B-Day

Aaron had a birthday this weekend. I am happy to say I am only one year older than him right now instead of two. So teasing me right now isn't as fun for him. Josh is getting to the age he is really excited for birthdays and holidays so he was really excited. He couldn't wait to wake Aaron up and sing him Happy Birthday this morning. He really wanted to draw Aaron a birthday picture. I finally told him to make Aaron a card. He grabbed some paper, drew a rectangle, and cut it out. He then drew a bulls eye and wrote target on the card along with the number 60. He then gave it to Aaron and said it was his card--meaning gift card instead of my intended birthday card--and then asked Aaron what he was going to buy at Target with his 60 dollars because that was a lot of money. I included the picture of his gift card.

Yesterday we had a cleaning day with everyone helping. The whole house is clean and I really should take pictures of it because it only lasts that way for 5 minutes when you have kids spreading toys everywhere. Anyway, this afternoon Josh was helping me make Aaron's birthday dinner of homemade chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes with country gravy when I spilled something on the counter. Josh looked at me and said, "I cleaned that really good yesterday so you better clean that up, Mom." I was thinking maybe I could use that line in the future and he would actually understand what it means hmmmmm. Unfortunately, the kids didn't appreciate the southern cooking so they filled up on cake and "ootbeer" floats instead. After having cake and "ootbeer" floats with melted ice cream (because someone at some point yesterday thought it would be a good idea to turn off the freezer, but that's another story in itself) Aaron opened his presents. They weren't too much of a surprise since he "accidentally"(or so he said) saw them earlier and also that my kids can't keep a secret. Aaron asked Daniel what he got for presents and Daniel said, "You got shirts Dad, but it's a surprise." So much for the element of surprise. All in all I hope Aaron had a pretty good birthday.

A Face Only A Momma Could Love

This is a face only a momma could love. She has pretty spooky hair from actually leaving her head squeezer on for longer than five minutes and oatmeal all over her face. I only had a few seconds of her holding still in between her semi-crawling around the floor to take the picture. She is pretty happy tonight. I guess a full tummy will do that to you.

Getting Dressed Is Hard To Do

I found Daniel's clothes this morning and let him get dressed by himself. This is what he came upstairs with: This lovely ensemble also did not include underwear. I don't know what happened to them. He took them off in the process of getting dressed and I don't know where they ended up. I am sure I will find them laying around somewhere in the house later on today. Can you tell he has never dressed himself with a tank top before? He put his head through the arm holes, but he still thought he was pretty stylin'.

Interesting

Every time I go to the grocery store if I have time I look around to find any possible foods Daniel can eat. I found a frosting the other day. Interestingly enough it is flavored Cream Cheese, but yet it contains no dairy ingredients. I wonder what they flavor it with if they don't use cream cheese...maybe it's best I don't know. I will try not to think about all of it's artificial chemical goodness when Daniel is eating it because we are just excited that Daniel can actually eat something normal.

In other happenings I caught Daniel using Aaron's deodorant today. I noticed he smelled rather manly this morning, but I couldn't figure out why until I caught him in the act of application. He had the lid off rubbing it on his armpits, chest, arms, tummy, etc. I still don't know how many "applications" he has put on, but I am sure he definitely won't be having any body odor problems today.

Embarrassing Moments and Memorial Day Weekend

We had a mini vacation this weekend. We went up to my parent's cabin (or cavin as my kids call it) up above Heber City. It was a pretty rainy weekend, but we made the most of it. We left Friday afternoon and met G&G T at Dairy Keen which is the most yummy hamburger and shake place in Heber. They serve something called a Train Burger aka heart attack on a bun. It is a huge hamburger with two beef patties, a huge pile of ham, cheese, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, and fry sauce on top. It is Aaron's favorite burger so we made three visits there this weekend. Hmmm and I wonder why I am not losing the baby weight...anyway we don't go there too often so we splurged. We also found out Sarah LOVES french fries. She dropped as many as she ate, but what baby doesn't? Saturday we made the trek over to Park City to hit the outlet stores. I splurged yet again and got Sarah some cute sandals with some Bling as you can see in the picture. Sarah even likes looking at the rhinestones on her new sandals. On the way back from Park City we hit Dairy Keen yet again. After finishing dinner Matthew decided he needed to use the bathroom and he absolutely couldn't wait. I started taking him when Josh all of a sudden decided he needed to use the bathroom as well. I herded them both toward the women's bathroom (I am very paranoid when it comes to sending them alone into the men's restroom). I started walking into the small bathroom with two small occupied stalls when I see Grandma T bringing Daniel towards me who interestingly enough all of a sudden needed to go to the bathroom as well. Josh and Matthew went inside as I was holding the door open waiting for Daniel. I was holding the door open waiting for Daniel when I turned in time to see Josh force open the occupied handicap stall. I was a deer in the headlights. I saw a lady with her pants around her knees sitting on the toilet obviously using the bathroom. I didn't have the guts to meet her eyes I just grabbed Matthew, Josh and Daniel and ran back to our table with my face BRIGHT red. I then made Aaron take them instead. We left very shortly after because I didn't want another chance encounter with her. However, I probably wouldn't have recognized her with her pants pulled up anyway ;).

While at the cabin in between rain storms we rode the motorcycle and 4 wheeler. I have never seen so many wrong ways to wear a helmet until my kids tried to put their own on. I have included some pictures of some of the most wrong ways. Anyway, all Matthew wanted to do was to keep getting rides and he kept pestering anyone to take him for a ride regardless of the weather. We had to keep the key hidden because he would try and take himself for a ride if we he got a hold of it. We saw lots of deer and we even saw a moose. The moose let us get relatively close in the car so we could get a picture. Last night we had a campfire and roasted smarshmallows as Daniel calls them. Sarah didn't quite know what to think about the marshmallows, but the rest of us loved them. We even broke out the hot dogs or gogs and roasted them too. We had a few, well a lot of burnt offerings between the marshmallows and hot dogs. I never knew how far a roasted very sticky marshmallow could be spread until after I saw the boys. They had marshmallow EVERYWHERE even spread it all over us!! Afterwards Daniel grabbed some bread and wanted to roast that too. He didn't understand why you couldn't roast bread if you could roast hot dogs and marshmallows. Some things are just too complex for a 3 year old. The kids got plenty of use out of the stick swing and grandma's lap which by the way can only hold two kids at one time.

When we got home it was such a beautiful day we did some geocaching and found some neat treasures. Hopefully the kids are worn out enough to fall asleep without any problems tonight. It will also help that Matthew set his alarm for midnight last night. It took Aaron about 40 minutes to finally wake up enough to realize he was really hearing music and it wasn't a dream. Anyway, we had a really fun weekend.

Big Girl

Sarah turned 9 months old last week. She is getting so big! She finally is starting to get her two front teeth in and is quite proud of them. She also hates being girly. Within five minutes of her being dressed, she has either pulled her head squeezer off and thrown it on the floor or it is pulled down around her neck. She also hates sandals and within minutes of getting those on she has either kicked them off or she has pulled her toes out of them. If she only knew how long I have waited to use bows, flowers and girly sandals... She has in addition perfected the art of scooting to the bottom of the stairs and screaming at me while I am upstairs. I seem to be her favorite toy.

She has been getting faster at getting around. This morning she even crawled a few inches. She has been getting up on all fours and rocking, but she finally actually crawled a little bit this morning. I think I may be in trouble--or at least she's going to get into trouble! She has started babbling. She says dadadadadada and Aaron is convinced that her first word meaningful word was Dada. I am not so sure, but it's not worth the"discussion" (aka argument). In these last two pictures you can see her up on all fours and in the other she is showing her two teeth.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Aaron and I are trying to get the kids to be a little more independent. The bedtime routine is to shower and get dressed. Josh and Daniel shower together and then Matthew showers alone. In fostering independence we are trying to let them wash themselves which can sometimes be good and other times not so good. Last night Aaron started Josh and Daniel in the shower and wanted them to wash themselves while he went in search of pajamas for them. He came back to find the floor of the shower orange. On closer inspection he saw Daniel instead of washing himself he poured the whole bottle of shampoo all over the shower floor--by the way this is the expensive Mom and Dad's shampoo not the cheap kids stuff. However, I can't get too mad. When I was little my parents sent us to the shower (without the water on) to work things out whenever we started fighting. They sent us there so we could hear our own whines echo in the empty shower stall and hopefully hear how annoying it was. Instead of working things out we just sat and poured the shampoo down the drain. I guess what goes around comes around.

I had to add this picture of Daniel. I ran errands this morning and Daniel fell asleep in the car. When we got home he staggered inside and continued his nap on the couch while remaining standing. Wish I could sleep like that!

Soccer, Church Talk, Geocaching

Last Monday Daniel had a pretty bad asthma attack that wasn't being controlled with rescue nebulizer treatments. The pediatrician started him on some oral steroid (Prednisone) and decided to start him on preventative treatments. The preventative treatments are daily nebulizer controller medications (Pulmicort) to help prevent asthma attacks severe enough to need steroids to clear up. When he does have a flair up we do have additional rescue medication to open his airways. The bad thing is that no asthma medication has gone generic yet. The pharmacy bill is pretty hefty (our copay--yes I said copay-- is $80 a month just for Daniel' s medications alone), but on the other hand so are hospital admissions, ER visits and doctor's visits.

In other news Josh and Matthew had their last soccer games for the season on Saturday. It is sad to see it end, but we are glad to have our Saturdays back. Matthew got a trophy and Josh got some dog tags. The coach had to give us the dog tags instead of Josh because on the packaging it said the dog tags were not for children under seven years old. I questioned the point of that, but who knows?

After our morning errands and fixing the sprinkling system on Saturday we headed out for an afternoon of geocaching. I am glad to say we found one cache, but the other remained very elusive. Josh is starting to get into geocaching and likes to look at the GPS and tell us which way to go. We even found some horses to feed along the trail. For dinner we went to a park and had a picnic. I have fond memories of our family picnics growing up and it was fun to take my family on one. However, it was cut short when right after eating Daniel had a...um potty accident in his underwear/pants (not the #1 kind of potty either) so we had to come home. He had been complaining that his tummy hurt all day and after dinner I found out why. Anyway, after being outside for most of the day we came home pretty sunburned. I need to get back into the routine of sunscreening everyone up before going outside during the summer.

Today was Daniel's first talk in Primary. He was pretty excited to get up there. Every couple minutes he would wave and say, "HI MOM!!" just to make sure I was paying attention. He is quite the ham and does not have any stage fright whatsoever. It was cute to watch.

We're In Trouble

In the last day and a half Sarah has mastered the army crawl. I am finally looking around the house and seeing how un-baby-proofed we really are. We had movie night tonight and she kept rolling and army crawling over the boys to get to their bowls of popcorn. The minute their bowls of popcorn went unsupervised is when she would take her chance. It looks like she really likes popcorn. I guess baby food is for...well...babies =). She can also tell what she doesn't like. I was trying to coax her to army crawl toward a toy so we could record her. She looked at the toy, shook her head no and army crawled away. She's pretty funny.

Thank Goodness for Health Insurance

We just got Matthew's fun little bill for the ambulance ride. To transport him 13.0 miles with just oxygen (no other care was needed) it is over $1000. That is CRAZY! I am awaiting the actual hospital bill any day now. We got the preliminary statement a week ago and it was over $4000 just for less than a 24 hour stay. I can tell you many other ways I would like to spend $5000 and a fun overnight hospital stay is NOT one of them. Good thing we have insurance. Unfortunately, we are one of those families that really use it!!

In other happenings we finally moved Josh and Daniel downstairs. The first few nights they didn't have a clock down with them and that was a mistake. Josh has an internal alarm clock that no matter what time he goes to bed he wakes up between 5-6am. After getting woken up by them so early in the morning I bought an alarm clock for them to use. However, Josh can't quite tell time yet. I told him not to come upstairs until 7:00am. I guess he thinks that any time a seven appears on the clock anywhere it means it's 7:00. He ended up coming upstairs at 6:07, 6:17, 6:27, 6:37, 6:47 after this time there was no chance of sleep so I got up. The next night Aaron set his alarm and told him not to come upstairs until the music turned on. The next morning Josh came upstairs amazed that the music turned on. He thought it was magic that the music turned on. He continues to be mystified every morning when he comes upstairs that the music turns on. It is great! I am hoping he doesn't learn how to set it himself though. That could be disastrous. Good thing I love my kids!

Chicks Dig Star Wars

Saturday at our family party Grandma T was all the kids' favorite because she handed out the bandaids for a few real and quite a few imagined owies. Ever since then Daniel has been showing me all his owies (real and imagined) trying to get some bandaids from me. He so far hasn't been too successful since my motto is only if it's really bleeding do you get a bandaid. Since he hasn't been very lucky in the bandaid department with me he tried Aaron today at lunch. During lunch he was showing Aaron all his owies. We were having lunch in a noisy restaurant which is one of the best places to take kids. In a noisy restaurant no one can hear them screaming over the music and different conversations but, it also can make it hard to hear and understand your what everyone says during lunch. Aaron listened to Daniel's long list of owies for a bit then leaned over to him and said, "Hey Daniel don't worry about it. Chicks dig scars." Daniel got super excited and yelled across the table at Josh, "Josh, Josh!! Chicks dig Star Wars!!" Who knew?!

Mother's Day

I love, love, love Mother's Day--not just for all the sentimental things, but for all the CUTE crafts the kids bring home for Mother's Day. They get very excited to show me and I love that. At school Josh transplanted a pretty flower with a nice note saying he loved me. Matthew made a dishwasher towel with his hand prints and a poem saying he loved me. In primary all three boys made a cute sack with Hershey hugs and kisses with a poem saying they loved me. Also today in church the primary kids sang a couple songs about moms. I LOVE that part of mother's day.
This morning I got treated to breakfast in bed. I am happy to report I did not get breakfast in bed as I did a couple years ago when the full cereal bowl got dumped on me while I was sleeping. I almost did get eggs dumped on me, but Aaron saved them just in time. Aaron is also going to cook dinner for us tonight and I can't wait to have a night off. For a mother's day present Aaron ordered a printed and bound hard cover book of our blog. It supposed to come this week so I can't wait to see it.

I want to say thanks to my mom for all the sacrifices she made while raising kids. You don't realize how many sacrifices go into raising children until you have your own. Instead of working on a career I get to work on learning my ABC's and 123's over and over again. Sometimes it is hard, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I also want to say thanks to my mom for being my cheerleader. Our little family has gone through a plethora of freakish challenges (autism, seizures, anaphylactic shock, an accidental home birth, etc.) and my mom has been there to cheer me on. She encourages me and supports me and tells me I can do or face whatever happens. When I start doubting myself she is there to encourage me and tell me I CAN DO THIS. Thanks for your support!! Mother's are great!! I am very thankful for the chance to raise some of my own special kids. I just hope they turn out as good as Aaron--whose mother did a good job raising him to be a great person and husband.

Blackmail Pics

Yesterday we had our family Mother's Day party at Grandma and Grandpa T's house. It was nice to see everyone. After dinner all the cousins played together. They all eventually got into all the dress-ups which are all our old dance and Halloween costumes. They came out with some pretty funny combinations. This first one Daniel had stripped as much as he could get off then started wandering outside to find someone to help him get his shirt off. We were pretty excited to see Matthew come out in a costume. Whenever he does anything socially appropriate without one of us suggesting it, it is a good thing--even though we were wondering how socially appropriate dress ups are for boys hmmmm. I can't wait to pull these gems out in 15 years to show their friends.

The Daniel Run

Daniel has the funniest run. It is a whole body affair. I thought I would add for posterity's sake.

I also want to show that Daniel truly is accident prone. You can tell by his past history of a broken leg and collar bone as well as a few incidents of road rash. Here is a small clip it to show his accident prone-ness.

One more Daniel funny happened yesterday. Daniel is not afraid to speak his mind. I was at a store that had a children's play area in the front. I let Daniel and Josh play while I was browsing. As soon as I had walked to the back of the store (it was a small store) I hear (as well as everyone else in the store), "I NEED TO GO POOP!" There was no question of where we were headed next after hearing that. Daniel is our comic relief quite regularly.

Strong Willed Child

Sarah has now decided that certain people food isn't so bad. She still HATES all baby food and will only eat food with texture instead of the smooth consistency of baby food. She will only eat soda crackers, bits of a tortilla and oatmeal (only the non-baby kind). She is pretty strong willed (or spoiled) because she will only eat if I am the one feeding her. Aaron has tried to feed her the same foods, but she clamps those little gums down and she won't open them up for anything--that is until I switch him places. Once I am the one feeding her she eats a TON. It should be interesting to see what kind of teenager she will be...

She has also figured out how to roll to the bottom of the stairs and scream at me while I am in the kitchen. I have to be in the same room with her or she is very sad. Aaron thinks he knows who she got that stubborn streak from, but contrary to his opinion I still don't think it's me. Good thing I love her since she is my inseparable buddy.

Beautiful Day For Playgroup

Today was Daniel's last turn to host playgroup for this round. It was a perfect day outside so we spent the majority of our time outside. I had a box of sidewalk chalk and a whole porch to be covered. Everyone had the goal of covering the porch completely, but tired eventually. They got pretty far in their endeavor, however. For our craft I opened up a bag of pipe cleaners and it was interesting to see what things they created. I tried to encourage them to make something for their mom's for Mother's Day so if you can't tell what they made just know it was made just for you =).

Why You Don't Weed Eat Wearing Shorts

I had put off the yard work for long enough this season. I broke out the edger and weed eater yesterday and got started. It had been such a nice, warm day I wore shorts while I was doing the yard work. That wasn't the best decision as you can see by looking at the picture of my leg. I was hoping for some sympathy from my husband as I was showing him. He started by saying how he could see all those black slivers and how they must be painful. I gave him a dirty look and said they weren't slivers...I just haven't shaved for a few days. I am so glad I married a comedian (read with much sarcasm).

Beginning of Summer

You know it's the beginning of the beginning of summer when bowling sign ups come around. I signed the kids up for their bowling passes Saturday. On base they have a summer bowling program where for $20 a piece each kid can bowl one game with shoe rental every single day for the whole summer from May 1st to August 31st. We did this almost every day last summer because I was hugely pregnant and it was the only fun place that was remotely air conditioned. The employees got to know us pretty well and even recognized us when we came back this year to sign up again. They were glad to see Sarah because I was still pregnant with her the last time they had seen me. Hopefully, I will feel like being more active this summer since I won't be pregnant.

I am excited to say we made our reservations for Disneyland this week. Aaron is especially excited to go because he has never been before. It has been quite a while since I have been so any tips and/or suggestions would be helpful. We were looking around at height requirements and Daniel is only an inch shy of going on the big kid rides. I am wondering if there are any huge soled shoes out there to "help" him grow an inch in the next few weeks. We are really excited.

This weekend the boys' soccer games were cancelled due to all the rain. Aaron, however, got to still help out my brother put in his sprinkling system. Luckily, Bryan had done a big portion of the work Friday and was super organized so everyone only had to work a couple hours out in the pouring rain Saturday morning. After it was finished Aaron came home and had the world's longest shower to get warmed up again.

We are getting ready to move Josh and Daniel to their Spiderman room downstairs. In that room we have a queen size bed and a twin bed. The twin bed was Josh's bed from upstairs that we moved downstairs. Seeing as Josh is going to be the oldest down there we assumed he would want the queen size bed since it is the big bed. When Aaron told him such Josh got pretty upset. He insisted he wanted the little bed because it was his. I am documenting this so we can look back and say that Josh had his choice of which bed at one point. That way I can't be accused of giving him the shaft (AKA the middle child syndrome) later on.

In Matthew's class during the week they work toward "Fun Friday". If they have good behavior all week long they do some pretty fun stuff (sledding, flying kites, reading party, etc.) This week they learned about butterflies and watched a cocoon hatch. Friday to sum up the week they made butterfly costumes. Matthew was the only one who earned "Fun Friday" this week so he revelled in all the attention. He made his costume and was so excited to show everyone. Coming home on the bus he made the bus helper carry all his backpack and papers so he could flap his butterfly wings from the bus to the front door. He has worn the costume all weekend and is insisting that's what he wants to be for Halloween. Aaron is trying to think of ways to talk him into a more masculine costume, but we'll see what happens.

Little Boy?

Yesterday was haircut day at our house. After all the boys were done I got to looking at Sarah's hair and it is looking pretty scary. She has a few patches of really long hair on top, but it isn't uniform. It also wasn't even enough to put in a ponytail or pigtails. I got the bright idea of trimming it up a little since I already had the clippers out. I made the mistake of using a guard that cut it pretty short. Now my little girl looks like a little boy :(. She will definitely need to wear some head squeezers until her hair grows out. Not one of my finer decisions I must say. The pictures are the before and after.