10 years of Marriage!!!

Dear Dallan, June 22 2009

So much has happened this week that I am not sure I will be able to do any of it justice. We will start with some of the main highlights and see where it take us.
First of all today is Jon and I’s 10 year Wedding anniversary. And wouldn’t you know it I woke up Puking this morning and Erica was sick all yesterday and last night. So our dinner and date plans have be cancelled to be rescheduled for a later date. Go figure! That is what life is like. But all in all I think that we just might be able to do the whole eternity thing especially if we can continue to look at the bigger picture. I honestly can’t believe that the Woodin’s have continued the put up with me this long, and it is a well known secret that my family gave Jon the 10 cows to take me off of their hands. (and then he gave me back for an 18 month stint, but that is beside the point). I am grateful that he continues to put up with me despite my ever increasing demands for things like a maid, a cook, a nanny, a butler, a gardener, a secretary, a chauffer and so forth. Of course he is sure that he is already paying for all of those things with every last penny he has ever made and the whole eternity thing. I am pretty sure that the maid, cook, and nanny that he keeps on telling me he has already hired are substandard and that she needs some real professional help! Jon keeps on telling me to give her some time and she will come around and get the jobs done right. He has so much faith in his household employees. I’ll tell you what if they worked for his siding business he would have told them to take a hike a long time ago! But honestly if 10 years ago someone would have told me about the 5 kids and the one on the way and the mortgage and the minivan and the deployment and the doctors bill I am not sure whether I would have turn around and run away, or put in a stupid grin and said “bring it on.” But now that I am in it and since the next ten years involves raising teenagers and drivers licenses and a billion pine wood derby cars, I think I will just put on a stupid grin and say “Bring it on.” After all what else can I do at this point!?!
Hunter decided that since it was Sunday and Fathers day to boot that he ought to do something extra exciting- you know just to stir things up a bit. So After breakfast Jon and I had crawled back Into bed to take a midmorning nap before church. Erica came into the room all upset and said something about Hunter getting dressed and I dismissed it and told he that he would be fine. Then she really bursts into tears and Said “No, Mom Hunter knocked the dresser down on top of himself again!” That got me bolt upright and I raced down to check oh him. And sure enough he had pulled the dresser down on top of himself, AGAIN! only this time the dresser had managed to hit him on the face and split him open across his nose right between his eyes. There was quite a bit of blood all over him. I called for Jon informing him that we were going to have to see a doctor and started digging Hunter out from under the dresser. Jon called our trusty bishop and we ran over to his house to have him take a look at it. Their daughter Mckenna, who is Marcus’ age, opened the door and just about fell over when she saw Hunter and the bloody mess that his face was. So then Bishop Thayne who has 6 daughters and no sons said to us, when he saw Hunter, “I’m telling you guys, GIRLS! You just don’t have this kind of problem with girls.” Then we went to his Doctors office and Hunter was a trooper and let our Bishop put 5 stitches across the bridge of his nose and close up his “third eye.” So you have to imagine my Hunter who looks like he has had the worse case of Chicken pox in history and has mosquito bites all over his face which he constantly digs at and make them into big bleeding sores and now he has Frankenstein stitches right between his eyes… Well I really do not want to take him out in public because I know that people are going to call child protection on me. When we got back home and were getting ready for Church it became apparent that Erica was running a fever and was sick so Jon doing the Fatherly thing on Fathers day “Volunteered” to stay home from church with Frankenstein and Erica and I even left William with him. So that is how fathers day went at our house, aside from the amazing rain storm that blew threw, knocked out the power, and shook the church house! It was all in all a pretty quite day at the Woodin Nickel.
So speaking of Sick, I am sick today, Erica was sick all yesterday and is still feverish today. William has been on and of with a light fever all week. Jon stayed in bed all day on Thursday, and I put myself to bed a few times on Friday with feverish symptoms. I stayed up with Hunter until 4:30 am one night this week. He was complaining about his ears. And I am convinced that he has wax blocking his ears. I was using some ear wax Softening drops in his ears and trying to remove the blockage myself, with the promise to myself that if I couldn’t get anything to come out that I would take him to the doctor the first of this week and have the doctor check it out. Well now that he looks like Frankenstein I might just wait until the stitches come out before hauling him in. but them again it might be better to get all of the torture to my son done in one fell swoop.
This week I heard through the grape vine that Libbie was praising my humorous writing ability and that Aunt Leslie made the Comment back that I didn’t have to look far for writing material, “after all I was raising Wolves!” I have been laughing ever since. I know that my kids have given me great material but I never considered them to be like wolves. I compared them to be something more like hyenas. On some days it was closer to monkeys. But I think Aunt Leslie is right, Raising my children is like raising a pack of Wolves!
Anyway It continued to Rain every single day this week. That is three weeks straight with rain every single day. And Seattle has gone for 28 consecutive days without measurable rainfall. Go figure. I guess we swapped locations for the month. Or maybe it is just one of those Signs of the times you hear about in Sunday school class. Mom and Dad Drove home from Florida across the heartland in the worst week of all time for Tornados. 77 were reported this last week and wouldn’t you know it Mom and Dad and Garrett missed every single one. I was going crazy following the weather on the internet and knowing that my parents were somewhere out in it. But the Lord was watching out for those old folks of ours and they made it back all in one piece.
Stiles picked and ate the first peas out of our garden I really wanted to demand tax from his pea pod but it was from a pea plant that he himself planted in the green house and then transplanted outside and put a trellis up by it, and watered, and took care of so I let him eat all 5 little peas. But it made me wish for a split second that Dad still grew peas and we could all go out and sit in the pea patch and eat ourselves sick. The pea pod fights were definitely the best. But I am afraid that you would be to young to remember when we use to do that. It makes me sad that you would have been to small to remember the fights and the awesomeness of the when the great big Pea viners would pull into the fields and, in what seemed like a miracle to a little child who struggled to open the pods one by one and eat the little guys, just ripped up all of the peas and opened up all those little pods and them dumped the peas into a great big truck. It always smelled gross though when they were all done. So maybe it is okay that you do not remember when Dad used to grow peas.
I am finally in a count down stage of my pregnancy. I have 11 weeks to my due date. Laura is considerably closer, and I am waiting for a call from Dan the Man any day. Crystal and Cody are in their count downs as well. And they all have much less to count down than I do. The hardest part is that when I weighed in at my last doctors appointment the darn liar of a scale showed that I am weighing as much as I did when I delivered Stiles and Marcus! NO wonder I feel like I am ready to be done already! So I asked my doctor what I could do to make the next 3 months go by really fast. He suggested that I stay busy. I laughed and said with 5 other kids at home, I was thinking more like checking into a spa! He said that I could do that if I really wanted to. Jon said it sounded like a great idea and that we could set one up here at the Woodin Nickel and other men could send their tried cranky pregnant wives to the ranch and we could charge a ton of money and feed them and let them lay around and whine. I said I am not taking care of a bunch a pregnant woman! He made some comment about how if other women were like me when they were pregnant he was sure it was a golden business opportunity and husband would pay top dollar to be rid of their cranky wives for the last bit of pregnancy. I think he is due for some TLC eventually for putting up with pregnant me for the better part of the last 10 years. But he should put up with cranky old me. It is HIS fault I am in this ever expanding body situation in the first place!
So I hope you have bee entertained at our expense once again The funniest thing Erica said this week was… I had asked her “what we girls were going to do with all of these boys?” and without missing a beat and with a twinkle in her eye and a sadistic sound to her voice said “Have them for Lunch!”
The church is true. Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. He Saw The Father and the Son in the Sacred Grove and restored this church to the fullness of the Gospel. We Pray for you always.

Marcus wants you to know that of all of his Uncles he misses you the most.

Love Monica and her Pack of Wolves!