Family Home Evening

Tonight for Family Home Evening we roasted marshmallows in our fire pit in the backyard. We invited Brandon, Ethan, and Caden over. Ethan's marshmallow is the one on fire.
(Is it really spelled marsh "mallow"? Spell-check says it is, but I could swear it is "mellow")

It was colder than it looks in the pictures, so we had Lila all bundled up. She was pretty cozy in her snowsuit.

The kids were so excited. They've wanted to build a fire since we moved in and this is the first time we've done it.

Trying to ruin the picture with a weird face, but I think it's still pretty cute.

A rare picture of me and the kids.

A little blurry, but what a sweet baby!

Let Me Out

Lila was so bored while Jackson and Sunny were at school today. She kept staring out the window like she was looking for them.

Let me out.

She was fogging up the glass and thought it was pretty cool. She'd get it really foggy and then rub it with her hand.

If

If I could make the background disappear so you didn't know this was taken recently at our house, would you think it was Jackson?

I was taking care of Sunny this morning b/c she was sick in bed with a fever. When I finally came downstairs, Ryan had dressed Lila up and taken these pictures. Jax wore this outfit for his two year old pictures, and still wore it up until I put in in the D.I. pile a month or so ago.

I think she looks like a boy.

Jackson is so proud that his sissy looks just like him.

Sick Saturday

The older kids are still pretty sick, so we have stayed home for the last week. We are starting to go stir crazy, but yesterday the kids all spent some time playing on the floor together and they had a great time. Lila is not sick, but I'm assuming she will be soon. There is no way I can keep her away from the germs floating around. She is into everything.

The big kids loved having Lila be able to play with them. It seemed like she really got what she was supposed to do. They would build towers and she would knock them down and climb on them.

Sunny pretending to buzz Jackson's hair.

Sweet Sisters!

She loved the cheap hot wheel cars.

It was so fun to see all the kids laughing and playing together. I was so amazed at all the stuff Lila could do, and so were Jax and Sunny. She seems so much older than she is.

"Fun, but boring"

I told Jax I wrote about last night and that is his summary of the night. He says the funnest part was when he got his bracelet. That's all he can think of. Wait, let him think for a minute. No, nothing else was fun. What a silly boy?!?!?

E.R.

You all know we've spent plenty of time in the hospital and doctors office with all of our kids. Well, last night was a first for us...

Our first middle of the night emergency room visit.

Jax sleeps way down in the basement and we used to keep a baby monitor with him so we could hear if he woke up at night or needed something. Recently we haven't been using it b/c he rarely wakes up, and if he does he walks upstairs. Last night I when I went to bed I noticed it was not on. I yelled down for Ryan to turn it on. He didn't, so I went all the way back down and turned it on. This is unusual for me b/c I hate going up and down stairs, especially when Ryan was already down there, but for whatever reason I did it.

At 1:00 I heard a strange noise on the monitor. I got Ryan up and told him to go check b/c it wasn't coughing or crying, but it was something weird. Turns out Jax got croup in the middle of the night and his throat was swelling shut. He's had croup 4 other times, but we always got it under control and then got steroids the next day. This time was different. He was panicking b/c he couldn't breathe. He couldn't talk or cough or anything. I was terrified. I tried to get him outside to breathe the cool air, but he wouldn't. We finally got him to call down by telling him he could play football on the PlayStation. At that point he could breathe, but not well.

I called my mom and she came over to stay with the girls while we took him to the hospital. He was the 3rd kid there that night with croup and another little boy with it was right behind us. The gave him a cool mist breathing treatment and steroids and we had to stay there for awhile so they could monitor him. He is doing better today, but is still not as good as I'd like him to be. They say the 2nd night of croup is worse, so I'm very nervous about tonight. He has to miss school today b/c I'm worried about him having an attack there.

He is going to the doctor -not ours, he's out till Monday :( -and hopefully will get another round of steroids to help him get through the night. Croup is such a scary thing. I'm just hoping the baby doesn't get it now.


On a side note, the e.r. trip was priceless. There was a man who was obviously on some kind of drug that kept trying to escape his room. At first it was funny and the nurses were just pulling him back in. Eventually he became agitated and the had to get two male nurses and security to wrangle him back to his room and keep him in. It was entertaining, but he made me a little nervous. I think I've watched too many episodes of E.R.

So Proud

Today was my first ever parent-teacher conference. Well, my first one as the parent anyway. I'll have to admit I was a little nervous. Obviously I think Jackson is an awesome kid. I think he is smart and funny and obedient and everything else wonderful. I was just hoping that his teacher would come to the same conclusion.

The verdict is :

He is wonderful, perfect, super-smart, awesome, etc, etc, etc. Told you!

Mrs. Chapman said Jackson is doing great. He is one of her favorite kids. She said he is hardworking, a good listener, participates often, and is generally just a really fun kid.

They give you a list of things the kids need to work on. She said she had to go back in his file and pull out all his stuff to try to find something he needed to work on b/c there just wasn't anything she could think of. She finally decided he needed to work on his handwriting, but she said that was a bit of a stretch. Really she just had to put something on there.

I asked if he was shy and she said no. She said she can tell that he is a quiet kid, but that he loves to answer questions and talk in front of the class, and that he gets along great with the other kids.

Sorry I'm bragging so much about him, but I'm just so proud. We've always known he was a special kid, but it's so nice to hear it from his teacher.