Back to school for Rachel and Ryan

Rachel started 2nd grade on Monday. Her teacher is Mrs. Curtin and so far she loves her.

 Tuesday Ryan had his first day of preschool at Little Learner's Preschool with Mrs. Caffrey as his teacher.

He was excited, but for the last week occasionally he would tell me he wanted me to stay with him when I took him to preschool (he's gotten rather nervous and clingy sometimes lately). Luckily when I dropped him off Tuesday morning he was happy for me to leave. 

  

Today he wanted me to stay, but was ok when I left. With Annie going back to school in a week and a half I'll have an hour every Tuesday and Thursday when Megan is napping and Ryan is at preschool when I can do whatever I want without kids around. I'm kind of looking forward to that! :)

In kind of related news, we started Ryan on a gluten challenge at the beginning of summer. Ryan has been gluten free for 2 years now, but we never got a definitive diagnosis since he had already been GF for too long by the time we got in to see a doctor that any tests wouldn't have shown anything anyway. When we talked with Ryan's GI about doing a gluten challenge he would always say we should wait until he had a bit more of a cushion on his weight before we did it in case he started losing weight when he went back on gluten. Finally in May he agreed that we could do a gluten challenge so we would know for sure if we had to be super careful while Ryan is at school or if he could eat treats and snacks others bring.

We were supposed to have him eat the equivalent of 2 pieces of gluten bread every day for 8 weeks then do his blood test. If he got symptoms before 8 weeks, like diarrhea, we could test earlier. He had no symptoms, but we wanted to get the test in before school started, so after 6 weeks we did the blood test. It was surprisingly difficult to get the boy to eat much gluten. When he eats a sandwich he eats a quarter of a sandwich, so 1/2 a piece of bread. Nutrigrain bars, cupcakes, and other such treats helped a little, but I'm sure he didn't get the equivalent of 2 pieces of bread every day. Who knows how accurate the test was...

Anyway, it came back negative, so he is allowed to eat gluten now. It makes it easier for everyone at preschool as we take turns providing snacks. It also makes it easier for me to not have to worry about when some one is going to bring in cupcakes of some other treat and I would have to try and create a gluten-free version for Ryan. I'm sure we'll have more follow ups to make sure he really is ok eating gluten. But at home we're happy to be back to mostly gluten-free. It is SUCH a pain to try to keep most of the surfaces clear of gluten so I can make dinner that is safe for Jacob to eat while trying to get Ryan to eat as much gluten as he would eat. Now the only gluten we have in the house is for lunches/snacks that are eaten out of the house. It is much easier.

Wrapping up Summer Break

Yes, it's still July, but our Summer Break is short in Vail School District because we have a modified year round schedule. It's short enough that I didn't have time to wish school was starting soon, but long enough that the last week before school started was beginning to have enough sibling fights that going back to school happened just at the right time. We managed to squeeze a lot into our summer, but didn't quite get to everything on our summer fun list (but all the things that mattered got done).

Since we got back from vacation in Washington here are a few of the things that we've been up to, as far as our cameras can remember (that's the only way I remember most of what we've done).


The children have no qualms about taking over our camera. Most of these pictures are them capturing their own fun as they're playing together.

Jacob got out his light saber from back in the day for the kids to play with.

 Ryan loved it as much as the girls. In fact a little too much. After a few too many fights and time outs over the light saber, it has been retired for a while, perhaps to come out when only one kid is home to play with it. :)

The kids had a store playdate with their friends.

 Everyone brought stuff they had collected or made to sell to each other with fake money they had earned over the course of a week.

 There were lots of book marks, some cool rock pets, and lots of other *quality* homemade items. :)

There has been a fair share of fighting. But some sibling love, too. In fact this picture is a make up hug taken after either Annie or Ryan came out of time out and had to say sorry.

 Our monsoon season isn't nearly as awesome as it was last year, but we've got a few storms. Only one so far that has the streets filling up with water even a little bit to go splash in them (at least while we were in town). The kids all were happy to go play in the water.

 Ryan likes the rain, but does NOT like the lightning and thunder, though he'll tell you different when there's no thunder going on. During a thunder storm, however, he sticks pretty close to me.

This $5 air hockey table I found at a yard sale is the best find ever! Megan has been watching the other kids play and in her penchant for being in high/precarious/dangerous places she was having a ball standing on a kid table to see what all the fuss was about with the air hockey table.

 A few minutes after this picture was taken she decided higher is better and climbed up on top. She seriously loves heights. Put her on the floor and she will throw an all out tantrum, but on the couch, a chair, bench, sink/counter top, table, or stairs she is happy as a lark.

Pirate girl?

 Playing outside--there actually hasn't been much of that this summer because it has been so stinking hot in June/July and lately it's been humid, too, but without the rain to cool things off except for the rare occasion, so we don't go outside all that often.

 Plenty of time spent with blocks and indoor toys, however.

 We discovered that Annie is allergic to dogs.

 She held a little dog and a half hour later she was itchy all over and her face was getting blotchy. We washed everywhere she had touched the dog and she was back to normal in a half hour or so. I guess we won't be getting a dog any time soon.

But that's ok because we have enough messes to clean up even without a dog.

We visited the library several times and did a good amount of reading this summer. I bet Rachel read 30 books over her 8 weeks off. Next summer we'll have to keep track.

Rachel went back to school on Monday, but Annie's school doesn't start until August 3, so she still has a little over a week of summer break left. She has been really missing gymnastics since we took a break for the summer. She has been doing somersaults all over the place, especially on the couch and on beds, kicking people in the head when she's not careful. So we headed to open gym yesterday for Annie and Ryan to get some energy out and jump around.

 They spent 40 minutes out of the hour playing in the pit, jumping from high heights, getting buried in the foam blocks, and getting stuck. It was great. Annie got totally sweaty, and they both worked off a bunch of energy so they had less energy to fight the rest of the day. :)

It's been a good summer. It's kind of nice to get back into the school routine again, though.

Synchro

I thought participating in a team sport would be good for Rachel, so when summer started I encouraged her to do swim team or synchronized swimming at the city pool near our house. At first she would not even entertain the idea, but after some persuasion and showing her videos she finally agreed to try out synchro. She is not completely comfortable in the deep end yet (though she's a good enough swimmer that she is safe in the deep end, she's just a little nervous about it still), so that was a challenge she worked on overcoming this summer. She did great and had fun.
The night before the dress rehearsal for the water show she was so nervous, but it turned out to be a lot of fun for her.

All summer she has been swimming with 2 other girls on her team, but at the dress rehearsal all the girls in all the teams got to learn a routine together.

The following week was the watershow. The night before she told me she didn't think she was going to do synchro again next year. I responded that the night before the big show is not the time to make any such decisions. The next morning she was a little nervous and a lot excited.

Her team did a good job. Since they were all beginners and had just finished learning the routine 2 days earlier, their coach was in the pool with them reminding them of the moves. It's hard to see all the moves from our vantage point (10 feet in the air would have been better). But Rachel did a good job and, most importantly, had a lot of fun.

Here's Rachel's team's routine:

From 07

And the routine for the whole group together:

From 07

From 07

Purple Heart (her team) won the biggest smile/attitude award.

Naileah, Rachel, Coach Tahira, and Sara

Afterwards I asked Rachel what she thought about doing synchro next year and she said she definitely wants to do it again. It was a lot of fun to be part of a team.

To celebrate a job well done we took the kids to McDonalds for an ice cream cone and to let them play in the PlayPlace.

Washington trip--wrapping things up

Sunday we enjoyed going to church with the Knights, and had a lovely low key afternoon.

Megan had some fun out in the driveway riding a scooter, then decided to walk around a bit with Daddy. This is a sight I see a lot:

 Megan wants to go to Dad, then looks at me and realizes, "Wait, but now I'm not in Mom's arms." and tries to get back to me.

Monday we stuck around the house in the morning, except for a few kids who went with Todd on a bike ride to walk the dog, and Annie and Jared who came with me to the store. The kids had a lot of fun swinging high in their awesome swing.

 Ryan spent a lot of time during the week with Shadow telling her what to do and what not to do.

 I think he enjoyed being the boss of someone (he tries it unsuccessfully with his sisters all the time) who wouldn't fight back or tell him no. Ryan didn't seem to mind that Shadow mostly ignored his commands.

That afternoon we loaded up the raft/boat and took it down to the lake. Megan got packed up in a life vest to go out on the boat. She didn't particularly like it, but tolerated it as long as she was standing up. If she sat in it her legs pushed up on it so it was uncomfortably choking her.

 Unfortunately we soon had a run in with a police boat who got after us for not having life jackets for all the kids or for the adults even though we were keeping the boat in the swimming area. That put an end to the boat fun.

Instead Todd pulled out the inflatable seats and they became rafts for the kids to play on.

 We had fun swimming for a good while. Jared especially liked the fact that our camera can take pictures and videos under water. We had a good time with that for a while before heading back home for dinner.

The first day that we went swimming in the lake Ryan was not a big fan of the waves. By the last day he was swimming in the "pool with the waves" as much as he does in the pool back home.

The next morning we got up and headed to the airport for one of the most exciting parts of the trip: riding the airplane.

The kids had some fun at the airport waiting to board the airplane.

 Megan napped on this flight and did pretty well right up until the end when she really just wanted to get down and walk around.

 But we survived. And 3 hours in a plane is WAY better than 3 days in a car.

Grandma picked us up at the airport and Megan just wanted to cuddle with her. She must have missed Grandma while we were gone.

 Like most vacations, this one was tons of fun and we're glad we got to go, and we're glad to be home. We could have probably even handled another day or two before the cousins started to fight and get sick of each other. I guess it's good that we left before that happened, but I wouldn't have minded another day or two. Thanks for having us, Todd and Savannah!

Washington trip--4th of July

We had a fabulous Independence Day/Megan's Birthday. We started the day off with a walk in the Magical Woods that are right by the Knight's house. Like 3 houses away. It's awesome.

 The kids ate some huckleberries and blackberries and played hide and seek in the clearing. But we couldn't play too long because we had a pancake breakfast to get to that their ward was putting on.

 Our 1-year-old:

 After the pancakes, sausage and fruit were devoured the kids had some fun on the playground equipment.

 Megan was having a blast climbing all the stairs and would get to the top and turn around to go down the big slide feet first all by herself.

We then changed into our swimsuits and went down to the water to play until everyone got hungry for lunch. Luckily the pancake breakfast was at the same park that is on the lake front and has the beach that we played at all week.

 Megan loved the water.

 When I picked her up to go get her swimsuit on she was MAD. She forgave me when I brought her back to the water.

After swimming for a while we packed up and headed home for lunch and naps. Everyone tried to nap, knowing that we'd be up late for the fireworks. Ryan was successful, but Annie and Rachel couldn't fall asleep, so they were just extra tired the next day (not that they slept in much later, but they needed to).

Ryan was sharing his puppy with Sammy.

 Ryan is very sweet with little babies. At least ones that can't grab your toys from you.

After naps we headed outside. The kids had lots of fun on the trampoline. They played a lot of Dead Man and a little Crack the Egg. Megan just watched and bounced and enjoyed the effects on her hair.

 For her birthday Megan got some colored bubbles. She was really excited to hold the container.

 Once we started blowing bubbles she got a kick out of that, too.

For our Independence Day/birthday dinner we roasted hot dogs in their fire pit and had potato salad.

 We also roasted marshmallows because to my kids fire=marshmallows.

 Savannah made a delicious pudding cake to celebrate Megan's birthday.

 This cake made for much better messy baby pictures than her first cake did.

 And it was delicious. I will have to make a gluten-free version, maybe for Jacob's birthday.

We headed back down to the lake to watch fireworks that night. Sammy was fussy and overstimulated from too much fun and being awake too long during the day, so she volunteered to stay home with the sleeping Megan in the hopes of helping Sam get to sleep in the quiet house. I was happy to not have to 1. wake up Megan when she would otherwise sleep through the night and 2. not have to chase her around and keep her out of the water for an hour while we looked for fireworks. Thanks, Savannah!

It was beautiful down at the lake. You can see Mt. Ranier in the distance, just to the right of the sailboat.

 The kids had all had their Saturday night baths and were in their pajamas, so of course they immediately picked up dirt and rocks to throw in the lake. :)

 B and Ryan were best rock buddies, sharing rocks and throwing them in together. They got along really well all week, actually.

 Ryan was pretending to be sad.

 Then Rachel tried to pretend to be sad.

 We had a fun time watching fireworks around the lake. We left before the big fireworks displays went off around 10:15, but we still got to see enough. Having the sun go down so late up north is really rough with young kids trying to stay up for the fireworks. I was impressed that we made it as long as we did.
Overall a GREAT 4th of July.