Parent Teachers, Dentist, Temple, Hostage Bribery, Matthewisms, Primary Program

Ever since Matthew has turned 12 he has wanted to go do baptisms for the dead at the temple.  Since Matthew usually needs a little more, well actually, a lot more assistance Aaron wanted to take him first.  That way Aaron could be there to help him through all the steps of finding a locker, changing into the white clothes and finding the font without Matthew having a meltdown or walking around naked because he couldn't zip up his zipper, untie his shoe or some other random complication.  Aaron was glad to say everything ran smoothly and it was a good experience for both of them.  They did five family names so it was an even better experience.  Now that Matthew knows what to expect the next time should go a bit smoother.  Aaron still says he might need a little extra help, but at least he will have the basics down.

 The other day I was really busy in trying to cook dinner, stay on top of the kids doing their homework, trying to clean up, etc.  Sarah still needed to read her book, but I didn't have the 20 minutes right then to sit and listen to her read it a few times.  That's when having an older literate sibling comes in extra handy.  I bribed Josh with some Halloween candy if he read with her and he was more then happy to oblige when there was candy involved.  It was a win win situation.  Sarah got her homework done, Josh got candy and I was able to finish some stuff.  It was pretty awesome!

 Aaron has been asking me to get my hair cut for a while now.  He is not a fan of long hair.  He finally caught me in a weak moment on Saturday and finally talked me into it.  I got 14 inches cut off and donated it to the charity Locks of Love who makes wigs for children who have lost their hair to cancer treatments.  First they washed my hair, then put my hair in a ponytail and chopped it off at the nape of my neck.  There was no turning back after that.

 I asked for a bob cut.  Wow, it's short, but I am liking it.

 Aaron has to do a double take when he sees me from behind because he is not used to seeing my neck and short hair.

 It is so weird to wash it in the shower and not need hardly any shampoo or conditioner.  It doesn't take very long to dry, either, which is great.  I am still trying to figure out how to do it, but I like it so far.  It's been about four years since I last had short hair.  I had previously donated it about four years ago so we will see if I donate it again in another four years.  Hey, it's just hair, right?!

Sunday was our ward's primary program in sacrament meeting.  In order to prepare for it we had a practice Saturday morning where everyone went through a dry run.  After the dry run on Saturday morning they had a pizza party.  The dry run was in the chapel so all the kids were supposed to wear Sunday dress clothes.  Well Sunday dress and pizza don't go very well together so afterward I got to wash everyone's clothes to make sure they would be clean for the next days actual program.  Oh well it was worth it just to see Daniel able to eat the pizza along with everyone else.  I know that I have said this a lot, but I will say it again  I love that he can now eat dairy!!

On Sunday morning during the program I got to sit up on the stand with my sunbeam class.  Aaron felt weird sitting in the audience with just Matthew and G&G T while the rest of his family was up on the stand.  It was Josh's last primary program which makes me a bit sad.  However, the kids did great on all their parts.  Josh was assigned to give a talk on the sacrament.  He even had written the talk about the sacrament by himself.  However, Sunday morning came around and he couldn't find his printed talk anywhere.  Aaron tried to get on the computer to print another one, but couldn't find the original.  Josh had done his typing homework over the top of his talk and had erased it.  DOH!  Luckily, Aaron had the foresight to take an actual picture of his talk with his phone last week.  He was able to print that out so Josh could have a physical copy of his talk.  However, when we got to church one of the primary presidency came over and handed Josh his original talk that he had left at the Saturday practice.  Phew!  I don't know what to do with that kid!  The rest of the program went great and was fun to watch all the little kids say their parts.

Sunday after church was over Matthew's young mens leader came over and talked to Aaron.  That's never a good sign.  Anyway, he came over and asked Aaron if Matthew had said anything about their combined young mens corn maze activity.  Aaron said Matthew hadn't said a word.  The leader breathed a sigh of relief.  He then went on to explain that when they had gotten to the corn maze the leaders let the boys go into the maze without the leaders.  Matthew did not agree with this and continued to say that that activity was horrible because the boys weren't following directions and staying with the leaders.  The leaders tried to explain to Matthew that it was ok they went into the maze without the leaders, but Matthew had already made up his mind that it was a horrible activity and kept telling the leaders such.  The leader wanted to see if Aaron had heard about the horrible activity and wanted and chance to explain himself.  Aaron hadn't heard a thing about it, but tried to apologize for what Matthew had said.  Luckily, the leaders have gotten to know Matthew well enough that they just understood that was Matthew and not to worry about it.   Also Sunday Matthew got out of Sunday School early and found Aaron sitting in the chapel waiting for priesthood.  Another ward's choir was practicing for their Christmas program. Well when Aaron's back was turned Matthew went up to the stand in the chapel and walked up to the other ward's choir director and told her it was time for them to leave because they needed to get priesthood started.  Wow, Aaron was embarrassed.  They still had a good five to ten more minutes before they even needed to be in the chapel for priesthood.  Aaron quickly walked up the long aisle to explain that to the choir director that the still had plenty of time and to tell her about Matthew and not to worry about what he'd just told them.  You never know what's going to come out of that kids mouth!  Just yesterday Matthew had an orthodontist appointment in the morning.  We had called transportation to let them know Matthew wasn't going to be riding the bus that morning, but Matthew didn't think we did it well enough.  So he waited until our backs were turned and called his bus driver himself to let her know he wasn't going to be riding the bus.  This is why we don't let him see any phone numbers we write down because he memorizes them so fast and then he will randomly call people.  He is a bit of a handful!

Monday all the kids had an appointment with the dentist.  I had to take them all by myself because Aaron was at work.  Wow, they were a handful.  When we parked  I was getting Noah and Sarah out of the car when Matthew took off and ran inside the office without me.  When I hurried inside with everyone else I saw Matthew chatting it up with the receptionist.  I was checking us all in when Matthew felt the need to tell the dentist we were there at that very moment.  He took off running into the back rooms to track down the dentist so he could tell the dentist that we were there.  I took off running after him and caught up to him right before he could run into a patient's room to talk to the dentist.  I told Matthew that was not appropriate and that the receptionist would let the dentist know we were there.  You never know what that boy is going to do!!  Then they called us back for X-rays.  Matthew went first because he had to get done early so he could go to his after school program.  Now my kids are competitive.  When they saw Matthew was done with his X-rays Josh and Daniel started fighting about who was going next.  Really?!  Since they were busy fighting I sent Sarah in.  Josh and Daniel continued to fight about who was going to be next.  When Sarah was done Josh slipped by me and ran to get his X-rays done.  This made Daniel mad.  One of the dental hygenists saw Daniel was upset and took him to get his teeth cleaned right then.  That way Daniel could be the first to get his teeth cleaned since he was not able to be the first one to get his X-rays done.  Anyway, let's just say I had my hands full that whole visit with sibling squabbles just like that!  Here's Sarah getting her X-rays done:

 Matthew getting his teeth cleaned.  I think it took extra long because they couldn't get Matthew to stop talking long enough to clean his teeth.  Boy that kid talks a ton!

 Noah was a little stinker, but he did everything they asked him to do.

 Josh has a hard time making decisions when it comes to what flavor of fluoride to use--cupcake, mint or bubblegum.  Wow, it took him 5 minutes to decide.  I'd hate to see how long it will take when it comes to bigger decisions because it also took him a while to decide on what color of toothbrush he wanted, too.

 The good news was Matthew, Daniel and Noah were cavity free.  However, Sarah and Josh weren't so lucky.  I can't get too upset because Sarah's only cavity was in her new 6 year old molar, but the tooth had formed funky and it wasn't her fault she had the cavity.  Josh, on the other hand, his only cavity was from not brushing his back molar good enough.  Oh well, I will take only two cavities out of five kids.  Luckily, the office had had some cancellations so they were able to take care of the fillings right then so we didn't have to come back again.  Wahoo!!  After everything was done the kids got to pick out their prizes.  The 'sticky hands' toys were a hit, but unfortunately, they have spent more time stuck on the ceiling than they have been played with as you can see:

 Yesterday was Veteran's Day.  I am thankful for all the veteran's who made it possible for us to live the free lives we enjoy!  It also meant that Aaron had the day off from work--Wahoo!!  We had a fun day date without any kids after we dropped Noah off at preschool.  It was awesome.  We grabbed some breakfast and enjoyed our morning date together.  We picked up Noah from preschool did a few more errands and then had to come home because the elementary school kids all have early out this week due to parent teacher conferences.  It was funny because the day before Sarah had come home from school saying we had Stake Conference the next day.  I had to correct her and say it was parent teacher conference instead--haha.  We had our appointments to see the teachers yesterday afternoon.  We first started out by visiting with Sarah's first grade teacher.  She says Sarah is so quiet, but she is doing great.  She showed us some of her work and we came up with a few goals for Sarah to work on through the rest of the year.  Sarah's teacher really likes having her in her class this year.

Our next visit was with Daniel's third grade teacher.  Now we weren't surprised to hear that Daniel talks a ton.  We have heard this every year from every single teacher that has had Daniel.  I found this appropriate meme to describe Daniel because no matter where you move him or who you sit him by he still is a chatterbox:

However, despite his chattiness he is still doing great.  He has an awesome teacher this year that believes in challenging the kids even more if they finish their assignments and tests early.  However, the teacher doesn't quite know what to do with him for the next month because he just got a 100% on the pretest.  He was the only one to get 100% on the test, too, so the teacher is trying to come up with some independent 4th grade level work for him to work on while she teaches the class the stuff on the pretest.  Hopefully she can get him to stop talking long enough to work on it and complete the independent work.  In other things Daniel is doing great and loves his teacher this year and so do I.  She is great!

Our last stop was Josh's teacher.  Josh's grades weren't very good for this term.  However, the teacher explained why they were so low and that most of the 6th graders grades were low.  The 6th grade teachers have all decided that the students need to learn personal academic responsibility.  The teachers do not accept any late assignments, period.  This explains a lot of the zero scores we saw on Josh's report card.  For whatever reason Josh wasn't turning in his assignments.  Now responsibility is not one of Josh's strengths, but after seeing his lower grades he says he is going to try harder to get his assignments completed and turned in on time.  Other then that his test scores show he is on grade level and is doing ok which is awesome because in the past that hasn't always been the case.  The teacher came to me a few weeks ago and asked me about Josh's handwriting and how he could improve.  I told her he was meeting with the occupational therapist for hand strengthening exercises and practice.  She then decided that Josh would benefit from having an alphasmart keyboard, too.  This keyboard allows Josh to type his notes and homework during class instead of handwriting them which makes it easier to read for everyone involved especially Josh.  Josh was getting some of his answers wrong on his tests because the person that corrected the tests couldn't correctly read his numbers or words.  After typing on the alphasmart his scores have increased.  It really helps you understand things when you can actually read and understand your own notes!  His teacher is going to copy her own math notes and put into Josh's math journal to fill in before he got the alphasmart keyboard.  That way he will be able to read and understand how to do his math since they are not working out of a math textbook this year.  We ended up talking with Josh's teacher for about 50 minutes and it was nice to hear about how far Josh has come.  Yay!!  Hopefully now he is using the keyboard he will be able to read and understand more when he goes back to review the notes.  All in all it was a good parent teacher conference.

Noah is still a knuckle sucker.  This is one reason he will for sure need orthodontia work in the future.  It is moved his front teeth around where he sucks his knuckle, but I don't know how to get him to stop.  I am not too worried about it because he only does it at night and when he gets really tired so it isn't too often.

However, he does it enough to keep this nice callus built up on the base of his finger:

I don't mind because it still makes him look a bit more like a little toddler then the big kid he's growing up to be.  I am sad he is getting so big.

Aaron had an Elders Quorum activity on Saturday morning.  They went shooting.  Someone brought a clay pigeon thrower and everyone brought their own guns to use.  Aaron borrowed my brother Bryan's gun and they all had fun.  What's more fun than shooting clay pigeons along with eating donuts, milk and juice?!

Halloween, Carving Pumpkins, Programs, Wolf, Late Night

This last week went by pretty fast.  It was Pack Meeting for Cub Scouts this week.  Daniel earned his Wolf and received it this past week.  Here's the pinning ceremony.  I am proud to show off all three Wolf pins of my older boys so far.  

 Here's Daniel picking out his cheesy cub scout cheer:

 I was at Walmart the other day and ran into Erin our fellow Ute Rival.  When I went out to my car to put the groceries away I found it had been vandalized!  Good thing I saw it before I drove it around!!

Thanks a lot Erin--haha!!

The kids actually got Halloween off from school so they did all their parades and parties on Thursday, October 30 instead.  Here's the kids doing their costume parade.  Josh was a red ninja:

 Sarah was Rapunzel:

 Daniel was a Viking:

 After all the classes finished their parades, the first grade put on a Halloween program in the gym.  Of course Aaron and I chose to sit on the opposite side of where Sarah ended up sitting.  DOH!!  Oh well I did get a few good glimpses of Sarah, though.

 They did a bunch of songs and poems about Halloween.  It was so fun to watch.  To try and get a better picture of Sarah Aaron tried to get a bit closer, but could only get the back of her head.  When I tried to video her, I got Aaron in the background trying to video her, too.

After Sarah's program, Noah had his preschool program.  It was a busy morning!  Noah's preschool is by a park so the kids did a costume parade from their teacher's house to the park.  When Noah saw me, Aaron, Grandma and Grandpa T he came running:

 It was such a nice day they were able to do their Halloween program outside in the park.  They did a bunch of Halloween songs:

 They were so cute:

They had had their Halloween party earlier that morning.  When Noah saw us he wanted us to see how many treats he had gotten and his cute pumpkin holder he had made to put all the treats in:

 Here's Noah's teacher Miss Sarah.  She has been great!

 Here's a picture from that mornings party:

 When Noah was going through his loot when we got home he found these purple vampire teeth that he insisted on wearing the rest of the day:

 That afternoon when the kids got home from school we started carving our pumpkins.  We were a little late in getting the pumpkin carving started this year, but better late then never, right?!

 When Aaron came home from work he jumped right in to help he de-gut the pumpkins:

 Each kid got to design two pumpkins and then I tried to carve them the best I could.  Here's the end result:

After carving pumpkins Aaron had to go out that evening for a meeting.  While it was just me and the kids I tried to talk them into watching a scary movie since it was Halloween time.  I turned on a Goosebumps movie which is geared for kids, however, Daniel, Noah and Sarah watched all of 5 minutes of the beginning before they absolutely refused to watch any more of it.  It was too scary.  We ended up watching an episode of Psych instead which is still a mystery, but with lots of humor to counteract the scariness of it.  Close enough to a scary movie, right?!

 The next morning, Halloween day, there were lots of fun things going on.  Thankfully, it was Aaron's Friday off from work so he was able to come along with us.  We got the kids dressed up in their costumes and headed over to Krispie Kreme Donuts.  You got a free donut of your choice if you were dressed in a costume.  The kids had a hard time deciding which donut they wanted, but they finally did make up their minds.  Here the kids are waiting in line watching the donuts come down the conveyor belt:

 Yummy!  It was so nice Daniel could eat a donut right along with the rest of his siblings since he can have milk now.  It was awesome!

 Next, a restaurant called Warrens offered free kids meals to kids in costume so we headed there for lunch.  The place was so busy that we had to all squeeze into a small booth which Daniel was not too happy about, but what can you do?!

 Since it was so busy it took them about 45 minutes to get us our food.  In the meantime Noah took down a few fry sauce cups so when his food finally came he wasn't even hungry for it--the crazy kid!

 After lunch we headed over to the grocery store who was having a fun trick or treat throughout the store.  The kids got some chocolate milk, string cheese, candy, etc.  Again I have to say what a great thing getting Daniel over this milk allergy has been because he was able to get everything everyone else was getting!

 After that we headed over to Sweet Tooth Fairy to get some free cupcakes.  However, by this time all of us were completely sugared out so we just brought them home to eat later.

 Later that night it was time for the trick or treating.  Here's the excited trick or treaters--Rapunzel (Sarah), Shark (Noah), Red Ninja (Josh), Viking (Daniel), and a train conductor (Matthew):

 Matthew, Sarah and Noah were done after going around the neighborhood.  Josh and Daniel wanted more so we headed out to do the next neighborhood where Josh's piano teacher lived.  We got a good walk in and a candy stash that will hopefully last us a while :).  By the end my pedometer said that I had taken over 11,000 steps that day.  Hopefully that will help counteract some of the candy I had eaten.  We also take the 'Parent Tax' very seriously at our house much to the kids' chagrin.  Hey, we as parents have to work pretty hard to get that candy, too, with getting the costumes and makeup and everything else put together :).

 G&G T came along with us.  Grandpa T stayed with Aaron to help hand out the candy at the house.  Grandma T came along with me to help me herd all the kids along.

Matthew wanted to talk to everyone at every house we went to while the rest of the kids kept running ahead to the next house.  It was good there were two of us because we had a hard time keeping all the kids together!  By the end Noah's 'toes and shoes' were too tired to go on so I had to carry him for a bit.  Wow, he is getting heavy!  Thankfully, he did start walking again for the last part because my arms were about to fall off from carrying him.  We had a fun night though and it made it even better because it was 70 degrees outside so it was a beautiful night!

The next day we didn't do too much.  I think everyone was in a sugar coma except Matthew.  Later on that evening we had some friends over for dinner and games.  It was fun even if we did have to watch part of the U of U football game since our friends were fans.  That's ok.  We had pizza for dinner and we didn't have to get Daniel anything different to eat since he can have pizza now.  I know I keep saying how great it is to have him over this milk allergy, but it is wonderful.  He even is starting to like pizza which is even better!  It was fun night even if the kids didn't get to bed until 1 am.  The next day at church wasn't nearly as fun, though, because everyone was so grouchy, but it was worth it.

I love the artwork elementary kids do.  Daniel brought home his body he had made in school.  He even drew on a BYU shirt which Aaron is proud about.

 On the flip side is the skeleton so they could see where all the bones went inside the body.  Daniel was so excited to show us when he got home.  I love it!