Day off...

The Smoosh and I have the day off today.  It's our reward for going to Parent Teachers conference last night.  She is doing fantastic by the way, we are SO proud of how well she's done so far in middle school, especially considering she had a cast on her arm the first month of school and could barely write. 

So, we are treating ourselves to a day on the town while her sister is at school.

In other news... 

We managed to talk Ashlee into not letting anybody write on her cast until the week before she got it off.  Who wants to look at nasty ink all over their arms day after day?   Not I, and it wasn't even my arm.  She didn't care.   But, a few days of it was good with us all.  

October 8th, we ventured to the orthopedic surgeons office to have the cast removed.  She was so nervous, worried about how it was going to feel and if they'd accidentally cut her arm off in the process.  But that's her, she worries about everything.

Their machine was really loud and while the blade looked like it could cut down a small tree, it merely vibrated and she barely felt a thing.  

The first words out of her mouth when she saw the dry, scaley skin left behind was,  "This is not my arm, this is a dead persons arm".  

Then they took x-rays and the doctor told us that her arm was healing but not healed.  It still had a pretty good fracture in it, and didn't look much differently than the first x-ray from six weeks earlier, other than it was no longer bowed.  He told her to be super careful with it, no jumping, no biking, no pressure, no twisting.  If you break it again, you will need to have it pinned.  Arilee piped up and said "and most importantly, no cartwheels off the couch".  The doctor didn't find that quite as amusing as we did.  He was serious.  Yikes.  He wanted us back in three weeks for another x-ray.  

Lovely.

So she has been babying it, though, now that she's used to having her arm back, she does forget that she has to be careful with it.  We've had to remind her to get off the trampoline and slow down. 

Cody's mom had a birthday that same day.  We didn't do anything exciting, just gathered together at her house for cake and ice cream.  Britnee blew out the candles, as usual.  I haven't touched my camera in weeks, I have been relying on my cell phone, which normally takes really good pictures.  This night, however, this is the best I got.  Oh well.  

She got an iPad for her birthday and it's been an adventure teaching her how to use it.  Luckily, the girls know more than I do, so we've let them take charge.  Now if they would just take care of Grandpa Dial's computer problems, we'd be set.  

Ashlee has wanted lowlights in her hair ever since Arilee got her's done back in July.  I finally relented and let her use some of her birthday money to pay for it.  We went to Evans Hairstyling College and were lucky enough to get my nephews new wife, Brittany, as our beautician.  She did a fantastic job.  

I'm trying to decide if I'm brave enough to let her do my hair now. 

Cody's hole in one made the paper!  I cut it out, took a picture of it with my phone and sent it to him, and then promptly lost the article.  Thank goodness for photographs. 

     We have the worst trees ever when it comes to leaves, which is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you want to rake them up and play in them.  My in laws  however, have two beautiful elm trees that make the perfect leaves for playing.  Grandpa raked up a huge pile almost as tall as Ashlee and the girls had fun burying themselves in it.  

Cousin Britnee wasn't so sure about the sound, texture and feel of the crunchy leaves, but she participated anyway because playing in the leaves is a part of growing up. 

Our ward recently split and we lost a lot of really fantastic families to the newly created 18th ward.  I was SO sad to see so many of them go, but excited for the new leadership we have received as a result.  

 Over General Conference weekend, I kept myself busy by making a new church bag.   I didn't use a pattern, but between Pinterest, Etsy, and Porters craft store, I came up with an idea I liked and ran with it.   It doesn't have nearly enough pockets and needs to be just a hair more sturdy, but I think I like it.  

Not much else has been going on around here. 

Arilee is enjoying every second of high school and wants to go to every game and activity she can go to.  We don't have a problem with it, other than she still doesn't have her drivers license and it's 13 miles round trip to the high school and all her friends live the other direction so she can't even carpool.  I've only put 2,000 miles on my car since school started (which has included multiple trips to Rexburg for hair and doctors appointments).  It feels like we live in the car some days. 

Justin is doing well at Boise State and having a great time, at least from what we can tell from all the pictures and comments that get posted on Facebook.  We don't hear much from him and haven't seen him since Labor Day, but he has promised to come home next weekend.  I have missed seeing his cute face and hearing his voice every day SO much. 

Work is going really well this year.  We're as busy as ever, with around 45 kids on the docket (this number changes every week, adding new kids and graduating others).   I have become attached to so many of these kids and it's exciting to see so many of them improve and graduate from our services, and some of them I am sad to see go.  I love to see how many of them light up when they see me walk in to the room to get them - and not just because they are getting out of class.   Some of them just need the one on one attention they get from speech and I can always tell exactly who it is and go out of my way to give it to them.  And when I get paid, and I see how little the paycheck is, I smile because that reminds me I'm not doing this for the money, I'm doing this because I enjoy it. 

The cute husband has been doing awesome at his new job as well.  Clearly, he's not in it for the money, either... haha... but he has increased their business and is giving such great personal service to so many of their patients.  I'm so proud of him and all that he is accomplishing - even if the pay isn't all that great.  He's a remarkable husband and father and I'm so proud to call him "mine".