Fish

Seth is freakishly good at carnival games. With very little effort, he usually wins a prize and often it is the best prize. It drives Wade nuts! It is not uncommon for Mr. Competitive, aka Wade, to be in tears while Seth has won more prizes than he cares for. It is a strange but true fact in our family.

The kids' school had a "Winter Festival" where there were tons of carnival games in order to raise money for the school. Both Wade and Seth were super excited to test their skills at bean bag tosses, bowling, cake walks and a dreaded-by-all-parents FISH POND. Prize=LIVE GOLDFISH (UGH!!)

The cost: 3 tickets (a steep price if you ask me), but definitely worth it for my two as they found their place at the back of the long line of hopeful future fish owners.

The game was a ping pong ball toss into glasses filled with water. If your ball landed in colored water you win a fish. Wade went first, 3 balls, 3 tosses, none landed in colored water (PHEW!) Now it was "carnival game superstar's" turn. 3 balls, 1st toss into colored water, 2nd toss into colored water, 3rd toss miss. SERIOUSLY? Seth picked up his fish (they only let him have one) in a bag with utter excitement and promptly named him "Fluffy." Wade insisted on getting in line again for another try.

I try to allow my kids to make as many of their own decisions as possible (especially when I'm indifferent to the outcome) so when Wade wanted to spend 3 more tickets for another shot, I let him. He had his tickets and knew how many he had left so it was up to him on how he wanted to spend them. Tears (from Wade), 12 tickets later and even 3 more from Seth (where he won ANOTHER fish) and we had 2 more fish. Wade named his "Buddy", the other was for Trent and Rylee to share.

My kids were beyond thrilled about these fish. We don't have pets because Matt and I are allergic to fur and it melted my heart when Wade squealed, "A pet, a pet, we finally have a pet and these one's don't have any fur, mom, so we can keep them!" I am a little softer these days and knowing these fish would be lucky to survive the next 24 hours, I went with it.

We hurried off to "Walmart" and bought an $8 dollar fish bowl that came with a starter kit. All 4 of my kids were so excited as we carefully followed the directions on the bowl, sanitizing the water, dumping the fish in and feeding them.
The fish were the main topic of conversation the rest of the day and into the second day.

By day 3 the water started looking a little cloudy and we had our first casualty. Wade used the little net to scoop out the fish and flushed him to the great big sea. A few short hours later Fish #2 and 3 bit the dust. They lasted longer than I thought they would, but I was glad to see them go. Luckily the kids agreed that these were the only fish we were going to have and there would be no "replacing" them once they died. Until next year... :)

Running Club Meet #1

As mentioned before, Wade and Seth are both in Running Club this year. Wade is 100% in it to win it and Seth is lukewarm about the whole thing, but they both go to practice twice a week and both participated in the first meet of the year today.

Wade has been looking forward to this meet for weeks and had one simple goal in mind: he was going to get 1st place out of the 2nd grade. He had his strategy in mind and knew what he had to do to achieve this goal.

Seth, on the other hand, did not know what to expect with the meet and looked at it like he looks at practice--kind of a take it or leave it attitude.

Last year, Wade got 4th place in the last running club meet and did it with his shoe lace untied most of the race. He was especially excited for this race because he has the "Nike Free" shoes which do not have a shoe laces so he knew it wouldn't be an issue this time until, I exchanged them for a new pair which had to be ordered and did not show up in time. :( Luckily, it was only a slight blip on the radar and with triple-knotted shoes, Wade lined up with the other 2nd grade boys to wait for their signal to start the race.

The race was in the same format as before: 6th grade boys are to go first, followed by 6th grade girls all the way down to kindergarten to avoid any trampling of the small ones :). Wade anxiously awaited his go ahead and took off. The course was 1 and 1/2 miles long.

A short 9 and 1/2 minutes later, Wade ran across the finish line placing 75th overall and 1ST in 2nd grade!!! We were all sooooo THRILLED!! So proud of this boy! He has such great drive and it makes me tear up to watch my little boy (who isn't so little anymore) work so hard at something (that is SO hard) and succeed at it!

Little Sethie came along a good 10 minutes later placing 225th. He wondered where his ribbon was? Bless his little heart, he had a great attempt at his first meet and told me he was going to "run a lot faster next time" and try to get a ribbon.So thankful to be their mom, I love them both so much!

Dance Like No One is Watching

Rylee LOVES to dance and I couldn't be more thrilled about it! I grew up dancing and have hoped long before Rylee got here that I would have a daughter who wanted to dance too. She has loved music since birth, but most babies do so I didn't think a whole lot about it, but I knew she really loved to dance a little before she turned one.

She has always danced to music in the car moving her arms around and bopping her head. While at home, I would often find her bouncing up and down to Dora's theme song, but it was when she started running closer to the TV playing music so she could bust a move that I knew I had a dancer on my hands.

As soon as I found out #5 was a boy, I immediately enrolled Rylee in dance figuring she is my one and only shot at it so I better get started! I bought her a couple of leotards and tutu's that she immediately squealed in delight (to my delight!) when I showed them to her and called them her "pretties." All dressed up and ready to go, she enjoyed looking at herself and spinning around in front of the mirror about as much I did watching her!

We took a "mommy and me" class for a month and then dove right in with a "young 2 year old class" where the kiddos learn the absolute basics to dancing. The class is every week for 30 min and is just right. It is so much fun to watch Rylee dance! She is doing such a great job!

Although she is doing well, she is a little hesitant to let her creative juices flow while surrounded by 4 two year olds she doesn't know, but at home it is a completely different story.

Nickelodeon or Disney are on about 24/7 in our house and have lots of theme songs and commercials that Rylee loves (among her faves are anything by "Victoria Justice", "Fresh Beat Band" or "Kids Bop" commercials!) When she was littler, she would bounce up and down to the beat and then she started really getting into it with deep lunges and pounding her feet like she was doing hip hop...so cute! Now, she has added spinning, swaying and shoulder bouncing to her moves and will literally drop everything and run into the living room to "dance" when she hears a song she loves! I adore her! She is SO much fun and has the full support of her mama (and the rest of the fam) to pursue her dancing dreams. :)

Jumping Ship

Rylee decided the crib life wasn't for her anymore and went ahead and hopped right out of it. I do not know how some mom's have their 3 year olds (or older) in their cribs because every one of my kids has jumped ship right around or before their 2nd birthday (with the exception of Trent because we moved him to a bed when Rylee was born.)

Unlike the boys, Rylee would stay put in her crib until after nap/bed time. The boys wouldn't ever calm down and jumped out immediately after we put them in the crib. Just like with the others, though, in order to avoid a broken leg, we took the front off of the crib pretty quickly after the first escape so Rylee is officially in a big girl bed!

She has only been mischievous once, but made it count by sneaking into our bathroom, while she was supposed to be napping, and scooped out an entire bottle of Matt's hair WAX and rubbed it all over her head.
That stuff is thick too! Other than that, she has done really great. She even sleeps in her bed (I cannot even begin to explain the places I would find Wade asleep in his room when he made the same transition) without falling off.

It was actually good timing, since baby will be here in LESS THAN 3 months! Whoo hoo!