Short update on Zack; Camden's Birthday; Caitlyn's Skate Competition

Baby Zachary is still in the NICU at the Logan Regional Hospital.  Crista is hoping to be able to bring him home tomorrow.  The benefits of having him in the hospital--Crista gets a good night's sleep,  But the drawbacks outweigh the benefits: the nurses don't give Crista enough credit for knowing what her child needs, and because the baby is connected to so many monitors, etc. Crista cannot leave the chair that is right next to Zach's bed.  Roy and I have been in Logan as much as possible to help with the other four children, and I'm heading up this evening to help for the next couple of days before I leave to join Roy in Florida (he left today for a conference).  Hopefully they can get Zach home so I can be there to help with the transition.  

On Saturday, after I'm with Roy for a couple of days in Florida, we fly to Augusta to spend Thanksgiving with the Jacksons.  We're looking forward to spending some time with them.

When you take over the care of the children to this extent, you become enough like the  parents to get some pushback on things like bedtime, but it was all worth it when I received this compliment from Todd: As I was changing his diaper he accidentally called me "mommy."  You could see his little mind working as he processed this in his brain.  He then said, "You're grandma mommy! Then he looked over at Roy and said, "And he's grandpa daddy."  

Catharine with Cub (while Adrienne was with Crista at the hospital); Todd--when all else fails, get out the technology!

Roy took all four kids to Del Taco on his own.  They wanted to go here
 because there's a big playground!

Crista with Zack;  Bridget visiting her brother

Baby Zack above;  Below: Todd.  He lasted about 3 minutes outside; it was pretty cold;  Also, Ruby, Greta, Bridget and Todd with grandpa daddy.  

Fun Fact: Camden turned three this week.  Happy birthday Camden.  

Below are some fun pictures of what Cam got to do to celebrate his birthday--although the activity was mostly for his dad.  Nick has a new interest in snakes.  The pictures below are taken at a reptile exhibit in Springville, UT.  

Caitlyn did a great job in her competition in Vegas.  Unfortunately, subjective judging is hard for the competitor and she didn't accomplish her goal of passing her Senior Freestyle Test during the competition.  She missed it by .8 points and was devastated.   Personally, I think she did a fabulous job and should have passed.

Thoughts from a mother:

Children have great power to influencetheir parents for good. 

TV was a lot different when I was younger than it is today.  You had to choose a program that happened to be airing at the time you sat down to watch.  There was a program I liked to watch occasionally.  I don’t remember what it was called, but it was a Hollywood news program where they shared information about the lives of the movies stars.  It wasn’t always perfectly clean (since the movie star’s lives weren’t always upright).  One evening, Dan walked in while I was listening to this program.  It probably made me uncomfortable because of the content of the show and I told him that this wasn’t a show for someone his age (11 or 12).  He quickly responded, “If it’s not a appropriate for my age, it’s not appropriate for your age, either.”  I knew he was right and I never watched that program again.  I won’t say I’ve never made the mistake of watching programming that isn’t 100% upright, but I was at least a little better from that point on.

Then there was the time when we accepted an invitation to Road Atlanta—on Sunday.  We were invited by Wendy Sharon, an actress in the community theater we owned.  She and her husband owned Road Atlanta (A race car venue).  On this particular day, Paul Newman was one of the drivers.  We were tempted so we talked over what we should do.  After a little discussion, we rationalized that it would be all right this one time. 

All throughout the day, our children were unhappy with us and the choice we had made.  It was not a fun day, and to top it off, Paul Newman wouldn’t even wave at his fans.  He was in racing mode, not movie star mode.

We have tried to be better at keeping the Sabbath Day since then.  Again, we aren’t perfect; there are always things we can do to be better, but we don’t use rationalization to blatantly break the commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy.