Mother's Day Part 2, Doctors Visits, T-Ball, Bubble Day, Fire Pit

We have been really nervous about Matthew's transition into Junior High School next year.  I am nervous because Matthew does not do well with change and basically Jr. High is so different from elementary school I have been worried.  However, I got some comfort last week when Aaron and I went and grabbed a dollar burger from McDonald's.  While we were waiting in line there was a huge group of special needs kids.  I was curious so I went and found an adult with these kids and asked what kind of group it was.  She went on to tell me that they were from West Point Jr. High's Functional Skills class and that they do a community field trip once a week.  During the week they earn money and then during the field trip they go out for lunch and learn how to order and pay for their food.  After lunch they head over to the grocery store with a list from home of ingredients to make a dinner.  They have to find the shopping list items in the store and then buy them figuring out how much money they have and how much the ingredients cost.  Then over the weekend their homework is to make a dinner for their family.  Now Matthew will be in a Learning Center and not a Functional Skills class, however, the lady told me that the learning center students get to join them on their field trips once a month.  Matthew would LOVE that kind of field trip so that got me a little excited about next year even if we are still worried about all the big changes to come....

 

Speaking of Matthew our neighbor, the train engineer, gave Matthew a pair of Union Pacific gloves to complete his train conductor ensemble.  He was so excited!!  Now every day after he finishes his homework he goes to to give train rides (with his wagon) to all the kids that are outside.  While doing this he wears his Union Pacific hat, gloves and vest.  He takes his job as a train conductor very serious around the neighborhood.  The other day we had a new family move in to our neighborhood. Matthew saw their child who is about 3 years old named Davis outside and offered to give him a train ride.  I didn't know he had done this until he brought Davis inside our kitchen to meet me.  He introduced Davis to me and then turned around and left leaving Davis looking very scared and confused.  I had no idea who Davis was or where he came from so I called back after Matthew who was outside to come and get Davis and bring him back to where he got him from.  The following Sunday Aaron met the family and then explained what happened and Davis's mom said she had wondered where he had gone.  Good thing Matthew gave him a train ride back to his house.  I guess I will need to keep a closer eye on Matthew and his train rides....

 

 Mother's Day part two--in my last post I didn't say everything I got for Mother's Day so I thought I would add here.  One of the best gifts I got for Mother's Day (other than the cute things my kids made for me) is a morning off.  Aaron let me go out to breakfast with a friend Saturday morning.  While I was gone he and the kids cleaned the whole house for me.  Aaron was also brave enough to load up all five kids and take them to the local nursery where he picked up two beautiful hanging baskets for me:

 On Sunday I got the day off.  I even got to attend Relief Society because the Primary Presidency had gotten substitutes for all the girl teachers.  It was a nice change of pace.  Aaron even got all the kids ready for Sunday (which is no easy task) then after church I got to have an uninterrupted nap.  He then cooked us dinner and cleaned it up.  It was a wonderful day!!  I gotta good husband!!  Too bad Mother's Day is only once a year--I think it should be at least monthly if not weekly :).

 

T-ball has started up again for the summer.  Aaron is team coaching with the same guy from last year that he team coached with for Daniel's team.  Don't they look cute?!

 Here they are actually playing a game:

While they are at practice I take Matthew with the scooter and Sarah and Noah in the double stroller and got walking on the track by the field.  Josh gets to choose either to watch the game or play in the playground.  Tuesday Matthew, me and the two youngest kiddos were heading over to the walking track when Matthew took off on his scooter saying he was going to race me and beat me.  Seeing as I was lugging the double stroller, I had no chance of even coming close to racing let alone beating him.  However, during our walk he stopped on part of the track to watch the game.  I took this slight advantage and started running with the stroller and passed him while saying, "I am beating you Matthew!!"  He did not like that and jumped on his scooter and tried to catch up with me.  Unfortunately he ended up tripping over his feet and doing a complete face plant into the asphalt.  After seeing him fall I was worried about injuries because he fell HARD.  I was glad to see his teeth were all intact when he got up, but he got a HUGE knot/bruise on his chin.  He also scraped his knee pretty good.  I gave him loves for a minute and he seemed fine.  We got about half way around the track when he looked down and saw that his knee was bleeding.  That's when he got REALLY upset.  Why is it when you see blood it automatically makes your owies that much more painful?  He was screaming and crying.  It got everyone's attention far and wide.  I tried to calm him down, but he was inconsolable.  Good thing the game was almost over so we could leave.  I guess I won't be doing any more racing on the track with Matthew and his scooter. 

Last Sunday one of the Den Mother's came over to me and said, "Hey I just want to remind you that you signed up for the refreshments for Pack Meeting this week.  We are also learning about healthy eating so could you make them healthy refreshments?"  All I could do was say, "What and WHAT?!"  I guess Aaron signed me up for them and failed to pass on that little tid bit of information on to me.  Oh well, I had a few days to figure it out so no big deal.  However, isn't 'healthy dessert' an oxymoron anyway?!  I ended up making zucchini bread because minus all the sugar and oil it's pretty healthy, right?!  I made the zucchini bread while the kids were in school and it finished baking right before they came home.  As soon as the kids walked in from school they were super excited because they smelled I had made something good and they wanted to eat it.  They were sorely disappointed when I said they couldn't touch the bread or else since it was for Pack Meeting and not for them.  Daniel was not happy so he did the next best thing, he grabbed the empty loaf pans and scraped out all the scraps of bread that had stuck to the sides and ate those.  What a funny kid. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?!

 I ended up making four loaves and they only used 1 1/2 at pack meeting.  However, the other 2 1/2 loaves were gone by the next afternoon from all the kids (and Aaron).  I only ended up getting one slice myself.  Oh well I am just glad the family liked it.

I was going out to run errands the other day when Noah got in the car wearing his glasses.  He sees my wear my sunglasses while I am in the car and he wanted to be like me and wear his glasses, too.  I am hoping mine look a little more stylish than that, though!  He was quite pleased with himself.

 The other day Aaron had a few hours off from work and so we found ourselves with only the two youngest kiddos so what did we do?  We went and got some REAL ice cream that's what!!  I had a few bites of my bowl when Noah confiscated it and ended up eating the rest of it.  These poor kids never get ice cream since Daniel is allergic so when they get it they really like it!

 We finally got Aaron's bike up and running.  We, of course, had to do a test ride with Noah and Sarah (and Noah's baby).  The kids loved it!  I can't wait to take more family bike rides this summer!  Aaron and I will have to trade off the kid trailer because the kids get pretty heavy pretty fast.  Now if we could just teach Josh and Daniel how to ride without pulling out in front of moving cars we'd be set.

 Through Aaron's work Matthew was able to get a scholarship to a special needs camp for a week this summer.  In order to be able to go he had to get a physical done which is what we did Monday morning.  I was a little nervous because it is about age 12 that they start doing hernia checks and I didn't have any idea of how to explain that to Matthew.  Thankfully, the doctor didn't need to do one and I breathed such a sigh of relief!!  However, Matthew had to get two immunizations which he was not happy about.  I got to bring Sarah and Noah along with us.  Unfortunately I didn't get to use the ipod as a reward since Josh's ipod has a cracked/shattered screen again.  I can't get too mad because this time it was Sarah, Noah and my fault it shattered.  It was already cracked but we finished it off so now it has to get fixed before we can use it again.  D'OH!!

Anyway, we made do with what we had--I gave Sarah and Noah some pens and they got to color all over the exam bed paper.  They thought it was pretty awesome.

 Matthew did really well and is as healthy as a horse!!  He ways 88 pounds and is 60 inches tall (5 feet).  He did better with the immunizations than I thought he would which was great.  After the visit the kids got to pick out stickers.  Noah got his and immediately put it on his owie on his leg.  He thought the sticker was a band aid just like the band aids Matthew got on his arms.  What a funny boy!

That afternoon we had an appointment with Matthew's psychiatrist.  It was time to get his medication readjusted since he was getting quite aggressive with Aaron and I when he doesn't get his way.  He was getting to the point of biting, hitting, kicking, head butting, punching which has left a quite a few bruises on Aaron.  He usually would just target Aaron, but he has gotten to the point that he is starting to target me as well.  He is getting quite hard to handle and we are suffering some caregiver burnout because it does get hard dealing with these tantrums day after day.  Unfortunately, his doctor could only increase a few meds and then she said that we need to get his anger under control by other means then medication especially before he hits puberty which will happen in the next few years.  She suggested that maybe we could find an ABA therapist we could hire to give us some tips among other things.  Now this seems rather overwhelming for me. I guess I will start up some research and hopefully we can come up with some solutions, because what we are doing now is not working most of the time.  I could sit and cry about it, but that wouldn't fix the problem....SIGH!!  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers because this is a very difficult problem that does not have any easy solutions!

We finally finished our fire pit.  We got the basic set up last year, but got the finishing details done this last few days.  Aaron had lots of 'help' (if you can call it that) from the kids, but they had fun 'helping' him even if it made more work for Aaron.

 That evening after Family Home Evening we had s'mores for our activity/treat.  It was lots of fun!  It was also nice to have a fire and not have to smell like smoke since it is from a natural gas line.

 The smores were really yummy, but.....

 very sticky and messy.  Good thing we had a hose to wash the kids off with!

 Everyone loved it!

 Here's what it looks like at night since you couldn't really see the flame during the daytime:

 It was Sarah's last true day of preschool on Tuesday and they finished it off by having a bubble party.  They did all things bubble and it was fun.  They had a bubble table with all kinds of bubble wands you could play with.  They also had a water table filled with water, toys and dish soap so the kids could play in the bubble water with the toys.  The funnest part of the day was doing the bubble tunnel where you stood inside the baby pool filled with bubble solution and they blew a bubble around you with a hula hoop.  Noah and I came a few minutes early to see Sarah play.

Sarah loved the bubble tunnel!

 They even let Noah have a turn.

He LOVED it as well.

I can't believe Sarah is almost done with preschool.  It makes me sad to think she will be starting kindergarten in a few months.  How did she get so big?!