Basketball!

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but K has a very specific order in which he will try sports. First was soccer, then football, now basketball and then he'll try baseball. Well, it's basketball season round these parts and we're in it full swing. We showed up to the first practice and found out that K's friend from school is on his basketball team. I don't know if K looks like he loves basketball because he really loves it or if it's because H is on his team and he loves playing with him. Whatever the reason, K loves basketball! Watching them play is adorable. There are no fouls called, they can travel and double dribble. It's awesome when one of the kids gets the ball on one end of the court and runs, holding the ball, all the way to the other end to shoot it. You can hear parents from all over the gym yelling,"dribble it! You need to dribble the ball!" It seems like if the kid can hear their parents and they try to dribble it, it hits their foot and they end up kicking it. Holding it and running seems like a much safer bet! I have learned that K gets all of his athletic ability from me. Poor kid! He got the ball and was running, and actually doing a semi-productive dribble, to the basket to shoot the ball. I was cheering like mad! Little B won't sit and watch the games, so B and I switch off with sitting on the bleachers and watching, and walking around with little B. It was my turn to be watching K play when this amazing play was unfolding. I was clapping and yelling for him as he shot the ball, when my ears tune in to B yelling from the side lines,"K! That's the wrong basket! Don't shoot it!" I had no idea that he was running towards the wrong basket. Thankfully, K missed the shot, but he still had a huge smile on his face. Clearly, he didn't know that he had shot at the wrong basket either. B may have the dominate genes when it comes to the looks of our children, but I donated the genes for their amazing sport skills!

I love that he's using both hands to dribble! That's my boy!

Sitting with his friend H as they watch the game. They get so into it and they keep score on their own. They've told me that they've won every game by a lot! We love watching him play and love that he has such a great time.

Croup is really crappy!

Little B is the first kid in this family to have Croup. It's not great! He woke up late Saturday night with the cough. It's so weird to me that neither of our other kids had it, but we knew what it was as soon as we heard the cough. I can't believe how much he sounded exactly like a seal. I had heard that that's what it sounds like and I have heard a seal bark; but to have that sound come out of our little boy was a little unnerving. He also had a fever. I used to worry out loud about fevers until my dear husband told me that there really isn't any reason to get worked up over a fever unless it's about 104 or higher. So when we took his temperature and it was 103.1, I just freaked out on the inside. B on the other hand very calmly went to the cupboard and got the Tylenol. I was thinking about rushing him to the Emergency Room, having them take one listen to him and having them sing my praises for being such a concerned and loving mother that we would venture out at such a late hour to seek medical attention for a child who's fever was very high and who's cough was the worst sounding cough the hospital employees had ever heard. Instead, we gave him a teaspoon of Tylenol for the fever and held him until he was ready to go back to bed. He was awake an hour later because he couldn't breath or sleep while in his bed. We had tried shoving couch cushions under his mattress to try and elevate his head so hopefully he could sleep, yeah, that didn't seem to help at all. He wouldn't sleep unless I was holding him, so that's what I did. Needless to say, neither of us got a whole lot of sleep. of course I had sharing time on Sunday. Our primary has over 100 kids and most of them are in the Valiant 11 class. Most of the Valiant 11 class are annoyingly loud boys. Not a whole lot of sleep mixed with boys that were ripping the curtains and throwing little pieces of fabric at the heads of the kids in front of them while the teachers just sat there and watched, made for a less than spiritual experience in Sr. primary. Then in Jr. primary I didn't have enough things for all the kids to help with in the lesson, which I thought was pretty normal. Ya know, you tell them you're watching for reverent helpers. Well, one little girl didn't get a chance to help and burst into tears screaming that she had wanted to help. Not great, I felt so bad, but if every kid in our primary got to help every week, we'd never get to go home. We would just live at the church so that all 100+ kids could have a turn helping with sharing time. Anyway, now I know that before I do sharing time next month, I need about 15 hours of sleep the night before so I can be more prepared for the battle that lays ahead of me! When we got home B had evidence all over his shirt that little B had slept on him while we were gone. B said he didn't want to lay there the whole time we were at church, so he had scooted out form under little B and taken a picture.

 The poor thing just didn't feel very good. Thankfully he slept a lot better last night and even stayed awake until 10:00 this morning before he was so tired that he was almost asleep by the time I carried him upstairs and put him down for a nap. Croup is awful and we're really hoping that he feels all the way better really soon.

The trouble with a big kid bed

We moved little B from his crib to a toddler bed. It worked out just great except for now he can open doors. Easy fix you say, put on one of those baby proof door knob thingys. We tried. He pulls it back until the hole in the center is away from the door knob. He then sticks his little fingers in the hole and leans back. Using all of his body weight he pops the child proof door knob thingy off, turns the door knob and out he goes to play in the toilet. Wish I could say he's only played in the toilet once, but I can't. Anyway, both M and K wouldn't take naps much after 18 months old. I wanted Little B to be different. Honestly folks, I don't know how much longer he'll last. Since he's figured out how to bust out of the not so child proof door, I have resorted to using a tie to tie the door shut until he's asleep. I untie it as soon as he's sleeping, so don't judge. Now, one day not so long ago, I had tied his door shut. I went to lay on the floor to look under his door to see if I could see his feet or if he had gotten back in bed and fallen asleep. We have an extra twin bed in his room. He was standing at the bed. I came back downstairs and waited about five minutes and then I went and checked on him again. He was in the same spot. I untied the ties and went in. 

He was totally asleep. The poor thing was sleeping while he stood at the side of the bed. I wondered why he hadn't just climbed on the bed and fallen asleep.

I moved his monkey and tried to get a better shot. There on the floor are his pillow and blanket. He could have laid on the floor, but instead he fell asleep next to the bed. It's tough to get a good nap when you're big enough to climb out of bed!

Happy New Year!

Before we talk about New Years Eve, let's talk about my favorite Christmas tradition. Painting our ornaments is by far my favorite tradition. I love that the ornaments they pick to paint are so personality oriented. Like little miss M. She picked a heart with ribbons on the front of it. Of course she would pick the heart. Not only is she so sweet and loving(most of the time :) ), but she is all girl. She loves things to smell good and look good, with the exception of her room; which she doesn't care about at all! But generally speaking she likes things to look, smell and just be pretty and nice. I love this picture! Not only does it show them painting their ornaments, but it also shows that she's left handed! I think it's so awesome that she's left handed. I long to be left handed so much that all I'll say is that the mirrors in this house aren't used only for dancing and singing in front of anymore! They also fulfill my desire to be left handed! Or, at least to appear that way.  

Now, moving on to New Years. We were all pretty healthy through New Years Eve. M did have a weird fever, but no other symptom except she was tired. But it seems that as soon as Midnight stuck, our healthy streak ended.

Here's proof that four of the five of us made it all the way to midnight! This is the first year these two have been awake when the ball dropped. Can I just ask a question? What's with the ball dropping? Isn't dropping the ball in anything in life a bad thing? So, why on New Years Eve do so many people pack into Time Square to watch a huge ball drop? What an odd thing to call a tradition. Anyway, Yay for making it to midnight and being able to welcome in the New Year! B woke up Thursday with a small back spasm. Meaning, he could hardly move because some muscles in his back had freaked out. He's gone to the Dr about it in the past and they say sorry, ride it out. He had his back issues, M's fever was higher and she was even more tired and then K was starting to complain about his tummy hurting. The inevitable happened. Bodily fluid started springing forth and out. Not great! K was so kind to share with me. Cleaning up after a sick kid when you yourself don't feel good should be against the laws of nature! The stomach bug hung around until Saturday night. I am happy to report that everyone was able to report back to school and work today. I was even able to use my new padded sports bra that I found on sale, in my size at Maurices! It's bright orange and I love it! Can I just say that I love Maurices?! Truth, if there was a t-shirt that said, "I love Maurices", I'm pretty sure I would but it and wear it a lot! Their jeans are usually on sale and their sizing makes me feel so good about myself. Their clearance racks are great! Last time I was in there I found a pair of capris on the clearance rack for $6.49! I would have rounded up to $6.50, but they didn't cost that much!!! I truly love that store! Anyway, where was I, oh yeah, we're all healthy and happy! 

What else, what else.... I don't have anything to say really, so I'll just put some pictures on and call it good.

AH yes, the infamous clothes on the floor picture. That can only mean one thing. There's a kid around our house somewhere that had clothing on a few minutes ago, but no longer does.

Here sits the culprit. He loves to take his clothes off. Honestly there have been days when he removes his clothing in the wee hours of the morning and the lazy side of me takes over and he stays in just a diaper all day. Thankfully the diaper stays in place. It's so annoying once they find out how to take that off. He had stripped, found a chip on the counter and was so happy sitting on the chair, eating his snack and watching that cars go by.

This act is what causes us to tie the fridge shut. He opens it, climbs in and gets yogurt. Which is fine except for the nasty diapers eating five+ yogurts a day causes. At least he had his clothes on still!

We'll end with this one. The fellas in this house got new BYU shirt's from grandma B for Christmas. I got little B dressed first one morning. K saw him and said he wanted to match. He came down from getting dressed and said he didn't have a white shirt to wear under, so he just put on his blue one. But, "It still matches because we both have long sleeves on and grey pants. Well, I didn't have grey pants, I only had my blue fuzzy pants so I'm wearing those instead, but we still look the same." Imagine hearing all this while K is running and jumping and doing somersaults and causing mayhem, that's just how it goes when he's telling you something. If you didn't imagine him doing such things as you read his quote the first time, you must go read it again thinking such things. He's wild and crazy to say the least!

We had an amazing 2014. We were able to do such fun things as a family and make some awesome memories! We are so thankful that my sister, E, still has her foot after an awful motorcycle accident that very easily could have left her with only one foot. Speaking of feet, we're also thankful that my brother, A, still has his foot and toes after a 3000 pound trailer fell on it and crushed it. Let's not forget my nephew, R, that thankfully still has his eyesight after a wood chip went in it and risked leaving him blind. Little, M, we are so thankful that even though you fell in the fire, you are still here and that your burns aren't worse. L, hang in there dude! We're praying that you get to leave the hospital soon and that you and your mom will be able to go back to Texas with your dad and S! I love coming from a huge family, but sometimes it feels like because there are so many of us, there's always at least one major medical event each year. This year there was just more than one! We truly are so thankful that all of these people are still here and that they are still part of our lives. We hope and pray that this new year is full of happy memories and that we will be able to stay close to family, maybe even get a little closer! To 2014 we say farewell and to 2015 we say, bring it!

Christmas lights

This last weekend we went to see my older brother in DC. He and his lovely wife, K, have eight kids. We hadn't even met two of them, so we were excited to go see them. The plan was to leave as soon as B got off work on Friday. It's a six hour drive so we didn't want to leave too late. Of course Friday was the one day of the week that B didn't get done early at work. Not only did he not get done early, he was an hour late! Why is life like that? I don't have an answer. All I can say is that it's so annoying. We didn't leave our house until 4:30. We were able to make good time and got to their house at 11:00.

Of course little B slept almost the whole way there. When we put him in the car he found the strap on the bag and latched onto it. Please don't judge us because he's already forward facing and he's not two. The angle of our seats is really annoying and when we had it put in rear facing we had to take it to the fire department to have the fire fighters put it in. I took it out one day when I was riding in my friend's car. I couldn't figure out how to put it in backwards, so forward facing he went. Now he's been forward facing long enough that I fear if we turned him around he would lash out irrationally. And we all know there's no rational talking when a 21 month old is lashing out!

We called to tell them that we had left late and were told that two of their kids were sick. We were already packed, in the car and eating the Little Caesars we had just gotten for dinner. Can we talk about that for a minute? I love that they have pizza for five bucks! I had made the awful mistake of going to get snacks for the drive when I was hungry. Needless to say, we had enough chocolate, licorice and crackers to last, well, a long time. So we were able to get one pizza for five bucks and it fed us dinner. We just topped ourselves off with the junk we had! If that's not living the dream I don't know what is! Anyway, since we were already en route, we decided to take our chances and go mingle with sick children. Unbeknownst to us, as we drove their kids started falling sick like snow in a blizzard, fast and a lot of them! We felt so bad for the littles that were feeling under the weather. Six of their eight kids were six by Saturday afternoon.

Poor A wanted to play, but he couldn't be too far away from his bucket. I heard my brother say more than once to more than one of their sicko's, "Always have your bucket with you!" 

This was taken before M, (The M on the right,) got whatever was in the air. These two played together all morning, but then she said that her stomach was starting to hurt, she was out for the rest of the day.

V got sick in waves. She would be fine for a little while and then she wouldn't be. When she felt good, these two played a lot. She had cars! K didn't care that they were pink and purple, he just loved that she would play cars with him! We just hung out on Saturday. And by hanging out I mean that we cleaned up throw up, disinfected surfaces and tried to make sure that little B didn't play in whatever fluid he found. My brother and his wife are an amazing team and they cleaned up bodily fluid like machines! B and I felt so helpless. We tried to help, but sick kids don't want an uncle or aunt, they want their parents. Even though kids were sick, it was good to visit. Our niece, S, asked for funny stories about her dad. I told her about the time her dad was coming home from school, and ran over a duck, but not with the tires. He looked in his rear view mirror and saw the stunned duck standing there. He put his car in reverse, ran over the duck again, stopped, leaned out of his car, grabbed the duck and brought it home. When he walked in the house the duck's body was in his backpack with the zipper zipped up to it's neck. He walked into the bathroom, filled the tub with water and put the duck in. It swam around the bathtub so happily; simply because it didn't know it's fate. If it had known that it was going to become dinner, it would have tried to bust out of there. Instead it swam it's last laps in the bathtub of the only bathroom in the house. When I got done telling the story, he tried to deny it. Thankfully my parents had come for the weekend and my mom was able to vouch for me. He then told the story of when he hit a deer on the way home from church. He looked in his mirror and noticed it wasn't dead. He told K they had to go back. They turned around and he got out. He picked the deer up and walked to their car. At the time they didn't have their 12 passenger van that they have now. No, they had a Toyota Echo. In my opinion that car is basically a roller skate. It's tiny. He made it back to the car and told K that she needed to drive. She moved over, he got in the passenger side while holding the deer. He said he was holding it like you do a baby when the baby needs to burp. The deer's head was on his shoulder and he was patting the deer's back. All the sudden, the deer opens it's eyes and starts freaking out! Deer legs, fur and body are going everywhere. A is telling K to stop the car! She stops, he opens the door and the deer bounds out and across the street. As I listened to him tell the story, I was laughing so hard! Why oh why would you pick up a deer and put it on your lap in the car? Good times! He's really funny and should write a book!

Sunday after church we went to see the lights on the temple grounds at the DC temple. We were so excited to see them! I had heard they are beautiful, and they are. Our camera isn't the best and so most of these are blurry, but we tried!

That truly is incredible! The spirit of the temple is one of the greatest feelings on earth!

We were checking to see if taking pictures with the flash on worked very good. It did unless you want to see the lights behind you. He's a cheese ball and loves to say "cheeeeeeese" when he sees the camera.

So we turned the flash off but if the picture taker or the subjects in the picture move, it's blurry. This one worked ok, so we went for the family shot.

We actually got a good one with my dad's Ipad, but I can't figure out how to get it off email and put it on here, so just imagine this one really clear and beautiful!

There was a camel next to the manger scene. Our niece, S, really wanted to take a picture of us on the camel. K loved it and wanted to play on the camel for longer than our freezing body parts would allow.

K also wanted to take a picture of us. He did pretty good, but we wanted to try it without the flash on.

Fireworks at the temple! Not really, this is just what happens when you let a six year old take your picture when the flash is turned off. I think it's actually a pretty cool picture!

We went inside the visitor's center to thaw. How awesome to have the statue of Christ with Christmas tree's behind him! I wish that the flash hadn't gone off so that you could see how beautiful it really was, just use your imagination!

We had a great weekend even though the cousin's were sick. We laughed and talked and ate really good food. We made it home with only one case of pink eye and one case of yucky diapers for a day. It was totally worth it to be able to see/meet family and go see the lights at the temple! 

Visitor's from the east-ish

My parents came for a visit. I would have said that we had more visitor's from the west since they live in Utah and I'm no geography whiz but I'm pretty sure Utah is considered the west. However, they have been staying at my brother's house in DC for a while to help with child care whilst he and his wife are doing classes at the same time or something like that. Clearly, the details that I have are a little vague. All I know is that one night it was 11:00 here and I thought it was safe to call my parents because in Utah it was only 9:00. I woke my mom up because they were already in DC helping with A's kids. That was in September I think, so they've taken up semi-permanent residency out here in the east. That's why we had visitor's from the
east-ish. Not that you needed to know, noticed or even care why I titled this here post that. They came, they slept (twice) and then they were gone again. It was a short visit, but our offspring loved having grandma and grandpa K come. We got them from the airport early Saturday afternoon. We went and tried out a different children's museum. I don't know who liked it better, the kids or me. It was really awesome! Not to mention K only got lost once, so that's amazing! (He went on the elevator, the doors closed before the rest of us could get on. M and I ran down the stairs to try to beat him there. The elevator came, the doors opened and there was no K. We ran to another elevator, still no K. We ran up a different set of stairs, no K. Finally we saw B waving at us. K has stayed on the elevator. Some mom's got on and rode with him until he got back to the floor where B was waiting for him. That kid and getting lost are going to send me to an early grave!)

There was a 3D movie about penguins that people thought looked interesting. I knew how long little B would last, about ten seconds. So I took one for the team and stayed out with him while everyone else went in. We went exploring while they were gone. We found this really cool fish tank with no one around. He loved to stand on the steps and watch all the fish. There was one in there that looked like tie-dyed cotton candy. He loved that one and the bright yellow one. The fish were so active that he didn't have time to finish saying "Whoa! What's that?" Before the fish he was originally talking about was long gone and another one or five were whizzing past. We saw other tanks with sea horses, jelly fish and these nasty worm things that would poke their heads out of the sand and then slide back down into the hole where they came from. I hate worms and I hate holes so to see a worm in a hole gives me full body chills. Little B thought the worms were hysterical and laughed and laughed at them. He also loves minion's and when we found out that there's going to be a movie on just the Minion's that comes out next summer; we watched the trailer and little B laughed really hard at it. I digress, the tanks full of sea life were really cool.

Once the movie ended we went upstairs and found some really cool things! The tube blows air, so you drop the ball and it floats. The tube moves and so you can move the ball in the stream of air. We spent a lot of time there. We all had fun with this one!

There was a bed of nails. Once grandpa figured out that you have to push and hold the red button, he was in business. It's so cool to lay on one of these things! It doesn't hurt, it's just awesome! Grandpa is nice and would have let every kid in the museum go in front of him, but enough's enough and we told the little kid in blue and orange that "grandpa's next." No, he's no relation to us but my dad is old enough that when we say,"grandpa's next" everyone knows who we're talking about. True story.

We were waiting while M was pulling a ball back really far and letting it go so it would launch a tennis ball into the air. The tennis ball would then fly sky high trying to hit the red target. She's amazing and hit the target over and over again. He must have gotten tired of waiting for her because he laid down on the floor to wait for her to finish. People walked by and laughed at him. Truthfully he was only down there for about 15 seconds, it was funny while it lasted!

There were the cool lift yourself up using your own body weight chairs. All that tried these chairs really liked them. I tried to get pictures of everyone at the top, but they were too fast, our camera is too slow and there were people waiting so no do overs. At least I got pictures of them on the chairs, that counts for something right?

This was taken on Monday before M and K had to go to school. I had thought that mom and dad were staying until Monday evening. I was wrong, they were leaving early afternoon. It was a short visit, but it was fun and now when little B walks under the picture we have of the grandparents on our wall he wants me to pick him up so he can point to grandma and grandpa K. He rattles on about something but he has a smile on his face the whole time, so he must have had a great time while they were here! M and K thought they were funny especially when grandma came downstairs and asked if anyone had seen grandpa's teeth, he took them out and couldn't find them. They about died laughing. Good times! Thankfully he found them and popped them back in his mouth. Grandpa's are so funny! They and his teeth are welcome back any time!

Family pictures

Our wonderful and amazing friend took our family pictures this year. We really wanted to wait until the leaves had changed colors. We picked out the park we thought would be perfect. We waited until we were sure the leaves would be a lovely color. We pulled into the park one Thursday afternoon and to our utter disappointment, the trees were mostly green still. Well, some trees were totally void of any leaves at all. But the trees that were lining the field that we were going to use were still a beautiful shade of green. We walked around the park and did find some fall foliage and a cool wooden door. So, without further ado, here are our family pictures.

This one had such potential, but I feel like M is holding her arm as if it was broken and little B isn't looking at the camera. We tried to take several shots of this one, but none of them were blow up to a 16x20, hang on the wall kind of picture.

So, we did a funny one instead. I totally love this picture! It makes me feel so happy inside!

This one is B's favorite. I like this one, but my smile is wonky and I don't love that. I feel like everyone else looks good and it would have been awesome if little B was smiling, but oh well. I do love the lighting and the trees in the background. 

This is my favorite. K and little B are a little washed out, but of everyone I feel like this one is the best overall.

This goes without saying, but this is my absolute favorite picture of the day. I am so thankful that J was willing and able to take our family pictures.