Our TV has a mind of it's own lately. Out of nowhere it will start throwing out captions...all over the television: top, middle, sideways, you get the picture. For a while we were learning Spanish, and a little bit of French, but lately it has started speaking to us in a whole new language.

On an unrelated note, I keep finding Maddie whispering secrets to the blank television screen. What's that about?

Globe Trotters

We've been world travelers lately. And by world, I mean travelers of two western U.S. states. We had so much fun (which made everyone getting sick as soon as we got home seem even worse). First stop: Park City for a Kopp family ski trip. My dad flew all of my family out to Utah, and provided sitters, so all the adults to spend the trip skiing. Even Maddie and Jude were able to hit the slopes. On her second day of ski school Maddie was good enough to ride the chair lift up to the top of the mountain and ski down with some help from Greg and Rob. I was SUCH a proud mama that day! We had to "exaggerate" Jude's age a bit and say he was four, rather than a kid that had JUST turned three, because ski-school was for kids four and up. His instructor eventually (five minutes into class when Maddie revealed the truth) found out that he was only three, but they let him stay anyway. They even said he was a fantastic three year old skier. I'm missing a lot of pictures because I didn't want to risk taking my camera on the slopes. Instead, I opted to buy a disposable camera to capture those awesome moments. (I quickly realized it was a dumb idea because, well, disposable cameras are stupid.) Maybe I'll scan some of those pictures eventually...

We also enjoyed an afternoon of tubing and a sleigh-ride-dinner.

Just as nice as the snow and fresh air was spending time lounging around the condo trying to polish off the RIDICULOUS amount of groceries that Jessica and I thought would be "appropriate," for the trip. Apparently fifteen people don't need $500 worth of snacks and breakfasts for five days. (Sorry, Dad!) :)


Thanks again, Dad, for this AMAZING week. It was so good to spend time with all of the family.

I'd like to formally apologize to all the BYU students dining at Tucano's last night. If Madelyn had made the announcement two minutes earlier that she was going to "choke," we probably would have made it to the bathroom in time. Instead we rushed away from our table, got stuck behind a server, only to have her throw up all over the floor next to your table. To the lady that had her back to us, who literally had to hold her husband's head forward so he wouldn't see the mess, then duplicate the problem, I'm sorry about the throw up on your chair, and your purse.

I'm also sorry for the birthday celebration that was ruined by round two of vomit. We really were on our way to the bathroom, but your birthday-drum-song distracted Maddie, and caused her to go your direction, rather than to the bathroom.

And last, but not least, I'd like to apologize for the hundred-plus expensive dinners that were ruined by four, on the way to the bathroom, vomits. I cannot even imagine the stories that are being told today...or the amount of cleanup that it took to sanitize that floor. I'm sorry I walked away, but I had no other choice, there was much more puke potential. Don't worry, I got mine too - when Ella started the whole process again at home.

Yuck.

Checking In

I know, I know...I REALLY left you hanging. But I've been having a fabulous couple of weeks. I'll post all about them in the next few days, but after receiving a call from my sister-in-law who was still worried about Ella, I realized I really left off on a bad note. Just know that our darling Ella no longer looks like a leopard.

I also found this video of Maddie. I don't even know where to begin. I mean, where did she learn to dance like that?!


Check back soon for adventures in Park City and Vegas!

When your little girl looks like this one day:
And this the next day, there's cause for concern.
But when she wakes up with a fever, starts throwing up, and has progressively swelled into this:
there's cause for a 4am ER visit.

After a epinephrine shot, and steroid, she's looking much, much better. No more penicillin for our little Ella.

(That is unless we take the advice of the original on-call nurse who said we could probably keep giving her the penicillin as long as we had some benadryl to cancel out the allergy.) Probably not.