School!

So, this was my Sunday night indicator that boredom had completely taken over and school really needed to start.

Natalie's first day of 2nd grade was yesterday!  She was so excited to start school again.  She has one of the many new teachers at the school this year.  Actually, I think this might even be her teacher's first year ever.  We will see how it goes!  Natalie loved her first day of school.  When I asked her if she thinks she might like her teacher, she said, "No mom, I know I like her!"  I am excited to see what this new year brings for Natalie.

Kelton on the other hand was not too happy to lose his Natalie.  Actually, I think it was more that he really wanted to go to school too and felt left out, especially when Nate took her to school (she normally will ride the bus--it was just a first day of school thing) and the two of them left together and Kelton had to stay.  I had to take a picture of his pathetically sad, yet cute, face.

BUT... today is Kelton's first day of Pre-school!  He hasn't been too excited about it because he realizes it isn't Natalie's school and that he won't get to ride the bus.  But he was really excited about it this morning.  He got all ready and could hardly wait to get out the door.  He was excited to wear a backpack and his new shoes.

Kelton is going to a preschool that someone I know from church is doing.  I decided that, for now at least, I am done with the whole co-op preschool thing.  It stresses me out.  I'm just not cut out for having a bunch of extra (meaning not mine and don't know my rules) kids running around my house.  Plus, with a two year old and a new baby coming in seven weeks or so, I figured it wouldn't really work out anyway.  And I wanted something more structured for Kelton.  The co-ops tend to end up more as play groups and they don't really learn much with having a different teacher/house every week.  Kelton will be at preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:45-10:45.  I'm excited for him and I hope he loves it!  And for the next two months I will enjoy having only one child for six hours a week!

24th of July

Our vacation for the year was our trip to Snowflake for the Pioneer Days Celebration.  We spent almost an entire week there and it was really nice.  Rob and Tina's family was there too and Melanie came down a few times so the kids had lots of cousins to play with.  Here is some of what we did.

Damon was introduced to earphones.  He couldn't figure out why Tina was trying to put that thing in his ear, but once he figured it out (he had to do it himself), he had lots of fun listening, dancing, and singing.  Mostly he just zoned out a lot while he listened.

I bought bubble gun/fan things from the dollar store for the kids to play with one afternoon.  They worked great!  And the kids had a lot of fun.

Slip and slide.  My kids had never played on one of these before.  They thought it was fun but never mastered the technic.  Kelton doesn't like getting his face wet, so that was a bit detrimental to the whole process.

Damon was very content to stand on the side and play with the water.  Later, we got out the inflatable pool and the kids had a lot of fun playing in there.

On Friday night I had my 10 year class reunion.  There weren't a ton of people there, but a lot of my friends did make it.  It was fun to see everyone.  I was really glad to get to spend some time with my best friend from high school, Rebecca (Baldwin) Norton.  We've been really bad about getting together.  I hadn't seen her for four years.  Here we are.  (Me, Becca, and Carla Free)  I think it's kind of funny that because of the shirt I am wearing and the angle of the camera, you can't tell that I'm 7 months pregnant.  I also think it's funny that I don't think I've really gained any weight in other places until I see myself in a picture and realize that my face is chubbier. 

Saturday morning was the parade.  The kids love this for the same reason I always did... the candy.

 Everyone waiting for the parade to start.

Waiting for more candy.

Candy action shot.

 We had a community bag where everyone would put their candy.  Natalie on the other hand decided to hoard some of her favorites and fill up her own pockets.  Crazy girl.  However, that is so something I would have done too...

This picture makes me laugh.  I wanted to try to get a picture of the two of them, but instead, I got a three feet apart stare down.  Damon and Jade had a tricky relationship.  Basically, Jade wanted to just touch Damon.  And Damon just wanted to not be touched.  They found it fun (only on the giving end) to push each other a lot too.

Getting a ride home from the parade with Grandpa and his new golf cart.

 Nate's brother, Tyler recently got remarried.  Saturday night we had a reception for Tyler and Aurelie.  I forgot to take my camera so I don't have any pictures.  It was at Webb's house.  They had a taco bar and a soft serve ice cream machine.  The highlight for the kids was getting ice cream from grandpa... pre-dinner.  Since Aurelie is Swiss, they had a cake made from swiss rolls and more on the side to eat.  My kids are now in love with swiss rolls and we've had to buy some for treats at home.

On Sunday we took a big family picture with the whole Webb family, minus Marissa and Johnny, who couldn't make it.  (Photoshop is in the plans, I think.)

Here's a picture of just us girls.

Baby sister.

And I thought it would be a good idea to try to get a family picture after the big group picture, since my boys were being so super cooperative (NOT).  We took about 20 pictures.  Massive amounts of swiss roll bribery got us a bunch of pictures that look something like this:

Oh wait, here is the one lone picture where Damon decided to smile.

Overall, this is maybe the best thing we got.  Oh well.  We will try the self inflicted torture again sometime after the baby is born because, you know, it will be so much easier with one more child.

Right before we headed home on Monday night, Damon and Jade went for a walk with Grandma and Grandpa.

Kelton's Finger

If you don't do well with pictures of, or descriptions of injuries, this post may not be for you.  It's not super graphic, but consider yourself warned.

Every Monday (and Friday) I go play volleyball at the church.  I take the kids with me, and so do other people.  The kids were running around and being a bit crazy.  Kelton was chasing Natalie and some other girls.  Natalie didn't want him to.  So she was running around the out of bounds line in the gym and ran into a classroom that is right there and slammed the door shut so Kelton wouldn't be able to come in.  Unfortunately, Kelton's finger ended up in the door.

I knew it had gotten smashed, but then I saw it was bleeding.  I figured it must be the nail.  But then I saw what was really bleeding.  The door had cut through, in a large upside-down "U" shape, the entire meaty part of the tip of his finger.  It was even pulled open and out from the rest of his finger.  I was actually surprised that I couldn't see the bone because this was not a shallow cut of skin.  It really was the whole padding part.  There was a medical resident there playing with us and he helped me wrap it up so we could go to the doctor.  Wrapping it up pinched everything back together.  Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately for most people) I didn't get a picture of it while it was open.

We then spent a while driving trying to figure out a cost efficient place to have his finger fixed.  We have an insurance plan where we pay every penny up to our somewhat high deductible, so I knew that we would be paying full price for whatever was done.  And can I just insert, it is a huge pain to not be able to know upfront what I will be charged for medical expenses.  When I am the one paying for it all out of pocket, I want to be able to make an informed decision of the cost effectiveness of different places.  Anyway, there is an urgent care right close to my house, but luckily I knew, from someone else's misfortune, that because they are an extension of a hospital in town, they bill at the ER rate and not that of an urgent care.  (Soooo sneaky and shady, in my opinion.)   So, we weren't going there.  We went to Kelton's doctor first, who said she couldn't do anything.  To insert another complaint, it is very frustrating that pediatricians no longer do much more than check on healthy kids and diagnose ear infections.  So, on we went to a walk in clinic in town.  Normally, they would have been able to help, but they didn't have someone there today who could do stitches.  So we then drove into town to an Urgent Care clinic. 

After all that, the nurse practitioner wasn't quite sure what to do and ended up just glueing it shut.  He thought it was staying closed well enough to try glue over stitches.  They did do an x-ray to check for bone fragments.  There were none.  Afterward, it made me wonder why someone else along the way couldn't have just glued it closed.  They can't do x-rays at the pediatrician's office (which they should...) but they could have sent me to another place in town to get the x-ray.  Then they could have glued it closed.  Our medical system is so messed up.  It's like everything is set up to make you pay the most amount of money possible.  It's like they want you to have to go to the ER for everything.

You can see that up the sides and over the tip of his finger is where it was cut.  It was attached at the bottom.  And really, "cut" is the wrong word.  It was sliced all the way through there.

Tomorrow I am going to call his pediatrician.  The nurse practitioner who saw Kelton didn't clean his finger with anything and didn't prescribe antibiotics.  He literally dabbed glue around the edges of the cut and put two strips over the top to hold it together and then put a bigger bandage around it.  He told us not to take any of the bandages off for 48 hours.  I'm not seeing how this isn't going to get infected.  So I want to see what Kelton's pediatrician thinks.

Kelton is doing just fine.  It doesn't seem to be bothering him much at all.  I gave him some ibuprofen a few hours ago, but that's the only medication he's had.  This is the only picture I could get him to give me of his bandaged finger.  He looks so sad and miserable, but really, he is just watching Star Wars and didn't want to be bothered.  :)

More of a Home

Today I finished most of the decorating in our front room. It's so nice to finally have things up on the wall. (The family picture is really old, but our newer, still two years outdated one was oriented the wrong direction.  We are getting a new one soon anyway.)

I somewhat had this same grouping in our other house, but it hadn't been up for very long.  And there is one more picture on there now.  Sorry to disappoint anyone hoping to see a name on the baby's magnetic photo board.  Nate and I both have one to put on there, but for the time being, they don't quite match.  Kind of a problem.  They almost do, but not close enough to call it good. 

I got the idea for this sign from my sister Melanie.  I think she got the idea from esty, which is a great place to go to steal great ideas.  Anyway, you use everyday object to spell words.  The guy at the one hour photo made my day by asking if they were professional photos.  It made me feel good that he thought they were good enough to ask that question (for their copyright reasons, I'm sure).  I have a non-DSLR camera that I fight with all the time and don't really know how to use.  And to give credit, I didn't photograph the "E."  Melanie did, but let me use her file.  If you can't tell, the "W" is my church shoes, the first "B" is a pearl necklace I have, and the second "B" is the top of my gate (turned sideways).  The "E" is the swirly metal end of something Melanie has, maybe an easel.  I am going to put pictures in the two other mat openings on each side.  I'm thinking I will put a picture of Nate and I on the left and a picture of all the kids on the right.

This is a small section of wall by our sliding doors that go to the backyard.  The table is there on the right.  I got the unfinished shelves at Michaels and Natalie and Kelton helped me paint them black.

Closer up view.  I actually made everything on this wall, at least in part.  Including the candles.

Despite how this picture looks, these little crazies didn't really survive the day being neglected by their mother.  Fighting/crying levels were much higher than usual today.  But now I'm done, so we can play more tomorrow.

Church Callings

Just a quick update on my church callings:  After a little over three years of playing the organ, I got released last week.  When asked about playing the organ by a member of the bishopric a little while ago, I did mention that it was going to be a bit difficult, mostly for Nate, once we had this new baby plus our other three fairly young kids.  Some moms have to manage their little kids by themselves during sacrament all the time, but dads aren't as used to it, mostly because they don't do it at home all day long.  Nate barely survived by himself with Damon as a newborn and Kelton as a crazy two year old.  And really, it only worked for me because Damon was bottle fed from really early on.  So, now with two crazy boys who like to fight and bother each other, and a soon to be newborn baby (Natalie is always really good), it was time for me to rejoin them.  I didn't mind playing the organ at all.  I will miss the quiet of sitting alone on the stand for the beginning and end of the meeting.  But it will also be nice to not be worried about not being able to help Nate keep the kids quiet, especially during the Sacrament.  (Or chasing my escaped two year old (Damon) across the front of the stand during the sacrament.  He was ever so nicely repetitively yelling, "NO, MOMMA!" the whole time I tried to catch up with him.)

Today was my first time sitting with my family for all of sacrament meeting since Kelton was about a year old.  I think having me there on the bench for the first 25 minutes of the meeting threw my boys off a bit.  They weren't very good.  It is going to take some re-adjusting/re-training. 

Also, this evening was the third time I have held choir practice.  I was called to be the choir director back in January or February.  But, along with being super not excited about it, I had morning sickeness hit at about the same time.  That pretty much took me out of commission for a few months.  Then we had a few months of crazieness in buying our new house, setting the other house up as a rental, and moving/settling in to the new house.  Once that was all finished, I was able to find some music for the choir to sing and then figure out a time when we would be able to meet.  Our church meetings start at 8:00 a.m. and we share the building with three other wards, plus one more ward that meets in a school because we can't do five blocks in our small building on Sunday, but they still use the building for all other purposes.  So, finding a time for choir practice when people would actually come was a bit challenging.  We meet from 6:00-7:00 p.m.

But we are underway now.  This calling is a bit different for me.  I am way more used to being the one behind the piano.  And directing a choir is different from just conducting the music.  But I am slowly figuring it out and it seems to be going okay.  Hopefully the choir members feel the same way.  We even almost have one song ready to sing.

Ultrasound

I had another ultrasound a little more than a week ago.  Everything still looks really good.  And the baby is still a girl.  :)

Profile view

Hand

(I'm pretty sure the oval is a top view of her head)

I like this one with her arm and hand up across her face.

Marble jars

About a month ago I decided we needed to do something about some bad behavior around here.  The kids were being disobedient, complaining when asked to do things, and were not being nice to each other in words or actions.  And, as a result, I was not noticing or praising any of their good behavior because I was so frustrated by the bad.  So I decided to institute a marble jar system.  (This is not original at all, and I'm sure many of you have done it too.)  Simply put, you do something nice, or obey mom and dad, etc... and you get a marble.  You do any of the bad behaviors and you lose a marble.

Here are their jars about a week after starting.  I didn't tell them they had to choose a certain color, but Natalie wanted to be blue, Kelton wanted to be green, and Damon decided each time what color he wanted.

I must say, I had no idea the power that these little marbles would hold.  It was truly amazing.  I heard Kelton stop and nicely ask Damon to "share" his own toys with him (instead of grabbing, yelling "that's mine!", hitting, crying... you get the idea) and Natalie was a lot more cooperative (overly so at times) about doing homework, putting her shoes away, etc.  They were always looking for ways to get marbles.  Which resulted in everyone being a lot nicer and happier, myself included.  And, it was nice for me to be able to notice all the good things that they do.  And it is amazing how positive reinforcement encourages more positive behavior.  I just know that as a parent I will a lot of times get stuck in a rut of just getting upset with all the "bad" behavior and then I end up grumpy all the time.  So, these jars really helped me too. 

Over the weeks, we were not as dilligent as the first week or so.  But we've tried to get back on track.  Today the marble jars were full.  Natalie's was all the way full and Kelton's was only five or so marbles behind, so I figured we would get all their rewards on the same day.

I let each of them choose what they wanted to earn when the jars were full.  (I did guide their choices a bit by making suggestions.)  Natalie wanted ice cream from McDonalds and to play in the Playplace.  Kelton wanted one of those big balls you always see in the isle at Walmart.  Damon is a little too young to understand the whole concept, but he did understand some.  He really loved being able to put marbles in his jar and did realize that he got them for doing good things.  But he loves ice cream, so we decided his reward would be the same as Natalie's.

Here they are with their rewards.

I couldn't choose just one picture of Damon.  Each one was just so indicative of his cute personality.  Such a happy kid.

Kelton had to choose the exact ball that Damon got on his birthday so that they would each have the same one.  I couldn't even sway him with the balls that had the dots all over them.  He was so happy. 

And I did feel a little silly taking a picture of him with his ball in the middle of Walmart. Other people were probably thinking my poor kids were so deprived for this to be a big enough thing to pull out the camera. :)

The marble jars are now empty and we are starting the whole thing again.  The kids just need to choose a new reward.

Lost toenail

Just as a warning... this post might be gross or kind of weird to some of you... but it's for my personal record keeping.

Back before I met Nate, he had a reoccuring issue with an ingrown toenail on his big toe.  He went to the podiatrist a few different times to have it taken care of, but it then grew back with a fungal infection.  When I met Nate, he told me that his toenail had fallen off once and that it was about to fall off again "any day now."  That was about nine years ago and I have never seen his toenail fall off.  Until about two weeks ago.  So, he decided it was time to just go in and have the podiatrist kill the root so it wouldn't grow back again and he wouldn't have to mess with it anymore.  He went in at the end of May and had it taken care of.  (Don't worry, I didn't take any gross pictures.  It wasn't that gross anyway.)

(Just a note:  my house is around 82 degrees and my kids still wrap up in their blankets. I can't imagine.) 

 Now Nate has a whole care routine he has to do twice a day for a few more days.  I think he is ready for it to be done with.  I'm interrested to see what his toe will look like once it is all healed and doesn't have a toenail anymore.