Kids Update

Okay, so now we are caught up with Damon and all of his happenings. I thought it would be fun to write about the rest of the kids, too, and what they are up to lately.

ALLIE

She has been seeing her counselor every week (which has really turned into every other week with all the busy summer activities), and I think it is helping. She is significantly better than she was before she started going. I can tell when she skips a week, though, and those second weeks are always harder. We got her a table and lamp for her room, which she thought would help with all the scary shadows and such, and she has been listening to Jim Brickman's Pandora station when she is ready to fall asleep. That way her mind isn't as likely to wander and get scared. 

Her counselor's assessment is that her mental ability is FAR greater than her ability to filter and process everything she takes in. Emotionally, she just isn't able to handle all the information she is getting (from everything she sees, reads, hears, etc).She also has a very active imagination, and believes that things you imagine can become real. These are the things she is working on.

Allie also has frequent trips to the orthodontist (good thing I know him!).After losing her baby teeth, her big ol' permanent teeth started coming down, except two haven't come down at all. Jeff took an x-ray and could see there wasn't enough space, and one tooth is even completely sideways up in the bone. So, he put an appliance on her (an expander) and twice a day we tightened it, widening her palette to make room for the teeth. Just yesterday, he put a limited set of braces (four) on her front four teeth to move them and open up the space. 

Allie's favorite books right now are the Boxcar Children series. She has to be careful about what she reads, and even some of the fairy books she used to love have made her scared, so hopefully those mysteries don't get too scary! I recently had a book for book club called With a Name Like Love (local author), and I couldn't ever find it, because Allie had taken it and read it.She is a great reader and I'm glad she loves it.

KYLA

Kyla recently finished her preschool computer program, Rusty and Rosy (if anyone in SLC or Utah county has preschool age kids, check out waterford.org and the free preschool program. It's awesome!). She has been doing it five days a week, 30 minutes at a time, since school started. It's personalized to her level, and is a great tool in learning to read. She fought it a lot, but I'm glad she stuck it out. She is reading great now (one day it all just clicked, which I wasn't sure was going to happen before Kindergarten), and I know a lot of it is due to the Rusty and Rosy program. 

Allie and Kyla are both doing a week long drama camp called Up With Kids. They are going to put on a production of The Little Mermaid tomorrow night (along with 65 other kids) and they all have speaking parts. Allie is one of the mermaids (I think there are about 20), and she is ecstatic. Kyla is a jellyfish. She was quite bummed, because she really wanted to be Ariel. I had to explain to her that they give the big parts to the older kids and she'll have to keep coming to camp every summer if she wants a bigger role.

Kyla also really learned to ride her bike. Last year she could do it, but after a few crashes, she decided she wasn't going to ride again. And she refused to get on the bike at all for almost an entire year. Then one morning she decided it was time, and she took off. We even did an hour long bike ride around the neighborhood and she managed just fine, never falling down once. I guess I just need to let her blossom on her own schedule.

CARTER

Carter has gotten really fun. His vocabulary has exploded and he is always cracking us up with his funny lines. Yesterday at Jeff's office (while Allie was getting her braces on), he said something about his best friend. I asked, "who's your best friend?" And he told us, "you are." Sweet boy.

Carter loves anything that has to do with balls. Hootball (as he calls it), baseball, basketball, soccer...he loves it all. He rides his bike and steals his siblings' scooters and loves to jump on the trampoline. Basically, he's your typical two-year old boy. He wants to do what Damon does (like shoot bb guns), and he loves anything that will make him dirty.

He has started to show an interest in getting potty-trained. And by that, I mean he recognizes that the toilet is a place where you go to the bathroom and has "practiced" sitting on the potty. Two times he has managed to go (pee once, poop the other) and he was excited beyond words to get to blow out a candle for his accomplishment. I am definitely not pushing anything here, but keeping it fun and casual and letting him tell me he wants to try to go. I don't anticipate really potty-training seriously for some time. It's just not worth it.

Carter loves McKay and has gotten over the phase where he likes to hurt him (for the most part. Occasionally, he will still bite him or do something else, and it's completely random, as he isn't upset or anything. Just curious I guess?). He wants to make sure that McKay is taken care of, and that everything is fair. McKay loves Carter, too, and wants to do everything he does.

McKAY

McKay is at a fun age, too. He understands so much and so much of the kids' enthusiasm rubs off on him. Even when he doesn't know WHY he is so excited, it's fun to see him that way. He decided to go blonde after he turned one, and I couldn't be more in love with him. He is constantly falling and hurting himself (like the night he fell getting out of the van and face planted on the garage floor)

McKay is starting to communicate a lot more. His signs include: milk, more, please, eat, help, thank you and drink. Mostly he will copy me, but does "more" whenever he wants something. His words include: mom, dad, Day-day, allie, kyla, baby, yeah (his personal favorite), no, night-night, please, more, milk, and . A couple of times he has repeated phrases, like "let's go" and "mean to me." I love to see what he'll come up with next. 

The kids thought it would be funny to put McKay in the girls' blessing dress. Clearly, he didn't find it funny.

McKay is very loving, and recently gave me a closed mouth kiss.That made me a little sad. But he also brought me flowers, and that made me happy. I'm a simple gal. Look at that blonde hair!

I sure love these five kids! And we have had such a fun summer. Nearly every day I have felt like I am ready for summer to be over (will my house ever be clean again?), but it's been fun to have them around so much. 

Baby, you're a firework!

Our Fourth of July was pretty typical. Starting with the balloons at 6:00 am...

Followed by breakfast and swimming at Colleen's...

Food, naps (for the babies), a rousing game or two of water volleyball, and then home to shower quickly and get down to the field for the fireworks.

With all the festivities on one day, we missed out on the parade and I didn't get to see Jeff's family at all. I liked it so much better when we spread things out over a three or four day period. Also, because of all the fire warnings, we didn't do any fireworks ourselves (except for a few sparklers).That was a bummer. I love the Fourth of July. I wish it lasted all week long!

Damon's 10!

I'm so behind. Sheesh,when will life slow down so I can document how busy we are?

Damon turned 10 on July 2nd. I've been a mom now for a decade. 

He opted for a friend party this year, and we decided on Nickel City. He invited 7 friends and 3 cousins and only one boy couldn't make it. Tara was in town with her kids, so we also had 9 extra party-goers, which made for a very busy party (and one sad reason I don't have any pictures).

The kids played games with their nickels and one big game of laser tag before Tara and I took the little kids to the park for pizza. Damon and his friends stayed with Jeff for pizza and cake in the party room, and Jeff didn't take any pictures either. We probably need to hire a photographer for our next party, haha.

It was a lot of fun and WAY less stressful for me to have the party at Nickel City and I think all the boys had a great time, too. 

The next night, the rest of my family came up for the Fourth and we celebrated again. Damon shares his birthday with my cousin, Kevin, Jonny's birthday is July 3 and Kenya's is July 5, so we had a combined party for all of their birthdays (plus America's on the 4th: who would name their kid America? haha, inside joke).

Damon is a great kid. If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you probably have a good idea what he is like. But here are a few things I want to remember about Damon at 10 years old:

1. He just finished his second year of ALL (accelerated program at school) and is a good student. He's not the smartest in his class, but he works really hard and is responsible for doing his own homework and basically taking care of himself. He is finishing a summer program this week called Bright Ideas, which is sort of a fun summer school put on by the Gifted program, and comes home every day telling me how much he learned and how much he loves it. 

2. When he turned nine, my mom challenged him to read the Book of Mormon, and promised him $100 if he could do it before he turned 10. He read it in 9 months and made us all really proud. 

3. He plays soccer and will play on a competition team this fall. He also plays baseball, but the league is in is not challenging at all, and we'll probably have him try Little League next year to see what his skills actually are. 

4. He wanted "spy equipment" for his birthday and has been using it to spy on us. 

5. He loves the show The Great Escape on TNT, which is a reality show where three teams gather clues and try to escape from locations such as Alcatraz, a battleship, a missle silo, etc. He put together a Great Escape for his sisters and cousins, complete with clues, maps and patrol guards. He's the one everyone looks to for good ideas and fun.

6. He has been playing the piano for almost two years and is making slow progress. He is really good at sounding things out, which has hindered his ability to read music. But he's working on it and is getting better all the time.

7. His favorite TV shows are: Ninjago, Phineas and Ferb, Avatar the Last Airbender, Storage Wars, The Great Escape, Once Upon a Time and old Heman cartoons.

8. He is a bit obsessed with the quail. He rescued two babies from their families (one would have died, so that was fine, but the other he stole from the parents after he chased them off) and added them to the ones we hatched last week. 

9. He and I have been running in preparation for a 5K we are participating in this weekend, and it's been fun (and hard) running with him in the morning. He is doing well, but he complains a lot. We are constantly working on positive attitudes rather than negative, and we'll see how the race goes.

10. He is currently loving the 39 clues series of books, and is memorizing the states and capitals so he can get a jump start on fifth grade. He is such a good boy, with such a good heart, and I am so lucky to be his mom. 

Family Trip 2012

Last year, with a one year old and a newborn, we decided to forego a big family trip and instead opted for a stay-cation in Park City for three nights.This year, though, we're all grown up and back out there.  We left Tuesday morning and drove to Vernal, where we got out at the temple to have lunch before driving to Dinosaur National Monument. We had with us Daisy, our pet quail, because she is such a good bird and follows us around like a dog, but isn't nearly as messy and/or needy.

We were walking around the temple grounds, getting ready for a family picture, and Daisy was following behind, 5-6 feet away from us, on the grass. Suddenly, I hear Jeff gasp and look over to see a large bird on the grass, where Daisy was standing, take off and fly away. It took a moment to process that this large bird (a hawk, Jeff confirmed) had landed on the temple lawn and flown away with our pet quail. It was unbelievably surreal, like a nature show come to life. It was all over in 5 seconds and Daisy was no more. 

No one was in the mood for a pic after that, but Jeff snapped one anyway. Note the girls' hysterics and Carter's shock. So funny. And sad. But most of all, crazy.

Dinosaur National Monument was awesome and definitely worth seeing (the Utah side, where all the dinosaur fossils are). We then drove around to the Colorado side (Dinosaur, CO) and on this steep dirt road down to Echo Park. We set up camp near Steamboat Rock (seen below) and started getting worried that the wind was going to ruin our night. A couple of our poles on the tent broke and we were a tad worried the tent would actually blow away.

We took the kids on a hike (supposed to be one mile each way) where we would get a great view of Steamboat Rock.We started at Picasso Face (the kids called this Witch Mountain) and scrambled up to the top of the hill. Then we proceeded to hike in 90+ degree weather and the beating sun for over a mile with no end in sight. The kids were good sports, but started wearing down, faces looking more like tomatoes than peaches. Jeff went on ahead while we sat in the shade, trying to get them cooled off a little. 

After some panic from Damon (he thought Jeff was going to die--maybe he's seen too many survival shows), Jeff came back to tell us that he hadn't found the lookout either and we headed back down to the water, where we cooled off a little.

Carter and McKay loved throwing things into the water and we spent more time doing that than anything else on our trip. Seriously, they were in love with the water.

That night, after eating our soup in a bread bowl in the van because of the wind, we got into the tent and everything just died. No wind, nothing. In fact, we were a little warm. But grateful we didn't blow away.

Wednesday morning we got up and drove to Rocky Mountain National Park, a few hours away. We stopped and had lunch in Steamboat Springs, which reminded us all of Park City. We played at this park and were glad for a little cooler weather.

We drove all the way through Rocky Mountain National Park, which was a 1.5-2 hour drive on windy roads that go up to 12,000 ft (above the treeline). Jeff was getting a sinus headache and the kids were BEYOND done traveling, but we kept going to Estes Park. It was raining, and we got there way later than we planned, but we found a two bedroom lodge that had room and stayed there. That was a lot of fun, although the gas stove accidentally was left on and I stayed up extra late after everyone else had gone to bed to make sure there wasn't anything fishy going on. 

The next morning we went back to Rocky Mountain National Park and tried to do some cool hikes. But there was so much construction on the roads to the trails, and so many people wanting to go, that we ended up doing one short "hike" (.2 miles) to some waterfalls. Again, we spent quite some time throwing things into the water. Pure heaven for my boys.

We took off a little earlier than we planned (the park was beautiful, but not any more so than a lot of places in Utah. Not a must-see if you live in the mountains here) and drove down to Denver. We ended up staying at a Hampton Inn there. Jeff wasn't too thrilled when he found we had to pay for parking, but once we found that we had scored a handicap accessible room (with PLENTY of space, including two queen beds and a couch bed), I was redeemed. The kids swam in the pool, we got takeout Qdoba and played games. 

The next morning after a hearty breakfast (one of the best things about Hamptons), we went to the Denver Museum of Science and History, which was awesome. We didn't even have enough time to see everything we wanted to see there, and I would love to go back someday when the kids are a little older and their attention spans are a bit longer. 

We then drove out of Denver back toward Utah on the I-70. We stopped about an hour outside Grand Junction at a place called Rifle Mountain. We took a slight detour (GPS on my phone was not working), and ended up going about 30 minutes out of our way, but finally made it to the campground. It was gorgeous. We walked around, threw things in the stream, and took a few pics. 

Then we headed back to our camp, had some pasta and spaghetti sauce, and tried to talk the kids into going to bed. Instead, we listened to music, played more PIT (a new family favorite with the kids) and finished the candy we had brought. Good family memories.

Saturday morning we got up and hiked (not much of a hike at all) to the falls and caves, which was really cool. And except for a run in with the world's smelliest latrine, it was a great day.

We then headed home, stopping in Grand Junction for a last picnic lunch and a Redbox movie. We made it home in one piece, having driven 1200 miles in five days, with five kids. We rock.