Found it!

We lost touch with our own blog, but we have found it again. Yay!

Bandanna Boys

One of the fun things Bishops get to do is go up to girls camp. For several years now, we have been going up and singing with the girls. This past year we did that, but also sang to the girls.

They named us "The Bandanna Boys" because they had given us the pink camo bandannas. We had a great time with it.

Fish On!

Each year I plan a fishing weekend with some friends; I look forward to the trip all year long. It is a time to relax and enjoy three of my favorite things: the mountains, fishing, and friends. We keep it simple; we eat and we fish (and the fishing is optional). We fish a small stream called Silver Creek. It is surprisingly productive and has become my favorite place to dunk a worm. We went last week over a Friday night. The menu was tasty and simple. We ate chili dogs and trout for dinner(Its a tight fit to squeeze a trout in that bun with the hot dog.), breadfast sandwiches for breakfast and we all skipped lunch.

I took my camera up with me, and I don't mean to brag, but my outdoor photography skills are beginning to rival those of the great photographer Pat McManus. You may be surprised that I took this one myself with the fish gyrating on the end of the line (that's its tail at the bottom of the photo).



The picture I didn't get was me slipping on the rock and taking a hard spill, smashing my knuckes, scraping my leg and very nearly requiring the services of an oral surgeon. But I never dropped my pole! Of course, that's why I smashed my knuckles.

Midmorning Saturday a bunch of us found ourselves at the confluence of Silver Creek and Peace Creek. Jared and I wandered up Peace Creek and had some good success. Jared caught this beautiful brook trout.



I caught a brook trout every bit as beautiful, just not as big as this one. Soon after we got back to the car, a guy looking very much like a fish and game officer shows up. It just so happens, at that very moment, I realized I left my fishing license back at the cabin. I very nonchalantly finished putting my pole away hoping he would not ask to see our licenses. Turns out he is a forest guy not a fish and game guy. He did, however, inspect the licensing of a four wheeler one of our group brought up and found it outdated. Luckily David wasn't there. The forest guy asked lots of questions, but left before David got back. When David returned he hightailed it back to the cabin, and we didn't didn't see the forest guy again.

The trip ended all too soon, but we had a great time. I didn't get a final count, but I am sure we caught over 20 fish as a group. Next time you see one of the guys, ask them about the killer whales, the captain, and the whale lips.

Out on the Town

The Friday before Valentine's day, Nancy and I were planning on spending the day in Boise. We were going to go to the temple, shop, eat, and go to a movie. I didn't know it when we left, but Nancy had made all the arrangements for us to stay in town overnight. I didn't find out 'till mid afternoon and I was extremely suprised and delighted. We had a fabulous time, and I can't tell Nancy enough how grateful I am she made the arrangements.

I thought it would be fun to take pictures of everywhere we stopped and I would post the pictures here on our blog. Nancy wasn't convinced this was a great idea, but she went along with it. Nancy had some coupons she wanted to use so our first stop was at Walgreens. We took the picture and went to the temple next. After we got out of the temple, we found somone to take our picture. I thought it would be nice to have a good picture of us at the temple and the gentleman we asked had a big, professional looking camera. I figured out chances were good. The problem, you wonder? This is when the camera's batteries decided to die. Long story short, the only picture we took to commemorate our wonderful day away was this not so great picture of us at Walgreens.

Matthew Enters the Scene

Hey, this is Matthew. The oldest child and one of the main forces in this family. ( Although me and my mother would probably argue about what kind of force.) I am so exited to finally be able to put posts on this ridiculously, errr, remarkably and uniquely named blog. But, I am fully prepared to make up for the name.

First I would like to make it known how proud I am of my parents taking that giant technological step and joining Facebook. Cellphones and Facebook! What next!?

Next I would like to make it known that this year was my first Stake Dance, which will actually not be the subject of this post. The only reason I am actually putting up a post and not telling all you faithful followers what I have been doing this year, is because I have just been informed if there is no subject there will be no post by myself. And I certainly would not want to deprive you of that pleasure. The subject is actually the Klondike me and Nathan went on this year.

Me and Nathan ( I know it's not proper grammar!) got up to Camp Glenwood at about 4:00pm on the first Friday in February, and me and Nathan, 'scuse me, Nathan and I started on our snowcaves. I got the biggest drift, but unfortunately, it was right in front of a 200ft long sledding hill. Lets just say the cave didn't work out. Nathan's did though. Well, after a while, me and Nathan decided to try the sledding hill. On the way up a 13-14 year old with his little brother passed us going really fast. About halfway down, they veered of and hit a pine tree hard. The poor little guy had been in front, so he got the worst of it. He was screaming all the way back to the first aid station. The next day we participated in the Klondike race. And, defying all odds, got second place in orienteering. Everybody was out of it on the ride home. Well, everybody had a great time, but I'm not sure I will be going next year!

Takin' the Plunge...

We have been meaning to get up to the mountains forever. We finally made plans to spend a couple of days up at the cabin and we found out that one of the bridges on the way was going to be under construction starting the second day. We decided we would make a day trip of it. We did and had a great time! The weather was gorgeous and we had the place to ourselves. We visited with Uncle Wayne, went swimming, fishing, and hiking. Here are some photos...

Harvest Time

Monday night we went out to the garden to do some weeding and harvest some tomatoes. John immediately sampled some of the dirt and seemed to quite enjoy it. He also discovered cherry tomatoes and ate several (that's my boy).


Julia found the flowers (for her hair).


And here's the whole family (minus the photographer).

A New Way to Canoe

Did you know that you don't have to pack up and take the kids to the lake for them to have a good time with the canoe? The subdivisions around here have areas that are made to catch the extra rainwater so the streets won't flood. So after a good amount of precipitation fell on Thursday and Friday, the drainage areas were full. The kids had a great idea to take the canoe down and paddle it around. So James, Nathan, Daniel, Stephen, Julia and Samuel (Matthew was at scout camp and John was napping) put the canoe on the piano dolly and pushed it down the street. It was quite a sight!




They had a great time paddling around and around. We had a few people stop and laugh at us and someone that we didn't even know stopped and took a picture. The kids have probably landed on someone's blog that we don't even know!!
Don't think that it was all just canoeing. They all came home dripping wet but really enjoyed their time in the water. I missed this part, but James says that at one time all of the kids, himself and the dog were in the canoe at one time! I wish I'd gotten a picture of that! Fun times at the Aydelotte house!

Adventures in cooking with food storage

I've been inspired by our friend Bob to write on our blog for the very first time. I can't make any promises after this entry, but who knows what may happen!
I've been really putting forth some effort to make good food with our food storage. It started with our wheat. In the past when making wheat bread, it has turned out yummy but very crumbly. That makes for good toast but not so good sandwiches for lunch. So for the last several years, I've stuck with a good white bread recipe. No complaints from my family.:) But I'm always on the lookout for a good wheat bread recipe. I've been following a "cooking with food storage" blog and she posted a recipe that she makes that sounded incredible. So I thought I would give it a try. A few of the ingredients were a little strange but I dove in with the hopes of making a bread that my whole family would eat. What's a little vinegar, or a cup of potato flakes? Low and behold, it turned out awesome! And you can't even taste the vinegar! And as for sandwiches, the bread is perfect for that, too.
But I didn't stop there. As we were drypack canning with our ward, one of the ladies there brought chocolate chip cookies made with white beans. Kind of weird, right? But they were really good! So I came home with the recipe and tried it. The first batch wasn't what I wanted. So I let the kids eat as many as they wanted, which they promptly did with no complaints! The next batch I made with oat flour instead of whole wheat. YUM! Now I don't have to feel bad about eating cookies for breakfast, right?:)
So on to different things. My children eat refried beans like they grow on trees, or something like that. So we thought it would be good to try the homemade kind. My first try was on Friday and even though I thought they were slightly burned, James, Matthew and Nathan loved them! 2nd try - today I added more water (in hopes of not burning them), then blended them for a short time. I became a little carried away with the salt, but other than that, they were good. I cooked 3 cups of dried beans and they are nearly gone! (It helped that it was fast Sunday and several of the kids were really hungry after church!)
What is next, you might ask? I'm not quite sure. I have a couple of very picky eaters. I'm trying to figure out how I can "hide" some of this good stuff in the foods they will eat. But I'm sure I'll come up with something soon. Until then, I'll continue to work on the spices in the refried beans. Wish me luck!!

Fifteen years and counting...

Thursday Nancy and I began celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary. Our MO is to celebrate events for several days and spend too much money. We started later Thursday evening because we had to take Daniel and Stephen to the pine wood derby races. We went to Olive Garden that night. They messed up my order, so we ended getting mine for free. Nancy let it slip that it was our anniversary and they gave us a free celebration cake which was yummy. We were happy Brent and JeNeale stopped by after we got home to wish us happy anniversary.

Friday I took the day off work so that we could go out shop or whatever. We ended up buying the kids a bunch of books and very little for ourselves, but we had a good time. We went to Panda Express for lunch; it was Nancy's first time. By the time we got home in the early evening we were beat so we just stayed home. We had a great time!

Why don't YOU have a laser, Woody?

Nancy and I are up with Julia and her ear ache. The ibuprofen wore off before the pain did so she is very miserable. Others in the family have stomach aches and head aches. We just tried the the warm olive oil treatment, but we are having a hard time getting an accurate report of its effects. Our parenting practices include letting sick kids watch movies to take their minds off of the misery. We just finished "The Little Mermaid" and have started in on "Toy Story"-thus the title of this blog post.

Its been way too long since we have written. Some of the things we should have written about but didn't include:

Christmas
Our switch to high speed internet
Stephen's birthday and baptism
The anniversary of our engagement
John's birthday

Well, we are a work in progress.

I have added a sweet picture of Julia with Valentine's messages for me and Nancy.

In which we discover John has Kawasaki's disease

On November 12, we discovered that John had a fever. That's not too unusual in our house; we took his temperature and didn't think to much of it. We used one of those ear thermometers, and his temperature was around 100 and 101 degrees. Soon, Nancy noticed his neck seemed sore when she picked him up. This continued until Friday. The symptoms remained the same and we had become concerned enough to go to the doctor. Friday afternoon we saw the doctor and after an examination, the doctor concluded he had an infected lymph gland. It seemed very apparent; when the doctor felt the lymph gland, it was swollen and very tender. He prescribed an antibiotic and sent us on our way. We were relieved because we were worried he had meningitis.

Friday we noticed that the skin around his eyebrows was red, but we attributed this to his fever. Later that evening, JeNeale noticed this redness and suggested that it could be an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. Nancy didn't think so because his eyebrows had been red all day, but she did notice some red spots on his neck soon thereafter. Later that night, we were having a hard time getting John to sleep so we had the light off and were watching a movie. When the movie was over (about midnight), John still wouldn't go to sleep. We turned the light on to change his diaper and discovered that his stomach and back were covered with a rash. After reading the prescription information and talking to an on-call nurse, we decided to take John into the emergency room; we thought (as JeNeale had suggested earlier) he was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotic (amoxycillon).

We woke Matthew up to let him know what was going on and left him in charge of all the sleeping kids. The on-call nurse had suggested we stop on the way to the hospital and get benedryl to help the rash. We went to the Nampa Wal-Mart, got the medicine, and went to the Mercy Medical Center ER. (We arrived about 1am) We hadn't given John the benedryl so we verified with the nurse at Mercy that we should do it, and we gave him benedryl at that time.

We waited some time (over an hour) for the ER doc to show up. He conducted a brief examination of John and concluded that John had probably had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. He gave us a prescription for another antibiotic (zythromax). Over the weekend, John made no improvement despite being on the antibiotic. John's regular pediatrician was very attentive and kept in contact over the weekend.

By Monday, we were concerned enough to take him back to the doctor. We stayed there several hours and began doing blood tests on John. Doctor A spent much of that time with us talking through the possibilities. The symptoms John was experiencing did not seem to follow the usual course of either a viral or bacterial infection. The pivotal point came when they took John's temperature one more time before we left. He measured at 104 degrees. We were somewhat surprised because it had not measured that high before and he didn't seem any warmer to the touch. As Dr A asked some follow up questions, he discovered that we had been using an ear thermometer and one with whcih we were having some problems. He is not a fan of that kind of thermometer and thought that John may have had a higher temperature than originally thought. It was at this point that he began seriously considering a diagnosis of Kawasaki's Disease. Two of the main symptoms are sustained fever for 5 or more days and a rash over the body. Because it is rare, there is no test for it, and it can cause long term heart and coronary artery damage, Dr A referred us to a pediatric cardiologist.


Tuesday, the 18th, we went in and John had an EKG and echo cardiogram (another term for an ultrasound of the heart - caution, these are VERY expensive). Both went pretty well because John was so lethargic by this point. The cardiologist was very nice, and he called in a infectious disease specialist with whom to consult. They started talking about John in front of us. When they realized what they were doing, they excused themselves and went into the hall to talk about John. We could hear them just as well from the hall. They felt that there was enough evidence of Kawasaki's disease to admit us to the hospital. Although the diagnosis of Kawasaki's is difficult, the treatment is well established. We had no idea that we might be admitted to the hospital that day and so we were not prepared.

Well, we went anyway. We were admitted early afternoon. We spent most of the afternoon waiting for John to get an IV. The treatment of Kawasaki's disease is a dose or more of IV immunoglobulin (IV IG for short) and baby aspirin therapy. Finally, about early evening, it came time to give him his IV. This was one of those things Nancy likes me to take care of so I went in with John. Unfortunately, the Kawasaki's had caused John's skin to be swollen and the nurses had a hard time finding a vein in which to insert the IV. In fact, they never did even though they tried for 2 1/2 hours. It was miserable -a parental nightmare. John cried so much that Nancy finally came in to be with us. In the end they decided to insert a central line into a main artery that was just under John's clavicle. I was actually relieved. It meant that he would be able to get his treatment of medicine. We are fortunate enough to be close to Nancy's family. Kathy and LeAnn watched the kids while we were in the hospital.

Friends from the ward started showing up right after John had his central line. Bryan (my brother), and TJ stopped by. A young man in our ward had been diagnosed with cancer and was on the same floor as we were. On Sunday evening I had taken him a copy of field and stream. Bryan took the opportunity to make fun of me for that. Katrissa and Ron brought us a sack of goodies and later brought us Chicken Club sandwhiches with guacamole. Brent and JeNeale stopped by with slushy drinks and stayed and visited. Nancy had been fighting a headache and was trying to hold off from throwing up while everyone was there. Brent and JeNeale were still there when Nancy couldn't keep it down anymore. She did make it to the bathroom. They stayed and visited and made sure we were ok. Earlier, Julie had asked Nancy for a key to our house so the relief society could clean our house while we were in the hospital. Nancy said no so Linda came to me for a key. She is small in stature, but she somehow got a key from me. She was trying to be sneaky, but Nancy knew the whole time.

John started his course of IV IG about 9pm Tuesday night. It continued to 9ish the next morning. The night was misery. They gave us one cot and a glider chair for our accommodations. Nancy held John most of the night. Part of the night he slept in the provided crib and she got in it with him. Wednesday afternoon, John started showing improvement. His rash was slowly fading, and he started showing some signs of life. For the past day or more he had been very lethargic. I had gone home Wednesday to shower and change and get some things for Nancy and was caught by the house cleaning crew. It was humbling to be there while the house was being cleaned.
Our doctor decided to keep him another night for observation. Another miserable night. Nancy needed sleep, so for part of the night I put John in his carseat and put his carseat in a wagon (we were in the pediatric unit) and we walked the halls of the hospital. The movement kept John asleep. Occasionally, I would stop a read an article out of an Ensign I had with me. We ended up back in the room and I traded back off with Nancy.

We were discharged Thursday and home by noon. We came home to a clean house and a beautiful flower arrangement. John was doing better and continued to show improvement over the next few days. We have since had a follow up doctor's visit. John shows no sign of heart damage. We will have one more doctor's appointment, but expect no problems. Through it all we have been very blessed. Friends and family have been very supportive and we have been taught, once again, of the blessing friends and family can be. Nancy's back endured surprisingly well - another significant blessing. John is on 1/2 a baby aspirin a day and will be until his last doctor's appointment, but he is back to himself.






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Me and Julia Down by the School Yard

Ok, this post has nothing to do with a school yard, but I couldn't resist the allusion to the Paul Simon song. On Columbus Day, Julia asked about going on a fishing trip I owed her. For my birthday, she had given me a small bottle of a kind of fake worm I like to fish with. Here is the funny part - they are pink. More about that later. When she had given them to me, I promised I would take her fishing. Anyway, we had a really busy day. I wanted to take her fishing, but it had to be close because we didn't have much time. My friend Jared had given me a tip about a canal flowing from a local reservoir (Lake Lowell) that I wanted to try. I figured it was perfect. It was close, Jared's reports were good, and it gave me and Julia a chance to fish.

However, when we arrived, we saw that there was no water flowing into the canal. What water there was was shallow and dotted with dead fish. In fact, there were dead fish all over - hundreds, maybe thousands of them. With the exception of one small (like 6 inches) catfish, they all appeared to be carp. Then we saw a pool thick with live fish. The water was so shallow that, as Julia put it, you could see their "fish tops" (their dorsal fins). They were so concentrated that I felt it took the sport out of fishing for them. After some thought, though, I figured Julia might like the excitement of having a big fish on the end of her line. I didn't bother taking my pole out of the Suburban - the fishing was going to be so easy as to ruin the fun of it. We climbed down into the canal and started fishing. To keep it simple, we were just bobber fishing with the pink worms -bright pink worms. I cast it out and waited. Nothing. Julia says that maybe we can take the ones we catch home and eat them. I said that we didn't really want to eat these kinds of fish (carp). Then she asks me the kind of question only kids can. "Then why are we fishing?" Not expecting to have a philosophical discussion on why I fish, I don't think I ever gave her a good answer. So we are casting and waiting and Julia is exploring and no fish takes the bright pink worm bait. I start casting into the part of the pool that is the thickest with fish. They are so thick and the water so shallow there is a constant display of "fish tops". Still nothing. Cast, wait, retrieve. Nothing. Julia suggests maybe we try another close by pool. No, there are a lot of fish right here. However, despite the fact that they are packed in like sardines and their food supply has got to be extremely limited, they want nothing to do with bright pink worms. We soon tire of the this and I suggest we head back. Julia asks if there is somewhere else we can go. I explain that we are short on time and need to get back....blah blah blah...and I can tell she really wants to try somewhere else, so we do.

We go across the road to the lake that should have been draining into the canal - Lake Lowell. We sit down at the water's edge and I cast out another pink worm with a fisherman's optimism. Julia has it too.



I take the opportunity to give her the talk I think all fishing fathers have to give their kids at some point. It's the "why we had fun even though we didn't catch any fish" talk. We saw and heard a lot of geese and the lake was blue out past the green stuff floating on the water. And we came up with other reasons, too. Of course the best part was just being together and to see her in her pink shoes, pink dress, and pink coat out fishing. Very cute.

We fnally ran out of time and we had to reel the line in to see if there was a fish on the hook. We visually inspected it and found that, indeed, there was no fish on the hook. To our delight, however, we discovered that the pink worm was gone. That means that a fish might have eaten it off the hook. It was enough to satisfy us. In reality, I did see the bobber bob ever so slightly. With fishing, you never know.

We go back to the suburban to get in and I thank Julia for coming and for the pink worms. When I said that, she asked me, "Do you know why I got you pink worms?" You should know that there is actually a reason besides catching a young girl's eye to sell pink worms. I have had good luck catching rainbow trout on pink marshmellows and pink lures. One of my favorite lures is a pink Rooster Tail that has caught so many trout I call it pinky fishslayer. Of course Julia knows none of this. I ask her why she pick out pink worms. She says, "Because I like pink!" I can't think of a better reason to fish with a pink worm.

Vacation

The week of September 29 we went on vacation. Our original plans were to go to Utah to meet our newest niece, but that didn't work out. We decided to take the time anyway and find things to do close to home. The first thing we did was go visit Nancy's brother and family near Letha.

We don't get out there as often as we should so we should have gotten a lot of great pictures of the kids. We didn't get enough kid pics but I did get this great shot of a bumble bee.


We had a great time bowling a couple of times. Even Samuel got to bowl. You can see that we Aydelottes have some natural bowling technique.

For years we have been talking about building a firepit in our backyard. We had one in Nampa and loved it. We finally did it. The "building" consisted of stacking landscape bricks in a circle and lighting a fire in the middle. We didn't even bother digging out the grass.

Not complicated but it was effective. We tested it by cooking hotdogs and bratwurst. John and I enjoyed sitting together near the fire.

Nathan's birthday was that Friday. Family came over to celebrate with us. Nathan turned 11 and will be starting boy scouts. More evidence that the kids are growing up way to fast.

We finished up by watching conference. I love listening to the speakers. When I was at home, my father started the tradition of taking us to pizza after the priesthood session. At first I didn't care much for all the long talks, but always enjoyed the pizza. Well, now I love the talks, and I still love the pizza. I go with my brother, my two brothers-in-law, my father-in-law and my son, Matthew. Because Matthew was excited to start being part of the tradition, Nancy and I let him go to the priesthood session just before his twelfth birthday. Now Nathan wants to do the same, so I will have two of my boys with me in the spring. Guess Dad knew what he was doing. One of my favorite vacation moments came while we were watching the movie Cars. It is a favorite here -particularly with Samuel. I was sitting on the couch and Samuel came and propped himself on my lap and kept watching the movie. For that momement, we were together and he was so sweet and beautiful. It didn't last long, but for me it was one of those moments that makes all the other stuff worth while. Monday it was back to work. It was work and sickness (for some of us). We finished this week on a high note, though. We had some great friends over for dinner. Now I am looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Blog's Beginning

We, the family Aydelotte, finding ourselves at our leisure during this vacation week, have decided to start a blog. We have also gone bowling and swimming. We have friends that blog, and we take some inspiration from them. We hope that this will be a good forum to share family events with friends and family. The whole thing nearly came to a screeching halt when we realized we had no ideas for a blog name. (Is this a bad sign for our blog?) Well, anyway, Nancy came up with the name. I think she was referencing the fact that we home school. I like it because it reminds me of fishing and is somewhat abstract. The kids don't really like the name. Maybe they will grow to like it. Maybe not. Please visit on occassion. Both Nancy and I will be posting. Maybe we will let the kids post. Maybe not. By the way, Matthew came up with the title for this post and he would be proud to know he got the credit.