Happy Birthday Conner!

This year Conner was much more vocal about what he wanted for his birthday.  It is amazing to me how good his memory is.  When we started discussing his upcoming birthday he wanted to make a pinata, since Alan had one for his birthday.  He also wanted to make the exact same invitations and deliver them to all of his friends.  I said yes to the pinata and no to the invitations.  We decided to do a family party this year, but to make up for the lack of friends we did go swimming as a family (one of Conner's favorite activities).  So a week before his birthday we started on the pinata.  For some reason Conner decided he really wanted a horse pinata.  Conner had very specific ideas of how it should look.  I taped 2 balloons together, one for the body and one for the head, and then I tried to tape toilet paper rolls on for the legs but Conner didn't like that idea so we skipped the leg phase.  After 3 layers of paper mache I let Conner paint it. At this point Conner decided he did want legs on it but I couldn't get the legs to stick to the paper mache so we just painted it. 

I love the look of concentration on his face!

He was so intent on his work!

I glued felt legs on at the end and we added a tail, mane and ears and eyes to complete it.  The finished project:

We invited our friends Alex, Josh and Emily to come and break the pinata and have cake and ice cream with us.  Conner taking the first hit:

Alan made a dent in it:

I brought Micah over and handed him the bat at which point he burst into tears...he was still getting over his 105 degree fever and not really feeling like hitting the pinata, I guess.

Conner also decided he wanted a horse cake.  I have no idea where all the horse enthusiasm came from - he hadn't mentioned horses before his birthday and he hasn't mentioned them since, but he really wanted a horse pinata and a horse cake.  Thankfully the cake was a lot easier than the pinata.  Grandma and Grandpa P. were here to help celebrate his birthday so my mom helped decorate the cake, while my dad helped decorate the pinata.  They both turned out great!

Everyone singing to Conner

Make a wish!

This year was the first year that Conner was able to blow his candles out - Yea Conner!

Conner opening up his own creature power suit:

Yea! His own flash light:

Opening the water bottle that he picked out for himself at the store, and wrapped for himself.

He also got a new set of sheets that he was able to pick out and a container of sand toys that he was pretty excited about.  Happy Birthday Conner!

Setting new records

Early Friday morning (1:30 am) Micah woke up with a fever.  I could tell by feeling his forehead that he had a fever so I gave him some ibuprofen and we were up and down with him the rest of the night.  At 7:30 that morning I took his temperature and it was 102.8 so I gave him some more ibuprofen.  Micah kind of perked up a little after that and ate a little bit of breakfast but after 45 minutes he wanted his blanket and he just laid on the couch.  He was extremely lethargic and didn't have the energy to move - he just laid there.  After 3 hours I took his temperature again and it was 103.2.  Its never good when their temperature goes up while on medicine.  I decided to call the doctor and they set up an appointment for 45 minutes later.  We got to the appointment by 12 and they took me in.  After a few questions they took his temperature and it was 105 - Yikes!  That is a new record for our kids.  The highest temperature our kids have ever had has been around 103.5 and it wasn't a record I was hoping to break.  Anyway the nurse quickly gave him some tylenol and gave me a wet cloth to try to cool him down.  They did a quick strep test and it came back negative so they decided to draw some blood to see if he had any bacteria in his blood.  That was not fun.  The poor boy was so sick that he didn't have the energy to fight at all but he did cry pretty hard.  I felt so bad for him.  It was scary to see him so sick and lethargic and to feel how hot he was and see how red and flushed he was.  Anyway after an hour and half of sitting in the doctor's office his temp was back to 103 so they sent us home.  They said that it was probably a virus.  He stayed pretty sick the rest of that day but his fever never got back up above 103.

 Here is what he did all day - laid around in his diaper, preferably snuggled close to Reed or I

That night my parents came for a visit and Reed and my dad gave him a priesthood blessing.  He slept, restlessly, in our bed that night and by the next morning his fever was much lower.  He continued to improve until he actually started to play and walk around by Saturday afternoon.  It was such a relief to see him walk over to the toys and dump out a box and to hear him start to chatter again.  Today he has been great, he is eating again and getting into everything and happily chattering away.  Days like Friday make me so grateful for how healthy we usually are - good health is such a blessing!