Baseball, Sleep Deprived EEG, Sophie, Lost Teeth

What a week!  We are sure staying busy around here even more so since everyone has all of their end of school activities going on, too.  However, Noah has a few days off from kindergarten to give the teacher time to assess each student's progress individually.  Noah's appointment with his teacher will be tomorrow.  In the meantime it is just me and him hanging out.  We have been making our own fun--haha!

Speaking of Noah he said the funniest thing the other day.  We were talking about good hygiene, showering and deodorant and why we use it.  A few minutes later he came over and told me, "I need to shower because my armpits smell like they have hair in them."  Hahahaha!  He was so serious and couldn't understand why I was laughing so hard.

Baseball/softball is in full swing.  Some member of our family has a game every night.  It has been pretty crazy.  Here's Sarah at her last game running to home plate:

 Noah even got to hit the ball a few times with the coach pitching.  Wahoo!

 For Daniel's team Aaron got roped into being an assistant coach.  The first practice the coach came over and specifically asked Aaron to help out.  What a nice guy!  Daniel's been doing pretty well.  He even hit two home runs this past week!  Wahoo!  Here's Aaron being the 3rd base coach while Daniel is up to bat:

In following up to Noah's seizure we were able to see the neurologist Tuesday morning.  She said she would like to do an EEG to see if there were any abnormalities in the electrical activity in his brain.  To make the test more accurate they wanted to do the test while Noah was sleep deprived to make the abnormalities more likely to show up.  Luckily, they had an appointment open for Wednesday morning to do the EEG.  That meant Noah and I got to have a sleep deprivation party--wahoo!  Trust me it wasn't as fun as it sounds!!  Anyway, we went to bed at midnight and then got back up at 2 am.   In the pretest instructions it said that Noah couldn't eat any sugar or have any caffeine.  I was glad those rules didn't apply to me.  I drank a few Cokes that night/morning!  Anyway, Noah was having a hard time staying awake so around 4 am we decided to go wander around Walmart.  Wow, I have never gotten so many crusty looks because I was shopping at that hour with my 6 year old.  To make Noah feel a bit better about not sleeping I let him pick out a Matchbox car.  I let him take as long as he needed to pick it out because we only had three more hours to kill--haha!!

 When it was time to go to Primary Children's Hospital for the EEG I had to bring along Grandma T to help keep Noah awake during the drive down to Salt Lake.  Aaron was out of town so I was glad Grandma T was able to come along to help!  Here's Noah laying on the bed waiting to get hooked up.

 In an EEG they hook up electrodes all over his head to measure certain areas of brain activity.  In order to get the electrodes to stick they use a special gel.  In the EEG instructions they told Noah to have freshly washed hair with no conditioner or other products in it.  Unfortunately, Noah ended up taking two showers that morning.  After the first shower he got out and I combed his hair.  When I went to get his clothes for him to put on he took advantage of my absence and coated his hair in about half a can of hairspray.  DOH!!  I can't be too mad because he wanted his hair to stay in place, but I had to throw him back in the shower and rewash his hair.  After he got out the second time I made sure he didn't go anywhere near the hairspray!  It paid off because all the electrodes stuck and stayed in place during the test.

 After placing the electrodes they wrapped up his head so they wouldn't come off.  We joked that  he looked like a mummy.  I guess you have heard of momma's boys he was my mummy boy--haha!

 After a 3 minute purposeful hyperventilation test we then tucked him in with his pillow pet and blanket and turned off the light.  He was supposed to sleep for 30 minutes in the dark while they measured his brain activity.  Me and Grandma T just got to hang out in the dark room just watching and listening to Noah sleep for 30 minutes.  When it was time to wake up they came in and flashed lights in his eyes at different frequencies to see if it would trigger any abnormal activity.

 Afterward they cleaned off the electrodes and sent us on our way.  On our way out of the clinic they did give Noah a cool pillowcase and carved wooden car which was nice.

I really wanted Noah to make it to school that day because the kindergartners were having school lunch for the first time in the cafeteria.  I was glad Noah was able to make it.  As I checked him into school the kindergarten teacher came over and asked me about Noah.  She then asked me if I could come and help out during their kindergarten lunch.  I said sure.  After I dropped Grandma T off I ran over to pick up a big Coke to help keep myself awake and then headed back to the school to help.  The kindergartners were so cute.  They were so excited to eat in the big kid cafeteria!  After helping the kids dish out their food they had 15 minutes to eat.  Noah and his friends loved their lunches!

 After kindergarten was over Noah and I came home and had a power nap and then got to jump back in to regular life especially since I was single parenting it.  I will admit I wasn't the funnest person to be around the rest of the day, but we got through it ;).

The EEG tech told us not to expect the results for a week.  I was surprised to get a call the next day to let me know that his EEG was normal.  That was a bit of a relief.  They think it was just a febrile seizure after all; however, we aren't all the sure, but it is nice to know that there is not abnormal activity regularly on his EEG.  To be on the safe side the neurologist just said to take seizure precautions (wearing a helmet for biking, skateboarding, etc., not bathing without supervision, careful around heights and ladders, etc.), keep an eye on him and let them know if anything else happens seizure-wise.

It did take Noah a few days to recover from his night of lost sleep, though.  If he sat still for longer than a few minutes he would doze off.  Even Friday afternoon after Aaron had gotten home from being out of town Noah snuggled up to him and dozed off in what looked like a really uncomfortable position:

I really had a stressful week while Aaron was gone.  It didn't help that Thursday morning Sophie had pooped on the floor and the Roomba ran over it and smeared it all over the floor while I was in the shower.  Boo!  That sure was not fun cleaning that up if you can imagine!!  Gross!!  Anyway, I was so done by Friday afternoon so it was a good thing he was willing to jump right back into things when he got home--I really needed the help!

 The next day I was able to go to a baby shower which was so nice to get out of the house for a few hours by myself!  It was also fun to shop in the baby department for a little bit, too.  When I got home from the baby shower Aaron had us spontaneously go to see a matinee movie--Captain America Civil War.  It was so nice to have a break for the afternoon!

My faith in humanity was restored this week.  Sarah had dance pictures last week in a park.  The day they did pictures it was pretty windy and a bit stormy.  Luckily, Sarah's picture time was during just a windy part.  It was a bit chilly, too.  We were trying to get the pictures done quickly since it was cold, windy and might start raining at any second.  In the haste my check must have blown away from the pile of forms the photographer had.  I didn't know that had happened until the photographer contacted me that night and asked if I had left her a check.  I said that I had so we just figured in the windy day it had blown away.  I was a bit worried about having my information just floating around who knows where.  I called the bank the next day to cancel the check.  A few days later I received a regular envelope in the mail addressed to me and Aaron with no return address.  I opened it up to find my check that had gone missing with this post it note on top.  It says, "I found this check in my yard near the Clinton Elementary School."

 Oh I wish that letter had a return address on it!  I would have given the person a HUGE THANK-YOU!!!  I was relieved that my check hadn't gotten into some dishonest hands.  There are good people around!

Sophie is still Sophie.  She is a crazy dog.  She has made friends with the huge labradoodle across the street.  Anytime she escapes she immediately heads over there and he comes here when he's out.  They are some pretty crazy dogs!  We are still trying to potty train Sophie and get her to consistently go outside.  Since we can't trust her inside without someone watching her all the time she gets kenneled when we aren't around.  She seems to like her kennel.  Most times she will take a nap in the craziest positions.  Her favorite is on her back.  You can tell she is dreaming because she will sleep bark and run.  It's pretty funny to watch.  Here she is just hanging out for a bit.

 She isn't as innocent as she looks, either.  We planted our garden two weekends ago only to have her rip out or chew up most of the plants.  After chewing up the plants she would come back inside looking like she was so innocent as you can see:

 This weekend we replanted the garden again, but this time we put a fence around it.  Hopefully it will deter her from doing it again--the stinker!

We did plant some strawberry plants in a patio planter.  Noah was so excited.  The plants had two red strawberries already on the plant when we planted them.  Those strawberries didn't last very long after Noah spotted them.  He LOVES strawberries!

However, when we fenced up the garden to protect it from Sophie we failed to protect our strawberry plants in the patio planter.  This is what the poor strawberry plants looked like two days after we planted them thanks to Sophie:

Yes those are the chewed up remains of the leaves on the ground to the side of the planter as well as the dirt piles she dug up in front of the planter.   RIP strawberry plants.  You lived a good life until the dog got to you, dug you up, chewed the leaves, and pulled you out....

Sophie did give me a good scare yesterday.  I was playing tug of war with her and a rag when I heard something fall on the floor.  I looked down to see one of her canine teeth had fallen out.  I was worried.  Good thing for Google because I looked up more information about it to find that puppies lose their baby teeth just like humans.  I breathed a sigh of relief to know that it was supposed to fall out and that I hadn't pulled it out.  Just like human teeth dog teeth are pretty disgusting, too.  Bleh!

Speaking of teeth Noah's bottom tooth has been loose for a long time.  He would not let anyone get close enough to do anything with it.  Finally Aaron pulled it out Sunday morning much to Noah's surprise.  There wasn't much pulling it just really fell out.  However, it fell out while Noah was laying in my bed and we couldn't find the tooth afterward.  Gross!  Since Noah didn't have a tooth to give the Tooth Very (Fairy) he left her this note that Sarah helped him write:

 It says, "Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost a tooth and I can't find it.  Will you help me?  Love Noah.  Good thing the Tooth Very is a nice person because he still got the whole amount of money despite not having a tooth to give.  Luckily, Aaron and I found the tooth later in our bed which was yucky.  Aaron slept all night laying on top of it.  Gross!

Yesterday I had to run to the library with Noah in tow.  After we came out he begged to go to the park right next to the library.  How could I tell him no?!  It was such a nice day and the park wasn't very crowded, either.  We had fun playing.  Noah liked playing on the twisty seats that got him pretty dizzy.

 When all the kids got home from school yesterday Josh begged me to let him bake some cookies. I said it was ok and he went to work.  Little did I know that there would only be a few cookies before Josh would use the rest of the dough to make two monster cookies for him and Daniel.  The crazy kid!

 Last weekend the scouts had a camp out in Hooper.  As they were leaving we got a wind advisory alert for the next few hours.  It was pretty strong winds as well as it started raining pretty heavily in the middle of the night, too--the poor scouts!  Luckily, they did have some fun despite being bad weather!

 Last week Daniel had a mini camp out in his cub scout leaders yard.  It was a two hour den meeting where they roasted marshmallows:

 They also set up a tent as well:

Daniel said it was pretty fun.

Matthew, Josh and Sarah finally restarted piano lessons again.  It took a while to find a new teacher, but I finally did.  She seems like she will be a good teacher.  Her daughter knew Matthew from 7th grade and was excited to have Matthew come to her house for piano lessons.  I am hoping it will be a good fit for everyone!

My niece, Miriya, graduated from the U of U last Friday which is awesome.  Thursday night we all got together for a family picture and some cake and ice cream.  Unfortunately, Aaron was out of town and not in the picture--no I am not regularly a single mom.  Our last family picture has a few grand kids missing from it so it was nice to get it updated.  This has my parents, brother and two sisters as well as their families all in it.  We are going to try to photoshop in Aaron and my cousin Taylor who is serving a mission in Brazil right now.  I am hoping it will turn out.  Here's everyone minus Aaron and Taylor:

Of course you have to take a silly picture, too!

Horrible No Good Weekend, Homerun, Good Sport, Baseball/Softball, Ambulance Ride, Seizure

 It has been an eventful week for our family.  The weather has been so nice that Noah loves riding his bike and is wanting to go for longer bike ride/walks.  The other day we made it all the way down to the park about a mile away from our house and around.  All in all we went about 3 miles which is pretty good for a kid on a bike with training wheels.  Of course we had to stop and play while we were at the park.

 In getting ready for girls camp the stake has put all the assistant camp directors in charge of the youth camp leader committees.  I am one of the ones in charge of the activities and games up at camp.  We had a meeting with the youth camp leaders (the girls who are 16-17) and let them come up with the activities that sounded like fun to them.  One of the activities was the game messy Twister.  It's where you make a huge Twister board and then cover all the colored circles with colored shaving cream.  When that idea was passed by the stake leaders they had some reservations about the shaving cream getting in the girls' eyes and causing problems.  I didn't think this would be a big deal and Aaron didn't either.  To prove my point, and, Aaron being the good sport he is, put shaving cream right into his eye to see if it would hurt.  It didn't hurt or sting at all, but I sure got a funny picture out of the deal--haha!

 Daniel is losing his baby teeth left and right.  He lost this one the other day.  At this rate the Tooth Fairy won't have any money left!!  Daniel also has great timing--he loses his teeth when I am the only one around so I have to handle them myself.  Ewwwww! I think teeth are really gross so Daniel likes to tease me with it.  Ewwwww again!!

Daniel had his last soccer game of the season last week.  Wahoo!  The kid scored another 4 goals in this game, too.  He was pretty proud!

 His 4th grade teacher even came to watch the game.  She had a few students on both teams that she got to watch.  What a nice teacher!  Daniel was excited to see her there.

 Since it was the last game of the season the coach threw a pizza party for all the kids.  During the game the coach sent her husband to pick up the pizza.  The kids were so excited for pizza that they didn't even wait for him to park in the parking lot before they stormed his car to get to the pizza.  Daniel told us later that he ended up eating 5 pieces.  What?!  Good thing the coach got a ton of pizzas is all I can say!

Josh is keeping busy.  He is now up to maintenance allergy shots which means he only needs to go in once a month to get his allergy shots done.  We only have to do that for the next 3-5 years.  He also got to do a Bird Identifying Merit badge class early Saturday morning.  From his check list he got to see quite a few different birds.

We had quite the scare Saturday morning.  Aaron and I tried sleeping in, but that didn't work out very well with 5 kids!  All 5 kids were up and playing/fighting at 7 am.  Bleh!  We finally gave up on sleeping and got up.  I was just getting out of the shower when Aaron came in with the thermometer showing Noah had a fever of 103 degrees.  Boo!  That was really weird because he was up and running around just an hour ago.  Noah didn't have any other symptoms besides the fever which was weird.  Anyway, Noah felt pretty crummy from the fever so I let him lay down in my bed with his pillow and blanket while I got dressed and ready for the day.  While I was brushing my teeth I heard these weird gagging sounds so I went to check on Noah only to find him having a tonic clonic (grand mal) seizure in my bed.  I went over to turn him on his side and yelled for Aaron to come help me.  Aaron came and called 911 because Noah was gray and not breathing.  Thankfully he started breathing soon after the seizure stopped.  The ambulance came.  After the seizure Noah was not really responsive.  The paramedic pricked his finger for a blood sugar and Noah didn't even respond or move his hand away after they pricked it which shows how unresponsive he was.  His room air oxygen saturation was only at 90% which isn't too bad, but not great especially since he was not very alert and responsive.  It was decided to transport him to the hospital in the ambulance just in case he seized again and to get some oxygen on him.  Thankfully G&G T were able to come watch the other kids while Aaron was able to drive over to the hospital behind the ambulance.  The whole trip to the hospital Noah really couldn't stay awake.  I was just glad I got to ride along with my kid this time.  About 25 minutes into the trip he started perking up a little bit, but was still pretty loopy from the seizure--the poor kid.

 At least his heart was beating strong since we have the EKG strip to prove it:

They got us back in a room at the ER right away.  The poor kid just mostly slept for the next few hours.  Thankfully, he didn't have any more seizures.  They don't really know what happened.  They started an IV and fluids, drew some blood and had him pee in a cup which was an adventure in itself--think wild water hose.  It was amazing they even got enough urine in the cup to sample--haha!  Anyway, they don't know if it was a febrile seizure (however, Noah is really old to be having his first febrile seizure), or if the high fever lowered his seizure threshold of an underlying seizure disorder.  Our family history of Epilepsy isn't the best, either.  Just to be on the safe side they referred us down to the Neurology clinic down at Primary Children's Hospital.

 The frustrating thing was, was that he had the seizure Saturday morning and the clinic didn't open until Monday morning.  We just had to wait to call until Monday which seemed like forever.  We tried to keep his fever down all of Saturday.  I was pretty nervous to leave Noah alone so he slept in my bed Saturday night.  By Sunday evening he didn't have a fever anymore at all.  He didn't have any other symptoms either which was still weird.  However, Aaron wasn't so lucky.  He got double whammied.  When Aaron heard me yell about Noah's seizure he really heard the panic in my voice and came running.  Unfortunately, he tripped over the bookcase and a few kids which made him fall and face plant on the hard floor.  He has a nice bruised lump on his knee and a purple toe.  He also got a pretty bad stomach bug Sunday afternoon/night.  It seemed all his insides wanted to be in the outside (if you know what I mean) the whole night.  I felt pretty bad for him.  He was pretty ill and sore from his face plant on the floor so I let him take over the master bedroom and bathroom while I went and slept on Noah's bedroom floor Sunday night so I could listen out for him.  Wow let's just say the floor was pretty hard to sleep on.  Judging by that I don't think I am quite ready for girl's camp yet--haha! Thankfully, Noah didn't have any more seizures and Aaron started feeling better late Monday morning.

Anyway I called the clinic first thing Monday morning.  After being on eternal hold I got to an scheduler.  She was looking at appointments and told me the soonest they could get him in was next week on the fast track appointments.  Just for a Hail Mary because I didn't want to wait a week to be seen I asked her if there was any openings with Josh's neurologist because I really love her.  She is usually scheduled out a few months so this really was not looking good.  The scheduler put me on eternal hold.  When she came back she told me they had an appointment the next morning with Dr. Benedict.  I said we would definitely be taking that appointment as I did my happy dance.

We met with Dr. Benedict this morning.  While waiting in the room Noah decided to see how many jumping jacks he could do in a minute.  His record was 71 if you were wondering.  Thankfully we didn't have to wait too long to the the neurologist.  Noah was a bit nervous about being in the clinic.  Everyone he came in contact to he would ask them if he was getting any shots that day.  It was his lucky day because there were no shots.

She was concerned.  Noah has a few strikes against him seizure wise--1.  He was premature at birth, 2.  He has a family history of epilepsy for two immediate family members, 3.  He is pretty old to be having a first time febrile seizure.  To try and see if there is any seizure activity going on she is going to have him get a sleep deprived EEG this week.  When she sees the results from that she will decide what she would like to do next.  I am not too excited about this, but I would like to make sure Noah is ok.  I could just sit and cry, but there's not time for that....

After our visit we stopped by to get a late breakfast at the cafe.  Noah was a pretty entertaining breakfast partner.

Back to Saturday night by the evening Noah had a bit more energy.  He went outside and was playing with Sarah while Aaron put in our garden.  Sarah and Noah were talking to each other through the garden sprinkler pipe.

 I kept Noah home Monday just to make sure he was ok.  Since Aaron started feeling a bit better by late morning Monday he wanted to get some parts to fix the leaking garden watering system.  Noah was his store buddy.  At one of the stores Noah found a pot of shelled peanuts for customers.  He was in heaven.  He couldn't believe they were free!  When it was time to go he tried to sneak a handful out, but Aaron made him put them back.

The funny thing is that Aaron got the garden put in, but Sophie took part of it back out again.  Every time we let her go outside to potty she runs over and starts chewing up the plants.  Aaron's not too happy about it, but Sophie, the naughty puppy, sure enjoys it.

 In other happenings Sarah, Noah and Daniel started baseball last week.  Here's Sarah up at bat:

 Noah just hanging out on the field during his practice:

In Noah's practice they practiced running around the bases.  He has that cute all over body run that Daniel had and still has.  I love it!

Daniel has had a few practices and he had his first game last night.  He even hit his very first home run ball.  Wahoo Daniel!

Grandma M has been going through a few pictures and sent us an old picture of Aaron way back when.  A few people said they could see Josh in the picture so I made this side by side.  I am not sure if I see Josh in the picture or not, but it was still fun to see an old picture of Aaron--haha!  Either way they are both handsome!!

Laudable Lion, Meets, Field Trip, Soccer, Project, Teeth, Mother's Day

These past two weeks have been jammed packed with stuff.  I am behind in blogging, but what is new?!  Here's our family happenings in the last two weeks.  

Sarah received the Laudable Lion Award at her school--wahoo!  She was picked as student of the month.  Her teacher filled out the form and it said, "Sarah Mancil is a Laudable Lion because she is a very positive person.  She is kind to everyone around her, using positive words to help them feel good.  When something is hard she uses a positive attitude to solve them."  Way to go Sarah!

 Sophie is still learning the ropes at our house.  She has been a fun addition to our family, though.  She is so excited to see everyone every morning and especially when they get home from school.  Josh got home from school and made the mistake of sitting down.  That's when she attacked him with slobbery kisses.

She keeps us entertained.  The kids have been pretty good to step up to help take care of her.  However, things don't always go as planned.  Yesterday morning after feeding her Matthew took her for a walk.  Unfortunately, he only took one poop bag with him.  Sophie decided to go poop twice so for the second time Matthew didn't have a bag to pick it up with.  The second poop was in front of one of the houses in our neighborhood.  We didn't have time to go and take care of it before church, either.  So Matthew being the honest tell all kid he is, decided to run over to the neighbor's house that Sophie had done her business on and let the guy know what had happened.  That was a tad embarrassing.  Matthew told him that Sophie had pooped, but he didn't have a second bag to pick it up with so he just left it in his yard.  Why Matthew felt he needed to tell our neighbor that is beyond me.  Gotta love Matthew and Sophie, too.

We got Sophie groomed last Friday.  She looks so cute!  The groomer said she had a really hard time clipping her nails, but other than that she is getting used to being groomed.  I love that she will come home with a cute bow in her fur.

 The bow even had bones on it.  Of course the bow didn't last more than five minutes until she had pulled it off and chewed up, but it was cute while it lasted.

 Daniel found this note in his school cubby the other day.  He brought it home to show me.  It says, "Daniel keep being good at being funny.  Em"  Hubba hubba Daniel! I asked who she was and Daniel just said she was a girl in his class.  I may have to keep an eye on this Em girl--haha!

 Noah is doing an alphabet countdown to the last day of school.  Last week was 'H' day and they were supposed to wear hats to school.  Noah refused to wear a baseball cap because he had to wear a hat like Grandma's.  What a crazy kid!

 We have had more problems with Daniel and braces!  Last week one of his baby teeth fell out, but it had a bracket on it so it couldn't come all the way out of his mouth.  We couldn't get in to see the orthodontist for a few days so he had to deal with it until then.  He got pretty good at flipping it out of his mouth and showing everyone who wanted to see--and even those who really didn't want to see it like me.

 He also broke a bracket off a tooth by fighting with Noah.

 I got an appointment for 11:20 for Tuesday morning.  Instead of sending Daniel to school for a few hours I let him take the morning off and we hung out together.  It was fun to have someone to run errands with.  I dropped him off at his appointment  and he got everything fixed only to have him fight with Matthew and break another bracket off yesterday!!  This kid is going to be the death of me!!  I guess we will be making another visit to the orthodontist again.  These visits are turning out to be weekly which is not how it is supposed to be.  Anyway, the orthodontist kept the bracket on the baby tooth when he took it out which made Daniel excited.  Since it had a bracket on the tooth the Tooth Fairy gave some extra money for the tooth.

I went in to volunteer in Noah's class Tuesday and it was fun to see the newly hatched chicks.  They were so fluffy and chirpy!

 Noah made this flower in art and wanted to take a picture with it.  Don't mind the pink helmet....it was the only one he could find so that's what he put on to ride his bike.

 Josh had two meets last week.  The first one was a make up meet from the week before.  It had been so windy and rainy that the meet got cancelled so they rescheduled it for Tuesday afternoon.  Josh did great in running the mile.  He even beat his personal record--wahoo!

 This past week has been pretty crazy because the end of soccer has overlapped with the beginning of baseball/softball.  There were a few days where we had two soccer games as well as a baseball practice.  Good thing this upcoming week is the last week for soccer!  Noah is still being Noah at soccer.  Daniel offered to help Noah out on the field for a bit during his game.  It helped a little bit, but Noah still danced and daydreamed even with Daniel out there to help.  I am starting to think that maybe soccer just isn't the sport for Noah--haha!  It was really sweet for Daniel to help him out, though.

 We got all the soccer pictures back this past week.  Here's Daniel's:

 Sarah's:

 Noah's:

I got to help chaperone the kindergarten field trip to the Children's Treehouse Museum in Ogden.  It was pretty fun.  A lot of the kindergartners had never ridden on a bus before so they were pretty excited--Noah included.  I had a group of three boys to keep track of.  It was harder than I thought it was going to be, too!  Here we are on the bus ride over:

 Here's my group with Noah, Ben and Deakon:

 Noah got to play the part of the Wolf in the story Little Red Riding Hood.  The kids thought it was funny he got to wear a grandma nightgown and a wolf wig.

 After a few rotations they let the kids explore for a little while.  Of course the first thing they wanted to do was climb.

 Noah got to sit at the president's desk:

 It was a fun field trip and I was glad I was able to go.  This was the first field trip I didn't have to worry about getting a babysitter for a younger child.  It was kind of sad....

That afternoon Josh had his third meet.  While he was running the mile he heard us cheer him on and saw that I was taking a picture.  The stinker waved at the camera.  That was against the rules, but what can you do?!  I was glad I made it.  I almost missed it because I looked at the wrong thing and went to a different school.  I was hiking up the bleachers to sit down when I realized there were no West Point kids around--DOH!!  As I was climbing back down the bleachers to get to the right school Noah slipped and fell down the metal bleachers.  Ouch!!  He got a nice scraped up and bruised back from it the poor kid!  After giving him lubs until he was ok to walk we hurried over and made it to the right school about 10 minutes before his actual race started.

 That afternoon after the meet was soccer.  During Noah's soccer game Daniel wanted to get some baseball practice in with just Aaron.  They threw the ball around for a while.

 Noah did occasionally go after the soccer ball.  I was lucky enough to get an action shot that didn't involve him dancing or picking the grass--haha!

In getting ready for girl's camp I went picked up more blanket making fleece Friday.  It is crazy to think girl's camp is only about a month away--eeek!  Thankfully I only have a fourth of what I had before so it fits in the living room a bit easier than last time.

Saturday morning I signed the kids up for the Home Depot kids workshop.  They were making an Angry Birds birdhouse.  Josh thought he was too old for the craft so he decided just to help Noah which ended up being a full time job in and of itself.  Aaron helped Matthew and Daniel and I helped Sarah.   As you can see Noah knew he was going to be crazy with the hammer even from the beginning if you look at the crazy gleam in his eyes:

 Aaron, Josh and I all got the lovely chance to get our fingers hit with the hammer, but the kids had fun making their birdhouses.

 Josh was pretty patient considering Noah was crazy with the hammer.

 Here's the finished project:

Saturday evening we had a pizza party and watched one of my all time favorite movies The Money Pit.  The kids didn't think it was as funny as Aaron and I did, but it was fun.  The kids had pizza, but Aaron made me some potato, steak nachos that were pretty tasty.  Saturday was busy for us because the Elder's Quorum decided to take over primary to let the sisters go to Relief Society for Mother's Day.  That meant Aaron had to prepare a sharing time activity and Mother's Day activities for the classes to do as well.  He also had to find teachers to replace the sisters with, too.

However, he was still able to get all the stuff so the kids could make me breakfast in bed Sunday morning under Josh's supervision.  It turned into eating breakfast in Mom's bed, but it was fun.  The kids made a bunch of toast, bacon, cereal, carrots and an apple to share.

Then I got to open the kids presents they had made for me at school.  That part is my all time favorite of Mother's Day!!

I got lots of goodies.  I got some pretty flower baskets:

Daniel made these:

So sweet!

Sarah made these along with the pretty flower in the pretty pot.  She tried to surprise me and hid the flower outside Friday so I wouldn't see it.  Unfortunately, we had a really bad hail and wind storm that afternoon which broke off the pretty bloom the flower had on it.  Luckily, there is another bud that will bloom soon.

Noah made a book of poems with the coordinating artwork to go with it.  It was so cute!

Matthew made me a cute painted flower pot with a pretty pansy that he planted in it in his afterschool program:

This was the activity that Aaron had the younger classes do during the last hour of primary.  Here's Sarah's:

Aaron wanted to hand out something for the moms from the primary kids so we came up with these cute handouts:

Aaron did a great job in sharing time.  He came up with a Sons of Helaman activity where the kids got to dress up.  He then had them fill out a thank you card for all the kids' moms.

After church Aaron let me have a nap and then fixed dinner for us.  We had some yummy grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.  Here's Aaron grilling the food:

We were glad to visit with G&G T, too.

All in all I had an awesome Mother's Day!  I am so glad I get to be a mom to such great kids.  I am also so thankful for all the good examples of moms I have in my life--especially my mom!!