Indoor Track Races, Basketball, Awesome People, Spelling Bee, Behaviorist, Special Needs Concert, Book Fair

Here's our last 10 crazy days...

Daniel is still doing basketball and Aaron is still assistant coach.  Here's the team huddle during a time out:

You can only see Daniel's shorts, but he is there standing next to Aaron.

Even though the cross country running season is over, Josh continues to run with the high school indoor track team.  It is a bit more difficult since Josh has to do most of the workouts on his own since the Jr. High gets out after the high school so by the time Josh can get to the high school the team has already done most of their workout.  However, Josh still makes sure he gets the daily workout and does it on his own.  He had his first indoor meet at Weber State last Saturday.  He ran the 1600 meter (1 mile) race and did the 4x800 meter relay.  Here's Josh running the 1600 meter:

 Here he is running the 4x800 meter.  We were a bit nervous about this race since he hasn't had to pass the baton before, but he did great.  I think it helped that before the race the relay team practiced for a while on just passing the baton.  Wahoo, Josh!

 The indoor track meet ran about 4 hours behind--yes, you read that right 4 HOURS behind schedule and Josh was in the last even of the day--ugh!  That was a long day.  We didn't get home until about 9:30 pm.  I felt bad because the kids didn't like us being gone for so long.  Had I known the meet was running so far behind, Aaron or I would have stayed home while the other one would have stayed at the meet.  Oh well live and learn right?!  When we got home Sarah had made a colored window ornament at an earlier friend birthday party she had gone to and she was excited to show us.  She begged me to take a picture of her and the window ornament so I did, but I don't think she realized that you couldn't see it because it was so dark outside.  Oh well at least it's a cute picture of Sarah and if you look really close at the window you can see her ornament--haha!

Monday we had an appointment with Matthew's psychiatrist.  He meets with her every 6 months or more often if we need it.  It was his 6 month appointment so after getting his labs drawn we took him in.  His behavior is getting quite challenging.  As he gets older he gets harder to manage.  However, the interesting thing is he saves his most challenging behavior for Aaron and I at home, mostly because we are dealing with the other kids and can't give him our full attention.  This appointment couldn't have come at a better time since Matthew had a blow up of all blow ups the previous Saturday before the appointment.  In talking with the psychiatrist she reiterated the fact that we need to seek behavioral services because he is at the point that medication can't really help anymore.  She has told us this before, but his blow ups were usually not very often so we thought we could handle them.  Well I now know that we should seek some outside behavioral services to help out.  I have called his coordinator and we are meeting with a behavior therapist so hopefully we can find something to work for us.  The psychiatrist said that she thinks he can get better since he shows no blow ups at school or at his after school program so he can control it somewhat.  That gave us some hope.  I am just hoping we can find a good solution to this really difficult situation.  It is so crazy because he is the sweetest kid when he is not upset.  As crazy as this sounds I am glad that he only ever gets that upset at home and that he can be the sweet kid everywhere else.

Last week we got a surprise on our front porch...When everyone heard the doorbell ring Sophie went crazy barking and all the kids ran to do the door like a herd of elephants.  Is anyone else's house like that when someone rings the doorbell?  Anyway Matthew was surprised and excited to find that he had been asked the the Preference Dance that was in a few weeks.  He was so excited!  He stayed on the porch for a little while just squealing and flapping his hands.

 We brought in the heart and it was a candy gram that said, "Hey 'Mr. Good(bar)' you are '(100) Grand' so, I '(Nutter) Butter' ask you 'Now (not) Later' Will you be my Preference Date?"  He had to unscramble the wrappers on the Now and Later candy to find out who had asked him.

 He got help from all the kids because they were excited to see who had asked him, too:

 It was his friend Ashlyn who has been his really good friend for a long time.  He was so excited!!

 The next day he answered back with some Swedish Fish.

 Here's what his reply said, "I would like to make it o'fish'al that I will be going to Preference with you!"

 She sent over a picture of the dress she would be wearing so we can get her a corsage to match as well as a tie for Matthew to wear.  We are so grateful for such kind people who really love Matthew.  It really is an answer to a prayer!!

This past week was the school Spelling Bee.  Each of the classrooms from 4th-6th grade had their own individual spelling bee in their classrooms.  One winner from each classroom was sent down to participate in the school wide spelling bee.  Sarah was a bit upset because she came in second in her class room spelling bee, but since she came in second she couldn't participate in the school wide spelling bee.  Daniel, however, was the winner in his classroom so he got to participate.  They invited family to come and watch the Spelling Bee take place.  Here's a few of the kids waiting for everyone else to get there so they can start.  Daniel was pretty nervous even though he is smiling in the picture:

 Daniel did great.  He didn't make it to the end, but he still did great.  Here he is spelling a word into the microphone:

 Here's all the classroom finalists of the 4th-6th grades--we have a pretty big school so there are about 5 classrooms of each grade from 4th-6th grade:

 Daniel got out and didn't make it to the district Spelling Bee level, they only take the top three of the school wide spelling bee, which really upset him.  After this picture was taken he came over and burrowed his head into my chest because he was pretty upset.  I decided to check him out of school and take him for a treat because I think he did great just finishing first in his classroom spelling bee.  After spending about an hour and a hamburger and fries at McDonald's with him he felt a lot better about things.  Sometimes I feel bad for how much stress people can put on themselves.  We are not made to be perfect and we need to learn how to be more gentle with ourselves when we feel we don't measure up.  This is something I know I NEED to try and practice myself as well.

Wednesday I got the chance to attend the Ogden Temple with my parents during the day.  It had been awhile since I had done an endowment session so it was really nice and even better that I got to go with my parents.  It was a nice break during the week.  Even though I miss having kids at home I do enjoy being able to have the freedom to do things like this, too.

Wednesday afternoon we had an appointment to meet with Josh's counselor at school to discuss his schooling plans for the future.  The counselors try to meet with every single 9th grader and their parents to make sure they are taking the classes they are interested in, need to graduate, discuss scholarships, and the classes that will help them prepare for college.  It is crazy because Josh has to start thinking and deciding what he wants to be when he grows up.  It makes me nervous because I still see him as my cute little toddler so to see him making such big decisions makes me a bit anxious, but it has to happen sometime, right?!  Eek--I thought kids were stressful when they were little, but it seems to be even more stressful as they get older....It even got more stressful when the counselor brought up taking Driver's Education next year--GULP!!  Heaven help us--haha!

Thursday Josh had a field trip down to Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake with the MESA (Math, Engineering, Science Achievement) club.  He had a lot of fun and was able to see a few of the star shows they had there, too.

Thursday evening was the Access to Music Concert.  That is a free concert put on by the Utah Symphony and the Utah Opera for special needs kids who otherwise wouldn't be able to attend such a concert due to unable to sit quietly, or to have the lights dark, or unable to talk during the concert, etc.  The Utah Opera and Symphony want everyone to experience music despite their challenges so that is why they do this concert every year.  We weren't able to make it to last year's concert, but we did the year before and we loved it.  It is quite noisy during the performances, but not something out of the ordinary with such a group of people.  Aaron was feeling ill that night so I took all the kids by myself.  I had signed up for the concert about two months before so we had a lot of time to prepare to go.  However, thinking I knew all I didn't check the fine print.  All the concerts they have had have all been at the Capitol Theater in Salt Lake.  I thought this concert would follow suit, but I was horribly mistaken.  After we parked in paid parking and hurried everyone down the sidewalk, across the street is when I noticed that Capitol was dark and locked--DOH!  That's when I looked at the invitation again and saw that this year they were holding the concert at Abravanel Hall which is about a half mile away, but that meant we had to hurry back to the car, drive over there, find a new spot, pay to park and walk over to Abravanel Hall.  Luckily, we got there about 20 minutes before the concert started and got pretty good seats.  I was sweating bullets because it was a booked concert and they opened up seating at 6:30pm so we didn't get there until 6:40pm, but we made out okay seat wise.  If trying to look on the positive side of things, at least now I will be double sure to check the location before we go again--haha!  Here we all are waiting for the concert to start:

 There was quite a bit of noise so Matthew's squeals and hand flapping didn't stick out much at all.  Here's the view from our seats:

 The concert was 60 minutes and half was the symphony playing and the other half was 4 different opera singers singing.  It was a pretty cool concert.  They even had the performers out in the lobby to see the patrons after the concert.  As soon as the opera singers came out, Matthew chased them down across the lobby yelling that they did a great job.  Normally I would have chased after him, but since this concert was full of special needs individuals who were doing the same things we weren't judged for his quirky behavior which was awesome!!

 I did get a picture of all the kids with the opera singers.  As you can see Noah was not too enthused about it, but he still got in the picture for me.

 In the lobby they also had cookies for everyone.  They had quite a few platters of cookies so I was doomed when they said you could eat as much as you wanted.  DOH!!  I had to force all the kids to leave because they were stuffing their faces full of cookies.  Again since this was a special needs concert everyone else was doing the same so no one really cared so I tried not to care either, but it was hard....I really do feed my kids, however, watching them at such things you would never believe it!!

Walking back to the parking garage we got to pass by a pretty view of the Salt Lake Temple and get a picture right before it started really snowing quite hard.

 Josh had another track meet at the Olympic Oval in Kearns Saturday.  It was a two day meet.  We were unable to attend Friday afternoon to see Josh run the 1600 meter (1 mile) race, but he got a new personal best time--wahoo!  He did have his coach take a few pictures for him, though:

Here he is on the race board:

 Here's Josh running the 1600 meter:

 A nice selfie from the coach:

Josh's time:

Saturday he got to run the 800 meter first and then he wanted to try out the 3200 meter (2 mile) race just to see what it would be like.  Here is the name board that shows Josh's name as the 800 meter race started:

 Here's Josh running the 800 meter:

 After the 800 meter he had about two hours until the next race so I took him to grab some lunch.  I was alone since Aaron had to stay behind to help with Daniel's basketball that day.  We had to divide and conquer--haha!  After lunch he ran the 3200 meter race.  He was glad for the experience, but he absolutely hated that race.  He called it "Worse than death itself!!"  As you can see in his final lap he looks like he is about to die--haha!

This was my first time ever seeing the Olympic Oval.  In the middle of the track they have two ice skating rinks.  After the Olympic Games they use one rink for hockey and the other rink for figure skating/speed skating lessons.  Then around those two rinks is the speed skating ring/track that they opened for public skating.  Then around the speed skating track is the running track where they had all the races Saturday.  It was pretty cool to be there.  By the way do you see Josh wearing his glasses again?  That means that he broke his second contact Saturday morning.  The optometrist's office doesn't open until Monday morning so he got to wear his glasses the whole weekend.  I understand that he is learning and there will be things (like breaking contacts) that come along with learning, but these contacts need to last longer than a week.  Ugh!!  Hopefully, he can learn to be more gentle with his contacts.  If not he may have to stay with glasses...

Aaron continues to try out new things on the smoker.  Yesterday he made a turkey meatloaf stuffed with Anaheim pepper, cream cheese, cheddar cheese wrapped with a bacon weave coated with BBQ sauce.  I am not much of a BBQ lover, but this was really good.

 The recipe entitled it as a Fatty, but it was good despite the weird name.  Here's what the inside looked like:

I don't mind the smoker because it really cuts down on the number of dinners I have to actually cook--haha!  Had I known that I we would have gotten it a lot sooner!!

Parent teachers is coming up for the elementary school.  That means they are getting ready to have a book fair which means a few days before they try to do a sales job on all the students to get them or their parents to buy books to raise money for the school.  It bothers me that they pull all the kids out of teaching time to do this sales job on all the kids, but what can you do.  It is for a good cause I guess.  The funny thing was this time they got the student council members with the highest reading scores and let them pick out a book from the book fair they wanted to read.  After reading the book they asked them to tell all the students about that book and how awesome it was to encourage them and their families to buy it.  I happened to volunteer at this moment when I saw Daniel presenting his book which was called Finding Gobi.  It is about a stray dog that starts running alongside an ultra marathoner.  The ultra marathoner decides to bring the dog back home with him to Scotland when the dog gets lost.  The book is about how they get reunited.  It sounded like a good book so maybe it will encourage someone to pick that up from the book fair...  Here's Daniel presenting his book in front of the entire 4th grade:

Close Call, Tumbleweeds, Sweet, Dance Recital, Basketball, Work Trip, Behavior Management, Tubing

Here is what my family has been up to for the last nine days:

Last week Noah bounded through the front door after school.  He then sat by me to start his reading.  That's when I noticed his hands were all scratched up. I asked him about it and he quickly said he had carried something home from school, but left it outside.  Then he went back to reading.  I didn't pay too much attention until I went outside and saw two HUGE tumbleweeds in my front yard.  WHA?!  I will never understand what prompts a kid to bring something home like that (especially if it is scratching up their hands).  Who knows?!  I don't even know where he found them, but they were pretty big. 

When he wasn't paying attention Aaron threw them in the garbage, but they were so big there was no way to hide them.  Luckily, Noah didn't say anything about them being in the garbage---at least so far he hasn't.  Good thing today is garbage day, though--haha!

Speaking of Noah he can be really sweet.  He loves his pillow pet.  He knows he is getting bigger so he tries to be more discreet when he is taking care of it.  This morning I was trying to get the kids out the door to school when I saw Noah messing around with the blanket.  I watched just for a second and realized he was tucking in his pillow pet before he left for school.  When he noticed me looking he got embarrassed and quickly pretended that he wasn't doing anything.  It makes me sad he is growing up, but I still love seeing these cute things he does occasionally.  Here's pillow all tucked in with just his tiny white face peeking out:

Last Friday was Sarah's dance recital.  I LOVE watching the recitals and getting Sarah all dolled up.  Here's my beautiful girl after getting her hair done and makeup on:

 Here she is after dropping her off to stretch:

 Practicing with her performance group in the hallway:

 Since Sarah is on one of the three performance teams she got to have her head shot in the program:

 Sarah got to do a back bend in her first dance.  She's the one in the very front of the picture:

 She is in the very middle of the this picture of her mermaid dance:

 Here she is on the far right of this dance:

 Here's all the dancers on stage after the performance:

 Sarah loved her flowers:

 She was excited to come and see G&G T after the performance:

 Here's my sassy girl:

 Sarah invited her friend Laurie to come and watch the performance and she did.  It was pretty awesome:

 When she got home I made her let me take a picture of all her costumes.  She chose the poses, though:

 It was a fun night.  I love that Sarah really likes dance!

After we got home from the dance recital we got a last minute text from some friends seeing if we wanted to go and see the Improvables show with them.  Of course!!  We got the kids settled and left to go out on a double date.  It was really fun!  We even got home around midnight which doesn't happen too often for us anymore because we are old--haha!  It was a busy, but awesome night!  Thanks for the invite Einzingers!!

Daniel is still doing basketball.  He even got a basket this last game.  Wahoo!  Daniel is in the white jersey #15.  If you look closely in the background you can see Aaron and the other coach, too:

Sunday we had a bit of a rough patch with Matthew.  Matthew LOVES blessing the sacrament, however, we have more priests than we need so they take turns with who is blessing every week.  Matthew had asked his young men leaders Wednesday night at the activity if he could bless the sacrament on Sunday.  He was told yes by someone so Matthew planned on blessing the sacrament Sunday.  However, when he got to church every seat was taken at the Priest's table.  When Matthew saw that he immediately went over to the bishop to plead his case.  The bishop tried to tell him that it wasn't his turn, but Matthew got more and more upset because he was told at the Wednesday activity that he could bless on Sunday.  Matthew got pretty wound up about it.  The bad thing was that sacrament meeting was about to start and this was going on in front of the whole congregation.  Aaron hopped up to try and help, but Matthew escalated into a tantrum pretty quickly.   It got bad enough that Aaron had to take him out of the chapel and that made Matthew even more upset so Aaron just had to take him home because he was inconsolable.  I feel bad for Matthew because he was told at the Wednesday activity that he could bless.  When plans change for Matthew let's just say things don't go well....I am wondering what to do about it in the future.  I am thinking of maybe texting the young men leaders Sunday morning to see who is blessing that day so we can prepare Matthew either way.  **Sigh** Hopefully, we can prevent future meltdowns to that extent at church.  Wish me luck!!

Speaking of Matthew Aaron and I got an invitation from Matthew's Learning Center teacher about a class for parents with aggressive children.  It was a two session course to help teach how to prevent melt downs and how to manage them when they occur.  This class couldn't have come at a better time.  As Matthew gets older he gets harder to manage because he is a lot bigger.  He currently is 6 feet tall and weighs about #150.  Between his size, his aggression and puberty it has not been a fun mix.  Ugh!!  Thankfully we started the class last Thursday night and learned some really helpful tips.  It was also nice to be in the class with other parents who struggle with the same things we do.  That was refreshing to know that we weren't alone in having difficult behaviors in children we don't know what to do about.  Anyway,  I went to the second session by myself last night since Aaron was out of town and learned even more strategies and skills that I hope to implement to prevent melt downs.  I also learned that there is a part #3 and #4 to this class as well that really go into the physical restraint aspect after a tantrum has started if needed.  However, in order to take class #3 and #4 you have to have already taken class #1 and #2.  I can continue on in the series, but Aaron can't because he missed class #2.  Thankfully, they will be starting another round of classes soon so he can pass of class #2 and move on with me to take class #3 and #4.  I am so glad this class came at the time it did.  We have been really struggling with Matthew lately.  I am also thankful that he has an appointment with the psychiatrist coming up soon so maybe we can tweak a few medications.  Like I have said before--raising a child with special needs is not for the feint of heart!!

Monday was a holiday--Martin Luther King Day--so the kids got it off from school.  We decided to use our tubing passes for that day up at Cherry Peak.  We called ahead this time to make sure tubing would be open and, thankfully, it was.  After checking in, we grabbed tubes and rode the lift up to the tubing stop.  Here is everyone getting on with their tubes:

 Here's Daniel at the top:

 Noah--he was so little that if he wasn't careful his whole body would fall in the tube hole--haha!

 Josh--his legs were so long he was pretty awkward trying to fit on the tube:

 Aaron:

 Me at the bottom of the run:

 For some reason I didn't have a picture of Matthew and Sarah, but they rode the hill, too.  Here we all are waiting to tube down the hill:

 We did unlimited runs for a few hours until everyone started getting tired of tubing.  I am glad we had fun tubing, but I don't know if we would got back to that place to tube again, though.  If we do decide to go again I think we would try a different resort.  After tubing we were right next to Casper's Ice Cream Shop so we HAD to stop, right?!  Here's everyone enjoying their ice cream lunch.  We are all about nutritious meals here--haha!  I figure lunches like these happen so rare that it balances everything else out--haha!

 We also stopped by the Gossner Cheese Factory.  The kids like their shelf stable flavored milk and I LOVE their squeaky cheese.  Aaron also LOVES their pepper jack cheese, too.  He picked up a few blocks of cheese because he wants to try smoking some.  We will see how that goes....

We have earned a $1 per gallon discount gas reward at Smith's so I have been trying to run down both cars--the van and the Camry--so we could fill them both up and maximize our $1 off discount.  On the way home from Logan I thought I had timed it out perfectly to get back to our city with just enough gas to make it to fill up both cars.  We were sweating bullets though.  As we got off the freeway we only had a range of 1 mile left before we were out of gas.  I carefully drove to our house to let Aaron pick up the Camry and then drove over to the gas station.

 By the time we got to the gas station I had a range of 0 miles meaning the van really was running on fumes.  I was just glad we made it!!

 Success!!  Aaron's car was on empty as well so we truly maximized our $1 reward--wahoo!  The reward has a max of 35 gallons and we filled up both cars totaling almost 32 gallons.  We just saved ourselves $32.  That made both our days because we are cheap like that--haha!  I am glad I didn't run out of gas, though.  I think that is the closest I have ever come, however.

 Tuesday morning Aaron took Matthew, Daniel and himself in for labs to be drawn.  He didn't tell Daniel what was going on so Daniel just got in the car willingly. It wasn't until they got close to the hospital that Daniel realized what was going on and that's when he flipped out.  He HATES getting his blood drawn.  Luckily, everyone got their blood drawn without a problem which was a good thing!  After coming home Aaron had to pack to leave on a business trip to Fort Worth, Texas.  The kids were out of school that day since it was a Teacher Prep Day.  After Aaron left for the airport I decided to take the kids out.  I got them all loaded in the car when I couldn't find my keys.  We looked EVERYWHERE for them.  I even called Aaron to see if he had accidentally taken them.  As we looked he called Cherry Peak and Casper's Ice Cream Shop to see if they had dropped out of my pocket while we were there.  No luck.  I was starting to get frantic because I didn't have a spare and Aaron was gone for the week.  The kids then suggested to say a prayer.  We said a prayer and kept looking.  All of a sudden Josh looked in the fridge and that's where he found them of all places.  In gathering up the grocery bags of cheese from Gossner's my keys somehow had fallen inside one of the bags and got put away inside the bag inside the fridge.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  However, since it had taken me so long to find them (a few hours) we ran out of time to do what I wanted to do for that day.  Instead I gave each of the kids $2 and took them to the store to pick something out for fun.  Everyone ended up choosing candy which doesn't surprise me.  It was fun despite it not being my original plans.

While Aaron was gone on his trip Josh had a follow up appointment about his contacts.  The last week he had been struggling with one of them because it kept folding up inside his eye and irritating his eye.  Then the morning of the appointment Josh had accidentally squirted his other contact out of the case the night before while he was filling the container with contact solution.  When he went to put it in he realized it was stuck to the counter.  He tried to get it off, but it had dried out and cracked. Doh!!  In getting to the eye doctor they realized that his other contact had a huge crack in it as well and that's why it kept folding up inside his eye and irritating it.  Thankfully, they got Josh another set of contacts to try out again.  They will follow up with me in two weeks to make sure things are going okay and then we will be able to order some for the rest of the year.  I am glad Aaron is around to help Josh figure out his contacts.  I have never had any contacts so I have no clue of how to take care of them. Aaron got Lasik surgery 14 years ago so he hasn't had to deal with them for quite a while, but at least he remembers what to do.  Hopefully, the next two weeks are uneventful for Josh's contacts!!

Josh and Daniel had a cooking merit badge they have been working on.  One of the requirements for it is to make a meal for your family that is healthy.  Wednesday night Josh decided to make his meal of pancakes and sausage with a spinach, mango, strawberry and orange smoothie to accompany it.  This is one of the kids favorite meals so they ate so much!!  30 minutes after dinner Sarah started complaining of an upset stomach.  Well things progressed and she ended up throwing up.  Ick!!  Of course this would happen while Aaron is gone.  Ugh!!  She spent the rest of the night not feeling so hot and went to bed with a barf bucket right next to her.  Thankfully, she didn't end up throwing up throughout the night, but I kept her home from school just in case.  She was just fine all day long.  phew!!  I think she just ate too much dinner and it made her throw up the night before.  I breathed a sigh of relief because I HATE when the stomach bug makes the rounds in the family.  We dodged a bullet.  I also know that next time we have pancakes I need to keep an eye on Sarah because she REALLY likes them--haha!

Aaron gets home today, but before his flight he was able to grab lunch with his sister and parents which was nice.  I am really looking forward to having him back, though.  My parents were nice enough to help me out last night.  I had my second class on behavior management last night and the three oldest Matthew, Josh and Daniel had young mens which left Sarah and Noah home alone.  They are too young to be home alone for a long period of time so G&G T were able to come play with them until I got home from my class.  I was so thankful for the help!!  I will be glad to have everyone under the same roof soon, though!!