Cabin Camping

At the beginning of August my parents and Drew came down to meet us and we all went to stay in a cabin for a few days. We stayed in the King Hill's pass cabin. It had electricity which was nice as well as two rooms: one for sleeping and one for everything else. The only bad part of the trip was when my parents and brother got sick with the stomach flu. Before that we got to have a lot of fun. We went for a short hike to see some falls. On the way back we caught some glimpses of the wildlife:

This particular specimen was in a bad mood so we gave him a lot of space

More wildlife, also in a bad mood.

Finally: cheerful one.

We had fun just relaxing by the cabin, playing games and eating good food.

Conner just relaxing by the fire with a juice box

One evening we sent the boys on a dessert hunt. We gave them a clue and they walked along the road until they found a box of graham crackers. Then they followed another clue until they found some chocolate bars. Then they followed the last clue, which brought them back to camp where they found the marshmallows and everything else you need to make smores.

Going on a dessert hunt

Alan and Conner found the marshmallows hanging on the ax, close to the fire pit.

It was a fun time. I was glad we were in a cabin - it rained one day and one of the nights Micah decided he was ready to get up when the rest of us were going to bed so we stayed up with him in the other room for quite a while. We would definitely do that again.

Housekeeping reminder

A random picture for a random post: pirate Conner and Astronaut Alan playing in their nook

Last week Reed and I watched the musical Les Miserables on t.v. Several of the songs are quite catchy so we found ourselves singing some of them the next day. As we were sitting at the table Reed sang "I know a place were no one sweeps" and Alan looked up and brightly said, "Yeah, me too, the kitchen!" Reed and I started laughing so hard. Apparently I need to sweep the kitchen more often.

Time flies when you're having fun!

It has been a while since I have done an update. My excuse is that I have been too busy having fun to write about having fun. Since I am quite behind (and because I have been working on this blog in 5 minute increments for a week, and I have had to redo large parts of it due to Micah unplugging the computer) I will do a condensed version. Here goes:

In July Reed had some time off so he took Alan and Conner on a father/son camp out. They had a lot of fun and as soon as they got back we unpacked the van and then repacked it so that we could go and watch our oldest nephew, Hudson, be baptized. It was really fun to see everyone - we had dinner at Russ and Kristie's and then we all went back to our hotel and went swimming. The next day we went to church in Belgrade and it was neat to see people that we knew when we lived there years ago. That afternoon we got to watch Hudson be baptized - way to go Hudson! I took our camera with us but I forgot to get it out so this is the only picture I got from the entire trip:

Micah and Bentlie

The next weekend we packed up again and went to stay at Grandpa and Grandma Bassett's house. We got to see Brenda and her kids while we were there and Reed and I went to see Harry Potter and I got to go to a baby shower for my sister in law, Mindy. When we weren't busy doing any of those things we helped build a tree house. Mom and dad had already prepped a site that was relatively close to the house (at least you could see it from the kitchen window). We all enjoyed working on this project:

James and Conner helping Grandpa and Aunt Brenda

When the kids weren't in the tree house they were climbing and sliding down the hill right next to it:

Or swinging on the rope swings - Kyla showing Alan how to hold on and swing:

Micah was the official straw boss - he sat on a blanket and tried to steal snacks or sneak off the blanket into the thistles

We decided to add railings to the sides and back. The front was only 4 feet off the ground but the back was 7 or 8 feet off the ground. If you look off to the left side you can see part of the swing that Dad and Brenda built.

Becky, Alan, Kyla, Breven and Conner having a picnic in the tree house

The 5 year old club (also known as the stick wielding club)
Breven, Alan and James

By the time we were done I thought it looked great. It was so fun to build and to watch the kids play on it. Right before we left we had a birthday party for Baer:
And then we headed home to unpack completely and begin the Herculean task of catching up on laundry. Hopefully I will get a couple more posts up this week and then be caught up!

Check out my ride

Here is Micah's ride:

Here is Conner's ride:

Here is Alan's ride:

Notice that there are no training wheels on his bike:

On Thursday, July 14th, I decided to take the boys to the church parking lot and see if I could help Alan learn to ride his bike without training wheels. I read in Janae's blog about how she taught her girls to ride by letting them ride their little brother's bike so I tried the same thing with Alan. I took the training wheels off Conner's bike. Then Alan got on and I ran beside him and held him for about 10 feet and then I let go and away he went. I jogged beside him and when he realized he was doing it by himself he got very wide eyes and said "stop me, stop me, stop me". He eventually got stopped. We practiced for about a half an hour and by then he could ride the length of the parking lot but he would just drag his feet to stop himself. That night when Reed came home we told him about our adventure and then we all went back to the church parking lot. This time I took the training wheels off of Alan's bike and had him practice on that. He mastered the braking part and then he practiced and practiced and got so that he could start himself without us giving him a push. Hooray! He learned so fast, it was a lot of fun to watch. While he was doing that Conner was practicing on his little bike. He got so that he could ride at a brisk walking pace (before it was a very slow walking pace, with many pauses). Micah was pretty patient with just sitting in his stroller watching everyone.

Destructo mode

Now that it has been over two weeks since the incident I can't laugh about it yet but I think I can write calmly about it.

Lately it seems that my kids internal programming has been switched to Destruction Mode. An example: Conner smeared sunscreen all over our back porch, my flowers and zucchini plants (apparently plants don't appreciate being protected from the sun because the leaves died that had sunscreen on them died), then he smeared sunscreen all over our living room (toys, carpet, couch), he used a hanger to enlarge a hole in the wall (which Alan had conveniently started for him), he dumped buckets of dirt on my zucchini and then stepped on it (the zucchini is still alive, believe it or not), Alan pulled our coat hooks off the wall while trying to pull his coat down, ect.....

So, a couple of weeks ago we watched two boys overnight while their mom went to the hospital to have her baby. My boys loved having a sleep over (they stayed awake very late and woke up very early and that probably contributed to the problems we had during the day) and playing with them that morning. After the friends left Alan and Conner were very hyper. They were constantly fighting and bugging each other so I decided we needed to get out of the house. I told them to put their shoes on while I used the bathroom and then we would go to the library and get new books. While I am in the bathroom I can hear loud banging noises coming from our living room and then I heard glass shatter. Uh-oh. I rushed out to find this:
The door was closed and Conner was sitting on one side of it, surrounded by glass and laughing hysterically. Alan was sitting on the other side with a shocked/horrified expression on his face. Micah was right beside Alan, making a beeline for the jagged hole in the door. I lost my temper. I was so mad I couldn't even form coherent sentences for a minute. I asked what had happened and Alan told me he and Conner were play fighting, and Conner was laughing at him, so he kicked the door (with his bare foot). I sent Alan to his room, I put Conner on the couch and told him if he got off he was in big trouble and I moved Micah way back (luckily he was a very slow crawler then). I then swept up all the glass, and vacuumed and mopped. Alan came and showed me a miniscule cut on his ankle so we put a bandaid on it and I sent him back to his room. Amazingly, that was the only injury sustained. Thankfully Reed called home at the beginning of this escapade. He said he just felt like he needed to call and I ranted and raved for a little while and that helped me calm down quite a bit. Reed came home for lunch early and we both talked to Alan and Conner. We told Alan he was going to have to give us all the money he had saved to buy fireworks, plus he was going to do a lot of extra chores to pay us back. We took the door off its hinges and to a glass place and $40 later it was fixed. Grrrr. What really made me mad was that this isn't the first glass thing Alan has broken. He threw a ball a few months ago and knocked the glass covering to his bedroom light off. After that he did a few extra chores and we discussed how glass is very breakable, and how we need to be careful with it. Apparently the lesson didn't sink in. So now he is doing A LOT of extra chores including weeding the garden, cleaning the bathroom, helping with laundry and washing the walls (Conner helps sometimes):
The whole day was just a wreck: Alan woke Micah up from his nap, Conner threw tantrum after tantrum, as we were trying to decide what to order for dinner (Reed had a $20 certificate that needed used that day) Conner peed his pants on the carpet while laughing, then after I cleaned that up he pooped in his pants, the kids seemed to be fighting and screaming all the time, we didn't end up ordering any food because by that time I was in tears so I think I made PB and J sandwiches. And of course it happened on the day that Reed had to work late.

That night as I got ready for bed I decided that it had been a day for the record book so I wrote about it in my journal. After I was done I felt like I needed to think about the good things that had happened and here was my list:
- Conner said "nake you Mom" a lot.
- Alan passed his swim lessons.
- Alan offered to give me a back massage and make me dinner (as long as he didn't have to cook it, he said).
- Alan picked me a bouquet of flowers from the backyard:
So, even though it was a really rough day it wasn't all bad. I figure now I can look back on this post and think "Oh, yeah, today wasn't really that bad at all."
Anyone know how to turn the Destruction button off on little boys?

9 months old

I decided I had better get this post done before Micah turns 10 months old. We went in for his 9 month check up last month and the doctors were happy to see that he had gained some weight.
Here are his stats:
height: 28.5 inches (50%)
weight: 17.1 lbs. (a little higher than the 10th percentile)
So he is still on the light side. The funny thing is that to me he doesn't look skinny - he looks just right. He eats a lot so I'm not worried.

Here is what Micah has been up to in the last month:

1. Teething - he cut 5 new teeth this month. His bottom two teeth came in a while ago and then I noticed that one of his upper side teeth was coming in. Since it was the only one up there for a while we joked that we could call him "Fang". Then a couple of weeks ago the other 3 top teeth and one bottom tooth came in (for a total of 7 teeth).

Micah before the hair cut

2. Learning to crawl - he has been working on this for a while. He could kind of scoot himself around but he didn't start to crawl until 2 weeks ago. Here are some pictures of him practicing so that he can keep up with his older brothers:

On your mark...

Get set... (before he actually learned to crawl he would get in this position a lot)

Go!!!!

3. Learning to pull up - as soon as he learned to walk he started trying to pull himself up on things. After some trial and error he figured it out and now his favorite thing to do is crawl to the stairs and try to climb them. Other random facts:
- Micah has become a Momma's boy. If I leave him with someone else (even Reed sometimes) and then walk away he bursts into tears.
- He is shy around strangers. He will bury his head in my shoulder if a stranger walks up and starts to pay attention to him. Or if he is on the floor he will lay on his stomach, raise his hands above his head and press his face into the carpet. Then he will lay there really still and occasionally check if the person is still there. If they are he resumes his "play dead" pose.
- He loves baths - he gets so excited when I take him into the bathroom and start the bath water.
- He is very good at self-entertaining now that he can crawl

Swimming Lessons

We put Alan in swimming lessons this year and he loved it! He turned into quite the little fish. He was put in the beginner, or "butter cube" class:

Alan liked the "butter cubes" - they helped him float

One of the days they did boat safety. They piled a bunch of kids in the boat and pushed it back and forth across the pool and then the teacher's tipped the boat. All the kids swam away and then they swam back and the teacher's took them under the upside down canoe and showed them the air pocket under there. Alan thought that was pretty cool. Alan has his back to the camera and he is sitting in the middle of the boat.

Alan was very hesitant about putting his face in the water but after the teacher had them all use goggles that all changed. After that he spent so much time with his head under the water that he sometimes missed instructions. Alan did everything his teacher asked him to do including: jumping into the deep end, jumping off the lifeguard tower, doing a kneeling dive, swimming to the bottom of the shallow end to get a ring off the bottom as well as learning different kicks and strokes. It was so fun to watch him become more confident and to hear him talk about what he was learning.

Alan working on a stroke with his teacher

He was so excited about swimming lessons that when he woke up in the morning he would ask how many more hours till swim lessons (the lessons were at 4 pm) and then he would ask frequently throughout the day "How much longer till my lessons?"

Alan with his class on the last day

Alan passed the Guppy level - way to go Alan! We are so proud of you!