Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

Meet Hyper Jumper. He is Noah's pet for the day. Noah was very sad to let him go! But they had a great day playing together!

Noah's catch from our back patio! He went on to find tons more and had the can filled about 2 or 3 inches deep with these slugs! Yuck!

We have a bit of a slug problem here in our area. It had rained all night and Noah decided to go out in the back yard. He soon found lots of slugs and decided to try to catch them. He found tons of them much to his delight! I didn't have a big problem with this until he took them out into the front and left them on the front walk. After about an hour I went out front and found snails trying to escape the can and all over my sidewalk! YUCK!! He very happily cleaned them all up. Well a little later he comes home the a new pet. This was a little green frog he named Hyper Jumper. He had that frog all day and introduced him to Daddy when he got home.

Random Thoughts

It is only 7am and I feel surprisingly rested. It could be due to the fact that I am getting 8 hours of sleep almost every night now. It is so wonderful to be able to sleep! Yesterday I took Emma in for a hearing test and they found nothing wrong with her hearing, it's perfect! If you are wondering why I got her hearing tested it is because she seems to have extra sensitive hearing. She will scream out in terror when she hears different sounds (like say a heart beat). Her most common question besides "Why?" is "What's that sound?" So she's a little odd, we'll still keep her around! It is really quite fun sometimes, Noah loves to play the lullaby CD just to make Emma run from the room screaming when the heart beat sound comes on. Poor girl will never be able to be a doctor or nurse when she grows up!
After the hearing test we went to a friends house to let the kids play. It was one of my friends birthdays so we went out to lunch. The waitress kind of looked at us funny when the three of us walked in with our 6 kids. She stuck us in some corner in the back with all the other families with kids. I am happy to say it was a good lunch and our children were all very well behaved, I think we were one of the quietest tables in that "kids corner". It was nice to get out and let the kids play. We don't eat out very often so it was a really treat for the kids.
This weekend is our stake camp out for our church. We are going up a day early as we did last year. Noah is soooo excited and can't seem to talk about anything else! I am excited because we are getting a new bigger tent. We are kind of out growing our little 5 man tent. It is kind of crazy that it would be no problem putting 5 grown people in our tent but try fitting 2 kids, 2 adults and a baby in it and there is no way it is going to work! Kind of like putting 3 full grown adults in the back of our car is no problem, but three small children is next to impossible to fit.
School starts next week. I just got my history curriculum in the mail this week. Noah was soo excited when I opened the box and he saw all those books! He wanted to read them all that night. When I woke up in the morning I saw that he had tried, all 18 books were all over his bed! I am glad he is so excited about school. I am too! I think I know how I am going to teach all his subjects. I am really excited about his history, I love teaching with living books and not the normal boring text books. It should be a fun year! Emma is excited about starting pre-school. There are 5 of us moms in my ward with 3 year olds and we are starting a pre-school. I think it will be a really good thing for her. She is so shy, but I think this will help her overcome that a little.
Well that is all I have time for right now. Gotta go get the day started with the kids.

Motherhood

Well it's been almost a week since I last posted. Not much going on. Today is going okay. I woke up to Emma and Noah whinning that they were starrrrrrrving and needed breakfast. And Daniel had leaked thru his diaper all over his sheets. So I got the kids breakfast and changed the sheets. I will have to wait to wash them til later as I have a pile of diapers to wash. I was feeding Daniel in my room and Noah and Emma went outside to play, time to relax and read a little. A while later Emma comes walking in wearing sandles and a t-shirt, no pants on, no underware on. I asked her where her pants were and she said they were in her room. They weren't dirty or wet, she just decided she didn't want to wear pants. She told me "My Bottum was to hot". She had been out side playing with out pants on! She had pants on when I went into feed Daniel. I sure hope the neighbors didn't see her! I don't know what is up with my kids! Both Noah and Emma see nothing wrong with going outside without pants! Daniel has pooped on me twice and puked on me I don't know how many times. I am going though clothes like crazy today. It's only 1 oclock. I sure hope the rest of the day goes better! I have to go down to Everett today in about an hour, I hope traffic coming home is not to bad! Being a mom is so much fun! Well Daniel is fussing and Emma is trying to sit on him so I should go rescue him.

8 hours

8 hours of Sleep is a glorious thing! I just got 8 hours of sleep for the first time in I don't know how long! I know it hasn't been in the last 7 or 8 months. Daniel just woke up. I think having Daniel is a separate room is going to work out just fine! Well the kids are "starving" so I should go. It's going to be a good day!

It's late

It's late and I am still up. Just as a warning, when I am tired, like right now, I kind of ramble on and on...Funny everyone else is asleep, even Daniel is asleep. I got busy and lost track of time today and didn't get the bread started till after dinner and it is just now going into the oven so I have about an hour before I can get to bed, about 11:30pm. We haven't had bread in the house for a couple of days and I think my husband is going through withdraws! He really likes bread! I was planning on being really nice and have the bread come out of the oven right as he got home, but life happens, so I'm not the perfect little wife! Just kidding! I can just see some of you rolling your eyes at that comment! My sister called and said she was bored, she has two kids ages 5 and almost 4. She must be way organised, cause I am never bored and always have way to much to do! We talked for over 2 hours, so I didn't get everything done I wanted, but that's okay. While I talked to her the neighbor kids came over and played. They seem to really like it here. Yesterday the little 7yr old girl walked into our house and sat down at our table and watched me make some cards and dinner. She sighed and said "I wish you were my mom" I asked her why she said that and she said her mom wasn't "active". I am not sure what that means. She finds my kitchen really fun with all kinds of things she has never seen before, like wheat grinders and cheese graters, yes cheese graters, she thought that was pretty cool. She thought cheese came grated naturally.
I moved Daniel out of our room and into Noah's room tonight. He has slept really well the last few nights so I thought it was time. The craddle in our room is getting to small for him. Last night he didn't wake up once! Emma was a different story, she was up every time the train went by. Noah was still up at 10pm when I went in to lay him down tonight. He was just so excited to have him in there with him. I think he was a little disappointed I didn't put him down earlier. We shall see how is goes with two kids in one room. Noah sleeps really soundly so I don't think it will be a problem. Well I am going to go lay down, I hope I hear the timer go off for the bread.

The Squash Beast update

So our Beast has not slowed down at all. It is now way out of control! I must admit I do enjoy the shade it provides my kitchen. If you compare pictures from my previous post you can see how much it has grown. Every morning I have to pry it's little feelers off the screen door to go outside and water! The "little" squashes are now softball size, all 19 of them! We can't let it grow higher so we are just letting it grow back down, it is almost back to the ground, don't know what we are going to do when it gets back to the ground! When we talk to others in our ward they all say their squash plants died or they are really small. Well, we are willing to share!

Emma's love

Emma loves her little brother. She shows her love the way any 3 year old sister would, with hugs and kisses, which are sometimes not so pleasant for Daniel. Some times Daniel feels a little smothered! Really, Emma is a great big sister and loves to make him smile and laugh. I love these pictures and the expressions on Daniel's face.

Daniel sits alone

Friday I was sitting on the couch with Daniel on my lap facing me, I let go of him and he stayed upright. So I had a thought, can he sit up by himself? I put him on the floor and we discovered he can! We were so excited! Noah, I think was the most excited and just had to call someone to tell them that Daniel was sitting like a "big baby". So we called Manna to tell her Daniel's newest talent. I wish she could have seen him while he was telling her about it as he was so animated. I don't think a big brother could be prouder!

Daniel is 5 months old!

On the 4th of every month we take Daniel's picture with this cute duck that he recieved from some of Kendall's co-works. When we first started taking his picture with this duck he was so tiny and now he is bigger than the duck. This past month he has started eating rice cereal and he is getting very good at rolling over. He also rolls over in his bouncey seat and gets stuck. I need to be careful and strap him in good. He is such a great little baby and we feel so blessed to have him in our family!

Visit from Manna and Papa Ted

Saturday we had Manna, Papa Ted, Jessica, and Emily come for a visit. The kids had a great time playing together. We stayed up way to late visiting and I am amazed we made it to church on time this morning! It was a short visit, but we will see Manna and papa Ted when they come up in September for Daniel's surgery. It was nice to get to see Ted again and get to know him better. He is a great person and we are glad to have him in our family.