Brooklyn is 5!

There are a lot of things happening at our house this week with Brooklyn, she started kindergarten and had a birthday. I'm going to list the things I love about Brooklyn at age 5:

*She is always good for a hug or a kiss

*She is a really good singer and memorizes lots of songs

*She loves me to read to her

*She is very friendly and makes new friends everywhere we go

*She talks to herself when she is playing and I think it is so cute

*She loves the water and has since she was a newborn, she can swim really well

*She says the cutes prayers, ie: bless we can go campin, bless we can have good night sleep, bless we can love Jesus, bless that we can go swimming at Alicia's pool, bless we can play with our friends, etc.

*She loves to ride her bike and we have skid marks all over our driveway due to her sudden braking to avoid going in the road like mom told her.

*She loves to go "campin" in our trailer

*She loves to clean and always helps me around the house, she cleans the playroom all by herself and then shows it off to me (this is a really big job, too)

*She adores animals and loves playing with the both our neighbors cats and dogs.

*She loves to climb trees, except our pine trees cause "they make me sticky!"

*She like writing and having me help her spell words, so she can write letters to people.

*She loves to go to Primary and raises her hand every time they ask a question whether she knows the answer or not, a few weeks ago they asked a question and called on her she told them all about princesses and how she has princess stuff at home, completely irrelevant to the question, silly girl!

*She loves to dress up and wear my jewelry

*She loves anything to do with princesses

*She love to go to dance and tumbling and loves to show off her cartwheels.

Well I know this list is kinda long, but it is more for me, so that in a few years I can look back and remember how Brooklyn was at five. We love you Brooklyn and hope you had a wonderful birthday!

1st Day of Kindergarten

Today my little baby girl started kindergarten. It is so hard watching your kids grow up. It was a little bittersweet. I'm excited for her to make new friends and learn new things, but I hate that from now till she is eighteen, she'll spend most of her day away from me(not really in kindergarten) and not at home. She had a great day though, and her teacher is really great, so I think is going to be a great year!

Hogle Zoo '08

Watching the bird show, my kids really liked this show. Afterwards, Grandpa Reeve gave them each a dollar to donate, so they could hand it to the bird, unfortunately my pictures were lame and only show my kids hands, what I really wanted was their facial expressions, oh well.

I just love this picture of Gavin, with his hand in his pocket, he looks so grown-up( which I don't like) and like such a little man.
Brooklyn loves maps, when we went to DisneyWorld last year,
she carried her map everywhere, so when the Zoo gave us our map Brooklyn was all over it, checking it out all day, making sure we knew where we were going.

Drive-In Movie

The last six weeks or so, we haven't done much because of Spencer's knee, but a couple weekends ago we decided to go up to the drive-in in Salt Lake. Wall-E was playing so we thought we could take the kids to see it. We loaded up the truck, and borrowed my brother Ryan's blow-up mattress to put in the back and were off. We got there about an hour early, and it was a good thing. My brother said it only took like 15 minutes to blow up the mattress, well an HOUR later it still wasn't blown up all the way and the battery in the pump died. SO, we had to do a balancing act with Spencer on one side, and I and the kids on the other. The mattress was basically in a V-shape with us rolling towards the center. It was pretty fun anyway though. Except after getting all settled in on the mattress, the movie started, and Gavin said "Mom, lets go home.." WHAT! we just drove all the way here, bought you a bunch of treats, spent one-hour blowing up this mattress and you won't even watch the movie? Two-year olds, go figure. Brooklyn however loved the whole experience and didn't make a peep. Gavin was okay as long as I kept shoving candy in his mouth. All in all think we'd do it again, minus the mattress :)

I have to add...

...when Brooklyn saw her picture on the blog she said, "I look stylish!" Too funny.

I'm Ready Mom...

...is what Brooklyn said the other morning, after I asked her to go get ready so we could run errands. Notice the headband on TOP of her hair, but with matching purple flower attached, to match her purple LONG-sleeved tee, my matching purple wicker purse, three bracelets, a neclace, sunglasses, and of course keys! She walked in the kitchen and said "I'm ready Mom!" What a cutie.

Back to Same-Day-Surgery...

And hopefully it is really is SAME DAY, unlike last time where Spencer was checked in to the hospital. As many of you may know, we've been going through some challenges with Spencer's knee, since his recent accident. Because, his first surgery caused him so much pain, he was unable to really start physical therapy the day or two after surgery, so a month later Spencer still cannot bend his knee past 110 degrees, because he developed a lot of scar tissue and didn't get into PT like he should have. So, Monday we are back to UVRMC for Same Day Surgery. Basically they are going to do a nerve block on his leg, put him under general anesthia and "break" his leg. They aren't actually breaking it, they just call it that, because they are going to break up all the scar tissue by making his leg bend all the way (OUCH!). The other problem we are facing is his nerve damage. Yesterday they performed a test to see how much damage there was because he can't really feel his leg from below his knee down to his foot. His foot is almost completely numb, and his leg feels like pins and needles. The test results came back as "severe." He was told that his nerve damage extends about 410mm, and nerves grow on average a mm/day. Well 410 days is long time to take to heal! Spencer is pretty bummed about it, but says he'll still bike and hopefully it will heal sooner. The doctor said breaking up the scar tissue around the nerve shouldn't damage it any more, but I'm not so sure, so I want to hold a fast on Sunday for him, he can use all the help he can get at this point, so if anybody wants to join in, it would be greatly appreciated. We have such great friends, thanks everyone who has helped us through this challenging times in our lives, we love you all!

Goodbye Huggies, Hello tighty whities!

Look at this cute bum!

Since Gavin turned two, he has been telling me when he would go the bathroom, then he started to take off his diaper to go potty! This was not so great, so a couple of months ago I bought some underwear to kind of test the water and see how ready he really was. After like two hours I decided it was too much effort and I gave up. Then a week ago last Friday (July 27th) we woke up to realize we had no diapers! Somehow I had slowly used the ones in storage as well and had nothing!

So, I decided this was a great opportunity to try again, given I couldn't resort to diapers. So the training began. The last time I tried to potty train him I used hershey kisses. The problem with this is that Gavin can go pee on demand at any time, even just a little bit. So, he pretty much would pee a little bit every time he wanted a kiss and ended eating so much chocolate he got diarrhea! So, I decided against chocolate. He loves hard candy so I bought jolly ranchers and he did really great, basically going every time I put him on the potty. The problem was, I could tell he wasn't completely empyting his bladder and he wasn't getting the concepts of wiping his bum and washing his hands.

I remembered I had this book "Potty Time" and it is actually one of his favorite book anyway, and at the end it has a sticker chart, so I decided to try this instead of treats. He was thrilled! I think one of the reasons why, is because Brooklyn has a sticker chart for her chores, and he thinks it is so cool, so now he had his OWN chart. After day 5 he was telling me when he had to go potty and I no longer had to ask him. THEN this morning he got up and went potty without even asking me to help him. At church I was nervous to send him to nursery without a pull-up(last week he wore one) but in the middle of primary they called me out because Gavin told them he needed to go! I was so proud :) He does pretty good for 2 years and 4 months.

This is my first time being diaperless in 5 years! Aah...it feels awesome, it kinda makes me think having 1 boy and 1 girl is good.

A New "Do"

This is before the cut,

It was a very hard decision to cut Gavin's hair this short. I love his curls, but after four haircuts this year, and him fighting me all the time to actually style it (yes, style, it took me almost as long to do his as it did Brooklyn's hair!) I finally broke down and cut it off :( The hardest part is that he looks so much older! But it is darling, and his Aunt Leesh did a great job!

He was a little scared of the buzzers for the first time, but still did pretty good, sitting there. Here is the end result, Gavin's new faux hawk :)