November Recap

This month Brighton played the Big Bad Wolf in his class play. He had quite a few lines and had them all perfectly memorized.

In the story, Little Red Riding Hood made changes to the story at will and she changed the story so the wolf had to dance around in a tutu.

Dale got to come watch his big brother. He ended up laying on the floor under my chair by the time it was over, but he was excited to see Brighton at school. Dale ADORES Brighton.

Brighton and few of his buddies. The kid on the left is Brayden, a friend who used to be in our ward and who I was so excited to find out would be in Brighton's class with him.

Halloween

The weekend before Halloween our ward had its annual Trunk or Treat. We made homemade root beer last year and it was such a hit that we did it this year as well. It's nice to give out something different that what most of the other people are giving.

Hooray for Goodwill/Saver's and loaner costumes! Adaira was princess Jasmine, Daisy was a soft pink bunny rabbit, Brighton was the Grimm Reaper, and Dale was a fireman (because he is weird about masks and costumes, but is cool with helmets). Justin wore his SWAT gear and I did my best to look like a witch. I'm really lazy when it comes to Halloween, but I found this witch dress at Goodwill, so from here on out I'll be a witch, giving out my witches brew at Trunk or Treat :).

Happy girl!

Dale couldn't wait to sit down and dig into his stash of candy. I'm pretty sure most of his bucket was gone within 24 hours...

A few nights later on the actual Halloween night, we met up at Don & Dia's house and went Trick or Treating with them through their neighborhood.

This time Justin was a construction worker.

The kids really wanted to get a picture behind this gate. We took two pictures and Adaira made this same face in both pictures...What?

Staying well lit with Justin and Dale and their reflective stripes.

It was a sad day when I needed to put Dale in a regular booster seat so Daisy could use his 5-point harness seat. It took him about a full week to stay in his seat and not unbuckle and walk around the car while we were driving. Without fail, however, whenever we stop for an extended period of time, Dale unbuckles and starts making his way around the car. Lately when we are waiting to drop Brighton off in the morning (we always get there about 5 minutes before it's time for drop off to start because Adaira has to be at her school 30 minutes before he has to be at his) Dale decides he wants to get up on the dash like this:

While we wait Brighton plays with Daisy, he is so good to her. The other day he came into her room after I had gotten her up from her nap and he kneels down and says "Hi sweet Daisy, how's my girl?" in this sweet high voice, as he gives her a hug. I love seeing him so tender with her.

A great kid right here:

Dale found these black vampire teeth in the car. Who ever came up with that idea?! Those look disgusting!

I have another mess-maker roaming around the house these days...

ER VISIT

I have a very negative perception of the Emergency Room. I have never gone there, as I have always opted for waiting things out or going to Urgent Care if something seems serious. Unfortunately on a Friday evening, I noticed these great big swollen lumps on both sides of Dale's neck. I figured it was his lymph nodes but he hadn't been sick recently so they shouldn't have been swollen. He hadn't been acting different or whining about anything either, which actually made me kind of nervous about what this could possibly be on his neck. That night I had him with me at a carnival for the Southwest Region Families Supporting Adoption Conference and I had an adoptive mom friend of mine (who is a nurse at the Mayo Clinic) take a look at it. As soon as she saw it she seemed really concerned and since he hadn't been sick or had any other symptoms she said he'd probably need an ultrasound on it or a biopsy and they wouldn't have that at an Urgent Care center, and that I should take him to the ER. I REALLY didn't want to go to the ER!!! But, I had a full 10 hour day at the conference planned for the next day (Saturday) and I didn't want Justin to have to take Dale and the three other kids with him, so after we all got home I took Dale to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center. .

We only ended up being there for about an hour and a half (thank goodness), but it turns out that Dale just had a really bad strep infection. As part of the routing tests they did a swab of his throat as well as blood work, but before the blood work came back the throat swab came back as strep. That was it!! An ER visit for strep??!! I have to say kind of felt ashamed of myself. You know, being one of those people in the ER that really don't need to be there? Anyway, the doctor checked out his throat and said his tonsils were very swollen. I asked the doctor if he thought Dale had been in a lot of pain and he said he didn't see how Dale couldn't have been in pain with a throat like that. The crazy thing is that Dale hadn't complained a bit! He'd been playing and running around like normal, and only eating slightly less at mealtimes (which he does in spurts). I tell you it's not a good thing when you have a child that doesn't communicate and has a really high pain tolerance.. We went to the pharmacy after our $$$ ER visit and I finally got Dale home at 12:30 that night. He's all better now :)

New Playground Bed

A few weeks ago my older brother Dean send all of us an email asking if we wanted his daughter's old bed since he needed to get bunkbeds for his girls. He was going to list it on Craigslist but said we could have it for free. He had me at FREE... I told him I would take it if he couldn't sell it on Craigslist first, but I guess he didn't want to deal with the hassle so he just gave it to us.

All of the kids have been having fun on it, including Daisy who climbs up to the top, sits down, and scoots off on to the slide all by herself.

Very precarious situations these kids put themselves into. Luckily nobody has gotten hurt, yet.

Dale still has to be held down most of the time he has his teeth brushed. He doesn't like to make many things easy on us...

He had an appointment with a developmental pediatrician at Phoenix Children's Hospital a few weeks ago and it wasn't until I was reading the assessment after I got home that I read that he had failed the autism screen the PA had performed (I didn't realize that was what she was doing). I had a few emotional days after reading his evaluation, but now that some time has passed I really don't think he has autism. He seems to social for that and although he presents some of the key indicators, there are just as many that he doesn't present. I do, however, feel like there is something off with him, more than just a speech delay. He does have some inappropriate emotional responses and in my "professional" (which isn't professional) opinion, I think he falls somewhere in having a mild Pervasive Developmental Disorder-NOS (Pervasive development disorder, not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS): This category is used to refer to children who have significant problems with communication and play, and some difficulty interacting with others, but are too social to be considered autistic). This was something I had looked into even before we went to PCH, because he just didn't seem to fit the Autism or Aspergers cases I have ever read about. I suppose we'll find out as the the people at PCH continue to monitor him. I had to fill out some questionnaires, as did Dale's preschool teacher, and we have another appointment in January. Until then we are really going to focus on his speech. He's getting 30min of speech therapy every week through preschool, but I'm going to get him some additional help and hopefully once he can talk we will be able to know if there are additional developmental problems.

So Long Turkeys

Well, we raised three turkeys for Thanksgiving. We had heard that free range turkeys taste a lot better than store bought ones, so we decided to give it a try since neither Justin or I really like turkey. Turns out, our turkeys still tasted like turkey, although the flavor was great since Justin smoked them in his smoker!

Our smaller turkey, the hen, was fascinated with the color orange. Any time the kids were pushing this car around or playing with the orange dodgeball, she would just follow them around making all sorts of noise. Brighton thought it would be funny to give her a ride, and that's just what he did. She sat in there until he started to spin the car around wildly...

Oh the horror! We had a friend who had raised two of his own turkeys and it was his first time butchering them as well, so he came over with his birds and between he and Justin, they got it done. It was pretty sad, the kids were all curious and we let them watch from afar, but I reminded them that this wasn't "cool" or "funny", that what we were doing was serious and it is part of the process of how all of our meat gets to us. I don't enjoy taking animal life...I helped get the bags over their heads but that was it until they were good and dead. Justin, on the other hand, got all bloodied up...

David, our friend, had a good idea to cut the corner off of an empty feed bag and put it over the turkey so just the head was coming out of the corner, and they couldn't flap their wings around. Then they were tied upside down to the hitching post and their fate was sealed.

After a short scalding bath the kids actually helped us pluck the feathers and then the men did the gross work of removing the innards... Removing that gunk took longer than removing the feathers!

And this is the aftermath in our garbage can, until I thought of how gross and stinky it would be when the trash was collected 5 days later, so Justin was nice enough to bag it for me.

Happy Birthday Miss Daisy!!

She's really a year old! My goodness this sweet little girl has been such a joy. I think she is so easy, but I have to admit that compared to her two cousins her age she's probably the the hardest one of the three, but given my experience with the baby before her I think she's a dream! We weren't able to celebrate on the day of her birthday because Justin was out of town interviewing people on one of his cases, but I made sure to take some pictures of her on her actual birthday.

At a year old Daisy is walking, but still pretty unsteady. She started taking her first steps in her tenth month, but there was slooow progression from that point. Finally at about 11.5 months she was trying to walk all the time but even now (at almost 13 months at this writing) she still falls quite a bit and is unsteady, but improving. She's doing it though, which means I don't have to carry her all the time, yay! Daisy can say "mama" & "dada" and jabbers a lot. She's fun to listen to and I just love her smile. I've been asked a few times who she looks like, and though she definitely resembles Adaira, I thought I also could see some of Brighton in her.

Then I saw this picture, and I knew exactly who she looks like. He made a handsome man when he grew up but I don't know how well that translates in the feminine form, good luck sweet girl!

Justin Owens

 The lambs from Daisy' viewpoint

I love this girl, and I love that I get to experience having such a sweet baby to wrap up my baby years.

We had a little birthday dinner with family a few days after Daisy's birthday. Justin smoked ribs and with that advertisement the cousins came to join us :)

We gave her a slice of cake and she looked at it,

Then she took it by the fist and devoured it.

Dale + unguarded treats = fistfuls of sugar straight to his brain

After we ate Daisy ventured out to the family room to see what her cousin Scarlet was doing with her favorite toy. Daisy wanted it and Scarlet wasn't too happy about it...

In other News:

Brighton is enjoying cub scouts

Business as usual for Dale (he knows he's not supposed to be up there, but he appears to be on a mission with his backpack and all)

He's been obsessed with the caulking we've been using as we've been painting the trim on the outside of our house (I'll have to add a picture of that later). He steals it and goes around caulking whatever he can, including the sides and front of my van.

Our trampoline continues to be the best family fun investment we've ever made, especially now that the weather is nice again.

Dale LOVES to jump high

Look at that huge pretty smile. Adaira's hair is getting long and thick, and she loves to have it done (well she doesn't like it when I'm doing it, but she's happy when it's done and likes to have a picture of it)

 Adaira's fancy hair before church. I enjoy doing fun things with her hair, but I think I might be doing myself a disservice. These days when I want to do a simple ponytail, this girl is like "JUST a ponytail? Hmph!" lol

Adaira brought home this mask from a birthday party. Dale claimed it and wore it for the afternoon. He's too funny.

Phew! We took a lot of pictures in November. I still have another post to go before I'm done and close to caught up. Almost there!