Brady is Four!

On Saturday evening we headed over to Ron and Elaine's for supper and cake with the grandparents.  I stuffed myself with Elaine's homemade Butternut Squash Curry soup and the sandwich bar.  Yummm.  Fortunately Brady was a lot more exuberant with this celebration than the one at church.  Afterwards, Duncan dropped me off at Jennifer's (where we had earlier dropped Duncan's car) so that she, Vasti, and I could meet to talk about a field trip for the fall.  Vasti had sent a joking email about going up to Williamsburg, Virginia for their homeschool festivities in September and I replied "Let's go!" So we're going!  It will be a bit of a drive, around 12 hours, but I'm used to long drives so no big deal.  We are really excited about all the possibilities of fun stuff to do up there besides just Williamsburg itself.  I told the kids about it and that we would be gone for about six days and when they heard Duncan wasn't going, Calleigh said "I just don't know if I can be away from Daddy for that many days." That was pretty sweet.  But she'll have practice this summer because we will be up at my parents/campmeeting without Duncan for a good week and a half although I don't think the kids have realized that yet.  

Sunday was so nice because we didn't have anything going on until the evening.  It's been a while since that happened.  Duncan cleaned out the garage and I'm sure I got something accomplished but I have no recollection of what it was.  One strange thing was that Calleigh was kind of mopey and I eventually found her napping on the couch in the early afternoon.  That NEVER happens!  She woke up and went into our room and took a nap with Duncan and eventually Brady.  Odd.  That evening I picked Tangie up and took her to Colorado Fondue Company where we had dinner with Jennifer, Amy, Vasti, and Ashley to celebrate Tangie's 40th birthday.  Such a great group of ladies.  Tangie seems to be handling the milestone very well and hopefully I will be able to follow her footsteps when I get there eventually (I wanted to use that word so it sounds further away than it is).  I got home shortly after 11:00 and went upstairs to check on the kids and I wasn't too surprised to find Calleigh still wide awake as well as Brady who was hanging out in the girls' room.  Those dang naps. They always seem nice and cute when they're taking place but doggone it if the kids can never get to sleep later.  

Monday was Brady's actually birthday so I decided we needed to do something special to commemorate it.  I settled on Monkey Joe's since we hadn't been there in a long while.  I got a coupon in my email for buy one, get one free so that at least defrayed some of the cost of having to pay for four kids now. I remember when it was just Calleigh and I was like $7.99 to take one kid to Monkey Joe's!  Now it's $9.99 and I have four of them.  I thought it would be really busy because of it being summer and all but nope, not a bit.  They have some bouncy houses there for the three and under set and then ones for the older set.  As I have done in the past, I took Colby onto the ones for the bigger kids since it had always been okay to assist them on them as long as I didn't actually jump.  After we had gone down the big slide a couple of times, I was politely informed that adults were no longer allowed in any of the bouncy houses.  Oops.  Apparently things have changed since I was last there.  Colby was now relegated to the three and under section which Calaubra (okay, we did cheat.  Brady went on it since we figured one day past being three was okay) couldn't go on.  This was a real dilemma.  I told them to just go to the other bouncy houses since I could see them from where I was but they came back saying the sign said "Jump with parental supervision only." I guess I have some real rule sticklers.  We eventually gave up on the bouncy houses and just did the games (another annoying thing...the games only take special cards rather than cash or tokens.  There is a $1 charge for a new card.  They like to get you any way they can, am I right?).  We went all out for this big day and got pizza and chips there for lunch.  But wait!  The fun wasn't over yet.  We made a stop at Toys R Us on the way home so they could spend some birthday money.  Aubree and Brady settled on some Legos but Calleigh was very indecisive.  She finally found this sort of robotic dog that was on sale for $29.99.  Being the savvy shopper I am these days (as most people probably are), I immediately scanned the bar code to see if we could get it cheaper elsewhere.  Sure enough, it was only $19.35 on Amazon.  I told Calleigh if she could wait two days, she would save $10.  I was so proud that she said she could wait.  It's so nice when they don't have to be instantly gratified any more. 

Tuesday evening we started swimming lessons for Calleigh.  You may recall that Aubree and Brady took them last month and it went well with our new teacher, Robin.  Brady never quite got over the hump but is "swimming" like a fish on the stairs to the pool.  He loves to swim under water with his goggles going after stuff.  To see him, you would think he was actually swimming and he may very well be a little bit but I think he does have his hand down there on the bottom while he swims.  He's so close and I really want to have him do more lessons but he says he doesn't want to.  I'm torn into making him or not...Calleigh originally didn't want to do lessons but was inspired by the others doing it.  She's already a great swimmer but we wanted her to work on her strokes and technique.

Wednesday morning we were off to JCPenny for the kids to get their annual pictures done.  I know, I know.  Some people make fun of me for going there for pictures but honestly, I loved the posed pictures with them holding the number for their age.  What can I say.  Plus, I had a really, really good coupon!  Unfortunately we didn't have our usual lady that we love taking the pictures but this photographer got some pretty good shots of Caluabra individually (I will do Colby's when he's closer to his birthday) but the four of them together was a dud.  I'll try again when we do Colby.  Incidentally, I was expecting the photo studio to be packed since school was out but again, there was no one there.  Where is everybody??  From there, we did some stops at Payless, Target, Costco, and the ABC and then I dropped the girls off at Jennifer's so she could take them to David Biri's birthday party at Rebounderz.  It's a place that has all these trampolines.  The party was right during Colby's nap and I didn't think that there would be anything for him to do all that time so better to send them with Jennifer.  When we got home and I put Colby to bed, Brady came to the realization he was the only kid around.  After about two minutes of wandering around he said, very forlornly, "I wish we were all here together."

Thursday was sort of our last day of school.  I say sort of because our history curriculum covered the fifty states and we still have eight states left at the close of business yesterday.  It would be a shame not to finish them especially since they are making a notebook with all the states in it.  I imagine we will be finishing them up during the summer.  It remains to be seen if we'll do any other work but more than likely, I will just be enjoying the break!  

Last night was a big night for the girls.  The church is sponsoring a drama club for kids age five to whatever.  Allen, Ashley, and Rosa are in charge of it and there are about 25 kids signed up, many of them our close friends, to participate.  We are meeting five or six times this summer to do some skits, etc. with the goal of doing something during the church service on July 18.  Unfortunately we won't be here that Sabbath but that doesn't preclude us from attending the meetings.  The neat thing is that the whole family can attend and supper is provided as well.  No cooking for me!  The downside is that the boys are very loud and rambunctious.  At one point, Duncan took them for a long walk in the parking lot to get them out of there.  A bit later, I get a call from him which I thought was weird.  The first thing he says is "I need your help" and I panicked a little thinking one of the boys was hurt.  But no, Brady had merely pooped his pants.  He said he had to go but they were way out on the far side of the parking lot and he couldn't make it back.  I ran out to get Colby as Duncan was carrying Brady very gingerly and we made our way back to the youth center to get Brady cleaned up.  But what do we find but the door to the main entrance locked!  We had to hang out for a few minutes until I got ahold of Jennifer to let us in.  Of course, I had no change of clothes for Brady so Duncan had to just take him back to the van, in his bare bottom, and wait there until we were done.  

The girls had so much fun.  Aubree was in the group of kindergarten through second grade and they did a play on the Good Samaritan with Aubree being one of the robbers.  Heather Cochran and I were in charge of the third to fifth graders who were doing a skit on chores.  We had Calleigh, Braelyn, Lindsey, Macey, and Marley, all good friends which makes it even more fun.  We were given copies of the skit for each girl so we just put them in a pile and the girls picked one out and that was the part they got to play.  Calleigh was Kid 3 and I found her part to be very fitting as she had to deliver lines such as "I hate chores" etc.  Of course, Braelyn, upon coming to that line in her handout, whispers to me, "We aren't supposed to say that word," meaning 'hate.' I thought it was ironic that it was HER father that picked out the play but apparently hadn't read it ahead of time to see that the the word was repeated many times.  We instructed the girls to change it to "dislike" and all was well again.  We went through it a couple of times and then once the groups got back together, the girls got to "perform" their play up front.  They all did so well and for the most part we didn't have any problem with someone not paying attention and forgetting to read their line.  They haven't stopped talking about how fun it was and can't wait until the next meeting.  

Something that I want to mention strange about Calleigh just to have it written down.  For about the last three months I would say, she will randomly wake up around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and say her belly hurts.  A few minutes later or sometimes longer, she'll eventually throw up.  There isn't much in her stomach since it's been so long since she's eaten but she definitely goes through all the motions.  Sometimes she'll throw up once and sometimes it twice.  Afterwards, she's fine and goes back to sleep and there's no problems in the morning. She has no other symptoms either.  I mentioned it to the doc and she said not to worry about it so I'm not but it is strange.  One thing that made me feel good at least was that when it happened this last time and I was holding her head over the bowl, she kept saying "Mommy, say a prayer, say a prayer."

I don't have many witty quotes this week but I do have one comment from Calleigh.  She will get this cough now and then that is very unproductive...mostly a cough someone would have if they had a tickle in their throat but she'll cough for like 15 or 20 minutes and it makes her very frustrated.  This past week she had it a couple of days in a row.  Which prompted this:

Calleigh:"EVERY DAY for the last TWO days, I have had this cough." 

Some more pictures...

Toddler jail...

Have a great rest of the weekend!