Two wheelin'

When the weather turned nice again last week Lauren decided to practice on her bike. She is pretty good on her scooter but hadn't quite figured out her bike yet. She has had training wheels off most of the summer but hasn't been able to ride it without help. Well, she got on and started balancing herself around the driveway...kept trying...and guess what? She just sorta picked it up and started to go. She's pretty proud of herself. And after about a week of practicing she has gotten pretty good at it. She makes me a little nervous at times I will admit. She likes to show off and is always trying to come up with new "tricks". She is sometimes a little wobbly but has only had a couple minor falls. We are pretty proud of her!

I took this video of her the first day she picked it up. 

Poor Ben...Luckily she was going pretty slow and no real harm done :)

Halloween

After waking up to THIS the week before Halloween...

I was a little worried about how well trick-or-treating was going to go for us this year. But nothing to worry about. We got our pumpkins carved....

(Ben likes to play with them and switch the lids around)

Our costumes on....

(Glow fairy, She-ra, Mermaid, and Spiderman)

Walked a lot, and knocked on lots of doors...

 And candy accounted for.

All in all it was a big success. The weather was perfect--the girls even went out in short sleeves and did not complain about being cold. It turns out we live in a great trick-or-treating neighborhood which is new for us. 

Wedding weekend

We were able to get together with Julie's parents and siblings including Evisa and her family who drove up from Arizona for Alan's wedding in SLC. Mom & dad came up to Idaho Falls first and we also got to visit with Uncle Newel while they were here. I didn't get many pictures from the actual wedding and Matt has a few from his phone but I don't have them on my computer. Anyway, here are some photos from that weekend. It was good to be able to see everyone! I haven't seen Evisa since she was married--I think 7 years ago.

End of summer

Trying to catch up here. I keep telling people I will get around to this soon...so here it goes. I made a little slideshow of photos from this summer. More to come...
 

Megan update

We visited with Megan's new cleft team at Primary Children's Hospital on Monday. It's hard to switch doctors after working with the team at Riley since she was born, but we had heard good things about the doctors here and decided to give 'em a shot. We visited with the plastic surgeon, ENT, speech therapist, and dentist. After all was said and done I would say we felt comfortable with the new team and what they had to tell us. We do like the facilities at Riley better, but we can deal with it :) I think we will need to find somewhere for the other kids to go for her future appointments though, since there just is not enough room for everyone in the exam rooms. 

So here's what we learned. When you talk, your soft palate separates your mouth and nose to keep air from coming out your nose. When you have a cleft palate, often times this doesn't work as well as it's supposed to. This is what is happening when Megan talks. A couple of the doctors demonstrated for us with a small dental type mirror under her nostril. They had her say a few words and we watched the mirror fog up as she spoke. When we got to the speech therapist she had Megan wear a "nasometer" which is basically a headset with two microphones on it--one by her nose and one by her mouth, separated by a flat piece of plastic. As she spoke a series of different sounds into it, we could see on the computer how much air was coming out of her mouth and how much of it was coming out of her nose. It looks a little funny, but it was pretty cool and Megan says she liked wearing the thing and talking to the computer. 

So what does this mean? It means we get to go back down sometime in the near future for another appointment. They want to do a naso-endoscopy on Megan. They will stick a small camera (about the size of spaghetti they tell us) up through her nose (after using a numbing spray) and see what is really going on back there. After they see what's happening when she talks, they will know what the next steps are. It may mean she just needs some speech therapy, or it may mean another surgery. We will just see what happens. The speech therapist did seem very positive about how well Megan talks and all the different sounds she is making. All things considered, she does a great job!

The dentist also talked with us about the possibility of future surgeries down the road including, but not limited to adjusting her jaw, as well as other adjustments to her face to get things lined up just right. We aren't going to worry about that just yet because she still has some growing to do first. For now we will focus on speech issues. 

Megan tends to be very shy/stubborn with the doctors so Matt bribed her ahead of time, telling her that if she talks to the doctors and does what they ask, we would get ice cream afterward. Well, she took it to heart and she sure did a great job! She answered all their questions, opened her mouth, said all the funny phrases they asked her to say. What a good girl. Needless to say, she earned her ice cream!!

While we were in Utah we were able to visit with Julie's brothers Alan and Neal and Alan's fiancé Jenny. It was great to spend some time with them, as it doesn't happen very often :) And we also visited Matt's grandparents in SLC. The kids haven't spent much time with their great grandparents so it was great to spend some time with them as well. Didn't get a picture of the uncles but here's one at Grandma and Grandpa's. 

Boy

People have asked me if it's a lot different having a boy after all the girls. My answer is, "not really"--I have heard that the first year it is pretty much the same, babies are babies. But after that it starts getting more interesting. Of course all kids have their own personalities from the get-go. Well, now that Ben is getting more mobile I think I am starting to see it. Maybe it is just personality but this kid is a lot more fearless than the girls.

He doesn't seem to care what he crawls over...wood, grass, cement, rocks....whatever! Although he CAN walk, crawling is still his preferred mode of transportation. His hands and knees were BLACK today after playing at the park.

Then there's the climbing. I don't remember any of our girls being climbers but we have to keep an eye on this little guy.  I knew we were in trouble when I found him on the girls top bunk!

 

And here's a little video of Ben walking. He does pretty well at it and can even get across the room but crawling is just faster for him still. He gets a little better every day though and I'm sure it won't be long before he is walking full-time.

Lost tooth club

A major milestone for Miss Lauren about two weeks ago--she lost her first tooth! She has been waiting for this event a long time. Her kindergarten class in Indiana had a "lost tooth club"--a spot on the bulletin board to keep track of all the kids who have lost teeth. She never made it on the board. So when she discovered her tooth was loose she was super excited. It seemed to take forever for that little tooth to wiggle its way out. And not just because she was anxious. It really took forever! :) But finally the day came. She fell off her scooter and her mouth was bleeding...still didn't knock the thing out, but during dinner it finally caved. She wasn't the only one anxious for the thing to come out...already had a replacement tooth halfway out coming in behind it. 

Once Lauren discovered her wiggly tooth she wrote this note for the tooth fairy and saved it until the special night. What a funny girl.

Entertainment

Of course...we aren't on the go ALL the time, and we DO have our boring moments too. In those moments, the kids have to get creative to keep themselves entertained. 

For example: Bored at church? Practice your spelling!

(Lauren showed this to me after church on Sunday. "I did this in primary 'cause I was bored. . .(thinking). . . I was listening too"

Wondering what to do with those empty crystal light containers?? 

But probably the most entertaining thing to do is to get a hold of mom's phone and take pictures and movies of yourself.  

It keeps me entertained too, when I look through my photos and find all sorts of surprises. Like this little gem below. This is one of the many videos I have discovered (to be saved for a later date for blackmail/embarassment purposes):

And just for fun, here's a little bonus video of Ben monkeying around:

                                       

Summer

We are enjoying the lazy days of summer here in Idaho. Here are some pictures to prove it...

Fun at the park

The kids have gotten a lot braver on the playground equipment this year. It's been fun to watch them. 

Fishing lure bench. There are lots of fun benches along the greenbelt (walkway around the river) and the kids like to stop and sit on them all.

Discovering what plants we have in our yard has been interesting. Love the pretty flowers that have been blooming! We are waiting to see if the grape vines produce.

Playing in the sprinklers on a hot day 

 No school=Shopping with ALL the kids. (FUN!!) Can't you just see the excitement on Ben's face?

We signed the girls up for weekly dance classes for the summer. They are loving it. I was a little worried that Megan would be the kid sitting in the corner, crying...like swimming lessons last year. But she got right into it and it is so fun to watch her follow along. At the end of her first day she came running out with a smile on her face and said, "Mom, I'm so HAPPY!!....there are NO BOYS IN MY CLASS!!" Apparently she just doesn't like boys. Hopefully she has no boys in her preschool class in the fall, too:) She is the only girl in her sunbeams class at church. 

Ben cruising at the park. Can you tell it was windy that day? (Like most other days in Idaho) 

Riding the ferris wheel at the park. A one-time event....since it cost over $9 for the three of them to ride! They did get a private ride though.

 Fun with food.... Nothing like marshmallows and toothpicks to keep you occupied on a summer day. And Ben has discovered a new favorite food...WATERMELON! Yum!!

Happy 4th of July!! (Or as the girls have been calling it: Patriotic day). We are going to try to watch the fireworks from our house -- we have seen a few test runs and it seems we can see them at least from one bedroom window. Maybe we will get more adventurous in future years and watch it by the river, but this way Ben can go to bed and we can actually enjoy it. At least that is the hope.

Hope you are having a fun summer, too. What have you been up to??

Birthday Boy

I was informed that 17 new posts in one day was a bit much and that I should update more often instead :) I'll see what I can do about that.

Today is Ben's 1st birthday. Happy birthday, Ben! We are thrilled to have him in our family. He is a funny boy. We had a fun little party for him complete with a dance choreographed by his sisters, cake, and presents. At dinner we talked with the kids about when they were born and also their first birthdays. When Allison was little I was pretty careful about the things she ate, etc. You know, first kid. I found a recipe for a healthy cake...it was a carrot cake from scratch and probably had whole wheat flour, who knows what else, and no sugar in it. Also a special frosting that didn't have all the sugar in it. Well, it didn't really matter what was in the cake because she wasn't interested in eating it. I learned my lesson. So here is Mr. Ben enjoying his sugary chocolate cake with black frosting. And he did enjoy it for sure!

We had to keep wrangling him in to open presents, since he hasn't quite grasped that concept yet. However, once they were out he did have fun playing with the toys. I would have to say his favorite is from Aunt Lori & Uncle James. Here is a video of him playing with his new cars. He was cracking up!

Happy birthday little guy!

Random

One last post for the day with some random photos from the last few months...