Good News, Pumpkin Patch, Juice, Chaos

Well just a quick catch up....While Aaron and I were running our half marathon together there was no one to take pictures during to race except the race photographers.  So to prove to our posterity that we ran it, we ordered a picture of Aaron and I running together on the causeway out to Antelope Island.  We got it in the mail this last week so now we have one of us actually running while we were together. 

 This past couple weeks Aaron has been working late so that means I get to handle the after school tornado of three kids all trying to get their homework and chores done at the same time while trying to cook dinner and keep an eye on Sarah and Noah.  It has been utter chaos if you want to know the truth.  Each kid needs you to be right with them to make sure they get their homework done the right way.....the first time around.  Josh was supposed to work on a water cycle project--you know precipitation, collection, evaporation, etc.  I let him get started on that while I tried to listen to Daniel and Matthew read at the same time.  When I had a chance to finally check over Josh's work this is what I found:

Hmmmmm........Josh had friends waiting to play when he got started on his project so he hurried as fast as he could so he could play and didn't worry about the quality of his work.  When he finished he dropped it in my lap while he was running out the door to play.  Seeing as I couldn't quite tell what I was looking at, I made him come back and redo it--only with my supervision this time.  He was NOT happy about that, but to justify my point when Aaron got home from work and I showed him Josh's project and asked him what he thought it was.  Aaron told me he thought it was a picture of sheep.  Josh just rolled his eyes.  Josh redid it and it looked A LOT better the second time around.  However, while I was reading with Daniel and Matthew and Josh was doing his project with markers, Sarah and Noah decided to do their own art project while taking advantage of my inability to watch five kids at once.  Contrary to popular belief some mothers don't have eyes in the back of their heads unfortunately!  For Sarah and Noah's art project Sarah used paper and Noah used my dining table as his canvas--DOH!!!!  

Too bad these aren't the washable markers, either.  Double DOH!!!  Can I cry, yet?! Needless to say  I have been driven crazy these past few weeks.  I wish they could clone a couple of me to help each child when they need it, but, alas, I will just have to do my best and settle for a few project re dos, not very precise piano practicing, burned dinners and some lovely permanent artwork all over my table instead.  **SIGH** At least do I get an 'A' for effort?!

However, kids can make parenting worthwhile when you catch little snip its like this: 

 I went to tuck in Noah for bed when I found him reading his baby a tory (story) which is what Noah calls a book.  What a sweet guy--even if he colors all over my kitchen table with permanent markers!

This past weekend was Fall Break so the kids have Thursday and Friday off from school.  Since Daniel was pretty sick Wednesday and Thursday we stayed home and didn't do a whole lot.  By Friday Matthew was going stir crazy and starting to get into mischief and picking fights with his siblings.  He is one kid that does not like to be idle at home.  He likes to always be out doing fun things.  Thankfully Aaron only had to work a half day on Friday so when he got home from work we got out of the house for a bit.  We headed over to a local nursery who does a FREE annual pumpkin patch hayride that we like to go on every year to pick our pumpkins.  The only rule for the kids (now that there are five of them and only two of us) is that they can only pick pumpkins they can carry themselves because we cannot carry 5 of the biggest pumpkins while trying to wrangle five kids at the same time.  Here they are trying to pick the most perfect pumpkin.  It took them a while, too!

 They finally chose one and were proudly showing them off.  Noah was excited he could actually hold his, however, his is so small it will be interesting to see what we can carve into it for a jack-o-lantern.

 Here's the actual hayride:

 All of us had fun.

 After the hayride we weren't ready to go back home so we went for a drive and headed down to go and see G&G T.  We got to their house a few minutes before they got off work so we played around in their back yard since it was such a beautiful day.  Aaron started a dog pile war.  Noah and Matthew are among the mix somewhere even if you can't see them in the picture.  You can tell Sarah only has brothers because she is one tough little girl who was not afraid to be dog piled on, either.

 When G&G T got home they took us out to their garden and gave us some carrots and potatoes.  When they dug up the first round of carrots we were surprised about how BIG they were!

 The potatoes were pretty big as well.

 We have been eating soup all week with all our veggies and it has been yummy!

Saturday we came into 2 1/2 bushels of apples--SWEET!!  Unfortunately, Aaron had to clean the church Saturday morning and help someone move so I was left alone to try and manage juicing all those apples while trying to keep the kids out of trouble.  Things went smoothly enough.  Luckily, they found this old Batman mask that kept them entertained for a while.

 I was glad when Aaron got home, though because I was able to finish the juicing a lot more easily without being interrupted or needing to break up fights.  We ended up getting 9 gallons of juice.  I froze two gallons and bottled the rest.  I think we are set for juice for bit--don't you?!

 This upcoming weekend is Syracuse City's pumpkin walk.  We have gone to this every year as a family and enjoyed all the carved pumpkins.  To try something new Aaron wanted us to carve some pumpkins to enter in the pumpkin walk this year.  That is what we did for Family Home Evening last night was carve our pumpkins to enter.  The kids all picked their designs and I tried my best to carve it into the pumpkins with lots of help from little hands as you can see.

 Aaron and the kids scooped out the pumpkins and I carved and Josh took the pictures.

 Here's the end result: It goes from left to right Matthew, Noah, Josh, Sarah and Daniel.

Hopefully they last through Saturday because the pumpkin walk is from Thursday to Saturday.  We did coat them in Vaseline so hopefully they won't shrivel too much.

This week is Red Ribbon week at Josh and Daniel's school.  They wore red shirts yesterday and today was crazy hair day.  Daniel and Josh begged me to let them color their hair and I finally caved in and let them do it.  Unfortunately after I painted their hair blue I noticed that it was SNOWING outside--DOH!!  I ended up taking them to school to try and keep their hair dry so it wouldn't drip on their clothes and turn them blue.  Hopefully it won't be snowing when they come home from school!!

In other things Daniel is learning the art of blackmail.  He likes to collect dirty information on Josh and then when Josh won't cooperate according to Daniel's wishes Daniel spills the beans.  I have found out quite a bit through this little system I must say.  The most recent knowledge came out a few days ago when Daniel told me that Josh eats his sack lunch every morning before school starts in the mornings.  After hearing this I went and asked Josh about it and he confirmed it.  I asked him why and he told me it was because he wanted more time at recess and if he doesn't have to eat his lunch, then he has more time to play.  Really JOSH?!?!?  I then tried to explain why he should wait to eat his lunch at lunchtime instead of in the morning--something along the lines of keeping his energy up and feeling better if he doesn't go all day without eating, blah, blah, blah.  We will see if he actually listens to me--probably the next time things don't go Daniel's way--**SIGH**.  Daniel is not as innocent as he seems either.  Last week I got a nasty gram from his teacher telling me that Daniel has not handed in any of his math homework since the beginning of school.  What?!?  I know that he brought a Math packet of homework home every Monday and we would work on it.  What I didn't know is that he never handed the finished work back in on Friday.  Sure enough I went over and looked in his home homework bin and there were all four completed Math packets sitting inside.  We then called his teacher and told her that he had done the packets and for whatever reason he hadn't turned them in.  That's when he told me that when his teacher asked him where his math packets were he just said that his mom didn't tell him to turn them in.  Thankfully his teacher was nice enough to accept late work so he went and turned in all his late assignments that were done.  What a crazy kid.  What kind of kid completes their homework, but doesn't turn it in and then says it's their parents fault they have late work?!  Gotta love parenting!!

I am happy to report we got Daniel's allergy blood test results back and I almost cried tears of joy when we learned that his egg allergy has almost disappeared according to the blood tests.  The next step is he has to clear the skin prick test next March and if that comes back negative, we can do an oral challenge to see if he really has outgrown the egg allergy.  I can't wait until March.  Hopefully by April we will all be eating omelets, scrambled eggs and quiche for every meal!!!!  Keeping our fingers crossed til March!!  YAY!!!!!

Some more good news happened at Noah's last Early Intervention visit--we found out he is caught up to his age group and won't need services anymore.  YAY again.  He only has one more music group class and then we are done with Early Intervention.  I must say he has progressed into a chatty Kathy.  He follows me all around with his non stop chatter.  I love hearing all he has to say--even though it took a while for him to start saying it!!

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!

Fun Trip to Primary Children's ER, Daniel's Allergist Visit, Family Pictures





What a busy and crazy week we have had!  I thought when soccer ended last week things would calm down.  I was wrong!  Tuesday night Sarah started complaining of a tummy ache.  Now what kid doesn't do this as some point or another so I didn't pay too much attention.  The next day she complained the whole day of having a tummy ache that seemed to be getting progressively worse.  I started to get really worried when her friend came over to play and when she went to go outside she started screaming and doubled over in pain and wouldn't move.  I tried to comfort her, but she was hurting so bad she wouldn't stop crying.  At this point she had my full attention because if you know Sarah she is one tough little girl and doesn't usually cry unless she is hurt quite badly.  Finally after quite a while she calmed down and she felt warm to me.  I took her temperature to find she had a fever.  Uh oh.  She had no signs of diarrhea of nausea and vomiting either so we called and made an appointment to the pediatrician's office.  Of course it was after hours and we couldn't see her regular pediatrician so we went to the 24 hour pediatrician's office.  They got us back and examined her and found her tummy to be quite tender especially in the lower right quadrant area.  Too rule out a urinary tract infection they told me to try and get a clean catch urine sample.  I looked at them and tried not to burst out laughing--now that should be very interesting indeed to try and get a little girl who is newly potty trained to try and pee into a tiny specimen container without contaminating the sample in any way.  They realized that it would be rather difficult so they gave me a hat to put in the toilet to have her pee into and then pour the contents into the specimen container.  Now this would be a little easier to do.  We got up to go to the bathroom and Sarah couldn't even stand up straight.  She slowly walked over to the bathroom hunched over in pain which was concerning.  We got back to the bathroom and I had to clean her off with an antimicrobial towelette which was just weird and she didn't like it any more than I did.  She thought it was weird that we were pouring her urine into a cup and bringing it back outside the bathroom to give to someone.  Her urine sample ended up ruling out a urinary tract infection, but she did have trace amounts of blood and protein in it which was unusual.  When that came back negative they sent us over to the lab to get blood drawn to see what was going on.  After waiting what seemed like forever they got us back and drew her blood.  Sarah just sat in the chair and didn't even make a sound when they put the needle into her arm.  They had to fish around to get the vein and she still just sat there calmly not even whimpering.  Then they sent us home and told us they would call us in about an hour with the results.  They did call us an hour later and told us that she definitely had something going on since her white blood cell count was quite high at 17--showing that there is an infection somewhere.  They then told us we needed to take her on down to Primary Children's Medical Center Emergency Room because they needed to get a CT scan to rule out an appendicitis and to not let her eat or drink just in case they would need to do surgery.  At this time it was 11 pm.  After a quick priesthood blessing by Aaron and our neighbor we set off down to Primary's while Aaron stayed back with the boys at home.  Luckily the pediatrician's office had called ahead so they knew to expect us.  They got us back into a room and Sarah who was still in pain just wanted to lay down on the bed and not be messed with.  She looked rather pathetic:

 They had us repeat the urinalysis since the last one wasn't 100% clean catch and it also had trace amounts of blood and protein in it.  Now this time they told us that I either needed to get a clean catch urine straight into the specimen container and not into a hat or they would have to catheterize her.  We went into the bathroom and I cleaned her off again and had to guess where to hold the specimen container in order to get the urine.  I guess wrong, unfortunately.  I got pee all over my hands (ewwwww), but luckily I did get enough in the specimen container to make it count.  Sarah just looked at me like um....why are you doing that?!  After that came back negative again they scheduled her for an abdominal ultrasound.  They like to do an ultrasound before they resort to a CT scan since they don't want to expose her to any more radiation than they have to.  Finally they got her back for the ultrasound at 2 am.  At this point I was expecting the worst so I was pleasantly surprised and quite relieved when they found her appendix and that it looked normal.  After the ultrasound they got us back to our ER room and then after another hour told us that they didn't find anything immediately acutely wrong.  They ended up sending us home and that I should just keep an eye on her as she might be starting into a stomach bug of some sort.  As we were leaving they gave her a dose of ibuprofen and a slurpee.  We got home around 3 am and we both crashed.  Unfortunately, the boys were up bright and early at 7 am to get ready for the day.  DOH!!   That morning it was Grandparent's Day at Josh and Daniel's school so Grandma T came up to spend the morning with them.  They were excited to see her and take her to school with them.  She said they introduced her to everyone as they walked down the halls which was funny.  When Sarah finally woke up later that morning she didn't have a fever anymore and she said her tummy didn't hurt anymore.  WHAT?!  I kept her home from preschool anyway since she had had a fever just a few hours previously.  She went on to have a normal day without any sign of a fever or complaint of a tummy ache.  During the day she did end up going stinky in the bathroom which she was quite proud of.  I let her put on her own pretty lips, but I immediately regretted that decision when she came out of my bathroom with her lips oozing lip gloss down her chin.  She thought she was beautiful, though.

 Whatever was wrong it cleared up and we haven't had any problems with fevers or stomach aches since.  I guess it was just one of those really random don't know what just happened kind of things...however, I am glad it wasn't anything serious!!

Friday was one of Daniel's semiannual allergist visits.  This visit it was time to get his blood drawn to check how allergic he is to different allergens.  We won't know the results for a week.  I have a feeling not too much has changed since he had an accidental exposure to milk and eggs in the last six months and reacted horribly to it.  Here he is getting his blood drawn.  Sarah is watching the phlebotomist's every move since just had the same thing done to her two days previously.

 Boy Daniel should get an Oscar for his great acting ability.  To hear him you would have thought they were cutting off his arm.  Jeez!!  I guess it worked for him, though, because they sure loaded him up with prizes and stickers afterward.

 Yesterday morning I took our family pictures in the park.  Afterward Daniel had a birthday party to go to.  For the second session of Conference we went on a drive up Sardine Canyon to Logan to look at the pretty Fall foliage.  When we got up there we were sad to see our regular ice cream shop we stop at had closed.  We ended up getting some ice cream and some squeaky cheese at the local cheese plant.  It was yummy, but hard to do since they didn't have anywhere to sit down and eat your ice cream.  We all stood in the doorway of the cheese factory trying to eat our ice cream and stay out of the way of the people coming and going.  We will need to find a new ice cream place next fall since that one didn't work out too well.  The fall leaves were pretty, though.

 Here's the family pictures we got:

We were going to borrow my brother's tripod for our camera, but luckily we ran into our neighbor at the park who snapped the family picture for us.  With five little kids it was impossible to get everyone looking at the camera at the same time.  It was Aaron's insistence that we all wore BYU shirts.  Go Cougars!

 Why is it in pictures you finally see what you actually look like?!  Maybe Weight Watchers will be in my future....I ended up taking the rest of the pictures, though.

Here's Miss Sarahbug:

 Bubba:

 Josh:

 Matthew:

 Daniel:

 Me and my hunna:

 The boys of our family (Noah was too fascinated by the ducks waddling by to look at the camera):

 Here's the girls of our family who are very few in numbers:

 Here's the kids:  We had to corral Noah in between his siblings to keep him from running away.  He's mad that he can't get out so that's why he is not smiling in the picture.

Aaron and I were looking forward to this weekend.  Our race was over and we didn't need to get up early on Saturday to do a long run and we had Conference instead of our usual 9 am church.  Aaron let me sleep in until 8:30 am Saturday morning so his turn to sleep in was this morning.  He got until 8:21 until we had two emergencies that I needed immediate help with.  Sarah had just had diarrhea in her pants that was leaking out and at the same time Noah had gotten a hold of the gallon of milk container and emptied almost the entire jug all over the counter and floor.  Not a nice way to wake up, but he only got shorted out of 10 minutes which isn't too bad........but that's not what Aaron thinks;).  Gotta love our crazy family life...

Race Day, Dentist, Interviews, Embarrassing Moments

This past week has been crazy busy.  I finally find myself with some extra time this morning to finally try and catch up on everything that I have neglected until now.  Here goes: Last Sunday was the Brigham City Temple dedication so we went to that instead of having regular church.  Now kids older than 8 and baptized were only able to attend with a special temple recommend.  In order to get that recommend Josh and Matthew had to visit the bishop(ric) for an interview to get it.  The bishopric had an open Tuesday evening that I took the boys over to get their interview after scouts.  Unfortunately it happened to fall at the same time as when the Elder's Quorum presidency met so that meant I had to take all five kids by myself--ugh!  We headed over there and waited out in the hallway for them to meet with the bishopric.  The kids were bouncing off the walls it was pure craziness.  When I would run after one kid the others would run the opposite way.  After a few minutes of that I was ready to pull my hair out!!  Aaron happened to be in the foyer and heard the craziness and came to see what was going on only to find it was his own kids that were making the racket.  Thankfully he came to help me out until after the kids got their interviews.  I was never so thankful for the help!!!  Matthew went first and met with the first counselor.  He was only back in the room for a few minutes when he came out and Josh went back.  While we were waiting for Josh to get done we asked Matthew, "So, what did he ask you?" because I was curious.  Matthew replied in his monotone Matthew voice, "He asked me to be quiet."  Aaron and I found that quite hilarious.  About that time Josh came out and the first counselor came out with him and silently handed me a king size candybar.  SAWEET!!  It wasn't until later that I had found out that Josh had seen the first counselor's candybar and asked if he could have it--that's why he handed it to me.  Awesome--I am so embarrassed!!  Anyway we swapped kids with some friends on Sunday so we could both attend the dedication.  I do believe that we got the better end of the deal because the Einzinger's kids were little angels.  Our kids did ok, but Noah found his happy place at their house and took care of business in his diaper.  He also crawled up on their counter and played with their hand soap and their kitchen sink.  Sorry 'bout that Erin!!  Thanks for watching them, though!

 

This last week Josh finally got completely weaned off his Topimax medication.  YAY!!  So far so good.  He hasn't had any seizures that we know of and he doesn't overheat in the heat.  It has been a blessing for all of us!!  However, I have to keep my eye on Josh.  Every morning I give the kids their medications in addition to a calcium supplement and a chewable vitamin.  Josh HATES the vitamin and calcium so he tries to get out of taking them every morning, but I still make him take them--or so I thought he was taking him.  Aaron went downstairs yesterday to find the kids' Sunday clothes.  As he was looking for them he found a pile of vitamins that had fallen out of Josh's pants.  Daniel then informed Aaron that Josh hadn't been taking his vitamins, but putting them in his pants and telling me he had been taking them.  What a stinker!!  He got in big trouble and now in addition to being grounded he has to chew up his vitamins in front of me so I can make sure he is actually taking them instead of stuffing them into his pockets. 

 

Last Saturday we had a family party at our house to celebrate my Mom's 29th birthday (again) ;).  I am so glad our yard is in so we could have it outside.  It was such nice weather, too!  It was nice to get together for dinner and cake.  We also got to hear about my brother in law's latest hunting conquest.  He was able to get an elk tag this year and got his huge elk earlier in the week.  It was a fun get together.

 

Last Monday Sarah had her appointment at the dentist to get her cavity filled.  They took her back to a room and thankfully her cavity was small enough and they had some strong enough numbing gel that she didnt' have to get a shot.  They just rubbed the numbing gel on and gave her some nitrous oxide and filled it.  It only took about 20 minutes from start to finish.  It was so funny once they gave her the nitrous oxide.  She was pretty loopy.

Unfortunately, Daniel had spiked a fever Sunday afternoon after having a week long cold and wheeziness that needed the nebulizer.  Spiking a fever after already being sick for a week usually means some sort of secondary infection so we had to take him in to the 24 hour pediatrician's office where he got some antibiotics.  I kept him home from school Monday just to make sure he would be ok so he had to tag along with us to the dentist's office.  However, once they turned on a movie for Noah and Daniel they didn't seem to care about whatever else was going on around them.

Noah is progressing in his speech and development so our Early Intervention visits are getting less frequent like one every two months.  We probably won't be needing services after next month--WAHOO!!  However, they were starting a music class for a couple of kids who were in Early Intervention to help with socialization and speech.  They decided to enroll Noah for the 6 week course.  He started last Tuesday and he had lots of fun.  He thought he was big stuff to be going to his own 'school' just like his siblings.  Thankfully the music course is during Sarah's preschool time so I only have to wrangle Noah so that worked out great.  Here he is getting ready to go to 'school' (of course Sarah can never pass up a photo op):

Last week I came into a bunch of tomatoes and pears which had to be bottled before they went bad.  Now bottling and kids don't always work out well together so the kids got to watch TV for a day while I bottled like crazy.  While I was busy peeling the pears I noticed that Sarah hadn't moved for a while.  I went to check on her and found her really asleep.  She looked so sweet you could never picture her getting into trouble right?!  Anyway, seeing as she doesn't fall asleep on the couch very often I took a picture.

When Noah saw I was taking a picture, he came over to check things out.  When he found that Sarah had fallen asleep he had a field day with her.  He started poking and prodding and she must have been really asleep because she didn't even move.  What a nice little brother....He is learning the ways of how to be an annoying brother quite well from his older brothers.  He eventually did wake her up and she was not happy about it either!

After two days and lots of hard tedious boring work, here is my bottled bounty:  We yielded 28 quarts of pears and 33 quarts of tomato soup and multiple cuts and stab wounds all over my hands from peeling everything, but I think it is worth it.  I might even have a chance at winning a ribbon at next year's county fair maybe.  I will just have to wait and see.

The other day Sarah was playing in her room and came out wearing this outfit.  She came out and told me she was a princess with her glass slippers.  Who knew princesses had wings?!  She thought she was just beautiful and me being biased had to agree.  Have I mentioned that I LOVE having a girl?!

Friday at school they celebrated Daniel's birthday.  He was so excited to show me his birthday hat and birthday book.  His teacher made a birthday book that everyone wrote cute messages, signed and drew a picture for him in.  He was also excited to pass out his Oreo treats at school.

In July Aaron and I were sitting down and talking together.  The subject of goal setting came up.  I had just listened or read something about the importance of goal setting so I was really gung ho on setting some goals for myself, but I didn't know where to start.  I had always wanted to run a marathon, but that seemed like too big of a goal so I kept putting it off.  Aaron talked me into to trying a half marathon (which is 13.1 miles) instead to see how that would go over.  Well I got a training program and got started.  A little into starting my training I somehow convinced Aaron to do it with me as well.  We have both been training since mid July and after a month of training finally signed up for the Layton 1/2 Marathon that was September 29th.   To keep me motivated I bought a sticker that I could put on my car after we had run the race.  Here's my 13.1 sticker:

Race day was bright and early Saturday morning.  G&G T came up and stayed overnight so they could watch the kids while we ran.  Thanks again G&G T!!!  We parked at the finish line and got bussed over to the starting line which was on the causeway of Antelope Island.  Here we are all smiles on our bus ride over to the starting line: 

 It was very beautiful as we got off the bus except for it was freezing cold, windy and there was a strong 'lake smell'.  Other than that it was a beautiful way to start a race at sunrise:

 Aaron and I have different running styles.  We had agreed beforehand that we didn't have to stay together during the race if it became easier to run separately.  We did stay together for the first 7 miles until Aaron had to take an emergency pit stop.  I ended up finishing about 7 minutes ahead of Aaron so I was able to take his picture as he crossed the finish line:

 Here we are very sweaty and delirious with pain, but glad we accomplished our goal.   Albeit we were slow in running (we averaged 12 1/2 minute miles) that still is not too shabby for only training 2 1/2 months.  I also learned determination is an awesome thing!!

 Yay I got to put on my sticker:

After we got our medals for running we came home and showered and got ready to celebrate Daniel's birthday a day early with G&G T.  We started out by having a McDonald's lunch and then cake.  Daniel's choice of cake was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  Here he is blowing out his 7 candles.

 Then he opened his presents:

 Noah loved his chocolate cake--don't you think?!

 After lunch we headed out to a corn maze--something we try and do every year as a family.  We decided to go to a different corn maze this year than Cornbelly's because Cornbelly's was quite expensive.  We got to the other corn maze at 1:30pm only to find it doesn't open until 3 pm.  WHAT?!  What corn maze doesn't open until 3 pm on a Saturday?!  We all thought that was ridiculous.  We didn't want to sit and wait in our cars for over an hour so we decided to come back home and watch Daniel's Avengers movie that he got for his birthday.  We popped popcorn and sat back to watch with G&G T.  It was the first time I had seen the movie and it was a good show!  It was a fun afternoon.

Sunday was Daniel's actual birthday.  He was super excited to get sung to in Primary.

 Sunday afternoon we had Brad, Jessica and Bailey over for dinner.  Brad is Aaron's long time friend that he grew up with in Plano, Texas.  I guess in growing up Brad and Aaron had a long time tradition for birthdays.  When it was either of their birthdays the other one would think of the most messy, sticky way to give them a present.  One year Aaron gave Brad $20 in the bottom of the biggest honey jar he could find.  Another year Brad filled up a bunch of balloons and put them in Aaron's bedroom.  He only filled 19 of them with a dollar bill and left the rest of them empty so Aaron had to pop all of them one at a time to get everything.  He then hid the last dollar bill somewhere else and made Aaron look all over for it.  Well Brad and Jessica found out it was Daniel's birthday and decided to bring Daniel a present.  They found a tub of whipped honey and put $10 worth of loose quarters all over in it.  Aaron tried to explain to Daniel about the present and Daniel summed it up when he said, "Oh so this is payback?"  He did have fun going through the honey trying to pull out all the loose quarters while the rest of us enjoyed the entertainment.

 Here's a few he excitedly found:

It was a messy endeavor, but he did find all the quarters.  Now the hard part is trying to decide what to spend them on....  It was a fun night and fun to see Brad, Jessica and Bailey again.

In embarrassing moments we had a huge one yesterday.  My Mother/daughter visiting teachers had not made a visit for September so the daughter and her dad stopped by to drop off a treat.  I was busy in the kitchen so when the doorbell rang Matthew ran over to answer it with Aaron on his heels.  When he opened the door Paige, my visiting teacher, gave Aaron the cookies and explained what they were for.  Paige's dad was by the sidewalk waiting for her to finish giving the cookies to us.  Now her dad is an average guy, but for whatever reason Matthew thought he was a girl. You can almost tell where this story is going....Matthew then asked Paige, "Oh is that your grandmother?"  Aaron tried to recover and started to say, "No that's her grandfather." but then caught himself because it was really her dad who happened to have really white hair.  Paige is only 18 years old.  Aaron was so embarrassed that he didn't even try to recover.  He just took the cookies, said a quick thank you, pulled Matthew back inside the house and closed the door and then came and told me what had happened.  Great--I can't wait to visit with them again and try to explain the actions of my family.....**SIGH**.