Birthday Week

 

This has been a super busy week for us (in a good way).  We had 2 birthdays, Thomas started 1st grade, visits from Grandma Toone and our nephew Clint, sports club (more on that later), cub scouts, and a few miscellaneous meetings scattered throughout the week.

The picture above is with our lovely Grandma Dallas.  She will be 75 years old tomorrow!!!! Happy birthday, we love you! Thank you for visiting us last weekend, we love to be with you.

Thomas is really liking school this year other than he has had to sit all by himself at lunch everyday this last week because of his severe peanut allergy.  I've talked to the staff at the school each day trying to resolve this problem, but still Thomas's friends are told that they cannot sit with him, even when they have school lunch (which is peanut free!). So I've emailed the principal and hopefully this week will be a better one. Thomas is getting pretty upset over this.

We celebrated Thomas and Natalie's birthday on each of their birthdays, plus we had Thomas and Natalie's first friend party (10 kids + our 4) yesterday.  At the end of the party the kids were on cloud 9, but Jared and I were exhausted.  We had the kids play "hot potato dress up", run through an obstacle course, and go fishing for prizes.  For cake we served a special rice crispy treat cake (actually quite good) since one of our guests is severely allergic to wheat, milk, eggs, and nuts.

 

As mentioned earlier, we had our Sports Club this week.  I started the sports club 2 weeks ago.  It's a free club for kids pre-k through 3rd grade.  We meet once per week at the park to play sports with different parents coaching the sport of their choice.  We have had about 12 to15 kids show up each week.  Jared and I coached kickball the first 2 weeks and the following weeks we have flag football, soccer, and tee-ball scheduled. It's been a great way to get to know others in the community.

Lessons Learned from Potty Training

So the last 3 weeks have been exhausting.  That's because we started potty training 3 weeks ago.  Potty training it my least favorite thing about having kids.  It is so stressful and that's why I've waited so long to train the twins. You'd think it would get easier after having already trained two, but it doesn't. 

Here's some advice, if your neighbor comes over telling you she trained her 2 year old in 3 days (using the book 3 Day Potty Training) don't believe her. We had an awful first week (imagine 15 messes a day for 5 days) and then just as the girls were doing better we went on a week long vacation to see family.  So this third week we've basically had to start over.  The girls do stay mostly dry during the day and night, they just have a hard time with telling us when they need to poop. This morning, as I was so frustrated, I had a thought.  I thought "of all the things I would like to teach my kids, the most important is to always be loving".  This made me realize that maybe it's me that needs to learn something from potty training. 

Okay, so onto a better topic.  As some of you know, we went and spent a week in Ogden.  We were able to see both of our families (for the most part). Jared and I had a night away from the kids and went to Salt Lake (first time away since we've had kids--Mom & Dad, thank you so much for watching the kiddos!) .  We also took the kids to Lagoon, which was fun, but expensive and exhausting.

 Yesterday we went to the best parade ever! We came home with 5 flats!! of flower's from Olson's Garden Shoppe--granted they are annuals, but they'll still look great for another couple of months.