Sleepless Nights

Sarah Beth had knee surgery on Monday morning. It all went well and we are looking forward to her being able to return to activity, specifically volleyball and bike riding.

But in the meantime, I am suffering greatly from no sleep. The first night we thought we had it right by settling Sarah Beth in the little girls' bed downstairs. I stayed up a little later than normal to give her the next dose of medicine and to ice her knee one last time. Poor girls could not get comfortable and called me about every 30 minutes. Finally around 1:30 we decided to move her to the recliner in the family room. She finally got comfortable and went to sleep.

Of course I had to get up around 5:30 to get everyone up. Yeah, that was difficult. Tuesday was a rainy stormy day. Since I had finally doubled up on Sarah Beth's medicine that night, she was still quite sleepy. ;-)

So we both dozed off and on the rest of the morning. We did wake up to watch Mitt Romney on the "View". I even dozed off for part of it, though. We rescheduled her first physical therapy appointment for the afternoon since the weather was so bad.

Then last night, she woke me up because we had accidently left her ice pack on her knee and during the night it started to leak and she was soaked. We had to change her clothes top to bottom.

She is sleeping now, but I had to get up with the kids right after that and am determined not to go back to sleep.

This toddler is sure making me tired.......this toddler is 5 foot 9 now!!!

Emma came into the kitchen this morning for school, late as usual, sporting some earrings she found in her sister's room. They looked a little large on this skinny little girl. I asked her if they were heavy and she said, "a little". They must have been because when I dropped her off at school on this blistery cold morning she was holding her ears to prevent the wind from blowing them. She looked pretty proud of herself though.

Emma at eleven. Emma is so fun and sweet. She is our most determined child. She has also learned to be very patient with Lily. Some times she gets agitated, but mostly she just humors her and then smiles knowingly at me. Very mature, Emma!! She is really working hard on the violin and loves to tinker around on the piano. She is ready to take up her cross stitching we started during the summer. She is pretty good. She also is wanting me to teach her to sew on the sewing machine. On Saturday she made a dress for her American Girl. She cut the pieces for it by holding the fabric up to the doll and measuring here and there to get it just right. It has a bodice and skirt attached with straps at the top. Pretty impressive. The other thing she loves is to draw house plans. Truly a day can be spent huddled over her writing pad drawing away. As I alluded to earlier, Emma is unbearably slow. She takes almost all afternoon to get her homework done. She is always the last one ready in the morning for school. She is the longest in the bathtub at night. It makes me crazy so many times.

So, Emma will not be winning any races soon, but she sure is a wonderful girl. So innocent and childlike still. She was introduced at New Beginnings in Young Women last week (I can't believe that she was even there!!!) and she told that her favorite TV show was "Arthur" from PBS. No peer pressure there..............yet. How thankful I am to have this great girl in my family.

Girl Baby

At Christmas we found an ornament that we gave Zack for Christmas the few days before Mary Catherine was born. It was signed from Alex, Taylor, and Girl Baby. It was all he got for Christmas that year. I remember that I got a Precious Moments figure with a little baby perched on a cloud. I loved it. Especially because we were going to have our little girl baby in 5 days. We were poor but those gifts were so sweet.

So now our little girl baby is 17 and so sweet, too. She and her friends had Sarah Beth do a photoshoot for them. They turned out so cute.

On her birthday she had a house full of girls added to our home. Our expert cake bakers and decoraters....Emma and Lily.....made her 2 cakes. One was traditional, the other a theme cake. Since she had girls spend the night, they decided on a bed and made pillows, and a chair out of fondant icing for her. So sweet. Makes my heart warm when they are so thoughtful. And boy were they proud, too.
Her wonderful brothers presented her with this cute horse that Elaine is demonstrating. They had a blast with that thing outside by the fire roasting huge marshmallows.
They boys also had a bolt of inspiration and made her this light bulb hat to show how smart they think Mary Catherine is. Brilliant!! They kept exclaiming how smart THEY were. It took a little electric skills to rig this up. So funny!!

So Happy Birthday to our first Girl Baby. We sure do love you much!!

So four weeks tomorrow I had surgery to remove my tonsils at 40 years old. I have indeed turned 40. So I had surgery on a Tuesday and this was me on Saturday....

ALL DAY!!!

I would love if I could say that I feel bad about it, but I really loved it and wish I could do it again!

We had a couple of months of surgeries starting with Zack in October having not one but two surgeries. He had the disk in his neck fused early in October and then by the end of the month he had his rotator cuff repaired....... courtesy of wrestling with Taylor.

These two were next........

They both had their wisdom teeth out the Friday before Thanksgiving. Lots of swelling ensued and TONS and TONS of mashed potatoes from Popeye's.

I was next on the 14th of December and then her...........

This was two days later. She had her tonsils out 3 days after mine. She was much more of a trooper than I was. She needed her pain meds for several days but really downed the Tylenol and macaroni and ice cream.

Then 4 days later after this cute kids came home from BYU-Idaho......

he had his wisdom teeth out, too. After he got this great haircut from Alex on the back porch. He was shopping the same day with his brothers and sisters. And again the next day. No swelling, no pain meds after I made him take them the first day. He just went right on.........but still ate tons of Popeyes mashed potatoes.

So 2010 was the year of surgery for us.


Lily helped us meet our deductible early in the year with her tonsils being taken out in March. She was so sweet at the hospital with Zack and me and GranJan. She wore her robe to the hospital and was so talkative. She was quite proud of herself.

So that makes my BYU-again son the lone holdout for surgery this year. Lets hope he doesn't jump into the fray in 2011.


Hope we can stay out of the doctor's office and hospital. We will eat our apples for sure!!

Ok, Sarah Beth made this picture above for our Christmas card but it would have cost a fortune to print. So instead I am making it our header even though it is Christmas. Just pretend it isn't. I LOVE it. She had become quite the photographer, even having a photo shoot that she got paid for.........well it was Mary Catherine and her friends, but still. She is so good and we are impressed with her abilities.

The pictures do tell alot of our activities for the year. I made me think that I should just put our Christmas letter on here to save for posterity! Mary Catherine and Elaine wrote it and I think they did an amazing job..........

(Joy to the World)……The Saints have won!! This year has been the craziest year since Taylor’s birth, but we loved every minute of it. How could it get any better than to start with the Saints unbelievable victory in the Superbowl that in these parts was met with many fireworks and raucous celebration? We were so thrilled to be able to continue our love of the Saints and LSU, even attending an LSU game where we were invited to sit in a suite that was extremely exhilarating. Our other most fun family outing was on a weeklong cruise with Daddy’s goal was to read a book!, Alex’s to get more sun, Taylor’s to eat as many entrees as he could, MC to meet many new friends, SB to break into the older youth room, Emma and Lily to run back and forth between their amazing siblings and their new friends in the Kid’s Camp! Mama just wanted to sit and be served….not disappointed! Daddy Zack has come back to the land of the living and now resides on Horseshoe Lane once more. For 5 months our beloved Padre was separated from the rest of the family working on the oil spill in Mississippi. In recent weeks he has survived two surgeries and is now in ship shape condition. In the season of giving, none shows more generosity than our dear Daddy. Mammy Zack is also recovering from a recent surgery and from the intense trauma of turning 40. As mother hen, she is constantly tending to all of us chitlens. She made a spontaneous trip to Utah with a couple of girlfriends, shopped up a storm, and extended a loving hand to all those within a 1,000 mile radius. AlZachy spent the year expanding his income. He first worked at Books-A-Million where he completely dominated the sales charts. Then he trucked on over to Biloxi to work with Daddy to make the big-bucks. Alex is also returning back to BYU for the winter semester where he hopes to become a physics teacher. We expect him to be the coolest teacher around. TayBro is the tallest of the Zachary clan at a whopping 6’3”. He graduated Sulphur High in the spring and spent the summer dutifully working on the oil spill, alongside Daddy Zach. Then he took a huge leap out of the home-coop to the frigid wasteland of Idaho to attend BYU-I. What a tragedy for Mother Hen. But he absolutely loves it there. MCAT,aka MCZ otherwise known as xxpoppinpappinpacxxxx is the health nut. She amazes us all with her stamina to withstand culinary temptations! She passed her driver’s test and is now the terror of the road, but puts her license to good use by helping her mom shuttle the younger ladies. She has flown into her junior year of high school and is going strong. Her life is full of school, friends, volleyball, church………...and writing Christmas letters ;) sBeth is a barrel of laughs. Her giggles are boisterous and frequent, but never without cause. She has found a new love of photography and if you need fabulous pictures at a good price sBeth photography is the way to go. She is young and fresh and has loads of pazazzzz! She has recently had a knee problem, but that doesn’t stop her moving and grooving. She is a big bad freshman this year and made lots of new friends on the 9th grade campus. EmJ received a brand new violin last Christmas and has taken to it like a duck to water. We are all repeatedly impressed by her willpower to get better and better at playing. She loves that she is a senior of the elementary school. She is daily improving her culinary skills and is training for motherhood with the American Girl program. She remains the only surviving blond. She loves to talk and tell magnificent stories to any willing listener. Emma is our cutie pie that is rapidly growing into a young woman. Lil is the Queen of Maplewood Middle School and runs that place with an iron hand. She has recently started taking lessons to become an equestrian and this has sparked a love for horses that is unparalleled by anything known to mankind. When she comes home from lessons, she is always using terms that half of us can’t understand, yet we still nod our heads and say “awesome.” She was baptized by Taylor this year. Family from all over Louisiana came in to witness the magic. Though this year was crazy, we find ourselves very grateful to have done it all together and for our Savior’s love and guidance through all we do.

New Year's Eve 2010

Well it is 5:30 in the morning on New Year's Eve. I haven't gone to bed yet, but I felt like I should write down what I am feeling.

I just watched my 2 sons and my husband drive off for a long trip out west. Taylor is returning to BYU-Idaho for his second semester and Alex is going back to BYU after a year and a half back at home. I am filled with emotion as I think of the last 2 years. I love my boys so much. They are so special. I am proud of them and filled with hope for their futures. I hope that we have prepared them for what they have ahead. It has been a long road........one that I didn't think I could handle when Alex came home. We have all grown so much closer as a family. I am thankful that we had this time to learn more and love more.

I was left in the driveway with the Matts. Alex has one and Taylor has one. I am so thankful for the great guys who have filled our home with laughter and energy. We won't have any boys......at least for a while. We don't know what the future will hold, and it may not go the way we expect it to, but with Heavenly Father's help we will make it. I know he will guide us and show us the way.

There is something about a mother's love for her sons. It is not deeper, but different. I have been so blessed to have these wonderful boys call me mama. They laugh at me and give me a hard time, but I know they love me and that I am crazy about them.

Just before they left, I was filling a small ice chest with some drinks for them and ended up letting 6 fall and spew ALL over the kitchen. They boys watched it happen and you would not believe the laughter that ensued. Our home will be much more quiet now. I will miss their boisterous laughter and fun they bring with them. Alex is almost never in a bad mood and Taylor is almost always willing to help with anything that is going on. They are quite a pair.

Just now, I heard keys in the door and looked. It was Taylor...........don't do this to me...........he forgot his IPad. But, of course, recalling Alex's story when he was ready to come home from a friend's when he was little..........Taylor said, "Alex just needs to spend a little time with his family." I hope they got enough time in our family and can go out now and make their own way in this world. I love them so much!!

Mary Catherine turned 17 yesterday. She will be next to leave. I can't even imagine how hard that will be. What a wonderful girl she is!! Another year and a half. I can do this!!!

As I talked about earlier, Emma is really changing and maturing. She has moved into Mary Catherine's room while her room is being worked on and she likes nothing more than for Mary Catherine to come to bed while she is still awake and they can lay there and talk. Last night Emma was determined to wait up for her and sat in the chair while MC finished homework, listening to the I-Pod.

The last two days she has come out ready for school wearing Mary Catherine's signature item....Converse. She assures me they are not too big....I am not so sure! Yesterday it was just the red ones........today....one red, one green!

She confidently got out of the car, because, after all, they are MC's shoes and if Mary Catherine wears them, then they must be cool! This was just after telling me that she is for sure the smartest in her class. Humble, too!

I sure love that girl!!