Baby Raspberries

Ethan's Birthday Events

First, a few past birthdays with Ethan because it is fun seeing the consistencies with his friends.

For his 3rd birthday we went to the park and had cupcakes (a week late because he had chickenpox on his birthday).  Adam and his family were there, and Paxton who has sadly moved since then.  Not sure why Carlee wasnt...

4th birthday: Train park with Adam, Trent, and Carlee.

 5th birthday: Pump It Up with Brinklee, Adam, Trent and Carlee.  Not pictured is Rachel who came to help.  The group was exactly the same this year, as you'll see below.

We made Ethan's cake the night before.  He found this flower pan in the cabinet and wanted to use it.  We only put frosting in the middle so the flower could be seen.  We did a sprinkle 6 and then he decorated it with Angry Bird toys.  With a busy birthday planned and not knowing how long this tower would stand, we did birthday cake the night before.

 Birds flying, trying to knock over the tower.

 Ethan woke up to a Mario toy hunt with rhyming clues.  I was very proud of myself for doing all of the clues without relying on Lisa who is usually my go to rhymer.

 He loves these scavenger hunts!

 All his presents were at the end.

 Shortly after he opened his presents, we drove up to the new Phoenix Temple open house.  We rode a bus from the remote parking to the temple.

 We saw the beautiful temple.

 And found our niece/cousin, Rebekah, who is serving as a missionary in Phoenix.

 During naps, Ethan got to play with his toys a little and got halfway through his first ever (not Duplo) Lego set.

 Then we woke everyone up, picked up friends, and went to Pump It Up.

 Ethan decided he wanted to go to Oregano's.  I had suggested it not realizing how not kid oriented it is.  They wouldn't save us a table, even when I called on my way.  Ethan by then had his heart set on it, so we waited and opened presents outside.

 Brinklee, Trent, Ethan, Benton, Adam, Rachel.

 And Carlee in this one.  They got dough to play with, ate pizza...

 And of course pizookies!

They were exhausted by the time we got home, way past bedtime.  Doing Little Cesar's at a park last year was definitely better, but live and learn.  We have school schedules to work around now, so it is harder to find an ideal party time.

Hopefully today will be a little calmer and Ethan will actually get to play with his new toys!

And, a few funny Ethan conversations I've been meaning to post:

-We tried putting his booster seat next to Asher’s car seat on our little 8^th seat in the van.  When we turned the corner the whole seat slid off the bench and was dangling as the car seat held it and Ethan up.  Ethan was laughing and saying, “this is hopeless!”

-In the car,

Ethan: Mom, how come every time you have a baby it is a boy?

Me: I guess Heavenly Father wanted me to have all boys.

Ethan: Did you?

Me: Yes, I had three boys.

Ethan: No, did you want all boys.

Me: …I love my boys…

-Ethan is notoriously bad with names.  He gets 20 minutes of screen time if he stays on green at school and if he tells me someone’s name in his class he gets an extra 5 minutes.  One day when I asked what he did at recess he said that he blocked the slide and wouldn’t let people past until they told him his name so that he could get more minutes.  He was unable to come up with any names to repeat to me.

-He also told me one day that he wanted fly food for his birthday because he has become friends with the flies and wants to build them a city and keep them as pets.

Fall Break: Week 1

Ethan has 11 days off of school for fall break.  It is actually great timing because it is finally cool enough to go outside.  With such a long break, we needed some structure, so our basic routine is:
-I exercise before they wake up.
-After breakfast Ethan picks a chore slip and we deep clean that room.
-Something fun.
-Naps for the younger boys, learning time and then screen time for Ethan while I work.
-Playtime while I make dinner
-Dinner, Dad's home, bed

I think the element of surprise has helped with Ethan's attitude towards doing chores.  He tears a slip off from this and then finds out which room we will do.  We mostly have been cleaning blinds, windows, and fans and doing some walls and baseboards.  At the end of week one we have one more day inside and then we will be done with our inside chores.

 On Monday we cleaned, went to a friend's house so I could learn how to pressure can chicken, cut the boys' hair, and then went for a swim to wash all the hair off.  The water is definitely cooling off, but we still brave it.  For some reason, when the water gets colder, the boys like to wear floaties (they still get their heads wet).

 Each day during naps, Ethan does at least 5 pages from his workbook, reads me a book, and then gets screen time while I work.

I am working extra hours right now to pay for our holiday travel, so sometimes I work while Asher is awake and he will play in his jumper or outside in his play yard.  One evening he started fussing, so I put him on my lap as I finished up and he fell asleep!  This is a very uncommon occurrence!

 Monday afternoon I took everyone to the dentist's office just to find out that their appointment was on Tuesday, lame.  We still went to Sonic after, which was kind of a bust because Benton was grumpy from being woken up, but Ethan loved it.

On Tuesday we did chores, played with friends at the park, bought some decorations at the dollar store, and actually went to the dentist.  Benton was nervous, but, as usual, was pretty easy to distract into the dentist's chair.  Then he didn't want to get out.  No cavities for either boy, yay!

 On Wednesday, the boys played at a friend's house while I went grocery shopping.  I was getting a migraine by the time we got home, so we didn't get chores done until the evening, but then we got to start decorating for Halloween (which is what most of our fun activities entail).  We started off with bats on our sticks.

 After chores on Thursday we went to story time at the library.  Benton gets so excited to go to the library every week.  He likes to drop off his books and get his ticket and he sits very well to listen.  He is in the front in the yellow shirt.

 The few times Ethan gets to go with us, he is adamant about not participating.  I'm not sure if that is because it is "preschool storytime" or what, but I let him stay out of the story time room to look at books.  That lasted less than 5 minutes and then he came in with two loads of books he wanted to check out.  He looked at those for the rest of the time.

 One day, while I was getting dressed, I left Asher on my bedroom floor.  When I left him, he was face up on the other side of that bird.  When I came back, he was like this.

 We have done more decorating with pumpkins, birds, and spider webs.  The spider webs are hard to see, but Ethan was very excited about those.  The boys also like the skeleton hanging from the fan.

 After our chores on Friday, we had 3 friends over to play for the morning plus two older friends over for a little while to learn more about taking care of Asher so they can babysit for me.

After chores on Saturday, I took the boys to Scooptacular.  Benton hasn't been too involved in the chore process and didn't help at all on Saturday, so I let Ethan get a bigger treat than usual so that he felt like he was being rewarded for his work (plus I had a Groupon I needed to use the value of).

 Saturday night we had a babysitter come over for all three kids for the first time.  I am usually not the type to be nervous about leaving kids with a babysitter, but I was a little this time.  When Ethan was a baby my mom was here to babysit him, and when Benton was a baby, Mike got babysitting in exchange for violin lessons so it was, again, an adult (the mom) helping with the babysitting.  Of course it went fine and Mike and I got to go to Cafe Rio and do some shopping.  I have been putting off shopping until I wasn't pregnant and was back to a normal size.  I'm like two pounds from my goal, but that is close enough for the awesome deals I found at Kohls.  I got 13 items for $106, yay!  It was funny to see the difference between what Mike and I shop for.  I needed exercise clothes (since I'm at the gym everyday and end up in my workout clothes before and after quite a bit) and casual shirts.  Mike was shopping for professional clothes and discovered extreme slim fit shirts at Calvin Klein.  Such a difference between our day to day activities and between the sizes we need (all my exercise and I am definitely not an extreme slim!).

And here are random pictures of Benton looking super cute as a fireman.

 He's upset with me for trying to get pictures instead of helping him get his squirter backpack.

While we were swimming after my run on Saturday, Benton was making up his own version of the 5 little monkeys song with his shark and fish.  He was also play acting with his toys.  It is fun to watch them when they start being more imaginative.

If you aren't familiar with it, this is the song he is altering.


I had more trouble remembering what we did each day then I thought I would.  However, going through my text messages each day, particularly with Jessica, filled in the blanks.  I'm glad I have friends to interact with throughout the day!