Vacations, Vacations

We spent the last month going on lots of little trips and vacations. And now that I'm feeling good again and have some time I will finally write about them. The first trip was an impromptu camping trip. Cade had to go to Chinle (on the Navajo Reservation) for work so Conner and I tagged along and spent a night camping. The next day we drove through Canyon de Chelly with the husband of one of Cade's employee's as our guide. He used to be a guide there, so that was fun.

We have a toilet bucket to go camping with, but Cade said this campsite had a flushable toilet and he didn't pack our bucket. But the toilet was some contraption that involved pouring a bucket of water down the toilet to flush it and I just really didn't like the looks of the whole thing. (I'm very picky about the facilities that I use.) So my only other option was to just go around our campsite. This wasn't very easy since there were almost no trees or logs around and other campers pretty close by. I couldn't find anything to lean against so Cade tried to demonstrate how I should position myself to pee. I'm not sure he really understands the female anatomy because doing it his way would mean I either had to take my pants completely off or get them completely soaked. Anyway, I managed a way that involved the very small tree and picnic table that you see in the picture, and Cade as a barrier from any possible onlookers. But in the middle of the night I had to go again, really badly. So I got brave enough and went by myself and about a minute after I got back in the tent I started hearing some funny noises. For a minute I thought it was a dog from the campsite over but it was getting louder and then definite growling. I looked outside and I thought for a second that it was a bear, but it turned out to be a wild dog standing on his hind legs on our table, trying to get into our cool chest. Thankfully we hadn't left any food out. It ended up being 2 wild dogs and I woke up Cade and he tried to tell me they couldn't hurt us because we were in a tent. I told him that was ridiculous since they could tear our tent to shreds if they wanted to. Luckily though Cade's flashlight scared them off and he moved the cool chest into the truck. But if they had come just a couple minutes sooner I probably would have been eaten alive while I went to the bathroom! 

You can see the ancient rock writings in this picture.

How would you like to live in houses built in crevices on the side of huge rock walls? 

It was a little uneasy just driving our truck under rocks that could potentially crush us to smithereens at any moment. 

More houses- I sure wouldn't run out for errands if I had to go to so much work to climb up to my house.

That weekend the boys went on the Father's and Sons camp out and had a great time. A friend brought his Ranger and they spent a lot of time riding around in it.

Conner wandering away, maybe following this guy in the ward.

Conner and Kase in the Ranger.

Its amazing how messy Cade will let Conner get.

A few days later we went to Utah for Sam's graduation and mission farewell. On Tuesday we drove to Flagstaff and stopped to cash in on a free breakfast that a payroll client of Cade's had given him. And we can't be in Flagstaff and not watch some trains for Conner. So we wasted about a half an hour waiting for a train to come by and then we were on our way again. We drove to Cade's grandma's house in Toquerville, Utah to get out of the car for awhile. Then it was back on the road to Pleasant Grove. We spent the night at Ashley's house and drove back down to Hurricane on Wednesday. By the time we got there it was too late to do much so we just had dinner and visited with family. On Thursday Cade, Sam, and their grandpa went on a very successful fishing trip and then we were off to the graduation. 

On Friday we packed up again and went camping in East Zion on some property of Cade's uncles, with all of Cade's immediate family. This was by far the best camping spot we've been to. It is just past some lodge and cabins that also have a swimming pool, playground, miniature golf, restaurant, and zipline. But best of all the lodge had a lovely bathroom for public use and it was just a quad ride away! No more risking my life around wild animals. We were only there for about 24 hours so we didn't pay to do any of the activities, but its nice to have the option for longer trips.

Conner hanging out in the gift shop while I use the restroom.

Playing on the playground.

Driving a dump truck into a bush.

Riding the horses, always a favorite of Conner's.

I was so amazed that Conner picked up this caterpillar, he's more of a look but don't touch kind of kid. But as soon as it started crawling up his arm he freaked out and flung his arm around until it fell off, and I don't think it lived much longer.

The one bad thing about this campsite was how dusty/dirty it was. It was pretty bad, but Conner thought it would be great to lay it. Thank goodness for baby wipes, we went through those things like there was no tomorrow.

Riding the quad with grandpa, Logan, and Jeter.

On Sunday, during Sam's farewell talk, Daisy started having her puppies. We missed most of the births, but did get to see her poop out puppy number 9 and eat the sac and umbilical cord. Yummy.

Conner loved watching Tanner's turtle.

Ryan, Carly, Logan, Conner, and Jeter. All the boys are within 6 months of each other. Somehow Conner ended up 2 inches shorter than the rest of them.

Playing on the boat in the driveway.

Grandpa sure got a workout playing with these boys. They chased him around this circle a million times.

Playing with Sam before its too late.

Before we left on Monday, we took a trip to the splash pad. Conner still wasn't thrilled with it, but at least he wasn't terrified like last year.

 

 The next weekend we headed down to Mesa for Sam's endowment and Alyza's baby blessing. Sam went through the Mesa temple so he could go with one of his best friends from Cottonwood, who also happens to be Cade's boss's son. After the temple we had lunch at Bill Johnsons and then went swimming at Natalie's apartment.

Logan and Conner in the boat.

 

The final goodbye.

Cade, Natalie, Sam, Kameron, Tina, Russ. Tanner didn't make the trip down.

Alyza and Cade after the blessing. I just loved her little dress.

I just think this picture is funny because her hair looks a little crazy but its just Tyler standing behind her.

Tyson, Tyler, Eli

 After I told the boys to stand for a picture Tyler went running to his parents for his tie. I saw Jared getting frustrated with him for wanting to put it back on right before they were leaving and Tyler didn't tell him why he wanted it so badly. I meant to tell you Jared but I was busy talking to someone. So there you go, Tyler just wanted to look super nice for the pictures and you can't blame a kid for that :)

A cousins picture. Unfortunately Conner was exhausted and being a pill so he didn't make it into the picture.

Just a short 5 days later we headed off for San Diego. Thank goodness it was our most relaxing trip because we were getting a little tired of traveling by then. But I will make that a separate post after I get some of the pictures.

Our Little Conner

I recently noticed that Cade and I have stopped taking pictures of Conner doing everyday things so I've been trying to get us to pay more attention to that. So I thought I would share some of those pictures.

One day he was into making a fort with the chair in his room.

I was cleaning up in the kitchen for like 2 minutes and when I looked up I found toilet paper going across the house.

I followed it to find the culprit.

I also just took Conner to his 2 year well visit, only a few months late. He weighed in at 23 lbs and 12 oz putting him into the 4th percentile for weight. And he is 33.5 inches tall and for the first time making it to the 20th percentile for height. The doctor couldn't believe it. He said that usually when kids are that low in the weight ranks that it really shows but Conner didn't look particularly skinny to him. In fact, he made us go back out and he re-measured himself since he didn't believe it so much. But it was accurate.

Conner discovered all the shoes in the bottom drawer of his dresser and was really proud of himself for putting them on. I didn't have the heart to tell him they were on wrong.

Sadly though, if we re-measured today he would probably be off the weight charts and he now looks too skinny and little sickly. Two days after his well visit he came down with a cold. It was Valentines Day so we were thankful we had gone out a day early before all this started. The next day a fever came. He refused to take any medicine because of the taste, so I told Cade to bring a new kind home with him from work. Cade didn't get home until after Conner went to bed so he never got the medicine but woke up without a fever. Cade also came down with something, what we thought was the flu because of the chills and nausea, but he never threw up. So the boys spent the 3 day weekend recovering together, while I worked. But only Cade got better. Conner had a fever off and on for another week. His cold symptoms were getting better but he started sleeping, a lot. Sleeping all day in fact. One day he woke up about 9:30 and went back to sleep about 11 and literally slept the rest of the day and through the night and most of the next day. He did wake up fairly frequently, cried a minute, and then got in a new position and went right back to sleep. And of course we had to hold him the whole time because otherwise he couldn't sleep and would just cry and cry.

"Hey look at the mess I made with the Frosted Flakes!"

Eight days after getting sick he said his ear hurt. We all know what that means, but I thought I would wait until the next day to take him to the doctor, just to make sure his ear really did hurt before I bothered taking him in. But soon he was sticking his finger in his ear and it was coming out wet. I was pretty sure that was a bad sign so I gave in and took him to the doctor. I kind of thought he also had another fever but didn't bother to check it. When the nurse was looking him over he had a temperature of 103. I'm not sure how I was so off on that. After BARELY eating for days (one day he had about an ounce of a smoothie and 5 frosted mini wheats for the entire day) he now weighed only 22.5 pounds. He lost a pound and a half in one week. And as my mom says, "He just lost everything he gained in the last 6 months!"

The nurse immediately gave him the exact same medicine I had given him a few times for his fever. But this time, within minutes he was coming alive, more than he had been in over a week. The "doctor" (she isn't actually a doctor but I forget what her credentials are, maybe a nurse practitioner) that was seeing walk-in patients is a lady I have seen before and not liked. I quickly remembered why I didn't like her. Our regular doctor takes his time, chats with us, answers any and all questions we may have. This lady was just starting to tell me what she was going to do when she walked out with her laptop and told the nurse the plan. I thought she would come back in to finish discussing it with me but instead she just typed things up in the hallway and disappeared. She had said she was going to give him a shot of something I had never heard of to "jump start" him getting better. I was ok with that since he had been sick for so long. But she also said we would have to wait in the office for 15 minutes to make sure he didn't have any kind of reaction. I was curious what those reactions might be but didn't get to ask. The nurse reassured me though by saying she had never seen any reaction to it. The "doctor" had also said that he had a bad ear infection and that she would get a prescription that we could start in the morning. She said it wasn't ruptured and that the wetness had probably been melted ear wax from his fever.

 Once a week a local gymnastics place lets kids come and play for free and they all love it. Here is Conner in the foam pit.

With his good friend Sophi

A few hours after going to bed Conner woke up crying. Then we noticed the crap dripping out of his ear and figured his ear drum had ruptured. He was understandably upset and we didn't know what to do so we thought we should pick up his prescription. I only assumed it was where we normally go since the "doctor" hadn't said anything about where to get it. But the place had no prescription for him. Then I was really annoyed. I called the after hours number and informed them that he was not dripping ear wax and that the prescription wasn't where it should be. The triage lady said she was going to call the "doctor" and I was glad she was going to disturb her at 10:30 pm. The "doctor" reported back that we couldn't start the medicine until the morning since he already had the shot and that she wasn't surprised his eardrum ruptured because it was the worst she had ever seen. It would have been nice if she had mentioned that to me in person and let me know what might soon be occurring. The triage lady also said that kids feel better once the ear has ruptured because the pressure is gone and he should feel better in "a few hours". I was not excited to listen to Conner's pathetic moaning/crying for a few hours, but luckily it only lasted about 45 minutes and then he was back to sleep. I still can't believe his ear infection got so bad before he ever started complaining about it. I guess I can believe him when he says something hurts.

Here is the bloody ooze collecting in his ear.

By the next afternoon Conner was finally feeling much better, but not great. Now it has been 3 days since his eardrum ruptured and it is still oozing pretty steadily. This morning he had a fit and cried a long time, which set off a cough attack from his cold, and soon after that the oozing was much bloodier for the rest of the day. His ooze has gotten all over his pillow, my pillow, some sheets, clothes, and pajamas. Overall Conner is getting close to being back to normal, but he still complains about his ear sometimes and is a little cranky. I was so happy to be able to leave the house with him after 9 long days stuck at home. But now he is looking too skinny and scrawny to Cade and I so he is getting extra cookies to get him looking back to normal.

I didn't know about this until I happened to go through the pictures on Cade's phone. Apparently this is what the boys do when I'm working.

I wish I had a picture of our scrawny Conner but it hasn't worked out. It probably wouldn't be noticeable in a picture anyway. Hopefully he'll be looking like himself again soon, his face looks funny to us now.

Disneyland!

Last year the Jensens started trying to get the whole Rodgers family to take a trip to Disneyland. The rest of us weren't sold on the idea, me included. I was planning on being pregnant and didn't want to pay all that money and not get to go on all the rides. So the Jensens planned to take the trip with just my parents. Then back in October when they were getting ready to buy their tickets my mom started asking me to come along. My "plan" obviously hadn't worked and I wasn't pregnant and then I found out that they were going on Cade's busiest work week of the year with him traveling all over northern Arizona, which also happens to be my birthday. So I figured I should take Conner after all so we wouldn't have to be alone all week and actually be around other people on my birthday for once.

On Sunday morning Conner and I drove down to my parent's house, had lunch, waited for the Jensens to get their spare tire on (to replace the one that went flat the day after buying a new one), and were on the road. Conner did great on the drive. We didn't have anything for him to watch a movie on so we just went old school and brought a bag of things for him to do (books, music, puzzle, crayons, etc). He made his way through that bag and fell asleep right after the last activity until we got to the hotel. We all shared a two bedroom suite and Conner was so happy to play with his cousins the whole time. We went out to Outback for dinner and Cade was so jealous. I didn't know he liked Outback much, but he sure was sad that he missed out on a steak dinner. He never cared that he wasn't going to Disneyland (he isn't a fan of Disneyland, tsk tsk) but he sure cared that he missed out on Outback!

Eli, Conner, Tyler, Tyson hanging out in the hotel room.

The hotel gave out balloons during breakfast and I think that might have been Conner's favorite part of the whole week.

The whole gang posed for a picture for us! (Ok maybe not, it was just in the picture package that the Jensens bought)

The whole gang

On Monday we hit California Adventure and I unfortunately forgot my camera, luckily Carol Ann took a few for me. Conner was cautious most of the day, he didn't get upset about any of the rides, but he rarely looked happy either. He did love riding the spinning rocketship ride and we went on it 3 times while waiting for the rest of the group to go on some other nearby ride that he wasn't tall enough for. Later, grandma and I took Tyson and Conner on the spinning ladybug ride a few times while everyone else went on Tower of Terror. He started warming up to the ride finally and put his hands in the air and faked screamed since Tyson and I were doing it. He also watched the Bug's Life 3D movie without freaking out and we managed to last through the whole thing. (The previous 3D movies we've been to involved crying and walking out.) We don't have the movie Cars, so I borrowed it once a few months ago and tried to get Conner to watch it but he wasn't really interested in it. But he loved the Mater ride and has been talking about him since and tries to steal the Mater truck from the other boys in nursery. I guess we'll have to get the movie now.

This is actually on the last day and Conner just couldn't keep his poor little eyes open

Tower of Terror. We're on the front two rows on the left. It looks like my mom enjoyed it, but she wouldn't ride it again.

On Tuesday we went to Disneyland. We only made it through about half the park. On Wednesday we did the other half of the park. I had been promised much in advance that we were going during one of the slowest weeks of the year and there would be no lines. Overall I felt lied to. The first 3 days there were plenty of lines, not overly crowded but certainly more than I had been led to believe. Luckily, with fast passes and parent swap passes we never had to wait too long for any of the big rides. Jared was so nice and ran around to all the rides and got us fast passes everyday, thanks Jared! And our last day was great. We didn't stay the whole day and we were still able to ride everything in both parks that we had wanted to, with almost no lines. A friend of mine had told me that 4 days would be too long, but it turned out to be just right.

Conner did a great job of reading the map and telling us where to go.

Saying hi to Mickey.

Playing in Tarzan's tree house.

Conner LOVES all trains so the grandparents and us took a long ride around the park in the train and had lunch. It was perfect.

Thankfully Aunt Caryn was around to take these boys on the teacups or they would have missed out on such an iconic ride.

The Jensens getting off of the Matterhorn.

We took this picture just in time. The next morning the Christmas tree was gone.

All the kids were really good the whole time. Our longest wait was for some Toy Story ride in California Adventure (which is nothing special so I don't get what the huge line is for). It was close to an hour. The nice thing was that Conner, Tyler, and Tyson all fell asleep and got a decent nap in so we didn't have to entertain them during that long wait. The bad thing was they were all asleep in our arms and it was painful. Everyday Conner fell asleep while waiting in some line, slept about a half hour and that was it. He also stayed up too late and got up at his normal time but was just fine. Until the last day. On the last day he was tired and not interested in any rides, but still wasn't cranky. On our way out we passed one of the rides he had liked and I thought he asked to ride it but I wasn't sure what he said. So I asked him if he wanted to ride it and he told me it was too late.

A bit mesmerized underwater in the Finding Nemo submarine.

Conner wasn't thrilled with Autopia the first time around but he loved it the second time.

Conner and I with Grandpa and Eli in the car behind us.

Saying hi to grandma and grandpa in Toon Town.

Jared and Tyson on the Roger Rabbit ride (I think).

Conner and I

Grandma and Emma

Grandpa and Eli

With no line, we just had to hit up the Merry Go Round.

Jared's birthday was on Tuesday, mine was on Wednesday. Jared didn't get a birthday pin, but he and Carol Ann picked one up for me. He should have worn one because he really missed out on every single employee he passed wishing him a happy birthday. It must be a requirement of the job because even the shuttle driver wished me a happy birthday. And on another day, the shuttle assistant, (you know, the guy who points to the bus and says get on here) told us "Have a positive day".

Playing in Toon Town

We're flying over Neverland!

In the monkey cage on the Casey Junior train. We had to wait a little bit for this one and Conner kept saying "Think I can, think I can" while he watched it. And in case you notice, my birthday pin is upside down only because Conner had been playing with it in line, not because I can't pin things on right side up. Also, check out Emma's hair bow.

A priceless picture of my mom on Splash Mountain

It's a Small World was still decked out for Christmas.

 

The rides aren't the only fun things at Disneyland. The shuttles are pretty awesome too!

We left about 4:00 on Thursday and got slowed down by rush hour traffic for awhile and then stopped for dinner. After that Conner was out like a light for the rest of the drive, it was great. I thought for sure he would be ready to play once we got to my parent's house around midnight, but he just played for a few minutes while I got ready for bed and then he was ready to go back to bed again. And thanks to my dad for driving the whole way both there and back!