The Mills

Thanks to Grandpa, we now have an airplane toy in our backyard. The kids have been on it quite a bit – looks like a hit.

I love to take pictures of temples, especially the San Diego temple. Here it is in early morning:
  

We had a family home evening the other week (it may have been even a month or more ago) about putting on the whole armor of God. It was toned down a bit, due to the low average family age, but quite fun.

we went camping with the Hodsons in February. It was pretty fun, for being the first time we’d really gone camping in a long time. The combination of 10 kids and 4 adults meant that we kept pretty busy. Here are some group shots of the kids.
      

Kyle is adorable.
        

His brother Darius is pretty cool, too.

A couple of great pictures of Darius and Grandpa playing ball, taken last time Grandpa was here.

Fiesta is what San Antonio calls the yearly party where we celebrate the battles for Texas’ independence. (Yes, I know, we’re now part of the US, but we still celebrate it. Who else can claim prior independence, after all?) We went to two Fiesta things this year (it stretches for over a week and a half) – Fiesta de los Ninos and the Fiesta Riverwalk Parade.

Fiesta de los Ninos was a bit of a disappointment. In effect, it was a carnival. If we’d known that, we might have taken some money – since basically everything had a cost. Overall, it was ok because the kids got to sit in a fire engine.
    
We went to Sea World afterwards, because we had already paid for season passes and most everything there is free once you’re in (excepting the shops, of course.)

The Riverwalk parade was very well done. My company asked if we wanted to sit on the back lawn of the downtown office and watch the parade floats as they started down the river. Of course! The theme was holidays, and there was a broad mix from various cultures.

For more pictures, click here

The Saturday after Easter, on the day of Lily’s birthday party, Lily awoke with pink eye. (The party got canceled.) This illness struck out of nowhere and began a long saga. The next day entered a second infection… high fever (above 102F), exhaustion, and vomiting for Lily, and Kyle got pink eye. Unlike last year when pink eye ran though our entire family twice, this was the end of pink eye for us this season. (Hooray!) That other virus though… That high fever lasted a full 7 days for Lily, on the 7th day Darius came down with a high fever. He didn’t throw up, but he was definitely sick. On his 4th ad final day of fever, Adele got of the school bus with a 102.5F fever. We got quicker, hers lasted less than 2 days, but went above 103F a lot of the time. I did some research and was relieved to learn that it takes a fever of other 107F to do damage. Friday she was back at school and Cynthia was sick. She made it to the bread store and that was too much of an expedition for her. Saturday Hyrum was sick, but by Sunday Cynthia was well. After 2 solid weeks of illness, we left Daddy home to rest and went to church. Monday he went to work and we though we were finally over it. Oh, but not so. Tuesday Kyle is cranky, but doesn’t really have symptoms; he threw up in the evening, but it looked like he had found an old, lost sippy cup and had a drink. Wednesday afternoon he is way sensitive about his ears and cracks a fever of 100.5F. Good enough, lets go to the doctor. Is it an ear infection? Yes, it is, but wait, there’s more… a gastrointestinal virus. We can expect the diarrhea to last 2 weeks, oh and the antibiotic for the ear infection will make it worse. Oh, and the virus is Very contagious, so wash your hands. Yippe! His fever continued to rise and reached 104.3 with ibuprofen in him. Last night was not spent sleeping, it was spent putting a screaming baby in the bathtub to get his fever down and taking him out to calm him down, changing diapers, and cleaning the bathtub, back and forth all night. The good news is that his fever is under control now (101ish with medicine.) He was actually playing by the end of the day.

Look at all we have to be grateful for: we haven’t been overwhelmed with all of us sick at once, we tend to get better faster each time someone new gets sick, Kyle is staying hydrated, no one else has diarrhea yet, we have managed to live through this mess so far