Jack and Preschool

Jack started preschool 2 weeks ago. It isn't a true preschool. The High School has a class that puts it on. They basically read, play with toys, and make fun crafts. He LOVES it and is happy to say he has school just like the older kids.

On a side note, I took this picture on January 12, 2012. It has been crazy warm. We just got our first good snow storm since last October a couple of days ago and the snow is already melting. It was in the 40's today. Crazy weather!!!

Finally some updated pictures!

I have been trying to get myself up to the challenge of getting the kids pictures taken.  And....here they are.  I love how they turned out.  Considering Jack and Brayden wanted NOTHING to do with it, I think we got some pretty good ones (we had to take Brayden twice!).  I'll start with Hailey and go down.  There are a couple of group shots at the end.

As I look at these pictures our kids look so grown up.  I can't believe how big they are getting!  I sure love them!

A Great Book!

Sorry to all of you who could care less about books, but I'm loving the ideas in this book!

In a world where values are being lost and overlooked it's nice to read a book about the importance for everyone to have values and how to teach them to our families.  As parents in this world or at least for me, it's not always easy to know what, when, and how to teach our children some things they should know. 

It was written back is 1993 and was a New York Best Seller.  Richard and Linda Eyre have written many parenting books.  I actually learned about this one reading another one of theirs The Entitlement Trap (also another great book).  The book is great for anyone religious or not because it doesn't put a religious spin on anything and brings that out in the first of the book.  It just takes a value (honesty, loyalty, dependability, service, etc.) explains its importance in our world and gives stories and examples of how to teach preschoolers, school age children, and adolescents about each one.  It has 12 different values and the idea is to work on one value each month.

It has been really fun to try out in our house.  The kids love the weekly competition to see who was best at using the value over the week.  And get a certificate on their door for the week.

If you're interested you can probably get it from your library or buy it used off of Amazon for about 5 bucks.  Even if you hate reading you only have to read a chapter a month to keep up with it and really not even the whole chapter since it is broken down to different age ranges. :)  It's totally worth your time!

Christmas 2011

The very much anticipated Christmas morning started at about 7:30 when the kids woke up.  They opened their presents and loved everything they got.  We started out by having the kids take turns opening each present.  But, that didn't work long because Jack opened one and just wanted to play with it.  We switched to Hailey and Conrad taking turns, but when Conrad started to want to play with his new stuff we said forget it.  Hailey was done in not time.  The boys took a bit longer.  I think Jack would have taken all day, but the kids kept telling him to open his present. :)

We did more video than pictures so this is all we got of Jack.  Here he is doing his favorite pass time, eating candy.   He looks like he is gagging.  No I think he just stuck as much candy as would  fit in his mouth and started chewing.

 Here's Hailey with her new MP3 player.  She LOVES it.  We downloaded Friend and Book of Mormon stories from LDS.org.  She can't tell me enough how much she loves listening to them.

 Here's Conrad chomping on candy too. 

 Brayden wasn't really in to the Christmas thing...

The rest of the day was just lazy since everyone was still not feeling well.  Including Bo.  I went back to bed at about 9.  I don't think I was too much fun to be around.  Bo sent me to bed :)  It was a much needed nap! 

Monday morning I went up to my parents and hung out for a bit.  All the ladies went to lunch at Red Robin.  It was fun to hang out for a bit and see everyone.  

By Wednesday everyone was feeling much better!  We were able to have a lot of fun together as a family and get some chores caught up on the house.

Pre-Christmas 2011

This Christmas will be a Christmas to remember.  Not because it was the most meaningful and full of cherished memories, but because it was a bit different than we planned.  (This is a long story, it's mostly for my memory.)  And sorry no pictures.  It was crazy and I was tired!

Christmas this year was with my side and everyone was coming by the evening of Christmas.  The Wednesday before, the kids started coughing and it sounded like Croup.  So, I called my mom and let her know we would probably be missing out of the fun with the family because we didn't want to give Croup to everyone.  Little did we know what we had in store the next couple of days.

At about 4 in the morning Jackson woke up having a really rough time breathing.  I couldn't decided whether to take him to the ER or not.  So I got the bathroom all steamy and we sat in there for what seemed like forever and he started doing much better and fell back to sleep.  I took him to the Dr. (in IF) that morning and they gave him a steroid and said to watch him and if he started having a rough time to bring him back and they would have to admit him to the hospital (croup is the worst the second and third night and we were in the first twenty-four hours).  So I ran home dropped Jack off and ran to the store to get some food for our Christmas Eve dinner since plans had changed.

By the time I got home it was around noon and Brayden sounded horrible so I decided to take him to the Dr. (in IF) to get a steroid too.  I decided to take Jack to have his oxygen checked because he was still having a little trouble.  They said yeah we'll give him a steroid, but he's going to have to be admitted to the hospital.  Jack's oxygen was good but the Dr. said  I'd admit him too if it was my child.  So, off we went to the hospital two kids in tow.

Craziness!  They both had to have chest and neck x-rays.  They screamed all the way through.  Luckily there was a very patient nurse helping out with one while the other was getting their x-rays.  This made the whole breathing issue worse too.  Instead of a couple of boys screaming it sounds like a bunch of seals barking.   When we finally got that all done and checked in.  Brayden was willing to take a nebeulizer treatment which helped out a lot.  Jackson would have nothing to do with it and they can't force it because it just makes things worse.

So, here I was hanging out with two kids waiting for Bo to come to help out.  They weren't happy campers either.  Finally he got there.  Jack was ready for bed and since we had to legally have them in separate rooms I went to tuck him in and he fell asleep instantly.  About ten minutes later he woke up working extremely hard to breath.  All I could do was sit with him and see if I could get him to calm down and sleep deep enough to get a neb treatment.  It took two hours of listening to him barely able to breath and FINALLY he fell asleep and his airway opened up a bit.  They did a neb treatment and he slept great.

The Dr. came and talked to us the next day and said he sounded worse than he'd heard a kid in years.  The nurse told me they always get nervous when they hear kids breathing like that too.  I could tell everyone was a bit nervous because at one point there were two nurses and the dr. in Jack's room the night before just listening.  Gratefully, everything worked out and our prayers were answered.  Brayden slept great and was able to go home Friday.  Jack had to stay another night because they won't release a patient until they can go all night with out a neb treatment.

Saturday (Christmas Eve) we finally made it home by about 1:30.  I had been promising the kids all month that we would make sugar cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, so I started that.  Bo's mom happened to come in to town just in time for the kids to be admitted and watch our other two kids that were also sick.  Not what we had planned, we were going to have a little party on Friday with her.  She helped out a lot with cleaning, laundry, and cooking.  Thanks for saving my sanity Gini!

As we sat down to dinner with two kids on the couch and the rest of us at the table ALL of the kids looked like zombies.  It was kind of sad because I had all these things planned to do with them (including dinner at my parents) and they didn't have enough energy to even eat.  Oh well, at least we were all home together and everyone was doing much better.  It makes you stop and think about how blessed we are to be healthy most of the time.  I love my family!  They are such a blessing!!!

We did gifts just before dinner and Gini left after dinner to get back to Boise.  Bo and I put the kids to bed and decided to watch a movie until they were asleep.  By the time the movie was over Bo was sick!  Not just a little, he was really sick! Bummer for me.  I got everything ready and made it to bed at 2:30 in the morning!!!  I'm not sure when Santa had time to get to our house since I was up all night getting things prepared.