 2 AM. I'm still not convinced that its just a cold. He's had a cough and fever for 2 weeks, but whatever.

So Tuesday morning we went to look at a few more places. I was looking on line and as soon as I found this one ad I said, "Jesse this is our house!" My mom drove by it and said the same thing. It was the second appointment we had that morning, and at the first one the landlord never showed up. So we went to the second house, and I loved it. Jesse wasn't sure. So the landlord left us with the keys so we could come back and look at it. I brought my mom back and we noticed that the address is almost the same as Jesse's parents. Ours is 225 and theirs is 2552 on the same street. We also noticed that the house 2 doors down had a Marine Corps flag outside. So we got in the car, and Jesse called to say that he called the landlord and took the place, and we could move in that day. So we called a few people and got the truck unloaded in about 2 hours. I spent all day yesterday unpacking, and we are just about done. We don't have internet yet though, so I'm not on much for now.

Savannah is now running a really high fever, so we can't really do anything.