Homecoming parade

Dave and I took the kids to Pocatello on Saturday morning for the ISU Homecoming parade. This is our 3rd year of attending. It is pretty fun to go down on a cool fall morning and watch a parade. The kids got lots of candy and so they were very happy. Dave's sister and her little boy were there also.

After one random float, that was it. There was no one else behind them. We thought it was weird that the parade would just suddenly end like that. So we waited and waited. We waited through about 10-15 minutes of nothing, and finally decided that it must be over and packed up our stuff and left. As we were driving away, we looked back and saw that the parade was going again. We drove down a street parallel to the parade route and saw that there was a lot of parade left. Dave and I were not too disappointed, as we had already watched about an hour and 15 minutes of the parade. The kids didn't notice that the parade was still going, so they were fine with leaving. We couldn't figure out why there was such a LONG break in the middle. Dave heard later that a couple kids got hit or something during the parade and that was the reason for the delay.

Afterwards we went to Butterber's for lunch. We really like their food and usually go there when we are in Pocatello. Avery was very cranky while we were there and so it was good to get on the road back home. Fun day, though!

Recent events

A few things have happened the last few days.


Paisley lost her second tooth before church on Sunday. She showed it to me and it was very wiggly, but not enough that I could just pull it out. She worked on it for a bit, we tried again, and out it came! She was so excited! The tooth fairy visited that night and left her another whopping $2! WhooooHoooo! I am so surprised that she is losing her teeth this early, but the dentist said it is fine.



Paisley's asthma has been acting up a lot the last few weeks. I feel so bad for her when she gets this way. It usually is just a tight, constant, high pitch cough. Once she gets into a coughing "fit" it takes her a long time to quit. We usually give her a breathing treatment and that will help somewhat. The only thing that really gets rid of it is to put her on a liquid steroid for a few days. That will loosen her cough, and as soon as that happens, I know that she is on the mend. Yesterday she was getting really bad and so Avery and I took her to the asthma doctor down in Pocatello. They squeezed us in, I was very appreciative. But, squeezing us in meant that the doctor came in for a couple minutes and talked, then had to leave to attend to another patient. After a bit he came back and listened to her lungs. He gave her a breathing treatment for the wheezing, and left again. The nurse came in and took off the treatment and left. Then we waited quite a while. He came in and listened to her again, she sounded better. He wrote out the prescriptions and we were able to finally leave. But, this was 1 1/2 hours after we got there. I thought that we would be in and out. Avery was very tired and cranky by that point. Oh well. My friend, Heather, picked Easton up from school for me and watched him for a while. Then later, my other friend Valerie watched him for another hour. I was very thankful to these friends for helping me during this time. The doctor put her on another steroid and she should hopefully be getting better in the next couple days.


Easton will be starting wrestling practice tonight. He is sooo excited for that. His flag football season just ended. He also really enjoyed that. Both are aggressive sports and are right up his alley! In fact, at one of his football games, a man came up to Dave and asked if #9, Easton, was his son. He was a little worried to answer, not knowing why he was asking. :) But, he said, "You need to get that kid in wrestling! He has attitude, and that is a good thing, and is really aggressive. He would do well!" That is something we had already talked about, but that kind of decided it for us. I hope he enjoys it. He was showing me his wrestling moves last night, which weren't official moves I don't think. I just hope that he can control his excitement enough to pay attention and learn. :)

The BIG "5"!!

Paisley turned the big 5 on October 3rd! I can't believe how the time has flown since she was born!

She had a friend birthday party on Saturday. We wanted to do something different, something other than the normal "princess" theme. So, we decided to do a chocolate theme! Paisley loves chocolate, like her mother, and I thought it would be fitting. We gave out invitations that we glued onto a Hershey bar. Then I bought little aprons for all the kids and used puff paint to write each of their names on them.



I bought some sucker molds and melted different colors of chocolate and put it in squeeze bottles. The kids got to squeeze the chocolate into the molds to make two suckers each and a pretzel rod with chocolate on it, too. Then we made chocolate pizzas. They took a chocolate rice krispie treat, spread chocolate icing on, coconut as the cheese, and then got to load it up with little candies for the toppings. Those were fun, but messy. We put them in Ziploc bags to take home and they ended up looking like a big mess in a bag! Oh well. The point was to have fun, right? The suckers turned out to be a big success. They were easy for the kids, and turned out very cute!



Paisley got totally spoiled with all the presents she received! (Thanks everyone!) It was funny because all the kids started out holding the presents for her sitting on the ground watching her open them.



But, it must have been very exciting because they all ended up huddled right around her. They could hardly move! :)



After presents we had chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, a Hershey kiss, and chocolate sprinkles.



Dave and I tried to eat one, but threw most of it away because they were TOO chocolaty!! The kids seemed to love them, though!



Then we had about a half hour left and no plans. So, we took them downstairs to play musical chairs with the music from the music stations on the satellite and towels as chairs. It was a total throw together game, but a hit! We played three rounds and they all had a lot of fun!



I recruited my mom and my sister-in-law to help at the party because I was afraid of Dave and I being alone with lots of chocolate and 10 5-year olds! They were a ton of help! Thank you soooo much!

All in all it was a really fun day! I think the kids had fun and I know Paisley did!

(I couldn't resist adding a picture of Avery in the tutu that Paisley got for her birthday. What a cutie!!!)

Here are a couple pictures from the two family parties we had on Sunday.



All the cousins together. You can imagine the chaos while trying to get this picture!

Paisley and my brother's son, Dillon. Dillon turned 2 the day before Paisley's birthday.

Happy Birthday, Paisley!! I am so proud of the sweet little girl that you are. You are such a helper to me and make my life so fun! We love you more than you'll ever know!!

Cheerleading

My mom called last week and told me she had heard about a cheerleading clinic hosted by some high school cheerleaders. Paisley had been to one previously and LOVED it and so we signed her up for this one. She wanted to invite her friend, Madisen, to go along. They did a 4 hour clinic where they taught them cheers, jumps, and a dance. They also fed them lunch and gave them a really cute T-shirt.




Then they got to perform what they learned at the halftime show of the varsity football game that night. She loved the clinic and had a lot of fun performing. In her words it was "super, super fun!!"

What did I tell ya???

(I almost could not post this picture because it grosses me out too much! I might have to remove it!!)

A couple of posts ago I wrote about 6 quirks of mine. One of them was my very strong fear of bugs. I have discovered that one of the bugs I am most scared of is a PRAYING MANTIS!!!! YIKES!!! Well, today, my fear was brought right to the surface.

Today I was outside mowing the lawn along the back fence. All of a sudden, right in front of the lawnmower was a big, NASTY tan-colored praying mantis!! I totally screamed! I mean, loud! Oh, and I ran, too! Paisley and Avery were inside playing and Paisley quickly came running out to see what I was screaming about. (So, I know that my all my neighbors must have heard, too!) I ran to the safety of the porch and told Paisley to go get it. She got the little shovel and ran over. When she saw it the poor little girl screamed just like her mama! She said, "I can't get it!!" I told her that she was going to have to because I would not be able to go on mowing, my fear is that bad. So, being much braver than her scaredy cat mother, she started trying to get it in her shovel. She kept trying and I could tell that she was very grossed out, but finally she got it on the shovel. So, I said, "Okay, now FLING it over the fence!" So, she brings the shovel back, and flings it...right into the fence. So, again she goes through a bunch of tries to get it back on the shovel. Finally she gets it on again. This time she says, "I need a chair!!" So, she runs over to me and I send her back with a small folding chair. She stood up on it and gently brings the shovel up and drops the nasty creature over the fence. I was sooo happy! I cheered and gave her several kisses on her face. (If you don't understand my joy then you truly don't understand my fear!)

Finally I am able to get back to mowing. So, I send Paisley back inside with Avery and I head over to the lawnmower. All of a sudden, to my horror, that nasty bug is crawling back into our yard under the fence!! So, I have a repeat of the last time, I scream and run for the security of the porch. I told Paisley that it was back and she couldn't believe it. So, she goes out there and decides she is just going to kill it. (Sorry to all you praying mantis lovers out there!) The mantis is about half under the fence. So, she tries to scoop it up, and instead just starts pounding the shovel. It was so funny. I laughed the whole time. She would pound the shovel as hard as she could and yell, "I'm killin' it, mom!" Then she would look down and say, "Oh, it's still alive!" And, then the process would begin again. She was at such an awkward angle that I am not sure she could have been hitting it at all. But, she was on a mission for her mother, and she was determined! After several poundings she declared that it was dead. I wasn't as sure, because she said she couldn't see it. So, I asked her to sit on the chair there and watch for it to make sure it didn't come back. I began to mow again, but man, I had the hebee-gebees after that. When I would go past the "dreaded spot" I would practically run! We didn't see it again, thank goodness. Either Paisley killed it or it figured it had to run for it's life.

I am really not exaggerating on my fear of these things. Anyone who knows me can totally picture this happening. It is a bit embarrassing that I have to make my poor daughter, who also has some of my fear, do the dirty work. But, I just CAN'T!!

Anyway, looking back it was pretty funny. I would love to have had somebody get the whole thing on video so I could watch and laugh! :)

Great hometeaching visit!

We have really good hometeachers, Brandon John and Trevor Harris. They come each month and we really enjoy visiting with them. Trevor was telling us last month about his horse. Dave and I are really city people and know next to nothing about horses, but it was interesting to hear about them and what he does with them. He offered to bring our family out for the next hometeaching visit and let the kids ride the horse. So, last night, being the end of the month :), we went to the place where he keeps his horse and we all got to ride.

They have an older horse named Jack that is really gentle with kids. So, he had him all saddled up in the corral and the kids got to get on by themselves and hold the reins and "ride". The kids thought this was great! Paisley was especially chatty and excited about the whole adventure. We put Avery on with Paisley and then again with me and she didn't seem too excited about it. She really loved Trevor's wife, Krista, and chose to go to her over me. She also loved to go to Trevor. Being the mama's girl that she is, I was surprised how quickly she felt comfortable with them!

Then we got to go out to look at the other, not so easy to ride, horses. They gave the kids apples and let them feed them to Tiny and Red. Avery really didn't want to feed her apple to the horses, she wanted to eat it herself! We were in a field that also had a couple cows in it. The cows were friendly and not scared of us. Krista had told us that if you ran at them and waved your arms they would be scared. So, Easton decided to try this out for himself. None of us were really paying attention until all of a sudden he was running away from the cow who was chasing him. Trevor quickly stepped in between and the cow stopped. I will admit that it all scared me a bit. Easton, however, thought it was great and exciting. He thought that was like a rodeo! He kept talking about it for a while afterwards.

Paisley and Easton have horrible allergies and by the time we left they were sneezing and sniffling quite a bit. I gave Easton some allergy medicine before we left because he is usually worse in a farm setting. But, Paisley's eyes were almost swollen shut by the time we got home! We gave her some Benedryl and sent her to bed and she is fine this morning.

That was a really fun time for us and the kids. Thank you, Trevor and Krista, for taking time out of your schedule to do something fun for our kids!!

I've been tagged!

My friend, Jaimee, tagged me tonight. I have never been tagged before, so here goes...

Rules:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them

1. A lot of people know this about me but I can't stand it when my kids get dirty. If they are dirty, I change their clothes before we go somewhere. I always try to have their faces washed, hair done, and clothes clean when we are in public. (Now, when we are at home is another story!) I really have tried to not stress so much about it, but it is hard for me!

2. I am a freak about being on time! Not that we are always 100% on time, but I always strive to be. I have told people that if you want to see the worst side of me, come observe me while I am rushing around the house trying to get us all ready to leave and be on time!

3. I am TERRIFIED of bugs! Especially crickets, june bugs, really any kind of beetle. When we first moved in our house we had a lot of crickets. That was a nightmare for me! One day I was vacuuming the floor in the kitchen and a cricket jumped out from under the ledge of my counter. I thought I would die. I wasn't even brave enough to use the vacuum hose and vacuum it up. I dropped the vacuum, still running, and ran to my kids for help. Easton was brave enough to go vacuum it up so that I could go on with my life. I could tell you many more instances where my kids, especially Paisley, (I think I passed on my fear to Easton a bit) had to "save" their poor mom from a bug. Last week it was from a praying mantis while I was mowing the lawn! FREAKY!!!

4. I am also scared of really large birds and really large fish! They freak me out, too! When Dave and I were dating, we were four-wheeling in Island Park. We came around a corner and right in front of us was this HUGE crane. It took off running/flying when it saw us. But, that was so creepy to me!

The summer after I graduated, my family went down to Lake Powell for a week. It was so fun. The water was like bath water. But, when I was swimming in the water, if I made the mistake of letting my mind think about what kind of fish were swimming around me, I would have to get out! Also very, very creepy to me. There is just something unnatural about big birds and big fish!!

5. As I write about being scared of things, ironically another quirk is that I kind of like to be scared. Not by beetles, large birds and fish, but of scary movies, books, and stories. The older I get, I have decided I enjoy it a bit less. But, I still am drawn to scary thriller movies. I always hate being scared when I am in the moment of watching the movie. Dave always laughs at me for watching a scary movie through my fingers while my hand is covering my eyes. But, at the end, when I feel safe again, I think "That was fun!" :)

6. I, along with Jaimee and Megan, have to check on my kids every night before I can go to sleep. It must not be so much of a quirk as it is just a "mom" thing. There have been nights that I get all cozy in bed and remember that I didn't go down and check on Easton or something. I will think, "Oh, I am sure he is fine." But, the thought will nag at me and keep me awake until I get out of bed and go see with my own eyes that he is okay. I also worry that they are going to get cold during the night so I make sure that they are covered up. Like I said, I think it is totally a mom thing!

When I first saw that Jaimee tagged me, I thought, what quirks? How can I come up with 6 of them? But, unfortunately, I realized that I have a lot of weird quirks. I am sure that I could come up with several more. Call me crazy!

I tag: Chelsea, Kori, and Ashley.

Here comes the TOOTH FAIRY!

I can't believe how time is flying by with our kids. Paisley got her first tooth at about 6 months, kind of early. So, I wasn't TOO surprised when she told me a while ago that she had a loose tooth. I didn't think about it much, just when she would mention it every once in a while. Well, Saturday morning we were getting ready to go to Easton's football game and Paisley told me that her tooth was really loose. I looked at it and it was basically laying sideways-it was so loose. So, I grabbed it and barely pulled and out it came! She was soooo very excited. She put it in a plastic baggie and took it with us to the game so that she could show everyone. She kept saying, "Can you believe that I lost my first tooth???" :) It was cute.

Of course the tooth fairy visited that night and left $2. (Is that about the going rate for the tooth fairy? We are still kind of new at this.) She was very excited and has been begging me to take her to the dollar store to spend her money!

Avery is 18 months!

Avery finally turned the glorious age of 18 months!! Hurray, Yippee, Hallelujah!! Some might wonder why 18 months is so glorious, but those who are LDS all understand! She can finally go to nursery during church! The last few months I have been counting down the weeks and watching enviously as people at church dropped their children off and finally we are able to drop our little Avery off. Yea!

Yesterday, Paisley and I took Avery to her 18 month well baby check up. I am always anxious to see how much she weighs, etc. Ever since her two month check up she has been really tall. For a while she was off the charts in her height and then was around 98th percentile. Yesterday she weighed 26lb 14oz (58th percentile) and measured 34 1/2 which is 98th percentile still. I just don't know where she is getting this height! Dave and I are not tall people. Easton and Paisley were usually between the 25th and 50th percentile for height, usually the 25th. So, somehow Avery got the only tall gene. Of course it would be our girl that gets it! :)

The doctor said she looks great. He did say he is a little concerned that she isn't saying much yet. But, he said we won't do anything until her 2 year check up and see how she is then. She says "mama" and "more". That's about it. So, we will see how the next 6 months go. Also, he gave us some bad news. We have to give up the beloved pacifier!!! Dum, dum, dum!!! I am really dreading this. She is way addicted to that thing. She has it all day and absolutely has to have it for naptime and bedtime. I think we will take it slow. I am not going to let her have it during the day anymore, only when she sleeps. Then I think I will take it away at naptime and finally, bedtime.



We sure love our little Avery. Her nickname is the Texas Tornado, cuz that is exactly what she is!! She goes from one thing to another at rapid speed and leaves destruction in her path! But, she also makes us laugh everyday and has the sweetest personality. She loves to hug and kiss, and loves to be kissed on the neck. I will kiss the back of her neck and then she will point to it again and again for more kisses!

I just can't believe it has been a year and a half. It has gone so fast, and we have truly enjoyed having her in our family!