House O' Sullivans

The past few weeks have been one big nauseous swirl.  I stopped running (and I never do that).  I stopped cooking.  I started sleeping in--getting out of bed at 9:30 am--and that's after 12 hours of sleep--fitful, nauseous sleep, mostly.  I started spending many of my waking hours lying in my bed or on the couch.  It is quite safe to say that I hate being pregnant.  I am not good at it.  Some women talk about how they feel so amazing and alive while they are pregnant.  I feel like I'm dying.  I am a wuss about being pregnant.  I would gladly give birth once a week to not spend 9 months being nauseous.  I could live normally Monday through Friday, give birth on Saturdays, and start again the next week.  I could do that.  That actually sounds easy to me at present.  I am way better at birthing than being pregnant. So earlier this week I started feeling really vegetable-like.  Weeks of inactivity led to a fe...

Zeke asked me a question the other day: "Dad, are there goldfish under our shower?" I laughed and said: "Maybe? I'm not sure, bud."  In truth I really was very sure, indeed, positive that there are no goldfish living under our shower.   Our downstairs shower has a small gap between the the bottom of the shower and the floor a space just big enough for a kids imagination.  Certainly it is moist under there but not the kind of place for fish. Where do kids come up with stuff like this?  The question was so three-year-old that I wanted to remember it in case I needed to ask someone a really good surprise question.  "Do you know if-- well-- if there are fish like maybe alligator gar, or tiger muskie, or lake trout, or guppies living under our shower??  I was just wondering. I guess that's what it's all about, being a three year old, you wonder about every possible thing.  Like maybe:  Where does all of the water in the shower go?  Are the...

This will all be fodder for a hearty laugh someday. In the middle of the night, Casey and I were startled into consciousness by a loud cry for help.  Zeke stood on the threshold of the bathroom at 2 am, yelling, "Help!"  Casey quickly ran upstairs to see what was wrong.  (I am already feeling the pregnancy grossies and was too tired to move.) That call for help morphed into a wild vomit.  Happily, Zeke aimed into the bathroom, so it was somewhat contained.  One bath and a thorough bathroom cleaning later, Zeke was back in his tepee.  Meanwhile, downstairs, I was feeling more and more disgusting and joined Zeke in a parallel play of spewing.  Sophie joined us this morning, covering the kitchen with her lunch.  It was bad. When Casey left this morning, I was lying on my bed in the fetal position and it didn't get much better.  The crowning moment came later in the afternoon.  Zeke and I had curled up for a needed nap on my bed.  Whe...

Yesterday, as you may have observed, was Valentine's Day, one day removed from a lesser known if slightly warmer holiday--the Ides of February--which I am celebrating today by contributing to our family blog--a rarity I know. Yesterday turned out to be a very special Valentine's for the Sullivans, as we all really wanted to make a mark on the day.  In preparation, everyone came up with their own treasure hunt for the other members of the family, complete with written clues that lead you incrementally closer to the treasure.  In Sophie and Hallee's cases these were hand wrapped toys from their own collection.  How many of you have ever been given a draft horse for Valentines?  Hallee gave me this one.  Hope I can keep it in the back yard (smile). Earless draft horse?--everyone should have one I got Helen a new olive oil decanter.  No, serious it's really cool!  Okay, it's just a plain old bottle with rubber stopper and metal spout, bu...

Recently our kids decided it would be fun to start sleeping in random places.  Sophie made a makeshift bed on the floor between Grandma Sampson's swivel chair and a big toy organizer and slept there for several nights.  It does not look comfortable, but apparently she enjoyed it.   Zeke moved his bedding into his tepee a couple of weeks ago and has slept there every night since.  In fact, he casually informed me that I could sell his bed if I wanted to.  It's a pretty dreamy set-up with his Christmas lights still strung overhead.  A few days ago, I actually curled up in there myself (during the day when it was unoccupied) and took a little nap myself.  (The kids were happily playing and it seemed like the right thing to do.)  If I had a tepee, I think I'd sleep in it every night too. Little Buddy all snug in the tepee

January will forever be "Austerity January" at the Sullivan household.  My Uncle Danny and Aunt Leslie got us started and this is our third official observance.  The idea is to not buy anything all month, surviving predominantly on food storage.  We do pay our regular monthly bills, naturally, and we slightly modify and allow ourselves $25 a week to buy milk and fresh produce and we do fuel our vehicles (those vehicles are part of the chaos story to come).   Time slows down in January and I find myself realizing that I don't need much at all to be perfectly content.  Hustle and bustle decreases dramatically and a satisfying stillness fills the vacuum.  These are some photos that I took of the kids at a free zoo day last month: Sophie Gene Hallee Bradshaw Noble Ezekial Roanhorse As January drew to a quiet close, chaos suddenly unleashed with a fury.  Last Wednesday, Casey was driving home from some appointments in Ogden when his car...

 Yesterday, Kim and I brought the kids up to the Thayne's Canyon trail up Millcreek to get a piece of this: Izzy Hallee, fast and furious.  (I categorically banned her from riding head first in her sled, so this was her second choice.) Walking up the trail, it was evident that we'd kill ourselves coming down on sleds.  The trail was hard-packed, trees and rocks peppered the trail, and we had 5 kids 7 and under.  To avert death and bodily injury, we hiked up the trail and fashioned our own sledding track, running parallel to the trail but off in the woods a ways.  Kim and I removed several dead trees (very burly ladies we are) from the proposed sledding path and the kids took off.  When we finished our foray (because the kids were starving--we'd postponed lunch to get a piece of this action) we decided, against our better judgement, to sled down the packed, obstacle-laden trail.  Our plan was to keep the kid's sleds right behind ours and l...