Guess who lost their very first tooth??

Yep this kid!!

Last week Luke proudly showed us his very first loose tooth.

Every morning since he would say "I hope it falls out at school". Never one to shy away from attention, from the way he tells it they pile it on for this occasion. I offered to do it the old fashioned way by tying a string to the tooth and then a door knob. His exact words were "yea mom we are not going to do that"

Luke ended up getting his wish, Wednesday at school his tooth came out. He came home jumping with excitement to show us his tooth hanging around his neck in a little plastic tooth shaped necklace. And according to him even better was the fact that he was the very first person in his class to lose a tooth in the month of April. 

Thanks to Pinterest I found a "First lost Tooth award" And a little DIY envelope to put his tooth in to leave for the tooth fairy. He also wrote a letter to the tooth fairy asking her to tell him exactly how she was able to get the tooth out from under his head.

First of many to come. I should add I'm not surprised his little teeth are now starting to fall out. We just finished paying off his dental bills for the extensive work that had to be done on them. Only makes sense they start to fall out now :)

Family lessons

This was our house last weekend..... OK its our horse and tree but you get the idea, snow and lots of it.

So I thought I would share our adventure from last month. (the bruises are gone its safe to talk about) 

You might recall the Wilcox's that were up a few weeks ago. Their entire family are mountain bikes extraordinaire, seriously true talent, each one of them. So my darling hubby looks at all their cool pics on their blog and figures his own little family would have so much fun going on a Mountain Bike ride. I tried to tell him that even if you put the four of us together we are are maybe 5% of the Wilcox's capabilities, but being the optimistic man he is he researched to find the "perfect trail". He found a "beginner" trail in an area of St George we had not been before. In case you are not familiar with Utah it is an outdoors man paradise and a little on the extreme side. I know this and still didn't pick up on the fact that my idea of beginner is far different then a Mountain bike websites idea of beginner.

What follows is our adventure and the lessons learned.

We parked, unpacked bikes, helmets and backpacks and set off. Not 10 feet from the start of the trail we went around a corner and saw that the trail went uphill. Of the three of us Dewey is the only one that can do hills. Don't judge not even in my so called prime 100 or so years ago could I do them so its not an old outta shape thing, I swear......

So off the bikes to walk. We were sure that it would be just a small section that was uphill, surely any minute it would flatten out and we would be riding through flat soft meadows. First lesson learned I do not have a realistic view of certain situations.

After a very long time of taking turns pushing the kids bikes the ground leveled out a bit. We worked out a system that we continued to use the rest of the day. Dewey or I would ride ahead, stop and start walking back. The other one of us would start the boys and they would go as far as they could. Best case until they met one of us walking back. We did this hopscotch thing for 3 hours.  

Once we reached the top we hit the real trail. This brought our hopscotch thing to much shorter distances. And added in a lot of bike carrying.

Luke actually did pretty good for his first time riding a "slick rock single track" trail. Yea that's what our "beginner" trail ended up being.

I think Dewey managed to squeeze in a little fun. And no he or I was not wearing a helmet, remember my flat meadow trail picture in my head? 

Patience was our second lesson for the day, neither Dewey or I lost our cool can you believe it? For all you that know me you know this is exactly the type of situation that causes me to freak out. 

The next three shots are a good example of the day, Luke, Dewey and Kolby all coming down the same spot.

Its hard to tell but Luke has a very grumpy face on.

Dewey still smiling after 3 hours

Kolby walking his bike. This becomes important later on in the story. Because he walked his bike so much we did not realize that he refuses to use his brakes.

A trip through the desert is not complete without spotting a critter of some sort.

So after three hours we were all past exhausted and knew we were getting close to the end.... We came around a corner to an almost straight up sand hill. My muscles screamed in protest ans Dewey and I pushed our bikes, then the boys bikes up that last hill. I think I may have told Dewey to just leave me there, I was pretty sure I could learn how to live in the desert, there had to be a tree I could sleep under.

We did however all make it to the top. (yes you are right we started and ending walking up hill) And wonder of wonder a downhill curvy dirt road leading back to our car. All we had to do at this point was get on the bikes and coast down the hill. Luke went first then me, Kolby and Dewey bringing up the rear. From behind me I hear Dewey yelling for Kolby to brake. The yelling gets more intense and I turn to see Kolby flying down the hill screaming "I can't, I can't. Mom instinct took over at that point as he came along side me I reached out and grabbed him. (that's right as we are both speeding down a hill) I kept him on top but we still landed on a pile of bikes and road. Thankful neither of us were hurt more then scrapes and bruises. (in my case great big backside covering bruises)  I like to think that I don't often feel my age but that day and the week after I felt 40 and then some.
At the end of the day I was pretty proud of us. We pulled together as a team and worked together to get us out of a tough situation. 

In a strange (and exhausting) way it was a great family bonding day. And it ended with no trips to the hospital woot-woot
Lessons learned...check
And lucky for us there is not a hill or even a bump on our property. Kolby will be able to practice riding and  more importantly braking with no cause for concern.... knock on wood

Just another week in our lives..

On Tuesday Dewey had to drive across the state (12 hours round trip) on a work errand. I had the kids in their pajamas and it was supposed to be relax time before they went to bed. But as is the norm for them they were rolling around on the floor wrestling. I might add not five feet away from where I was standing. So I had a front row seat to Luke jumping on Kolbys back and Kolbys head hitting the tile floor. (I should also add this happens a lot to both of them) He managed to hit the exact spot he had his demoed cyst removed a few years ago...... opening the scar open again. I grabbed a towel to stop the bleeding and called Dewey. (I knew he was still 4 hours away but its my natural first reaction.) I told him what happened and he said "hang up and call dad". Dewey is well aware of my limitations in this area, I'm not good with blood ever, and even worse when the boys are hurt. However his dad who has a PHD in hurt boys thanks to dewey and his brother Jason spending a good part of their childhood getting themselves injured. (for example "I bet we could fly just like superman lets jump of the roof" type of behavior) In less then five minutes grandpa arrived making all three of us feel a lot better. (Luke was feeling guilt pangs for being part of the accident) He took one look at Kolbys head and said "get your shoes on we are going to the hospital". And 4 stitches later Kolby was back in one piece. Kolby was a trooper in big part to grandpa being their to hold his hand.

The next morning when Kolby was telling Dewey about the hospital it went a little like this "dad it was so cool, well not the medicine part (the shots in his head) but they gave me a bracelet (id tag), toys (a little bag with a coloring book, crayons, and a few trinkets) and they have a snack box (vending machine). I love how this child sees the best in everything situation. I pray he keeps his "glass is half full" attitude always.

It was Luke's week to be "Star Student" at school. I have known about this for oh I don't know EIGHT months. And I swear I have thought a lot about what we would do and the cute picture board I would put together for him. However time flew by and it snuck right up on me. After spending Easter weekend with Liz and Gary it was about 8:00 on Sunday night I looked at his list which had his activities for the week just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. For some reason I thought we had until this Fri to have his Star board in....negative it was supposed to be there Monday morning. FRICK!! Now you all know I have literally thousands of pictures of the boys, however I'm not the best at printing them out. (I know this about myself, that's the main reason for this blog, since I have not done scrapbooks or photo albums this serves as our family story) So I scrambled to go through the photos I did have and threw this together. Luke seemed happy with it and I guess that's what matters. (not my pride in having the perfect project put together)

On Monday he got to pick our five things to take to school to talk about who he is. He choose to take a little Lego ship he made, some Star Wars guys, a soccer ball, his Cowboys jersey and a globe to show where he was born (Kazakhstan)

On Tuesday they went on a field trip to Snow Canyon. That night he told us about it. "We went in a cave and there were spiders in it, and I'm not a "spider explorer" (he made the quotation marks in the air)". Having never seen him use quotation marks before dewey asked him about it, Luke said " quotation marks what does that mean I was doing spider fangs". Needless to say we were rolling on the floor laughing.

On Wednesday we wrote a letter to him that had to be in a sealed envelope to be read to him by his teacher. I deemed the fact that he is still only in first grade I could be a little mushy but I tried not to go overboard :)

Thursday is his buddy lunch, he gets to pick someone to come to school to have lunch with him. It was a toss up between dad and grandpa but in the end Dewey got to go. (hum... weird that I don't recall hearing my name mentioned)

I took Kolby in this morning and they said his stitches look great .(they look a little Frankenstein to me but I guess that's why I'm not a doctor) He gets them out on Sunday.

So all in all just another week in this adventure we call life.

April Fools

Since last Sunday was April 1st....April Fools I thought it would be fun to give the boys a few surprises.

We asked if they wanted doughnuts for breakfast. Of course this was answered with a resounding YES.

"Ok here you go"

Surprise....
And my favorite...laughter

I took Cheerios and dipped them in various things to make them look like real doughnuts only itty-bitty. We also had hard boiled eggs......except that they were filled with jello

Both of the above ideas were big hits and entirely not my own. They were straight from my new addiction PINTEREST. There are some amazingly talented, crafty, creative and stylish people out there. I am NOT one of those people BUT I can copy like nobodies business. And there is no place better to do that then Pinterest. Seriously so many ideas, recipes, crafts really anything you can think of, love it!

So my Aprils fools was, on Saturday noticing that the flowers Luke and Kolby planted for me a few years ago had just started to come up.

Only to have snow on them Sunday morning.

Spring takes its own sweet time in getting here in our part of the world :)