Happy Easter!!

We had a nice Easter this year.  Saturday morning we went to our ward pancake breakfast and Easter egg hunt.  The kids had a great time.  Here is John collecting eggs.

 

 He was perfecting his reaching down and standing back up skills.

 I got a lot of pictures of John because he is the slowest moving.

Easiest to keep up with.

 

Grant had no trouble finding eggs - I helped him a little.

 The nursery kids got to have the first crack at finding eggs.

No pun intended.

 

Later the junior primary got to have a turn (Matthew and Anna) 

And here are the kids on Easter morning.  I felt happy that I was able to get Bunny Buns made before we had to leave for church at 8:30.  Small victories.

We also had a little Easter egg hunt in the yard before church

We stayed after church a little while Scott did the tithing (he is the ward financial clerk right now).  So this is the best picture I got of the kids dressed for Easter.  We didn't have any special outfits or anything.

 

After church Anna had a mega tantrum.  She had had a similar one on Saturday.  :(  After she had screamed herself out, she fell asleep on the couch for about 6 hours and missed dinner.  After an episode or two like that I start seriously doubting my parenting skills.  Scott reminded me that we are doing our best and that she came from heaven that way (with a "strong willed" personality).  And she did.  Hoping for better days with her ahead.

And ready for Easter dinner - ham, potatoes, spinach salad...all good things.

Happy Easter everyone!!

The Easter Egg Derby

We held our annual Easter Egg Derby on Saturday night.  It was lots of fun and we all had a great time.  Here are the kids dyeing eggs to prepare for the big event.

Anna and Matthew dyeing eggs

Anna with one of her eggs ready to go!

And here are the kids trying to roll and collide their eggs.  We set up a tournament bracket (a la March Madness) and the eggs go head to head.  The theory is that when two eggs collide, only one of the them will crack, which does seem to be true.  So the uncracked egg advances to the next round until we have one ultimate winner.

Grant and Matthew rolling some of their eggs

Sometimes we had some trouble getting the eggs to actually contact each other.  We had a lot of re-rolls

Our bracket - 32 eggs!!

Everyone got to name their eggs

And the big winner was one of Anna's eggs, Raspberry Rabbit.  Scott and I were a little torn about Anna winning since she had had some major tantrums that day including one about possibly not winning the egg derby.  But she won fair and square.

The prize for winning was a giant chocolate bunny - we let her hold it and take a picture but then we took it back and said she could earn it back by having good behavior (i.e. no tantrums) for the next few days.  She did eventually earn it back.

I've been having some heartache about Anna and her tantrums lately.  The one thing that seems to work is to offer her a positive incentive for good behavior way ahead of time.  Once we're in the moment, it seems to be pretty much too late.  When we've offered a trip to Chuck E. Cheese if everyone is good all week, she seems to have no trouble behaving herself for that.  So I don't know.  Hopefully we'll get it all figured out.

Anyway, it was a successful Easter Egg Derby.  Lots of fun.

My Magic Shoes

When John first started physical therapy, the therapists were recommending that he be fitted for plastic leg braces to go inside his shoes.  They thought he might never be able to stand up on his own without the extra ankle support.  Before we could fill out all the paperwork to get the leg braces John proved them wrong by learning to pull up on things on his own.  So the leg brace idea was put aside.

John has been making great progress and can now stand up on his own (without something pull up on) and walk a few steps.  A lot of the time when he falls it looks like his ankles are rolling or giving out, so the therapists suggested getting him high top sneakers to give him just a little extra support in the ankles.  I didn't want to waste a lot of money on shoes he would quickly outgrow but high top shoes (the basketball kind, not just the converse all star kind) were hard to find for his size.  I ended up getting some Nike basketball shoes on sale.

From the first time I tried the shoes on him he has been trying more and more to walk and seems to be able to go more than just a few steps.  Scott and I joked that they are his "magic shoes" a la Forrest Gump.  He got a lot of practice using them at the church Easter Egg hunt today.  And Matthew even told people John had magic shoes.

Way to go, John

 

Even without the shoes he has been making a lot of progress, but I think the shoes help too.

Hooray Johnny!!

Grant is Three!!

Grant turned three this week.  He's been looking forward to his birthday for a while.  He was ready for it.  He has been telling me he wants a "monster truck" birthday, so I tried my best to deliver on that.

 Grant helped me decorate his birthday cake.  Monster truck themed.

 We played pin the headlight on Mater

Grant got a direct hit on Mater's eye.

 I think Anna got the closest, but John got pretty close too.  He didn't have to wear a blindfold though.

I wanted to take a picture of everyone with the Mater picture, but Anna wasn't having it.  In her defense, she was sick today and may or may not have to go to the doctor tomorrow.  We'll see.  But she wasn't feeling her best.

We did a few car themed activities - race car shaped scratch off pictures, and small wood cars that we decorated with sharpies. 

 We also had a car shaped pinata.  You can see Scott holding it up and holding John.  Super Dad!  Anna was feeling sick, but the boys finally got into the pinata and even set aside some of the goodies for Anna.

Then it was time for cake. 

Grant did great blowing out the candles.

 Grant was more into eating his pinata candy than the cake.  But the cake was good too.

We had a short treasure hunt to find Grant's gifts.  Matthew and Anna helped.  Matthew also helped him open his gifts.  And then wanted to play with them.

 Grant was excited about his presents.

Grant liked this airplane he got, Bravo from Planes.   I told him to smile normally and this is what he did.  :)  I think he enjoyed his birthday.  Happy Birthday Grant!!  We love you!!

April Showers

We've had some big rain the past week or so.  It rained a lot in the middle of last week and the wind blew hard.  There was a tornado watch in our area and we lost power.  The elementary school also lost power (and the base) so school was canceled and Scott only went in for a couple hours til they lost power again at the base.  We had no power from about 6am til 11am.  Then we got power again and lost it again around 3pm for an hour or so.  But we had power after that.  The school got power back the next day.  After dinner we went on a walk around the neighborhood to see all the floody places. 

 The big fields behind our houses and some of the playgrounds were flooded.

We got some more storms after that and I'm sure we're in for more.  All this rain sure is making everything green.  Hooray for spring and liquid precipitation!

John Standing Up

My new favorite thing is this video of John.  He has acquired a new skill - being able to stand up in the middle of the room unassisted.  He's been trying and trying and suddenly he just seemed to be able to do it and make it look effortless.  Good job John!  Now that he can do this, he is practicing his walking a lot more.  I've been watching this video over and over (and watching him do it in real life when he is up for it) and it makes me so happy!  Progress!!

Let's Go Fly a Kite

actually the proper British would be "Let us go fly a kite"
Have you seen Saving Mr. Banks?  I just saw it so it's still fresh in my mind.  I highly recommend it!  Especially if you are a lover of all things Disney like myself.  But I digress.

Scott got the kids some kites and on a warm day, he helped them fly their kites.  They were very excited.   Here is Matthew with his kite up in the air.  You can see our house to the right (single story with reddish roof).

 Anna with her kite up in the air and Grant doing something??

Grant with his kite up in the air.  We actually had many incidences of all three kites in the air at once.  Very exciting!  And no mid air collisions.

 Matthew again.  Look at that flat, flat, flat landscape.  :)

A few more pictures.  We all had lots of fun flying kites.  I brought John out a little bit so he could see.  He wanted to walk around on his own, but kept falling down.  He's getting better.

I tried to get a picture of Grant's face...didn't turn out that well.

 

And here's another less than perfect picture of everyone inside with their kites.

Thanks Scott for making kite flying so fun!

Sports

Matthew finished up his basketball season a week or so ago.  He had a great time and learned a lot.  His coach and his team were both great so it was a good experience all around.  Here is Matthew after the last game.  One of the parents made cool basketball cookies and another parent made certificates.  He also got a YMCA medal.  Matthew said his favorite part was playing games.

 

Here is Matthew with his team.  You can see he is one of the taller ones.  He was quite a formidable defender.  A little too formidable.  They played a man to man defense and Matthew stuck on his man pretty well.  We sometimes had to remind him when his team went back on offense.  He got better at dribbling and was also pretty good at getting rebounds.  It did help to be tall.

Anna, who is not tall compared to her peers, has said she wants to play next year.  She did swimming this time while Matthew did basketball, and she's doing well.  Her teachers said she is ready to move up to the next level, but can't move until she turns 6 in August.  But she's having fun and getting better at swimming I think.

 

Here is Matthew after one of his last practices.  It had been a warm day (one of our first ones) and he rode his bike outside for a couple hours before basketball practice.  During basketball he started feeling sick and then threw up when we got home.  I think he had some heat exhaustion.  I gave him some pedialyte and tylenol for his headache and he felt back to normal within an hour or so.  Poor guy.  Now whenever he feels a headache coming on he says he has "The H.E." and wants some pedialyte.  He has had no real recurrences yet...we're making sure to stay nice and hydrated.

And then there is karate.  Here are Anna and one of her karate classmates getting a new stripe in karate.  She has earned four stripes and will move up to yellow belt once she earns her next one.

 

And Matthew earned his yellow belt last week, so he is very excited.  No more white belt.

I didn't get a picture in his karate uniform so he modeled just the belt for me.  :)

And here is an unsanctioned recreational activity that Grant and Matthew like - fighting with "swords."  Grant is using a pool noodle here.  You can see John in the background and may notice that he is a) too tall for that bouncer and b) has no clothes on.  He had just made a big applesauce mess in the kitchen and I had to take his clothes off and put him somewhere to contain him while I cleaned up...and I managed to take a picture of the sword fight somewhere along the way.  Hmmm, priorities.  Anyway, those are some of the sporty things we have been up to.  We're hoping for more warm weather and less of the "H.E."

Baby Steps

John is 19 1/2 months old now and has been going to physical therapy for about 7 months.  He's been making good progress.  Scott and I work with him walking between us and he usually won't take more than a step or a half step between us without holding on to someone.  He's been getting a lot more stable and a lot more confident.  Today when Scott got home he was able to take five or so steps in between us on his own.  He is getting better at correcting and stabilizing himself when he starts to get off balance.  So we were very excited for his progress today!  I tried to take some video, and got some of his steps - not as many as he was going off camera of course.  :)  It still might be a while til he initiates taking steps on his own, but I think this is helping him feel more confident.  I love his victory dance on this video!!  Way to go John!!
As a sidenote, Scott is wearing a boot thing on his foot because he broke his foot.  He broke it back in February but didn't find out it was broken til sometime in March.  They can't cast it or anything so he just wears the boot to take some pressure off the break and he isn't supposed to run or walk too much on it for a while.  Fun times!

A Nasty Bump

If you ask Matthew what happened to his cheek (notice the crescent shaped bruise on his cheek), he'll tell you he fell and hit his cheek on a bar of the treadmill.  Ouch!

What he won't tell you is that he was walking around the room with a large red blanket on his head (after I asked him to take that off) pretending to be a ghost.  And that he fell down, on purpose, in what he thought was the middle of the room.  But since he had a blanket on his head, he didn't realize he was right next to the treadmill when he purposely fell down.

But in any case, he got a really nasty bonk to his face.  It swelled up a lot and got very black and blue.  This happened on Monday, and of course, picture day was on Wednesday.  So his cheek was at maximum black-and-blueness by Wednesday.  Those will be some memorable pictures.  Poor Matthew.  He's also been a little sick this week, so its been a tough week for him.  Hope he feels better soon!