Randoms

No purpose for this post other than some random cuteness from 3/4's of the boys!

More Random Updates

I am just not maintaining my blog as good as I have in the past--I have a number of posts just waiting to be written, but time just slips away so quickly...may as well get a few quick updates while I have a moment.

• Karianna was elected as her grade's student council representative.  She went to her first meeting earlier this week and really enjoyed it.
• Karianna also signed up for the talent show, which will happen in April if I remember correctly.  She and four friends are making up a dance to the song "Elastic Hearts".  She did this last time she did the talent show and I was actually impressed with the caliber of dance steps she and her friends came up with! this year's dance, so far, has her doing the splits and a couple other gymnastic-type moves....getting harder, that's for sure!
• Jackson is walking around everywhere now.  I started him on shoes this week, so he is acclimating to a little extra weight and clunkiness when moving around the house.  
• Jackson's favorite word to say is "Whoa!" or "Wow!"  He is so, so, so expressive when he says it!  He loves dogs, cars, birds, planes, and now shoes.  
• Sara is progressing leaps and bounds in school.  She has always been excited about school and has always done well, but the last few months have been huge.  She is reading extremely well for a mid-year five year old, working on a log of vowel digraphs and upper-level phonics skills to that degree.  She can count to 100 by 1's, 5's, and 10's-something she is very proud of.  She comes home and writes a story, so to speak, every day, and her invented spelling is quite good.  She has mastered all sight words, including the list that was sent home just a few days ago.  She reads her bedtime story on her own every day now-she does so good at sounding out longer words, splitting them up into "legos" as we call it.  Overall, i am just so pleased with her work ethic and progress, it is always, always a neat process to see the light bulbs come on in a child's head!  
• Jordan and JD regularly switch bunks nearly every single night.  We haven't had any spills or bonks on the fan, thankfully, the biggest issue is the vent over the top bunk, which works a little too well-if we have the heat on, whoever is in that top bunk tends to get too warm.  Otherwise, we are super pleased with how bunk beds are working.
• James is collecting animals that hatch out of his reverent egg every Sunday in primary-he loves them, and it has really motivated him to stay in his seat during sharing/singing time.  He earned the reverence spotlight two weeks ago, and you could tell he was so, so proud of himself.  
• I finally took down Christmas decorations yesterday.  The house officially looks weird. 
• Jared has been going to gym now for about 2 weeks and has lost 9 pounds.  His diet has been super healthy during that time frame-realistically heatlhy, not starve yourself healthy, which is important.
• All the kids have been able to bike ride a lot in the last few weeks. Sara is finally going on a "big girl" bike with training wheels, and Jordan finally mastered JD's bigger bike-he has been doing great with no training wheels for a while, but JD's bike presented some issues with its bigger frame...now he is hopping curbs, standing up, riding one-handed...no issues anymore.  JD and Karianna have always been pros of course, and honestly, Karianna is probably ready to transition to a 10-speed bike.  
• Our family has had a big change in the last 3 weeks:  no TV during the school week.  I had a moment 3 weeks ago when i just lost every ounce of patience I had in terms of our house.  I was sick and tired of the constant messes and complete disregard for cleaning. I would ask kids to get off screens to clean, and was constantly met with grumbling, arguing, or plain old ignoring.  It was constant wheeling and dealing-"if you do this, you can get screen time", instead of just taking responsibility for messes.  Keeping up with a job list was helpful, but the second the screens were on after jobs were done, fighting ensued.  I was just tired of all of it.  After one particularly hard day, I gave up.  I went for maybe 3 days not talking to anyone unless I had to.  I stopped asking for help cleaning, and just did it all myself.  It was very obvious I was in a terrible state of being, but I was just done.  That is obviously not ideal for our family, and I don't claim that my attitude was the best choice I've ever made, but it prompted us to make the change to help our family and the tone in our house: no TV during the school week.  Now, occasionally, Jared will turn on a family movie after the little kids go to bed-it has to be his choosing, and for a very limited amount of time.  However< i even discourage that, as all or nothing has been working just fine.  As a result, we have spent more time together, the house is cleaner, the kids play together more, contention has dropped, and academics are improved.  Interestingly, when we do alott screen time over the weekend, we honestly feel we see an increase in contention!  We have had several family meetings to point these things out so the kids understand why we have made this change.  overall, the spirit has been better, and we are so much more productive and loving this way.  I am super excited about these changes and look forward to what else they can bring to our family.

That's it for now!

Sweet

Sara always wraps up in a towel after a bath/shower and just sits on the rug until she is dry.  She looked so sweet just sitting there, I told her she looked like Mary.  Love this little girl!

Tucson Day Trip Part 2

The second part of our little day trip was visiting the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson.  We spent longer hiking than we anticipated, so we only had about an hour and 20 minutes at the zoo-worrisome, since I really enjoy this zoo and wanted to see everything.  Well, that ended up being very doable, as we walked the entire zoo in about 45 minutes-and felt we were able to really see all the animals!  I love this zoo-so much better than Phoenix, it is not even comparable.  The only thing this zoo is missing is orangutans, and even that is excusable given how close you can get to all the other animals!  

 Upon walking in, we immediately saw the tiger pacing right in front of the fence.  We were three feet away from him!  The kids and especially James and Jackson were in awe.  I LOVE seeing these huge animals up close-so amazing.  He was growling like crazy too-even cooler!

 We hit up the giraffes and lions next-we counted 6 lions, and they were actually walking around-the male even pooped right in front of us! The lions at Phoenix are usually comatose....so nice to see these great cats moving around.

 The Grizzly Bears?  Oh my goodness. They were wrestling and rolling around with each other!  Who sees that on any given day at the zoo?  You can't see them unfortunately in this picture, but they are right behind JD in that glare of the window.  I could have watched them all day, they were so cute and cuddly, rolling around like big fluffy balls....

 While this gem was far away, we still got a glimpse of the baby elephant-seriously adorable!

 So with all that, this zoo visit went down as the best one in history-literally.  We were walking towards the exit really satisfied, knowing Jackson was getting cranky and needing to eat.  However, we ended up staying another 20 minutes because we hit a gold mine of sorts:  we caught the trainer working with the tiger, and we got front row seats....it was so cool, probably the coolest thing I have ever seen in regards to animals. She had a huge bucket of raw meat that she fed him off a stick based on tricks he would do.  She had him stand up on his hind legs multiple times, reaching way above her head as in the few pictures below.  She had him roar really loudly several times-those teeth are huge! Basic thing like sitting, walking, touching a tennis ball through the fence with his nose-all earned him a mouthful of meat.  The other worker kept telling us this training is voluntary-if the tiger doesn't want to do it, they don't force it at all.  He really performed for us though, and it was so cool to see!

My favorite moment came when the tiger roared for the last time:  Jackson roared right back at him in his little baby voice!  Cracked me up!

We hiked it back to our van and I took a moment to try to feed Jackson.  He did not want to eat, which was surprising, and I thought he felt somewhat warm.  I cooled him off with a few cold compresses we had, but he still didn't want to eat.  He took a cat nap while we drove to Sahuarita to try to catch the Hammerquists. They were not home, so we left the bag of things we had brought by the door and just stayed in their driveway for a bit while I attempted to feed Jackson again-still wouldn't eat, and he definitely had a fever. Thankfully, I had brought meds just in case, so we hung around for half hour waiting for the motrin to kick in and let him cool off/snuggle with me.  He seemed happier thereafter, and immediately fell asleep as we headed back towards Mesa.

We meant to stop for dinner in Casa Grande, but given Jackson's fever, we opted to head straight home.  Once we arrived, I was finally able to get Jackson to nurse a bit, though I had to pump to make up the difference of missing a few feedings.  I laid him back down to bed and took the oldest four kids to Golden Corral since they were really looking forward to a restaurant....no easy feat, but they had a blast, and the food was okay.

And thus ended our day trip-it was great honestly, though I am yet sad that the Hammerquists are dealing with such a hard trial, and sad that Jackson is definitely sick with something.  Tomorrow will be interesting with church (both Jared and I teach the second hour....), but we will make it work and definitely get a lot of rest in!

Tucson Day Trip Part 1

 We were able to spend the day in the Tucson area, just as a way for us to get out and explore as a family-probably our favorite past time.  We had very different plans for this day honestly-we had planned to spend most of the day with the Hammerquists.  Sadly, we only briefly visited their house to drop off cards and a few gifts, as Suzie lost her baby just shy of 17 weeks gestation.  My heart has gone out to her in more ways than I can express.  I can't adequately describe those feelings and her experience, especially since it is not mine to share, and I'll save a few thoughts for a different post.  For now, we'll focus on our day trip.

We started off by hiking Sabino Canyon.  We were prepared to be somewhat chilly....that was not necessary!  It was fairly warm, and we quickly warmed up while hiking in the sun.  We enjoyed a quick lunch and hiked a few miles to one of the dams, which actually had water flowing.  The sky and landscape were beautiful, especially around the foothills area.  We were so proud of the kids-they had such good attitudes, especially Jordan and Sara once it started to warm up.  I packed Jackson in my backpack carrier and he actually fell asleep for the last 10 minutes of the hike-that hasn't happened in a long time!  I even loaded James up onto my back for a good half a mile, carrying both of them while Jared stayed with the other kids...it was a good workout, that's for sure!  Once we started heading back, the three older kids ran ahead, which we didn't mind because the path was pretty clear.  When we got back to the parking lot, they were nowhere to be found.  We checked the visitors center, the car, and the restrooms-no kids.  I was just starting to feel that inkling of panic when they came walking up the path together, saying they had heard our voice.  Turns out, they got to the parking lot and waited for a few minutes, then went to the car thinking we had headed straight there.  Upon that not being the case, they started walking back down the trail to meet up with us and took a wrong turn!  They found their way back to us at that point. I was proud of them for staying together-we could have been in a bad situation if Karianna hadn't had the where with all to keep the boys with her.

All in all, it was a really fun, beautiful hike, and we probably could have stayed there a lot longer if we had alotted ourselves more time!

Pinewood Derby: The Race!

JD has officially completed his first Pinewood Derby-so exciting!  

 We have been gearing up for this day for a while now, especially over the course of the last week.  JD has been so excited to race his car, christened "Flash" and decorated with those tell-tale flames.  Jared would say he wanted to do a little bit more to make the car more aerodynamic, but for our first race, I think this car looked and performed wonderfully-certainly making for a memorable morning.

 JD raced his car multiple times which I didn't realize was the format.  The course was awesome-starting at an adult's shoulder height and zipping down to race toward the finish line.  It was all computerized in terms of times and placement, which was great so there was no confusion.  JD's car initially placed 2nd in, like, the first 3 heats, and then he started placing first in all the rest of his heats.  He was so excited to race, whether it be the first or eighth time-it was so cute to see!  I can't believe how old he is getting!

 After all was said and done, JD's car took 4th place overall, which we thought was pretty darn respectable.  We didn't really care, the look on JD's face the entire time was priceless.  JD's good buddies Jacob and Noah took first and second place, so we were really excited for them as well.  We took the whole family to McDonald's afterwards for treats to celebrate JD's awesomeness.

 JD did get a certificate and a really cool stand to display his car on.  He enjoyed taking pictures on the award podium regardless!

 Now that's an awesome first place prize that JD actually gets to take home!

 Such a fun event, we are super proud of JD and how amazingly he is growing up!

We Go to the Zoo Way Too Much.

I feel like I post about the Zoo all the time....what can I say?  It is a favorite retreat of mine, especially when the weather is so darn nice!  I meant to take the boys yesterday, but I was not feeling good at all, and while I was not 100% today either, I didn't want to subject the boys to another day of just laying around.

James and Jackson and I ventured out today and had a grand time walking most of the zoo, save the Farm area, which I generally don't care for anyway.  We even hung out in the horse corral area for quite a while watching the workers round up the horses before leading them into the barn one by one-never done that before!  We actually caught both lions up and walking, even observed the female taking a long drink from the pond area.  We got up close looks at both male monkeys, and the giraffes were all hanging out at the edge of the enclosure-like, seven of them!  The male orangutan was especially interesting:  he was laying on his back, in full view, right next to the glass window, and his face was perfectly angled towards us.  We spent quite a while crouched down, staring into his eyes, and it was honestly a pretty amazing experience!  This was the first time Jackson seemed to really enjoy the zoo-he kept pointing to all the animals and going "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" the second they moved.

So great weather, great walk, and so fun letting Jackson get out of the stroller every now and then to toddle up to the windows and cages.  Love getting out of the house with these boys-so much joy!

 Yes, I immediately berated James for licking the monkey--Jackson's response was to immediately copy his big brother.  Yuck!

Pinewood Derby: The Weigh In!

 This is it!  Coined "Flash", JD's first pinewood derby car is officially ready for its inaugural race this Saturday. This was quite the experience as we worked together as a family to figure out how this pinewood derby stuff works.  We obviously don't have the machinery needed to make a car out of a block of wood, and after exploring a few options with no luck, we ended up buying our own car with predrilled holes for the weights for less than 10 dollars online.  The shape of the car was perfect, and JD and Jared were still able to work together to sand the car down, measure and insert the weights, and put the wheels on.  JD went with Jared to Hobby Lobby and Lowes to get everything they would need, and sure did enjoy the process.  He came up with the design of his car, though I admittedly painted it for him.  He helped do the lettering and the base coats of red before I painted the flames on.  Overall, i think it turned out awesome!

 At the weigh-in tonight, we ended up adding a couple of little weights to bring his car up to the maximum of 5 ounces.  Jared took the graphite to the wheels a few times before we left, and both JD and Jordan made great posters to cheer on "Flash" during the big race.

Super excited to see how things go on Saturday!  We are such greenies at this, I am sure families who have been doing this for years know the tricks of the trade, and will likely do better, but I am hopeful that JD's car will hold his own and above all, that JD will just enjoy the experience of making and racing his own car.