Snow, dishes, laundry... and hospitalization

Wow, sometimes life just overwhelms you a little bit. Our little daughter Hazel woke up last Thursday morning (1/30) at 2:30am with a high fever (103.something). She had been fighting with a low-grade fever for a few days already, and we had already been to the doctor once, but it didn't take much thought to know we should take her into the emergency room. So Jen packed her up and went into the local hospital while I stayed home with the older kids. They ended up admitting Hazel on Wednesday, and Jen has been amazingly strong in staying with her most of the time since then. (I spent one night in the hospital with her, but have been trying to work at least half-days.) Life as a spectator at the hospital, as anyone who's spent much time there as a non-patient can attest, ranges anywhere from dull to mind-numbingly boring, with brief little spells of alarm thrown in here and there. So your heart's gotta go out to Jen, who has been there five days so far.

Of course that's not to take the focus away from Hazel, who surely can't be enjoying her hospitalization much either. Between getting poked & prodded & tested in every way imaginable, it's really a miracle she stays as cheerful as she does. Friday they transferred her up to Primary Children's, where she and Jen remain today. Hopefully they'll be home soon, but we'll know more tomorrow after more tests & results.

Meanwhile, life on the home front continues. I've gained a new appreciation for all the domestic tasks Jen does every day, mostly because I've spent so much of my time trying to do them and so few of them actually get done. Dishes pile up, laundry piles up, and snow keeps piling up outside as well (ugh!). But we've had tremendous help already from friends and family, what with watching the kids during the day, bringing meals over, etc. etc. We are truly blessed with great family and friends!

Besides that... well, it seems like every day on the way to work, listening to NPR, I think of some great thing I'd just love to blog about. But by the end of the work day, I've completely forgotten whatever it was, so nothing gets blogged. Obviously I've got to try some new tactics!

Igloo Builders

Piper is working on a project for school where she chooses a Native American tribe, learns about their traditions, and then does a bunch of research, a project, a report, and a class presentation about them. She chose the Inuits, so we've been immersed in Inuit/Eskimo culture around here for a couple weeks.

She had a great idea for a project, though... she wanted to build an igloo. I had recently borrowed a great igloo-building tool from our local scout troop, so yesterday Piper, Julia and I set out up the South Fork of Provo Canyon looking for a good spot to build. We found it way up near a spot where we'd been sledding in years past.

The bottom line: it's a lot harder to build an igloo than you might think from watching Nanook knock his out in about an hour. Ours took closer to 8! But it was a good experience for the girls, who learned a lot about the trials of hiking in deep snow (3 feet!) and hard work with a shovel. Here are some photos from the adventure:

Just for the record, the 8 hour construction time was primarily due to two factors: it was the first igloo any of us had ever built or seen first-hand; plus, the instructions on the igloo tool recommended 2-3 adults when building the igloo, but we gave it a shot with 1 adult, a 7 year old and an 8 year old. I can attest things would have gone more smoothly if we had followed the instructions more closely! :-)