Be Strong

This month is SMA awareness month. You haven't heard of it? Well now you have. Spinal Muscular Atrophy. My cute nephew has it, he began showing symptoms in the later part of his first year of life. He will be three years old next month. 

We did a candle lighting this month. 

As an odd side note to this video, I am just realizing that Macey was wondering if it was going to blow up-explode and I probably Totally freaked her out by saying it was, indeed, going to blow up. Awesome.

SMA affects the muscles of the body. The motor neurons don't tell the muscles to move and causes muscle atrophy.
I blogstole this right off of my sister's blog:
The National Institute of Health has said that SMA is the neurological disease closest to a cure.  And, the cure for SMA could help further the progress of treatments and cures in other diseases, such as ALS and DMD.
SMA has three types.  Type 1 is the most severe, with children often not living more than a few years.  Type 2 and type 3 are progressively less severe.  What was once considered adult-onset SMA is now being classified as type 4.
Type 1 SMA a.k.a. Werdnig- Hoffmann disease is the number one genetic killer of children under the age of 2.
SMA is autosomal recessive meaning both parents must carry the gene for a child to have SMA.  It is fairly common to be a carrier for this disease.  1 in 40 is a carrier.  It is estimated to affect 1 in 6,000-10,000 births.
SMA is progressive.  Once there is an onset of symptoms, there is typically a steep decline in strength with an eventual plateau.  
SMA affects all muscles in the body, usually manifesting in the legs and core first.  The hardest part of SMA to me is the part that is unseen.  It's the loss of strength in the intercostal muscles.  The muscles that I never knew existed.  They are the muscles in between your ribs that help you breathe and cough.  This weakness is what causes so many deaths in children so young.

We love you Benson. 

Thanks for showing us how to 

Be Strong.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Fresh Tomatoes. 

Toast topped with cottage cheese, sliced tomatoes and s&p

Toast topped with avocado, tomato and s&p

Just tomatoes and toast

Yep, there's a theme.

And there's ALWAYS fresh salsa.

MMMMMMMM

and

sauteed zucchini.

and zucchini bread.

and Kale in smoothies (that one's from my mom. well i'm sure 100s of people do it but she inspired me)

Aaah, Someday I Will have a garden.

Eating should be fun. Not forced. If there's one thing I took away from my degree in fitness and wellness it was not that semi-starvation and or over-exercising is the way to look good. It's moderation and exercise consistency and a good ole dessert every once in a while to keep you happy. But I'm pretty sure a garden would help me immensely:) I hate store bought tomatoes.
All I want to do when we go home (to Utah) in the late summer months is hang out in our parents' gardens and pick fresh fruit and veggies. We may have to go to a farmer's market soon.
Cody, Macey, Mackayla and I planted rosemary (cody's choice) and spearmint (macey's choice) yesterday in our planter boxes. It crosses off one of my year's goals! Even if they die soon. That night we had rosemary chicken and sweet potatoes and lemonade with mint and the kids were pretty pleased with "their" dinner.
Oh, and back to bread becausei'mobsessed. I just got an order of hard white winter wheat (oooh another goal!) and made my first loaf of bread with it this week. My kids think it's white bread and have constantly been asking for the white bread. They LOVE it!

The Library.

I love the library. We reach our limit of books every time.
We've decided to read all the caldecott medal books that our library has. At one award a year starting in 1938 there are a bunch!
We also get music for the car. A lot of kids cds but I want my kids to know a little about classical music, too. The Little Einsteins has an awesome cd that taught them four famous pieces like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. This time though we just got Boston Pops Orchestra with Scottish songs (one from Braveheart, etc.) The kids love it!

Cody gets informational books about supercrocs and dinosaurs and super structures. 

Macey loves every book ever written. Mackayla will usually insist on getting a couple, this time one about potty training (in the works now! again)

three things

Out of the clear blue during lunch today Macey logically informed me "you don't know anything so dad is the chief." (No idea where this indian theme came about.) Ben told her we are both chiefs and then winked and whispered to me, "but don't forget that she's right." She didn't mean that literally, just to be clear:)

We made zucchini bread, Tons of zucchini bread. I told Cody to take some to our neighbor, one of his friends who lives right next door. We'll call him Matt. We've lived here a month and see this boy very often but I reviewed where Matt lived with Cody just to be sure. Cody enthusiastically grabbed the bread, ran outside, exclaimed "Here Matt!" and shoved it in the hands of a boy that happened to be standing outside, whom we have never seen in our lives. ~I think he made that boy's day though.

Mackayla goes through phases of favorite words she says frequently. It used to be "maybe" inserted into random sentences. Now it's "eyeball." It's surprising how often this word can be used in daily conversation.
She prayed at dinner the other night. I just start the prayer and she takes it away. She prays for things like family members, toys, house, swimming. Thank you is pronounced distinctly "do-mm." As she ended, instead of our traditional closing, she held out her hands and pronounced "The End!"

Dinosaur Walk

One day in utah we wound our way through the dinosaur park learning about every kind of dinosaur you can imagine.

We think the dinosaurs likely moved like this:

Micah loves taking care of Mackayla.

In fact, I practically had time off as a mom with her around!

 We also got to drive by my dad's childhood house.

He kept remembering stories about growing up such as sneaking into the city pool to go skinny dipping and rolling huge tires down hills. Such a wild child:)

Fun day to take a drive down memory lane
and walk through some prehistoric paths.

Two in Style

  This sweet girly girl turned two.

 She hates being hot more than anything. One day at nap I found her stark naked and tried to get a diaper on just in case but only got it half up. We were good, luckily. 

We were going to celebrate her birthday twice, once with my side and once with Ben's side of the family. We're lame. We forgot! Sorry guys, next year?:)

Maybe we had enough cake for a year:)

 Mackayla's great aunt charlotte made this awesome cake, which is actually Four cakes!

 One of her favorite presents: Shoes!

 "Hold it up so we can see it."

Thanks Amelia Bedelia.

 Singing

 She is such a two-year-old-messy eater but manages to be somewhat dainty about it.

 Made by cute Micah

 We had to do a mid-party try on because Mackayla thought her new dress was so cute.

 (We went to Cherry Hill and celebrated Clayton's birthday the next day!)

 We love you Mackayla!!!!

Bustin a Mutton

Pretty much since birth I've wanted Cody to go mutton bustin.

So when he got in at the Davis County fair I was thrilled.

Heading to the fun.

 Cruising out 

 Taking it like a cowboy!

 He was swooped up after the fall, I'm assuming so that in case he was hurt people wouldn't feel bad:)

He was fine just a little dazed

 Blake did it too!

Wedding Pictures

A couple of celebrations were in order this trip to Utah. First a birthday for Mackayla (more to come) and a wedding for Jessi!

Two sets of triplets, each with their own dominating personality makes for some calm nights together;)

Cute Cody is so patient with all the drama

Seriously, you can't plan faces like this (below). You are born with them. I am stealing the show. or something.

Their sealer said their children would be hollywood movie stars.:)

Lucy and her new friend stole the show with their dancing

Congrats Jessi and Stefan!

Before the wedding we had a girls day and went to lunch and a pedicure.
This, aside from one a friend in beauty school did for me, was my first pedicure!!
They are awesome!