Life back to normal ...

Life is back to normal … as normal as normal gets anyway :) We’ve had a ‘great’ time trying to get back into our normal routine the past 2 weeks. Perhaps the most difficult was trying to get Collin and Hunter back into nursery at church. Collin was afraid of the local church nursery bully and Hunter, well, Hunter just plain doesn’t like being left for a second without Mum and Dad. But, this past week we turned a corner and Collin went to nursery with the promise that the nursery leader would protect him and Hunter gave it a go at least for a bit on his own (Collin told us after church that Sister Torres was “a good blocker”).

While the kids have been at some of their worst the past little bit, they’ve also had several moments of quite hilarious antics and quotes. Let’s start with Hunter. As usual, he is into everything the past little bit. There’s no such thing as child proofing with Hunter around … he just finds a way to get into everything. One of his popular efforts is to take the potting soil from the plants outside and then bring it in the house and pile it on the couch. He has figured out how to get what he wants on the counters by climbing up on a chair. His favorite is the butter dish, which he licks clean. He’s also got this fetish with salt and pepper shakers. Loves to use them on food at the dinner table and … The other day Collin was taking a nap and Hunter managed to get a hold of the salt and pepper shakers. Kelli was in the other room and the next thing she knew, Collin was covered in salt and pepper. I know the kid eats a lot, but this was taking it a little too far :) He’s started doing some cute stuff as well. He’s talking a lot and loves to jibber/jabber on the phone. He always kneels down and folds his arm when we mention it’s time to say family prayer. He’s a cute kid …

Collin on the other hand is our little egg head – and never has that been more evident than right now! The other day I let him use some scissors so that he could cut some paper. He was doing pretty good but then I let him get out of my sight and he took the scissors with him. The next thing I knew Kelli was giving me the ‘JESSY!’ and I came around the corner and there was a trail of hair leading to the little culprit red handed with the scissors and a terrible haircut. He took gouges out of his hair pretty much down to the roots and it was darn near impossible to make it look halfway decent. But, we shaved it as low as we could without giving him a complete buzz. Collin has also given us some laughs with his little mind. The other day we were driving in a neighborhood and this elderly lady with white hair came driving around the corner. From the backseat we hear Collin, “Hey, Granny!” Oh geez, what a laugh. His new phrase is also, ‘not exactly.’ For instance, we have some friends in our ward that are going back to the States to visit their Grandma/Grandpa. Kelli told Collin that they were going to visit Grandma/Grandpa just like we did. Collin then said, “Well, not exactly … it’s not the same house or the same grandma.”

Then we move on to Savannah – our little smartsy fartsy. She couldn’t wait to get back into school and her mind is always going a million miles an hour. The other day Kelli was doing her hair so she could go to the movie with her friend. Kelli asked her if she wanted braids or pig tails … pig tails of course. So while Kelli was putting her hair into pig tails Savannah comes out of nowhere with, “Mom, they shouldn’t call these pigtails, they should call them fly flippers.” Not a bad idea … Then there was last Friday after school and it didn’t end until 3 in the morning … Savannah came home and had this little smell on her breath. Kelli thought it was different but couldn’t place it until later in the evening when she asked me to smell her breath. It immediately took me back to my mission when certain Russians had the smell of vodka on their breath. When I mentioned that to Kelli she agreed that it smelled like alcohol. Well, we tried to get it out of her where she would have had alcohol or anything of the sort, but nothing came to her mind that would have caused the alcohol smell. So, Kelli went on the internet and found things like late stages of diabetes, ‘near death’ syndrome type stuff. We called a local doctor and they said to take her to the hospital as it was a tale-tell symptom of diabetes. 4 hours later (yes, Australian healthcare isn’t the speediest …) the blood/urine tests showed that everything was normal, thank goodness. Somehow she just had this smell on her breath and we’re not sure where it came from. The doctors couldn’t smell it though so maybe Kelli and I were just having a rough day of our own J kidding of course …

In other news, we’re in the midst of trying to decide about our next job --- whether to stay in the military or whether it’s time to get out. There are a lot of advantages to staying in through retirement, but the opportunity to go back to Utah and be closer to family is also appealing. We have to decide by the end of the year, so we’ll just play it by ear and see what options present themselves over the next month.

The kids are doing really well in swimming. They are excited for Christmas and tonight we put up the tree. It was kind of weird to put up the tree and having to open up the screen door to get some air flow because it was too hot outside. Then there was a fly which came inside and was buzzing around as we were trying to hang ornaments. Yes, the fact that it’s 95 degrees outside and getting hotter is going to make this yet another unforgettable Christmas … We attended our second Christmas parade and loved to watch the elves wearing sunglasses while swatting away the flies and trying to find a bit of shade ... but the lollies made it all worth it!