Random from Keaton and Berkley

Keaton: “Mom, when grandma was your son did you like qubo?” (Aug. 2010)

Berkley (while eating a banana): “Mom, I hate bananas, but I still like them.” (Aug 2010)

Keaton (while holding up a snail with a big crack in it’s shell…it was obviously dying): “Mom, I found he’s heart. I found the poop, too.” (Aug 2010)

Keaton: “Mom, I just killed a snail but it’s still alive, and I can see it’s poop. Come see it.” (Aug 2010)

A conversation with Jaxon:

Jaxon: “Mom, I’m getting really big….do you know how I know?”

Me: “How do you know?”

Jaxon: “Because, when I go pee the bubbles are really big.” (sep 2010)

As we were driving down the road the other day, the kids saw a log cabin:

Parker: “Wow, that house is made out of lincoln logs. If a car ran into it, it would just fall down.” (Sep 2010)

Between Keaton and Scott

Keaton: “Dad let’s pick a number between 1 and 20.”

Scott: “Okay, I’ll pick the number. You guess.”

Keaton: “40.” (Aug 2010)

Between Jaxon and Scott

Jaxon (wearing his white shirt and tie from church): “I’m going to wear my church clothes all day today, dad.”

Scott (thinking Jaxon was going to say a reason that is spiritual): “How come?”

Jaxon: “Because, I want to be a secret agent.” (sep 2010)

And now here are a few pictures from our summer:

For boys who claim to hate everything that is girlie, they sure love this barbie car.

Below are photos of how we spent most of our summer

And below we have Keaton who LOVES his baby sister, but before she was born, he kept saying he didn’t want a sister, and he was upset that we were having a girl. He wanted another boy, but to his surprise he has learned to love Swasey.

Parker/Keaton news:

*Parker had another eye appointment a while back and once again his eyes are all clear, and he’s doing great. So we are continuing with his meds and hoping it all keeps going good.

*Keaton went to see the OT/PT—whom when we went to these appointments both therapists said to me, “So why are you here?” Apparently he is doing so good that they don’t even know what to do with him when he comes in. However his leg continues to give him trouble. The more he grows, the stiffer his ankle is getting. So, we go back in this month to the physiotherapist to talk about a rhizotomy again and also the possibility of surgically lengthening his achilles tendon.

Also, Keaton broke yet another pair of glasses today. I guess we’ll be getting more glasses for him.

Other news:

Jaxon lost both his front teeth and Parker lost one of his front teeth. I will post pix later. The kids started school. Swasey had her 2 week appointment and cried and screamed. The doctor and the nurse both commented on her feisty temper. I’m tired and life is a blur right now.

No, I’m not talking about the movie “Short Circuit,” or as my kids call it “Wall-E 2.” But, our baby girl (child number 5) finally arrived last night and is alive and kicking. Her name is Swasey Lydia, and she weighed 7 lbs. 6 oz.

Here’s mom as labor started. Still feeling pretty good. Kristin was a few days overdue, but wanted to wait for the baby to come. We went to our check up and the Dr. decided to do a quick ultrasound to make sure everything was okay before he left town for a few days. He found that the amniotic fluid was really low and the baby needed to come out, so we went straight over to be induced. After 9 hours , little Swasey was born.

Mom and Swasey hit it off right away.

Swasey wasn’t so sure about being measured and weighed. She kept grabbing the stethoscope and when they put her on the scale she rolled over and grabbed the side of the tray. She pulled on it and moved a few inches and for a second there I thought she was going to pull herself right off the scale. I started having flashbacks of our oldest, Jaxon, who used to do things like climb out of his crib and drop to the floor before he could even crawl.

Anyway, since then Swasey has mostly slept and not cried very much, so I hope she’s nice and laid back.

She’s so tiny, I’m pretty sure Berkley will look like a 12 year old when I see him next.

Me: “What would you like to cook?”

Jaxon: “I don’t know, but I want it to be something really hard and you use A LOT of knives.”

And, yesterday I came downstairs to find a smelly wet rag on the living room floor. The rag had previously been in the laundry room. I know, because I put it there. One of the kids had gotten it, and had been throwing it at the others. I picked up the rag, and was getting mad and asking who got the nasty rag out and was throwing it. Berkley knew who did it.

Berkley: “It was the T-rex, Mommy.”

That T-rex is going to get it when I find him. He seems to be causing a lot of problems lately!

…and are you ready for this last picture? I’ve really blossomed this last month.

Wow! No wonder I’ve been so uncomfortable this last month. I think my belly is getting bigger by the minute! This was taken this last weekend.

Here’s how the vacation went:

Day 1: Drove to my parent’s house and stayed the night

Day 2: Went to church

Day 3: Drove to calf creek. Approximately 1 hour after we arrived, Berkley fell and hit the van (I think…neither Scott or I saw him fall, we just heard the screaming), and cut his face open just below his eye. We drove back to escalante, where they put 3 or 4 stitches in, and luckily it didn’t cut the corner of his eye open or else we would have had to go somewhere else where a specialist could stitch his eye. He looks really dirty in the pic, but amazingly somehow the stitches stayed very clean. This is one of scott’s photos. I’m not sure why, but when you tell Berkley to smile, this is what he does.

Day 4: Went on a 2 mile (4 mile roundtrip) hike to a natural bridge. I didn’t really take any pictures on this hike. So, I will wait for Scott to post some. The kids did really good. We crossed a river 5 different times to get there. At one spot it was deep enough for them to stop and swim for awhile.

Day 5: Hiked to calf creek falls…..Super awesome hike, but long. It his 6.8 miles roundtrip. We took our time and let the kids go slow and took lots of breaks. We left about 8:30 am and got back around 5:30 pm. We stayed at the falls for a few hours. The kids had a lot of fun at the falls. They swam, built sandcastles, and played a lot.

Here they are starting out on the hike. Everything was going good.

Then, Keaton got tired, and decided to hold onto the backpack Scott had on. So not only was Scott carrying Berkley on his back, but he was also pulling Keaton along on the trail.

Scott gave the kids rides on his back.

This is the waterfall at the end of the hike. It was sooooo hot hiking to the falls, but when right before you get to the waterfalls, all the sudden there are a whole bunch of trees, and the temperature drops drastically, and the water is nice and cool. Hopefully Scott can get some of his pictures up soon. He has some good pictures.

Day 6: Scott’s parents joined us and we hiked the upper falls trail. It was a steep hike. I think this hike was 3 miles roundtrip.This hike also had a neat waterfall at the end, but I liked the other waterfall better. didn’t really get any pictures on this hike.

Day 7: Drove to Green River and stayed in a motel. I got to shower…..that felt soooooo good.

Day 8: Drove to the San Rafael Swell, and looked at a few things out there…..Oh I forgot to mention throughout this whole trip, Jaxon was keeping track of how many lizards everyone saw. He wanted to make a pie chart when we got home of all the lizards everyone saw, but I think he forgot. I think he ended up seeing about 51 lizards, and with Grandma Davis’s help, he even caught one. He also became quite the dragonfly catcher. I’m not sure how he caught so many of those poor dragonflies, but he somehow figured out how to catch them……anyways, we went to the San Rafael Swell mostly to go see the government caves. Scott and I had gone there with the LDS institute class when we were attending CEU. The caves were really awesome. I guess the government built these caves and were going to use them as an underground protection site, but it turned out the caves ended up not being sturdy enough, so they didn’t use them. Anyhow, from what I can remember they were super awesome. But, when we got there we found that the caves had been mostly destroyed and it was also gated off. I was disappointed to see all the grafitti everywhere, and the terrible things written all over the rocks. It was obvious it had become some kind of “party” place for young kids. That part of the trip was dissappointing for Scott and I…..However, the kids loved it. They found a bunch of bullet shells, and even some bullets that hadn’t been used yet. They could have cared less about the caves. They were more excited about how many bullets they found.

Then, after being disappointed at the caves we drove out the “wedge” overlook. It’s a really neat overlook, and I don’t think I got any pictures of the overlook, but I did get some other interesting pictures.

It’s not really a vacation unless you get a flat tire is it? What’s even worse than having a flat tire?

Our spare tire was also flat. It was a good thing Scott’s parent’s were there. Him and his dad jumped in there car and raced back to town, and were able to get the tire fixed right before the shop was going to close. Scott’s mom and I stayed at the van with all the kids, and suprisingly it wasn’t all that bad. Scott and his dad were back a lot faster than I thought they would be, and everyone was okay…..kind of. I can’t remember what point this happened, but at some point while we were at the overlook, Keaton was messing around and pulling on Grandpa Davis’s shirt. Grandpa told him to stop, but he didn’t listen, and he fell and smacked his head on a rock. There was blood all over, and I couldn’t tell if it was bad enough to need stitches, but we got the bleeding to stop, and then went into town and ate dinner at Wendy’s. Keaton wore Grandpa’s hat to hide the blood in his super white hair. It seemed like he was doing fine, until we got home late that night. I went and put Keaton to bed, and a while later heard him crying. I went down to see what was wrong and there was blood all over his pillow. So, Scott and I got out the super glue and glued his head shut. I think I need to start taking super glue with me wherever I go. It’s a good alternative to stitches. We did make it home, so that was good. It really was a fun trip for the most part, and I was amazed at how well the kids did with all the hiking. Over all we hiked 13.8 miles…..I think. I think I remembered the miles right on all those hikes.

Here are a few more pictures from the trip:

Jaxon and one of the dragonflies he caught, and Scott “Bear Grylls.” To stay cool Scott got one of his shirts wet and put it on his head.

And for those who want to see some pregnant shots of me, I will put some up another day. I’ve spent too long on the blog. I even had to kick Scott off the computer, so I could “quickly” update my blog. Now he needs the computer back.

We went to the library yesterday, and I got a “How to Draw Bugs” book. I mostly got it for myself, since my kids always want me to draw them pictures and I’m not very good. Well, Parker saw the book and spent the next hour drawing on the chalkboard. I think he has his Dad’s talent. He drew all of the bug pictures himself. Nobody helped him at all.

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

Keaton has been trying to ride a bike with training wheels. Before he used this bike, he was riding a little tricycle. It’s pretty hard for him. Getting his left leg to work right is really difficult for him, but he’s been practicing and can now peddle by himself. He just has trouble stopping. And, his left foot slips off the peddle a lot, so Scott tried strapping his foot to the peddle. It worked pretty good. He’s taken a few spills, so it’s been hard convincing him to ride it some more. But, the therapists said if he would start riding a bike it would really strengthen his scrawny little leg, so that’s what we are trying to do.

Here he is riding by himself. He’s doing soooooo good. Just about a week and a half ago he got another round of botox in his leg. And, yesterday they casted him. The botox seems to be working a little better this time, so that’s good. Scott took him to get his cast on. Keaton has been following Scott around lately….he’s Scott’s little shadow. So, I had Scott take him to get the cast on, because when I take him he always ends up trying to kick the therapist, and screams and cries. But, Scott said he did really good. He just sat there while they put the cast on. I think it was fun for him to have time with just Scott. After he got the cast on, Scott took him to get some ice cream bars. He seemed pretty happy when he got home. So far he’s doing pretty good with the cast. He has asked me to take it off a few times, but he’s been a lot milder than he ever has been. At his appointment with the therapist before he had the botox, the therapist was amazed again at how well he’s doing. He just gets around so well, and doesn’t let anything stop him, which is good, but I think the therapist doesn’t know what to do with him anymore. I think it’s kind of pointless for us to take him to physical therapy. He does his own therapy at home by wrestling, playing baseball, playing soccer, and lots of other stuff. So, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. I guess maybe take him every 6 months or so to make sure he’s still doing good.

The hard thing with Keaton lately has been all his questions. I expected him to question his differences at some point, but not this soon. For a few days he kept coming up to me and saying, “Mommy, why am I different?” I was surprised and didn’t really know what to say. And, now with his cast, he has been asking me, “Why do I have a cast?” He wants to know why he has to have a cast and his brothers and friends don’t. So other than answering his hard questions he really is doing great.

And here are his broken glasses. He had these for approximately one month. He’s so hard on his glasses. I really don’t know what to do anymore. If anyone knows of any “Keaton proof” glasses, please let me know!!

Parker had another eye appointment. I always get so nervous at those appointments. Before we went he had been complaining that his eyes hurt when he went out in the sun, and his eyes would water really bad. I always think they are going to say he has inflammation in them, but once again they were free from any cells. So, we just keep doing what we are doing, and he gets his meds once a week. It was such good news to hear that his eyes were okay. I was soooooo excited, and I’m praying that it stays that way.

Parker got a slip and slide for his bday from his nice auntie. Since then the kids have been watching the weather everyday to see if it would be warm enough to use it. One day was finally a little warmer, and I gave in to their begging and got it out. I think they loved it, but it was still kind of cold, so they only lasted for a few minutes. You can see Berkley above. That is as far as he made it on the slip and slide. He didn’t really like getting wet.