Thoughts From a Frazzled Mind

The Olsen Family Christmas party is always tons of fun.  The Woodlands were in charge this year and it was a craft party.  They had several fun Christmas crafts like painting and assembling snowman ornaments, rock nativity sets, and Christmas eye-spy bottles.  For the little ones there was coloring pages and pipe cleaner activities. The California Olsens were able to attend for the first time in many years.  A great time was had by all.  Since all of the brothers and sisters were here, we got some great family pictures.  The first one is a common sight in the Olsen home - Kim and Douglas comparing their "pregnant" bellies.  We all agreed that they are both measuring about eight months!  Each year we thrilled that Joan is able to make it to the party, she surprises us all with her endurance! My dad never truly recovered from his pneumonia months ago.  He was pretty much bound to a wheelchair because he didn't have t...

Tasha and Zane got to take a fun trip to New Orleans because Zane was presenting at a conference there.  They spent several days there and then going to their house for only two days and then Zane was flying to Las Vegas to present at another conference.  When we discovered that they had a layover in Salt Lake and that Tasha and Ish would be home alone while Zane was gone, Kim and I decided to "kidnap" them when they stopped in Salt Lake.  It was a great surprise visit!  I was even able to take a few days off work to spend with them. Poor Tasha, she hit her arm on the oven door while baking cookies and got a 2nd-degree burn.  It was awfully sore and took several weeks to heal.   My maternal/newborn class needed to practice pediatric assessments so Tasha brought Ish and Shandra brought Kalel and Kiaya down to be assessed.  They were good sports and participated perfectly.  The students all performed their assessments...

This has been a crazy month!  It started while I was at work with a phone call from the aide at Gables who said that Dad had a fever and had fallen, she then casually mentioned that his O2 stats were in the low 80's.  She also mentioned that they had called the nurse to come in and check on him.  I wasn't too worried until she mentioned his low oxygen, but was anxious to hear from the nurse.  A few minutes later the nurse called and said that his O2 sats were at 78 and she couldn't get them higher.  He was also acting very tired.  She recommended that we take him to the hospital.  I jumped in my car and called Robin to tell her that I would meet her at Gables.  When I got there 40 minutes later I found Dad laying on the sofa, he was acting totally lethargic and his O2 was at 68.  We maneuvered him into a wheelchair with the help of the aide and got him into the car.  He could not help at all.  He was extremely confuse...

Shandra has been living with only a concrete floor since her water heater went out and water has been leaking under the flooring.  When Kim and I were shopping for the flooring for our bathroom, we found some nice flooring that was on clearance and we bought it for Shandra's birthday.  We  (ok, Kim and Hayden) installed the floor over Memorial Day.  I had the very rough job of babysitting while Shandra helped the boys.  I know - it was a tough job, but someone had to watch the beautiful, little princess and her helpful, adorable brother.  Unfortunately, I failed to get any pictures of Shandra's new floor.  It looks wonderful!  She actually pulled out the carpet in the living room and had enough flooring to do both the kitchen and the living room. Peach Days was fun this year.  The California Olsens were here to join in the celebration.  Kalel was so cute!  Instead of spending all of his time gathering candy at th...

The Parrish family arrived for McKay's wedding.  It was so good to see them, they are so comfortable to be around - just like family.  We got to meet McKay's fiance, Annie.  She is a doll!  Mont, Marilyn, Maddie, and Marshall all stayed with us for the week, but their schedules were so varied that we never knew from one minute to the next who was in the house. We were able to go to the temple with Annie and Maddie to take out their endowments.  What a special memory for them both. McKay and Annie's wedding was beautiful.  They were sealed in the Brigham City temple.  Their reception was at her father's barn in Perry.  Mitch and Marshall provided entertainment by singing together.  It was awesome!  We ran into Cyn and her granddaughters at the reception and we had a great time catching up. Fun tidbit:  when McKay was about 3 years old he used to pray every night that Kim would stop saying "bad" words and drinking "ba...