Walking!

Dylan has been a little stubborn about not wanting to walk. I guess he's just been too good at crawling to care about walking. But over the past couple of days, he's seemed to really be wanting to walk more. The following video was taken tonight. Shows how he's gone from taking one, maybe two steps before leaning over for a hand to grab to full out walking. Still a bit wobbly though. Russ calls it the "zombie walk."

At the very end of the video Dylan looks like he's kind of attacking the camera. He was. He wanted to watch the video I had just taken. Grabbed the camera and sat down on my lap to watch it. It really was funny.

Heart Walk

This morning we participated in the 2nd annual Heart Walk for Intermountain Healing Hearts. We didn't go to the first one because Dylan had been home from the hospital less than a month and didn't really want to take him to a lot of places yet. I think it is a really nice event. It is the one fundraiser a year IHH holds. This year the number of people participating doubled the number from last year. I think that is great. It was nice to see a lot of extended families going together. Some made their own shirts so didn't wear the shirt we got with the registrations.

Since Dylan has a chg, he was given a heart sticker to wear on his shirt. After about the 5th time it came off, I went back and got him another sticker. They gave me two in case he kept pulling the next one off too. Of course, Molly was sad that she didn't get to wear the heart sticker.

Here is a picture I took of some of the crowd waiting for the start of the walk/run. Doesn't show nearly the number that was there.

This was a portion of the group ahead of us. There was at least as many behind us, if not more.
Here are a few pictures of the kids before the walk started. They played a lot on the playground before and after.







After the walk, they took a group picture then held an "Angel Ceremony" for the children who have passed on. Each child's name was read and then once all were read the families huddled together and each released a butterfly. It was sweet. They also had a couple of canopies where posters with pictures of each child was displayed.

I just wonder how much bigger the group will be next year.

First Day of Preschool

Today was Alyssa's first day of preschool. She was so excited about going that I had to make her eat breakfast. She wanted to just go instead of eating.

Since it was the first day, her teacher had an activity of decorating a gingerbread man cookie where the parents could help if the child were scared and nervous. Lys was saying bye to me before she even got out of the car but once to the door seemed a bit nervous and shy so I thought I would stick around for a minute to make sure she was okay. After sitting down with her cookie and frosting, she looked up at me and with a smile said, "Can you go now?"

She loved preschool. She said she had a lot of fun and that she's going to have more fun than Molly had at her preschool. She's looking forward to going again.

It was really quiet in my house with just Dylan. He even took a short nap with everyone gone. Was kind of strange to have it be just the two of us, but I'm thinking it won't take too long to get used to.

Cones and Cars

Yesterday the city held it's 6th annual "Cool Cones and Cars." It was started as a family tradition to celebrate the birthday of the ice cream cone (which is Sept. 21) that grew and grew until the city decided to take it over 6 years ago. Most years we forget completely about it. One year I took the kids when Russ was working late. This was our second time going and the first for Russ. Kind of a nice way to end the day. Here are a few pictures.


I told Russ to take a picture of Dylan with his messy ice cream face. Side shots don't show the messy face so well....
I took this one just because the license plate made me laugh. It's up there with the Honda Odyssey I saw with the license plate of "Iliad." If you can't tell from the picture, the car is a Dodge Viper and the license plate is "SSSSSSS."

Why I'm Allowing my Children to Listen...

Tomorrow morning President Obama will speak to our nation's children. This single act has sparked controversy in many areas. Some school districts are refusing to show his speech. Others, like the one in which my children attend, sent home letters giving parents the option of having their children opt out of watching the speech. I have had neighbors ask me if I'm going to allow my children to watch his speech. I am. Don't get me wrong, I disagree with Obama on several issues. I am not one of his supporters.

I read the letter that education secretary Arne Duncan sent to principals of schools. I've read what some people have said about the speech. I've even read an advance copy of Obama's speech. But there are two main reasons I have chosen to allow my children to listen.

He's the President of the United States. He was elected by the majority of citizens of this country. We should respect the office that he holds. We don't have to agree with him or his policies. By allowing my children to listen to his speech, I can teach my children in at least a small way to respect that office. This was the reason I first decided to allow my children to listen. Some of their comments to me when we were talking about how Obama would be speaking to them made me realize that this is something they could learn.

One of the things that makes this country great is the freedom we have to hold our own opinions. More and more it seems as if people are forgetting that. They are forgetting that just because another person has a different view on something it doesn't make him a bad person. How can we teach our children that it is okay for someone to have a different view if we don't allow them to hear those other views? To me that is much like someone saying to their children that their neighbors aren't bad people just because they don't belong to the same church then turning around and not letting their children play with those same neighbors because they don't belong to the same church.

By allowing my children to listen to Obama's speech, I am provided an excellent opportunity to teach my children these things. I can discuss with them the things that stood out to them and ask them how they felt about it, which could help them know better that I do care about their opinions. Even if their opinions may be different than mine. I can watch Obama speak as well and tell my children the things I liked or didn't like and why.

Just as a side note, the only thing I read in that advance copy of his speech that stuck out to me as not needing to be in there were just a few sentences where he asks the children to wash their hands often and stay home when they are sick. Just didn't really seem to fit in with the rest of the speech and a bit unnecessary. I will be interested to see how closely he follows the advance copy.

Molly's Birthday and Party

Yesterday was Molly's 6th birthday. Normally I would have posted on her birthday but when I realized I hadn't yet I figured I could just wait until after her party today. Makes it a little easier for me anyway.

She seemed to have a good birthday. She took treats to share with her kindergarten class. I let her pick out the treats and she picked some crackers and cheese packets. She loves those. I was surprised when she picked them out though. I thought she would pick something like Ring Pops. If I had thought of it, I would have taken a picture of her coming out of the school with her birthday hat on. But I didn't.

Here is a picture of Molly the day she was born with Emma, Russ and Jimmy. She had a lot of black hair.

Here's Molly when she was close to a year old with her cousins Maddy and Rebecca. Rebecca is a week older than Molly and Maddy is a month younger. I can see Dylan in Molly here.
We had Molly's party at the local Arctic Circle. I'm sure the workers were probably glad when we left because of the noise level during the party. The kids all seemed to have a good time playing. Molly, of course, was anxious to open her presents. She was ready to go home as soon as her presents were open. Didn't even care that we hadn't had cake yet. One nice thing about having it at Arctic Circle was how they bring you the little complimentary dipped ice cream cones. Almost didn't need the cake after having those.

Emma gave herself the job of watching Dylan on the play equipment. He thought he was big enough to play with all of the kids on it. Here she is holding him on one of the slides.
It didn't really feel as hot as it can get in the play room there, but as you can see here, it didn't stop Molly from getting quite flushed and a bit sweaty. Could be that she chose to wear her new long-sleeved shirt. Or I would think that if the other kids didn't seem to get juts as hot and sweaty playing. The rest of the pictures are just random pictures from the party.

September Birthdays

Happy birthday this month to Molly, Breanna, Russ, Joshua and Autumn! Hope you all have a great one this year!

Sheesh. These birthday posts are short enough that I sometimes start to think that I should just stop doing it. Maybe I'll stop in January so I finish out the year. We'll see.