Chairs and Karate and Eyeballs

I don't know why, but I can put pictures on my blog again!  So I am going to put a bunch of things on here before blogger stops me again. 

Here is one of our kitchen chairs. I kind of like them. They work well and stuff. But, they have been well used. My children are not the cleanest things in the world. We catch them wiping their yucky hands on the chairs constantly. 

It is one of the most important rules of our family that they don't wipe their dirty grungy hands on the chairs. That and flushing the toilet. They don't follow either rule. 

These chairs have been around since Jaxon was a toddler. So they have lots of problems that I don't even like to think about.

In this picture it shows a clean piece of the material next to what it looks like now. That is disgusting. 

So, after a few years of thinking about it and a few months of putting it off. I decided to jump in and do it. The chairs are re-upholstered!

  

We put clear vinyl over the fabric so they are easy to clean if an entire bowl of cereal is dumped on the chair. (not like that has EVER happened.) It also makes it shiny!

I really like the fabric, it kind of reminds me of the movie Monsters Inc. You know, all the doors... It is probably just me. 

Anyway, I only had a few major problems with this project and it only took us 4-5 days longer then it should have, but that is pretty standard around here. I am really happy to see a bright color in the kitchen instead of gross. 

In other news... 

Tanner broke a board with his hand!

We had fun making a reenactment picture.

 

I went into his martial arts class to watch the last few minutes and saw the first few kids try and they did not do it. Tanner focused and hit and success! I am so proud of him.

 Christmas time is here and we have made our gingerbread houses.

  

We do these houses in my Webelos den. You just have to make a few more for your family and you get the mess done all at once. It is even better if you go to a relief society dinner that night and let your husband supervise the house making!

They all did the most creative things in their "yards" ponds with fish, pets, santa with a sleigh...they had fun. 

Alex is so sweet. He found out that we were doing ginger bread houses and immediately said that he wanted to do the nativity scene.

He was playing with the letters in Jesus's name. He thought it was so funny that Jesus spelled backward was sausage, you know, they way a first grader spells-- susej.

Speaking of Alex... 

He broke his collar bone or to be more precise, his clavicle. He is wearing his sling for 4 weeks and it should be fine. This video is him telling about what happened. Kind of. I was asking him questions and he was answering.

So, while we were at the doctor for his bone,  I asked her to watch his eyes- how they go side to side. It seemed to be getting worse. It had been going on for about a month, maybe longer. You can see it in this video. He was even starting to squint while doing his homework and covering up one of his eyes saying that he could see better.  I asked if the eye movement could be a "tic"

She seemed very concerned about it and ordered an MRI. She said it was probably not a tic. She wanted to see why his eyes were doing that asap. She said that I needed to get in to see a pediatric Opthomologist within the next week. If they could not get an appointment for him She would contact them and get him in. Well, we did get him an appointment for a week later but it took a lot to do that. The next available appointment was in February.

It was a really hard week for us. of course I was imagining the worst but hoping for the best. When we got in to the doctor, they did a full exam and he has great vision. He could see everything great. The doctor had him do all sorts of stuff with his eyes and he was really good at doing exactly what she wanted him to do. So his eyes really had no reason to drift (I had noticed that it happened more when he was relaxed.) She never saw it happen! I was getting frustrated because as she would turn away to reach for something or talk to me, he would relax and I would see it happen again. She checked everything and we were just talking and she was finally able to see it. She diagnosed it as a "tic".   (From wikapedia- A tic is a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle groups.) I was hoping for some ideas of how to help him stop doing it. She said there really is nothing to do about it.

So I felt pretty stupid. It was this huge big deal for nothing. Yes a tic can be a problem but I was imaging much worse. So we came home and I told Alex that his eyes were perfect, that there was nothing wrong with his eyes. (we really had not talked about it much, just that we were going to ask the doctor about his eyes- we didn't want to freak him out) He acted surprised and acted like he thought there was something wrong. I told him about his eye movements and nicely told him that he needed to try to stop doing that. He said "OK"

It has been a week and I have not seen it much since. He is not squinting, or any of the weird stuff that he was doing. Today I mentioned it and said something about how I was glad there was nothing wrong with his eyes. He said, "ya, that was just something I was doing".

I swear, my kids are giving me grey hair.