Rory's Zoo Adventure

Along with the Bayly Bank, Teag and I also give our kids points for different things; random acts of kindness, being helpful with out being asked, etc. They never know when they're going to get them, but once they've earned a certain amount, they're qualified for different prizes. A special treat, an activity with mom or dad, or a dinner with mom or dad. We're not trying to bribe good behavior out of them, we're mostly just trying to foster a positive atmosphere in our home.

After trailing behind her sisters for awhile, Rory finally earned enough points for her special activity a few days ago. As such, we decided to take her to the zoo and see the new Rocky Shores exhibit that recently opened. First up though, was the elephants.

Rory exclaimed over how large they were, but she was most interested in seeing the baby. Suri isn't all that small anymore, but Rory was satisfied.

The new exhibit is really quite spectacular! Not only is it much more modern looking, they have new animals that Hogle Zoo hadn't had in the past, including seals, bald eagles, and a variety of bears, including a polar bear. The polar bear wasn't around for viewing that day, however. But Rory seemed rather pleased at being able to view the Grizzlies up close.

The sea lions and seals were awesome to watch! They would swim in circles, and right next to the glass, which all the kids loved. You can see one right next to Rory's head in the picture below.

 

Finn accompanied us, and loved being out and about. I can't say whether or not he cared about any of the animals, but he liked the walk at least!

Rory kept begging to see the giraffes, so she was quite excited when we finally made our way there. The three giraffes behind us had their backs to another giraffe behind them. It was very odd, like he was being ostracized or something. All four of them just sat there, barely moving other than to stick their long blue tongues out and lick their faces.

As we were walking along one of the paths, we came across this family of geese with their little group of goslings. They had no fear of people at all, but we still kept Rory a safe distance away. Those fluffy little goslings were adorable!

And no zoo trip is complete without measuring your child against the gorilla silhouettes!

Speaking of gorilla's, all three of them were indoors, so we got to see them up close. The big male one in the background even pounded his chest when one of the smaller gorillas came in his enclosure. Rory decided to put on a show for him, but I don't think he was impressed.

It was a lovely, sun-filled Spring day, and it was a great way to spend a few hours. The new exhibits are definitely worth a look, and an African Savannah exhibit will be opening in 2014 as well. If it's done as well as Rocky Shores was, I'm looking forward to seeing it!

20/15 Never Looked So Good

Farewell, dear glasses. You served me well, but I'm happy I no longer need you.

Most of you will know that I have had absolutely horrible vision since I was young. I mean, legally blind from grade school. I wore glasses forever; hideously large purple ones. I was so excited when I finally reached an age that my parents deemed mature enough for contacts. I think it was twelve or thirteen. No more smudgy lenses, no more fogging when I came in from out of the cold. Contacts were amazing, I loved them. But they still had their drawbacks. I was still blind when I took them out at night. I couldn't just wake up and pop them on my face like glasses, I needed a sink and a mirror, making sleepovers or camping a bit of a hassle. Driving anywhere with a window open or the top down was pretty much impossible, and there were those fun times when my contact would just randomly pop off my eye for no reason, and I'd have to gingerly crouch down on the floor to hunt it up praying I didn't accidentally step on it.

I remember hearing about  LASIK sometime in my teens, and thinking how amazing it sounded. I knew it would be a long time before I could afford it, and I figured the procedures would be nice and perfected by then. Fast forward many more years, and I'm an adult who has begun to feel irritated with my contacts. I have four kids who love to take turns waking me up in the middle of the night for leg cramps, or bad dreams, or potty breaks, etc., and the glasses fumbling had grown to be a real annoyance. Not to mention, I couldn't ever read the clock to know what time it was in the middle of the night, despite the fact that it projects the time in huge numbers on our ceiling.

My old dream of LASIK resurfaced with a vengeance. So after a little research, I found out that Moran Eye Center was conducting a study for LASIK patients that involved very little but gave you a $2000 discount on the procedure! I called that very day, and was instructed to stop wearing my contacts immediately. Two weeks later, I had my first appointment where they verified that I was, in fact, a candidate for LASIK as long as my vision didn't get any worse in the next three weeks. When I went back three weeks later, my vision had actually improved. Odd to say the least. So they wanted to see me a third time a few weeks later to make sure that my eye had stabilized. When I went in for that appointment, my eye was closer to its original correction, and the doctor said we had enough info to proceed. My LASIK appointment was scheduled for two days later, April 18th.

Despite the fact that they told me the whole appointment would only last 2 hours at a maximum, I ended up waiting for over an hour an a half just to be seen. When they finally called my name, the nurse had me put on this lovely paper hairnet, and cleaned my eyes with iodine.

That's attractive!

Shortly thereafter, they were ready for me in the room with all the lasers. I laid down under one machine whose sole purpose was to inject little gas bubbles under the surface of your eye to create a flap. In order to do this, they have to stick a suction cup on your eye for the machine to dock with. Suffice it to say I felt like my eye was being slowly shoved to the back of my brain. It was an unpleasant experience that I had to turn around and repeat on the second eye. My vision actually went completely out for this, by the way. Seriously freaky, but at least they'd warned me of that possibility. When they were done, I sat up, and it looked as though I were looking through skim milk. They led me to the second machine where they inserted a specula to keep me from blinking. The doctor loosened the flap, flipped it back over, and the laser began tracking my eye movement while I stared at a flashing green light.

Now I'll just tell you right now, that the laser itself doesn't hurt, but it's so bright on your now-very-light-sensitive eyes that it felt painful at times. It also smelled like burning hair, which again, they'd warned me about. It only took 22 seconds of treatment on my right eye, and 23 seconds on the other. That's like $50 a second.

When it was finished, the doctor replaced the flaps, and made sure they were laying nicely. My eyes were still quite blurry, but the numbing drops kept them from hurting for the moment. A nurse taped some sweet plastic shields over each eye, than gave me some even sweeter giant black granny glasses to protect me on the ride home. At this point, I was starting to feel pretty nauseous and had a nasty headache. The car ride home, with all the twists and turns and steep hills, felt endless. Once we got there, I went straight to my bed and laid down, ready to relax and let the healing begin. I was supposed to keep the eye shields on for the rest of the day, but the tape was making me crazy.

Racquetball anyone?

When the numbing drops finally wore off, my eyes did burn quite a bit. I had a hard time even opening them, and Teag had to help me apply my prescription drops for the rest of the day. The next morning however, I could see amazingly well! I still had a bit of haloing, but that supposed to be gone in a week or two. At my two subsequent follow ups, I've been seeing 20/15 out of both eyes!

My older kids were a little freaked out by the whole thing, and seemed to expect that I would emerge looking horribly  disfigured or something. The only evidence of my procedure was some large broken blood vessels on the whites of my eyes.

Even those haven't been that bad. Overall, it's been seriously amazing, and I'm so happy I was able to get this done. For me, having been SO blind for so long... this is life changing.

The Bayly Bank

As my kids get older, I've been fretting about how to do allowance. I've heard all sorts of variations on the topic; pay them to do chores, give them money that's not connected to any work to teach them money management, how much you should pay based on age, etc. I wanted to use allowance to teach my kids some basic principles of how the world works, including budgeting and savings, but I know most of them are too young at this point to grasp these concepts. I also didn't want to wait until they were old enough to understand the big concepts, and then throw it all at them with no foundation. I happened across a blog where the mom talks about this same issue, and what their family has discovered works for them, through trial and error. The blog is called 71 Toes and the Bayly Bank borrows heavily from their system, with a few changes that work better for our family such as it right now.

It starts out like this. Our kids have a chart where we keep track of some basic things that are required of them on a daily basis.

Maisie and Danyn are responsible for making sure their schoolwork and chores are completed daily, that they listen and follow directions, and that they maintain a good attitude. Rory also has listening and following directions and attitude, as well as finishing her dinner on time, and having a good nap. If one of these items isn't completed satisfactorily, they don't get an 'X' in that column for the day, and a percentage is taken from their weekly allowance.

Then on Sundays we settle up. We picked Sundays because everyone is usually home, and it's less chaotic. Now rather than just handing over their money, and hoping for the best, we've introduced the 10-20-70 Principle. Ten percent goes straight to tithing, twenty percent to savings, and seventy is theirs to do with as they wish.

I bought a little box to use as our "bank", and inside it we keep tithing envelopes and check registers. The kids put their ten percent into a tithing envelope, and the twenty percent for savings is added into an individual check register. Teag and I as the bankers have the responsibility of keeping track of how much money is actually being deposited into their savings, money that can be used for college, missions, maybe a car, who knows.

As Maisie gets older, she'll have more responsibility as far as calculating her own deposits and such.

Hopefully this will be a workable solution for our family, and something that's relatively easy to maintain. The kids are definitely excited about it right now, and I hope they will maintain that excitement even after the newness wears off. I'm sure we'll be changing/adding things as time goes by, but I feel like this is a good starting point at least. It's important to me that my kids have a real understanding of money, savings, credit, and budgeting before they leave the nest.

One Sick Finny: Part Two

So I posted a little over a month ago about how sick Finn has been lately. In that time, things had continued to worsen. He had been on three more antibiotics, for a total of five, nearly consecutive rounds. He hadn't been gaining weight, or moving forward much in his development. He woke up frequently at night, and just often seemed like an unhappy kid. Worst of all, the ear infections just wouldn't go away. I finally made an appointment for him with his pediatrician where I essentially demanded they do a bunch of tests to see if there was some underlying cause. He agreed, and they took some blood, did a deep suction of his sinuses, and did a chest X-ray. Finn was surprisingly patient for all of this, and just fell asleep after awhile, tuckered out from all his tests.

They also gave him a monster antibiotic in shot form, for three days in a row. It was looking promising, but alas, ten days later, his ears looked terrible again. After that, they decided to call in the big guns, and we were referred to an ENT, who immediately scheduled him to get tubes in his ears a mere two days later. They didn't want to make him wait any longer, and I was very grateful for that. So yesterday morning, Finny and I checked into Primary's bright and early. I worried he'd be grumpy at both the early hour, and the fact that I couldn't feed him, but he was in good spirits.

In the waiting room

It didn't take long for a nurse to call us back, and then we were getting his clothes changed in anticipation of his surgery.

Again, he was really happy, and easygoing. He was charming all the nurses and doctors with his waves, and smiles. A short while later, I spoke with both the doctor and the anesthesiologist, and then it was time for us to walk to the operating room doors. This was hard, as I had to hand my sweet boy off to a total stranger, and pray that they would take good care of him. A tympanostomy is such a quick procedure that I was only in the waiting room for about fifteen minutes before the doctor showed up. He said the procedure had gone very well, but that Finn's ears were very infected, more so than is typical when placing tubes. The poor kid has obviously been in a lot of pain these past few months, but he's been a trooper. I was escorted back to recovery where I saw one of the nurses holding a crying Finn. After she passed him off to me, he settled down, and chugged a small bottle of glucose water. 

It didn't take him long to get back to his typical, playful self, and they only had to monitor him for a few minutes to make sure his stats were okay.

He was such a good boy, and he seems like he's recovering well from the procedure. He honestly seems happier too, more energetic for a longer period than I've seen for awhile. I pray that this will be the miracle he needs to finally get well and stay that way. Thank you to everyone for your kind words and prayers on Finn's behalf!

City Creek Hike

Another of our Spring Break activities was to go on a hike. We'd like to go on at least one hike every week this summer, and we figured now was a good time to start easing the kids into it, by starting with something relatively easy. Most of the way we walked was paved even.

 We strapped Finn into a baby backpack, and he had a blast! The poor kid has hardly gotten out of the house lately, due to illness, so he was thrilled to be out in the open air.

 The rest of the kids were really good sports as well. Lots of excitement, very little whining, and a good sense of adventure and curiosity were the prevailing attitudes of the day.

 After we'd hiked for about an hour or so, we stopped for a little snack.

Then we worked our way back to the car, even though the older kids wanted to continue. Teag and I worried they'd hike one way until they were tired, and then have no energy left to make their way back down. Hopefully we'll build up some good hiking muscles this summer, with repeated excursions.

The Art of the Brick

The kids had their Spring Break last week, and we had originally planned to go to St. George for most of it, but some last minute flying for Teag put the kibosh on that. As such, we found ourselves looking for ways to occupy our kids time during that week, to prevent boredom, and the whining that tends to accompany it. One of the things we did was head to Park City for "The Art of the Brick" exhibit at the Kimball Art Center.

The artist, Nathan Sawaya, has created all kinds of sculptures out of Lego's! Our kids love Lego's, so we thought it was worth a look. A lot of his sculptures were in the shape of people in different attitudes, which was interesting by itself.

But he also had several 2D "portraits", or sculptures of recognizable landmarks, etc.

All of it, made with Lego's! It was pretty amazing to see how everything was put together, and the creativity that went into it. We were all very impressed.

The display isn't huge, you can see the whole thing in maybe 15 minutes, but it was a different and cool way to spend an afternoon. The exhibit is open until April 21st, and it's free, so check it out if you have the time!

Easter

This year the Rogers celebrated Easter a day late, due to some scheduling conflicts. Us Bayly's got to enjoy a tasty Easter dinner at the McKinley's the day before, so our kids were blessed with a few days of Easter festivities. Monday night we got together early to work on dying eggs. my brother Kevin has really been in to creating eggs with the Pysanky method, and decided to try teaching the older kids how to make some of their own. Alas, the concept seemed to be beyond them,  but I'll show you a few of Kevin's masterpieces.

They're seriously cool, but a lot of work, as you can imagine. It's actually bad luck to keep them, so I got to be the recipient of the second egg :).

Despite gorgeous weather for several days leading up to it, Monday night was looking pretty gray and nasty. As such, we had to hurry and get everything hidden before the downpour began. We locked the kids in the garage to eat their dinner (supervised of course), while the women made quick work of baskets and treats. Then we let them run hog-wild til everything was found.

Finn is still too young to participate in these kinds of activities,and with him being such a sickie lately, he stayed inside with Grandma, and watched the fun through the door.

Not the ideal Easter Egg Hunt, but the kids didn't seem to mind. Easter weather is always a crap-shoot anyway. Happy Easter to all!