Pioneers, EarlyBirds, Trains, Missing Sidewalks

The other day I sent Matthew over to clean up the mudroom.  A didn't hear any movement from him so I went to check on him only to find him fast asleep.  He stayed asleep just like this for over an hour.  It looked pretty uncomfortable to me, but it seemed to work for Matthew.  What a way to take a nap!

 Speaking of Matthew he can be a little stinker.  Matthew is a morning person.  He cannot fathom why anyone would want to sleep later than 6:30 am because that is just crazy according to his logic.  Unfortunately for our neighbors that means Matthew is out bright and early knocking on our neighbor's doors offering train rides in his wagon to their children.  We have told him he can't knock or ring doorbells until 10 am, but we caught him doing this about 8 am Saturday morning.  I just about died when I found out what he was doing.  After much apologizing to our neighbor's Matthew, Aaron and I had another talk about what times are appropriate for talking, knocking on doors, etc.  I thought it sunk in until this morning.  Matthew waited until I got in the shower to sneak outside over to our neighbor's house to visit.  I didn't catch him until our neighbor was outside in her jammies with her 3 year old kiddo chatting it up with Matthew on her porch.  It seems that another round of apologizing will be in order...Sorry neighbors we really do try to keep Matthew reigned in, but he is a sneaky little stinker who will do what he wants as soon as I am in the shower--ugh!!  Who knows maybe our neighbors will be converted to morning people before too long...

A couple months ago our family was asked to participate in the July 24th Ogden Pioneer Day Parade representing the handcart pioneers.  It was the 135th anniversary of the primary so they got 135 children from our stake to participate.  Seeing as we had 5 primary aged children in our family we were the go-to family :).  We tried to dress up as pioneerish as we could.  Thankfully, they actually had some women pioneer clothes for me and some hats for the boys.  As for everyone else I tried to come up with the best pioneer outfits I could find without breaking the bank.  We had to be at the parade starting point by 8 am (thankfully most of my family are morning people as you can see in the previous paragraph...).  We got up and dressed and headed over to the parade starting point.  Aaron thought it was kind of ironic and funny that me, as a pioneer woman, was driving to over to park and then to pick up a handcart.  I have to say I kind of agree.

 Here's a picture of some of the 135 children waiting for the parade to start so we can start pulling our handcarts.  You can see Noah, Sarah and Matthew in the middle of the picture.

 Here's our pioneer family standing in front of our cart.

 Since the parade didn't start until 9 am and we were parade entry #44 we had a long time to wait until it was our turn especially since we had been there since 8am.  However, my boys being the boys they are entertained themselves with all the rocks around us.  Sarah being one of the boys as well joined right in with them.  Here's Noah rock hunting in the parking lot:

 Finally it was time to start.  We shared pulling duty with another family.  All the kids were really excited to pull the cart at the beginning of the parade, but that lasted about 5 minutes when they all left the cart to walking beside it instead except for Matthew.  Matthew pulled the cart the whole time and did great.

 Noah decided that walking was for chumps and insisted on being carried the whole parade by only me.  They had told us that no one could ride in the handcarts so I had no choice but to carry him the whole time.  Towards the end Aaron noticed how tired my arms were getting so he found someone to take his place in pulling the cart and came over to take Noah from me.  However, it was about this time Sarah decided she was done walking as well.  Aaron meant to take Noah from me to give my arms a break, but ended up carrying Sarah instead while I had to endure to the end with tanky buns Noah.  I got a whole new appreciation for the pioneer women who had to care for toddlers across the plains.  By the end of the parade I had arms of steel--well maybe more like jello...

Here's our pioneer family in front of our house after we got home from the parade:

 G&G T came up to see us in the parade.  It was fun to be cheered on by them while we were walking.  Afterward we picked up a pizza and had a picnic in the park.  After lunch we headed over to the Union Station Museums aka the train museum.  The kids had fun showing G&G T all the fun stuff like the inside rail car.  Noah insisted on wearing his pioneer bandanna the whole day:

 The luggage scale:

The outside trains:

 It was too hot outside to get a tour of the medical and postal car so we just had to make do by looking in the windows.  It was a fun day.  I think everyone got a new appreciation for the pioneers.  It was a good experience and I am glad we got to participate as a family.

Friday we went to the water park for fun.  We usually take turns with the kids.  One person takes the older kids on the slides while the other person stays with the little kids at the kiddie section.  During Aaron's turn with the slides he took Sarah along with him down the slide.  They were both sitting on the tube when it overturned while going down the slide.  In trying to keep Sarah upright out of the water he got a nasty slide burn on his elbow.  He calls it his battle wound.  It looks a little like the slide burns he got on our honeymoon when he fell off the sled going down the Alpine Slide.  However, that time he got huge burns on both elbows and knees.  It was a painful crash.  Anyway, he did survive and lived to tell about it :).

After we got home from the water park Sarah got to go to a friend's birthday party.  She had so much fun.  They had a professional face painter at the party and when I picked Sarah up afterward I was quite impressed with the girls' faces.  All of them looked so neat.  Here's Sarah's face:

 

She chose a butterfly with a rose in the middle.  At the party they decorated cupcakes and made bracelets, too.  Sarah had lots of fun.

 

Here is our temperature telling sidewalk.  The hotter it gets the higher the buckled sidewalk goes.  When it is cool outside the sidewalk lays flat, but as it heats up during the day the ramp gets taller and taller.  Here's what it looked like when it was 94 degrees outside:

 Aaron called the city to see if anything could be done about it.  The city came by yesterday and deemed it a safety hazard.  They ended up removing a section of the sidewalk and putting these HUGE sidewalk closed signs by the removed section.

It took the city three weeks from calling to come out to see the sidewalk in the first place.  Hopefully it won't take them another three weeks to replace it, but we will see.  As for now the sidewalk in front of our house is now closed.  Matthew was a little upset because they were part of his train tracks that he used for his train rides.  I guess the train will have to find an alternate route... 

 

Daniel is 100% BOY!!!  Holy cow!  Aaron brushed by him yesterday and noticed his bulging shorts pockets.  Aaron held out his hands and had Daniel empty the contents of his pockets into his hands.  He had so much STUFF in his pockets.  He had his tube of slime, a whistle, candy wrappers, balloons, toys, etc.  What a crazy kid.  I have let the kids start doing their own laundry downstairs.  I am now afraid to see what has gone through the washing machine since they aren't as good at checking pockets as I am....

 

Frownie Brownie, Museum, Water Park, Braces, Garden

The other day I was preparing my primary lesson which happened to be on families.  As I was looking for pictures of my family I came across these gems:

 There is proof that my dad had dark hair at one point--even though I don't remember it ;). 

His nickname at work was the Silver Fox for good reason as you can see in the next pic:

You can tell both of those were taken a LONG time ago.  The last one was before Aaron and I had kids so I can't even remember that far back hahaha :).  Was there life before having kids?!

We finally got our first tomatoes from our garden.  Now Sarah and Noah LOVE tomatoes.  Aaron didn't have any trouble getting a taste tester volunteer.

 Yup, it passed the Bubba test.

Noah has decided sleeping in a bed is for chumps.  Every night after I tuck him in his bed, when I come back to check on him a few hours later he is always on the floor.  This is what I found the other night:

 I guess the trucks and cars take priority over Noah.  All the cars and trucks were all tucked in nicely in his bed while Noah was huddled up asleep on the floor.  What a crazy kid. I do put him back in bed again every night, but it is his choice whether he wants to stay there or not.  He will surely be ready for those boy scout camp outs on the hard ground...

Matthew got his braces on last week.  Here's the before shot:

 He is so funny.  He knew he was going to see the orthodontist so he dug around until he found his orthodontic t-shirt that he could wear to the office.  He did that completely on his own without any suggestions.  He can be a little OCD that way, but he was excited to wear it nonetheless.

The hardest part of getting his braces on was not being able to talk.  Not that he didn't try again and again and again.  The assistant was pretty patient even though she had to remind him to STOP talking about a bazillion times.  Matthew just has A LOT to say all the time.

 Here's the after:

 He was so excited that he had to show them off to EVERYONE at Kids in the Park and even to all the parents who were dropping their kids, too.  We have been pretty nervous to see how he'd tolerate them, but so far so good.  Hopefully it will stay that way for the whole time he has to wear them.

We decided to make the most of Aaron's furlough time since he has extra time off.  He now gets off at 2:30 every day and gets every Friday off.  This is one positive thing that came from the furlough--however, it doesn't quite offset the 20% pay cut, though.  In trying to stay positive at least Aaron still has a job so I will stop complaining.    I do have to add that we have been blessed.  Aaron called up AT&T and said that he had been furloughed and they actually gave us a free month.  We also had to take Aaron's car in to get tires.  His two front tires were bulging ready to blow out.  Doh!!  I HATE spending money on tires!!  Anyway, we were just going to replace the two front tires because the two back tires were not the best, but still drivable.  After seeing all the tires the Discount Tire guy recommended we replace all of them.  Aaron explained why we were only replacing two which was because of the furlough and the Discount Tire guy bent over backwards to help.  He said that the owner of the Discount Tire was very supportive of the military and wanted to help out.  We ended up getting all four tires replaced with nice tires at almost the same price as the two cheap tires we had originally picked out.  We are truly counting our blessings! 

Anyway, Thursday afternoon since Aaron got off early enough 2:30 pm we headed down to Trafalga to take advantage of our Pass of all Passes which got us in for free.  The kids rode a lot of the rides.  Here is Noah (on the end) looking quite scared, Josh and Matthew riding the Frog Hopper.

 Here they are waiting for their turn to ride the mini Tidal Wave:

 Notice how everyone is wet?  We went on the bumper boats beforehand.  We all had fun except at the end it turned into everyone gang up on mom and Noah to see how wet you could get us.  Good thing it was a very HOT day so I wasn't complaining about being soaked.  All the kids (including Aaron) thought it was hilarious to corner mom (me) and get her as wet as possible.  I don't think boys every grow up they just get bigger....:).

Another ride:

 The hydraulic gizmo that runs the ride made a loud sound so that's why Sarah is covering her ears.

The go karts were fun, but Daniel was too little to drive one himself.  He was sad about it, but Aaron came up with a solution.  Aaron worked the pedals while he let Daniel steer.  Aaron feared for his life, but Daniel thought it was great.  Aaron is a brave soul!!

 We tried mini golf, but after the first hole it turned into a free for all.  By the end we were missing three golf balls and a few kids.  We ended up finding the kids, but the golf balls are lost never to be heard from or seen again.  I have no idea where they ended up.

The next morning Josh had cub scout day camp.  He was so excited he made sure he had all his stuff laid out the night before.  They were leaving at 6:45 am the next morning, but Josh got up at 5 am to shower and get dressed.  He was so excited to go.  Needless to say he wasn't late in showing up.  He did have to wait around for about an hour until I would let him wander over to the cub scout leader's house, though.

While Josh was gone we took the rest of the kids and used our family pass to the Union Station Museums.  Here's the kids checking out the luggage scale:

 Looking at the model trains:

 When we got home from the train museum we met up with Josh who had a ton of fun at day camp.  He did have one accident where he got a nice gash on his elbow and knees from tripping over a rock and falling down a hill, but other than that he had fun. 

We had a quick dinner, met up with G&G T and headed over to the Pioneer Days Rodeo in Ogden.  A few weeks ago a radio station was giving out free tickets to the rodeo and we went and picked some up.  We got enough for our family and for G&G T as well.  They came up and met us and we headed over to the rodeo together.  It was sure hot, but fun watching the rodeo.  However, I had fed Daniel some leftover homemade chili for lunch.  I quickly realized that was a very bad idea since I was sitting down wind of him during the rodeo.  Down-winders certainly got a new meaning for me--whew!!!  There were a few times I had to ask him if he had turned his whitey tighties into some frownie-brownies :(.  It was bad, but Grandpa and I survived it.  We should have gotten hazard pay though!!  It was hot, but the rodeo sponsors handed out fans at the gate which was awesome!!  Here  are most of us on the bench waiting for the rodeo to begin. Noah was climbing up the stands and Aaron was chasing after him.  Noah was probably trying to get away from Daniel and his post chili smell.  I don't blame the poor guy!!

We got home really late from the rodeo so the next day everyone was tired, but we headed out for more adventure.  That morning we went and used our Passes and got into the water park where we spent a chunk of the day.  Why does swimming make you so tired?!  By the time we were heading home everyone was 'Chuckles' or EXTREMELY ornery.  I have never heard so much fighting and whining!!  However, the longer we drove the quieter it got.  Here you can see why:

 Poor Josh!  All the craziness from the previous two days caught up to him and he was passed out cold in the car.  The rest of the kids did, too, but they woke up when we stopped at the store to pick something up really fast.  Josh slept through all of it.  He was TIRED!!

 Anyway, we have almost recovered from our crazy weekend.  It was business as usual yesterday.  The older three boys had their Kids in the Park field trip to Fat Cats in Ogden.  When they got home I was feeling brave and tried to go out grocery shopping with everyone.  That was a big mistake.  Whenever I feel like I have this parenting thing down it only takes one trip to five stores with five kids alone to remind me that I don't and will not ever have this parenting thing down!!  I think that trip wore me out more than our weekend did!!  By the time Aaron got home from work I put myself in time out and took a nice long hot bath.

Noah loves riding the wiggle cars.  He will sneak out every chance he gets (usually while I am in the bathroom or showering) to ride them.  However, he uses his toes as the brakes.  The whole summer his big toes have been bloody.  You think he would stop dragging his toes as his brakes, but nope, he keeps doing it.  I finally took a picture yesterday of his poor toes.  This isn't even that bad.  Usually they look a LOT worse.  What a crazy kid!!  I think he may have a high pain tolerance--what do you think?!

Occasionally I will treat myself to a Sonic drink just for a coping mechanism :).  Hey it's cheaper than therapy!!  Anyway, the boys used to get paid piano bucks according to how much they practiced.  Well this morning Sarah found an old piano buck and was so excited to get some money.  She excitedly yelled down the stairs, "Mom I got some monies!!"  She then said in the same breath, "I can get a Sonic drink now!!"  Maybe she needs some 'therapy', too.  Face palm moment--what am I teaching my kids?!?

 Speaking of Sarah, she was telling Aaron about primary on Sunday.  She said, "Dad I was so reverent in primary today.  I didn't even fart!"  Poor girl--you can definitely tell she has four brothers!!

Josh broke his new prescription glasses.  Good thing he still has another pair.  I am just hoping this pair will last longer than two months like the first pair did.  Good thing we only spent $10 on them!!

Soggy Candy, Free Food, Orthodontic Emergencies, Eating Eggs

Last Sunday in sharing time Sarah decided she needed to go potty.  They have made it a rule that the teachers can't take the kids potty anymore they have to get a parent to take them.  That makes things convenient for Sarah since I teach the class that sits right in front of hers.  She decided she had to go right then so I got up and took her out.  By the time we came back in it looked like all the primary kids were having seizures--not really, but they were doing some strange moves.  I came in the room only to find them singing Do as I am Doing and Josh was leading.  He decided he wanted to boogie on down for his action and the poor kids and teachers had to follow along.  Really, Josh?!  He had them shaking every part of their bodies and doing the vertical worm.  All I could do was take a big sigh, sit down and pretend Josh did not belong to me.  Too bad that didn't work very well because everyone laughed at my reaction of seeing Josh doing that up in front. I don't think they will let him lead that song again for a long time...

 

The Friday after the 4th of July, we had some friends over for dinner.  Along with them they brought some awesome fireworks that made our grocery store fireworks pale in comparison.  They were really fun to watch.  We also had lots of fun roasting marshmallows and playing games while our kids played with each other.  Thanks Einzingers it was a really fun night!  Here's the only decent picture I got of the awesome fireworks.  Of course it doesn't do the fireworks justice, but hey, it's the only decent picture that turned out somewhat.

We finally went out and got our America the Beautiful family pass.  They offer these passes free of charge to special needs individuals and their families.  We had to bring along his official diagnosis and birth certificate to prove he was special needs.  Now he (us) have a life long pass to use to get into most National Parks.  We are so excited.  Why it took us so long to get it I don't know.  Here is Matthew proudly showing off his new pass (and one of his new shirts I just made).

 After getting the pass we decided we were pretty close to G&G T's house so we stopped by for a visit.  It was nice to visit.  Josh even got a turn on the mower with Grandpa T.  However, Josh is getting so big I don't know how many more rides he will be able to get.

 

Last Tuesday G&G M came in for a quick visit.  We took them to the Union Station Museums for a visit.  When we got home Aaron accidentally deleted all my photos of the day so thankfully G&G M shared their pictures with me.  Here's one of our family in front of the massive train wheels.  The three older boys were in Kids in the Park which is why they aren't in the pictures.  I find museums are more manageable if you only have two kids.  I actually got a chance to read a few things.

 We got a tour of an old mail train car.

 And an old medical rail car:

 Here I am on the side of the Union Pacific Train.

That night it was Sarah's last Little Rookies class.  Let me just say she is still has a ways before she will know to play the game...at least she had fun.

Speaking of sports Josh started his tennis class this week.  He says he likes it.  It is twice a week for the next three and a half weeks so we will see if he still likes it by the end.

While G&G M were visiting we roasted s'mores over the fire pit.  I think they had fun roasting the s'mores.

July 11th was free Slurpee day at 7-11.  We made sure we went and got ours.  Daniel was the only one who got slurped (turned the machine on too fast where it sprayed him with Slurpee).  The kids had fun, but were completely messy and sticky.  I am the mean mom that made them eat all their Slurpees outside the car before they could get in.  Josh loved it so much he even licked some Slurpee splatter off his leg as I took this picture.

The next day was customer appreciation day at Chick-Fil-A.  If you dressed like a cow you got free food.  We only printed out cow masks, but that was good enough to get everyone a free chicken sandwich.  If we would have dressed everyone up in a full on costume we would have gotten a free meal--a sandwich, fries and a drink, but we weren't that committed.  Here's all the kids with their cow masks.

The allergist keeps telling us Daniel is really close to growing out of the egg allergy.  I got tired of waiting.  Aaron and I have started slipping egg into different foods just to test the waters.  We started this about six months ago and have progressively been giving him more and more egg.  Finally Aaron tried out the mother load last week and gave Daniel a hard boiled egg.  Daniel ate it and we watched him for signs and any reaction.  He had none and he now LOVES hard boiled eggs.  I am so excited to start being able to buy eggs again.  Wahoo!!  This is how he got over his soy allergy, too.  Matthew and Josh would leave their Pop tarts out (which were full of soy ingredients) and Daniel would go gobble them up.  Eventually he could eat soy again.  I am sure Daniel's allergist will have a cow when we got back to see her, but for now we are just enjoying our eggs.  Here's Daniel eating his new favorite food--a hard boiled egg:

Here's a random picture during movie night.  Yes my house is a mess, but at least we are all enjoying ourselves, the popcorn and Despicable Me.

Saturday morning was just crazy for our family.  Josh and Aaron ran in their fourth Clinton Days 5k race.  Josh was so excited to use his mp3 player that we had won from a previous Easter Egg Hunt.  We hadn't even opened it yet, but let me just say you get what you pay for.  The mp3 player would only play one song and on top of that the headphones wouldn't stay in Josh's ears.  Josh tried to use it, but gave up on the stupid mp3 player about 1 minute into the race. 

They both finished the race and loved it.  Josh looks forward to it every year.

After the race our family had to divide and conquer.  Josh was going to be in the Parade representing his theater class.  Aaron and Matthew went to the parade to support Josh while the rest of us went to my niece Tess's bathtism as Sarah calls it.  As the parade began there was a downpour of rain.  It cooled things off for a few minutes and got everything wet.  Aaron, Josh and Matthew got soaked.  Once Aaron dropped Josh off, he and Matthew sat with the Einzingers for the parade.  As Josh walked by Matthew got so excited.  He just ran along side Josh flapping his hands.  Josh even got to throw candy.  However, Josh has never been very good at screwing on his water bottle cap tightly.  We had that problem when we went to Disneyland a few years ago--Josh's shirt and pants were always wet from his loose lidded water bottle.  Anyway he still hasn't mastered that skill.  Unfortunately, he kept his loose capped water bottle in the same bag as the candy he threw.  That meant the water bottle leaked all over the salt water taffy and made them super soggy.  YUCK!!  He still threw them out anyway.  You can tell which bag of candy is Josh's at home because all his candy is one huge mass that is ooey gooey and stuck together.  Nothing says yummy like dripping wet salt water taffy--MMMMM-mmmmm!!  We will have to work on the cap tightening skill before he does another parade is what I am thinking.....

I was able to attend Tess's bathtism and it was really nice.  Afterward they had ice cream sundaes which Sarah took to the extreme.  She ended up having three bowls of ice cream.  I had my hands full with Noah and Daniel so she would just sneak up to the table and get more every time.  Afterward she came over and started telling me her stomach hurt.  Well eating three bowls of ice cream and drinking a huge glass of root beer will do that to you.  Aaron was able to finish with the parade and make it for sundaes for the last few minutes.  That's when we had this family picture taken.  That would be why half my immediate family is in  casual clothes.

After the baptism we came home to change in to comfy clothes and Sarah kept complaining that her tummy hurt.  She ended up throwing up all over the floor and all the way to the toilet in my bedroom.  YUCK!!  I guess her tummy really did hurt.  We didn't know if she was sick or if she had just eaten too much.  We decided to chance it and take everyone to see Josh perform in his Sleeping Beauty play that he had been practicing for the last month.  He was King Alfred (Aurora or Sleeping Beauty's father).  He had quite a few lines and didn't have too much stage fright.  He did a great job performing.

It was fun to watch.  He gets to have his cast party this afternoon that he is looking forward to.  Well we were lucky enough to not have Sarah throw up while we were there, but we didn't want to chance it anymore and came home after Josh's performance.  Sarah didn't throw up again, but we kept her home from church the next day just to be on the safe side.  I guess three bowls of ice cream and a big glass of root beer is just too much for her little tummy.

Yesterday I got a dreaded call from one of Matthew's Kids in the Park Leaders.  She informed me that Matthew had pulled out half his orthodontic appliance.  I had to drop everything and go pick him up because he was quite upset about it.  Unfortunately, our orthodontist was out of town until that evening so he had to walk around like this for most of the day:

 until we got in to see orthodontist.  We got lots of crazy looks. Ever since Matthew had gotten that appliance put in he has had his hands in his mouth.  I just thought he was feeling it, but I was wrong.  It appears rather than feeling the appliance he had been chipping away all the of the glue that cemented the appliance on his teeth.  When the orthodontist got in to fix it not only the top was loose, but the bottom was not cemented in anymore either.  It took over an hour to fix it, but Matthew was upset all day until he could get it fixed.  Hopefully he learned a lesson and will leave the glue alone from now on.  I am keeping my fingers crossed!!

Yesterday I helped Jill shop for a blessing dress for baby Lila.  We had to do it via text since Jill is still in Texas.  Of course you can't have a dress and no pretty (head squeezer with flower/bow).  Good thing I had my model for some help.  I also got some good black mail pictures, too.  Double win!!