Heart Smasher

Josh lately has really started loving to draw pictures. He especially likes to draw them for the little girl across the street. He averages one per day just for her. What a lucky girl! He has also started to enjoy helping me clean up the house. I think this is great and have been really positively reinforcing it. As we were cleaning up today he got out a wet paper towel to help me clean up the counter. After a while he decided his toy kitchen needed to be cleaned as well. I didn't pay too much attention until I heard a crackling noise coming from his toy kitchen. As I went over to check it out I found he had thoroughly saturated his paper towel with water and drenched the whole top of the kitchen. The sink was even full of water. Now this would be fine except the kitchen has an "electrical" stove top that makes bubbling noises with lights that turn on. Unfortunately this got rather saturated as well and electrical things don't handle water too well. The crackling noises I heard were from the stove top slowly dying to where I couldn't get it to work anymore. I couldn't get too upset because he was helping me clean up. This is just one of those times I just have to sigh and walk away. Aaron did take it apart to let it dry out so maybe that will work--I hope.

Last night Sarah did not sleep so well and I think she kept Daniel awake so he was all chuckles--AKA ornery--today. He finally fell asleep at my feet this afternoon on the hard kitchen floor--the poor kid. Good thing he's used to sleeping on the floor already from sneaking out of bed at night!

Play Day

Today was our turn to host playgroup. We didn't do anything too exciting, but they all seemed to have fun. They colored turkey pictures, had apples and juice and then played with toys.

Parent Teachers...Oh My!

Today was parent teacher conferences for Matthew and Josh. They both appear to be doing great. Matthew has gone all year up until last week without having a huge meltdown at school which is amazing! His latest thing to do at school is the monkey bars. Last week it was really rainy which made them quite slippery and because he couldn't grip them to go across I guess things got pretty ugly. The duty had to bring him in from recess to calm down and it took him the rest of lunch recess to do just that. Other than that he is doing great as far as his classroom goes. He is very happy and content and doing excellent in reading--comprehension, however, that's another story...

Josh is doing great. His teacher loves him. She said he sweet disposition and a glowing face. She even said she has a good feeling about him. He is very sweet and obedient--I had to double check to make sure we were talking about the same Josh--just kidding. His teacher is having a little bit of a hard time understanding him so he will probably be evaluated and will start speech therapy. Oh well, if that's all he needs I am grateful for that! Maybe he can meet up with Matthew there ;P. He loves school, but is having a hard time deciding which hand he favors. He writes with his right hand at school and does his homework at home with his left hand. I guess he just wants to be ambidextrous. I am glad parent teachers went as well as it did!

Here are some pictures of Sarah from last weekend that Aaron's sister Susan took. Thanks Susan!

Sarah's Blessing

The past few days Aaron's family--G&G Mancil, his sister Jill, and his other sister Susan with her family--have been in town. We made the most of it by staying busy all day Saturday. Aaron's sister had never seen the store Smith and Edwards so we made a trip up there to see everything. From there we drove up to Logan where we had lunch at the hometown restaurant The Bluebird. After that we came back and went swimming at the Aquatics center. Aaron, Jill and I were the only adults that got in the pool with seven kids under age 11. Aaron and I got our workout going up the stairs to take each little kid down the big slide multiple times. After swimming we went out for hamburgers for dinner. By staying busy all day the kids were exhausted by the end of the night so we didn't have any problems putting them to bed which was nice.

Sunday was Sarah's blessing. It was fun to dress her up in my old blessing dress which still fit her. We were nervous about that because we waited a little longer to bless her, but everything worked out. She did great even though she was awake during the blessing. After sacrament meeting we went back to our house and had dinner. We had 4 different soups to sample with rolls and veggies. Thanks for everyone for contributing for dinner! We even had Daniel friendly putcakes (how Daniel says cupcakes) for dessert. It was nice to see everyone.

New Toy

I finally got my new dishwasher yesterday. I am so glad to finally have one again! However, it did come with a price. During installation Aaron accidentally drilled a hole in my kitchen counter top. I am trying not to be upset, but... It did take longer than expected and three trips to Lowes to get everything we needed. Oh the joys of home ownership!

I also have a budding artist in the family. I don't know which child it is, but they decided to take some artistic liberty all over my sliding glass door. At least it is just my glass door and not the wall!! Geez--I don't know who is more of a destroyer--my children or my husband. It's a good thing I love them all!

We will be blessing Sarah this Sunday so we are going to have a house full of family this weekend. It should be wild and crazy at our house! Matthew stresses out at anything out of the ordinary so to lessen the stress he will stay the part of the weekend at G&G Terry's. Thanks, Mom and Dad! Hopefully, Sarah will cooperate with everything and not scream the whole time or have a blowout! Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Weekend Update

This weekend we stayed busy. Saturday we met up with an old high school friend and college roommate for lunch. We got to catch up on the last three years since it has been that long since we have seen each other. We are also happy to find out she will be having a new baby in a few months. Congratulations, KiLee.

Saturday afternoon we went to a park that I played at when I was young. We fed the ducks and walked around on the nature trails. Then we went to G&G house. They were kind enough to watch the kids while we went out for a date. While we were gone the kids got to have the special treat of having a bath. They only shower at our house. Anyway, Josh and Daniel were in the bathtub together when Grandma heard some kind of commotion. She went to check it out to find Daniel had taken care of business in the tub and it was floating toward Josh. Josh was curled up in the corner of the tub yelling, "IT IS COMING TO GET ME!!" Oh, good times at G&G's house!

We went out to eat and went shopping for the evening. It was fun, but hard to keep the conversation away from the kids.

Today we had stake conference that we played hookie from and had dinner with my Grandpa on my Dad's side. He has been a little lonely since they had to put my grandma in a nursing home. Then we went to visit my grandparents from my Mom's side. They hadn't seen Sarah, yet, so they were excited to see her.

We had some more good times when we got stuck in a huge traffic jam on the way home because of a car accident. Luckily we weren't involved, but in the thick of it--with no freeway exits at all close to us--Matthew threw-up EVERYWHERE! It took us another 45 minutes to get home to clean everything up. Kids keep things pretty exciting to say the least.

Halloween

Halloween day the teachers decided to take a Quality teaching day which means there is no school. I don't think I would want to teach Halloween day either. Anyway, we decided to meet my sister, Johanna, at the grocery store up by her house. They were doing trick-or-treating stations all throughout the store where the kids could wear their costumes and get candy. This was my first venture out with all four kids alone and I didn't do so well. Between my sister and myself we had 8 children to keep track of which is no small task--Sarah wasn't so hard to keep track of though. She usually doesn't get too far. As soon as we walked in the door there was the first T-O-T station. Josh went ahead to the next one with his cousins while the rest of the smaller kids finished getting their candy. While moving on to the next station I hear over the loud speaker, "We have a little lost boy. His name is Daniel and he's dressed as a...Bat?" I hadn't even been in the store for five minutes and I already lost a child. I went and picked up Daniel to come back to find that Josh and his cousin had gone so far ahead we couldn't see them. Next thing I know Josh's cousin comes back, but without Josh. I went to go find Josh somewhere in the store. I finally found him as the customer service people were getting ready to make another announcement about another little lost boy. I am sure the customer service people thought I deserved the mother of the year award by then for losing two of my four children in the space of 10 minutes or less. Oh well, what can you do? After the store we went to a playland for lunch for them to get out some excess energy.

This year we let Matthew and Josh pick their own costumes before we went to find them at the store. That wasn't such a good idea because they didn't have the right sizes for them. Matthew's was a little big, but for a pirate you can't tell too much. For Josh, however, with being a skeleton you could tell it was too big. They only had a size 10 which meant Josh's femur bone was connected to his ankle bone since he is only a size 6. He still ended up wearing it anyway--he didn't seem to mind.

Last night was Halloween and it was a beautiful night. It was 70 degrees and perfect for trick-or-treating. The kids had fun going to many houses and getting lots of candy. Some people even made sure they gave Daniel candy he could eat which was really nice. Aaron took the kids out this year and I stayed back with Sarah to hand out the candy. It was a good night.