Happy New Year???

Wow, it has been a long past few weeks! It's one of those times where you're just waiting for the sky to fall. Our water heater/boiler keeps going out, so we just forked out $500 to get it fixed. It's been a week and it's already down again. We've been having to heat up water on the stove in pans for hot water. We put the heated up water in a two liter bottle with holes poked into it to shower. I feel like we're roughing it. We give the kids baths in a little metal tub just like in the old days...it's great fun. And I am so incredibly happy we got our wood stove installed or we would be freezing to death at night when it gets down to -20*. Oh! And Michael was so happy because he bought 11 cords of wood ($1,300!!!! SIGH) with the rest of our tax return from last year, only to find out after it was unloaded that the wood is still green and we won't be able to use it until next year!

Then, I've been having some health problems and when I got my blood work back, the test showed that my white blood cell count was really low. I had to go back in yesterday to get some more lab work done...hopefully things turn out okay this time. I have an ultrasound on Thursday to see if I have fibroids or cysts or something. I've had a lot of pain lately and things are just out of whack. I hope the doctors can figure out what's going on.

And now our van is having problems. Again. Some day maybe we can actually pick a car that doesn't fall apart. And doesn't have 100,000 miles on it to begin with.

Then, Whitney keeps coming up with these strange itchy bumps. I can't seem to find anything that looks like them...other than a mosquito bite with a blister on it? It's not chicken pox because that would have exploded all over her already. I thought maybe it was fleas, but we had the cats checked for fleas and they are in the clear. I'm baffled. Nobody else is getting them, either.

Annnnd, church has been really hard lately. There is no nursery, and Kate doesn't get her nap because we're at church so she is a little terror. It's so hard. And Aaron won't go to Primary. Last week he came out crying because one of the kids told him he was going to kill him. Primary is a nightmare there. The kids are so unruly. I feel so bad for the Primary President. I don't think the parents discipline their kids (remember what I said about Sacrament meeting?) And half of the primary kids are usually in the nursery playing with the toys or hiding behind the couch in the mother's lounge. It's so frustrating. I think they tried to call someone to the nursery, but she never comes to church. SOOOO, my Y.W. end up bringing their little brothers and sisters or nieces and nephews to class with them and it is SOOOO distracting! But what can I do? Make the girls leave class? Nope. Last week, one of my Y.W. ended up with 3 kids!!! We ended up just going to the nursery and trying to have class in there. It was a disaster. It was going to be a really good lesson, one that they REALLY needed, but I don't think they paid much attention to me with all the crying kids and the noise. I hope they can get that branch organized quickly or I'm going to have a melt down.

And Aaron had to have a mole removed yesterday. He's had this mole on his right foot that has started to change shape, it was kind of scaring me so I took him in. The doctor said, "You're right, I don't like the look of that at all." So, they took us to the back and removed it. Poor kid! The numbing shot didn't work all the way so he could feel them cutting into his foot and started screaming. She had to give him another shot and that one seemed to work. He's got 4 stitches now. He was so brave, though. I'm so proud of him! I took a picture of his feet a while ago just because I love his feet...but you can see the mole and if you look closely you can see how the top edge had started changing to a light brown and spreading. They'll send it into get biopsied to see if it was melanoma. I'm crossing my fingers that everything comes back okay.


So...yeah. Not the best start to the New Year. Hopefully things will turn around soon!