The Last of the Thanksgiving Pictures

Here are the rest of the Thanksgiving pictures:

 

We enjoyed playing in Grandma's back yard

Football

Peyton loved this statue. She would say "Baby" and she patted it!

I think he was being a tiger

She was playing peek-a-boo with us

Another gorgeous sunset

More peek-a-boo! Loving her pig tails and jeggings! And that little bum sticking out!

We went outside to sit by the firepit

Peyton had one of Grandma's curlers in her hair!

Turkey Day- with Aunt Kelly

Uncle Jim carving the turkey

I wanted to get a picture of everyone at the table. This is the best we got. Oh well.

Friday we played corn hole in the backyard

We had such an amazing trip! It went by way too fast. We are so blessed with such a great family and I'm glad we were all able to get together! Next up: Christmas!

Milford: The Fire Station

When Grandma came to visit in September she got Colin a bunch of firetruck books and told him we'd go to the Milford Fire Station at Thanksgiving. She talked to the Fire Chief and got it all set up for us to head down there one day.

 

Colin got to sit in the firetrucks, toot the horn, and turn the sirens one. I think he was in little kid heaven!

Ryan liked the axe.

With Grandpa and Les, the firechief

He got a coloring book, pencils, a hat, and his own Beaver County Fire patch!

We had such a fun trip to the fire station!

Thanksgiving Week

We had so much fun in Utah for Thanksgiving! I have a ton of pictures so I'm going to do more than 1 post. To those of you who don't like looking at a bunch of vacation pics, sorry. This is pretty much my virtual scrapbook!

 

Sunday night Aunt Mary and Mike were at Grandma's. We celebrated little Ryan's birthday with some carrot cake.

Beautiful sunset from Grandma's backyard

We went to the park almost every day

Grandma's probably going to get mad at me for posting this one but they looked so cute snuggling together!

Colin at Aunt Luciel's with Oaklee

Walking back from the fire station. More on that later!

One afternoon Ryan, Colin, and I went for a little drive to look at the mountains.

It's so pretty!

Thanksgiving: The Chimp Incident

I think I finally got the blog thing figured out. Or rather, one of my friends tried it on her blog and pretty much walked me through it on facebook! My brain feels like scrambled eggs right now- I think from dealing with this but it could also be because I worked all day and only got 5 hours of sleep last night.

 

Anyway, without further ado: The Story of the Chimp

This story dates all the way back to July. One night I received a phone call from my brother asking me if I had talked to anyone in the family in the last 5 minutes. I hadn't. He proceeds to tell me that there had been a chimp shooting in Las Vegas and the cop responsible was my uncle.

{Some people had been keeping 2 chimps in their house, I think illegally. The chimps got out and were running around in a residential neighborhood. The male was hitting cars and acting aggressive. Some ladies had brought their kids outside to see the cute monkeys. The chimp started going towards them and my uncle was the first cop on the scene. He was the only thing between the chimp and the people. He didn't have a choice but to shoot it.}

Ever since that July night we've all been so excited about Thanksgiving because my uncle is hilarious and tells the best stories and we knew this would be a doozie! My dad decided it would be funny to dress up like a chimp when they got to my grandma's. Little did we know that wouldn't be the only chimp excitement this trip.
We stayed at Kelly and Andy's on Saturday night after we flew into Vegas. Sunday morning Ryan was working out in the garage and came inside saying "Get the kids and get out here." We go out to the garage and see a chimp head mounted on the wall with Andy's elk and antelope. Ryan immediately took a picture and sent it to my dad.

And here is the chimp costume:

Waiting to surprise Kelly and Andy when they pulled up to grandmas

Dad enjoyed wearing that mask. Colin and Peyton weren't fans. Sunday night Colin had to sleep in bed with me because he thought there was a chimp under his bed. Peyton cried whenever dad was wearing it. 

Stupid Blogger

I'm so frustrated right now. I want to start doing posts about our trip to Utah for Thanksgiving but apparently I've reached my quota for pictures on here. I deleted a bunch of posts from the beginning of the blog thinking that it would give me the space I need--well nooooo, evidently the pictures are stored on Picasa which I didn't even know I had an account on and which I can't even find my account and it sounds like if I delete them off of there they're going to delete the pictures off my computer. So it's looking like the only option to keep my blog going with pictures is to pay for more storage. I've been trying to figure it all out and none of it makes sense to me. It seems like it's going to charge me monthly and give me WAY more storage then I'll ever use/month. Has anyone else had experience with this? What should I do? Is there another blog site I can switch to that won't charge me after a certain time? I print my blog into books every year and it's one of my favorite things ever so I can't just quit. Help!

Peyton's Walking

Peyton took her first steps a few months ago. I don't remember exactly when. I'm sure I've got it on here somewhere. I think she was about 10 months or so. Since then she hasn't seem too interested in walking. She'd take 4-10 steps here and there but it was pretty few and far between.

That is until the last week. Last week she seemed to be taking a little more interest in it but didn't feel like practicing all the time. This week was like a switch flipped. I took her over to my parents on Wednesday and she grabbed my mom's hands and wanted to walk all over the place. She's been practicing like that ever since! She's also been practicing on her own without holding on to anyone. She's doing so great! It's so much fun to watch her get the hang of it! She gets so excited and starts giggling because she knows we're going to clap and cheer for her! She's not walking all the time yet but she's choosing it over crawling a lot of the time! 

Peyton Says

Peyton's been saying a lot more words lately. Here's the list (that I remember!)

*Uh Oh--probably the thing she says the most!

*Hi- says it a lot when she sees people

*Belle- for Belle as well as other dogs

 

Those first three are the things she says most often. Here are things she has said but not all the time:

 

*Thank you-repeated it the other day after I gave her something. It sounds so cute!

*Bubbles- We were reading a book last night 'Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere" and she repeated it as soon as I said it!

*Bye- Said to Ryan the other day

       *Baby

*Puppy--hasn't said it in a couple weeks, I think because she's calling them Belle now

 

Still says:

*Dada

*Grandpa

 

Rarely says: Mama. She got mad at me the other night because I put her in the playpen and as soon as I set her down she yelled "MAMA" very deep and forceful--so at least she knows who I am!

 

Besides all the words she's saying she still babbles a lot. She's got the cutest little voice!

 

Last night she and Colin were playing with his Hulk hands. They look so cute on her--they're the size of her head!

She'd punch Ryan with it and say "Pu"



A Bump on the Head

This story has 2 parts. I'm going to start from the end and then tell you the beginning.

Monday night Ryan felt Peyton's head and said: "Megan, there's a soft spot on her head. Feel this." Sure enough--there was. It's not in the normal place where babies have soft spots when they're born and hers has closed up anyways. It was on the left side of her head--a spot where she'd gotten a bump before.

So we decided I needed to call the doctor yesterday. I take her in, he checks it and says: "It's probably a hematoma caused by the bump on her head." (Basically some blood pooling- what would be a bruise on any other part of the body but since the head doesn't have much extra space for things such as bruises the blood doesn't have anywhere to go). He says there's not anything they can do for it (which we figured but it feels good to have him double check for us!) Then he says we should get an X-ray just to double check she doesn't have a skull fracture (once again--if she does there's not much we can do about it but at least we could keep an eye on it and make sure it's healing properly.) He was about 98% sure there wasn't a fracture (he didn't give it a number, I did based on how he was talking).

My mom had picked up Colin from school and as they were passing the doctor's office he said he wanted to come see us. Mom was like "I don't know where to go" and Colin said he'd tell her. It sounded pretty funny- they had to turn around at Schnuck's and Colin was like "Don't go here, that's where my finger doctor is." Then when they pulled into the parking lot Mom was like "Now where do I go?" (There's a bunch of buildings) and Colin was like "Park." So anyways-Peyton and I walk out and there are Mom and Colin. So I take Colin and Peyton and head to the hospital for her X-rays.

Both the kids did great. Thankfully they weren't too busy so we didn't have to wait very long. It was a little hard getting pictures of her head because she wanted to keep moving it but they were able to get everything they wanted. They had me stay out with Peyton and wear one of the vests. Colin stood behind the wall in the imaging room with the girl who was shooting the images. I saw her pictures afterwards and I'll tell you what--she's got the cutest little skull! I could see all her teeth in there--even some that haven't popped through her gums yet. 

So we go home and wait for the call from the doctor. I missed his first call and had to call him back.

Get this--SHE HAS A FRACTURE. He said it's about 3 cm, barely showed up on the X-ray but it's there. He said it looks really good, every thing's together so they anticipate it healing fine. He called a neurologist at Cardinal Glennon to ask how they would proceed with a fracture found a week later and they said they'd just bring her in in 4-6 weeks for a CT to make sure every thing's healing properly. He said that since she hasn't had any neurological symptoms--vomiting, headaches, acting differently than normal they aren't too concerned that every thing's not okay. P.S. How do you know if a baby has a headache?

So how did Peyton fracture her skull? She CLIMBS EVERYTHING! She is constantly standing on chairs and lots of times she gets up there before you can get to her. It's crazy because she's not fully walking on her own yet but she's an insane climber! So last week she got onto a chair while I was doing dishes. She had been up there for a few minutes but all of the sudden fell off. It was one of the kitchen chairs so only about 2 feet tall. I checked her out, she had a bump (it was hard at the time), her pupils were the same size, she didn't act different than normal, after she was done crying she went straight back to climbing things. At that point I didn't think she needed to go into the doctor because what are they going to do about a bump on the head?

So there you have it- Peyton broke her head. I feel horrible and I'm freaking out that there may be some underlying issue that hasn't been detected yet. IE: bleeding in her brain. I don't really think there is, my mind's just going worst case. And I did specifically ask the doctor about that at the office when he told me it was a hematoma and he said no. I also feel so bad that it took us so long to find out about it. My poor baby! So I guess the moral of the story is:Peyton is no longer allowed to climb things!

Thankful Turkey

For Family Home Evening tonight our lesson was on blessings. With Thanksgiving coming up I especially wanted Colin to know how much Heavenly Father has given us. After we talked about what blessings are and why we received them we talked about the things we have that we're grateful for. We took turns saying things we were thankful for and I wrote them on the turkey feathers- Colin wrote a couple too. Here are the things on our turkey:

Said by Colin:

-Daddy

-Megan (he wanted to write my name)

-My grandma

-The zoo

-Christmas

-Thanksgiving

 

Said by Ryan and me:

-Belle

-Jobs

-Cars

-Freedom

-The gospel

-Friends

-Love

-Health

-Our house
-Colin (he wrote his own name)

-Peyton (I'm pretty sure Colin's grateful for her too!)

-Our family

 

There are so many other things we've got to be thankful for! I love that we're able to focus on it this time of year but I'm trying to be better about thinking about them all throughout the year and really realizing how blessed we are!

Life is good!
PS-our turkey did have feet-Ryan just glued the feathers all around!

Colin's 1st Parent/Teacher Conference

Ryan and I went to Colin's first parent/teacher conference last night.

It was nice to be able to talk one on one with his teacher and hear how he's been doing!

She says he's a very big helper in class and that he's very independent. He can go to the bathroom or get a drink by himself and she doesn't have to worry about him getting into trouble. There's one little boy who gets in trouble a lot and she says Colin is really good about trying to get him back on track and helps him do things! He's such a sweet boy!

 

She also went through the things she tested him in:

-He drew a triangle and cross well and did pretty good on his circle and square.

-He didn't cut very well on her sheet of paper which surprises me because he's CONSTANTLY drawing pictures and cutting them out at home. But, sometimes he gets shy when you ask him to do things if it's not his idea so I'm wondering if he just didn't feel like doing it when they did it. Either way, he's getting a ton of practice!

-He can recognize and say the letters in his name.

-He counted to 10, skipped 11, and went on to 12. This is another one that I know he can do more but he doesn't do it consistently right all the time.

-He counted objects to 15 (and didn't skip 12). She said usually they do worse on this section than just counting so that's good.

He knew all of his colors.

-He recognized the numbers 1 and 3.

-He knew the following shapes: circle, square, triangle, oval, diamond, star, and heart. He first called a diamond a square though. He didn't name a rectangle.

He recognized the following letters: B, F, L, O, S, X, Z. For C, I, and N he said "That's in my name." For H he said "That starts with horse."

-He can say his first and last name and how old he is.

-He didn't tell her when his birthday is, his address, or phone number. He does know which city we live in but we haven't talked about our street address. As far as phone number I don't know when he'll ever learn that because we don't have a home phone so I'm going to have to teach him our cell phones which I could see confusing a 4 year old! Also, we've got a Vegas area code so he'll have to learn 10 numbers instead of 7!

 

All in all he's doing great! He loves school and they love having him in their class!

(She also has them do a picture journal with certain themes that we'll be able to keep once school's over and see the progress he's made since the year began. That will be so much fun!)

3rd Time's a Charm!

So after Colin's party on Tuesday he made the executive decision that he wanted to be Captain America on Halloween.

{I think in the future we may need to give him a limit on the number of costumes he can have per Halloween season. Aka: 1!}

Thankfully, since he's got such a great imagination he was happy with wearing his coat because "it has stripes on it" and jeans since they're blue. At least with the helmet and shield other people can tell who he is too :)

 

We went over to Kim and Mike's for dinner before Trick-or-Treating.

Garrison was a cute parrot and Mike was a Jamaica Mon!

We thought Peyton could ride in the stroller but she wasn't a fan of that so we ended up carrying our little owl around!

We didn't go to a ton of houses which is actually pretty good because now we don't have a ton of candy! After we got back to Kim and Mike's we played pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern. 

Garrison kind of veered far away from the pumpkin!

Even the adults got in on the action--and yes, we had to spin around before we went. I was dizzy!

Peyton tried on Kim's witch hat. It matched her dress perfectly!

We had such a fun Halloween! I can't believe it's November already!

 

Oh, and guess what Ryan and I did tonight? Went to our first Parent/Teacher conference for Colin. Where in the heck did my baby go?! I'll write more about that later--his report card is downstairs and I don't feel like getting it right now.