Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Brycen's 7th birthday--first friend party

Brycen's birthday was last Saturday, but we were at a family reunion... So we held his birthday party today. When I sat him down to write his list of friends he wanted to invite, the first three people he listed were all girls. Then he decided on some boys to invite. We made the invites and passed them out. I laugh that he first wanted to invite girls because when we talked about what he wanted to do at his party, he said he wanted to do an "army theme". We ended up with 4 girls and 9 boys.
  Well, I talked him into having a "marshmallow war". I bought a stick of 1/2" PVC and Ryan cut it into 12" lengths for me. Then I measured about 3/4 C. of mini marshmallows for each kid and put them in a bag. I placed a dozen marshmallow blowguns and a dozen bags of "ammo" into a box. I wrapped it to play "pass the parcel"... When wrapping I lost count of how many times I wrapped it-- I ended up wrapping it 15 times. :P I had 13 kids come, including Tucker and Eliza. We played "pop the balloon" and I used balloons that had been blown up for a week... It was awesome! The kids had a hard time popping most of them. Some of the boys did full body dives trying to pop the balloons. After that we played "pin the deer". The kids had fun telling each other whether they were hot or cold as they got closer to the deer. Then, we watched Brycen open his presents, had cup cakes in an ice cream cone with ice cream on top. It was a nice easy clean up!
After cake, we passed the present and everyone got to unwrap a layer, including grandma Nay, and Brycen got to do 2 layers. During this time, Eliza got stung by a huge black bumble bee on the back of her neck. It was very crazy and unexpected, but she survived! Once the package was open all the kids got their shooter and ammo. They spread out all over our homemade backyard "war zone" and they shot marshmallows for probably 40 minutes. We had two casualties. Grace Chamberlain got hit in the eye, and Sariah Heaton was attacked by too many people at one time. Thankfully the tears did not last too long, and injuries were not severe.

All in all, Brycen seemed to have a wonderful first birthday party with friends. :)

Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Power of Prayer

This evening Ryan and I took the kids to move 16 large metal panels (they kind of make a quick, easy, and mobile fence wherever you align and build them...) from one location to another. We had all of them loaded in a trailer, them preceded to set them tightly side by side. This way, Ryan could use a fork lift attachment on a tractor to pick up all of them and move them at one time. That was the original plan... So, we put them all nicely together, then Ryan turned to me and said, "Hun, can you hold these while I go and grab the tractor?"
I replied, "sure!"
I proceeded to the center of the stack of panels, got what I thought was a good hold, then Ryan let go and walked off. As he let go, the weight forced me into a sitting position on the side of the dump trailer. After a few minutes my arms started shaking because the weight was so great, and Ryan still had not yet started the tracter. Around the time I heard the tractor finally start, I started really wondering if I would be able to hold the load until he got there, because I could hear him having tracter issues. Well, I bent one arm and started using my back, but it didn't last long. I started praying at the beginning of this experience, and asking for additional strength to hold this. I kept telling myself I am strong, I can do this, Ryan will be here soon! After a while I realized I would not be able to hold the weight because the tracter was taking too long. I just prayed that I would be okay... I knew I could not bail out of the dump trailer and the only option was to let them crash on my pregnant body. I am still not sure how it happened, but as I felt my body give out totally, my left arm got pinched/caught between a couple of the top panels, and the panels firmly pinned me to the side of the trailer right between my lower hips... Just below where my baby is. I don't think it could have landed any lower than it did because I was so far down holding the panels to being with. If it had been any higher, it would have hurt my baby. If my arm had not been caught in the upper panels, I would have been hanging off the side so much that I would have pulled muscles. I screamed for Ryan and he came running over. He lifted up the panels and helped me out, then made sure I was okay. I was startled, but I know that Heavenly Father heard my prayers and somehow helped me tangle up just right to keep myself and my little baby safe in that situation tonight. I am so grateful for the knowledge I have of prayer. I find great peace of mind in my life knowing that I have a Father in Heaven who knows me, listens to me, and loves me! Thank you dear Lord for helping me so much tonight!