Corn Maze, Dreaded Calls From School, Priesthood, Birthday Fun

Again, I am behind on the blog, but we have been busy!  Oh well the first funny story happened two weeks ago.  I got a call Friday afternoon from Matthew's teacher.  Have I mentioned I HATE getting calls from school?!  Anyway, this one wasn't too bad.  His teacher was calling because she had been outside with the special ed students waiting for their bus to come.  After about 30 minutes she called to tell me why Matthew was so late in coming home from school.  Since his bus still hadn't gotten there yet I decided to just go and pick him up myself seeing as his school is all of two minutes away from my house.  When I got to the school his bus was pulling in as well.  Come to find out his bus driver had fallen asleep at home and woke up late.  Whoops.  Oh well, things happen, right?!  However, come Monday morning Matthew couldn't find his backpack anywhere.  We looked so many places, but couldn't find it.  I couldn't remember if Matthew had brought it home Friday or not.  Since I had to pick him up Friday it messed up his post school routine and his backpack wasn't where it was supposed to be.  Matthew started freaking out.  He is very obsessive and compulsive about getting his behavior note signed and seeing as we couldn't find his backpack with his note inside it, he was having a mega melt down--I have the bruises on my arm to prove it.  Anyway, I finally got him to take a different backpack to school, but not with the signed behavior form.  I got a call from his teacher that afternoon saying he had had a very rough morning at school as well.  See why I HATE getting calls from the school?!  Anyway we still couldn't find his backpack Tuesday so he continued to use that new backpack.  Wednesday morning, however, I was in the garage when I found his original backpack sitting inside Noah's stroller of all places--weird!!  Anyway, Thursday morning I brought out his original backpack and Matthew was so glad to see it.  He transferred all his stuff from the new back pack to his old pack and then his bus came.  30 minutes later the other kids left for school and I finally had time to start picking up after the crazy morning.  When I picked up Matthew's new back pack and it felt heavy.  I looked inside to see he had left his lunch at home and it was 15 minutes away from lunchtime.  Wow.  To avoid a massive meltdown at school I quickly drove it over to his school to drop off his lunch.  Matthew was in the middle of a test when I walked into his room.  When he looked up to see me drop off his lunch he looked confused.  I didn't want to disturb their class anymore than I had to so I quickly dropped off the lunch and left.  When I got home about 15 minutes later I got another call from the school.  Sigh.  I took a big deep breath and answered the phone.  That's when I heard the small voice on the other end say, "Mom, I can't find my lunch box!"  The little voice belonged to Josh and he was pretty upset.  DOH!!  I had to quickly take Josh some lunch money so he could eat lunch because he had no money in his lunch account.  He was pretty worried he wasn't going to be able to eat.  Luckily, I made it in time for him to buy some hot lunch--phew crisis averted!  That afternoon Matthew came home from school carrying two lunchboxes.  He said, "Mom you brought me an extra lunch box today."  Come to find out Matthew couldn't find his lunch box that morning so he took Josh's lunchbox out of Josh's backpack and took that instead, but didn't tell anyone.  No wonder he looked confused when I dropped off his lunch box at school.  In his mind he already had a lunch and didn't need two, but didn't tell me.  Do you see why I have so many gray hairs?!  At least now Josh has some money on his school lunch account now so if something like this happens in the future I won't have to be running around to two different schools like a crazy lady.

 

Last weekend was the BYU football game that we had tickets to.  We only had four tickets so G&G T were kind enough to watch Matthew, Sarah and Noah for us so Aaron and I could take Josh and Daniel.  They had lots of fun despite it being VERY cold.  Daniel loved it when they unfurled the Y flag over the top of the audience.

We are all huddled together trying to conserve body heat because it was so cold.

 

 We even got to see Lavelle Edwards in person.

 An interesting experience happened while we were at the game.  A nice family was sitting a few rows in front of us. About the middle of the first quarter the dad's two friends came to sit by them.  However, these two friends even though they were wearing BYU gear they were hugely drunk.  They had a haze of fumes around them that you could smell from three rows up--blech!  As soon as Daniel got a whiff he said extremely loudly, "EWWW!!  WHAT'S THAT SMELL?"  We got a few turned heads.  It was a little embarrassing.  Then the crazy guy sitting next to us was yelling really weird things at the game.  Daniel thought it would be funny if he repeated everything the crazy guy yelled.  I had to keep telling Daniel to stop.  The only thing that got him to stop was when I said, "Ok.  If you do that enough you are going to make that crazy guy mad.  When that crazy mad guy starts coming after us, remember I can run faster than you!"  That finally got Daniel to stop.  Kids keep things interesting that's for sure!

 We stayed the night at G&G T's house.  The next morning we went out to their garden nicknamed by us as the Garden of Eden and harvested all kinds of produce.  Daniel even got into picking pears by climbing in the tree to reach the higher up pears.

 We brought home lots of pears, tomatoes and a few plums.  The pears are only ripening a few at a time so I can only do a batch here and there.  So far we only have 7 quarts, but I am waiting for the other two bushels we have to ripen.  We made salsa out of the tomatoes.  Since we do have all this fruit laying around we have lots of fruit flies to go with it--blech.  Oh well I guess they just go with the territory.  If you didn't know I was brushing the fruit flies away it would look like I have Tourette's Syndrome!!



Monday was Daniel's 8th birthday.  He has been looking forward to his birthday for a long time.  Aaron was nice enough to get up extra early 4:45 am to go to the store and get 8 helium balloons and tie them on the stairs so Daniel could see the balloons as soon as he woke up that morning.  He was so excited.  Matthew was excited too because he kept telling Daniel Happy birthday over and over and over again.  Daniel was excited when we showed up at school to have lunch with him brought from McDonald's.  Sarah got to tag along since Daniel's lunchtime is at the same time that Sarah gets out of kindergarten.  It was Dad's lunchtime, too so he could come with us.

Daniel got to be the star student of the week in his class which he was excited to do as well.  We were supposed to make an all about me poster.  He brought home the poster board a week before it was due and begged me every night to work on it.  I finally gave in after two days of begging and pleading.  He was excited to turn it in the next day even if it was almost a week early.

 We gave Daniel the choice of having a friend birthday party or taking one friend to the movies.  Surprisingly enough he wanted to go to the movies.  That was great for me because it's a lot less planning!!  We had Daniel's favorite dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.  Afterward his friend Reed came over for cake and present opening.  After that we headed down to the movie.

 Daniel wanted to see Monster's University and since it was at the cheap theater we let them each pick out some candy to eat during the movie.  However, most of the candy was eaten before the movie even started.  Daniel said he had a good birthday.

 Tuesday was Daniel and Sarah's well child check ups from the pediatrician.  Sarah only had to get one shot, but she did ok with it.  Sarah is starting to catch up to Daniel.  There is only 8 pounds difference between them even though there is almost three years between them.

 After getting weighed in and their height checked we got creative in the room while we waited for the doctor.  Luckily, I had a few pens in my purse that they got to use to color all over the bed paper. 

 Noah didn't care to color, he just wanted to climb all over the chairs in the room.  He was a little stinker.  When the doctor came in and sat down to talk, Noah grabbed the little kid chair and shoved it into the doctor's knee caps.  The doctor flinched in pain as I told Noah to stop it.  I apologized profusely.  It was embarrassing, but what can you do?!

 Sarah only has one more round of vaccinations before we are all caught up to where she needs to be.  Sarah's stats are: weight 42.1 pounds (64.1%), height 44.25 inches (80.18%), BMI 15.12 (49.04%).

Daniel it appears the Terry gene is quite dominant in his makeup!!  He is an all around tiny guy, but he makes up for it in personality!  His stats are: weight 50.3 pounds (20.87%), height 50 inches (43.94%), BMI 14.14 (9.98%).

This past Friday we checked the kids out of school two hours early and headed down to pick up G&G T and go to the Thanksgiving Point corn maze Cornbelly's.  When we got to G&G T's house Daniel got to open his birthday present from them.  He was pretty excited to have more birthday celebration in his honor.  Here he is telling Grandma and Grandpa thanks.

 Grandpa wasn't feeling very well so he ended up staying home instead of coming to the corn maze.  Grandma came with us, though.  We love Cornbelly's and this was there opening weekend so we all got in for half price.  Wahoo!!  Here's the yearly pic of our family on the big rocking chair:

 Did I mention it was REALLY cold?

They had so many activities to do.  There was the bounce pillows.  Luckily they had them separated between little kids and big kids and they only did it by size instead of age.  Again poor Daniel had to go on the little kids one because he is such a little guy.  Here's Sarah, Noah and Daniel jumping:

 Here's Josh and Matthew:

 Sarah and Noah riding the bouncy horses:

 They had a big inflatable playground area.  Noah went on the little kid slide, but once he saw that everyone else was on the big kid slide he insisted he needed to go over there, too.  Here's Matthew and Josh going up the stairs and Noah sliding down the slide and Daniel and Sarah are getting ready to slide down the other slide.

 They had a princess corner.  It was awesome. They had all kinds of princess dress ups that Sarah had to try on.  She was in heaven.  Here's an interesting combo she picked out--tutu with fairy wings.

 She then ran over to the pumpkin shaped carriage and climbed in so I could get her princess picture taken.

 She wanted her picture taken by the princess pumpkin cutout, too.

 Here's another combo:  Don't you love her sassy poses?!  What a funny girl!

 They had a stage there, too that you could act out anything you wanted.  Josh was more than willing to dress up as a knight and get up and act on stage with Sarah.

 Here's another combo, but this time she wanted her picture taken in the carriage driver seat.

 While all the dress up was going on Grandma took Noah over to the stuffed pony rides.  Wouldn't you know it Noah's stuffed pony kept bucking him off.

 He didn't seem to mind.  In fact he thought it was pretty funny.

Here's on last combo she picked out.  I was excited that we got to go to the princess corner.  It was fun to do some girly stuff.

 While Sarah was doing dress ups, the other boys went over to the Legos and built things.  Here they are showing off.

 Matthew insisted I take a picture of him and Sarah by this cutout:

 We then looked at the dark clouds overhead and decided we better head to the corn maze before we got rained on.  Here's the overview of what the maze looked like this year:

 The maze had 2 halves--the first half was BYU and the 2nd half was the U.  Of course, Aaron only let us enter the Y side.

 The corn was so tall you couldn't see anything, but the path you were walking down.

 The corn maze was HUGE.  Luckily we didn't get too lost for too long anyway.  We did get rained on, too, but luckily it only sprinkled a little and didn't turn into a downpour.

 After passing all five checkpoints of the first half we crossed the victory bridge and exited the first half of the maze.  It took us about an hour.  Matthew was pretty happy to exit the maze because he was done doing the maze about 5 minutes after starting it.

 Next we went on a tractor train ride.  All the kids wanted to ride with Grandma.

 Poor Noah got stuck with his fuddy duddy parents, but he didn't seem to mind.

 Next they had a basketball, baseball and football throw.  Here's Josh, Daniel and Sarah taking their turns:

 We were watching the other kids and weren't paying attention to Noah when he asked for help.  Since he didn't get a response from us he took matters into his own hands and crawled into the ball net to grab his own ball.  He's a Mr. Independent 'Do it self, MOM!!' kind of kid.

 Next we headed over to the pedal carts.  Aaron volunteered to drive around with Noah.  Poor Aaron's legs were so long that he had a hard time fitting on the small cart let alone with Noah on his lap.  While he was pedaling around you could hear Noah yelling, "Go faster Dad!!"  It was pretty funny.  These were Matthew's favorite activity.  We had to pry him off these when it was time to move on.

 Josh found a giant spider web and crawled in for a rest:

 They had a big slide area set up.  The kids kept racing each other down each of the four different sets of slides.  Here's Josh, Daniel and Noah racing:

 Next we went on a hay ride around Thanksgiving Point.  It was pretty fun and nice to sit down for a few minutes.

 Next they had a volleyball court set up, but instead of using nets they use hay bales.  The kids had fun lobbing the giant balls over the bales to each other.

 Here's another cut out pic of all the kids:

 Yet another cut out pic of Sarah and Noah on the Cool Bus:

 At the end of the day they had a huge, very tall gunny sack slide set up.  The kids had been eyeing this all day so we finally let them take a turn.  There was a big jump at the end which if you hit it right hurt, but other than that it was pretty fun.  Everyone took a turn.  Here's Josh, Daniel and Sarah trying it out for the first time:

Here's me and Noah taking a turn:

 Here's Matthew:

Aaron took a turn with Noah, too:

 At then end you could see two giant pumpkins.  I told the kids to stand by them for a picture.  The four oldest did, but Noah being the rebellious stinker demanded to stand by the other pumpkin instead.

 It was a fun day.  We had no trouble putting the kids to bed that night!!

Saturday we finally did a much needed thorough house cleaning while listening to General Conference.  With canning season in full swing, my house has been neglected!!  I didn't realize how neglected until this morning when I went to get Noah dressed and realized he was on his last pair of clean undies.  Uh-oh we are in the danger zone!!   Keeping my fingers crossed we don't have an emergency/accident before the laundry gets washed or else he might have to borrow a pair of Sarah's....

We were also having some friends over for dinner and games that night, too.  Luckily in between dinner and games they took a time out to dress up and go to the Priesthood Session of Conference.  It was Aaron's first time to take Matthew and they both were excited to go.  My Matthew boy is getting so big!!

Afterward we had a much needed fun night with friends.  Both of our families have kids all the same ages so they play together so well.  It was nice!

 

While cleaning up the house I found all kinds of dirty socks in all the places Josh crashes after school.  However, most of them were shoved under his reading couch.  No wonder they never have socks--Jeez!!  Another favorite place was next to the piano.  Josh is not a shoe and sock lover and takes them off as soon as he gets home no matter where he is.  At least we have a huge supply of socks for now....that is until I have to search Josh's stashes again.