Happy Birthday Shane!

My boy up and turned 6 on me.  We started the celebrations on Thanksgiving and Grandma and Grandpa Dettinger's house

 And it worked out nicely that his actual birthday was on a Saturday so we could have fun all day.  He was super excited cause it was his golden birthday this year- 6 on the 6th, and he told me things all day like "this is exactly how I planned my day to be!" and "this is the best day of my life!"  I love how excited he gets about things, he was even happy opening clothes- he told me these are the softest pajamas he's ever had:)

 After opening presents first thing, we picked up his buddy Carter and had breakfast at Burger King and played in the play place.

 We went to Toys r Us and picked out a toy with his 6 dollars from Grandma Elkins, got his Book-It pizza, and just generally did what he wanted.  That night was our ward Christmas party, and they even had a pinata, I think he thought the party may have been for him!

We did cake the next day since there were lots of treats at the party, chocolate per his request.

 A few things about Shane:
-Loves tigers, the color green, outer space, numbers, books, Octonauts, superheroes, cuddling with mom, chocolate, and pretty much life in general.
-He is enjoying school still, he does very well academically and not always as good socially but is trying hard.  Here he is at his little winter program at school, that is him behind one of the microphones

 and with his class.  The 3 girls behind him are his best friends, I think he prefers playing with them because they are a little more mature in their play and more tolerant when he gets a little annoying:)  

- A couple months ago he kissed a girl on the bus.  The bus driver told me after he got off that she told him that wasn't allowed and she thought he might be embarrassed, but she added, "it was very sweet though!"  I asked him why he did that and he was pretty embarrassed but said, "I just thought it would be fun."  We talked about how he needs to be older to kiss girls and he said, "so when I'm older I can kiss all the girls I want?"  and I explained how they still needed to want to be kissed:)  I coaxed it out of him who it was that he kissed- the girl he sits next to, who is a first grader!  I wasn't sure if she was upset by it or not, but when we were trick or treating a girl came up to us and somewhat flirtaciously said, "Hi Shane!"  and when I asked him who it was, he said it was her- yeah she definitely wasn't upset!  He learned his lesson though and hasn't done anything since.
-He is loving drawing and I love finding little things like this around the house.  He told me those are all the layers of the earth underneath the bear, with the orange being lava of course.

I sure love this boy.  He can make me worry and exhaust me but he also makes my heart happy in ways that noone else can.

Sadie Bug at 20 months

This picture is so Sadie- on the potty, one sock off, chomping on her sister's half eaten apple.  She wants to go potty a lot and is successful usually a couple times a day but I am not ready to potty train her and am not sure she is completely either so I am just enjoying not having to change many poopy diapers.  

 One night I set out all their pajamas for the babysitter and couldn't find Shane's- someone wanted to try them on- also so Sadie.  She wants to pick out all her own outfits and dress herself.

 She started speech therapy with First Steps a few months ago and is really making a lot of progress.  She still struggles to make a lot of sounds but has a lot of new sounds/words and is using them independently more and more.  She LOVES when Miss Rachel comes, and truth be told, I think Shane and Marissa wish they had a Miss Rachel too!

She went back to the eye doctor last week and her eyes have gotten a little less straight than they were right after the surgery but still not too bad so we are going to wait it out a little longer and get glasses again (not so strong this time) if they start getting worse.  

She loves the Y.  When I talk about Shane or Marissa's school, she pipes in with "Y! Y!" as if to say, "come on mom, I went to the Y, aren't you going to ask me about that?"

She also loves Doc Mcstuffins (not really watching the show, but all the characters), Minnie, Hello Kitty, Elmo, Santa, goldfish, grapes, berries, cheese (even pepperjack- I finally converted her to a little spice), nursery, and people in general.  She will snuggle up to anyone and knows how to make them fall in love with her. It has sure worked on us anyway!  

Thanksgiving

Who knew you could have so much fun with Thanksgiving?  Being the cheeseball that I am, I checked out probably over 30 different Thanksgiving children's books over the course of November and the kids and I had a lot of fun reading a couple most days (there are so many cute ones) and coming up with things we're thankful for.  We did a couple different Thanksgiving crafts and of course Shane and Marissa had a lot of festivities at their schools- here is "Cold Snowflake" after his Thanksgiving feast at school.   

 The only problem with all that is that the kids, Marissa especially, wanted to have a turkey.  You know me and untraditional Thanksgiving fare.  We were going to Josh's parents on the day of and had already decided on enchiladas, but when I saw how cheap turkeys were at Meijer I got one and cooked it the Tuesday before.  I forgot it really is pretty easy to cook, and the excitement on this girl's face was worth the $8 I paid for it.

 Here she is doing some kind of ceremonial dance around the turkey.

 I did mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and green beans (from a can), and rolls out of a can (not gluten free).

 The happy feasters.  They probably each ate one bite of turkey, but loved the stuffing (and of course the rolls). And I got 5 meals out of the leftovers.  I would do it again.

 And then we enjoyed a nice lazy day at the Dettingers.

Halloween 2014

True to form, we stretched out our Halloween celebrations for weeks this year.  It was a good thing we had lots of indoor options, because it was frigid the actual night of!  And Josh had to work on Halloween night.  We had a Halloween party at the Y the week before,

and hit up 2 nursing homes the week of.

On Halloween night I took the kids for $3 Booritos at Chipotle,

 and we trick or treated at the shopping center it is at.  It was pretty fun, they gave out pretzel sticks at the pretzel place, comic books at the comic book store...

 We probably went to about 15 or 20 houses in our neighborhood before we were freezing cold and headed back, with plenty of candy.  The fun continued the day after with our church ward trunk or treat and Halloween party.  

It's not that I want my kids to get a ton of candy (Because let's face it, I am the one who ends up eating it...), I just think Halloween is the ultimate fun holiday for kids (and kids at heart) and we might as well get good use of those costumes!  Though maybe next year I will encourage Shane to wear something less aggressive- he is always a little in your face- put a Hulk costume on him and I was doomed!

Good Weather

We have been having great weather lately, and have been outside as much as we can, because as per usual it is all going south just in time for Halloween!  

 I love the view from our yard and watching it change with the seasons.

 I am always trying to get us out on walks and the kids (mostly Shane) were super into the continents and maps so I made a map of our neighborhood and marked familiar landmarks as different continents that we would travel to along our way.  Here they are stopping to mark off "South America" on the map.

 The big kids racing off to "Europe" while Sadie takes her time.

Oh the things a mom will do to get her kids to do what she wants!

A Hot Mess

Oh this girl- she is still always a complete mess.  I should start counting how many times a day I say the words, "Marissa get that out of your mouth!"- it would definitely be more than the times I tell it to her little sister.Yesterday she spilled her box of nerds all over the floor, so like any good mom I took pictures while I watched her eat them off the floor.  She had to be pretty meticulous to distinguish the nerds between the little pebbles she had collected from our yard and spilled onto the floor just before.  

 But man she is so stinkin cute.  She may drive me the craziest sometimes but she is the one who I worry about the least, and that is a pretty good gift to this worry prone mama.

My Girl

I am really enjoying the time I have with Marissa these days.  It is fun to see the things she likes and the way she plays, it is so different from the way Shane played at that age.  Sometimes it drives me crazy- she loves to gather everything in our house it seems and she has very specific ideas about where she wants to place them all and exactly how she wants to do it.  And often involves a big mess.

It cracks me up that she really can't smile on command.  I was trying to coach her and told her to make her lips go up and she did this and said, "are my lips up now?" 

Sometimes I manage to catch a good one.  And I know I'm biased but sometimes I just stare at her and think man she's beautiful.   

And then she manages to do something like eat chalk.  

I ordered  a few clothes online to fill out some of her outfits and she was SO excited when we opened the package and very carefully laid out each potential outfit.  

And then danced around in a circle around them.  Pink and purple clothes are VERY exciting.

My Schoolboy

Have I mentioned how good school has been for this boy?  He really enjoys it, and I enjoy all the things he tells me about it- I can tell he is paying attention!  Reading and writing are really starting to click for him and it is fun to see him grow and develop.  He sat down to write all the word wall words he knew and I asked him if he would write "I like Mom" and he whipped this right out (that's Marissa at the top and Sadie kind of backwards at the bottom).

 He was sad one day because he lost his stuffed monkey "vines", at least I didn't know he had until he showed me this picture he drew of him and vines that he wrote "I wot vis"- I want vines on.  I love that he thinks completely on his own to sit down and write things on his own now.

 this is one I found yesterday- I had made a paper with stickers for Marissa to draw lines to match the matching stickers on and he asked if he could make one so while I was outside he stamped a bunch of Halloween stamps and matched them and then wrote the words next to them- some I had to work hard to guess what he meant but you can see "spidre" at the bottom and a little above that "jaclatrn" curving around the side, "Bat", "awl" at the top, "gost", and "it has 8...?" I asked him how he knew to put an e on the end of spider and he said "well did you know that eagle has two e's?  when the letter says its name you put an e on the end"

School has been equally as good for him socially.  He is learning and practicing how to be a good friend and interact appropriately with others, and that sometimes means stories of kids not wanting to play with him etc.  The other day I was asking him about his table and he said, "Mom can I tell you something?  There's kind of a problem.  No matter what I do, L___ just thinks I'm annoying!"  Man I love that boy so much sometimes it really pulls on my heart strings. I know how important it is for him to have these experiences, away from me, to figure these things out.  And I'm really glad he knows I am there to talk to about these things and trusts me to share them with me and I am so proud of the way he lets them roll off his back.  

 And so glad he has sweet Ellynn to always be his friend.