Embarrassing, Field Trip, Jinxed, Halloween

I finally got around to putting up our Halloween decorations in our house.  I had lots of help from little fingers that made the job twice as long as it needed to be.  Oh well it was fun to have the help and see their excitement.  Noah's job was to take off all the stickies off the window as soon as I put them on.  Gotta love him.

We also have a motion sensor skull that sings, "I always I feel like Somebody is Watching Me" while it's eyes and jaws move.  Noah and Sarah are very afraid of it so being good brothers, the older boys totally exploiting that fact and chased Noah and Sarah all around the house that morning with it just to scare them to death.  Noah finally found a safe haven in my lap and once he was sitting by me he didn't mind the skull and actually started dancing to the song.  Here's Noah getting jiggy with it:

Speaking of exploiting your children's fears...Aaron and I are the meanest parents!!  Aaron had off Columbus Day from work while the three oldest kids had school.  We usually use this day every year to check out possible Christmas gifts without prying eyes since Sarah and Noah are usually pretty oblivious to what is going on around them.  We did have to go to Lowes to look at something and while we were there we took Sarah and Noah over by their Halloween section just to see what would happen. 

 Needless to say Sarah and Noah DID NOT like it at all, but Aaron and I sure did.  Aren't we mean?!  Hey my reasoning is if you can't have fun with your kids who can you have fun with?!

Fridays are Noah and Sarah's favorite day.  It's garbage day and oh so much fun to watch the garbage truck come around the neighborhood and dump everyone's stinky trash.  You can just feel the excitment!

Last Saturday was a BYU football game that Aaron took Josh and Daniel to.  They had lots of fun.  An even nicer bonus is that BYU scored in the opening run and so everyone in the stands gets a free haircut from Great Clips with a ticket stub from the game.  Sa--Weet!!  Aaron is trying to tell me that just for that reason the tickets almost paid for themselves.  Hmmmmm.....don't know if I am buying it, but at least Sarah and I get to get a free haircut so I don't mind.  They went early so they got to go to the tailgating party and get even more prizes.  Aaron loves his father son bonding time.

This past Tuesday Josh signed me up to go as a chaperone for one of their fourth grade field trips to an IMAX movie.  Aaron came home from work to take care of Sarah who he had to drop off at preschool and he had to take Noah to music group as well while I was gone.  You can call him Mr. Mom :)!! As soon as Aaron got home from work I walked to school with Josh and he was so excited to show me the haunted house he made.

After they took roll we then headed over to the buses.  It has been a few years since I have ridden a school bus that's for sure!!  We headed out and got to the theater where we got to pick up our popcorn and drink and our way awesome 3D glasses.  For whatever reason the adults glasses are way HUGE.  Josh thought we were pretty stylin':  

Of course Josh was his usual self that just speaks his mind with no filter at all.  We met up with our other group's chaperone at the theater.  Trying to make idle chit chat with her the first thing out of Josh's mouth was, "So do you like public bathrooms?"  WHAT?!?!  I immediately distanced myself from Josh and pretended he wasn't with me--just joking.  I just looked away and pretended like I didn't hear him ask that particular question.   Good thing the theater was packed with three different schools 4th grades so the sound level was pretty loud--phew!   Luckily she rolled with the punches and answered Josh just like it was a normal question anyone would ask at anytime.  She then told us about her family and how she had a special needs son that was 15.  Josh then said, "15?!  Wow, I would say that would make you really OLD, but that isn't polite."  Good thing I love my Joshy boy because otherwise....However, his unfiltered words didn't stop at the theater. On the bus ride back to the school we sat across the aisle from his teacher.  Josh got her attention and then told her, "Hey teacher do you know what my job is?"  He then went on to tell her that his job was to embarrass his mother.  Wow this kid does his job so well he should get a raise is all I can say!!!  Anyway his teacher told him that the tables would turn when Josh turned 16 and then his mother's job would be to embarrass him by showing baby pictures and telling embarrassing stories and such.  Josh then told her, "Boy I hope my mom doesn't show everyone the picture of my private spots!"  Um I could have crawled into a hole about then.  I immediately said, "Um, Josh we don't have any pictures like THAT!"  He then insisted we did and told me that one was hanging up in our house.  I finally figured out which picture he was talking about and it was this one of Matthew and Josh playing with some cowboy hats without their diapers on when they were little babies.  However, how Josh explained this picture I am hoping that his teacher didn't think the worst!!  How embarassing!! 

Mr. Noah likes to be my helper in the kitchen.  Unfortunately, he has figured out how to scale a barstool in seconds flat which means he is right by me at all times while I am cooking anything.  If he hears me even start to walk over to the stove he seriously comes running over to grab a barstool to scoot it over by the stove to 'help' me.  Which usually means me trying to keep him from getting burned while I try to make a meal of some sort.  He's very excited to 'help' me anytime, too. 

However, if I tell him 'NO!' (a word that he doesn't hear very often since he is the very spoiled youngest child) when he does hear it, it breaks his heart as you can see.  He will pull this face and then go over and cuddle up with his Pillow Pet to be consoled.

It does break my heart so he ends up 'helping' me more often than he should just so I don't have to tell him no and see his pitiful sad face.

However, he is not as innocent as he may seem.  Whenever Sarah goes potty Noah goes in the bathroom with her.  After she does her thing she climbs on the toilet to wash her hands (aka play in the water) and Noah follows her lead.  I found them doing this yesterday:

Between playing in the water Noah is pulling faces in the mirror and Sarah drinks that water right from the faucet.  They usually make a HUGE mess.  They have gotten smart, though.  They have started locking the bathroom door so I can't ruin their fun as fast as if they leave the door open.  If I have to run to find the door unlocker they get more time to play in the water.  After I do get the door unlocked after I get mad I usually see Noah's pitiful face make its appearance all over again.  How can you stay mad at a face like that?!  However, it doesn't become as hard if I look beyond it to the huge water mess inside that bathroom after they have gotten through with it!

I have jinxed our family.  Just about a month ago I was telling a few people how we still had some money in our Flex Spending Account and that we had never made it this far into a year with money still left in it.  Well saying that jinxed me something fierce!!  Three weeks ago Daniel had a week long bout with asthma and a cold which then turned into a fever which prompted an after hours visit to the pediatrician's office.  Then last week Sarah had her emergency room visit with her owie tummy which thankfully didn't turn out to be an appendicitis, but it still was an ER visit along with an abdominal ultrasound.  Then Tuesday Daniel started getting a runny nose.  Tuesday night he started having some breathing issues.  We pulled out the nebulizer to do breathing treatments, but by Wednesday night  Daniel was really struggling to breath and his finger tips and lips were blue tinged which is NOT a good sign.  That meant it was another after hours pediatrician's visit that almost resulted in a hospital admition since after multiple back to back breathing treatments they still couldn't get his oxygen saturations above 87%.  Thankfully after receiving multiple breathing treatments and a steriod shot his breathing wasn't as labored even if his sats were still a crummy 87%.  They sent us home knowing that this wasn't Daniel's first asthma attack and that we appeared to know what we were doing. Hmmmm....I still question that knowing what we are doing part.  Anyway, we now get to do Albuterol nebulizer breathing treatments around the clock as well as two doses of an oral steroid a day for the next five days.  Daniel looks as miserable as he feels, but at least the steroid shot has kicked in and he is not struggling to breath as bad even if you can still hear him wheeze something fierce if you stand next to him.  Poor kid!  He hasn't struggled with breathing like this for years!!  I think it's because I jinxed us by saying we still had money in  our Flex Spending Account--DANG IT!!  Oh well now our Flex Spending Account is now spent for the year so hopefully we don't have anymore 'emergencies'!!



We have finally started piano lessons again for Josh and Matthew.  We decided not to have Daniel take this time since it was like pulling teeth with lots of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from both sides to get him to practice.  The nice thing is that the piano teacher actually comes to our house which is awesome!!!  That means we can hear what is going on and enforce what they are supposed to be practicing during the week instead of taking 'their word' for it.  Josh had a hard time the first visit since he hates being corrected in any way.  So if he would play something wrong the the teacher would try to correct him, but Josh would lay down on the bench and not listen.  The teacher told us about it after the lesson and we gave Josh a talking to.  This last week he was a lot more cooperative now he knows we can hear what is going on during the lesson.  So far so good and we like the teacher so hopefully we can keep him coming to teach them!