Greyson's Birthday and More

Greyson had a birthday! He's now four. I had SUPER high expectations of four but thus far... it's proving to be just like three. I remember being concerned about Asher not caring about what anyone thought of him, or responding to you, and having just a general bad attitude and he is the BIGGEST sweetheart now so he did come around. (Seriously, he's like... the best.) Right now Greyson's having his turn at not being very personable... but we are working on it. And four will bring big things.

But for now, he's just demanding. It's like dealing with myself a little...

He had a great birthday - he got a bit spoiled between grandma and his parents... he loved it. Traci and Shane and grandma Shirley send him cards with money in them. He LOVED it. after he opened them he said "Yay! Let's get more cards!"

Then I did what I haven't been able to do with the other kids... I put him in the car and we ran right to the store so he could spend his money on something he can choose himself. He picked two Paw Patrol guys and his total came to $14.92 - The cashier handed him his $.08 and his toys and he thought it was the best thing EVER. Birthdays are the BEST.

I put together a bunch of questions for Greyson's and asked them over the course of a day so I wouldn't lose him as he got distracted and started answering all the questions the same... but I think I tossed it... I have no idea where it went so you get these impromptu few questions.

Favorite Show? Team Umizumi
Favorite movie? Big Hero 6
Favorite Song? Big Hero 6 song
What are you going to be when you grow up?: Police Officer
How many kids are you going to have: 100
How many girls? 100
How many boys? Infinity
What does daddy do for work? Gets money
What does mommy do for work? I don't know
What does mommy like to do? Get money like dad.
Favorite thing to eat? Umm, I lot of food.
Favorite fruit? Bananas, I love bananas
Favorite snack? Pizza
Favorite Book? Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Who's your favorite person? mom "Awww, it's me?" "Yea, I love you."

Asher has become this amazing little artist! Every day he comes through the doors and wants to color, draw or paint and he makes these amazing creations, and books, and even long paper pieces that he's glued together that he can walk on on the floor. They have numbers and shapes and letters and words. I love it, I love all the amazing things he draws... the only problem I have with it is that he takes them and gives them all to his teacher! I have to hurry and snap pictures of them if I ever want to see them again!

He is SO smart, he loves Math. I have a bunch of flash cards I ran out and got (because they were $3 and not a bad thing to have around) and he plays with them almost every day. He looooves being right and with math, there is always a right answer. Kind if the reason I like math. He is also reading really well. All if this he is totally self-taught. We read to him and stuff and help when he needs it but he is totally the driver of learning new things. It's so cute.

Ian also loves Math and loves the flash cards but has a hard time not being smarter than Asher to his face... Like asking harder questions because he knows the answer and knows Asher doesn't which drives Asher nuts. But with some moderation they both learn something. Asher some new math and Ian how to not be a butt face to younger kids. :)

Ian finally got his 'take home library' book from school and the first book he brought was HARD. It's instructional reading level so it's slightly higher than his personal reading level but I was like what?! It didn't help that they were all like alphabet tongue twisters with "gazelles galloping and grazing in the grass". Here in Florida they have a series of questions you ask them after they read to make sure they process the information and you talk over new words (like zeppelin). His parent teacher conference is next week and I am sure she will say she loves him, everyone loves Ian.

Learning new words as we are reading is fantastic until you get this big idea to read The BFG with the big boys (sans Greyson) and all the freaking BFG does is say made up words. AmIright? I finally had to say "I don't know what it means, I have no idea, he makes up words! He's FUNNY." I hadn't ever read the book so I had no idea what I was getting myself in to. The book is perfect though because it has a hundred million chapters that are only a few pages each so if the boys are being good I can go on but if they are losing it there is always a good stopping point. Duncan could buzz through the book so the pace is kind of killing him but we are having fun reading together so he deals. Generally we work on homework and then read a little while I am watching for Dylan's bus, so 20 minutes of reading for everyone.

Duncan and I are pressing on in school but it's just HARD. He has to work really hard. So I am trying to tone down my personal drive for A's and just tell myself nothing matters yet anyway and by not doing as well now he will learn the tools needed to try hard later. Right? He's not worried when he doesn't do well on a test, I am not making him paranoid, don't worry. We just talk about what he's done and work through anything that he's missed or just tried to hurry on. I think he will actually start to do better just so he doesn't have to have the one on one time with us going over every problem! It seems like we are hitting our stride with homework time where we work together for part and then he works independently and doesn't get frustrated or procrastinate but gets the work done and we move on with the fun. It's been a great week, I hope we can keep it up.

We really haven't done much of anything super fun in the last couple of weeks. Still swimming a lot now that they little cold spell has passed. And by cold, I don't mean really COLD... but when it cools down at night (like below 75) the pool loses all the heat it's collected during the day and it's too chilly to swim! There is a heater but apparently it costs a hundred million dollars to heat so we are chicken. It's warming back up now and we had Nohemi and Ezra come play for a while yesterday. I love those little peanuts and she is hilarious because she's the only girl with four boys in the pool and she is definitely the center of attention. (Duncan's too cool. :) )

I ran to the scout store with some people from church the other day and it's a pretty cool store! There are things to do, things to build, things to COLLECT! Duncan would love it, it's far away but when I go again I will have to make sure to bring him because I think he will get a kick out of it. I had to get my leader shirt... which was $50... holy smokes, it was expensive. And then I had to get all the patches. I brought everything out the other day with the intention of sewing on the patches and I couldn't even pin the big patch in place to even start! Where are my mothers when I need them?! So I googled and there is some or of sticky patch stuff that works alone but can also hold them in place if you want to stitch the edges... I ordered it. Can I get an 'Amen' for a no sew option?

Matthew has been out of town this week and it will be good to have him back! Duncan had early scouts this week so I had to bring him and the other four kids to my scouts... With the 6 boys that were supposed to be there and the 6 kids that were not it was a bit crazy but I think we got the job done. It's such a crazy job for me to have with Matthew traveling but whatever, you get what you get right? And now I have a new $50 scout shirt so by golly I am going to keep on keeping on.

Greyson with the puzzle he got from grandma Kathy. 

This is how much we love our missionaries. 

Several weeks ago the sister missionaries had casually talked about a gator head that they were in a contest with other missionaries to get. So Matthew went out and got each of them their own. We are having them over for dinner next week but we had to hurry up with the gifting because one was last minute transferred with only two weeks left before she goes home! She won't even have to unpack. Happy for her, but sad to see her go!

This is how you make an alligator head kind of cute... 

At the bus stop - These little ones were having fun all trying to collect under the same umbrella. Cute!

Sneaky church picture.
We take church ipads away at 8 so I am not sure what Matthew and Duncan are working on over there. This was after Matthew got done actually talking on the stand and came back to his seat for the rest of the meeting so I wouldn't be the lone adult on the back row. 

This gum ball machine went to Mrs. Grabb this morning. 

Special visitors! (And school and stuff...)

We had a special visit last weekend... and I don't mean the hurricane!

My kind of hurricane though, for real, the only thing exciting was a tornado warning for a half hour on a Friday. Other than that, schools were closed and it was just a big rain and wind storm. The pool got a TON of water and it's all of a sudden freezing! Anyway, I mean a visit from Jared and Aarika and their cute little family!

They came into town on Saturday and crashed here. It was SO FUN. Not only was it a little piece of home, but they are good people with a cute little flock of well-behaved children. We swam, a lot... and did some fun things around the house but that was about it which is perfect! Hoping some of that well-behaved-ness rubbed off here instead of us rubbing off on them!

Toward the end of their visit we asked the boys who they were going to marry and at least got Ian, Duncan and Asher paired off to the girls. It was highly convenient that they each chose a different one! Of course, I am not sure they know at all what marriage entails yet... we will work on that later.

We were all so happy to have them here and then sad to see them leave. On our family meeting the day they left it was all the kid's "worst part of the day". Duncan is IN LOVE with Bea. He thinks she's the best thing that ever happened and is convinced he needs a little sister now. I told hime if we couldn't have Bea he was out of luck and her mom said no, so we don't get to keep her. He still busts out with an "I love Bea!" a week after they left.

Greyson and I have been making the most of mommy and me time this week. Of course he does so much better when he has a little bit of an outlet. Our church branch has Wednesday play date activities they try to plan to meet somewhere or do something fun that they saw at the library or whatever. We hadn't gone until this week and we went to the beach for an hour or so with two moms and their three kids. They still play independently so the kids just played in the sand for the most part and didn't say a whole lot to eachother. Greyson thought it was amazing though so we will have to go back.

Assuming I can handle the sand.

Because... sand.

During the month of September annual zoo pass members can get two people in to the zoo with them for free so that was the plan for Friday, I am not opposed to buying a pass for Greyson and I to go but I think I would at least like to see what I am paying for first right? I volunteered to drive because honestly, the huge van is totally excessive when I am not running all of the kids around every day. As is, we are only in there one day a week, Sunday, and that's it. To down size or not to down size... that is the question. I mean, when there is seven of us, there's seven of us an a wheelchair.

At the zoo there were lots of us, like... 8? 10? Most pushing big strollers. There was hardly anyone there and it was great. Hot, but great. We didn't see much of the zoo because we weren't there that long and we were traveling at a 3 yo's pace but it was still a great adventure and fun.

They played in a little splash pad there towards the end. Cute to watch, but it was hardly a splash pad by Utah standards. Total weak sauce. But it was cool water and they were hot kids so it was totally fine to them right?

Dylan had an appointment with Neurosurgery this week. It was really nothing at all exciting, you just need to see a neurosurgeon to be able to get a referral to the spinal defect clinic. Interestingly, most of the doctors you see at the clinic are the same as in Utah except in Utah Neurology ran the clinic instead of neurosurgery and Neurology doesn't even attend! So you have to go see them separately. However... to balance out the goodness, you can actually see GI here in the clinic instead of having to make an appointment there so I guess that's good.

We have an appointment for clinic in October but I think Matthew might be out of town and it's at 12:30 so I am not sure I can go and get the kids home from school? A neighborhood and church friend offered to maybe get her kids from the bus, then come to my house to play if the kids can get off the bus and come home with each other and be here for ten minutes until she gets here. That should be easy? Ugh... I don't know. But if we don't go in October we won't be able to go again until December since they only do the clinics once a month.

I did like the Neurosurgeon, she was great... I had requested a lot of Dylan's records and scans and she basically took them all to go through and add to their system . Unfortunately, the scans they sent did not include her brain and spine MRI's (What?! I said all scans!) so I had to request those and we will hopefully get them. They just need a baseline in her records so we don't have to repeat them and if there is an emergency they have something to work off of. Hopefully this new request does the trick and I can get them to her. A neighbor sent me a text and told me that this neurosurgeon was the one that did surgery on her daughter for her chairi malformation and they really liked her so YES! All that calling around and trying to get into the right place was apparently helpful.

I did have to drive in to downtown for it and I will have to for the clinic which is a bit intimidating but clearly we could handle it. My friend said if you want any kind of serious healthcare you go down town so that's what we will do!

I also went to Ian and Duncan's 'curriculum chat' which is like a back to school night for them. Ian's was on Tuesday and it was great. His teacher is AMAZING. She's quick though, which probably makes her a great teacher for their quick brains! She said she has the sweetest class this year and she would say if she didn't. She is able to have them do some different table activities while she does one on one and testing and she said she normally isn't able to do that with her classes until into October so they have been great and they are moving along nicely.

Duncan's was a little bit of a different story. I have really been struggling with him because he has had SO MUCH homework. Like a ton. The other week he had to do some homework on an elevation map, locating and listing high and low point. I asked him if he knew what an elevation map was and he didn't... So homework on a subject he didn't know about? Hmmm...

He brought home a test from school and he got a 69% and it had NOTHING to do with the homework we did. I was kind of irritated, if he needed to focus on those concepts why weren't they in his homework? Help me help you, for real. However, a lot of his marked off things were what they call "non-negotiables", punctuation and spelling... his bad. We talked to him about slowing down and checking his work.

Needless to say I was a bit irritated about the not studying. I thought homework was re-enforcing what they learned in class, not having to teach them entirely new concepts. It was only the beginning of the challenges that I have had with his class but in spite of that he LOVES it. He loves school and he adores his teacher. So the fact that we(me) are struggling with homework wasn't reflected in his enjoyment of learning... yet, which is good.

I wrote the teacher an email, I didn't want to be *that* parent but for real... come on. I was nice though, I promise. I genuinely am grateful that she is fostering a love of learning but I did want to check on a few things. She said she is working on better aligning their homework to the testing and it will fit better. But then I went to this back to school night and guess what folks? It's not her... it's US. There are things she mentioned that Ian's working on getting the concept of this year but Duncan's missed out on two years of learning the Florida way of doing things. He's behind in math, he's behind, not in reading, but in reading comprehension, he's behind in the non-negotiables, he just a little behind... and he's not a behind kid.

Basically I got out of back to school night that we are going to have to bust our buns for the next month or so to get him caught up but that once he is caught up it will be easier and worth it. I came home and had a one on one with him, spent 10 minutes and taught him some multiplication that he should have probably already known (0, 1, 2, 5, and 10) and sent him on his way. He gets it, and he's a fast learner. I was concerned though...

Then Friday he brought home the assessments for reading and Math and reading he is totally off the charts (higher than expectation/goal, higher than the school average, higher than the district) and in Math he's in the target zone where the school and district averages are below the zone entirely. I don't know what to think now! Is it possibly she pushes them hard now so they have a great 'most improved' grade? Is that the way they do things here? He doesn't seem to be discouraged which is great. We will just keep plugging away and busting our buns. Gosh I hope he continues to love it.

We were tired of the hurricane weather and finally just decided to go swimming in the rain!

Jared's trying to get out of the picture, sorry Jared, this was the best one.
(My camera kept fogging up, welcome to Florida...)

This baby turns FOUR tomorrow!

Oh my Bea, honestly. I really do want to keep her.

It's my baby Ike! 

Ian, Lenna, Asher! Brave Lenna, learning to swim!

Everyone needs goggles AND sunglasses, totally normal right?

The big kids were still swimming, the little ones came in for Play Doh

More of this cute face... and some other goof balls.

Duncan obsessing over Bea.

Honestly, I would take him too.
He was a little thrown off his game here but he'd get used to it. 

Zoo trip! Look at all these yahoos! 

Julie and my yahoos.

Two peas in a pod these two. They behave the exact same. 

They are very, very three.

Okay, so these two are adorable! Her birthday is at the end of the month. 

 Uh huh.

Adorable.

Just a cute one of the pickle I snapped at her appt.