Isak

I remember a year ago when Isak was in preschool and how I was so worried because he didn't write his name very well. Its crazy to think how far he has come in just a year. Kids are amazing! I've started helping out at Isak's school twice a week with the accelerated reader program.  There are a handful of Kindergarten kids in Isak's class that are reading books and can take tests on them on the computer to earn points. They accumulate points and earn buttons, prizes, etc. I just go in to help the kids with the computer and read them the questions if they need help.  I started doing this because Isak was one of the kids reading and needed a chance to be challenged and to earn points.  I know every mom thinks their kid is a genius but Isak really has caught onto reading really fast. He's now reading everything he can get his hands on and insists on reading his scripture stories to us at night. He read me the back of the Oxiclean container the other day and then was asking what we could stain a washcloth with to see if it really worked.  He's so funny. And because this is my blog I can brag about my own kids so last week when I went in to help with his class his teacher told me about a test she had just given to all the students. It essentially had regular words as well as nonsense words and the kids had to sound them out and read them at a decent pace. Most kids she told me got 50-60 right out of 128 and that tells her that they are ready to start reading sentences. Then she told me that Isak got the highest score she had every seen a Kindergartner get ever! He got all 128!  The downfall is that he's starting to forget some of his basic letter names because so much focus is on reading so we will work on that. I was pretty proud of him.

Isak wrote me this note one evening after I had gone out for a run and I found it when I got back.   It had been a rough day (worked till 3am and Kevin up till 3am doing taxes) with little sleep and I was pretty grumpy. Totally made my whole day turn around, grateful for this sweet boy we have in our house!

 Isak wrote this note to the leprechaun today after he found his shoes in the freezer this morning. It says, "Dear Leprechaun, please find our orange risk pieces! Love Isak + Dad". I'm pretty sure we don't have any orange risk pieces but apparently the leprechaun needs to find some?? He also set out a trap complete with my sewing thread as trip wire into a box and coins to lure him in. I'm going to have to figure out something to leave in there tonight like a doll shoe. Good thing St. Patricks day is almost over!

Monday night Isak got to go out with Kevin and I to a movie and pizza. He earned a pizza coupon at school for learning all his sight words and got a free mini pizza. We took him to "OZ" with some friends of ours and their kids thinking it would be a great kids movie..well, it was a great movie but it was scary! Isak never mentioned being scared and went to bed fine but I was positive one of us was going to have to sleep with him. 

Isak is in wrestling right now and really enjoys it, although I'm not sure how much he really "wrestles".  His cousin Grady is in there with him and they are pretty fun to watch.  They spend a lot of time mostly not listening and throwing each other on the ground. He starts soccer this week with Lucy on his team and Kevin as his coach and I'm very interested to see how that goes!

 Isak gets out early sometimes on Wednesdays and he loves it when the girls are both asleep when he gets home. We played Risk when he came home last week and he thought it was the greatest thing ever. He makes up all the rules and usually there are random stuffed animals or ZhuZhu pets involved.

Edyn Girl

 Edyn thinks it hilarious to put underwear on her head while I'm folding laundry.

The kids think its just as funny as well and will often help her put it on her head.

 She's so incredibly crazy. And she's also into everything in sight. She lost my keys this week which I searched for for 7 hours to find them in our FHE crate in my room at the bottom. Our TV remote is currently missing and has been for the past few days. She loves to unroll all the toilet paper and tear it up. And use the stool to climb onto the toilet onto the sink. She makes a beeline for the outside anytime the door is open and also loves to put sand/dirt/rocks in her mouth at the park. Super awesome. Good thing she's cute!

End of February/Beginning of March

 Kevin is in charge of the cubscouts in our ward at church and at the end of February there was the Pinewood Derby. Our ward purchased its own track this year which conveniently came to our house in giant long boxes and Kevin got to spend a couple Saturdays assembling it all. It did look pretty awesome though. Kevin got kids for both the kids to make cars and I helped them paint them. They also each took angry bird tattoos left over from their Valentines and added those to them as well.

 Lucy really wanted a pink car with lightning stripes and she was very excited to watch it race.

Isak's was red with blue stripes and he had a lot of fun as well. Its a great tradition and I'm glad our kids, even though they aren't really old enough yet, get to be a part of it through Kevin. We will have plenty of cars when Isak turns eight!

 March 1st was Cat in the Hat day at school and the kids could dress in their pajamas or like a Dr. Seuss character. We happened to have the hat and bow tie and Isak couldn't stop talking about his outfit all week. I went and found him some white gloves and a black sweatshirt and he was good to go. He even sang me a pretty awesome song the night before that he made up about Cat in the Hat. I'm pretty sure he wore the outfit the next day as well.

March 2nd was my Snake River Half Marathon that I've been training for for a while. It was freezing cold, I lost my knee brace in a porta potty prior to race start time, my energy gel fell out of my pocket and turns out I was at the beginnings of the stomach flu as well. And my parents, who had my kids, got super lost on the way to the race (which had no cell phone reception) and got there about 15 minutes after I finished. Pretty much not the race I was expecting but I still knocked a few minutes off of my previous best time. The way home was super miserable and I laid in the front seat with  my head down hoping I wouldn't die. I couldn't stand to get in the shower so I laid in the bathtub when I got home. It was pretty awesome. Then Kevin left for Vegas for five days for work the next night and my parents had to come help my pathetic self take care of my three kids.  I learned a couple lessons from this experience. One. Do not let Kevin leave town the day after a big race because if not sick I will probably be quite sore and tired. Two. Give whoever is driving to said race a map of the location because they are usually in the middle of nowhere. Three. Do not let kids eat at McDonalds after the race because the smell will make me vomit.  Four. I need pockets in my running shorts/capris somewhere or else I will lose my gel. Five. Training hard really does pay off. Even when you don't feel your best you can still improve. Six. I need a new fitness hobby for a little while. I'm exhausted.

Fun Saturday at the Park

 This has been a super busy work. I'm working 4 days and all weekend long and our hospital has been crazy busy. Apparently February is a popular month to have babies. On top of that, I have a race in 2 weeks that I've been training for for the past four months and trying to squeeze in my mileage along with my work schedule and still see my kids has been challenging. But luckily I have a super supportive husband and kids who are spoiled by family all around them and they've hardly noticed me being gone this weekend. I think its much harder on me than them. Anyway, we took the kids to the park this afternoon and I was excited to take some pictures outdoors. Being cooped up all winter I miss the sunshine that makes fantastic pictures outside. Edyn was my most cooperative (and clean) subject so I took quite a few of her.

 She really loved the swing and loved watching Isak and Lucy swing on the swings. Lucy's legs tried really hard to fit in the baby swing but oh my goodness she was way too big. Getting her out was a challenge.

 This one above was by far my favorite. I love her little nose crinkle.

 Those are angry bird tattoos we got in our valentines on Isak's hands. Yes, I'm wondering how long till they wash off...Love being able to spend some time with my sweet little family this weekend. Even if I know my house will be trashed when I get back from work tonight. Sigh. Good thing they are cute.

Happy Birthday Lucy!!

Lucy turned 4 on Saturday and this much anticipated event was quite the party. On Thursday I brought cupcakes to her preschool class for snack and they sang happy birthday to her.

 

 On Friday, she had a few friends over for pizza and cake and games. She had a great time.They also played our kinnect which has an awesome game called Kinnect party that projects your entire room and the people onto the screen. It then puts them in different scenarios, like ontop of giant buildings or flying or in a big bathtub and then places props on them. Its really fun and my kids are always breathing hard and sweating when they are done playing. A great game for the winter.

Anyway, then on Saturday we took our kids to Chuck E Cheese. We've never been there and I was plesantly suprised. It was pretty reasonably priced and much cleaner than I anticipated. Also, we went at 10 am on Saturday and it wasn't very crowded yet. There were TONS of games and rides for the kids and Lucy loved running around and trying everything. Isak was mostly concerned with how many tickets which games could get him and we ended up with a 100 total. I think Isak traded them in for some air rocket gun.

The food was better than I thought as well. I think we would go again and maybe just do the games, it was pretty inexpensive for just the tokens.

Lucy picked out this Cinderella birthday ribbon a few days ago at Wal-Mart and of course had to wear it to her party. We also stopped at Target and got her some new clothes. I bought a bunch online but had to take most of them back because they were too small. Apparently she's grown out of most of her size 5 stuff. Sad, sad day.

We had a family party for her on Saturday evening with Kevin's parents, his grandma and my parents. Lucy ended up with way more gifts then I intended but oh well. I bought a few on black Friday and then had some stored away from last fall's Wal-Mart Clearance and then between everyone else's gifts she had quite the haul.

She ran around opening each gift quickly, I think it was a tad overwhelming for her. But she loves all of them. She got a cute supermarket play-dough set, a furreals dog, barbie mini cooper, kitty purse full of jewlery and other treasures, microphone and speaker, princess shoes, clothes, little princesses and her own box of cereal and fruit snacks. And we all got to watch Lucy's cheerleading performance from a few weeks ago that was video taped that was also quite entertaining.

Lucy requested a Cinderella cake and she had a Cinderella doll already so I stuck it in a cake a decorated it. Pretty much the easiest cake I have done, other than it took forever to frost it.

And we demolished most of the cake! It was impressive.

My parents and my kids. I have so few pictures of them with my kids, I need to take more! I also haave no idea why I didn't photograph Kevin's family with my kids. I need to do that.

Happy Birthday Lucy girl! She is definitely a fun personality in our family and keeps us on our toes. At 4 years old she is:
*The same size as her almost 6 year old brother, but we don't tell him that.
*Goes to preschool twice a week and knows the names of everyone in her class and can recognize most of her friends names printed.
*Is happy 90 percent of the time. She is almost always bubbly and smiling and positive. Other than when she is not like when she has just gotten up from a nap and she can only growl.
*Loves Cinderella and princesses but also really still loves her angry birds and playing with her
stuffed animals.
*Started Sunbeams at church and is very excited to be in the big kid Primary and I've heard she especially loves it when she can have the microphone.
*I find her singing to herself throughout the day and she entertains herself and plays by herself fairly well.
*Assumes everyone she meets loves her and wants to be her best friend.
*Her favorite food is "chicken sandwiches" which is just turkey or ham sandwich. She asks for them all day long.
*Loves to listen to stories and look at books. Play with playdough. Paint. Help me make cookies and crack my eggs for me.
*Carries her pink deedee (blanket) with her still and can't sleep without it. She's on like her 6th deedee I think.
*Loves to come with me to the store and sit in the cart. She also loves to sneak things into the cart when I'm not looking that I will buy and not realize till I get home...
*Loves to see her name written and anything starting with an L.
She is a lot of fun and definitely going to challenge us as she gets older. I'm so grateful Isak is older and can keep track of her for us, we're going to need it!

Shy they are not.....

 I put Lucy in a cheer camp last week that performed at half time at the girl's high school basketball game last Friday night. It was an hour after school for four days and they practiced and took a break with a snack. Seemed simple enough. Wrong. Lucy, apparently, does her own thing all the time. All the girls would be lined up and Lucy would be spinning on the floor, hopping on one foot, or be up in the front with the high school girls dancing with them. I kept having to remind myself that she is not even four yet and although many of those girls were Lucy's age and able to follow along better than she did I shouldn't be frustrated. She is still only three. She really loved it and loved seeing all the girls and the music she just wanted to do her own stuff.

 Anyway, I didn't have super high hopes for performance night but I figured it would be entertaining if nothing else. I had to work an evening shift on Friday so I gave kevin all of her stuff and put him in charge of getting her ready and taking pictures. He did a great job right up until Lucy took out her hair in the car on the way there and Kevin wasn't able to fix it before she ran in the mob of other little girls. He handed her hair bows to one of the high school girls and put her in charge of fixing it.

 Luckily I was able to come watch her on my lunch break and my parents along with Kevin's mom were able to come along for the show as well. Lucy walked out in front, hopping on one foot the whole way. She did pretty well standing in line with the cheer, then the music started and Lucy busted out her own dance in the front. She even turned around and did a booty shake to the crowd. I was laughing so hard I was almost crying.  Lucy dances to the beat of her own drum and while eventually she's going to have to figure out that she can't always do her own thing, I think for now its okay. I have no idea where she gets all this from, I was way more shy than that! I think we are going to do our best to foster all of that joyous energy in the right direction.

And tonight we had our ward talent show and apparently Isak decided it was his time to shine. They were all done with the acts and asked if anyone had anything they wanted to share. I see Isak's had shoot up and sure enough, there goes Isak, climbing onto the stage and break dancing for our whole ward for the next few minutes. I was fairly surprised that he was so brave but he had been practicing his moves in our kitchen for weeks and the last act was a kid dancing. I don't think he could hold it back anymore. I had lots of people comment to me afterwards about how similar he is to how Kevin was as a kid. I guess Kevin turned out okay so maybe there is hope. One thing is for sure though, we don't have a lot of inhibitions in this household! I'm just glad I was able to keep Lucy from the microphone, that would've been interesting for sure....