Tiffany Did It!!

Tiffany had her Dentist appointment this week. She did GREAT!

I guess I have to give just a little bit of background to this. A year ago she went in for her cleaning and did fine with it. They found a couple of little cavities that needed to be fixed. We went back and she was reluctant...well, more than reluctant, she sat in that chair and wouldn't let them do anything. Dr. Elmer didn't want her to have a bad experience so he said they are small enough, and she is so young let's wait the six months and try again then. We made a big deal about her not being cooperative, no treats, etc.

Anyway, 6 months later we go in for a cleaning and she sits in the chair and with a smile puts her hand over her mouth and won't even let them clean her teeth. I guess she thought she got away with it last time, she'll try it again this time. And sure enough, she gets away with it. Of course there were consequences at home. She did say she would do it when she was 4. She was too little.

Another 6 months has gone by, so now it's been a year since the first cleaning. We've been talking about the cavity bugs in her teeth and they are growing and the only way to get them out is to let Dr. Elmer get them out. We can't get them out by brushing ourselves. We even talked about how now that she's 4, she's big enough to let him. She kept saying she was going to let him. We go in there and sure enough she let them clean her teeth. She doesn't have any more than the two they found a year ago, whew!! I got some pics of Chris, the hygenist, "painting" her teeth with flouride and her "kissing" the suction straw. She thought that was funny.

The real trick is if she's going to actually let him fix them when we go back in!

Someone Special Lunch

I just found these pics on my phone, I guess I forgot to post about it.

At our Elementary School we have what we call a Someone Special Lunch. It happens once a month. They take a portion of the alphabet and they get to invite someone special to come have lunch with them at school. Ours was in Octoer.

It's really interesting to me that my kids think of their siblings first, and that their older siblings feel honored to be invited! This year both Melanie and Jon were invited but they both had to work, so they invited their younger siblings.

I don't usually get invited, but this year I invited myself since the little girls were invited!

After lunch we went out to the playground, that was a highlight for them to be able to show off their little sisters to their friends! Fun!

Dentist Appointments

The three elementary kids had dentist appointments yesterday. We went before school, I didn't think I would like that, but it actually turned out pretty good. The office wasn't very busy, they were waiting for us to show up, and the kids were only 1/2 an hour late for school, not too bad.

The best part of the dentist cleaning is the funny pictures you can get when they are doing their flouride treatments! I took these with my camera, so sorry for the lack of quality, but they are fun anyway. The hygenist said they looked like ducks because they had duck beaks!

Another thing that's funny is that Emily loves to laugh. She thought the funny toothbrush they use was very ticklish on her gums, so she laughed quite loud. She had the hygenist laughing just because he said he's never had someone have so much fun in his chair. He kept saying, "hey did you forget where you are, this is a dentist office, your not supposed to be laughing so hard!"


We found a few cavities we have to go back and fix, not happy about that. I always feel guilty when my young kids have cavities. My older kids rarely had any when they went, I don't know if it was because I took better care of them, or they just had stronger teeth. I really don't like getting my teeth fixed, so I feel bad when they have to have theirs fixed. All except for Kim, she says she loves to be numb and she's the one who doesn't have to have any fixed. She had two, but they were in baby teeth that are expected to come out in the next 6 to 8 months, so Dr. Elmer doesn't want to worry about them. Wow, I was impressed with that one!

Just for Fun!!

I just thought these pictures were too cute not to put on here for all to see...

This one is of Tiffany straight out of the bath. What a great smile!!

Then we have the bigger girls taking more pics of themselves. Some of them actually turn out pretty good!

And of course I couldn't resist this one of Natalie kissing Bethanie, way tooooo cute!!

I love their smile and her hands on her neck!!

Tiffany's Birthday!

Happy 4th Birthday to Tiffany!!

She could hardly wait for this day to come!! She kept reciting the order of birthdays since Shawn had his! Yesterday, it finally arrived!

She woke up to balloons everywhere and singing. We like to let the preschool kids open a couple of their presents before everyone leaves for school and work. That's where we started. ..

I let her open her dolls first... I have to tell the story of these dolls. About a month ago we were in Walmart shopping for the boy's bdays when we came across these dolls. They are Barbie dolls from the latest Barbie movie Barbie and the Diamond Castle. It is a musical, so these dolls not only sang two of the main songs, but if you push their buttons together they actually sing a duet! She instantly fell in love! She just had to have them, and watching her with them I knew I was going to get them for her birthday. She kept asking if we could buy them, I had to tell her no, we were shopping for the other birthdays. I'm surprised she didn't ask to get them for her own birthday, but she didn't. She just kept crying about having to leave them there. You see, this movie is her favorite right now, she not only sings all the songs, but she recites quite a bit of the dialogue as well. Whole scenes, it's pretty amazing for a 4 year old! Sometimes I think she's only 4 maybe I've miscounted, she's got to be 5 maybe even 6! But No, she's 4 years old.

Anyway...Needless to say she was mighty excited when she opened the first one, she was saying, oh I hope this one is Liana! as she was opening the second one. Then the third one was a dress up dress to match one of the dolls. She was in her glories!! She asked me, did you get these at Walmart? Too funny!!

We had our traditional Birthday Breakfast of chocolate chip waffles with ice cream and chocolate syrup. Yum! She was so excited about the dolls, she wasn't much interested in eating for a while. When she finally did, she had to take her dress off to eat, so she wouldn't get it dirty, so she only ate one. Then hurry and put the dress back on!

Nana was cleaning out some of her totes in her room and found these wings for her. That really sealed the deal. She was walking around all day with her dress, wings, and dolls singing and dancing!

She kept asking when she could open the rest of the presents, I told her that she had to wait until everyone came home. So when ever someone would show up, she would ask, now?

Finally, we had her choice of dinner, she chose chicken tacos (which she didn't really eat, she was too excited) strawberries, and broccoli. At last she got to open the last of the presents, although I don't think she was too excited, it was kind of a let down to only get a hooded princess towel and princess sheets. I thought she would be more excited about the sheets for her bed, but I don't think she really understands what they are. I put them in the wash last night and we're going to put them on the bed today. I'm hoping she will be more excited once they are on the bed.

So then we broke out the cake and ice cream. I made her a really yummy pumpkin spice cake with pumpkin cream cheese frosting. We sang her happy birthday and ate. She was excited to be able to stay up past her bed time (another bday tradition). By 10pm she was so tired she was getting grumpy because she really didn't want to take her nap after lunch and I didn't push it. She finally consented to going to bed. She fell right to sleep.

What a Happy Day!!

Carving Pumpkins

I know this is kind of out of order, I wasn't going to post these but as I was looking at them, they are too cute to pass up.

On Halloween Day we carved out our pumpkins, the kids love that kind of stuff. Well this was Nattie Girls first experience with it. Bethanie got her up from her nap and got her all ready, pulled her hair back and stripped her down so she wouldn't get goop all over her clothes. Then she promptly plopped her down on the table right in front of a big pumpkin opened up and ready to scoop out.

Nattie didn't waste any time getting in there and playing with the goop and pulling it out. She even saw that we had scoopers and had to have one too! She seemed to enjoy it! She even tried to eat it, isn't that typical of a one year old, "Hmmm I wonder what that tastes like?"

While some of us were carving the pumpkins, Ben was making some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies per Jon's request, Yum!!

We didn't have enough pumpkins for everyone to design their own, but we all worked together to get them cleaned out and then collaborated to decide on the faces. They turned out pretty good! But I haven't taken pictures of the finished products yet! Oooops, I guess I need to go do that before they get too grossed out!!

Bethanie found a sprouting pumpkin seed inside her pumpkin! I've never heard or seen that before! I wonder if we wouldn't have opened up that pumpkin, just how far it would have grown? A pumpkin vine inside a pumpkin?? Insteresting!!

Happy Halloween!

The kids were so excited for it to finally come. By the time we got to the actual day, we had already dressed up 3 timesbefore we even got to this point...

The first time was for the Primary Activity at the beginning of the month, I posted about it earlier, if you want to read it again, or if you missed it the first time just click on the link.

The second time we dressed up was for the YM/YW Carnival on Wednesday.

The third time was on Thursday for the school parade and class parties. We did it on Thurs because there was no school on Friday. So we got all dressed up and had all the fun activities, they were done by 1st recess, and then had to take it all off and have a regular school day the rest of the day. I had decided not to go all out with their costumes on these other days because it just would have been too much work!

So by Friday they were excited because they would actually dress up with the works and they got to go Trick or Treating! We decorated pumpkins during the day, ate pizza and then got ready to go!

I have to give a great big THANK YOU to Melanie and Bethanie who did all the hair and make up! They did a fabulous job!!

Although it was raining, it was warm enough to have a great time! I love it that they delayed going off Daylight Savings one more week. The sad thing was that not only were there not very many trick or treaters out and about, but a lot of the houses were dark. We covered our ward area in about an hour or so! It worked out pretty good in that when we were done they didn't ask to expand the boundaries. They were happy with their bucket full of candy!

I have to mention some of the things Tiff would say...when we first started trick or treating she would yell "Trick or Treat for the Food Bank!!!" We were laughing and had to explain to her she was not trick or treating for the food bank like for the Primary activity, but for candy. I always remind the kids to say thank you when they get their candy. Little Tiffany again, would say, "Thank You, Enjoy your treats!" After we had been walking around for about 40 minutes, she said "I am tired, we have been walking for hours!" But she didn't want to go home. She sure had us in stitches!

PS I know I'm a copy cat, because I loved this background, too, sorry GG, but I figure you wouldn't mind!

YM/YW Halloween Carnival

The Young Men and Young Women in our ward put on their annual Halloween Carnival on Wednesday. Another reason to dress up and go play games. The kids came home from school and hurried to get their homework done, because I told them I wouldn't take them unless their homework was done. Too bad I don't have an incentive like that every day!!


Anyway, When we got there it was too funny to find that Natalie wasn't the only little bee walking around. There were three little nursery age girls walking around plus an infant. We just had to get a picture of them!

Aren't they cute??!!


They had fun, but we had to hurry home and get ready for bed because it was still a school night.

Shawn & Jon are Back!!

I know I am behind the times, this is old news, but I did want to mention it anyway.

We have a very full house now, Shawn and Jon have moved back home! We now have 14 people living here, plus Lady (Nana's dog)! Because Jon moved out before Natalie was born, we've never had everyone here at the same time, except on a temporary basis. Jon was here for two weeks in April after we got home from Guatemala while he was waiting for his apartment to become available. He was also here the week after Christmas last year, but that's the closest we came. They both came home October 17th. We've had to do a lot of rearranging, (I'm still working on it) but everyone has a bedroom to sleep in! Jon took the bedroom downstairs and Shawn is sharing with Aaron up here. We moved Natalie in with the other little girls into the princess room.

Jon plans to be here for at least a year while he works himself out of debt and can get back on his feet again. Shawn plans on being here just until Jan, when he hopes to be going to school at College of Eastern Utah down in Price, Utah. He's still working out all the scholarships kinks, so we're not so sure how it will all play out. Only time will tell, we hope the best for both of them.

I'm still shuffling stuff around, I think that's a life long process! I have dubbed myself the Queen of Shuffle! Because I am so good at moving things around to clean and organize a specific area, "I don't want it here, but I don't know what to do with it, so just put it over there until I figure it out." Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get it under control!! :)