Cold much anyone?

One week here and we've already been lucky enough to visit the local hospital! Last night Nick woke up at 12:30am shivering badly enough that the shivering actually woke ME up. It was totally odd and a bit scary. He was saying the room was freezing cold and he needed more blankets and was pretty out of it. It was 70 degrees as usual, but I got two blankets for him anyway but he wasn't getting any better. I checked his temperature and it was at 101 so I got him some ibuprofen to try to take the temp down. I asked him about a bunch of symptoms and did a check on the iPod to see if I could find a non-lethal explanation. Of course good old webmd always lists the awful things first saying "see a doctor immediately or you might die"... because that is the comforting news you want to read at 1 in the morning when you're trying to figure out why your husband broke out in shivers. About twenty minutes later he was still shivering, so I asked Nick if he wanted Wally to give him a blessing.He said yes so I got Wally and he gave him a quick blessing. After 10 more minutes of shaking, Wally and I decided it was time to take Nick to the Emergency Room. (Several other symptoms played into the decision as well but I'll leave those out for Nick's sake and yours). On our way out the door he started feeling nauseous and threw up for several minutes straight so out went the ibuprofen and up went the fever. We were pretty concerned and even more so finding out that his temp was up to 103 when we got there though he said he was feeling "much better". They drew some blood, took a flu swab and ended up giving him two IV's. About three hours later, they determined it was likely to be a bad stomach virus that has been going around and sent us home with instructions to have him rest a lot and take some anti-nausea pills to help keep food down. He got some good sleep when the tylenol got his temp closer to normal and the anti-nausea meds helped stave off the puking. Thankfully all is well again and Nick is feeling great. Ready for another day working at Wal Mart. It is times like this though that make me appreciate all of the health we normally have and really get annoyed at WebMd for not including some sort of disclaimer at the top of "It's probably nothing that's going to kill you because all of these life threatening diseases and conditions are extremely rare, so tell your loved one to take Tylenol and go back to sleep."

For the love of Autumn, it's time for a change!

I love the Autumn. The leaves are changing, weather is changing, soon the time is changing. So much change. I love how pretty everything looks as you drive down the streets. Even the overcast skies are pretty to me against the bright orange, yellow, red and some green leaves. The streets are lined with leaves falling. It's just a great time of year. So many holidays to look forward to! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and then New Years.

Ironically, this Autumn, we will be figuring out a big change for us! Where Nick will work after graduating in just a few more months! He has only 7 and a half weeks left of classes towards his Bachelor's degree. He has had interview after interview this month and we are waiting in anticipation to know all of our options and then make our decision. In the next few weeks we'll know if we're staying here in Utah or if we'll end up moving to Arkansas, Idaho, California, Ohio... or any other number of places. So many options that may pop up for us. It's exciting! I can't wait for the next couple of weeks to come to a close so we can have a plan set in place for what we're doing after he graduates! Meanwhile, I just get so excited about the future that I look at houses on Zillow in our main potential locations. :) It keeps me occupied.

In other news, Harvey must've got something from watching all the other babies and little ones at the Shreeve Halloween party we went to on Sunday because he is a lot more interested in practicing sitting up now. We'll see how much longer it takes the little guy to catch on. Some things about him right now. He is a 110% Mama's boy. If someone else is holding him and he sees me, he just loses it and throws himself in my direction. A skill he's getting good at is turning the pages in books when I read him. He also enjoys knocking. He makes a fist and hits everything these days. When he wakes up from a nap in a good mood, he will sit in his crib and knock on the backboard until I get him instead of cry. When I'm changing his diaper, he knocks on the wall or changing table. He knocks on the toys, his books, the side of his car seat, pretty much everything he can. I have no idea where he got it either because we didn't teach him to do that, but he sure is cute when he does it! He's also very much into trying our food. If we are eating, even if he just ate, he tries to pull the food out of our hands and shove it in his mouth before we can grab it from him. He grabbed a huge piece of cookie the other night from right out of my hands. He loves stuffed animals, music, and anything electronic. Another recent thing is his love for paper. He likes to scrunch paper and try to eat it before we catch him. He is a sneaky little guy who can be perfectly content playing by himself if he is getting into trouble, but he would rather be around people. He loves to talk with us and cuddle too. He is starting to catch on that Nick is "Dadadada" and I am "Mamamama". He will say "Dadadada" when Nick comes home and if he's sad or wants to be picked up he says "Mamamama." He loves to be held and probably would be fine in my arms all day long if I am standing. His perfect day would be me carrying him around all day long on one giant outdoor walk, letting him take bites of whatever I eat, letting him eat paper and also my phone, and skip all of his naps. We love our little guy AND I cannot believe he's going to be 8 months tomorrow! His first birthday just keeps getting closer and closer! This first year of his is going by way too fast.

Vegas & Other Updates

Our Vegas trip turned out to be a lot of fun! Nick's mom was kind enough to watch Harvey for us last Monday and Tuesday. Monday we drove down to Vegas. First, we went to the Atomic Testing Museum, which was really cool. The Area 51 exhibit had some cool stuff. There were a few "what if" sections that had testimonials from people who used to work in certain sections and swore they were working on an alien craft, but the rest of the other people said it is basically a military weapons/aircraft test facility. It started up during the cold war when the U.S. was trying to keep up with Russia. They thought Russia had all this technology so they were trying to build it. Then they'd steal Russia's more advanced technology and reverse engineer it. There were a few cool things we read about and saw in that. One was a plane that basically has this camouflage exterior that changes to it's surroundings and scatters radio waves to go undetected on radars. Kind of neat! The other thing we watched a video of was this plane that went so fast you could SEE it breaking the sound barrier. That was pretty cool. It looked like a ripple effect, only in the sky!

After the museum we checked in at our hotel, the Stratosphere. Neither of us had ever been to Vegas before so the Casino atmosphere was pretty funny to us with all the lights flashing, videos playing, card games going, SO much going on in all different directions on the main floor. And how many different kinds of slot machine themes do people need?? Seriously! Wheel of Fortune 1, 2 AND 3, Bay Watch, Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, etc etc etc. JUST in slot machines!? We were there on a Monday and Tuesday and it was still pretty packed. Aside from that, we had a few things we wanted to do but nothing else set in stone. We ended up eating at the buffet, walking towards Fremont street, giving up 3/4 of the way there and stopping in the pawn shop from the show Pawn Stars instead, and riding the "Big Shot" ride at the top of the Stratosphere. It was a lot of fun even though we didn't have time to do everything that we thought would be fun. Maybe we'll go back again some day and we'll have some more stuff to do on our list already.

Meanwhile, Harvey did pretty good for his first night away from us. Grammy Potts took great care of him even though the second day he was being a little stink and decided he had had enough of taking milk from a bottle so she had to squeeze the bottle into his mouth to get him to eat the milk. He was fussy for a day or two after that but now he's back to his happy, bubbly self. Goofing around, trying to crawl, stand, sit up and grab everything in sight. I can't believe he had his half birthday already too! His first birthday seems like it's just going to sneak up so quickly since the past 6 months went by so fast!