She's done it again!

It's been a year since it last happened. And you really can't beat the timing with school pictures this week and family portraits next week. It all happened within a few minutes of forgetfulness. I left the scissors on the bathroom counter and was helping Hadley get ready for church when I overheard Morgan in the bathroom say, "Oh no!"

I ran to the bathroom just in time to see the hair fall to the floor. She even got in one more cut before I could get the scissors from her. This little girl definitely knows what she wants to be when she grows up . . . bald! Or maybe a hair stylist.

SLC Buddy Walk 2009

The buddy walk was amazing and inspiring! My friends Amy, who gets paid to plan college football bowl games, and Mandy were in charge of it this year and put so much work, time and effort into the event. It was incredible! I'm already excited for next year's buddy walk. We are gonna do it right next year and get a team for Morgan. Not that Mia, Griffin, grandma and I don't make a great team . . . cuz we definitely did! I'm just saying, we can do better!

Video Highlights from the Walk:

Buddy Walk is Saturday

Saturday September 26

Antczak Park
1850 East 7200 South

10:00-11:00 Carnival (face painting, bounce houses, clowns, cake walk, balloons, etc.)

11:00 Walk around the park (10 mins.)

11:30 Lunch provided by Red Robin

It's that time of year again. The Salt Lake Chapter Buddy Walk. I waited to post anything about it because I wasn't sure we would be able to make it with our crazy Saturdays. We may be a small team, but at least Morgan and I will be there walking!! If you would like to walk with us, help promote Down syndrome awareness and be a "buddy" to Morgan, here are the details: The registration cost is $7/individual or $20/family which includes a Buddy Walk t-shirt, lunch provided by Red Robin, and the carnival activities.

Let me know if you can make it!

Another year older and grouchier as ever!

I'm gonna blame it on not feeling well and not just a 7 year old phase (at least that is what I am hoping!). Morgan woke up extra-grouchy on her birthday. She was awake most of the night and the next few nights with a cold and croup. She was in a bad mood all day. I tried to explain to her that it was her birthday and most kids spend the day happy and excited, not ornery and mean. She didn't care. I've taken some editorial liberties and decided to only post the pics and videos of a happier girl.

Birthday morning. We sang Happy Birthday to her and then had cake for breakfast. I didn't get best mom award by being a healthy cook (or for any reason, actually)! We were rushed.

She was very excited to get a new bike, until she kept getting stuck in the kitchen while trying to ride it around the island.

I loved going into her classroom and seeing all of the kids excited to see me-- "It's Morgan's mom!" and all of them being so kind and cute with Morgan! She loved having all of the attention for her birthday song and then she passed out her treat (ice cream sandwiches) to all of her friends.

Birthday party at Jungle Jim's (an indoor mini-amusement park) with some of her cousins and friends.

No interest in posing for this group picture

lack of interest is a little more obvious in this picture

She loved her cake!

and loved the rides

even the fast elephant roller coaster!

She lost her front tooth 3 days before her 7th birthday

We received some exciting news from her school on her birthday. The resource teacher called to let me know the school was approved 2 aides (a morning and afternoon aide). Which means Morgan will be able to do full inclusion in the classroom and not be removed from her peers during the day. The district is still in the process of hiring the 2 aides but I am excited to meet with them and get going on her IEP goals. I love the social experience she is getting but also want her to continue to grow academically. She has been doing really well in the regular classroom and so far I am happy with our decision.

Here is a little video footage of Morgan's birthday celebrations. I love all the laughter at the beginning of the video but my favorite is at the end when she decides she'd like to make 7 wishes with her one candle!

In honor of her 7th birthday, here are 7 things we love about Morgan

1. She loves to ride her bike and sneaks out of the garage all of the time to go ride it. She has gotten better about not 'running away' and knocks on the front door when she wants to come inside (the knock is usually our first indicator that she is gone).
2. She loves babies (especially Baby Luke "Loot" and Abi -- her baby cousins)!
3. She is one smart cookie and is reading on a first grade level.
4. She still loves Barney but luckily she's expanded her horizons to now include Shrek ( but don't let your kids watch Shrek 3. It started a "You shut up. No, you shut up!" Morgan phase at our home!), Finding Nemo, Shaggy Dog, and The Sound of Music.
5. She loves a good corn dog with sauce (ketchup).
6. She's Griffin's best friend
7. She is a great swimmer and after a summer full of swimming lessons--swimming is her favorite activity.

And I had to put in a little footage of her bike riding skills. She finally got the steering thing down this summer and is now able to go around the block on her bike. Good physical therapy for her legs!

Another trip to the hospital

We found out about Ryan's asthma 9 years ago when he was admitted to the children's hospital on a Christmas night. We spent Christmas Eve at my grandma's house that year. She liked to have a fire going in her fireplace when it was cold and snowing outside, but that year it was more smoke than fire. We all felt it in our lungs. The next day we went to my parent's home for Christmas breakfast and Ryan was around their dog and by that night he was having a hard time breathing. Gavin wanted to take him to the ER but I tried to talk him out of it, "they will just send him home like they do every time. He just has croup and they always just send us home and never do anything for us." Good thing he chose to not listen to me and my good nursing advice, Ryan was admitted for several days and diagnosed with asthma. So far he has only had allergy-induced asthma around dogs (nothing with exercise, colds, etc.) and it isn't something we take lightly. He has a difficult time breathing after just a few hours inside a house with a dog. It was hard for him to understand this as a young child. He would ask all the time if he would be able to touch and pet dogs in heaven when he died. Not what I needed my 3 year old to be thinking about! We couldn't let him play or sleep over at friends' houses if they had a dog. And then, of course, both sets of grandparents have dogs!

We've done a pretty good job at keeping his asthma under control but there are the exceptions and this week was one of them. Gavin took him up to the ER on Monday night when Ryan started getting panicky and laying on the floor. He was admitted and started on breathing treatments, Prednisone, and oxygen. He was there less than 24 hours and hopefully this will be his last time there!

Getting a breathing treatment

His favorite thing about the hospital is the room service. They actually have really good food and let the kids order anything on the menu as often as they want. Ry was excited to have deep-fried shrimp, tomato cheese soup, tapioca pudding and a peach sunrise smoothie for lunch. Much better than school lunch!

Time for another breathing treatment and dinner. He ordered this while I was home getting all the kids situated from school to dinner. When I got back he told me, "I just ordered a bunch of side dishes." A bagel with cream cheese, mozzarella sticks, tomato cheese soup, and another peach sunrise smoothie (I drank most of his smoothie.) So yummy!

Mia and I spent most of the morning with him, but had to go home when Mia started breaking everything in his room.

He is still on the prednisone and breathing treatments but doing so much better. Does it make us bad parents if we let him play in his football game on Saturday?

I can't forget to give my awesome friends a big thank you! I had several friends call to see if they could bring us dinner. I turned them all down. My kids would think there was something up if there was a home cooked meal on the table. No need to mess with the routine. That night I had two friends show up a few minutes apart with two complete meals. My friends rock!!

Utah State Fair

Who doesn't love a good deal? The fair had a family deal on Monday ($12 entrance for the entire family, compared to the usual $40 for our family) that made it worth going. It wasn't the best circumstances . . . the kids had piano until 6:30, it was pouring rain, and it was a late FHE activity for a school night. I convinced Gavin that it could be fun to go and run through the rain with our umbrellas. Fortunately, the sun started shining through the clouds as we pulled into the parking lot and the rain stopped minutes after we walked through the entrance.

These umbrellas are huge and poked lots of friendly fair-goers in the face. Sorry!

Our first stop was the building with the displays and demos of random products. I stopped at the first display and got my wedding ring cleaned (maybe the first time in 13 years). It is all shiny and sparkly again!

Then we stopped at this display--"Super Shami". He had me at "Look at all this soda pop I am going to pour on this carpet sample. Now look at how this shami soaks it all up. Every drop." SOLD!! That's a daily occurrence at my home!!

We convinced the kids that rides weren't safe and that we really should wait until Disneyland next month. I feel a little guilty about it now. We should have at least let them do one ride. Griffin was going crazy over seeing all the rides and wanting to do them. Maybe next year.

Instead we went through the animal exhibits. Equally as fun!

Checking out the dairy cows. Ryan's asthma had been bad all day and walking through the animal exhibits didn't help. I think this is when we decided he shouldn't go into anymore of the stinky exhibits. We saw chickens, roosters, ducks, goats, rabbits, pigs, sheep, and cattle.

And it can't be a true carnival experience without a funnel cake!!

This funnel cake was Y-U-M-M-Y!!

Because oreos, twinkies and candy bars aren't already fattening enough!!

There are some crazy things at the fair. What's with having the "World's Smallest Woman" on display? I had mixed feelings about this exhibit since I spend most of my time being the disability police around my kids' friends, but . . .

We caved. My kids were so curious to see if there really was a woman in that small box that we let them go in. Jack took the "You talk to her. She talks to you!" advice on the exhibit to heart and asked her lots of questions. Apparently she doesn't understand English and just said yes to everything he asked. He felt like Ryan and Hadley just wasted their dollar because they didn't say anything.
Ryan continued to have a hard time breathing after we got home. When he wasn't able to keep his oxygen levels up without using his inhaler every few minutes we knew it was time for the ER.

A winning Saturday

Our beautiful view from the field

9:00 am--Hadley's first soccer game (Final score 3-0)

She hasn't ever played soccer before but looked really good out there. She is one fast runner with those long legs.

She was nervous to be playing in a real game and found comfort by twisting her earrings. I don't think she has ever taken such good care of her pierced ears like she did out on that field.

11:00 am -- Morgan's 1st soccer game (no need to keep score on the VIP league!)

She is playing on the "VIP team" and liked her new friend, Lucy. Some of you may recognize her from the Signing Time DVDs.

It wasn't hard to keep her attention and excitement up during warm ups when she had her own ball to kick around the field.

But it was a different story by the time the game started. She didn't want to stay on the field and had lost interest.

Here she is on the field in the middle of the game. Just hanging out and sucking her thumb. I am excited to see if she likes soccer more as the season goes on.

3:00 pm -- Jack's soccer game (Final score 8-3)

This kid has the moves! He took a few years off of soccer and I thought it would take him a little time to get back in the groove. I was wrong! He is so fast and has crazy foot work. It was so fun to watch him back on the soccer field.

3:00pm -- Ryan's football game (Final score 16-7)

Ryan had another great game and helped his team with a touchdown.

"Oh. Okay."

Griffin started preschool last week and goes 2 days a week. This means I have 2 mornings all by myself with just cute, little Mia! I am hoping to start a fun class (Kindermusik or Gymboree) with her on those mornings.

I've been telling Griffin all summer that he wouldn't be able to go to preschool if he didn't go poopies in the toilet (too much info?). We started potty training him at the end of June when he was almost 3. He is a tall boy so I decided to just let him stand up and forego the potty chair. Big mistake. How did I not know this after potty training 2 other boys? Apparently boys aren't supposed to do their thing standing up til the potty training is complete. Or you might end up with a boy that refuses to sit on the toilet. Ever. That's our problem. He's great with the potty portion and staying dry (a few accidents here and there) but nothing is worse than cleaning up poopy underwear, legs, feet, and bum. How did my mom (or all the good "green moms" out there) do cloth diapers? Whenever I talk to him about it he pretends like he is listening and cares. And after my long discussion about how we don't go poopies in our underwear but in the toilet, he always responds, "Oh. Okay." But nothing ever changes. I even tried bribing. I bought Star Wars action figure toys that he could open after using the toilet. No luck. He was excited for a day and didn't care anymore. I called his preschool to let them know Griffin would not be coming quite yet since he still wasn't fully potty-trained. The school didn't care and said he could still come (what a change from when I tried to find a preschool for Morgan and everyone used the potty training excuse to not have her in their classroom. Grrrrrr . . .). So here he is on his first day of school (in underwear because he refuses to wear a pull up while awake).

We went to Carl's Jr. for lunch to celebrate his first day of school with a few friends. Unfortunately we had to leave a little early because of a stinky boy. Guess I'd rather have it happen at lunch with me than at school with his teachers.

Any ideas of what might help? This is all new for me. I've stopped talking about it with him because he started stuttering right around the same time. I figured he'd heard enough of my discussions for awhile.

Game On!

Football season has started once again and Ryan picked up right where he left off last season. His first game was last Saturday and he played great. Jack decided that football was not his sport and has opted for soccer instead.

Here are some highlights of Ryan's first game: (Ryan is number 3 - in the blue uniform -the one with the ball) And I don't know why I am getting this blue underline, but I like it. Enjoy!

Sneaking in for a Touchdown!

Heather was afraid she might miss a status update, so she was checking fb every chance possible!

Here is a quick video of a few of Ryan's runs. He is quick and seems to run well with the ball. He reminds me of his dad!