What You Probably Don't Know About Me!

In the spirit of Halloween and all things strange, allow me to share with you something you probably don't know about me.
My mom always hoped to give birth to twins and when she became pregnant with me (her fourth and last pregnancy) she felt pretty certain that she was indeed pregnant with twins. Well, you've probably guessed it -- she wasn't . . . or was she?
Over the years we've discovered a few odd things about this body of mine, let me share.

Exhibit A:
When I was three years old I went in for what was supposed to be kidney surgery, but when the doctors opened me up, they actually found that I had extra tubing of some sort. They fixed it, hooked it all up correctly and here I am today. Extra tubing? Enough for two?
Exhibit B:
Take a look at your hands. Everyone that I have ever known has the same main lines in each of their hands -- everyone except for me.

As you can see my left hand has three significant main lines, while my right hand has only two main lines. Mismatched hands? Hmmmmm, very unusual!
Exhibit C:
Back in high school I had all four of my wisdom teeth extracted, but a few years ago I began feeling something growing in the back of my mouth. I went back to the same dentist who then took x-rays and pronounced that I indeed had an extra tooth with roots growing -- something he had never seen in his professional career. Now that we've moved away I have another dentist who is just as amazed at my "extra tooth." Over this past year the tooth has been chipping away and falling out and just a couple weeks ago it finally came all the way out. Am I growing teeth for two?

Now I'm no doctor or scientist, but I have heard that a woman can be pregnant with twins in the beginning, but that one baby/embryo is stronger than the other and basically "absorbs" the other and you end up with a single birth, which in my case is, ME.

My good friend, Jesica, says she saw a show on this sort of thing. A woman and her children had to have DNA testing so that she could prove paternity and when the results came back her DNA wasn't in her children. After more extensive testing they discovered that she must have indeed been a twin in the womb and that the "other" twins DNA was what passed through to her children. The doctors concluded that this sort of thing probably happened more often, but no one is aware since people don't usually get their DNA tested.

Far-fetched, possibly. Crazy, maybe. Food for thought, sure! Topic of interesting conversation, definitely!

A 1st for Jilli

After much deliberation, I went ahead and got Jilli's haircut. I had trimmed her hair myself about a year ago, but I wasn't sure I dared do anymore than that. The stylist ended up cutting about 3 to 4 inches off, but I'm completely pleased with the end result. And Jilli says she loves her "ladybug haircut" (I'm still trying to figure out why she calls it that).

october catch-up

These two are usually the best of friends and have so much fun spending their days together.

I took the kids and Mac's good buddy, Carlo, to the Life and Science Museum earlier in the month. The all-time most favorite activity every time we go is the fossil dig. I'm pretty sure my kids could spend hours there digging away. One of these days I'm going to count how many other children come and go while my kids plug away at perfecting their paleontologist skills.

Gobbling Ghosts

Thanks to an idea from my good friend, Lezlee, my kids had a great time making their white chocolate ghosts. Even more fun than making them was gobbling them up.

Next year I hope to poke a hole in the top of each ghost, tie a string through each one, hang them on a branchy tree in some kind of vase, display it on my kitchen table and let the kids nibble away at them.

We also had a good time making Nutter Butter ghosts (you couldn't even taste the burnt pieces of white chocolate -- oops! My bad!)

Our Week

My dear Grandma turned 96 years old on September 21st. Words can not say how wonderful I think she is. This is the card we came up with this year to send to her.

This weekend also marked the one time where our house divides -- Nate with his Cougs and me with my Ags as they battle it out on the football field. This year I had the bright idea of suggesting that the losers have to clean the bathrooms. Long story short, USU was ahead until the last seconds of the game and before I knew what had happened, I found myself mopping the bathroom floor with Jaxton and Beckam cleaning sinks. We're already looking forward to next year.

Jilli loves her princess shoes. She often comes home, takes of her gym shoes or flip flops and puts on her princess shoes. She can walk, run and jump in them and one of my favorite sounds is the clank clank clank of her walking on the wood floor with them on.

We SO enjoyed General Conference. I had a few ideas of things to keep the kids busy and attentive during these eight hours and luckily they all seemed to do the trick. Mac listened to basically all four sessions and the other kids did pretty good as well. One of the activities was to see who could construct the best temple and in the end they were all winners -- I was pretty darn impressed!