Another short one

I have a good excuse for my Blog notes being empty this time.  I really hardly saw the kids this week.  I guess being sick last weekend and taking Father's Day off I got really behind in school.  Plus a couple big assignments hit at once.  Matt was a champ, of course. 

The kids didn't seem to mind my absence, but I sure do love their excited faces when I come home.  They managed to make it to one Lehi Roundup Parade.  To get out of taking them to another parade, Matt bribed them with a movie and candy.  They went swimming at Sharon's house one day, and Hank has been playing a lot of play-doh and Jane and Jack have been playing Legos.  The entire bar in the kitchen has been full of their legos since Jack's birthday.  Every so often I announce, Ok, today is the day we clean up these legos.  And then they beg me and tell me how much they play with them and I realize it actually doesn't matter that the bar is full legos after all.

Hank continues to win us over with his big, kind heart.  He always asks before doing or eating anything, and it always starts with "Pease I.....?"  Matt told Hank that he could use Jack's dry erase board but before he did he found Jack and said, "Pease I use that?" One day I got a little frustrated about something that had to do with Hank.  I, of course, can't remember it now.  I think I breathed a sigh of frustration, which Hank picked up on as he is very sensitive to anyone showing any degree of unkindness towards him.  So when he noticed I was frustrated he said, "I love you, mom."  Then Matt hugged him and said, "You're such a peacemaker."  Hank replied, "I love everybody be happy." 

Jack's t-ball season is over but he's been waking up wanting to play each day.  He plays catch with Matt and practices batting and has really been improving.

The kids have a few school things they are supposed to be working on throughout the summer.  Jane is awesome at it.  She does her little math problems and she writes nonfiction reports about birds, but lately she's been really into writing fiction stories and I love them.

Pete has been coming out of his shell a little more it seems.  He actually let Matt mow the other day while walking with him and holding one pinky.  Matt said it took four hours, but it was improvement.  :)  He also takes the hose and pretends to water plants.  He absolutely LOVES music.  Matt gave him his own pandora station and Pete's preferred music is reggae.  He points to the TV, which means he wants to listen to music.  If a song comes on he doesn't like he instantly points to the remote to have you skip it.  If he likes it, he jams out.  I'll have to try to take a video of him dancing soon!

For now, here is a video of Hank that Matt took.  The kids were watching a Tinkerbell movie and this is how Hank reacted to the part where the father of a little girl was frustrated that the fairies had disturbed his room and the daughter wasn't taking responsibility but claiming it was the fairies who had done it. :)

Father's Day

Today is Father's Day.  The kids each made Matt a card and picked out a treat for him at the store:  BBQ Lay's Stax, Rips candy, and fancy soda in glass bottles. I made him a key lime pie.  I love that that is his favorite.  It's super easy to make and I don't like it that much so I'm not too tempted to eat the entire thing.  Matt definitely deserves to be celebrated.  He has handled his new role as co-stay-at-home-parent amazingly well.  Sure, the kids might eat cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he never complains and he's so supportive of me.

The week started off with me doing 11 straight hours of school work on Sunday and Matt taking all the kids to Sharon's house. (Again, Matt is a champ.) Matt worked Monday, I worked Tuesday and Wednesday, and at my last client's house, in SLC, (45 minutes from home) I locked my keys in the car. I could not remember Matt's number, so after several embarrassing tries on my client's phone, and even after calling my work to see if I had possibly left his number as an emergency contact in my employee file, I finally thought to call my parents (whose number I actually had memorized) and got his number from them.  So Matt had to lug all the kids up to Salt Lake at dinner time.  I felt so bad and apologized when he got there.  He said, with complete sincerity, "Oh, don't even worry about it."  His heart is pure gold.

Thursday we got to go out on a date, probably our first in about 1.5 years.  Sharon offered to watch our kids so even though I had started to feel sick that day I pumped myself full of ibuprofen and we went to The Cheesecake Factory and split three appetizers.  Yumm.  It was really fun to finally go out together.  By that night though, once the Ibuprofen wore off, my fever hit and my throat was feeling horrible.  When I still couldn't sleep by midnight, and my fever was 102, Matt ran to the store for NyQuill.  Friday, Matt took care of the kids while I went to the doctor, pharmacy, skyped in to some work meetings, and tried to get better. The next morning Matt had already done the dishes and taken Jack to an early morning t-ball game.  He told me when he got home that he hadn't wanted me to worry about the house.  When I was finally coming out of the sick coma on Saturday I told him that being sick had really set me back on Father's Day plans.  He told me not to worry about it and that the best Father's Day for him would be for me to be happy and not stressed out.  I told him that he is literally the best person I know.

The kids got a lot of pool time in at Sharon and Steve's house.  I haven't even been able to see them swim but I was told what they have been up to and I just don't believe it!  They've taught Jane to do a kneeling half-dive thing, Jack is jumping off the diving board (with his water wings) and Hank is jumping in from the side to be caught.  Matt didn't understand why I was so shocked so I had to remind him that just last summer Jack was refusing to get his face wet!

Jack had his last tball game and got a participation medal.  He's pretty proud.  At the game I was able to go to, Jack was bummed he didn't get a really good hit in.  I told him I thought his hits were good though. :)

The funny stuff all comes from Hank and his mishaps with words.  Somehow he has started calling a swim suit, a swim soup.  And a cereal that he likes which we call "Sunrise" Hank calls, fwench fwies, more because I think he's confused about what the name of the cereal is and less about his ability to pronounce sunrise.  But cute nonetheless.  Last week Hank played with a kid named Wirth.  He was telling me about his friend later and for a kid who can't say r's or th's, Wirth is extremely hard.  So Hank was saying "Woof" and for the first time I noticed that even he was aware of how he couldn't say the sounds right.  He started laughing about it but then later when I told him to tell dad about his new friend he clapped his hands over his mouth and shook his head no.  That made me sad, but I'm glad he has a speech appointment next month.

Jack turns six!

We had a fun week.  Jack was counting down to his birthday party on Friday all week.  He had a Star Wars party with friends.  It was pretty awesome.  All the kids filled out their padawan training badges and then we had different training stations.  We found asteroids around the yard (aluminum foil balls).  We played a game where the kids took turns trying to toss pennies onto the storm trooper pictures in a muffin tin.  We had a balloon hop where the kids put star wars balloons between their knees and hopped to the finish line.  We played hot potato but with yoda using the star wars theme music.  We whacked a death star pinata.  And then the kids received their jedi certificate and their own lightsaber made out of a pool noodle cut in half (and decorated with duct tape and black tape).  It was a blast!  And I scheduled it to only be 1.5 hours long and I think it was perfect.  You'll have to take my word for it because the only picture I have is of Jack opening a present.  Matt snapped a few more towards the end but I'm not sure when we might see those. 

The night before Jack's birthday Jack told me he was feeling sad about never being five again.  He said that he didn't want to grow up.  He wants to be a kid forever because he always wants to live with us.  I assured him that he can live with us as long as he wants to. :)

After the party we zipped down to Seven Peaks with just the family.  We were only there an hour before closing but since we have passes we decided to go since Matt and I were actually both home at the same time.  It was surprisingly a lot of fun.  A lot of time is spent hanging out at the bottom of the slide with Pete and either Hank or Jack.  Jane goes down by herself and Matt and I take turns riding down with Hank or Jack on the smaller slides. It's actually a lot of fun!

Hank has been cracking us up this week.  He told me that his "first name is best plane light sabers."  When the kids were talking about phone numbers he said, "I want to say my phone number.  Nine Oh Poo.  Seven Poo.  Six Poo. Die."

Hank has an obsession with threes.  Everything is "three because I three."  So he will want three of whatever we are giving him.  One time he went to the bathroom and called for me to help him with the wiping.  He said, rather disappointingly, "I only did two poops."  I was busy, so told him to hold on.  A minute later I heard him yell excitedly, "Oh!  Three!"

Hank is very easily scared of tv shows.  Maybe I've already mentioned this.  But if Jane and Jack are watching something that he is worried might get scary at some point (we're talking little kid shows), he stands in the kitchen and watches the whole episode barely peeking from the doorway.

Well, I do have one thing about Pete.  He really wants to hold anything that he thinks is cute.  So when we go out and see ducks he will point and whine and hold his arms out to them.  He also wants to hold anything cute on TV.  When the kids were watching a baby song youtube thing Pete was freaking out holding his arms up to the TV wanting to hold the cute, animated owl.  Speaking of music, Pete LOVES dancing.  He's hilarious.  Any time he hears music he first does a quick back and forth step with a big grin and then he busts into a slower wide-stanced back and forth sway. 

Also, speaking of music. Last Sunday we went to a park in Highland where there is a little stop on a trail with stone seats and we always stop and the kids put on little performances.  I am so sad this is out of focus, but I thought Hanks song was hilarious.  To translate, it goes like this: Clap Clap Shoot Shoot Knee Knee Die Run Run Run.

I sure do love these people. 

A short one

I have a little note on my Notes app that I jot down things for the blog.  It's always the worst when I go to write my weekly blog and it's empty.  So I'll have to come up with some things from memory.

Last Sunday we were at the Sabin's house and Hank had just learned the word, "butthole" from Jane and Jack.  He got a big reaction when he first said it so he thought it was hilarious to keep saying.  I made everyone totally ignore him when he would say it and he eventually stopped after a couple days.  But Sunday was one of the days he was into the word, and I've never been so happy that he his speech is so hard for people to understand.  He called several people "butthole" including Steve but they were none the wiser.

A couple months ago Hank was stroking my hair and he said he wanted his hair to be long like mine.  I had forgotten about that until that same Sunday Cara told Hank that she really liked his hair and he told her that he wanted it to be long like his mom's.

Before Jack's t-ball game on Saturday he told me that he wasn't very good at batting.  So Matt gave him some pointers, like to keep his hands together and to choke up on the bat.  He told him about Barry Bonds and how he was such a great hitter and would choke up on the bat.  Well, the pointers really worked and Jack had three great hits.  Later that night Jack asked Matt, "Did I hit the ball as far as Barry Bonds?"

Jane has made some jokes that have genuinely cracked me up lately.  First I was in my workout clothes and dropping her off somewhere.  I asked if I could just stay in the car and she said, "Why?  Just go out there and be like, 'Hey, I'm awesome.  I work out.'"  And then Matt and I were discussing something that we weren't intending on the kids to hear.  Jane came in asking questions and I told her we weren't filling her in because it was an adult only conversation.  Then a few seconds later she peeked her head back in, smiling, and said, "You guys are going to have a hard time talking now, because I'm getting older!"