I meant to do this sooner, but I have been a little busy so here goes. I spent a week in Utah babysitting for my brother and sister-in-law. I watched my Nieces Morgan, age 8, and Kali, age 3, and also my nephew Cade, age 6. By the way this is really long so don't start this unless you have some time on your hands. It probably really isn't that interesting either so I won't be offended if you don't read the whole thing. Here's how it went.
I actually got there on Thursday night because I was going to take my Grad School test on Friday morning, but then I wussed out so I just kinda hung out and enjoyed myself on Friday and most of Saturday. I went shopping with Becca, my sister-in-law, on Friday so that she could get all of the things she still needed for her trip to Mexico. Then I played with the kids Friday night until they went to bed and then I watched a movie with Jared and Becca and also my brother Steve and his wife Kelly. It was pretty fun and I was kinda enjoying my relaxation. On Saturday I slept in, the absolute last time I slept in for a week, until 9 when Cade came down to ask if he could play Wii. My brother Paul and his wife Mandy and my parents came down on Saturday so that Paul and Mandy could spend some time with her grandparents who were in town and my parents came down to take Steve out to dinner for his birthday. So we all went out to dinner, my whole family that was there including the kids, Mandy's grandparents, and our friend Brock who lives down in Logan. After dinner Jared and Becca left for Salt Lake so that they could catch their early flight to Mexico on Sunday morning. The rest of us hung out at Jared's house playing cards until we all decided to go to bed. The next morning Kali woke me up at like 7 which is pretty crappy since they don't have church until 11. Everyone else gradually woke up and I was able to get myself and all three kids ready for church on time. Although my dad did have to avert a shoe crisis and was able to help Morgan find her white shoes to match her white dress! We even got to church early! We only stayed for sacrament meeting and then went home. I know we should have stayed the whole time, but I don't know anyone there and trying to find Relief Society and then sitting in there with a whole bunch of ladies telling me how brave I was to come down and babysit for a week did not sound like fun to me. So anyway after church Mom and Dad headed home, Paul and Mandy had left earlier so they could make it back to Rexburg for their 1:30 church, I was finally all alone with the kids and frankly I was a little scared. We hung out just playing around and watching a little tv until bedtime which was 8 even though they didn't have school. After they were in bed I watched one of my movies, and just kinda messed around until about 12:30, which is normally when I go to bed, and then I crashed. Well fun for me Kali woke up at 6:30 the next morning. I was dying! I was definitely not prepared for early mornings with small kids. Fortunately Kali was happy with me turning on her favorite show, Horseland, in my room and giving her a bag of cereal and a cup of milk so that I could go back to sleep for a little bit. But then Morgan woke up at 7 and Cade was up shortly thereafter so I was up and making breakfast. Being President's day the kids did not have school so we hung out and played Wii most of the day. Nothing real cool or exciting. The kids again went to bed at 8 and I was soooooo tired from getting up early that I went to bed at 10 knowing that I had to get up at 7 so that I could get all three kids up and ready for school, Kali goes to preschool. So the next morning I start waking kids up, I had to go in and get Cade up like 4 times cause he just would not get up and get dressed. Morgan got up after about he second time I went downstairs. Kali of course was up when I went in to get her up so she was totally the easiest. So after getting them all dressed, making them all breakfast, and making sure that homework was all done and in backpacks I was ready to try doing hair. I started with Cade figuring he would be the easiest, cause he is a boy, but no after about the 10th time I heard "that's not how mom does it," I finally told him that this is how Jess does it so get used to it. He was kinda okay with that but he did pout a little. Morgan was pretty good she wanted her hair left down so I straightened the parts that needed a little help and that was done, but then there was Kali. Kali has the craziest curly hair that HAS to be done or else it is just all over the place, so here I am with these little tiny hair bands trying to part her hair and put the front into two little cute pony tails on top of her head. Now I have done this a couple of times, but I am not good at it. All I have to say is it's a good thing that Becca wasn't there to see how bad it looked. Sorry Becca. Anyway I got them all ready, Morgan and Cade got to the bus stop on time and I managed to get Kali to preschool on time as well. The morning was going great. I decided to go wander around the stores and see if I could find anything that I liked. By the time I had to leave to go get Kali I still had not found anything that I liked. Oh well, I really don't need anything new anyway. So I picked up Kali and we went to Wendy's for lunch, I didn't feel like cooking and after getting mandarin oranges instead of fries I felt like it was a pretty healthy lunch. :) Morgan and Cade got home at about 4 and after making sure that all homework was done I let them play Wii until 6 which is when we had to leave to go to Cade's program at the school. It was a nice little program and Cade was hilarious to watch. He was in the very back row and he would kind of bob his head to the music, but did not sing much. He did however make a bunch of funny faces including the time he spent about 3 minutes making himself cross-eyed. I was laughing pretty hard. After the program finally got over it was 7:30. I promised Cade that if he behaved I would let him decide what was for dinner and since the kids were supposed to be to bed about 8 we went to McDonald's and grabbed Happy Meals, with apples instead of fries as I was trying to make it somewhat healthy. I figured it would be faster than anything I could make. At this point all of you reading this realize that I pretty much suck as a mom, I mean who lets their kids eat out this much. Anyway I got home and listened to the messages on the answering machine and Jared had called and said that they would try to call around 8 to talk to the kids. So I got the kids to eat fast, and then get their pajama's on and get all ready for bed and then we waited and waited and about 8:30 Jared and Becca finally got through to talk to the kids. So it was close to nine when they finally fell asleep. My throat had begun to hurt that morning and by the time the kids went to bed it was really starting to hurt so I took some medicine and went to bed a little before 10. My throat hurt so bad it kept waking me up every couple of hours so I did not sleep well. And then at about 2:30 in the morning Kali wakes up to go potty and tried to convince me that it was time to get up. I finally got her to go back to sleep about 30 minutes later which I was very grateful for. When I got up at 7 to get the kids up my throat was really bad, I had a horrible headache, and I felt like I was gonna throw up. That last thing could have been because I ate McDonald's the night before though. The kids were really hard to get up and get going on Wednesday after their late night but I finally got Morgan and Cade dressed, fed and hair done. Kali on the other hand was very grumpy and threw a fit every time I tried to get her to do anything. I finally told Kali that she didn't have to go to preschool but that I was going to the doctor, I thought I might have strep throat, and that she would have to go with me. She quickly became compliant and got ready for Preschool. After I dropped off all of the kids I went to InstaCare to see a doctor. I had to wait for like 45 minutes and then my strep test was negative so they tested me for influenza, again it was negative. The doctor said I had what they call "paraflu" which is like the flu but not as bad. So I went and picked up my prescription along with some other needed things like throat lozenges and headache meds and then went and picked Kali up. I fed Kali some Mac and Cheese and then let her watch movies while I went in to bed and crashed cause at this point I was feeling really bad. Morgan and Cade came home at about 1 as they got out of school early. I called them into my room and told them that I was sick and would have to rest a lot and that they would need to be really good. Cade asked if he could read to me so that he could play X-box, which is a rule. So I told him yes, but I kept falling asleep and honestly have no idea if he read the whole story or if it was even right. I then told him and Morgan that they could play and then I slept on and off the rest of the evening. I got up and made them dinner and then went back to bed. I called my mom and told her that I was sick and asked how mom's take care of kids when they are sick like this and she said that they pretty much do what I was doing, rest as much as possible and try to keep the kids in the house. The second part wasn't hard, because it was so cold, but resting was difficult as the kids were fighting and I had to go in and talk to them about it and then Kali was in my room about every ten minutes wanting a new tv show, or something to eat. Thursday I felt even worse, if that is possible, and the kids were home all day because of parent teacher conference. So again the kids played and watched movies all day while I layed in bed and tried to not die. They did really well and I was so proud of them for getting along so well. About 4 Paul and Mandy showed up to help me out, Mom had sent them because I think she feared for the well being of her grandkids. It was soooo nice to have them there cause I could go in my room, shut the door, and sleep for more that 10 minutes at a time. Mandy made the kids a very healthy meal that did not contain Chicken nuggets or Macaroni as that is about all I had been feeling up to making them while I was sick. That night Paul and Mandy took Morgan and Cade to my brother Steve's churchball game just to get them out of the house which was good for the kids. I kept Kali home so she could go to bed because she had Preschool on Friday. I had been gradually getting more and more nauseous all day so I asked Paul to stop and get me some Pepto and some peppermint tea on the way home to see if that would help. And wouldn't you know it I drank some peppermint tea and then puked my guts out. I did feel a little better after that though. My head was pounding pretty bad so I went to bed at about 9:30 and Paul and Mandy put Morgan and Cade to bed. It was nice to not have to do that when I felt so crappy. The next morning I woke up at about 815 so that I could get Kali up and ready to be at preschool at 9. Then I tried to tell myself that I felt good enough to go and take my MAT, Miller Analogies Test, for Grad school as today was the day I had rescheduled it for. I didn't think I was going to be able to make it but fortunately I have two amazing brothers who were willing to give me a blessing. I know without a doubt that the only way I made it through being able go up there and take that test is because of that blessing. After the blessing I got dressed and then took Kali to preschool, I had Mandy drive so that she could pick Kali up after preschool. I was pretty dizzy and shaky as I had not eaten for about 3 days so I had Paul drive me up to my test. I was a little nervous as I don't do well on tests when I am around a bunch of other people, but fortunately I was the only one taking the test that morning. The guy giving the test was giving me the instructions and then he was like can I give you some advice? And of course I was like HECK YES!!!! He told me that a lot of people don't finish this test, it is 120 questions in 60 minutes, so when I come in and tell you that you have 5 minutes left just start filling in bubbles on all the questions you haven't got to yet so that you have at least a chance of getting them right. This freaked me out a little. So I started my test and went through answering only the ones that I knew or was fairly sure that I knew and then I went back through and spent time trying to figure out the other ones. When he came in to tell me I had 5 minutes left, I only had 4 questions left to finish. So either I did really well and I am smart, or I suck really bad and bombed it, but I won't know for 2-3 weeks. So after my test my friend Brock picked me up and gave a lift home and then we all ate lunch that, thankfully, Mandy had made cause at this point I was pretty drained. I didn't dare try to eat yet as I was still not feeling totally well. We then decided to run to the pet store to get some stuff for Paul and Mandy's new puppy Mack that they had brought with them. Funny story: Jared and Becca promised to bring the kids souvenirs from Mexico so Morgan and Cade are in the back seat talking about this and Morgan says "What are souvenirs?" to which Cade replies "They're Mexican." like Morgan was a complete idiot. We all laughed pretty hard about that. When we got back I was completely wasted so I went to my room to try to sleep. Kali came in and wanted to watch horseland so I turned it on and went to sleep. I woke up as Paul and Mandy were getting the kids ready to take them bowling. They had a great time. The rest of the evening wasn't real spectacular, Steve and Kelly came over and hung out with us for a while and then we all went to bed. Saturday I felt much better and was able to get up and get a bunch of stuff done including cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry and getting all of my stuff packed up as Jared and Becca would be home that night. The kids played and watched tv, but Paul minimized X-box time which Cade had loved having unlimited time while I was sick so Cade just wandered around looking all depressed and claiming that there was nothing to do. We fed the kids dinner and then just waited for Jared and Becca to get home as we had decided to go out to dinner. Jared and Becca finally got home and gave the kids all of their souvenirs and I gave a quick update about what had been going on and then Paul, Mandy, and I left. We met up with Steve and Kelly and went to dinner at my favorite place ever Olive Garden. Brock was there and he was our server so that was pretty fun. After we ate we all went to Steve and Kel's and watched a movie. I finally got home at about 1230 and I was totally exhausted so I went to bed. Well that is my week. This is pretty long so I give props to anyone who makes it to the end.
Here are some Pics:
This is the kids playing in the warm sheets that had just been washed.
This is Morgan and Cade playing Wii. They had a great time and were upset everytime I told them they had to take a break and do something else. 
This is Morgan and Cade having a sleep-over in Cade's room. They get to stay up late and hang out together on Friday nights. I tucked them in really tight at their request and then they looked like burrito's so I called them my little burrito babies. They thought it was hilarious.
This is Cade at his program, it was on America and symbols of freedom and Patriotism. Cade's class talked about the Eagle.
