Wahoo!

Jimmy's getting released tonight. Mom and Dad talked to a geneticist (too bad I couldn't have been there to talk to him too) and he said it is a genetic disease (Mom didn't know if they gave it to us or if it's a mutation) and that we should all be tested for it. He's going to have to seriously change his diet and take a lot of vitamin supplements and medicine and such. But at least he gets to leave the hospital.

Jimmy Update

When I called my parents this morning they said that they got the test results back for his parathyroid. The doctors thought that it might be the culprit for his unusually low calcium, but alas, the test results came back high instead of low. Also, Jimmy has to keep his calcium at least above a 1 (normal is 1.2 and last night he was at 0.6) for 24 hours before he can be released from the hospital. Sadly, the last two blood tests showed his levels at about 0.8, so there's no release date yet. However, the doctor is coming to discuss the latest results and the next steps in figuring this out in just a little bit, so hopefully we'll get some good news soon.
Happily, Jimmy is taking all of this fairly well and has been enjoying watching movies like Peter Pan and Lightning McQueen (Cars) and has been taking lots of walks around the hospital with Dad since it's pretty much a ghost town. He's been a brave kid to let them poke him and take blood every few hours.

Our Plea

We ask all of you to pray for Jimmy. Yesterday afternoon he had a seizure and stopped breathing for a little while. My mom and dad took him to the emergency room where they were told that his calcium levels were dangerously low. They said he could go into another seizure any time. He was rushed to a better hospital where they have started stabilizing his calcium, but it's still not where it needs to be. They're running lots of tests on his blood to try and figure out what caused this drop in calcium. I'll try to keep the blog updated on his condition. Please pray for him...

Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland!

Who would believe this! I took a picture of our house just so you guys would believe me that I didn't just make up these pictures. It snowed pretty much all afternoon yesterday and into the night. It killed me that I had to be at work though.
All over the city people were making snowmen and having snowball fights. The amazing thing was that there weren't more accidents. A policeman on the news said there were less accidents yesterday during the snow than on a regular traffic day. Go figure!

Elf yourself again

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Elf Yourself!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you! Hope that your holiday season is full of good times and good friends.

She's a Hoot!

I just have to share a couple of really cute stories about Kristianne.
Earlier this week, Kristi sat down on the scale and told me that her bottom weighed 45.5 pounds. She just couldn't understand why it weighed so much.
On Thursday I got to go to school with her for an hour since it was Take Your Parental Unit to School for Less than an Hour Day. It was hilarious to watch her with her friends at recess. She is totally the ringleader; they'll follow her anywhere. Later, we were playing a reading game and a little boy tried to hold her hand. She ripped her hand away from him and just glared at him. Looks like she can handle herself!

Update on Elder Davis

By the way, we finally got the address for Robert's new Mission President's blog. If you're interested, here it is:
http://soralundberg.blogspot.com/

Click on picture to see more from Robert's mission

Robert's Mission

We Miss You Grandpa

Today is the three year anniversary of the passing of Grandpa Davis. We will never forget him, and we can never thank him enough for the profound influence he had, and still has, in our lives and in the lives of all who knew him.
To commemorate, we went with Grandma to his grave site and put new flowers on the tombstone. We thought the rest of the family might enjoy seeing some of the pictures.


Click on picture to see more

Grandpa's Grave

If you'd like all of the photos, just email me or let me know.

The Zoo!

Dad has a couple of friends/patients that happen to be veterinarians, but on the side they also run their own zoo, out of their backyard. Periodically they let us stop by and visit their growing family of animals. Here is a small run down of some of the animals they have:
kangaroos
wallabies
wallaroos
porcupines
kinkajews
coatimondays
flying squirrel
hedge hogs
potbelly pigs
camels
zebra
zedon (zebra/donkey)
fainting goats (yes, they faint)
exotic birds
lemurs
kangaroo rats
dogs
cats (including a midget cat)
anteaters
turtles
monkey
patagonian cavy
snakes
sloths (they're really creepy looking)

I don't know if I even got them all, but you get the point. It was AMAZING! And this time our grandma got to come with us.
Holt family, thank you so much for sharing your incredible animals with us!


Click on picture to see more pictures from the zoo

Holt's Zoo

Rebels After Dark

Last year, Julie took Amy and me to Rebels after dark with her. It's a fun event that the university does to get students involved. Both last and this year they had caricature artists there, so I thought I would share both renditions of us with you.

Bunkerville

A few weeks ago, Dad, Amy, and I took a trip up to Bunkerville for some dove hunting with Uncle Bob, Brian, and Jonathan. Little did they know what they were getting themselves in for. The day started out well. It was a beautiful morning and the guys got in some good shots. Amy, Johnny, and I got kind of bored just chasing after doves. So we jumped on a couple four wheelers and took off. Well, I took a hill that was more than I can handle and it's lucky that Johnny and I weren't killed. Johnny came out alright, but I got pretty knicked up. The four wheeler rolled over my leg and at first I thought it might be broken. Thank goodness it wasn't, but it's still not great. I've had just about all of the colors of the rainbow in my bruises and for the first few days it was swollen really big. My arm is starting to heal (I landed on my arm when I was thrown off the four wheeler) and Mom and Dad are hoping it won't scar.


On a lighter note, after all of this trauma, we got to try out our cousins' new swimming hole. Really, it's more like a small lake. They have a zip line and a high dive and a rope swing. It's amazing.

Our own author

Kristianne has decided that she is going to be an author. Every few days she writes a new book and then sits me down and insists that I must hear it. They're so cute and it's best to hear it from her, so Kristi, take it away.

Among Kristi's other books are titles such as:
What are we doing? (a book on exercise)
I love Jimmy
Little Bear and Emily
I love Mom
I love the plants
I love books
I love Julie
I love Richard
I love primary
I like to finde fethrs
I love the USA
I love my dad
I love toys


She has some interesting spellings, as you can see in "I like to finde fethrs."
kumpuotr- computer
wadr- water
joolry- jewelry

Happy Feet

As some of you may know, Mom has enrolled Jimmy in tap dance classes. For mom this is less about dancing and more about socializing, learning that it's okay if Mom isn't holding his hand all of the time. But it's still pretty funny to see what he's been learning. Here's a little sample:

Back To School and Back on the Road

Well, it's that time of year again. The smell of new shoes and freshly sharpened pencils is everywhere. In our house, going back to school has certainly been an adventure. With students in four different schools, juggling cars has been interesting. This has only been intensified as car after car has fallen apart. First, on our way home from our hiking trip to The Subway (see post on the Subway for details) the tire on one car went out and all kinds of problems were found. Next, another car wouldn't start. Not lastly, the catalytic converter was stolen off of another car. Lastly, the second car was found to have a leak in the brake system. But we still have one stalwart and brave car left without problems... knock on wood.
Other than that, we've been doing pretty well getting back to school. Amy's finding her AP classes are very time consuming. Julie's finding her Senior year as social as ever. And I'm feeling completely overwhelmed by my Freshman experience. Kristi is doing best of all. Whenever asked about school, she will respond with a report of her lunch. Although, now that she has had some time to go to the fun classes (e.g. art, music, pe) she is making sure that we all learn everything she is. It's great fun to see her get excited for school, though.

How many wigs can one Linda make?

I've been growing my hair out for at least a year in the hopes of donating it to Locks of Love. I figured with as much hair as I have, they could make two or three wigs. And I finally decided it was time to do it. Your hair has to be at least 10 inches for them to be able to use it, so I've had to wait a while to get that much length. It was really weird when she first cut it. I kept thinking, "What am I doing? This is a huge mistake!" But once it was all over and I got to see how much hair I was able to donate, I felt really good about it.




BEFORE















DURING


My hair looked like a little squirrel sitting on the table.












AFTER

It was a big shock to lose that much hair at once, but I've really enjoyed it. You can do so much more with short hair and it's really quick and easy to style.
Hooray!

Summer Vacation

For our summer vacation we always visit Grandma and Grandpa and Becky. This year we made a couple of extra stops on the way.
Hogle Zoo:
Jimmy and Kristi both loved the zoo. Here are a couple videos of Jimmy just shortly after we got there.

The Subway

Dad and I hiked the Subway this last weekend. My greatest accomplishment was that I did the entire hike without a rappelling harness. (Mom scoffs at that, but for me that is huge.) It was amazing! As you can see, besides just canyoneering, there was also swimming.







Also should be mentioned in this blog, our trip home was about as eventful as our hike. While driving home, we suddenly found ourselves with a splitting tire. Having had some experience with this last summer, I thought it would be a quick job to switch tires and be on the road again. To our chagrin, as we removed the lug nuts, two of the lugs snapped off, as depicted here. Luckily, we had two angels that lived nearby and happened to be related to us that by some miracle were able to find lugs and lug nuts and made them work so that we could make it home.

Here is our mishmash of lugs and lug nuts.

Summer Activities

We've been pretty busy this summer (that's why I haven't been updating this blog as much as I should). Mom and I have been teaching Sunday school classes- Mom has Gospel Doctrine and I have Gospel Essentials. Dad's been hard at work at the office and in the Stake presidency. We had stake conference a couple weeks ago, and Elder Robert D. Hales and Elder Martino came. So we all got introduced to them since Dad's got an in. Here are a few other things that have been going on:

Learning Spanish (he's trying to say 'pantalones')

Swimming
Jimmy learning to jump off the diving board/swim

Kristi diving. It was really fun to watch her learn to dive since she couldn't really grasp the concept of your feet going in last.

Here are some other fun family pictures of swimming:

EFY

This summer I got to go to an LDS youth camp called EFY for a week! It was Awesome! The week was full of getting to know other youth, going to amazing classes and having my testimony grow, playing games, going to dances, and much more. My favorite part was definitely going to the classes. All the teachers we had were amazing!
It was such a fantastic experience!

I went to EFY with a bunch of my guy Keeley cousins and we lucked out and all ended up in the same company!

The counselors for our company were all super fun!!!

This was our counselor group and some girls from my group that i became really good friends with.

Our session director was hilarious and his family was so cute!

New Kristi video

Per requests, here is another sample of Kristianne's musicial talent. Enjoy!

A man with many hats

Jimmy has had a sudden explosion of personality. I thought I'd just share a few moments with you.

Magician
(He came up with this trick all by himself)



Pirate
(The yellow thing on his shoulder is a stuffed chick)

Girls Camp

Girls Camp is definitely a highlight for our family, or at least most of our family. This year Dad, Julie, Amy, and I all left to go to camp and left Mom with the kids. Luckily, we all survived. I had to go up as a leader since I got kicked out of Young Womens a couple of weeks ago. It's really weird to be a leader and go to Relief Society... but I digress.
Camp was amazing! It's so beautiful up there. And you can feel the Spirit so strongly.

Just for the record, we slept in tents. This is just a broken old cabin that's on the hike.



We went up the weekend before camp to help set up and get ready for the girls to come up. We had church on Sunday, complete with Sacrament Meeting and everything. Amy gave a talk. All of us girls sang. Julie taught Relief Society/Priesthood/Young Womens/Primary. This picture is everybody during Julie's lesson.


Dad and Julie on a hike















Dad's most famous attire at camp- with his chainsaw













One special addition to camp this year was the slip-n-slide. However, Dad wasn't too happy about this since it wasn't an "approved" activity. But everyone involved agreed that it was a very unifying and uplifting experience. We even had spiritual analogies to go along with it.










I almost forgot to mention this. On the way down the mountain, miracles took place such that we ended up being able to help our stake young womens president and her husband when their truck broke down. Dad took her husband to town to get a tow truck and we waited on the side of the mountain. Our only provisions- these red vines and a couple granola bars. The interesting thing that I would like to note is that of the 165 cars that passed us while we were stranded, only two cars stopped to see if everything was alright. Next time I have to give a talk in church, I'm going to talk about charity and use this story! :)

Linda's Graduation

It's really weird to think that I've graduated. It still doesn't feel like it. It was really fun, though. I gave a Harry Potter speech that was, I thought, pretty awesome. It was all about the pensieve and then I reminisced about our high school days. Nobody could recognize me because I straightened my hair and didn't wear my glasses. But have no fear, I did wear glasses during my speech. Check them out!

I found out later that the administrator that was in charge of graduation frowned upon my glasses, saying that they were much too silly for such an occasion. She said that she wouldn't have let me wear them if she'd known I was going to do that. But that's exactly why I didn't tell her :)