Kid and Family Pictures 2013

We took these pictures Saturday morning at the Union Station Museum in Ogden.  Since we were at the Train Station we had to stop all picture taking activity every time a train went by.  Matthew couldn't concentrate on anything else while a train was going by.  Other than that everything went pretty well except for just knowing that for every decent picture there are AT LEAST 10 outtakes :).

Here are the guys in my life:

The kids:

 Noah was about done at this point of the pictures as you can see in his face:

 The girls of the family:

Matthew 12 years old:

Josh 10 years old:

Daniel is 8 years old:

 

 

Sarah is 5 years old:



Noah is 3 years old:

The fam:

 

 

 

Halloween Activities, Sewing, Pinewood Derby, Etc.

Sunday Daniel was sick so Aaron stayed home from church with him.  To make things easier for me he also had Noah stay home with him as well.  As we were all getting ready to go to church Sarah had woken up on the WRONG side of the bed.  She was crying and screaming over EVERYTHING.  After about an hour of listening to her I convinced Aaron that she needed to stay home as well--he wholeheartedly agreed.  It was weird only have me, Josh and Matthew on a bench.  Anyway, since Aaron wasn't going to be at church to help Matthew get to his classes, I asked a neighbor boy who is Matthew's same age if he would be willing to help Matthew.  He said he would and I was relieved!  He made sure Matthew got to his classes and could navigate the hallways.  It was so nice.  However, since Aaron wasn't there no one was there to stop Matthew's random question asking.  Monday morning Aaron asked one of his friends that is in our ward how opening exercises of priesthood went.  Sure enough Aaron heard that Matthew had to clarify the activity announcements by asking if the activity time was am or pm. He also had to ask a few more questions in front of everyone and then say a few more things about random subjects before he let everyone convene to go to their classes.  Good thing most everyone knows Matthew and is able to just smile and nod and let him do his thing.  Oh Matthew--he keeps things interesting.  I am glad that Matthew was able to have some help from a fellow quorum member during the last half of our Sunday meetings.

 

Every night before I go to bed I have to check on Noah and put him back into his bed.  For whatever reason he prefers falling asleep on his floor even though when I put him to bed I tuck him in under his covers.  Anyway the other night I picked him up and put him back in bed and then I went to bed.  About 30 minutes later I hear the pitter patter of little feet in the hall and then my bedroom door squeak open.  Since this is how Noah wakes me up every morning I was curious to see what was going to happen since it was about 1:30 am.  Noah ran over to my side of the bed and then told me, "HIIIIII MOM!!  I had a good sleep!".  I had to sigh about then because that is what he says to me every morning.  The poor kid thought it was morning and time to get up.  Unfortunately, we had some guests over so I couldn't put him back in his room because he would start screaming and wake everyone up.  I had to put him in bed with me and try and get a little bit of sleep.  Now I am an extremely light sleeper so I have never let any of my kids share the bed with me EVER because I get no sleep otherwise.  That is why we have a king size bed because I can't have anyone near my while I try to sleep otherwise I can't sleep at all.  Anyway, to make a long story short--it was a LONG night for me, but judging by the sounds I heard from Noah and Aaron they slept really well.  It was early bedtime for me the next night I might add :).

 

Matthew is in a class called CTE (don't ask me what it stands for I have forgotten).  Anyway, he gets a rotation in cooking, sewing and wood working.  He is currently in sewing and LOVES it.  He brought home a book mark with Josh's name sewn on it and gave it to Josh.  He was so proud of it.  Last week he brought home a really nice windsock he had sewn as well.  I was quite impressed.  He was more than excited to show it off in a picture:

 He actually did a pretty good job on it.  He made sure to hang it up outside for everyone to see.  He keeps telling me he needs to show me his sewing skills with my sewing machine...too bad my machine is broken :(.  Next rotation will be cooking.  I heard they have to taste all the things they cook.  That will be interesting seeing as Matthew is one picky guy when it comes to eating....

Last week was the Pinewood Derby.  That's what Aaron, Josh and Daniel worked on all last week.  Aaron let them paint their own cars and everything.  They were excited to race.

Aaron thought he knew what was up with designing the cars since Matthew and Josh tied for first place last Pinewood Derby.  However, things did not go as planned.  The cub scouts hired a professional Pinewood Derby racetrack guy.  Now when everyone got there to way in, the professional guy geared up all the kids' different cars with the right weights and with graphite powder on all the cub scouts' car wheels.  That took away all the advantage Aaron was counting on to win DOH!!  Oh well the boys still had fun racing and even more fun tying down to the exact one thousandth of a second for 9th place.  Here's their cars:

 Josh and Daniel raced the first race together.

They were so excited that they were the only brothers ever to tie in this professional guys career even if it was for 9th place out of 10 cars.  They were excited that they didn't come in last...in their mind if they tied for 9th place than no one came in 10th place or last place right?!  What is more important they had fun with their Dad doing all the car stuff.

Noah is Mr. Private.  He does not like to tell me when he goes potty he just likes to, "DO IT TO MYSELF MOM!!" which are his words exactly.  However, I question what exactly he does when he comes walking out of the bathroom like this:

 Why exactly does he have toilet paper tucked inside his underwear trailing behind him??  Who knows?  I do know that he won't tell me because he, again, is Mr. Private.  Sigh--because he takes care of things without my help I must say it has resulted in many an empty toilet paper roll, unplanned toilet scrubbing and unplanned shower due to the results of him trying taking care of it by himself.  Good thing I still love him--I can't complain....too much anyway :).

Saturday was quite the busy day for our family!  That morning we headed over and did family and kids' pictures.  Right after we dressed everyone up in their Halloween costumes and headed over to the grocery store for their annual trick or treat in the store.  The kids were excited to hit each station and get more and more treats.  I love that they do this every year!!

 We also hit Burger King because they were doing a parking lot trunk or treat with activities as well.  Here kids are waiting to do one of the activities.

 Matthew got to do some bowling.  He LOVES bowling on the Wii and has gotten pretty good at it including getting 7 strikes in a row during one game last night.  Anyway he was excited to actually do it in real life as you can see by his jumping up and down, excitedly yelling and flapping of his arms.

 After that we hit another grocery store and participated in their trick or treating activities as well.  They had a huge blow up spider in front of their doors that the kids liked.

 They got to make some crafts, frost cookies and do trick or treating around the store.

 They also had 12 random numbers taped around the store floor.  Every 15 minutes they called out a random number.  Lucky for us during one round we had 5 of the numbers taken up with just our family--big families are awesome and advantageous at times like this :).  Anyway Daniel was the lucky number winner.  He was so excited.  He then got a coupon for a free pumpkin.  We let him pick it out and he got the BIGGEST pumpkin he could find.

 After all that we got dressed in our warm clothes and did our annual family tradition of walking through the Syracuse City Pumpkin walk.

 The kids loved looking at all the carved pumpkins.  I meant to pick some up for our family to carve so they could have been in the walk, but I totally spaced it and forgot this year :(.  Oh well you can't win them all right?!

 Anyway, at one station they had a whole train set up around some jack o lanterns that Matthew absolutely went crazy over when he saw them.  Anything to do with trains is his favorite!!

 Here's a few of our favorites this year:

 We got to meet they guy that carved all the Minions.  That was pretty awesome.

 It was a tad on the chilly side so we let the kids warm up by the fire at the end which they liked.  We stayed until Daniel and Josh started pulling out pieces of hay and trying to start them on fire....Why do all boys love to burn things?!

 I hate it when the kids try and open the cereal bags by themselves.  The NOT ME Ghost (no one admitted to who it was) split this one down the middle so every time anyone reached to grab it, it spilled cereal everywhere.  That dang Not Me ghost is really mischievous!!

 For FHE Monday night we carved out pumpkins.  Matthew wanted a train which Aaron free handed and carved by himself.  I was quite impressed!!  Of course I couldn't find my candles so you'll just have to settle for the unlit versions.

 Daniel wanted just a regular jack o lantern.

 Noah wanted a car which Aaron free handed and carved by himself again.

 Josh wanted a Cyclops:

 Sarah wanted a cat.  Unfortunately the cat lost his ear in the carving--poor thing.

I carved one of a witch face, but for some reason didn't get a picture of it.  Oh well.  It was fun.

Fall Break, Shots, Trunk or Treat, Fishing, Tails

Last week was Fall Break aka UEA so the kids got Thursday and Friday off of school.  Wow that snuck up on me and I was not ready for that.  Unfortunately on Thursday I lacked the energy to take the five kids out and about by myself so we had a nice relaxing day at home.  Thursday night we were able to set up a fishing date with Josh, Daniel and Grandpa T.  I dropped off Daniel and Josh to have a sleep over at G&G's house Thursday night and they got up early and went fishing Friday morning.  Meanwhile that only left me with three kids at home.  Wahoo!!  Since Matthew was not happy about our relaxing stay at home day on Thursday, he made sure on Friday we had to go out on the town. Just as a side note Matthew has a really good memory for faces and names.  If he sees someone that he has seen before, but we don't know he will still run over to them and say hi.  This happened in a parking lot Friday afternoon.  I was walking out of a store carrying Noah when Matthew bolted from my side and ran over to a car that was driving around in the parking lot.  I tried to grab him, but he was way too fast.  When I finally caught up to him I saw the people inside the car he was trying to talk to.  It was someone from our ward that we hardly even know.  Matthew was asking them (as he does whenever he runs into anyone from our ward), "So what's new in the ward?"  They were talking to Matthew, but I am not sure if they knew who we were or not.  Oh well if they didn't know us at least they got to say hi to a super friendly stranger--that's trying to look on the bright side.  Also funny things about Matthew it was our Stake Conference this past Sunday.  We actually went and got there on time.  As we were waiting for it to start more people came and sat down by us.  As I looked around it was a bunch of older couples who were chit chatting with each other.  When conference first started Matthew turned around to all these older couples and said quite loudly, "HEY IT IS STARTING. YOU NEED TO BE QUIET!!"  It was hard not to bust out laughing and pretend I hadn't heard a word because you can't say anything to those poor couples to smooth anything over if they were offended that a 12 year old kid told them to be quiet.  Oh Matthew you just gotta love him!  Anyway, after running a few errands we headed over to the Union Station Museums aka the Train museum.  We have been there quite a few times so when Sarah and Noah saw a fan that hadn't been there before they had to stop and play with it.  Matthew was eager to see the trains so he ran on ahead all the while excitedly flapping his hands.  He was in heaven!

 Here's the mock train car photo op they have set up with a seat.  The kids made sure I took a picture of that.

 Here's the indoor train car you can climb on.

The kids had fun at the train museum--especially Matthew.  He is a train loving guy.  Luckily Grandma Mancil saw lots of trains on her trip back to Texas.  She made sure she texted Matthew the trains she saw.  Here's is Matthew's response to seeing the train texts (needless to say he was pretty excited and kept checking my phone every time I got a text to see if it was another train):

 Saturday morning Aaron had to get up early to help clean the church.  Meanwhile I was awakened by Noah.  He ran in my room and said, "MOOOOOOOMMMM, I DID IT!!!"  and kept repeating it louder and louder until I got up.  When I walked out of my bedroom he ran over to show me his awesome PopTart sculpture he had created that morning on the kitchen counter.  **SIGH** not the best thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning, but he was so proud of it I couldn't get mad...Good thing I love my little guy!

 Saturday afternoon the FAAST program (Families of Autism and Asperger's Standing Together) put together a trunk or treat with all the Weber County emergency personnel.  We got to visit different stations that included the Sheriff, SWAT team, Fire fighters, Search and Rescue, etc. Every station had some candy and they also passed out these awesome bracelets:

Thankfully Matthew is verbal and can tell people his address and phone number if he ever did get lost.  However, I thought it was nice they had those. 

At the search and rescue station they had one of their team members dressed up like Jack Sparrow and he looked pretty good, too.

 The kids got a chance to sit inside the boat and fire truck.  They thought it was pretty neat.

Noah was just excited to get the candy.  I love his bat costume.  This will probably be the last time someone in my family will wear it :(.  Matthew, Josh, Daniel and Noah have all had a turn to wear it.  It is cute, though, if I do say so myself.

 

Matthew got to try on the fireman's helmet which turned out to be pretty heavy.

 Here's all the kiddos:  Noah is a bat, Josh a zombie, Sarah a strawberry, Daniel a zombie and Matthew is a pirate.

 Matthew also has learned how to work the system to his advantage.  He uses his braces as an excuse not to pick the candy he didn't like.  If the officers tried to give him something he didn't want he said, "I can't eat that because of my braces."  He would keep saying that until they offered him some candy that he liked.  He's a funny kid, but smart.

One other funny thing, is when I went to get Sarah dressed in her Cinderella costume that I had bought for her this year, I realized it was the exact same costume that she wore last year.  I had bought the exact same costume again for this year that I had bought last year.  Sometimes I wonder about myself.  Since she can't be the same thing for two years in a row, I returned the costume and let her wear her strawberry costume that still fit her from two years ago.  In my defense trying to remember what all five kids were for Halloween a year ago is hard to do!

Well Josh and Daniel had fun visiting with G&G T.  They slept over and went fishing early Friday morning.  I got a phone call on Friday afternoon and it was Josh asking me what I had planned for dinner that night.  I was confused because that was a random question.  Then he excitedly told me that they had caught six fish and he wanted that for dinner!!  We picked them up Friday night and they said they had lots of fun.  However, it was too late to cook the fish that night.  We ended up cooking the fish for Saturday night dinner.  Here's the proud boys showing off their fish while being photobombed by Dad in the background:

After they caught the fish Grandpa showed the kids how to gut the fish and then let each one have a turn.  Josh wasn't too excited to do it, but still did it.  Daniel on the other hand got quite upset because he didn't want to do that at all.  Grandpa was a softy and let Daniel out of it, but Josh won't let anyone forget it that Daniel was too afraid to 'clean' the fish. I can't say too much because of the bazillion times I have been fishing I have never 'cleaned' a fish before, either.  Blech!!

While I was cooking the fish Aaron took the kids outside to play some football.  I was thankful because I was getting all kinds of 'help' from lots of hands that was making it harder to prepare and cook the fish.

I cooked the fish, took the skin off and deboned them for the kids.  After all that there wasn't too much meat left, but whatever was left the kids scarfed it down which was surprising.  Noah finished his first.  Here's right after they were cooked and before they were skinned and deboned:

 They weren't the biggest fish, but I think the pride of catching them outweighed that, though.

Every night before I go to bed I check on Noah and put him in his bed.  He never falls asleep in his bed even though that's where I tuck him in.  He always falls asleep somewhere on the ground.  Also he is potty trained, but only has a 50% success rate with #2.  So when I went to tuck him on Sunday night as soon as I opened the door the wall of stench hit me like a ton of bricks.  DOH!!!  Like always he had fallen asleep right in front of the door and I also had noticed he had grown a 'tail' inside his underwear if you know what I mean.  That explained the wall of stink that was wafting from his room.  I had to get the poor kid up to clean him up.  When I got him up I realized that this was going to be a two person job so I had to get Aaron to come help me, too.  Luckily the mess was all contained inside his underwear, but it was going to require two people to get Noah out of his underwear without making a ginormous mess.  Once Noah was extricated from his dirty underwear I had to go give him a shower (it was THAT bad trust me!)  That left Aaron to take care of the underwear.  After we got him cleaned up and tucked back in bed Aaron came over to me and said, "I have gone to lots of school, but I never thought I would ever have to use my engineering skills and knowledge to get a big poop out of underwear without making an even bigger mess."  Things you thought you'd never do before you had kids, right?!

 It's Pinewood Derby time so the last few nights Aaron has been working with Josh and Daniel on their cars.  He let them paint them and everything.  Tonight is the big race so we will see what happens.  Our scouts are pretty small so there are only 10 entries and that is only if everyone shows up tonight.  It will be interesting....

 We still have not broken Noah of his annoying habit of using his hair as a napkin.  It was especially bad after Monday's dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.  The picture doesn't even do his crusty spaghettified hair justice.

 Yep it was shower time for him after dinner.

 Yesterday Josh, Daniel and Sarah's elementary school had a flu shot clinic.  After checking with our insurance I found out that they would cover the shot 100%.  That was a no brainer because with each shot the school got $2 back so we took the family over to get our shots.  I was worried about how Noah and Sarah were going to do, but they did ok.  The person that gave me the biggest trouble was Daniel.  When it was time for him to get his shot, wow, I have not seen a tantrum like that for ages from him.  He was so upset.  He ran away and when we caught him he dropped to the floor and kicked his arms and legs.  I finally had to pull out some big threats to Daniel to get him to get the shot.  Poor kid I know he's been through a lot such as a broken femur, broken collar bone, broken foot and has had a bazillion blood draws, Epi pen shots, steroid shots, hospitalization and IVs, but I didn't know he would get so upset about a simple flu shot.  Wow.  Next time I will have to have a big prize and hopefully he will let them give him the shot without too much whimpering.  Here's everyone getting ready for their shots:

 We started from youngest to oldest because I thought that would be easier.  Yep I was wrong.  Next time I will start with Daniel first!!