What kids do when they've been snowed in too long......

The boys took my camera the other day and were having a little too much fun in their room. The pictures are great quality, but if you look past that fact they're pretty funny I think. Enjoy!

This is Kaleb

And here is Damen.

Summer so far....

The weather has been beautiful so far this summer. Highs in the upper 60s and low 70s. We've been riding bikes, the girls did a week of Starbase camp, we have five monarch caterpillars and within the next week we're supposed to be having a splash park open! We've been having fun and staying busy. The soccer season ends on Tuesday and then next week will be the 4th of July! Craziness. I think our summer will slow down after VBS in mid July, but until then it's pretty hoping.

If you're wondering how life really looks in between all the fun (or not so fun bike trips because the kids complain the entire time)......yesterday I was taking the boys to a garage sale and Wal-mart. They were arguing in the back of the car and talking about a friend in a not kind way. I told them to stop talking like that, that it wasn't treating others like they were made in the image of God. They said the person they were talking about was not made in the image of God and I started talking to them (again) about how we are ALL made in God's image and reflect him......one of their responses? "Mom, you don't have to preach to us! We go to church on Sundays!" Wow, I'm not even the pastor :-) Obviously they haven't been listening very well at church? Anyway, lots of people have enjoyed the story, so I figured I'd share it here as well.

safety testing

The other night Nathan and I were safety testing some very hot cookies. The kids started complaining about why we got cookies and they had to wait. Nathan said "We're doing a very important job, we're making sure they're safe. You wouldn't want to be dead would you?" Damen respond "Yes, because then I'd be with Jesus!"

Surgery

Damen had ear tubes put in today and adenoids removed. We had kids programs start at our church last night, so he was out late and up early. Before heading out I asked Damen if there was anything he wanted besides his stuff animal. He requested I bring a sandwich for after surgery in the car. Smart kid! We had an uneventful drive to the hospital about an hour and twenty minutes away watching the sun rise. When we got there Damen was super chill and when they went to take him back for surgery he was almost asleep before they have given him any medications because he was laying down on the bed. When he woke up he was super hungry, no surprise there since he hadn't eaten since the night before and it was now noon. This seemed to surprise the nursing staff, as he ate the popsicle they brought him and asked for more food. They brought a tray of jello, another popsicle and some juice and he ate all that and asked for more. At that point I asked if he could just be released so I could feed him the sandwich he had in the car. He ate most of the sandwich on the way home and then had some quiche when he got home. The discharge instructions said soft foods only and they recommended nothing solid for four to six hours......yeah, that wasn't going to happen. They were going over the no school for five days I said he was home schooled...they said no PE for at least a week and I said you're joking right? He's a six year old boy, he'll be wrestling with his twin brother today. After eating he headed outside to play and was sliding on the ice in the drainage ditch and fell several times. And there was way less wrestling than normal but there was some when one of them would forget they weren't supposed to be wrestling today.

Chilling out after surgery.

And excited to be able to watch TV. 

He did great and hopefully this will help make his (and our) life better over all, as he shouldn't be getting ear infections and he'll be able to hear us better!

Co-op Celebration Night

Yesterday (Thursday) was our last day of homeschool co-op for the year. The boys were so excited after co-op in the morning to be singing that night. Damen even sang the whole song for me at home. When he got up to sing in front of everyone not a word came out of his or Kaleb's mouth. Damen's reason for not singing? "It's embarrassing with everyone looking at you!"

The Kindergarten class singing

Or maybe just hanging out up front......

Hannah and her sign language class also got up and signed a song, but Hannah wasn't willing to sign, so she just held cards with the picture of the animal they were signing from Old MacDonald Had a Farm. I didn't get any pictures because I had to go deal with Damen...... 

Big Boys

The boys will be turning six on Saturday. In recent weeks we've been having issues with Damen being wet when he gets out of bed. I think this might be related to his surgery, although when asking him why he's not getting up he says because it's too cold to get out of bed. Anyway, Nathan informed him that six year olds do not pee their pants. Yesterday I had the following conversation with Damen.
Damen: I'm going to be six in five days! Then I won't pee my pants at all!! Because six year olds don't pee their pants. Won't you be so happy??
Me: That's not quite how it works.
Damen: That's what Dad said, he said when you're six you don't pee your pants.

The joy of literal five year olds! :-) I informed Nathan he gets to deal with the fall out when Damen has an accident when he's six.

Finally to an ENT

Today we finally made it to the ENT! He's about an hour and 15 minutes south of here. He asked if I knew what happened to the ENT in Alpena, as he didn't know either. I still haven't found anyone who can tell me what happened. The ENT today assured me he's been practicing for 20 years and hasn't missed a day and isn't going anywhere :-)  Anyway, the conclusion is Damen needs new tubes in his ears (surprise!) and he wants to remove his adenoids. That will be our excitement on March 16th. I have to say the lack of doctors in the area is frustration, but as I was relaying the appointment to Nathan tonight, I did realize the one positive things about all the doctors I've been to in Michigan is they all have taken us back on time (or early!) and the doctors have come in right away. There were times at the ENT in CT where I'd be waiting for almost half an hour in the room before the doctor came in. Today the appointment was at 2 pm and we were in the car on our way out by 2:22, that's good stuff when you have four kids! I liked the doctor today, he was direct, kept it short and handled the boys well. The office staff was super impressed by the girls who waited nicely in the lobby because they wanted to watch the TV. The good news from today is that nothing needs to be done with Kaleb, they just need to continue monitoring him because his tube still has not fallen out. Really? It's been in over 4 years, that's just craziness! So until it falls out he'll be being seen every six months along with Damen.

Yesterday's excitement....

Yesterday we woke up and our heat was out....this had happened on Sunday as well and someone was out then but couldn't figure out the problem. Yesterday they decided to replace a part and it seems to be working well now. We thought that was enough excitement for the day. But that was the minor excitement for the day. We had co-op in the morning and Nathan had a doctors appointment which all went fine we came home and Nathan was actually taking the day off since he hadn't had a day off in awhile. We were doing a little quiet time after lunch and the boys were in their room and then we here blood curdling screams and Damen comes out dripping blood everywhere.....something in his mouth was bleeding, but there was so much blood it was hard to tell what was going on. We figured out he had knocked (or maybe ripped is a better description looking at the damage now) his top two front teeth out. We called the dentist and headed over. He took a look at the teeth and said the roots were damaged so they couldn't go back in, fortunately they were only baby teeth. They took some x-rays and were confused by what they saw so they called a pediatric dentist in Petoskey, which is just over two hours from here. The dentist here thought Damen's roots were damaged and arranged for us to go to the pediatric dentist today. This morning Damen and I headed across the state. The pediatric dentist said things looked just fine, there was no need for surgery (which our dentist here thought he'd need) and we'll just play the wait and see game. Apparently the adult teeth roots aren't developed yet, which hopefully is a good thing and it will all heal normally and he'll be fine. Worse case is the root develop and we'll have to deal with that later on. But for not we're praising God Damen didn't need surgery! We were in and out quickly and made it there and back in just over five hours. The other good news is for the next year or two everyone will be able to Damen and Kaleb apart :-)

Isn't he cute without his front teeth?

At least if they're smiling you can tell them apart! :-) 

30 churches

Sunday after church there was a luncheon for people who have recently started attending the church. As part of the luncheon everyone went around and said there name and a little about themselves. Well, we had the area regional minister visiting our church on Sunday and he stuck around for the luncheon, when introducing himself he said that he had 26 churches, meaning there are 26 churches in the area that he helps with. Kaleb heard this and turns to me and said "He has 26 churches? That's not fair, we only have two! (we go to a different church on Wednesday nights for a kids program) When I grow up I'm going to have 30 churches!" Who knew the more churches you have the better? :-) That and the fact that Damen was practicing his preaching at the podium before the lunch began was super cute. They get behind it and there was nothing on it, so Damen said "oh no, we need our papers! Wait, we don't need papers, we need a Bible!" Unfortunately he wasn't quite tall enough to see over it and preach effectively, but he was trying.

And back to the ENT we go

About a month ago Evie got a cold...Nathan was sure it was allergies, but I knew better. A week later I got it and still haven't been able to shake it....it's also gone through our entire house. Damen got it and it went to his ears, like all colds have been doing. I took him to the doctor last Tuesday and he had a double ear infection, his left ear being worse than his right. Well last Friday he was complaining of his right hurting him all day, but the pain stopped by the end of the day, so I decided to wait to take him to the doctor. I kept asking if his ears hurt and he kept telling me they didn't. Well, after calling him three times at one point yesterday and then having to yell because he couldn't hear me, I figured it was worth going in for a follow up to see where his ears were at. I took him today right after our homeschool group and his right ear is bulged, which it sounds like happens before rupturing. He's on a new antibiotic and we have an appointment with the ENT. His left ear hadn't drained at all either....so I'm hoping they'll put tubes back in. I am very thankful for that the one ENT in town takes his insurance so I don't have to drive hours away for the doctor.

Magic Show at the Library Take 2

Back in July we went to a second magic show offered by the library. Damen got to participate in this one. :-)

He was very excited about this opportunity.

First he got magnetized.....

Then the magician started sticking spoons to him....

He was okay with this at the beginning....

But was not so thrilled about it when they were all over his face by the end. 

It was a good show and the kids had a lot of fun watching the magic happen!

Bloody Wednesday

Nathan had a pretty rough day yesterday, our lead pastor is out of town and Nathan had to do a hospital visit for the first time ever and some one in the church died. Never fun to deal with. Anyway, we're sitting down at dinner today and I asked him how his day was, and he said productive, no, deaths, hospital visits, or anything like that. I said "what? No blood?" and then started relaying my day.....Kaleb crashed his bike a took several layers of skin off his knee in a couple places. Blood dripping down his leg, onto his sock everywhere. Damen was accidentally elbowed in the mouth...cue bleeding take two. Kaleb was accidentally kicked in the nose, bleeding take three. Monday was bloody when  Damen went mouth first into the pavement, don't get me wrong, but at least it was only one incident. Today was slightly more exciting with multiple events! The good thing about today was two of the events were Kaleb, he doesn't freak out about blood, he's pretty cool with it. It makes it much easier to deal with, get cleaned up and move on. I can tell we're finally getting to the fun stage with boys :-)

One of those days....

I didn't want to get up this morning knowing I'd have to deal with Connecticut house issues that came up at the end of last week. Well, I got several phones calls before even getting into the house issue and was on the phone with Nathan seeing if he'd call a plumber to see if they could resolve the contaminated water issue we had to fix (which the buyers didn't tell us about a month ago when they got the water test results back, but now can't get their mortgage because of) when I saw Damen go down on his bike. He went down hard, fortunately, I was out watching, so I knew what happened. When I got to him his mouth was full of blood....sound familiar? Instead of his tongue this time he managed to bite through his upper lip and knock a tooth loose. I knew he had gone through his lip, but that was about all I could determine at first, the tooth I didn't figure out until he had calmed down about 20 minutes later. He didn't have a huge hole through his lip, it's actually quite small, so I didn't have to worry about taking him anywhere to get stitched, which was good. But his upper lip is really large. I took a picture, I'll upload it soon along with the fun that he, Kaleb and Evie were having today after that digging a huge whole. The moral of the story is Damen will be fine, but I'm guessing we might get on a first name bases with the ER doctors here.

Transition and more ER drama

The last two plus weeks have been hard. We had VBS the week of July 18th. That was every night and involved being at church at 5:15 for dinner, which was great! And not leaving until 8:15 pm at the earliest, which was not so great. By Friday night when we were getting the boys ready for bed Kaleb broke down because he was sad VBS was over and he was missing everything Connecticut, his friends, toys, swing set etc. Since he was balling Damen decide to join in and it took a good long time to calm them both down. Transitions are hard. After VBS week Nathan was around Saturday and then Sunday night he had a meeting, Monday we had dinner at a couple's house from church, Tuesday and Wednesday Nathan had meetings. It was hard, by Wednesday night one child told me they didn't have to listen to me because Dad wasn't home. I was then laughed at when disciplining that child. I'm not sure what prompted the child to decide they didn't have to listen to me when Nathan wasn't here, but it was not cool. By the end of the week I was a wreck along with the kids. Nathan and I have reevaluated his schedule and hopefully have a solution that will work that will involve him being home every day for a couple hours even if he has a meeting. I went into this week with high hopes of things going better........and then yesterday Damen decided to chomp his tongue real good while attempting to do a pogo stick. It was deep and about an inch long cut. We went to the ER, but it was really crowed, so we went to the walk-in clinic, that closed at 3 pm, 10 minutes before we got there....we consulted Nathan's Mom, brought Damen home, but the tongue was still bleeding an hour plus after he did it, so I decided to try a pediatric office, took him there at four, was told the doctors were with their last patient of the day, so they couldn't get him in even though they didn't close until five....but then someone (I think a nurse) came out a took a look at it and said to take him to the ER because he'd need stitches and they didn't do them. So back to the ER I went....had a nurse take his vitals and asked if they'd stitch a tongue or not, she told me they had just done one last night...great....so I waited for four hours to be seen and then the doctor told me she doesn't do stitches on the tongue for kids that young because it just bugs them and they use the dissolving kind and the kids rub them off in less than 24 hours. Great, thanks, so I waited all that time for nothing...wonderful. On the way out Damen says "That was fun" I gave him a strange look and said "That is not my idea of fun." He did super well with the long wait and the over crowded waiting room was very impressed with how well he did for how young he was and the fact that he was hurt. Needless to say this week hasn't started out as well as I had hoped! That is the long update, on the past couple weeks, hopefully I will be getting up pictures and such of the fun we had as well!

Conversation of the Day

I have tons of pictures and things to post, and I will soon! But for today I have to share this conversation so I don't forget it.
Hannah and I are in the kitchen. Damen walks in and looks at Hannah, he then turns to me and says "Why is Hannah dark? She should be light like you!" I was surprised by the question and said something like "No she should, God made her that way and it's just the way she should be. Why do you think she should be light like me?"
"Because she's spiffy! And I'm not. I want to be spiffy!" This turned the somewhat tense and awkward conversation around and put a huge grin on Hannah's face. We continued going back and forth a little more about spiffiness, but it was really all quite ridiculous and funny. Apparently if Hannah were lighter she wouldn't be spiffy. Who knew? Maybe we need to work on his definition of spiffy ;-)

Riding a two wheeler take four

Damen sort of figured out the two wheeler last week.....at least how to stay up on it. He has not figured out how to stop or turn yet. Which is a wee bit of a problem when trying to ride a bike. Today he attempted to turn and ended up in the drainage ditch. But here is a video of him riding.

Slight better video, as I've started following the boys on my rollerblades :-) 

ENT the continued saga

Today the boys had an ENT appointment. They've been having these every six months or less since we got them over three years ago. They came with tubes in their ears. Tubes are supposed to fall out in a year or two and you move on. Well at this appointment both of Damen's were finally gone. Yay! Except wait, his ears look horrible because he's had a cold and they are completely filled with fluid, can't hear a word you say poor boy, so he has to go back in a couple months to make sure the fluid has drained or he'll be getting new tubes. Kaleb.....my Kaleb.....he STILL has a tube in his left year. It's been three and a half years people! Three and a half years!!!!!!!! And the doctor said it looks like she just put it in last week, it looks great. Except it was supposed to have fallen out over a year ago! So we have the option to wait and just leave it in and continue with our every six month appointments an hour and fifteen minutes away or we can have the tube removed. I am pretty tired of wasting half a day to travel half way across the state to be told "Yep, it's still there" and for various other reasons we are going to have it removed. Maybe just maybe we will actually have a final appointment with the ENT this year!

Starting to understand

Damen brought me a broken toy the other day and was showing it to me. When I saw it I said "Nothing lasts for ever......except us. How do we last for ever?
Damen: by dying!
I love that he understands that when he dies it's not final, that we will live eternally. I went on to reinforce that yes, that was it and that you have to follow Jesus if you want to be with Him forever in Heaven. The boys have had tons of questions about following Jesus recently and I love it! I am so excited that they are asking hard questions and looking to understand the ways of God. :-)

Buttons!

Here Evie is being a sweet older sister and reading to her brothers, I believe she read them several books that day.

See the shirts the boys have on? A month or two ago the boys decided that these shirts were going to be their "work" shirts. They have buttons just like Daddy's work shirts and they would wear them EVERY day if they were clean. The first time Damen put his one he decided he was going to button it. It took awhile, but he buttoned the whole thing by himself! Kaleb started working on it too, and once they had worn them a few times they became expert buttoners! They are now super fast at buttoning and only once have them been in the wrong holes.

Growing up....

The boys are very proud of the fact that they are "big boys" and want to do everything and anything their sisters do, or more! Damen had been bugging me to let him make his own sandwich for lunch, so Sunday I walked him through how to do it, and then of course Kaleb wanted to learn as well. On Monday while I was doing school with the girls Damen asked if he could make himself a sandwich. I said sure. And he did. Kaleb did as well. They didn't do half bad it it either! They had also gotten their own breakfast (they heated up scones) that day. Not bad for a four year old!