Seriously?!

I am suppose to be working on a talk. I am speaking in church tomorrow and I have been working on it ever since I was asked, about 8 days ago. The problem is this- I cannot work on it! Every single time I sit down, somebody needs me. Every time I try to form a coherent thought, it is interrupted by crying, whining, shouting, screaming or some one's little fingers pushing on my bottom to get me out of the chair. Yeah, that's really helpful.

Why don't I work on it at night? I do. I really do. I did. I did most of the work on it when the kids were asleep. I even stayed up past 11pm the other night. Do I work on it at nap time? Not so much. I'm still in the "Nap when the baby naps" phase and if I'm not napping when Rylee is, its because there is something I HAVE to do. I suppose I have to write a talk, but I didn't think it would take me all week! I didn't think it was going to be written in 2 minute segments. This talk stuff shouldn't be this complicated!

I tried to get it done all day today. Between the errands, the neediness, and the 2 hour power outage, I didn't get anything done. I was hoping I could finish it tonight once the kids were in bed and still make it to bed myself at a decent hour. 3 of the children are in their rooms right now. Of those 3, none are asleep. One is actively crying and screaming "Mom!" That's the one in the crib who woke me up at 7 this morning, so there's no love here right now. That's the one who has prevented any real work on this talk as well. I certainly can't work right now either. All I hear is "MOM!" and the tears. Nope. Not conducive to trying to feel the Spirit.

Thus, I blog.

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This is an update:

Rylee fell asleep after 9 pm. She woke up 30 minutes later crying. I was up till 11pm and finished my talk. It seemed well-received today and went much better than I expected. Oh yes, I was not alone in writing or giving it. And I wave a wonderful ward. I had plenty of offers to help with the kids and I did not have to worry about them at all.

I'm still here.

Dan and Joshua have been gone about 3 weeks now. I have been quite remiss in posting about what's been going on here at the homestead. There are several reasons for this. First, Dan took my good camera and as you will notice, blurry shots are not helpful. Plus, the red eye in them doesn't seem correctable by the simple program I have. Its all a bit frustrating, and therefore, not really happening. The second reason is this: Nothing is happening. We've had little that is blog-worthy, and we have not done much of interest. If we don't do interesting things, then I have to be interesting and this was not a good week for that! Which leads to reason number 3: Allergies have been so bad that I can barely stand myself, so blogging hasn't been appealing to me.

See, blurry shot. Cute kid though! The girls have been getting along fabulously well. We all went to dinner at Chili's the other night and they were pretty good. It was fun to go out, just us girls!

I finally gave in and went to the doctor. That was a 10 minute visit. This shot of Delaney was during the hour long wait at the pharmacy. Picture taking was one of the entertainments to distract her and Rylee from the boredom. I walked home with no less than 4 prescriptions (2 of which I'd already been taking), and in case you are wondering, no, I don't feel better. I feel worse. Not only are my eyes still streaming and itchy, and my throat itches and my nose alternates between being runny and clogged.... now my chest is gunky and hurts. So not only are the allergy meds NOT working, their nasty side effects are. Ug.

Rylee is into all sorts of mischief these days. I will mention only that if the back door is unlocked, she does know how to open it and will disappear into the neighbor's carport before you can find her. This one is big trouble!

The most fun thing this week was going to Delaney's preschool consignment sale. They have so much stuff! The girls wanted to go and I gave them a dollar amount and said they could pick one thing to buy. Marian chose a pull-along dog. Callie got a plastic drum. Delaney picked up a pretty pink box that looked like it had some nail polish in it. Since they were all very good and let me peruse to my heart's content, I said yes to all 3 things. Unfortunately, once we got home, I made the unwelcome discovery that Delaney's box contained multiple little lip glosses, and Delaney thought they were eye shadow. Isn't she lovely?!! The sad thing is that its been 2 days and she's had a bath, and been thoroughly scrubbed, but her eyes are still pink-rimmed!

And lest you think that there was no excitement around here at all, I will have you know that we had a front row seat to something very exciting yesterday morning! This is how Callie and Marian spent all their time before leaving for school. I got the blow-by-blow report as things went down. The girls were enthralled. What were they looking at?

There was a fire truck and an ambulance in front of our house yesterday morning! I thought I was going to have to walk to school (which is horrible for my allergies and leaves me runny nosed, red eye-d and headachey for the rest of the day), but they all left 2 minutes before we had to leave. Lest you think we are callous and unkind people, I'll alleviate your fears and tell you that our elderly neighbor had a diabetes issue and couldn't get her blood sugar under control. So she got a ride to and from the hospital in style yesterday, and she is fine.

Switzerland, part 1

This was our view from the hotel room in Brig.

I got lucky and caught the Matterhorn in the background on this shot. This is Zermatt, the launchpad for the premiere skiing and hiking surrounding the Matterhorn. We started our tram trip from down there somewhere and paid through the nose to stop at one of the many vantage points on the line.

I'll have to put the closer up shots of the Matterhorn in the next post.

Italy, part 2

None of these pictures can do justice to the Duomo. It takes your breath away. By far, my favorite part of Florence. They wanted to charge 8 Euros apiece to go inside the dome. We passed. We did go inside some churches in Florence that were really beautiful and moving with their artwork, but we were not allowed to take pictures inside of them.

Florence really lived up to its reputation, and then some. This is taken from the Piazza (one of at least 10 piazzas of Florence) Michaelangelo across the river from the main part of the city.

It leans even more than you would think...to the extent where you feel nervous standing to the right of it. They did have a few people climbing the tower and waiving to friends. They wanted to charge a lot of money for just 20 minutes of climbing, so we passed.

Chinque Terre is translated "5 towns." They are some of the most picturesque cliffside villages. From our hike, we could see Monterosso from above.

Where in the world is Joshua?

Trieste is really old. Here are the ruins of a Roman ampitheater.

They say life is a journey, not a destination. That was certainly the case when the train took us within 35 miles of our destination (Trieste) pictured above and said, I am sorry, but we can take you no further because the train workers are on strike. After milling about the town of Udine for about an hour, we figured out how a complicated bus change in the middle of nowhere worked (Nobody could translate the bus brochure) and got to our destination a few hours late, then got an express bus back to Udine that night to learn that the strike was short lived, so we could then go home. All part of the experience I guess.

Yes, those are french fries on his pizza. We have stories about Italian cuisine and the long break most of them have before opening for dinner.

That is Piazza San Marco and Joshua´s new favorite treat.....gelatto. He has had it at least 10 times since he hit the ground last week.

This blog only covers the first 48 hours of the last 8 days. I cannot do justice to the whole week before I get to bed tonight.

Dan