Christmas, Alex's birthday, and other stuff

Yes, I know that those who faithfully follow my blog have probably been wondering why I don't post a lot lately. It's just a matter of time and laziness, mostly. And I keep waiting until I put my pictures on the computer so I can post pictures, but I keep putting that off too.

So anyway, the week of Christmas, we had a lot of us sick with a cold/fever. It wasn't really fun and the kids weren't sure they liked having to be sick during their school break. But on Christmas Day, all of us seemed to be feeling okay, so that was definitely a good thing.

We followed our usual tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve. The kids were all pretty excited about that. Ben opened the present Daniel gave him because he was pretty sure he knew what it was, and he was right. It was a little hand held video game player thing from the dollar store. Yep, that ended up being one of his favorite presents.


Alex opened his present from Grandma and Grandpa T, which was some new Scooby Doo pajamas and a Cranium Clay book. He loved the pajamas and was very excited to put them on when we were all done opening presents.


Chris was excited to open a present too, and chose the one that Alex gave him. It was a little tiger in a cage where you fill the cage with water and the tiger grows. Yes, Chris loves tigers.


Daniel was also pretty excited to open his present, and chose to open the one from Ben, which was a toy truck. He called it a fire truck, but it was a big rig, not a fire truck.


Abby opened her present from Alex. She loved holding the present, but wasn't too sure what to do, so she had help opening it. Alex gave her a little squishy football. She likes playing with balls and grabbed it pretty fast when she saw it.



We made homemade oreo cookies for Santa after we opened the presents, then it was time for bed. Ben kept saying that he wanted to go right to sleep so Santa could come, since Santa doesn't come when they're awake. They were all pretty excited though, so I thought they'd stay up talking for a bit, and was pleasantly surprised when they did go right to sleep.

Christmas morning was fun, and of course, I forgot to take pictures. Most of the gifts from Santa were presents for all the kids/family, like some Star Wars little figures that the kids all like to play with, a few new games for the Wii (thanks Mom & Dad for buying us one for Christmas!), and some books, videos, and games. It was fun seeing how excited they were to open the presents and how excited they were to be able to play with their new stuff.

Five days after Christmas is Alex's birthday, so I always take down the Christmas decorations the day after Christmas (and it takes all my self-control to wait until then). This year, Alex had kind of a birthday week. On Monday, his dad took him to get his free ice cream from Cold Stone (if you haven't signed up, you should go to the Cold Stone website and sign up for their birthday club, since they give adults a free love it sized ice cream and kids get a free kids size one for their birthdays). On Tuesday we went to the zoo, since Alex really wanted to go so he could see the bats. We weren't able to stay long because Bryce needed to meet some guys for lunch about his new work. Wednesday was of course his birthday, so we made and ate a cake, he got to play the Wii for a while, and we went out to dinner at Pizza Hut. On Thursday he got to stay up late since it was New Year's Eve and had a good time doing that. On Friday, he and his dad went out to the store to pick out his birthday present. He was pretty excited.
Again, I forgot to take out my camera for most of this, but I did get this shot with my new Droid Eris (I love my phone, can you tell?):


This morning I took Alex and Abby for well child check-ups. I'm not sure if the insurance we had from Bryce's old work is still valid or if we will just have to use the insurance from his new one, but since I don't have cards yet for the new one, I thought I might as well try the old one.

They're both healthy and seem to be doing well. The doctor wants me to take Alex back in 6 months to check his height and make sure he's growing, since he's slowed down with that a little bit. Alex weighed 46 pounds and was 44 1/2 inches tall. I think he was close to 50th percentile on both weight and height, but I can't remember for sure. The doctor was a little concerned with Abby since she's not crawling yet and doesn't pull herself to stand in the crib, but since Chris and Daniel both crawled at 10 months, we get to wait and watch her for a bit. She was 19 pounds exactly (50th percentile)and 29 1/8 inches tall (almost 75th percentile), although their height measurements aren't all that precise. They both got flu vaccinations. Abby got both the H1N1 shot and the seasonal flu shot and Alex just got the seasonal flu mist, since his school did an H1N1 clinic and he can't have the second dose until tomorrow. The school is doing a clinic for the second dose, but since they gave me his flu shot card thing, they didn't send home the permissions for that. And now that he's had the seasonal flu mist, he can't have the H1N1 mist for a month and they're just doing the mist at school So I'll just take him back somewhere for it sometime. But they're both basically healthy and happy, so that's good.

And we have started potty training Daniel. He does well some days, not so good other days, but has only pooped in the potty the one time. For some reason he thinks his underpants are the place for that. Even when we give him cold baths/showers to clean him off after that, he still prefers his underpants for now. Hopefully one day soon he'll get the idea and I won't have to do so much laundry.

And if you haven't heard, Bryce and 3 guys from his work all started a new door company. They turned in their notices last week and got kicked out of the old office on Thursday, so were finally able to start full-time at the new one on Friday. Bryce is pretty excited about it, and we think it will be a good thing, especially since we all prayed about it first and all of us felt good about doing it, that it was what they should do. There are still a few on-going issues with the old work, especially since they're starting a competing company, but they shouldn't be a problem. If you want to know more about it, you should talk to Bryce, since he can tell you lots more. But they have a nice office building pretty close to the old one. They're getting the phones finally hooked up today and should be getting their computers soon. So we have some fun changes going on, I guess.

Family pictures

The day before we went to Utah for Thanksgiving, we finally got new family pictures taken. We went to a place by us that's called Portrait Innovations. It's a chain kind of like Kiddie Kandids, except the photographer holds the camera and they take a lot more pictures. Since our last family group picture was taken when Chris was about a year old, we really, really needed a new one. People were starting to think we were ashamed to have Daniel and Abby in our family.

Anyway, if you're anything like us, it's not easy to get a good family picture with 5 kids, especially as young as they are. Some of the pictures were quite humorous. And luckily for us, we have a nice cd of all the pictures they took so we can have them to remember.

Here are some of the pictures that were taken. I'm not going to label them. Some I put on just because they cracked me up. If you have any questions about any of them, just ask. :)

Alex

As most of you probably already know, last month Alex was chosen to be the student of the week for his class. He was pretty excited about it. He got a certificate with a pencil and some candy and I was invited to go eat lunch with him in the school cafeteria. We were all proud of him and excited for him too.

Anyway, his school has 10 virtues that they emphasize, like honesty, caring, discipline, perserverance, etc. When each student shows characteristics in themselves in each of the 10 virtues, the school gives them a t-shirt. Last week Alex told me he only had one more virtue to do, then he got a shirt. On Saturday as I was driving him to his soccer game, he told me that he had completed them all and would be getting his shirt the next time he was at school. So today when he got home, he opened up his backpack first thing and pulled out his new t-shirt to show me. And it didn't take long before he decided he wanted to wear it too, so he now has it on.

So good job Alex!

Bryce's birthday and Halloween

We had a fun time on Bryce's birthday this year. I made him his cake like he requested: choclate cake with a layer of pudding filling and chocolate ice cream filling and chocolate frosting. I also made him lasagna for dinner, even though it was his second choice, his first choice being Indian food. Since I don't make Indian food and we're not sure the kids would eat it, we went with the lasagna. It was pretty tasty. The boys were pretty excited to make Bryce find his present (Halo 3 ODST) by playing "hot or cold" with him. I think they were more excited about his present than he was.

Here are a few pictures of Bryce and the kids with Bryce's cake:

I laugh everytime I see this one, once I noticed Daniel's pants. Bryce had changed his diaper before this and told him to pull up his pants and that's as far as he did it.

Singing happy birthday:

Blowing out the candles:


And since I had Chris who had been asking every day in October if it was Halloween yet, I was pretty glad when Halloween finally arrived. So was he. The kids were all excited to be able to wear their costumes and go around trick-or-treating. Daniel once again didn't want to put his candy in his bag and just wanted to eat it all right then and there, but he loved going around to get it with his brothers.

Here are the kids in their costumes:

All the kids together:


Ben and Alex both had pretty similar costumes. Alex said they were Halloween Knights. I loved the play on words there, and he did it on purpose. Later he said they were just knights, but they were called anything from gladiators to warriors as we'd go to people's houses.




Here's Chris as a t-rex. He loved this costume so much that he wore it all Sunday morning before we had to go to church:


Here's Daniel the tiger. This costume has gotten a lot of use.


Here's Abby. She's a bee.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

So last night we had our first ever parent-teacher conferences with more than one kid. It's not really a lot different with more than one kid scheduled, you just go from one to another and are there a little longer.

Ben's was scheduled first, so we all headed to his classroom and waited outside for a couple of minutes while another student was finishing with hers. Ben's teacher offered to let the other kids draw on the dry erase board, which they thought was pretty darn cool. Anyway, Ben's teacher had mostly good things to say about him. Yes, he still has occasional problems, but they're normal for his age and he's usually pretty good. And she thinks they usually stem from him being bored with what they're learning. She talked about how he and one girl in his class are going to start doing the accelerated math stuff (which usually starts in the 3rd grade, but they get to do it now). She also talked about how advanced he is in reading. He tested at 147 correct words per minute in reading, which is well above the benchmark for his grade. I looked at his report card where they list the fluency benchmarks for all the grades and they had listed the benchmark for 5th grade in spring at 145. So Ben is doing pretty well, I'd say. As far as his grades go, he got all E's and one E+ (that's A's to you and me...E stands for "exceeds standard"). We were both really impressed with Ben's teacher and how much she's doing to try to make sure he's actually learning new stuff and able to do things on his level. She even said that she will let him stand to do his work if he needs to, and that she'll let him doodle while he's listening to her, since he seems to actually listen better when he's doing something like that.

After Ben's, we went over to Alex's room. His was actually a lot faster. She showed us how he's doing pretty well. She said he usually listens and is good in class and that sometimes she needs to remind him to keep him on track, but he's usually pretty good. She will be going on maternity leave here within the next couple of weeks since she's due on the 14th, but her student teacher (who I already knew because her daughter Molly was in Ben's kindergarten class and she went in and did some work with the kids sometimes) will be taking over while she's gone. Alex's teacher sent home some letter flash cards and a sheet to practice writing his name, so he can keep improving on those.

After those conferences were over, we went into the music room where the music teacher said they're both doing pretty well and participating, and then to the gym where the gym teacher said they're doing well. She did say that sometimes she'll be talking to Ben and he'll just kind of shut down (due to frustration usually) and other times he'll jabber away, but he's doing really well. And Alex is doing well too. After we left the gym, we went to the library where they were holding their book fair and bought 3 Goosebumps books for Ben to read (and he's already on Chapter 7 of one) and another Star Wars book for them to read.

It's always nice to go to the conferences and hear that the kids are doing well and not really having problems.