The my little ponies that pop up all over our house add to the decorating scheme, don't you think?

 
Dear Family and Friends,

 This week I felt like fall even though the weather was warm and Indian summerish.  We kept the windows open most of the week and it felt so nice to have our house smelling fresh and clean again.  Despite fans/candles etc after a while if our house is closed up all I can smell is old diapers, dog gas and remnants of cooked food - not the best combination.

Allison had a great birthday.  She brought treats to school and shared a poster about herself.  Her math T.A. made her cookies and they canceled math homework in her honor.  She picked out a cake from Coldstone and ate a meal of noodles, butter and cake.  Enjoyed all her presents and stayed up late into the night trying to learn a new knitting project by the light of her night-light.  Jeremy took her out for a birthday dinner the next night to her favorite all you can Chinese buffet that has noodles and shrimp - her favorites.  (Until this year he would take kids out to lunch on their birthday but now our kids' school has a pretty stringent attendance policy and we didn't want to risk it).  So she was just beaming pretty much the whole week.  She started her new math class with the 5th graders and once she realized she could do it, all the butterflies left.  She is having to scramble a bit to learn a few new concepts but since she is still getting As on everything, I am not too worried.

Allison loves her new slippers Mimi!

 Taylor is enjoying conference.  Every time the organ comes on, he starts chirping away - loudly.   The first half of the week he didn't do so well.  To the point that I started to worry about more permanent brain damage from seizures or mini-strokes.  When he is tired he really favors his left side and keeps his left arm/hand curled up.  And he has a harder time walking now or using his hands.  But by the end of the week he started cheering up and relaxing his left side more.  We went to ward temple night on Wednesday and I couldn't help sitting there and wondering how long Taylor will be with us.  Sometimes I think we will have him for a long earthly life and then other times I realize how fragile he is.

Spencer met with his psychiatrist today (with Robyn along to distract and annoy).  I appreciate his doctor a lot but boy is he chatty.  Two hours for an appointment to see how Spencer is doing plus commuting to and from the U of U makes for a very long morning.  But he helps me see how good Spencer is doing overall.  We changed his meds a bit to help with the high anxiety he gets especially over making decisions.  And Spencer has started wearing an ipod while he does his math homework which seems to help him not be annoyed by the sound of little kids playing.

Friday night Jeremy and I got to go out to one of our favorite restaurants Biaggis up in SLC with our neighbors the Larsons.  We are going on a cruise with the Larsons in February so we had fun discussing what we wanted to do on our trip.  Plus we ate an obscene amount of good food and returned home to watch the A-Team.  The movie did a great job of playing off the old T.V. show and was a lot of fun to chuckle at.

 I have been getting up before the sun to run lately.  I have a 10k this Saturday and then a half-marathon at the end of the month.  After doing 12 miles yesterday with some friends the 13.2 miles don't worry me quite so much.  I am still not that fast but I am much faster than I was two years ago when I started running so I am happy.  I am almost getting used to running looking like a dork, with my headlamp on and my reflector vest.  Yesterday two of my friends and I are running along a trail in the pitch black and I just kept thinking, "please, don't fall!"  But the nice part about running in the dark is that I swear your body thinks its still asleep so you just cruise along without thinking too much about it.

Back to conference again.  Watching conference with kids is a great practice in patience and dilligence.  Allison and Spencer are getting better about listening quietly and Robyn made it through one session due to a box of candy and a game of bingo.  The rest of the sessions has seen Robyn digging through our toys to find the loudest most obnoxious things she can think of to drag out.  I am hoping some of the messages get through to her simply by proximity to the T.V.

Love, Heather

I finally finished my scarf for Allison that my sister Christina helped me start in DECEMBER!  The flowers didn't quite turn out looking like flowers but they are still cute I think.  This scarf was re-crocheted so many times until I could get it right.