The Little Things

 Jordan stealing a cupcake. He found the toy box, emptied it and moved it into the kitchen so he could eat a cupcake!

 Drinking out of the sprinkler.

 Remember when I said that he liked to hide his sippy cup?

This is an old sippy cup - you can tell because of the curdling on the inside. Disgusting.

He put his 'toys' in here and then put the lid on. Since we don't use this very often no one ever checked it for a sippy cup.

John being John! Too bad we can't get free pizza.

T-ball

As you can see, Drew is very calculating in terms of hitting the ball. He doesn't like to just swing, he might miss after all. He makes sure that he's lined up and then he lets it fly. 

We asked Drew if he wanted to do soccer this year and he told us that he can't keep up with the other kids so it's not fun. (I might have almost cried. Poor kid.) But T-ball is something he can do without having to really 'keep up'. There isn't a whole lot of running involved and he still gets to participate in a sport - it was a win-win!

Dance 'Recital'

Ashley and Alexis made a dance recital of their own put together dances! It was unique, fun and creative. They were even sweet enough to allow us to record and take pictures as we wanted.

Drew's Adventures

Drew went gluten free for nearly a year to help him not get sick. He did great! He self regulated and he felt better. Both he and John quit puking randomly and had more energy.

At the end of the school year he started to feel not so great again. Then he came home from school and said that he was feeling really sick. He laid down and didn't move again for the rest of the day. During this time he told me that it was hurting to breathe. Because Drew had such issues as a baby/toddler I went and borrowed a pulse oximeter to measure is 02 sats. His 02 sats were in the low 90's but his rate was in the 170's, which concerned his mommy. Eventually he followed the same path that he always follows and he ended up puking. Once he puked, he felt just fine. O2 sats went back up, heart rate when down and he was just fine. I looked into ideas online - dangerous, I know - and found a couple things that somewhat fit what he seemed to have. One said that if it was a problem with his heart he could reset it by sticking his thumb in his mouth and blowing as hard as he could. I had him try it - it's not like it could've done anything worse than what he was already going through. It worked for a minute, his heart rate dropped back to a normal range but then it went right back up. So we went to the Dr again to see if they had any ideas. They wanted to do an EKG to see if they could see it when he was feeling normal - they couldn't. We had an appointment with a cardiologist made and had to wait another month to see what he was thinking of doing. 

Drew did great with this. He thought it was kind of fun, until they accidentally pinched him with one and made him bleed. He was fine once they took that off though. Luckily Drew had just overcome his obsession with not letting anyone see him with no shirt on. In primary they told them that boys should be modest too and that they didn't need to take their shirts off! Yes, yes, they said that. Honestly I wanted to beat one of them. It took over two years for us to convince him that it was okay if we saw his chest.

The cardiologist said that he thinks Drew has an extra node in his heart. So half his heart is going super fast while the other half is normal. Not always, but sometimes. Puking will reset the heart and bring everything back to normal. They wanted to hook him up to a monitor for a month but I nixed that idea. Usually when he has his episodes they last for a few hours, which gives us enough time to get to a Dr's office and get an EKG done. Drew hasn't had another episode since the cardiologist so it's just a waiting game to see what the tests say next time he has a problem.

Laundry before and after

My dryer died. Wouldn't start any more. For anything.

So I did what any reasonable person would do - I put them in the garage and got a new washer/dryer system! Because we literally have a hole in the hallway for the laundry there just isn't much room. Read: there is always laundry you have to walk over to get to the bedroom! I decided that if we ripped out the cupboards we could stack them, put shelving to the side and still have room to throw laundry! It worked! I'm much happier. And, laundry gets done in the half the time it was before - who can complain about that?

Summertime fun

 Alexis, Ashley and Madison manning their selling station. They did really well. Forty bucks in one day! We had a swimming party to celebrate!

What a Week!

 My dryer died. That's right, it gave up the ghost. I dried one load and when I went to dry the second load it refused to start. What do you do when you have seven people and no clean clothes? Use the clothes line in the back yard of course! I found it somewhat therapeutic to hang laundry. No child wanted to come near me while I was doing it because they would be put to work. I got a few hours of quiet time because of it and I wasn't complaining - about that part anyway. I don't like the smell of the outdoors on people when they come in. Guess what ALL of our laundry smelled like? I was nauseated for a good week. 

 Our neighbors went on vacation and asked us to feed and water their pets. One horse, a baby cow, two dogs and a whole host of chickens. Yes, we live in the country. It wasn't that big of a deal. There wasn't that much to do. The dogs had an automatic feeder so they just needed their water dish filled. The horse had an entire field to eat so he only needed water too. The cow had to have a milk mixture made and given to him twice a day, so he was the hardest to take care of. The chickens didn't need anything but my kids love getting eggs so we stole their eggs!

The first day went beautifully. I made John go with us because I didn't know how it was going to go. He ended up standing there looking at us like we were wasting his time. The second day I figured we could do it without John. We got there and the kids started yelling that the cow was out. Apparently little cows can slip through small holes. He ate most of the corn that they'd planted! Oops. I called the neighbor to come help me because I didn't know how to get a cow to go back. This cow was great though, by the time she got there the cow had followed me right in without a problem. She tied the gate shut extra tight and we left. The second feeding was much less problematic. The third day we took the cow his food and he was so excited he literally lifted the gate off it's hinges! When the horse saw this he wanted out too! So I called the neighbor again! She came and fixed the gate so he couldn't lift it off again and she got the horse to stay in too. She then noticed that the dogs had dirty water so she opened their cage to grab the water and the dogs bolted! After she cleaned the water bucket we wrangled the dogs back into their pen. I was so glad the neighbor was their to help because I don't know what I would've done without her! On the fourth day the kids went by themselves and they came running back to let me know that they had locked the key inside the house on accident! Why were in they in the house to begin with was my question. Apparently they needed to pee and they couldn't get the key out so they shut the door. Luckily our neighbor had their phone on during vacation so I could get their garage code so I could get into their house to fix the mess we'd made. And yes, they did call us again to feed the animals, but they took the cow to their farm first!

 So we may have a little redneck in us!

Jordan likes to hide his sippy cups, in the weirdest places. It can take a few hours to a few weeks to find them. One night he'd hid them so well that I couldn't find any - he has four! So I grabbed the condiment squirter, washed it out and filled it with milk! It worked great - as long as he didn't hold it upside down and squeeze!

Jordan's new found interest - climbing up the back of the chair. Dangerous? Yes. Does he care? Nope.