Our ride on "Pomas"!

Our family had a very special opportunity offered to us from the Children's Hospital to go ride Thomas the Tank Engine! It was a very exclusive event because Thomas doesn't officially visit until Memorial Weekend but I guess for the couple of days ahead of time he shows up and give special families rides. We are LUCKY! There were hardly any people at all which was pretty awesome!

Duncan has been seeing the Thomas commercials for weeks and leave it to him to assume that he was going. He was telling everyone... he was so insistent that I even asked Matthew if he had spilled the beans. Even the day before he told Ms. Debi that "next week we were going to go ride the Thomas Train!" I told here is was T R U E but it was going to be a S U R P R I S E and that he wasn't supposed to know! She said oh well, it will be fun either way.

Way to ruin a surprise kid!

So we got up early to get the family ready and drop Asher off with Aunt Ami for a fun filled day of animal crackers and pretzels. We opted to take only the big kids... Asher could care less at this point! And Aunt Ami likes a dose of baby every now and I then. Again, we are so lucky we have willing fmaily members so we can do these fun things!

It was a long drive but the kids were very patient. I had read online to get there a half hour earlier than your tickets but after we got there I determined that was the time we had been given. So we had a little bit of a wait until things were ready.

At one point Sir Topham Hat came out and Ian was mesmerized. He stopped in his tracks and just stared! Everyone was watching Ian watch Sir Topham because it was so cute. Ian was so tiny and Sir Topham kind of bent his knees and knelt down to look at Ian while he stared. Ian warmed up and was giving him high fives but that's all he wanted to do now so Sir Topham would be gesturing and Ian would think he was still high fiving. I think they could have been good friends even though Topham is a grumpster on the show!

It was a great day for a train ride, it was still a little cool and breezy when you were going. Sitting in very slow moving metal box can get a little hot. It was a bit warm, but not terrible. The crew came by to chat, there were a few engineers on hand to visit with the kids. They also passed out gift certificate to a local burger place and a couple of free train rides for use this summer. That was nice, the train rides are $15+ a piece and it's quite a family event for us all to be able to go so those tickets will help us be able to go again.

Over all I think Ian had way more fun that Duncan. Duncan was hot and grumpy and Ian was swept away in the whole thing. Maybe they just show their excitement in different ways? Ian would be a complete mess in Disneyland! Makes me want to take him! Maybe he and I will leave all the others behind. Ha!

Asher says "Yay!" now, since he started clapping and all... he clapped and I opened my mouth and he said "Yay!" for me. It was pretty cute. I think he is way ahead in the 'sounds that actually make sens'e department than our other kids have been. Though his other milestones are tracking his brothers' near perfectly. He also gives gooey open mouth kisses and 'hugs' that are actually head bonks, good ones too.

It's been so much fun with Owen back, the two boys next to each other are ADORABLE! Owen just needs to rub the walking off on Asher because even though Asher is very steady on his feet, he doesn't want to walk. They will stand together and look adorable and Owen loves to give him loves and kisses.

We went to Asher's 15 month appointment and he is now average in height. Remember when he was 75th percentile? Those days are long gone. He is now average, with a big head... so one of our boy! He weighs under the 5th percentile, he is not even on the chart at a svelte 20lbs 6oz. He didn't even cry for his two shots!

The big boys and daddy went swimming at Aunt Kristen's this weekend but I sayed home with Dylan and Asher. Dylan's not all about outside of course, or being contained... and while she would be fine inside, there was still Asher. He isn't okay any where not baby proofed! I heard they had a lot of fun so yay for dad for taking him. (And apparently Aunt Suzie for saving Ian's life, or at least preventing a freak out.)

The other night Duncan said "Uhhmmm, I think Charlotte is going to come see me tonight..." Random. And so Matthew let Duncan call Uncle Tracy and leave him a message to see if they could come over. When he called back the next day he said Asa was going to come by but Charlotte was at a birthday party and wouldn't be there. I think all Duncan heard was that Charlotte was coming over because he did not know why Charlotte didn't come too! So we made plans for her to come over tomorrow for a visit.

Dylan really seemed to enjoy the ride, maybe even more than Duncan. Boo to me forgetting the cute bows for her hair though!

Yea, cute. Checking out the scenery

This is a funny angle, but yay for almost getting a pic of the whole family.
Even in my 'eating for two' state!

Notice even the people behind watching and pointing at him. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

Took Duncan a while to get used to the idea but he finally pushed past Ian for a hug. Ian was still mesmerized.

Waiting for the train.

Such a cute face

Duncan and Thomas. From a distance was just fine... 

Duncan had a death grip on Ian, wanting to make sure Thomas didn't run him over.

Brothers are the best.

Duncan had his arm around Dylan but was asking Matthew a question. So cute.

Bright SUN!

For the normal train rides there is a little bit of a bandit problem... Something tells me Thomas should be excluded from the robbery scenario.

Can you see how freaked out they were?

I mean... they are outside the train now and Duncan STILL has his hands up!

Tracy was feeling *ahem* under the weather... but he still smiled with the babies for a picture!

(Had to throw this in for proper representation!)

And oh yea, by the way...

First... I owe an apology to Shelley! I think all along I have been calling her Dylan's aide in the blog, not really thinking, but all along Dylan has been getting the special treatment and has been with the Special Education Teacher at the preschool! Not an aide! I have to give credit where credit is due... she earned this title! Eeeeep! Forgive me Shelley!

I say this because I thought Shelley was going to stay with my girl for another year and I was way bummed to find out she's not. Like way bummed. Dylan recognizes Shelley's name. When I get her ready for school and I ask if she wants to go to school and see Shelly she gets excited and her face lights up. She doesn't recognize many people by name but she does Shelley. I am nearly beside myself and I can't really dwell on it.

We went to the preschool end of the year program and art show on Monday and watch Duncan sing (kind of) songs with the class. They had made these shakers from paper plates and even though Shelley said Dylan HAD clapping with it, she was done. By the performance all she wanted to do was grab it from Shelley and throw it! I thought it was cute and funny, but I think Shelley was looking forward to her showing us how well she was doing with it. Dylan was having none of it!

Duncan actually sang so we went for a shake after, but before we picked up the littles, and he thought that was a swell lunch.

Noah's school program is today and I told Aunt Jill t keep an eye on the aide for the special needs girl he has in his class and tell me if her aide loves her. He is in the 4-5 year old class and I assume that would be Dylan's aide. Jill seems to think it would be impossible not to love Dylie... I hope so.

We will miss all of our teachers, I can't believe how hard this will be! Duncan is always talking about Ms. Ole (which is not really her name...) at home and how he wants to go to her house. You can tell that the teachers really care for him because of how much fun he has and he can be a handful! I hope I like all their teachers this much forever.

This week I had my council meeting and we all had to go get our picture taken as a group. Great. With this big old belly? After I put. On my black shirt for the day I asked Matthew if black was slimming and he said "Yes!" and then added "... If you are also standing behind something black!" That's my man!

Asher is close to walking now, he will stand independently and he bridges very well but when it comes to actually having to take steps he chickens out and bends down. The little turkey. He has taken maybe one or two steps but that's it. I give him two weeks. Owen runs around here like crazy which leads Ian to believe he is older than Asher and Ian is a bit rougher with Owen. He wants to chase him around, which Owen loves, but he is not as sure footed at Ian! Lots of mommy gasps when that chasing thing is happening! And it's happening with those guy a LOT!

We have been to church for a few weeks in a row, thanks to our friends who save seats for us and assist! It seems like they enjoy it, I hope they do... I cringed last week when Asher spilled the bag of Cheerios and sweet Mike, who is a grown man by the way, was down between the benches scooping them up! Oye! Going for a few weeks in a row doesn't seem like it would be brag worthy but it is! Oh it is!

Duncan filled out a form for Sunday School for Mother's Day

My mom is "5" years old..

My mom weighs "65" pounds.

My mom's favorite color is "blue".

My mom's favorite food is "salad".

My mom always says "be good!" and "don't slam the doors!"

My mom cooks the best "hot dog".

My mom's job is "clean toys".

My mom laughs when "I fall down".

If my mom had time she would love to "sleep and go on walks".

My mom and I like to "go on walks and drives".

My mom really loves "me the best!"

I love my mom because "of everything".

I especially love that I can cook a mean hot dog and I laugh at him when he falls down. Awesome.

Asher's well child check up is tomorrow morning but everything should be pretty cut and dry. Nothing too exciting I am sure. Then no big plans for the weekend other than making several trips to the Sev for some Slurpees!

And, oh yea... by the way for those who don't know, I am pregnant! (Okay okay, not a shocker to the people we are closest too but I bet there are a few stragglers!) Again! Why? Well, here are a few reasons.

• Our Pediatrician gave us a ringing endorsement. He told us if we wanted to have 23 more he would be happy to see us through them. (He says... until he retires... I have no idea how old he is! I hope he sticks with us!)
• Everyone says the teen years are the worst, might as well all muscle through it together!
• I can't leave the house as it is anyway, well, at least without a big to-do about it!
• I am old and my eggs are rotting (When I said this to a friend she said "Well, they aren't getting any younger that's for sure!" XOXO Sara!)  
• No really, my eggs are rotting and if anyone has experience in what CAN happen if things don't go quite right, it's us.
• We are kind of good at this parenting thing. (If I do say so myself.)
• I don't ever want to look back and say that we should have had one more. Oh who am I kidding, I probably can't prevent thinking this! We should always have one more!
• Duncan wants more babies. 6 boys and 6 girls to be exact. (Well, or 76 on a big day.) He promises to share his toys. So far we have one named Stupendous and another named Angie (who is the woman who he sits with in church!).
• Saying we had four under four wasn't fun enough. Five ages four and under has a nice ring to it!
• We finally got this church thing down (I think) nothing like throwing another wrench in it!  
• My sister in laws pretty much accuse me of being pregnant 100% of the time. Might as well live up to the expectation.
• There is an off chance Ian will start school next year for speech, I can't even have ONE baby at home! How lonely would that be?
• I find it really, REALLY hard to focus on losing my last 10-15 lbs of baby fat knowing I am just going to gain 60lbs when I get pregnant again anyway. Believe it or not, this is one step closer to my goal!  
• We have room in the car. (Not sure what we are going to do after this...)
• Not ready to give up the baby snuggles, but Asher almost is.

And the number one reason? I love my family, I love my kids and I love the dynamic they have together because we are a big family. I can't wait to watch them love eachother as they grow. Wait, yes... I can wait. Where is the pause button?

The new us

Boo hoo, wahhh! The kids and their teachers.

Duncan got these cool glasses from the birthday party he went to last Saturday. Totally wicked!
(Wow, just wow, at the state of the living room behind him!)

Will she ever look at a teacher this way again?

Pretty sure this was right before she grabbed the plate and threw it to the side. 

Heart and soul! Wish I didn't have to blur the other kiddos, it's an adorable picture with all three of them singing away with open mouths!

Love these boys

He is actually staring blankly at the TV (nice!) but I had to get a shot with the hat on. He loves it! 

 

It's the end of an era!

Ian can climb out of the pack and play! Now what is supposed to keep him in bed? Sheer obedience? It will be a fun few evenings trying to figure this one out!

I found out because after we put him and Asher to bed it sounded like a ruckus in there! A great time! A party was going on and we were missing it. So after a few minutes I went in to lay them back down and tell them goodnight and I opened the door just as Ian was leaning out of Asher's crib to turn the light on the night stand on! Then they both started jumping and giggling and laughing.

I called Matthew in and he noticed that the crib looked rather unstable with them jumping like that. All kids out of bed, no party and no sleep. Turns out some nuts were mysteriously removed from the crib set on the bottom. Sabotage! Or loose bolts that worked off, or a curious little mechanic of a four-year-old. Matthew fixed the crib. All kids back in bed with the door cracked so I could tell Ian to lay down when things got too exciting in there.

If we are fighting Ian to stay in bed in there, we may as well throw him in the room with Duncan and let them wear themselves out to sleep. Guess we will see! For now I just put him down for a nap in my bed, I went in once because he was standing and making faces at himself in the mirror, but after that he laid down and chatted himself to sleep. Good boy!

Before they boys take baths they are supposed to go pee - in the toilet - well, at least Duncan anyway because Ian doesn't quite get the peeing thing yet. But, because Pete is doing it, Repeat is not far behind. Ian runs over to the toilet and says "peeeee" so I lift him up and say pee, he says pee, we all say pee... And we wait. Pretty soon I hear "ssssssss..." from his mouth. So funny.

He says Thomas PERFECTLY. Well, perfectly when you are not looking at him. It sounds great but when you watch you can easily tell he is saying "Pomace" instead. We go "T, t, t, Thomas!" and he goes "T, t, t, Pomace!" it's a work in progress...

For some reason our boys get obsessed with the song "The Cave" by Mumford & Sons and there is a part where the bass drum pounds rhythmically. Ian from the very back seat of the car says "Pump it mommy, pump it! " in his tiny voice, fist in air flying about. Whenever we get in the car he says "Song, song, song, song" untile you put it on and then he said "Sooooong" and smiles.

He does talk a lot though now, says everything and it's adorable, only the parents can understand speak most of the time. He was talking to Matthew the other night and he said "Daddy silly!" in the cutest voice ever.

Shelley thinks Dylan is starting to clap at appropriate times. Often she claps with one fist/one palm, but it's her own special clapping. We know what she is doing. Shelley says she is starting to do it when they say "Yay! " and things like that. Every time she does it here we say "Yay! Clapping!! " and try to get her to do it more so we will keep on trying!

I also forgot to mention that Dylan walked up to Owen and leaned down to give him a little kiss! He stepped back because her face was coming right at him but she slowly stepped forward and did it again and he let her. Megan and I are witnesses! It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. She loves giving kisses but it was such a cute gentle kiss like she knew Owen was a baby. What a good girl!

In case you care about her bowels, which... Okay, I admit, I do, things are going good right now. I would rather have more than not enough. So every day I am giving her a teensy bit of Miralax, it really is a very small amount, with her meds to keep things softer.

She is still having spasms in spite of us having gone up slightly with the meds so I will be placing another call about that soon. They aren't bad and don't wear her out like they used to so we aren't terribly worried. 

This was the first shopping trip that Dylan realized standing in the cart is an option (not sure how I feel about that!). She kept trying to grab Asher's head and plant a kiss on him and he would duck away, but he didn't make it this time! He was not loving this.

We aren't buying their school pics for the fall (we just got them in the spring!) but here are the cel phone pictures of them.

Any wonder why this picture is blurry?

Or is there more of a wonder how we ever get any pictures in focus?

Ian was rolling aroundon the floor and rolling into Asher. Asher seemed to think it was one of the funniest things ever. 

My mom recently told me my blog is unfair, there are far too many pictures of certain children. I try to keep them even, but honestly? This is my problem. Ian when he eats pudding... 

Duncan when he eats pudding. Only maybe this shouldn't count as much as the failed five pictures before it when he was grimacing in an attempt to smile. He turned and looked and this one is pretty cute... so maybe don't judge by this shot since he is so handsome in it... ...case lost.

And beyond! And beyond!

Oye! So the bow thing! I left the bows out of Dylan's hair for a few days in the hopes that she would just forget her new hobby of pulling them out and throwing them on the ground. Then I moved to either one bow or two smaller bows. This seemed to be working quite nicely. Well, except for one thing... apparently Shelley was looking all over the place for her bow on Wednesday, asking the therapists if they had seen it anywhere, well, she only had one bow that day!! Her one bow was nicely placed over a pony where I had put it. Poor Shelley! I felt bad!

Duncan and Dylan got invited to a birthday party for a boy in their class. That's very exciting, it's our first birthday party with a school friend. I think Duncan is the most excited about finding out where Jeremy lives since he seems to be a bit preoccupied with where friend's live at the moment. I think if he could he would pop in on them all for a surprise visit. It might take some maneuvering though because that party is over Matthew's cello lesson and I have a baby shower for a friend the same day. Everyone who knows me knows that I don't DO showers. Like at all. But I really adore this little gal from our neighborhood so I actually wouldn't mind stopping in! Shocker!

I was so SO excited to score some Thomas the Train tickets for when he visits the Heber Valley Railroad this month. SO excited. They are quite pricey and splurging on it would be quite the mental adjustment for me but there was an opportunity to go and I jumped (almost literally) on getting the tickets. We plan to leave Asher with his Aunt Meggie that day because he doesn't care too much. Since Dylan was the one that scored her train loving brothers the tickets she gets to go. I hope she likes it too! We aren't going to tell Duncan though, it will be a good surprise for him! Pretty excited about that too! Squeeee!

We had PT this week at the park and I arranged a helper and everything. I thought the day would be perfect as it was a bit overcast and for a successful park PT session we must have a few things a) no sun and b) no wind. We were one for two. It was so windy! I knew she would hate it and she did. She wasn't all about it. Mike gets an A for effort though, he tried and she was having none of it at all. The boys did get to play a bit with their cousins. Asher is just like Duncan was and when I put shoes on him he didn't move at all so he sat on the curb by the park nearly the entire time. It was pretty cute. I forgot my camera but the day was a big fail anyway. I guess maybe pictures would have been a win... oh well! Dangit!

Speaking of pictures, we need to get the kids out with their cousins and do a picture day to get some cute ones, it's been a long time since we have done that. School pictures are just too pricey and not as fun as outside ones. We will see if we can coordinate that at some point and get some pictures of Asher off to his great grandmas!

Nothing exciting planned for this weekend, maybe daddy will come up with something... I really don't care what we do as long as Chinese food is somewhere in the plan! YUM!

Start 'em young (Tap Tap Baby by the way, all littles are fascinated by it and it's free!)

The underwear... You can't really tell in this picture but... I was doing laundry and Ian found a pair of Duncan's Toy Story underwear and he took his pants off and busied himself putting them on. (He is a VERY do it myself two-year-old) and he put them on with both legs in one leg hole so he didn't get them all the way up (but far enough). He then ran around the house saying "And beyond!! And beyond!!" I left them on and put his pants up over so daddy could experience the fun too! And beyond!

My boys. Ian was swinging Asher around and it looked not very fun and kind of painful (for Ian) but he didn't seem to mind at all. 

We went quite a bit higher in this swing, he felt much better about the ride than he did in the car swing. He was giggling.