12 years ago, I gave birth to my 9th child more than 16 weeks early. Life suddenly became a lot more challenging. I wanted to see our very sick baby as much as I could but I had 8 children at home who also needed me.  I was also trying to pump valuable breast milk for her and sleep was in short supply. There was so much uncertainty.  We didn't know if our baby would survive and if she did, what her life would look like.  What disabilities would she likely have?  Our bishop gave her a blessing the day she was born that brought me a lot of hope but the health crises that she continued to have and some of the doctors' lack of optimism made it challenging to hold onto the hope.  After about 11 days, she had a bowel perforation which required her to go to a hospital an hour away which made it harder to visit and supervise her care.  I didn't get to hold my baby for the first two months of her life because her health was so fragile. Adding to the c...

Several months ago, we got another grandchild!  Previous to that, all our grandchildren had come from my oldest son and his wife and they have lived far away for some time.  But now we have another grandchild close by and it is super fun to see him and enjoy holding him.  We have been babysitting him more lately since his mother is teaching a class that is taking a lot of her time and his father is extremely busy working up and finishing up his last semester at college.  We're happy to be able to help out! And we found out more good news recently--our oldest son got a new job in our area and will be moving here in a few weeks!  They came out this last week to do some house hunting so I spent some time babysitting those three too.  We hung out at a lot of parks and playgrounds and visited the ducks too.

The four adventurers in Upper Black Box While I was gone to Louisiana at the beginning of August, my husband took three of our older, but not yet married, kids on an adventure in the San Rafael Swell.  My husband loves this place for the very cool rock formations and because hardly anyone goes there.  They went to three different canyons and didn't see a single person the entire time.  The only time they saw people was when they drove into the town of Green River to get some water.  Perhaps because it was the beginning of August, people might have stayed away, thinking it was super hot but it really wasn't, especially when they were wading/swimming through the water in the slot canyons.  They had a great time and a great adventure.  I'm just glad they stayed alive!  I did feel concerned about them especially when my sister-in-law told us how she went to the Upper Black Box Canyon some years ago and at the bottom they found a dead body.  ...

Shortly after we got back from the pageant, I got to go to Louisiana to visit our sweet grandchildren.  That week, Mindy was gone to EFY, Camille was at kidney transplant camp (Camp K up Emigration Canyon) and Scott took Everett, Susanna, and Talmage for an adventure in the San Rafael.  So I would have been all by myself at home anyway! Getting there was a bit of a pain.  My flight from Salt Lake was delayed by 2 hours or more which meant I would have missed my connecting flight, the last one of the day.  Fortunately, even though I had the discount ticket which means they don't want to accommodate you, a kind airline gate agent put me on a different airline through Dallas instead of Houston, allowing me to catch a connecting flight, so I was able to get there by midnight on Friday night. My goal was to spend time with my grandchildren and to be helpful.  One fun activity was going to the Children's Museum in Baton Rouge: We also spent lot...