School report cards

Emma came home with her report card on Friday. I thought about posting about it then, but since Jimmy had stayed home from school that day and wasn't able to bring his home, I thought I would wait until he had his too. And he came home with his today.

Jimmy's report card was good. He had mostly 4's with some 3's. His grade in math is much better than it was the previous two terms. I still wonder if the previous two were typos since the scores he showed on his work he brought home were all decent scores. But it's still nice to see that they've improved.

Emma's report card was also good. This time she came home with mostly 4's and the occasional 2.75. I think the lower score for those is due to her tendency to not finish her work. But we're working on that. As we have since kindergarten. :)

Anyway, I'm glad to know that they are doing well. Jimmy's teacher has been back to work just a short while after missing a lot. SEP Conferences had been cancelled for her class because she was gone. When they were cancelled, they said they would make them up when she came back. A note came home with Jimmy that read that his teacher will be at the school a few days this week for anyone who wanted to drop by. Just have to decide which day I'll drop by.

On a totally different subject, I got another thing in the mail today about the Dick's Market opening in Layton. This time it listed dates for a grand opening and the address. The grand opening starts on the 1st. Looking at the address, it isn't all that far from me (actually, looking at the address, it seems as though Dan's is becoming the Dick's). They have sort of doorbuster prizes every morning for the first 200 guests for the week of their grand opening. Not that there's any way that I would make it over there that early. But I think I will have to make sure their bakery is just as good as the other two...

Dylan's appointment today

Dylan had what should be his last synagis shot for this year. Well, this winter season, at any rate. He may get them next winter which would technically be part of this year. He's growing nicely. I believe he was still under 17 pounds a month ago. Today he weighed in at about 18 pounds, 7 ounces. As per usual, he was all smiles until it came time for the shot. Although I think he's getting to know that it's the nurse who gives him the shot. He didn't smile at her quite as much as he usually does.

Afterward, I stopped by my mom's house to help her move some furniture so they can remove old wallpaper in some rooms. My aunt, Evelyn, was there to help as well. She took Dylan when I got there. He was okay, but really didn't want her and wasn't going to smile much. He wanted to go back to me and she decided to tease him by turning him quickly and saying, "No, you don't want her!" He didn't think it was funny. At all. Started to cry. It was funny.

Before heading home, we all went to grab a bite to eat. There we ran into a good friend of mine, Lisa. She had stopped there to get some lunch with her son, Jack, after taking him for an echo. Jack was also born with a heart defect. (I would list his defects, but I'm sure I don't remember exactly what they all are. Okay, I can't ever remember one of them...probably will ask you again sometime, Lisa.) I'm sure she'll eventually write about it on her blog (so sorry if you didn't want me to mention it here), but she was telling me that they saw something on his echo that looks like a blood clot and he has to go in for an MRI to know for sure. If it is, he'll have to go on medication stronger than the aspirin he takes and will have to get blood drawn every month. But at least he's very active and everything else looks good.

Sorry, no pictures this time.

County Report/Fair

Yesterday Jimmy's school had the county fair for his grade. Jimmy had Garfield County (which I think he picked because he likes the Garfield comic strip). His poster and diorama didn't turn out too shabby for being done mostly the night before (and a little the morning of). What can I say? He's from a long line of procrastinators. Can't really see it very well, but his diorama is of some cliffs that surround the Colorado River, which is one of the boundaries for Garfield County. There was even a little boat with a person on the river.

The kids in the classes put on a little program before people could go see their displays for the counties. They sang a few songs and such. Jimmy was happy to see both of his grandmothers and his Grandpa Green and his aunt Linda come to see it. Although seemed happiest to see Dylan there. :)

And just so you know, Jimmy saw this picture and said it's a weird picture. I told him they both were and he laughed and walked away. :)

More pictures of Dylan

Okay, two pictures of Dylan. I took these pictures a few days ago (obviously when I was giving him some food to eat). Even with the messy face, I thought they turned out to be cute pictures. But then, he's a cute baby, so they should be cute pictures. He had been crying because I walked away for a second. Funny how he can look happy even with tears running down his cheeks.

Jimmy's party

Today was Jimmy's birthday party. Talk about insane. He invited about 13 boys, all of whom were able to come. Usually there is at least one or two who can't make it to a party, so I was surprised when boys kept arriving. And then most of them decided to get on the tramp at the same time. Yeah, we put a stop to that rather quickly. But picture 14 ten year old boys running around, yelling. If you can picture that, you can probably picture how his party went. Let's just say I'm glad it's over and I'm thinking the saying about there being a certain age that one stops celebrating birthdays and that's 10 sounds really good right at the moment.

All in all, they had a good time. He liked all of the gifts he received. I'm sure he'll post about it on his blog. Eventually, anyway.

The theme he chose for his party was "Mouse in Space," which is a story he has written. The school librarian actually has a copy of it in the school library. In keeping with the theme, I made a rocket cake with his character, Cheese the mouse inside. My camera wouldn't really focus very well on the cake, so the pictures aren't very good. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing since I was a little lazy and didn't make sure the lines were as straight as they could be. The kids were all impressed with the cake though. That's all that matters, right? (And there wasn't a single piece left at the end of the party, so that's usually a good sign too. Or a sign that there wasn't quite enough cake. I'm opting for the former and not the latter.)

Jimmy is showing off some of the toys he got. The balls open up to little figures when they get on anything metal. He got 6 at his party. Amazingly, none were exactly the same.
Jimmy and his sisters about to start with the pinata. Which was a big hit, no pun intended. I think the kids just wished it held more candy.
Chaos in the kitchen getting ready for the cake.
Getting ready to blow.
And about to blow....wasn't able to get a picture of the actual blowing out of the candles because the camera kind of froze up on me. And if you didn't notice, we did put the candles in the flame part of the cake. I thought it was a good place for it. That way none of the melting wax got on the actual cake.

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

It's hard to believe that Jimmy is 10 years old! Okay, I guess what's really hard to believe is that I have a 10 year old. Surely I'm not old enough to have a 10 year old. But it's not about me, now is it?

Ten years ago we were quite surprised when Jimmy decided to come 7 weeks early. (I would throw in a picture of when he was in the hospital, but I'm too lazy to get the pictures and scan one in so I can. ) He weighed 4 pounds, 11 ounces, which I really didn't think was bad. After 3 weeks in the hospital, he came home. I still find it funny that a baby with really no problems (just not gaining weight because he kept losing weight due to a couple of bouts of diarrhea) was in the hospital longer than a baby who had open heart surgery. The nurses all loved him and the day we brought him home they told us that the night shift nurse tried to think of anything she could to keep him there because he was so cute. :)

Anyway, happy birthday, Jimmy! Hope you have a great one this year!

Jimmy at about 5 weeks
Not sure on the age, but my guess is somewhere around 9 months.
Jimmy (with Xena) at 2.
First day of 1st grade
Jimmy now. (Okay, I guess technically it's Jimmy 4 days ago, but still.)

Yay!

Not to say I'm easy to please (at least some of the time), but I'm really happy right now. And no, it didn't take much. Just a simple walk to the mailbox. There was a mailer in today's mail that announced the opening of a Dick's Market in Layton. I love Dick's bakery. The eclairs, the white cake...yum! With Jimmy's birthday coming up, I keep thinking I should order his cake from there rather than make one. Unfortunately, they didn't have any in their book that went with his theme. I told him that and he said that maybe we can just order a regular one. He likes their cake too. But I'll probably just make him a cake this time.

Ooo...speaking of cake, I still have a piece left of the little white cake I bought from Dick's yesterday......

Feeding the Ducks...take 2

Not long after we got home from church, Dave and Michelle called us up and invited us to go feed the ducks with them at the Layton Park. Being a much nicer day than it was on Friday, we decided it would be a fun thing to do. And it was.

Unfortunately, the ducks and the geese didn't seem terribly interested in the bread that was being thrown at them. The seagulls, on the other hand, were practically fighting over the bread. Something would startle the seagulls and they would all fly off. At which point the ducks would seem slightly more interested in the bread, but it wouldn't be long before the seagulls came back.

Just like Friday, I brought the camera. You can tell in this first picture, at least, how the seagulls greatly outnumber the ducks. I think there is one duck in that picture. Somewhere.
The hard part about taking pictures of kids feeding ducks is when the kids keep moving closer to you as you are trying to take a picture. As is the case in this picture of Molly. I only had so far I could back away and finally just took it. Again, note that all you can really see are seagulls.
This was Dylan while the duck feeding was going on.
Lys turned and started to run toward me just as I was about to take the picture. She had been standing closer to Emma. Ah, well.
Just for fun, I thought I'd throw in a picture of these two seagulls.
And this black swan that we saw as we wandered around. The kids followed it as it swam toward the larger part of the pond. And no, it didn't really want any bread. In case you were wondering.
This was Emma riding on Russ' shoulders as we were getting ready to leave the park.

Family pictures

I was going to include these pictures with the other post (that I am actually writing after this one, but this one will be under the other one, so this one is second. In its own way), but my computer decided to be dumb and I decided at that point that two posts would be better than one.

While we were at the park feeding the ducks (well, more seagulls than ducks), we snapped a few family pictures just for fun. The little tiny thumbnail pictures that show up when trying to add photos to posts were hard to see, so these might not be the best of the ones that we took. But they give you a general idea how things went at any rate.

Rebecca really wanted to hold Dylan for a picture, so that's what this first one is. At least she looks like she's having a good time. :)
Jimmy actually took this picture of Rebecca, Michelle and Dave. Not bad for a nearly 10 year old.
Lys was posing here.
As was Jimmy. He wanted individual ones of each of them, but Emma and Molly didn't cooperate with his idea.
Our kids.
These next two are of all of us. No, I have no idea why Russ decided to pull a face in this first one.
Okay, looking at this one, I really don't think it was the best one that I have from this pose. But I really don't feel like trying to figure out which one was, so you're stuck with seeing this one.

Feeding the Ducks

I went this morning with a few from my ward to go feed the ducks at the nearby ponds. It was colder than it looked. The girls had fun though. Dylan, not so much. He has a bad case of diaper rash that is basically a result of the antibiotics he's on for his ear infection. So he thought I should hold him and he was tired and got pretty unhappy with me at the end. Luckily, it was on the way home that he got that unhappy and not from the start.

These first two pictures are when we were about to head over to the ponds. Dylan wasn't crying like it looks. He was yawning. The rest are at the ponds with the ducks.

A few more pictures....

Ever since finding my camera (again) the other day, I've been playing around with it and taking a few pictures. I thought I would post a few. Just because. Not that you can tell that I was using different settings with my camera. I actually think I used the same setting for about all of the pictures I'm posting.

I also had a little fun playing with my picture editing program. At least with one picture of Dylan. I mostly just changed it to black and white and played around a little with the sharpness features. Below it is the same picture in color. I did crop it slightly for the black and white version. I just think it's a very cute picture of Dylan.

This picture was obviously taken after she pulled out the things I had in her hair. And I have no idea why she has that expression. But yes, she was wanting to eat those Oreos she has.
Emma wouldn't let go of the balloon and I thought it looked better with the balloon in the picture than the one I took that just had the string in front of her face. :)
I told Molly I wanted to take her picture. She posed like this. I think she must have been thinking, "Oh, get it over with."
Yes, Jimmy thought he was very funny posing with the balloon weight on his head.

Mindless Rambling

Sometimes I really wonder where my mind has gone. For a little while now, I have not been able to find my camera (as mentioned earlier). Could not even begin to think of where it might be. I even started to wonder if the girls got a hold of the camera and took it out with them to jump on the trampoline and left it out there. In the snow. Being somewhat lazy, I didn't ever go out to look though. Which turned out to be fine.

Last night was Enrichment meeting (for which I made some Texas Sheet Cake and was a little sad when Jimmy and his friends ate most of the leftovers today). The little reminder note about it said to bring your purse. I tend to use my diaper bag as a purse, but actually have a purse thanks to Mom buying one and deciding it wasn't big enough for her. I even use it occasionally. (Actually, my diaper bag came into my possession in much the same way. Mom bought herself a nice purse only to get home and discover that it was in reality a diaper bag. I had been using a big tote bag as a diaper bag so she gave it to me.) When I pulled out my purse to go to the meeting last night, I discovered that the camera was in the purse. At which point I remembered how it got there.

Once a month some good friends of mine try to get everyone together for a girl's night out. This tends to be the last Friday of the month, as was the case in February. I decided that night to throw the camera in my purse in case I wanted to take a few pictures. And there the camera stayed. As soon as it was in there, it was out of my mind. Obviously. But, hey! Something good came out of it. When I got the camera out I started to play around with it. I discovered features on the camera that I hadn't known were there before. Like it has a feature that it will automatically take a picture when the subject smiles. I don't quite think Russ appreciated my playing around with the camera though. Mostly because some of my playing involved using him as my test subject (granted, I used Dylan more). Just so you know, Russ didn't smile for me to try out the smile feature. But if you look at pictures of Russ, you will discover that it's the rare picture in which he is actually smiling.

So now that I've found my camera again (assuming I don't put it somewhere and once again totally space where I put it), I may be playing around with pictures more. Which means I may soon have more pictures to post. Woo hoo. (In case you are wondering, I do sometimes wonder why I actually post some of these things....)

Oh the joys....

In case you didn't catch it, that title is dripping with sarcasm.

Yesterday Russ stayed home from church and I didn't go to the family dinner because Jimmy and Dylan were sick. Jimmy mostly had a bad cough that made him tired. (He's better today and went to school.) Dylan has had a cold and cough for a little over a week now. Didn't seem too bad yesterday. Then evening came.

Seemed like as Jimmy started to feel better, Dylan started to feel worse, but still generally his happy self. Wanted to be held and wasn't happy when I set him down to load the dishwasher and start it. Which actually led to another problem. More on that in a second.

I managed to keep him generally happy while Russ and the girls were gone. He was tired but wouldn't really nap long enough to do much. That's not all that unusual for him though. He tends to like the little catnap in the evening.

When Russ got home a little while after the kid's bedtime, I thought it would be a simple thing to get them sent to bed. But no. Curse that danged Daylight Savings! The girls had a really hard time getting to bed. And Dylan was starting to get crankier. Russ had also gone downstairs and asked me what the smell was. I hadn't noticed a smell. I kept telling the girls they needed to stop talking and get in their beds and go to sleep. They were being loud enough, so I thought, that they were keeping Dylan awake. I later discovered that they might not have really had much to do with his restlessness.

I got him to fall asleep long enough to go find out why I could hear Russ in the basement with the wet/dry vac. He was trying to get the clog out of the toilet and said I didn't want to go in the laundry room. By this time, I noticed the bad smell he had mentioned. I looked in the laundry room anyway. Turned out that our drain had a clog so when I ran the dishwasher, it backed up in the laundry room. It was lovely, let me tell you.

I told Russ I would take care of the clog in the morning. Run to Home Depot or something and rent a power auger. By this time Dylan had started to cry again. He tossed and turned all night and cried a good part of it. And a good part of the day today. Russ ended up staying home from work so he could help me with the drain. I think part of it had to do with not much sleep last night. Dylan's currently fairly happy, just in case you were wondering.

We decided we should take him to the doctor just to be safe. Especially after his last illness. And since he really wasn't happy at all. And wasn't really sleeping. During this time, Russ decided he really didn't know what he was doing and called a roto person to come and clear the drain for us.

The roto guy came and got the drain cleared as it was getting close to the time to take Dylan to the doctor. Russ asked him to look at the toilet, too. After getting his auger for the toilet and pulling really hard, he managed to free the blockage. And wouldn't you know it? It was a much mangled spoon. One the kids had put in the toilet a long time ago and Russ saw and for some reason decided to try to flush down rather than fish out. If I knew where my camera is, I would have taken a picture. Russ claims he doesn't remember flushing the spoon down the toilet. I think he's lying. :) But at least it works now.

Dylan fell asleep in the car on the way to the doctor and woke up shortly after getting there. And cried and cried. The receptionist commented on how miserable he is. He usually smiles at her. Not today. He did try to smile at the nurse who weighed him (clothes and a wet diaper on, he weighs 18 pounds, 5 ounces). He was crying hard enough that they couldn't hear his lungs. So left me in the room for a few minutes to try to calm him down. He is very, very tired. Took a bit, but they were able to finally listen. And his lungs sound great. But he has another ear infection. Hopefully the medicine will help quickly. And we'll be sure to keep giving him tylenol. The only times he has almost been happy today is for about the first hour and a half after we have given him tylenol.

I'm ready for a nap.

Cub Scout Blue & Gold Dinner

Last night Russ and I went to the cub scout Blue and Gold banquet (thanks for watching the girls for us, Linda!). Jimmy was getting his World Conservation award and some silver arrow points. Of course, I couldn't find the camera. Russ took a picture with his phone, but then, it's on his phone and not mine so I can't put it on this. Maybe he will later. Doubtful though.

Anyway, the night was fun. Generally speaking. When they announced that it was time to eat, the boys all went running toward the tables to get their food. Big ol' herd of boys running as fast as they could. Jimmy was nearly first when he got tripped up in this large herd and went down. Hard. He wanted to go home at that point. His knee hurt. We told him he should at least sit there and eat food first.

Since we took Dylan with us, I figured Dylan would be able to cheer Jimmy up so let him hold him. Only Dylan is getting fast with his hands. Grabbed Jimmy's cup of water and had it dumped in Jimmy's lap before we could stop him. Jimmy really wanted to go home at that point. Still, we talked him into eating. He had fun after that.

He ended up getting 7 silver arrow points. I had no idea he was getting that many. The cubmaster asked him to say what he did to earn his conservation patch. He said, "Well, I was really close to getting it so my mom got out my book and we just did it." It was funny, but might be one of those you had to be there for; especially to hear the way he said it.

Strange to think that at the next pack meeting, Jimmy will be in Webelos. He's just growing up too fast. As Jimmy would ask me, where's the shortening to keep them small?

March Birthdays

I realized that I hadn't done my monthly birthday post yet. So here it is. Happy birthday this month to:
Sadie
Cole
Jimmy
Sara
Mom

Also to Sandi...couldn't find a picture as I was doing this real quick. Lucky you.

Anyway, hope all of you have a happy birthday this year!