May

May always seems to take forever to come but once it is here it is over in a flash! It is currently July and I am finally blogging about May :/ 

School is finishing up and the boys are beyond excited for summer to begin. Aaron graduated from Sweet Peas at Kids Village! He was so excited and could not wait to sing all the songs he had learned we have been hearing them for a month nonstop. Unfortunately another little girl was constantly standing in front me so my video was so so. Aaron sang so sweetly and knew every word! He loves Miss Jessie his homeroom teacher and Miss Lynette his music teacher. 

Next up was Ian who was Eagle of the Month in May! His teacher commented that "Ian is a hard working, hard playing and fun loving kid. He comes everyday ready to give it his all. He is always on task and following instructions." He has done excellent in school with reading but numbers are his favorite :) 

The last week the Kindergarten class took a field trip to the Schow Farms here in Pleasant Grove. It was amazing! Everyone had so much fun and loved going. The kids helped feed baby lambs, ate ice cream, watched a sheep be sheared, feed fish, road tractor. and a lot more. Below are some of the kids in Ian's class -yes I got to help chaperone which is always fun ;) 

Grandpa Schow had us all fooled. He had the kids wait and throw their food all in together but said he was sure the fish were sleeping. 

Watching the sheep be sheared was the highlight of our visit.

Some of Ian's best friends. Mitt, Luke, Gunner, Ian, and Max. 

They also had the Kindergarten singing program. That was entertaining as Ian usually is. The beginning he did not sing. Finally after a couple songs he started just opening and closing his mouth randomly. Then towards the end he jumped in and sang a few songs.

Ian celebrated his birthday at school May 29 (I will blog more on that later). He came home looking like this. Apparently it is better to were your birthday crown so that you look like a transformer. 

Last Day of Kindergarten! I can hardly believe he will be moving on to first grade. He had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Ericson and has already started complaining that she will not be his teacher for first grade. I myself might be a little excited and sad that first grade is all day :) 

So with school coming to an end you might be wondering what else happened in May? The weather was perfect high sixties low seventies so we had fun outside. With spring weather we did a little toe nail painting...even the boys,

Ava is still an angle. She has recently discovered that climbing on everything is a lot of fun. She is also a big eater -she can eat more than the boys.

She hates bows. With a passion :( She now starts crying when you put them on and then is full laughing and smiling as soon as she takes the bow(s) off. 

Every now and then if she is preoccupied she forgets that she has a bow on...it does't last very long. 

We have also come to the conclusion that Ava has way way to many summer clothes.  All grandparents must stop buying summer clothes immediately! You may look at this picture and think thats not too bad. Let me remind you that these are only Ava's dresses (even more dresses have been added since taking this picture). She also has drawers that are completely stuffed full of shirts, shorts, capris, onsies, swimwear, pjs, etc  it is a girls dream. So if grandparents get the urge to continue shopping think winter -warm clothes, fall colors, and probably 18-24 months ;) Maybe hard to say with this little petite thing.

Tim's mom also sent the boys caterpillars. I can't believe how entertaining it was for everyone. All of them hatched and were beautiful painted lady butterflies. Unfortunately due to the rain we were not able to release them into the wild right away. So only one survived :(  

Ava loves when the boys go swimming and have lessons. Usually she has fun playing with the diving rings. Recently she is obsessed with trying to get into the pool. 

She also likes to pull daddy's ears. Daddy doesn't seem to mind it...hehe

We met up with my family a couple times this month. Aaron loved going swimming with grandpa.

Ava loves to fall asleep when grandpa is holding her. Grandpa is the only one she will ever fall asleep with. She normally hates to be held and always prefers to be in her crib.

I also like to put Andrew to work when I am visiting -I usually take no as a challenge. Honestly who can deny such a cutie and sweet little baby.

Aaron loves to hid things. After I returned from my parents house my keys went missing for a week. I had asked Aaron many times and finally one day he informed me he hid them in the computer desk. This has been a frustrating stage :/

Daddy is still here :) He enjoys cooking and taking pictures of his food to share with other people that might actually appreciate it -unlike his family.

We also just finished planting our little garden on the deck. Hopefully it grows and produced wonderful vegetables. Although we do like watching Ian "hair" grow in the house.

Museum of Natural Curiosity

The new children's museum is about to open at Thanksgiving point. Because we are members I was able to get us tickets to their members only event! We were able to reserve out tickets for the weekday and first thing in the morning. It worked out perfectly. We ALL had a blast and there was not two million people there! This table entertained us for a solid 20 minutes until we realized we needed to see the rest of the museum, Tim and I are seriously trying to figure out how to put one of these in our house...who needs a coffee table. You can see the colors change based on the elevation...it is snowing on Tim's mountain, and Ian is creating a lake in the middle of his mountain. The boys loved every minute! Like what would it feel like to stick your head out the window of a car going 80 mph? Well your skin would start flapping in places you didn't know could flap.   

Ava loved the baby table. She happy sat watching the other children splash and get completely soaked. She held onto her couple of toys and smiled at everyone.

When I say we ALL had fun I truly mean it. I came away with just as many silly pictures of Tim as I did the kids. 

The boys were able to easily escape jail. For Tim it took a little more effort ;)

This was another one of the boys favorites. They loved making hot air balloons and helicopters. 

That afternoon Tim and Ian did the ropes course. Ian was so excited to go did an amazing job. He got a little scared at one part but that was because he couldn't reach the ropes up above and had to rely on his harness more. The pictures do not do justice to how high they actually are. I took this picture from the second floor.

We headed back home that afternoon so that Ian could attend school. That evening Tim and I headed out for a date night. We had a babysitter and everything -it made us feel so old. The next day we met up with my parents. They were staying in Provo for a work conference my mom had. The boys had no problem joining them for swimming.

It was such a great weekend! We can't wait to return to the museum of natural curiosity just not sure how long it will take to die down (crowd wise) a little. I have a feeling it may never. It is definitely a must see and do no matter what age you are!

Ava Eleven months

This little cutie is now 11 months! I really don't believe it. I use my fingers to double check that is truly has been 11 months and unfortunately it has :( I can't believe how fast she is growing! We have way too much fun dressing her up and her Aunt Brittney sent some darling clothes just before she was born that she is now big enough to wear. So we have had even more fun! Does it get any cuter?!

We had little hope that she might actually grow up to be mellow and little quiet... she has confirmed that she too wants to be heard. She loves babbling but lately her babbling is making sense. She can say and understands mama, dada, baba, more, hi, bye, Ian and has just started saying Aaron. It is no surprise that she listens to us...she sounds just like me shouting for Ian.

The boys have been doing great! After heading back to school they have been a little exhausted but doing good. Oh the joys of the iPad! Since having their tonsils out (when they could be on the iPad 24/7 if it made them actually sit down and rest) we have been cutting back our electronic time trying to get back to our normal schedule. I am happy to report that we are finally back down to 0-30 minutes a day :) Unfortunately my house has also become much louder as a result.

If the boys bedroom door is open this little one can usually be found there. If she is alone she usually hollers for someone (Ian) to come and play with her. If she is quiet it means the boys have left their Legos out and she is attempting to shove them in her mouth...ahhhhh!

Nana sent us caterpillars. I have been pleasantly surprised how much fun these caterpillars have been. They are currently cocoons and should turn into painted lady butterflies in a few days :) 

With the warm weather approaching we have been loving spending time outside.

 Sibling love :)

In other news this little piggy is just that! She loves food. She is still not a fan of ground turkey but that is about it. As you can see she loves remotes, climbs onto anything, and loves to make a mess. If the pantry door is open she can be found pulling everything off the lower shelf.

Tim has been set on making sure she is no scaredy cat. She absolutely hated this for the longest time. Just recently she has decided it is hilarious. You can see that if she goes too high she is still a little unsure. 

She also loves her rocking chair. She can be found many times watching Baby Einstein or simply just chillin. 

 think we are getting pretty close to walking :) Ignore my frog/man voice I have a lame cold. Also that fact that she is kind of drowning in her clothes. She is just about out of 12 month clothes but not quite big enough for 18 month...so it is either too tight or too loose. At the rate she is growing the loose stage will not last long.

Tonsils and Adenoids

The time had come for both of the boys to have surgery to remove their tonsils and adenoids. Aaron had a horrible double ear infection in march that happen to cause both tubes in his ears to fall out. After another ear infection a couple weeks later the pediatrician recommended we go back to the ENT. While at the ENT he mentioned that it would be a good idea to have Aaron's tonsils removed. He asked if he had trouble sleeping at night, difficulty breathing, snoring, etc. I have always considered myself unlucky when it came to my children sleeping. Both boys have had horrible night terrors and snor like a trucker. Aaron wakes up usually 2-3 times a night. Tonsils are rated in stages one -four. One being normal size, four being so big they are touching. It was no surprise that both boys were a three and Aaron nearly a four. We had been thinking about have Ian's tonsils removed for a while due to the fact that he gets strep throat and tonsilitis constantly. So with our summer schedule filling up and not wanted to have the boys missed the last few weeks of school we decided the week after Easter would be the best. Tim had 8 days off and hopefully that would be enough time for them to recover. If only they would have given us a two for one pricing!

So to prepare the boys for their surgery I pulled out the old Huggy Bear Video that Logan Regional Hospital used to us when teaching children about having their tonsils and adenoids removed. The boys could not believe that I was the little girl in the video and that Grandma was in it too. I also completely forgot until my mom reminded me that I taught the class at the hospital for a few years (again no idea how I forgot about that). After watching the video the boys were so excited to have their tonsils removed -they could not wait to have ice cream and popsicles all day and night.

The morning of the surgery the boys were filling great! The hospital completely spoiled them with stickers, new pillow, beautiful quilt, and teddy bear for each of them.

The boys did great in surgery. Aaron headed back first and enjoyed racing the doctor down the hallway in the rolling bed. Then it was Ian's turn -apparently he took out a nurse he was rolling so fast ;) The staff was amazing. The boys of course had to bring their favorite stuffed animals with them which meant they each had about 4 stuffed animals. The doctors let them bring back all of their patients and made sure they were well taken care of too.

 Sorry gross...top is Aaron's tonsils and the bottom are Ian's. They are definitely big -considered that is the doctors fingers and Aaron's are a even a little bigger than Ian's being a couple years younger. As you can see Ian has one that is much bigger than the other -this one had a lot of stones from reoccurring infection.  The boys were in surgery at 8:30 and 9:00 and we were home with the boys laying in bed by 11:00 am! 

We moved Aaron's bed into the family room so the boys had a comfortable place to lay down and rest. Ava thought it was hilarious. Unfortunately by day 2 she figured out how to climb up the bed, which led to her climbing up the couch, and us quickly grabbing her before she climbed over the back of the couch.  

The next 3-5 days were spent making sure the boys received their medicine every 3 hours morning and night. The boys each slept in our room for the next couple of weeks. We pulled out the camping cots and one boys slept on each side of us. Occasionally we would all sleep a little longer then we should have at night -which meant the boys would wake up and were due for medicine a hour ago. Oh the nightmare! It would take us hours to get them to take the medicine. The refused to take it because it hurt to swallow but wanted the medicine because they were hurting. It was a constant battle. After about 5 days Aaron decided he absolutely hated medicine but he really still needed it or we couldn't get him to eat. We would give him medicine and he would throw it up. Then it was guessing if he actually got any or not. Finally we ended up with a system. He would count to three and we would squirt a little medicine in his mouth then he took two drinks of ice cold water. Yes, it had to have a lot of ice! Each dose of medicine took a half hour to get down if we were lucky but usually about an hour. As long as we kept the boys caught up on their medicine they were great! 

We had so many wonderful friends and neighbors stop by to visit the boys and bring ice cream, popsicles, snow cones, even ice cream in the form of a cupcake. They loved it! Aaron wanted to eat Smokin Apple mac n cheese all the time. Ian loved baby oatmeal with brown sugar. I would usually always make oatmeal for the boys in the morning. One morning Tim made them oatmeal and they refused to let me make it again. Then I watched as Tim dumped a Tablespoon or more of brown sugar in their tiny bowl of oatmeal...problem solved! They also loved toast. I realize that sounds insane since it is toast...crunchy hard toast. But when you slather it in butter with a little cinnamon and sugar they were in heaven. We also made a few batches of banana muffins that the boys inhaled. 

After 10 days of constantly alternating Ibuprofen and Tylenol, waking up to popsicles melting everywhere,

being awake for hours upon hours during the night and not realizing that by the time you roll out of bed it was nearly noon.

These boys are finally feeling great and back to normal! We are eating normal foods...hello meat! The boys are sleeping so so much better. We have seen the most significant difference with Ian. He is like a whole new child. Ian wakes up feeling refreshed, is sleeping normal hours 8:30 - 8:00, and not so over emotional during the day. Aaron is waking up occasionally at night but usually only once and he has not been having night terrors. Those of you that have had children who have night terrors understand what a wonderful blessing it is to not have to deal with those! We are both hoping that things continue to get better :) Love Aaron's scary spider picture (his drawings are really beginning to make sense). 

Family Pictures

 The second week of April we met up with my family and the wonderful Lindsay for our annual family pictures! The weather was perfect and the location was beautiful! The kids were so not in the mood for pictures thankfully Grandma and Grandpa picked them up some drinks before we arrived and that definitely helped cheer up the boys. I clustered many of the photos together to spare you from 20 pages of pictures :)

This little cutie was so good! She even left her bow on :) Which my friend Alexa at The Posh Frippery made for her. I made her little shoes just as we were running out the door.

Now the hard part -trying to decide what to hang on our wall!