Our trip to The Pizza Factory was very enjoyable! I really loved eating their yummy bread sticks and spaghettis with marinara sauce. James was well behaved at the restaurant, but I didn’t know that he was paying attention to how noisy it was around him, in fact at one point he said to me “Wow, adults are pretty loud mom.” Apparently the noise was distracting James from eating his food. It didn’t really occur to me that people were making too much noise.

After James mentioned that the restaurant was noisy, I started to notice it too and it was pretty noisy at the time. In addition, Right across from us and behind me there was two groups of adults seating at a table making noise( talking pretty loud). The group behind me was a group of girls and of course we girls tend to be louder than boys-most of the time! But the noise didn’t really bother me, but apparently it bothered James. Then he started pointing at all the tables that were being noisy. I told him that pointing was bad manners and he needed to stop doing that. But then I thought to myself…children are just like adults or adults are like children? Either way I look at it adults and children behave almost the same….especially when friends are around.

Being pregnant is one the most wonderful experiences, but when morning sickness comes along the experience is not as enjoyable the first trimester and sometimes the whole nine months. My energy levels have already become low with this pregnancy. Yesterday when I attended school I felt so tired after waking around on campus for only 20 minutes to get to my classes. After I got home from school the same day I walked around on campus, I wanted clean the house but everything seemed so hard and at moment I was wishing for a magic wand, so I could just tell the magic wand… “Make the house beautiful for the rest of my pregnancy.”

Moreover the smells have been so bad that I have had to go out of the classrooms a few times because someone had a strong perfume or something else. One time the teacher saw my face and knew that I wasn’t feeling well and she said to me “Here is a garbage can in case you need it” little did she know that the student behind me was making so sick and I couldn’t hide my expression. I sneakily moved my seat closer to the front of the room. I hope that he didn’t notice.

Nausea is probably the harder pats of my pregnancy because I can’t get rid of it. I am counting the days until I have my energy back, feel like myself, stop smelling everything, feel nauseated and stop craving The Olive Garden.

I have had many different important events throughout my life but there is one that really taught me something that I will never forget. It happened in 1997 on a Tuesday afternoon. While I was working in downtown Salt Lake at a department store called ZCMI, I started to feel sick suddenly. I was sick from something I couldn’t discern. The symptoms started out with a minor headache while half of my body started going numb. Then my speech began to sound garbled. It got to the point where it was clear to me that something serious was happening to my body and I was beginning to feel sad and very vulnerable.

A co-worker named Penny must have noticed that something was going on with me because I was always full of energy and my speech was clear. She said to me, “We are taking you to the hospital.” As she was speaking I felt my left limbs going numb. At that moment I thought that half of my body was paralyzed forever. Even though I was feeling so sick with all these odd symptoms, I remember saying that I wanted to wait and see if I got better. But Penny didn’t wait; she said once more, “No, there is no time to wait. We just have to go.” So she held me as we walked out to her car and went straight to the Emergency Room at the LDS Hospital in the avenues.

Luckily, the hospital was down the street from where we were worked. As we pulled into the parking lot I was starting to feel sensations in my arms and legs again. However, Penny still escorted me into the Emergency Room. I sat in a room for a few minutes waiting for a doctor to come see me. I can’t recall the doctor’s name to this day but I do remember him saying to me, “Will you take your shoes off so I can see your toenails?” What a silly girl I was when I answered him. I said I did not really want to because my toenails were not polished. However, I finally took my shoes off and my feet looked normal.

Penny asked him if I had had a stroke. The doctor said that he wasn’t sure because he needed more time to run some tests. Then I was sent to a room for a cat-scan. While I was in the room I was asked to take off my jewelry and any metal that I had before I went through the cat-scan. The room for the test had bright lights. During the test going through the cat-scan machine, I had a lot of different thoughts come into my mind. Some of my thoughts were questions, such as, “Am I going to die without finishing that round table of shirts, or the markdowns that I was assigned to do?” I realized that I was so wrapped up in thinking about work that I literately forgot about the urgent situation.

After the five hours passed and all the tests were taken, the results were that I did not have a stroke. The whole process turned out to be no more than a complex- migraine headache. What a scary situation that was! All of this happened because that morning I had taken my birth control pills without enough water and without food. The diagnosis included poor hydration, bad eating habits and the birth control pills.

This event made me realize that I had not taken good care of my health. I had considered a round of shirts more important than food and plenty of water. After this even I decided I would take better care of myself. This included being well hydrated when I took my pills as well as eating healthy foods. In addition, I visited my doctor and changed my birth control pills that I was taking at the time.

This was a very scary event in my life. When my body didn’t function normally due to a complex migraine, I thought I was going to be paralyzed and become a vegetable. At best, I was afraid I would never speak again and perhaps even die. After the experience I thought more about it. I realized from this learning experience that I had to change the way I took care of myself. If I did not change my personal care, I might not be able to Iive my life in the future and accomplish all I wanted to do.

Jonathan loves to read books, but not just any books, he likes to read fantasy, sci-fi and more. He has read more books than Troy has read in his lifetime. In this last four days he's read four thick books, I mean 1800 pages. He is so amazing to me and he does most of his reading right after he comes come from school. I love how motivated he is!

What happens when I get tired? I start speaking with the wrong words. The kids and I had a little conversation on pronunciation here is how it goes:

Me, I really like this shirt daddy got me! But I wish that it didn’t have a lot of blink, blink.

Jon, what did you say? Blink, blink….

Me, yeah you know, it has a lot of little fake demon, I mean diamonds.

Cari, oh I think I know what you are saying, you mean sparkly—right?

Me, yeah that’s what I mean! What did I say?

Cari, blink like in the blink of an eye.

Jon, well I didn’t understand what mom was saying did you Cari?

Cari, I knew what she saying because that’s how people say it in the D.R.

Me, no Cari we don’t speak English down there, I was just saying the wrong thing.

Cari and Jon, practice that word mom.

Me, bling with a soft g, I just need to go to bed:)

Family home evening lessons are great tools for teaching important principles of the gospel. As we strive to have family home evening every Monday sometimes things don't go according to plan and most of the time we only get half of our children's attention except....this past Monday night, we focused on teaching the importance of telling the truth and what would happen if my children told a lie. We got started by using some examples, questions, a yarn string for wrapping the liar and role-plays. I volunteered to be the liar and Troy and I role-played the scene. I sat on a chair (the hot seat). Troy asked me to pretty much narrate my day. Troy asked “what did you do today at school?” I stated, I had a good time playing on the computer. He got the yarn out and started wrapping with it while the kids were saying yeah right you don’t like to play computer games--that’s a lie. Then I also said that I had gone to get James from pre-school and found out that he had eaten a grasshopper for lunch and The teachers had told me that he really liked it. James’s face was confused and he said that’s a lie I didn’t have a grasshopper for lunch. He began to cry while Troy continues to put more yarn around me. I think that the kids got the point of the lesson and even James got it. We told the children that it is best not to tell lies because sooner or later we will find out about it. It took James a little longer to grasp on the concept of the lesson and It wasn’t until I started saying things that didn’t happen at school, but I sure got his attention.