Gone Fishin'

Well, all three of the older kids have accomplished something that their daddy has tried his whole life to do. And done it twice. They caught fish!!! All three of them caught two fish a piece! You should have seen their faces! They were so excited. I have video and I have pictures so I will be working to get those online soon. We drove up to Tonto National Forest and went to the Tonto Creek fish hatchery and played around there for a while. Then we went up to a place that specializes in kids fishing. It was a nice little place, very pretty, and they had a little lake. More like a pond really, that was stocked with rainbow trout. You got a bamboo fishing pole and homemade bait from the shop and went "fishing". Similar to shooting fish in a barrel if you ask me!! All you really had to do was dip your hook into the water and pull it out with a fish on it! Kaylee caught her second one in less than 3 seconds. Not hardly fair for the fish, but for the kids and their goldfish attention spans, it was perfect! Good size trout too. Very yummy, I might add. Jake ate more than any one else. He really liked it. He told us he wanted to save a piece for Abbey, our cat. We told him OK, just to put it on the side of his plate. He couldn't help himself, and ate it anyway! After we caught the fish we had a picnic lunch right there by the pond and after we ate, the kids asked if they could go over by the fish pond again. It is surrounded by a wall to help keep kids from falling in and so we told them they could. I told Jake to be careful. His response? "Don't worry mommy, there are no sharks in there!"

Armed and Dangerous

Jaden has a tooth. Such a scary thing for me!! It finally broke through yesterday afternoon. I was excited though because I thought that might mean a few hours of sleep for me last night. Boy, was I wrong! The tooth is the top right front tooth. He'll look like a jack-o-lantern if he doesn't get a few more in soon!

Slow down, I want to get off!!

Things have been CRAZY busy here lately! The kids all have been taking swimming lessons and doing very well considering that it is their first time. Jaden has a new walker and is so very mobile in it. He loves crusin' around! He is also getting his first tooth! It is almost through and I expect it'll be in either tomorrow or the next day. He and Jake have had their first fight too. Jake had a toy car and was playing on the floor by Jaden and he set the car down between his legs to do grab another nearby toy (a superman I think) and Jaden was real quick and grabbed the car. Jake of course yelled at him and took it back. Jaden moved on and grabbed the superman and Jake again yelled at him and tried to grab it back. Jaden wasn't going to be pushed around again and he held on. He and Jake both had the toy and Jaden starts screeching. He yelled and you could tell he was mad! Jake was so surprised he let go! The fight goes to the 10 month old! Jacob has also been doing really good. He has decided that he really likes books. He used to have the attention span of a gnat and would only sit still for a few pages. Now he's on the attention span level of a goldfish and will sit for 2 or 3 books at a time! He likes to be read to which is great, of course! Ethan is doing well. He is starting to read more each day and he is finally starting to get over the whinny thing he picked up when Bryan left. It has helped that we made him a poster of a race track and every day that he is good he gets a race car sticker to put on it. Kaylee is growing... again. I think she's gained an inch in the last month and its all leg! She has been bugging me to cut her hair again. She wants to go real short this time, a little pixie cut. I think she'll be ADORABLE, but I want to make sure that she is really sure that's what she wants to do. It's shorter that anything she's had before. It would be just at 10 inches off if we go through with it. Just long enough to donate! She's been reading a lot lately. i am trying very hard to get them all to the library once a week, but it just doesn't happen. I have been busy trying to keep up with them all and in the few minutes of spare time that I do have, I have been trying to get the video we made for Father's day onto the blog. Its having problems and today I looked at it and said, "you know, I've spend well over 12 hours trying to get this thing to work and that could have been at least 24 new posts for Bryan... " Hence the new post!

Ants and Hamdogs

It seems that today is picnic themed. Ants and ham dogs... One bad, one really funny looking! The ants story first. Get the so sad, really bad out of the way first. After swimming lessons today, as we got ready to go home, I noticed that Jaden was stinky. So I opened all the doors on the oven on wheels (aka "the van") and laid Jaden on the floor of the back seat to change him. I let the other 3 stay on the side walk right by me as the neighborhood we are in is very quiet and no cars to worry about. A really pretty cat came right up to the kids and they asked if they could pet it. I told them I would rather they didn't. The girl that owns the cat stuck her head out of the door and told me that the cat was extremely gentle and friendly, so I told them to go ahead and pet her. They petted her for a minute or so, when Kaylee says, "mom there are ants all over the cat" I said, "oh, well then you guys better not pet her". I wasn't too worried about the ants as most of the ants around here are little black ones that are harmless, but no sooner than I said that and Jake starts screaming at the top of his lungs. I look back at him and he is covered in ants and they are biting. I started swatting them off of him. Several of the ants took 2 or 3 swats to get them off because you could see them hanging on with their jaws. I finally got what I thought was all of them, carried him around to the other side of the van where his car seat is and set him up in it. I got one arm into the strap and he starts screaming again. There is one big black ant on his stomach and it is just biting away. It took a second to get it off and get him back out of his seat to check for more. That one ant had bit him 7 times on the tummy. He had bites all over his body, I had several one my hands, and Kaylee had 2 on her ankle. Ethan it seems, is either too tough or too sour for the ants to bite. I got them all in and headed for home. Home is less then 2 minutes driving time, but by the time we got there, Jacobs bites had more then doubled their size. Each one was the size of a pencil eraser. The bites on Kaylee's leg and my hands were still small. I doused the bites with Benedryl spray and then called his pediatrician. Since he wasn't having trouble breathing he said to give him Dimetapp (he couldn't have oral benedryl cause I had used the spray on him already). It took about 30 minutes for the antihistamines to work and the bites to go down. Tonight, they are little red spots. Jake and I counted them earlier when I was checking them to make sure they were going away. I quit counting at 37. He is paranoid about ants now. This afternoon he started screaming and pointing to my arm. He thought that there were ants on me (there wasn't, they were only freckles.) The good part of the day was dinner. Ethan and Jake helped me make it. I bought the wrong buns from the store. I thought I got hamburger buns, but I got hot dog buns. So we made hamburgers to fit the buns! The kids thought our Ham dogs were GREAT! I thought they were a very unappetizing shape. Grandpa called them "poo burgers" when the kids weren't around.

bad boys and bugs

Yesterday, mom and I took all four kids shopping. At the second to last store that we needed to go to, they were really good so Grandma told them that they could have these little "bug catcher kits". It consists of a net, 2 little vials with magnifying lids and plastic tweezers. The boys each got one and Kaylee got a little butterfly wind chime. Then we got to the last store. Jake made it down the first 3 isles, fussing, whining and being stubborn and three. Hit the fourth isle and he hit meltdown mode. I carried him screaming and crying in one arm and Jaden in the other all the way up to the front of the store and out the door to the van where we waited for grandma and the other 2 kids to finish the errand. Today, he was whining and fussing and I told him to go outside and catch some bugs with his new bug catcher. He asked where bugs lived and I told him to go out and look by the tree in the backyard. "Bugs live in trees?" he asked. "Um... well, some live by trees and some live in trees" OK, and he ran off outside. He ran right up to the tree. Held his net out and looked up at the tree and started calling the bugs. "Bugs! Bugs! Where are you bugs! Come here, bugs!" We about died laughing. Tonight we babysat ALL the other Airzona cousins. Jessie, Trevor, Aubree, TJ and Ben. Plus our four so it was a packed house. The oldest ones and Jake were supposed to be taking turns on the trampoline. I was inside with Aubree, TJ, and Jaden (Ben hadn't arrived yet), when Kaylee comes running in and says that the net on the trampoline fell down. I head out the door to see what she is talking about and I hear Jake SCREAMING at the top of his lungs. I ran over and here he comes, blood pouring down his face. After I got him calmed down, iced his lip to stop the bleeding and got him cleaned up, I started interrogating the kids to figure out what happened. I finally got a good look at the trampoline too. The safety net is more than half off. I finally pieced together what had happened. Instead of the rule of only 2 people at a time on the tramp, they had all 5 of them up there. Jessie who is 10, Trevor 7, Kaylee 8, Ethan 6, and Jake 3 were all up there at the same time. They were playing "crack the whip" and flinging the person on the outside around on the tramp. Evidently, they fell as they were swinging Jake around and all 5 hit the net at the same time. It isn't made to support that much weight at one time. Down came the net, over the side went Jake. We are very lucky that a busted lip and scrapped hands are his only injuries. The trampoline is really tall, taller than Jake is. He could have easily broken bones or hit his head. Needless to say they are grounded from the trampoline for what could very well be forever.

Busy, busy!!

Well, it's been a few days since my last post. Our Internet connection has been down for several days now. It is just amazing how dependant on the computer I have become. It's actually quite sad. I feel left out of the loop and it's only been a few days! It has been a busy week so far! Swimming lessons, session 2, started today. It was quite the drama this morning. Jake's lesson was first. I felt so sorry for Mrs. Amy, the instructor. Jake was the good one out of the four!!!! He was the only one in his group that has been in Mrs. Amy's lessons before so he got to "help" out by being the line leader when they moved to a deeper part of the pool to do jumps. He also got to show the other three how to do things like floating on his back, getting the diving rings, etc. He thought he was HOT STUFF! He was quite concerned about his fellow students. two of them were screamers (as in they screamed the whole time). They still had to do what Mrs. Amy told them to do, but they screamed anytime they were above water. The little boy screamer ran away from Amy twice, but was tracked down and put back in the water. The little girl screamer was one of a set of sisters. Her sister while not screaming, was a "jumper". That girl sank like a stone, but continually did things that made her fall of the steps. One time she decided that she didn't want to wait for her turn to go and just jumped in the pool. She, of course, had to be pulled up off the bottom by Mrs. Amy several times. This little girl would come up gagging and coughing, but it didn't seem to slow her down any!! Jake was quite concerned about the screamers. He kept trying to calm them down by telling them "it's OK. Its not scary. Ms Amy will help you swim. The water doesn't hurt you. There are not fish in Mrs Amy's pool. Ms Amy there are no fish in your pool right?" "right Jake, there are no fish in Mrs Amy's pool." "there isn't even any sharks either, so you don't have to cry". He is such a riot! Kaylee and Ethan's class was next. Kaylee did really well. I don't think it will be long before she is off and swimming well. Ethan on the other hand won't put his face in all the way and panics a little bit when its his turn. He did all that was asked of him and he tried really hard, but I think he was really nervous. I am hoping that tomorrow will be better for him. Who knows, he may surprise me. Heavens knows that's happened before!! Jaden is doing quite well. His cold is finally starting to clear up and so that is a relief to both him and me!! I thought it was never going to end!! Jaden's newest thing is dancing. Yes, you read right, the little boy that can't walk yet loves dancing. He has always loved music. Of all the kids, he is the only one who actually would stop crying if I started to sing to him. Unlike the other three who would usually just scream louder when I sang to them!! He stands up holding on to what ever he can find and bounces to the music. If you turn it off he stops and looks at you like "HEY!! I was busy here!!" He doesn't seem to care yet what kind of music it is. You should see him when we sing at family home evening. When he hears the kids and I sing songs like "5 little ducks went out to play" or "popcorn popping" his whole face just lights up and he is enthralled! He is at the age when his personality starts to show itself and it is just so much fun to see what he will learn next!

Summer's here!

Well, school is officially over. Yesterday was Kaylee and Ethan's last day of school. Ethan had only a 1/2 day and when I picked him up at 1230, he was crying. He didn't want school to be over. He has been really excited about going on to first grade and changing rooms at his school, but I think he got scared about yet another change, and he said that he doesn't want to change after all. He wants to stay in Miss Nikki's and Miss Megan's and Miss Courtney's class. He even went so far to point out that Tia, a girl in his class, was 7 and still went to Miss Nikki's class. I didn't point out to him that Tia has Down Syndrome and has taken an extra year of Kindergarten to master the basics enough to move on. When I went back at 330 to get Kaylee, I heard much of the same thing. As i was pulling away from the school, I yelled "yeah, its summer!!" I expected to hear "yes! Yeah!" and whoops and hollers from the back and what I got was "awwwww!" in stereo. Ethan perked up today when I told him at 9am this morning to go over and see if Chris could play. He looked at me and said "does Chris have summer break too!!??!" Like it was amazing. It never occurred to him that his friends wouldn't have school now either! I guess I am reassured that my kids like their school! Tonight was pack night for our cub scout pack that I am involved with. For the first time, the kids got to go with me. They had a good time. The theme was "cubs and bugs" and I was able to take a giant millipedes and a bunch of young millipedes to show them. I remember studying millipedes back in college and I really had to work to drag up the info that I learned back then. The boys loved it! They got to hold the bugs and they got to ask questions. It was great. Kaylee was the hot shot of the group. The giant millipede, named Millie of course, comes from her class at school. As Miss Sherrie put it "of course you can borrow her, Millie would love to go on a field trip!" Kaylee is used to handling and caring for Millie and so when these boys were grossed out and daring each other to "touch it, just touch it with one finger" Kaylee just reaches in and scoops Millie up and handles her like it's no big deal. Those boys jaws hit the floor. They couldn't believe that a girl could do something like that! Jakey will still not touch or hold what he calls the "creatures". He had a good time at pack night for a whole other reason. He ran and ran and ran around in circles like the energizer bunny the whole hour and a half. All three kids just passed out as soon as their heads hit the pillows tonight.