Bree is 4!

Bree is 4!  All of a sudden she is a grown up kid, no longer a toddler but a preschooler!  Wow, time really did fly.  I miss my babies but I sure do enjoy having big kids that can take care of themselves now.  No more diaper bags, no more snacks at church, she dresses herself in fits of independence, potties alone, and I don't have to worry about her getting into things she shouldn't anymore.  Its so freeing!  I love having big kids!  At times Bree still likes to act like a baby and says she doesn't want to be a big girl, but I think she will change her tune once she sees what being 4 has in store for her.  She gets to start school in the fall and that is her dream!  Along with peeing on a tree but we took care of that at the park the other day :)

Miss Bree has attitude for days, but her obedience is improving.  She rarely tests us anymore with a "NO!" and she pitches in when we need her too.  She is an avid drawer and her artwork is quite impressive for her age.  She is interested in the alphabet and putting letters together, though they never spell anything.  She is able to have real conversations and some of the things she comes up with crack me up.  She is my sweet Breezy and such a blessing to our family.

For her birthday Bree wanted a Rapunzel cake with a tower so I did my best.  I originally tried to make the tower out of rice crispy treats but the top was too heavy and the base kept falling apart.  So I frosted a toilet paper roll as the base and used the rice crispy top.  She loved it which is all that mattered.  She got a pink Rapunzel comforter for her bed, Rapunzel wall stickers for her room, a box of pink legos, and Frozen pj's.  She was a happy girl!  I get a bit stressed about her birthdays because she gets so excited and hyped up for them the day after Christmas so I don't want to let all that excitement down a month later.  I think we did well this year though.  I am excited to watch Bree grow and learn and experience all the new things in store for her now that she is 4.

Frozen pj's!  She wears these 24/7.

Me and my "baby!"

Darcy's Turn

Darcy received her Certificate of Recognition from her teacher for having a great attitude and being a hard worker.  We are so proud of Darcy and how hard she is working both at school and on herself.  She is reading like a pro and is into learning about anything and everything.  She LOVES school and wishes she could go all day like Drew and Mason.  Me too :)  Kindergarten is not my favorite year, time-wise.  Picking a kid up from school everyday at 10:30 doesn't leave much time before or after for grocery shopping or running errands out of town, but this is the last year we'll deal with that.  When Bree goes to kindergarten it will be all day.  I'm sad about that now but ask me again in two years and I will probably love it.  Darcy is working hard on self improvements too.  I love her self-awareness.  She came to me the other day to let me know she was working on not saying bad words (a habit I didn't even know she had), not sucking her thumb anymore (she leaves her ducky blankie in her bed now so she won't be tempted to snuggle with it and suck her thumb during the day), and she is working hard on staying dry at night too, though that isn't working as well as the others, unfortunately.  She is one strong little person and I have a ton of admiration for my sweet Darcy.  I can't wait to see what she accomplishes as an adult.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Thanksgiving 2013 was spent with my side of the family this year.  We were so busy eating and visiting that not many pictures were taken.  And those that were weren't very flattering as most mouths were full of delicious food, so I'll leave them out this time.  We had a fun Thanksgiving though!

 The weekend after Thanksgiving we always get our Christmas tree.  This year the plan was to go feet smaller than last year's monstrosity.  Well, we did go feet smaller, but only about 2.5 which still left us with a 15.5 foot tree!  Those darn trees look a lot smaller in nature than they do in a living room!  I think the picture is of my family acting like trees?  Obviously this wasn't Mason's first choice of trees.

 Here is part of the process of putting it up.  It gets wrapped in a tarp, we take out a banister on the front porch so we can slide it straight on down the hallway, I grab a 2x4 to push it up at the top while Paul is lifting the tree on his back, then we screw it into the floor when we get it set up perfectly.  Whew!  What an effort!  We love it though,  it would be hard to go back to a small tree.

 To decorate we get the ladder and even that's not tall enough so Paul rigged up a pole with pliers taped upside down to hang the ornaments on and then hopefully you can get it to slide off on the branch you want it to.  If not, it falls down and usually catches a branch somewhere and we call it good :)

The finished product on Christmas morning.  Am I the only one left in the world who still uses tinsel?

Christmas Eve was different this year.  The Beavers played their football bowl game in Hawaii at 5pm on Christmas Eve.  We have some friends who are Boise State fans (the opposing team) and we put a big OSU sign on their door the night before.  Well, Noel showed up before game time bearing treats and a short visit with what we thought was 2 of her kids.  Instead, we looked out the door later that evening and saw these horrific signs taped to our garage!  It turns out the older 2 kids were outside vandalizing our home while Noel was inside innocently visiting!  Nice one!  They got us good!  Except the Beavers won so I guess we got them in the end.  It was all in good fun.

We did manage to pause the game at halftime and throw together the annual acting out of the nativity scene with our Little People set.  I will admit the spirit seemed to be lacking though, as we were still amped up on how well the Beavs were doing.  See Bree - she's making the O.  Or maybe she's still trying to be a tree.  Who knows, she was having fun and that's what counts on Christmas.

Christmas morning we woke up at a respectable 6:30 and opened the gifts.  Bree finally got her Flynn Rider doll from Santa that mom just could not find.  Thanks Santa for coming through, you made a little girl very happy.  And who knew color crayons came in whole boxes of just pink?  If you are Bree's mom it is vital knowledge to have.

Miss Darcy was extremely difficult to buy for this year.  She isn't quite into receiving gifts the way my other kids are.  She appreciates whatever she gets but she rarely has her heart set on anything in particular.  Santa brought her some Legos as those always go over well at our house.

Mason is holding a bag of seeds for growing your own saguaro cactus.  I bought these at the Grand Canyon on our trip since we didn't get to see them in the wild.  Our first attempt at growing them was a bust, but come summer time we are expecting a 50 foot tall cactus in our front yard as the envy of all the neighbors.  Mason got his remote control helicopter that drops bombs from Santa, and another Lego set from mom and dad.  I guess we could qualify as Lego horders.  We need a room devoted solely to them.

Drew got another Harry Potter Lego set from Santa.  Hagrid's Hut.  They no longer make Harry Potter Lego sets so this will be the very last one she gets.  If that leads to big kid discussions about truth or make believe then so be it.  These hard to find sets are hard on the wallet.  She also got many books and she's read a few of them already.

Darcy and Bree got their Flipeez hats.  Darcy's has made her extremely popular at school as everyone wants to squeeze the handle and make the ears flip.  She won't take the darn thing off.  She even has it on her head in the mornings when she first wakes up and comes downstairs.  I'm glad she found something she likes!  Paul got a University of Michigan Dream Light!  Every grown man's dream!  He got my brother-in-law an Ohio State one so I returned the favor to him.  We are about to need yet another room devoted solely to pillow pets and dream lights.  I got a portable Bose speaker system to sync my phone to so we can listen to music on it.  And we do, constantly.  I love it.

Around 1:30am on Christmas Eve I woke up to strange sounds in the living room.  I knew right away it was Santa and whatever he was trying to pull off I wanted no part of.  I just rolled over and went back to sleep figuring I would be surprised in the morning.  And I was!  I thought usually Santa checked with the parents when he brought gifts this big, just so he was sure there was a place for it, but this time he surprised me.  It has actually been lots of fun and we are constantly playing it.  We collapsed it and moved it upstairs into the loft area.  It fits, but Santa, if you are reading this, next time you decide to bring something like this check with the boss first please!

After we opened gifts we went to Corvallis for dinner with Paul's family.  We were quite a crew!  We had a good visit and opened more gifts and enjoyed spending time with family we don't see all that often as everyone is so busy anymore.  Its fun to watch these family pictures evolve over the years.  For New Year's Eve Paul's mom came to visit and she stayed up till midnight with Paul, Drew, and Mason.  I gave up at 10:30.  I heard them yell Happy New Year at midnight, considered getting up, rolled over, and fell back to sleep.  Now I'm just trying to survive January.  It is my least favorite month as its so long and dreary.  Halfway through already though, I think I can make it.  The kids are excited for next Christmas already!

Odds and Ends

Yeah!  Congrats to Drew and Mason on receiving their Certificates of Recognition for Outstanding Work!  I was holding my breath until Darcy realized that she was not receiving an award too.  I wasn't sure what her reaction would be but she was OK, she smiled and waved at us as we walked by her at the assembly.  She still has 3 more chances this year, I'm sure her time will come.  We are very proud of the effort and hard work our kids put into their school work.  And I love that they are such avid readers!  Drew raced through the Little House on the Prairie series (which she loved) and received tons of book for Christmas.  Mason stayed up till 10:30 reading the other night!  Paul looked at me and said "what kind of kid stays up all night reading?"  MINE!

And then there is Minecraft.  It has invaded our home and taken over the lives of these two.  They actually pooled their money to buy it in November, even though I promised them they could have it for Christmas.  They just couldn't wait!  Now they are obsessed and I just don't get it.  They were nice enough to let Darcy play so now all three have to juggle computer time between themselves.  Here Drew and Mason are raking leaves to earn more time since we put a cap on their weekly screen time.  Now if I could just put a cap on their mouths when they regale me with all their stories of their "adventures" in the game.  They both constructed LDS Temples that were pretty cool though.  I don't know how they come up with the ideas for the things they make.  Hopefully they will get sick of the game soon because I am already done hearing about it.

Halloween 2013

Its two days before Thanksgiving and I realized I haven't mentioned Halloween yet!  No surprises this year, same ol', same ol'.  Except that Bree got sick on the day we were supposed to go to the pumpkin patch so we put it off and ended up going much later in the season than usual.  You can see all the vines had been cleared from the fields and most of the pumpkins were starting to rot.  Next time we will drag sick bodies out to the field if we have to in order to get the full experience of tripping over waist-high vines (if you are Bree) and pumpkins that aren't all squishy.  It was a nice day though so I should quit complaining.

On Halloween we went to Trunk-or-Treat at the church and then went around the neighborhood a bit.  It seemed like we spent far less time walking around this year but picked up just as much junk.  I enjoy the neighborhood walks but Trunk-or-Treat sure loads up the kids without much effort.  This year we had a pirate, a horse, a princess, and a witch.  I was sorry to see Halloween go, like usual.  Its my favorite holiday of the year.  Now on to the wonderful institution of family togetherness for the next few holidays.  Wish me luck.

Croup

 Welcome back Croup!  Not really.  It scared us bad enough almost 2 years ago when Bree had it that I never wanted to see it again.  Well, Bree's body had other ideas.  Friday she and I spent all day at the school watching the kids participate in their fun run (pictures at the end) and I knew she wasn't feeling well but I thought it was just a cold.  We had a great time watching the kids run and then that evening Paul and I went to Portland to see the Pet Shop Boys in concert.  Awesome!  When we got home and checked on the kids we didn't like the sound of Bree's breathing because it was loud both in and out and she was struggling a bit.  We turned on the humidifier and I told Paul to check on her again before he went to bed and he ended up waking me up an hour later telling me he thought she needed to go to the hospital.  Here we go again.  We went to the ER in Longview and they immediately saw her and put her on a cool mist to breathe.  Well that didn't do much and as I was holding her I could feel her whole body straining with each breatheso I rang the nurse and told her to try something else.  She got a steroid shot and breathed in some more medicine and it seemed like it was working for about 10 minutes but then she started struggling again.  They gave her another dose of the the mist medicine but the respiratory guy didn't like the looks of her ribs as she was struggling so he pulled the doctor in who didn't like the looks of her ribs as she was struggling so he wanted her admitted.  I guess Longview doesn't admit pediatric patients (?) so they sent her to Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver because it was closest they said.  She made lots of friends in Longview and they gave her a little green teddy bear and a handmade kid's quilt. We got to ride in the back of an ambulance and Bree was so hopped up on steroids that she wouldn't sleep and she kept watching the cars behind us.  We were finally admitted in Vancouver around 5am and by this time she was doing much better.  I think all the drugs finally kicked in and were doing their job.  We stayed in the hospital until 4pm when they discharged her.  We had plans to go to the pumpkin patch on Saturday with some family but Paul and the kids cancelled that and came to visit for awhile and then spent some time with Paul's sister Carmen's family, where Mason was able to convince her that he needed pumpkin pie.  She made us two!  So I guess the day wasn't a total loss for the kids.  Thankfully we took Bree home and she had a pretty good night that night.  Her breathing was still a bit labored but not to the scary extent it was Friday night.  She is improving and getting her voice back too.  Croup swells up the vocal cords so she could barely whisper for a few days.  She was excited to get her voice back yesterday.  I guess some kids are more vulnerable to croup than others and it looks like Bree is one of those.  We will definitely keep an eye on her in the future.

Here's my sweetheart with her breathing mask.  It didn't work very well because it was too big and the cold air went directly into her eyes so she ripped it off.

She did like her pink toe!  The oxygen monitor was stuck to her toe and it glowed pink, Bree's favortie color.

Feeling well enough for some toast.  She posed for this picture so I knew she was feeling better finally.

 The fun run pictures.  Darcy did awesome!  I was impressed watching her.  She went for it and rarely stopped to walk.  I'm pretty sure she would have rather passed out than wussed out by walking.

 Drew was great again.  She kept a steady pace and ran most of it too, unlike lots of kids who take off like a rocket and then have nothing left half a lap later.  I watched 3 different runs and it seemed the older the kids got the slower they ran and there were many more walkers than with the younger groups.  Maybe we hit our peak at 5?

Mason did a good job too.  I'm hoping in the future my kids all use their running potential and take cross country or track so they will have a love for it and be runners for life.  All three of them are pretty good at it.  They sure don't get it from me!

Back to School

Welcome to the 2013-2014 school year!  This year Drew started 4th grade, Mason is in 2nd, and my little Darcy started kindergarten!  The month between returning home from our trip until school started was kind of tough to adjust to.  There wasn't a routine to go back to since we left before school got out, so it felt like we were just kind of hanging out and waiting for school to start so we could have our new normal.  Drew and Mason started out well.  No surprise there.  Drew was a bit miffed in the beginning because the math was so easy but after I attended the parent's curriculum night I think Drew will be in for an exciting, challenging year full of growth.  I love the new vistas opening up to her as she gets older.  No more ABC's and adding and subtracting.  I'm excited to watch her learn this year.  Mason is doing great like always.  He doesn't get down or complain about much.  He's pretty easy going.  He had a kid throw a chair in class early in the year and totally forgot all about the brew-ha-ha it caused in his class till I asked him about it after reading the note sent home to parents.  He just goes about his business and I love that about him.  Its also exciting to watch him learn.  He is a great reader and I LOVE catching him reading a book at home instead of computer games or watching tv.  I love that he loves to read.  Drew too, she just finished the Hobbit and is now reading the Little House on the Prairie series.  I love having conversations with my kids about books and ideas.  Too much fun!

Darcy's first day was OK I think.  I cried pretty much the whole way home after I dropped her off.  My anxiety over her anxiety was out in force that day.  Her anxiety had been working up to the first day of school and I knew it wasn't going to be easy.  She was having trouble letting me go running again in the evenings and she stuck by my side like glue for weeks.  She probably went the first 3 weeks with tears in her eyes as we parted from each other but she is good to go now.  As long as we give lots of kisses and hugs and I love you's at the drop off.  She is doing great in her school work too.  Every day she tries to be the Superstar, where she gets 2 skittles at the end of the day instead of one for being so well behaved and on task.  And the little sweetheart always shares her skittles with me.  Even on a day where she isn't a Superstar we will take turns eating the one skittle she gets.  Its all warm and sticky from being held in her germy little hand, but I never refuse.  She is so kind hearted, I don't want to upset her.  She is getting the routine down and I think she is going so excel at this school business.  She just has to convince herself its OK to do it without mommy constantly by her side.  She is reading the Bob Books at home and is in the stage where she and I have to sound out just about everything and I have to spell everything to her.  Kind of an annoying stage I'll admit as a parent but I know its a short one and it leads to reading! I'm very proud of Darcy and her strength once again.

Bree got a princess backpack this year and for days wore it waiting for her first day of school.  Sorry sweetheart, I'm not ready to give you up yet.  She's only 3 so she has to wait another year till I will put her in preschool.  She wants nothing more than to be big like her siblings, but she also likes a warm, extended snuggle with mom.   I'll hold on to that for as long as I can!