Bow Explosion

So Krista has recently dropped all things including scrapbooking, card making, bread baking, and husband nurturing so as to pursue her most recent love. . . making bows. She sits for hours and hours sometimes looking at over priced bows online so as to ascertain the precise makeup so that her daughters' heads may be richly adorned like those of greater means. Who knows what her inspiration is, but certain people suspicion it is her daughters' lack of hair and desire to adorn said bald head. Her journey to her current aptitude for the art was not without its bumps in the ribbon road. It all dates back to her 9th and 10th year of age. She tells me that she would make bows even back then using all manner of creative medium with her specialty being plastic bows carefully glued and heated so as to contain skittles on its interior. She would sell those 10 at a time at her Father's work, which is on a chicken ranch, so you know it had to be good product if people going to a chicken ranch would buy some bows. She took a 14 year hiatus to pursue other interests, get married, and have kids. Then two years ago, with the emergence of daughter number one, her interests were re-kindled and she started the bow making process. They took her a few tries to get the touch back, but after some steady practice, yards and yards of ribbon, and a secret little tool, she now makes bows by the dozens. I had no idea of the extent to which she devotes time to this hobby until I happened upon a box of at least 50 bows. What is more amazing is that she still tends to the affairs of the home and children and the occasional haircut. If she could only find a way to popularize bows for boys then she would probably go into business for herself. But with the current state of child fashion she must be satisfied with bows for her girls. So, chalk up another talent to her already lengthy list. Maybe one day I will catch up, but probably not.

We had the girl’s pictures taken in their cute Christmas dresses. The others are Addyson's 6 month pictures. Unfortunately we do not have Brynlee's 2 years pictures available to post digitally.

Vomit or Diarrhea, take your pick

So Addy has now officially contracted her first virus. It all started on Wednesday with Brynlee as the fish crackers she ate that morning did not want to stay down; rather they wanted to end up on our white carpet. After one day and a low grade fever, Brynlee recovered nicely with minimal vomiting episodes.

Addyson was another story. The day after Brynlee's emesis episodes, I knew Addy was next seeing as Brynlee felt it necessary to allow Addy to suck on her right big toe for extended periods of time for no reason other than she said it made her feel better. Weather it was the precipitating factor, I know not. But I do know that the next day Addy was tossing her cookies all day long, every hour on the hour. She looked miserable as she just lay on her blanket ready for the next wave of vomiting to arrive. Fearing dehydration, we pumped bubble gum flavored Pedialyte into her via bottle and hoped for the best. Gratefully, she came out of it with a low grade fever as well that passed in 24 hours.

All this vomiting reminded me of an experience when I was a kid. I believe I was 8 or 9 years old and my brother woke in the middle of the night, he being 6 years my senior, and proceeded to regurgitate, from the top bunk, all over our room. I remember marveling, even at my young age, how much of our room he could hit from the aerial advantage point. My good parents woke that night, I assume somewhere in the time of 2-3am, offered comfort to my brother, woke me up seeing as my brother's episode did not seem to rouse me from my deep slumber, and proceeded to tackle the arduous task of cleaning out vomit from shag carpeting. For days and days our room stank of bile and vomit, so much so that my brother and I slept in the living room as we let our room air out. I appreciate now more than then how much love a father and mother must have if they are to wake in the middle of the night and clean up after their sick kid.

Thus, after this week I have learned four things:

1. Why is there no flavored-COLORLESS-pedialyte out there?

2. Teaching a child how to throw up in a bucket in invaluable.

3. Krista is becoming an expert carpet cleaner as she has now added partially digested fish crackers, apple sauce, and breast milk to her repertoire of items to extract from light colored carpeting.

4. If I were to take my pick of body product to clean up, I would choose vomit over diarrhea any day.

Big Mormon Wagon

Time. It just seems to slip by. One moment your preparing for the onslaught of turkey day then your sitting amidst a pile of Christmas-morning colorful wrapping papers and the next thing you know it is mid January and you are almost finished with the first medical school rotation of the new year. The time is definitely whizzing by.


The holidays proved to be the essence of joy and gladness as we celebrated with friends and family in the usual fashion. We tried to drink in as much Christmas cheer as humanly possible. This usually meant an inordinate amount of sampling baked goods. It all started one fine Tuesday afternoon after a long day's work, I came home to the cornucopia of sugary delights. There was chocolate dipped pretzels, pumpkin bread, molases cookies dipped in white chocolate, mint brownies, sugar cookies, and fruit cake. My wondering eyes beheld and my mouth partook and all was right with the world as we launched into the holiday season.

Addyson took her first Christmas well, opting out of the holiday dinner rice cereal and going straight for the holiday dinner breast milk. She of course had no clue of the goings on but smiled just the same. I do think, though that her Christmas gift pile stretched much higher than the rest of ours.

Brynlee also enjoyed her holiday but we just couldn’t get her to understand the concept of Santa and then to top it off, mom and dad forgot to have her set out milk and cookies for the Jolly Elf. I’m surprised Santa didn’t leave switches in stocking for that act of defiance. In all we had a lovely time and I now have one more sport coat to add to my collection of one, Krista can peel, slice, and dice apples in fractions of a second with her new Apple peeler decorer, Brynlee pretends to make all manner of baked goodies in her play kitchen and Addy loves to drool on her new teething ring. Indeed Santa weighed and measured our goodness this year and found us up to code.


One of the more harrowing experiences of my life came in 2004 when vehicle malfunction encouraged us to seek after a more reliable and gas friendly alternative to our then current mode of transport. Harrowing in the sense that any man who takes on the likes of car salesmen knows it is not for the faint of heart. For hours and hours and days and days Krista and I test drove and negotiated and test drove and negotiated, many times barely escaping with our lives and our pocket books. But we finally purchased a nice economy vehicle that has proved to be the epitome of reliable. Well, with the burgeoning Dalley Family, in numbers, the “econo-car” though manageable was turning out to be somewhat cumbersome. So Krista and I strapped on our body armor, hid our wallets, and headed for the Dallas-area dealerships. So, in case you were wondering, “Salesmen” have not become endangered nor have they changed their. So Krista and I readied ourselves with all manner of research, spreadsheets, and price comparison charts so as to thwart the salesman from every angle possible. We ventured into the Metroplex, arsenal in hand, ready for what may come. After the first dealership, I knew we may have a work cut out for us as the salesman tried the ol “what kind of payments per month were you looking for” routine, but we blocked that shot and moved onto the next car lot. For days (three maybe) this went on. We walked on the scene, they try to sell us a car we didn’t want or need or they try to ricky doo us on the price. Needless to say, we were sad, depressed by the unfeeling and uncaring dealerships. Then Chris, my brother-in-law, walked onto the scene. Like the Lone Ranger of car buying, he rode into our situation, made one phone call and within minutes had us the best deal on any vehicle we had seen or test drove. I was amazed. He shared with me his secret to success and I was inspired. So Krista and I drove down to the dealership, pluncked down our money, and drove off in our Honda MiniVan, grateful we had family to swoop in and save the day and grateful that we opted to purchase that extra carpet and paint sealer/protectant/warranty. Man, we made off like bandits.

Halloween 2007

Mom, Brynlee, Addyson, Mema and Pepa made it out to the ward trunk or treat/chili cook off this year with great success. Dad was on on call at the hospital that night, unfortunately, and missed the event . So we decided to go with an earth theme this year for costumes. Brynlee is sporting the latest in Lady Bug wear which brought her plenty of ohhs and ahhs from lookers on. And how can you go wrong with Addyson as a pea in a pod.

Of all holidays of the year I would have to say that Halloween is my (Ethan's) least favorite. I never liked the sinister and evil part of the day. Ghosts, goblins and witches are not aspects of any day that I would call good, especially not a HOLIDAY. The only redeeming value that Halloween has over, say, flag day is the cute costumes and the mounds and mounds of high fructose corn syrup and chocolate that is freely doled out to any kid that can utter, "Trick or Treat!"

My favorite costume of all time was when I dressed up as a Ninja. I remember too the haul I brought in that year surpassed any that I had or any that I would have. I think we feasted on the catch for an extra few months. Krista, on the other hand, can only recall one costume of all her youth worth remembering and that was dressing up like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. She indicates it also yielded her plenty of persuasion power to get an extra dip in the trick or treat candy bowls. I applaud the efforts of various of our friends that went with a family themed costumes this year, with such things as the Wizard of Oz or The Incredibles. I get a sense that if we are to keep up with the Joneses, we will have to do better than Mom and Dad putting on a wig for a costume.

Which brings me to my next topic, though I don't especially like the day, I can still appreciate when some semblance of an effort is made to obtain candy from our house. I was surprised at the number of kids that came to our door with no sign of costume or Halloween. I even had some kids who just stood there with their plastic bags open, saying nothing, like I owe them the candy. Tell me, is this the state of the youth today to walk from door to door expecting us to reward them for the mere act of ambulation? I think not.

In all, Halloween passed this year without incident or nightmares and we were able to move onto to the great day of November 3.

Brynlee turned 2 on Sept. 13th. She loves purses, buttons and trucks (yes that's right our little princess loves trucks!) She is loving having a new baby sissy!

So here it is. The first blog that has made its way onto the world wide web that bears the namesake of the Ethan and Krista Dalley Family. Perhaps this blog will be entertaining, or perhaps it will be boring, but either way it is something for you to keep up with us, if desired, or at least give you something to do to kill time when ESPN or ebay are on the fritz. Hopefully you will enjoy, but I give this one caution, you will more than likely find no high eyebrow/scholastic declarations and theorems herein. Rather a nice blog about a nice family from the nice area of West Texas. SO make sure you have your Primaquin shots in place and proceed at your own risk.