Sophie starts Kindergarden

Sophie started Kindergarten last week and I think it is going ok. She really misses preschool--her friends, the play time. Although she's getting along fine, I don't think she's connecting with many kids at school whereas last year she was such a leader. She does like her teacher so I'm hoping it'll just take a little time to make friends. In the meantime I hope her fire for school doesn't go out.


Sophie gave a talk on Sunday and did such an amazing job. She is really talented. She had a few drawings on a piece of paper to remind herself of the ideas but then spoke without any intervention. The primary president pulled me aside later and said she'd never seen anything like it. We are going to put the girls back in tennis. They seem excited about it and it seems like such a good sport for them to get into. They haven't asked about dance so as hard as it is for me to let that one go, I think I will try.

Last weekend we went down to Safford to visit the Hargis clans and had a blast. We went on a great hike and cought all sorts of wildlife: snakes, walking sticks, frogs, tadpoles, etc. There are 11 kids under 11 when you put them all together and the kids have so much fun together.

One positive thing about our new schedule is that I now get a lot more one on one time with Ellie. Last week she helped me unload the dishwasher every day(she's in charge of the bottles, sippy cups, etc). She folded the rags and helped me gather dirty laundry. We pretended we were hunters looking for tigers and we captured all the tigers and put them with their families (put dirty clothes in a hamper and sorted the colors). She had so much fun on the "hunt" that now tigers are her favorite animals.

Mathew started to wave a little. He usually does it while he's nursing. He also started doing little animal sounds--he roars like a tiger and whinnys like a horse. So now he's compartmentalized all of the animals into those two buckets--whinniers (more like a squeal) and growlers (more like a cat hiss). Elephants, monkeys, zebras area all on one side and bears, lions, dinosaurs are on the other. I didn't argue with him when he put the giraffes with the horses because I didn't have a better solution.

Tito's b-day

It was Mathew's birthday on Friday. We went to Chickfila for dinner because he loves playing with the balloons. He's starting to use his hand now even through the sock.

We went to see a specialist on Thursday and he says the finger is healing and we can take the stitches out next week. They took and x-ray and the bone is still in 2 pieces (split vertically). They can't tell how it's affected the growth plate on the bone. Worst case scenario is that the top bone in his finger doesn't grow or grows crooked.

Friday morning, the girls and I decorated a cake. I let the girls go wild and do whatever they wanted so we ended up with a valcano, waterfall and lots of toy dinosaurs. It looked so gross to Matt that he wouldn't even taste it. But it was fun for the girls and little Mathew (we're calling him "Tito" these days) just went along with it.

Mathew finds ways to still get in trouble even with his hand all bandaged up. He has one of those metal splints under all the bandages so he goes around banging it on everything. He doesn't seem to be in much pain-except for when we change the bandages.

We went to the science museum on Monday. We went to the demo on "The eye". They disected a cow eyeball and it was pretty gross. The girls were very interested and even wanted to touch it at the end of the show.

We saw the IMAX show--a 3d film about the Ocean. I'd forgotten how realistic those shows are. I was walking Mathew back and forth in the stroller and at one point I look back and Sophie and Ellie are standing up in their seats trying to grab the jellyfish. Sophie clapped her hands and yelled out--"I got one". She still swears she felt something so it was probably the lady's hair in front of her.

Welcome to boys

Monday morning I left Mathew in the play room while I went to get dressed. I soon heard a crash and screaming. I knew right away what it was. Mathew recently has been obsessed with climbing the chairs in the Kitchen. He'll hold on to the back of the chair and then start rocking back and forth as fast as possible before I get to him. Well this time I didn't get to him and when I walked in he was lying in a little pool of blood and I thought he'd cracked his head open. When I picked him up I saw that his finger was smashed and split open. He was hysterical so I couldn't even get a bandaid on. I called Matt and he came quickly and helped tape it up. I dropped the girls off at a friend's house and took him to the doctor's. The doctor taped it up again and sent me to the emergency room where we waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally they numbed his finger and gave him 3 stitches. The doctor said that the top bone in his finger was split in half (the long ways) and he would heal fine but it would really hurt for a while. We need to keep an eye on him the next few days to make sure he didn't suffer any head trauma since there is a bruise on his head but no bump.

His little fingers are so small it is nearly impossible to keep any sort of bandage on. He pulled it off 3 times yesterday and I was ready to tie his hand behind his back but a sock ended up working pretty well. Everyone keeps on saying "welcome to boys". Mathew has two sides to him, he's sweet and fun to play with but he is also a thrill seeker and fast. I was feeling so guilty all day yesterday--I can't believe that happened. But I also feel so blessed because I keep on playing the scenario over in my mind and I don't understand how he didn't crack his head open. When I saw him his finger was pinned under the chair and his arms are so short, I don't see how he didn't hit it harder when the chair crashed down.

Weekend in Eagar

We went up to Eagar on Friday and got back tonight (Sunday). We went on a long drive and saw 2 herds of wild horses, Elk and wild Turkeys. Here are the wild horses.

We went to a Pioneer day party. Mathew loves to scream until he gets what he wants.

The kids were in heaven.

These past 2 weeks have been a lot of fun. Last weekend we spontaneously decided to go up to Eagar. So we left Saturday (on the road 1 hour after deciding to leave) and got back Sunday night. It was a short but fun trip.

The kids finished up their tennis lessons Mon-Thurs and then Mom flew in Thursday afternoon. She brought a really fun game called Slamwhich and we all played that night. Friday we spent most of the day cooking a big Turkish meal--very yummy. Saturday Morning we all went to see Ratatouille which was hilarious. When Matt and all 3 kids went down for a nap I started showing my Mom the research I'd done on Puerto Penasco houses for the family reunion next year. It's difficult to see what the houses are really like on the web so we started talking about how we wished we could go see them. Matt said he could take Monday off so we decided to pack up right then and head off to Mexico. In less than 90 minutes we were on the road in 2 cars driving to Mexico. It really was fun. You can't go to Mexico without and adventure and this was definitely an adventure. They must have changed the main road there because Matt and I kept going down the main street the wrong way..it was completely not intuitive. We spent most of the time looking at houses and Matt took the kids to get hermit crabs on the beach. There were a lot of jelly fish out so they didn't really get in the water much. At night we went on the roof to see the sunset/look at stars or walked on the beach and then played Slamwhich and loteria. The kids were in heaven.

This is the acquarium; a very up-and close experience. Sometimes too close.