Boo at the Zoo

Saturday the kids and I went to Boise to participate in "Boo at the Zoo." You dressed up in your Halloween costume and while checking out the animals did trick or treating all around the zoo. They had lots of games booths and different activities also. It was so super crowded! It takes all my concentration to count to 4 every 8 seconds. SCAN. 1..2..3..4.....SCAN....

We had a really good time. The weather was great, perfect fall weather! The morning was quite nasty and it made me worried but by the afternoon it was cool, crisp and gorgeous. Zoo Boise is set in the middle of Julia Davis Park in downtown Boise. The park was SO GORGEOUS!!! I have been having major fall withdrawals this year. I was ready to road trip it to Iowa or even all the way to VA just to get me some good fall. The park satisfied the crave for color (for now!) I could take pictures all day out there!



I love that we didn't spend money on any of our Halloween costumes! The dress up box came in good use this year. I really enjoy this time of year.

Austin ~ Bat

(he didn't wear the full costume today. he did have lots of fun with the cape part though!)


Emma Lynn ~ Fairy




Spencer ~ Lion




Rooster ~ Frog

Ears

The ear saga continues. We went to the Dr. today to recheck Spencer and Ruth's ears after finishing their antibiotics from the last round of ear infections. Plus Austin needed to be checked per request from the audiologist.

After waiting for 2 hours (aHHHAAaaHHhhhH!!!!) we found out:
Austin - no infections but lots of fluid behind his ears.
Spencer - clear
Ruth - still infected. (fyi this is now a constant ear infection since the beginning of September. She is on her 4th different antibiotic. Moving her to the chronic ear infection category now.)

There are suppose to retest Austin at school next week. We'll ask them to wait since he obviously won't pass it with all the fluid (caused most likely by allergies.) So we'll recheck child # 1 & 4 again in 10 days. At which time we'll determined if Austin needs to see an ENT (Ear Nose Throat Specialist.) It sure seems like we are running around in circles trying to figure out this hearing thing for him. Meanwhile I'm trying to speak up. "WHAT?"

Welcome MADISON!!!

Our newest member of the family decided to come a month early this morning. Cindy called Kurt around 6 am to tell us that Traci had gone into the hospital with a lot of abdominal pain and would be having an emergency C-Section. Essentially her liver was inflamed and on the verge of hemorrhaging.

Madison arrived safely this morning weighing 5.10 pounds. Mother and baby are doing well and should even be able to come home in a 3-4 days. We are excited for you to join us on earth Madison!!! You have wonderful parents, they love you very much. We are grateful you arrived safely and will continue to pray for your family's speedy recovery.

We love you!

Mommy Date

On Friday night Emma and I had a mommy night with our friends Krystal and Katelynn. We went out to dinner (IHOP) and then to the musical "Beauty and the Beast." We had such a great time! We kept it a secret that we were going to the musical. Emma was so excited when I showed her the program, "Are they for real?! Is Belle going to wear her beautiful yellow dress?!?!"



It was a long/late night but a great production. There were lots of great numbers and plenty of talent. I LOVE me some musicals! I'm pretty sure that life should be a musical every day! :)




The girls with their super mini frosty for the ride home. Thanks for a great night girls! I heart ya.

Work

A family takes work. But I think that all things good and worthwhile do take work! We have definitely reached the stage of sibling fighting. Not even close to a favorite. Lately car rides are especially bad.

"He's teasing me."

"He's repeating me."

"She hit me."

I am trying to encourage them to work it out (with words) on their own. But it sure gets old! Luckily there are other blissful happy peaceful moments. This is one of my favorites:

All the kids working together to finish their chores. Rooster now helps with the dishes every day too!

This work is definitely worth doing!!!

Call to Serve!

My brother Sam received his mission call today! My mom drove straight down to Cold Stone (where he is a manager) and he opened it at work. He is closing the store tonight and won't get done till midnight and no one wanted to wait! :)

He has been called to serve in the Salt Lake City South Mission. He will report to the MTC on January 6th, 2010.

CONGRATULATIONS Sam!!! You will be an effective, humble, hard working missionary! We are excited for you and are proud of your decision to serve the Lord.

We LOVE You!!!

Small Vindication

How many nursing mothers wake up their babies during the night to brush their teeth?

Exactly!

While I realize I am still responsible for Ruth's teeth decay just not completely. Thanks to a fellow mom for a small dose of vindication off the guilt trip train.

Bad Parenting Reality Check

The worse has come true. Not only are Rooster's teeth really and truly rotting out of her mouth but it is due to my bad parenting.

All Aboard the guilt trip train!

You can definitely tell she is the baby of our family! All the things I said I would never do, I AM DOING! Mainly just letting her get away with things the older ones wouldn't even dream about. I've gone soft and realized, they are only little for a short time! Hence the reason she was just weaned from the bottle a little less than 2 weeks ago. It was easier to let her keep it than fight it which is why she had it for so long. But that bottle (that was constantly full of milk and apple juice) is the culprit of her horrible teeth situation. Granted I don't have the best teeth genes in the world either but...aaahhhhhh!!!!

So this major dental work is going to require putting her completely under at the hospital. Not cheap or easy. We are weaning her cold turkey from the sippy cup as of tonight (wish me luck! She went to sleep without much trouble but the night could be LONG...) Coupled with intense teeth brushing and then back to the dentist in 6 weeks to reevaluate. She is still young so the dentist is hoping to get a few more month under her belt before we dive into the serious dental work.

I'm sorry Rooster.

My Funny One!

Spencer is my funny kid. You never know what he'll say and he loves it that way! He loves to make us laugh and he is good at it. It is so much fun to have a funny one in the family.

A current family favorite song right now is "I've Got a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas (as noted from an earlier post.) The chorus goes, "I've got a feeling, that tonight's gonna be a good night. Tonight's gonna be a good, good night." The funny one has his own version of the song:

"I've got a feeling, that tonight's gonna be a bad night. Tonight's gonna be a bad, bad night."

He has never once sung it right. He loves to tease his older 2 siblings with these wrong words and he just smiles, irresistibly, about a bad, bad night. I can't help but laugh too!

Spencer has gotten good at drawing people in the last few months. This is his creation today. I added the caption to his drawing of his word-for-word explanation of his master piece. It is quite possibly my most favorite drawing (at least at this moment.) LOL


Spencer, thanks for making us laugh. You make me happy!

Another Fall Favorite

This morning was the preschool family field trip to our local pumpkin patch. This sweet couple have been planting pumpkins for years. Every year the decorations seem to dwindle as they get older. This year there were no decorations at all but she had a bag of candy for each kid to wish them Happy Halloween (and there were 30+ kids.) Just a really sweet lady. I think we brought mutual happiness to each other this morning. There is something magical about a fall pumpkin patch for kids (and me too!) And I know she really enjoyed seeing all the kids and having the company.


My super cute preschoolers at the pumpkin patch!


I was so happy that Braxton, Brooke and Marti came too!






Thanks for another great year at the patch!

A Fall Favorite

Have I mentioned that I love Fall? Luv It! The colors are so gorgeous! While nothing can beat the splendor of fall on the east coast there is something special about country livin when it comes to fall. I love the cooler weather, the pumpkin patches, the horse rides, apple orchards, corn mazes and straw bales. Love it all.

Becca and I went to Farmstead pumpkin patch in Meridian with the kids this afternoon. They had so many fun things to play with that we actually never even made it to the pumpkins! :) The weather was perfect (73!) After a long, cold, wet, rainy week we couldn't have asked for a better FALL afternoon.


LeBraun, Austin, Jacqlyn, Spencer, Johanna, & Emma Lynn


They had this amazingly fun "bounce pillow." The kids saw it from the parking lot and were so excited to try it. It was the first thing we did and they could have spent the whole time on it and been completely content. Finally I told Becca that we needed to pry the kids off otherwise we'd never see everything else! Ruth was so cute on it. She would just giggle. The sound of her giggling warms my heart and makes me cheese out!






The cow train. I rode the first time with Rooster on my lap. When we got off and started to walk away she turned around and started to climb back on. She rode it all by herself. She looked so BIG!!! I was honestly on the verge of tears.












watching the pig races




The "corn box"

Recordable

My brother Sam has his mission papers in (YAY! We so excited for you!!!) Here is the Romans' family predictions:

~ Kurt: Papa New Guinea
~ Rachel: Poland
~ Austin: Minnesota
~ Emma Lynn: Africa (so he can teach the lions and elephants)
~ Spencer: Hawaii (he pronounces like Hah /whaaa-EE)



Rooster is constantly babbling. It is the funniest thing! She goes on and on and on like we all know what the heck she is saying. During FHE each week we share a time when we felt the Holy Ghost that week. She had so much to say when it was her turn (if only we could understand what she is saying!!!) She stopped (naturally) when I turned on the camera.

Moments to Remember:

~ Austin brought me a book he had made. It consisted of a bunch of white pages stapled together. He told me, "Mom I made a diarrhea because I've never had one before." He had written on the front of the book, "Austin's Diare" and on the back "Do Not Touch." I explained the the word is pronounced DIARY!

~ We were taking the sacrament a few weeks ago and I look down at Spencer and suddenly his arms start moving: little fingers crawling up his other arm, wiggling fingers from top to bottom for rain, large circle above his head for the sun....He was doing the actions for the "Itsy Wensy Spider." His mouth was completely still. But you could see the words being sung in his head. He knew it was time to be quiet during the sacrament but he had a song to sing and he was going to find a way to sing it no matter what!

~ A friend brought over a whole basket full of Scentsy candle samples to smell. The kids and I had a fun time that afternoon smelling them all. There were about 50 to smell - I think my nose stopped working after the 22nd one! We put them in piles, "Definitely!" - "Maybe, smell again" - "Not so much" and "NO WAY it smells like a stinky diaper!" After smelling a green one Emma said, "This smells like dad's armpits!" After lots of laughing we each took a turn smelling it. Austin clarified, "It smells like the stuff dad puts in his armpits." Deodorant. Just to make sure Kurt is off the hook, it was a nice clean smell, exactly like his deodorant. So even though it was a great LOL moment it is still a compliment honey! The boys were inspired to smell like dad after that and applied deodorant in their own armpits! (In case you were wondering the scent that smells like dad's armpits is "Simply Irresistible.")

Sleep Beauties

This is where I found Rooster taking her nap yesterday. (After she had gotten out some of Emma's clothes to try on!)


This is where I found Austin when I came home from the temple last night.

Coupon Craze

I did my first coupon shopping experience this morning. Luckily it was very fast and painless. My SIL Marti is quite obsessed with coupon shopping and rightly so b/c she has found a ton of killer deals and even knows how to make money shopping. Pretty awesome! It requires a lot of time to do though. That is exactly why I haven't jumped into the coupon craze.

But Marti told me about some items you could get through rebates at Rite Aid. The store had all the rebate items together on one shelf (so nice, thank you rite aid!) So when the checks come in all the items I brought today will be free plus I had 2 $5 off coupons therefore making $10.

I could get use to this. As long as its not too time consuming I can do it!

Weaned amongst other things

8 days ago I let Rooster pick out a new sippy cup from Wal-Mart. She picked a Minnie Mouse 2 pack (it was also the closest one within her reach.) We made a big deal out of these cups and she was so proud of them.



7 days ago I threw away all the bottles in our house. I was determined to be firm this time, we were going to succeed at this no matter what!

That was also the same day she started throwing up. This was followed by diarrhea, fever, coughing, runny nose and lots more vomiting. She was so miserable! I have never had a kid have every symptom at once. Monday and Tuesday morning she spent with Grandma Cindy while I taught preschool. She still wasn't getting better so Tuesday we set off for the Dr. as soon as I picked her up. Things were complicated in the fact that her pediatrician wasn't taking any patients until Thursday. AHHH! She still wasn't keeping anything down so I didn't want to wait that long. We opted for the walk-in clinic in Fruitland. The waiting room....uummm...that is germ infested bacteria breeding playground. It was almost 3 hours before we saw the Dr. The ear infections were back (probably never went away, just got worse) and pneumonia. They wanted to do x-rays but Ruth was completely fried by this point. It would have been next to impossible to get her to be still for the x-ray. They had to check her oxygen levels again the next day so I suggested we do the x-rays then (if they were still needed.) So we filled her prescriptions (another hour wait) and headed home.

I rescheduled Wednesday's preschool class for Friday and canceled volunteering in Austin's class therefore freeing my schedule to spend another day in the germ pool. Emma played at Jacqlyn's both days which was nice for both of us. Spencer came down with a high fever Tuesday night so Wednesday when they were rechecking Ruth I asked them to look at him real quick. Ear infections. He has been doing great since we got him on antibiotics so quick (its nice we caught that one fast!) But Ruth's oxygen levels had improve in 24 hours so we didn't have to do the x-rays (thank you!!!) and are continuing on our current course of treatment. Today was the first real time I saw my rooster back. I MISSED YOU!!!

Amongst all this you are weaned from the bottle! Way to perform under pressure. You are making steps to the big girl world. Always bitter sweet for the mom. But I'm proud of you and so happy you are feeling better!


celebrating her success (with balloons from Traci's baby shower.)




Through the eyes of the party girl!

BFF

Best Friends, Emma Lynn and Jacqlyn in matching dresses. Matchy-matchy is so fun!

Our First Friend Sleepover

Last night Emma Lynn had her first sleepover! She spent the afternoon at Jacqlyn's house (while I took Ruth to the Dr.) When I picked her up I asked Jacki if she wanted to spend the night. That was a definite YES! She packed her bag quick and we were on our way.

The girls are such good friends and they were so excited to have a sleepover, it was adorable! I really enjoyed sharing this first with them. I have a feeling there will be many, many more sleepovers to come (especially with Jacki!)


Tub Time Fun



Lite Brite creations (thanks for the cool gift Kelli and Dan!)


These two LUV Little Petshops


All snuggled in bed


So I know you can't see anything in this video (they were suppose to be going to sleep.) But their giggling was SO cute that I wanted to capture it!


Sneaking out of bed to do each others hair


Finally passing out shortly after 11 pm.