Jonathan

So today I thought I'd do Jonathan. Mostly because he was reading my blog and asked when was I going to do a post about him :)

Jonathan is our family clown. He's always trying to make us laugh. But watch out, if he does something he didn't mean to he gets very embarrassed if we laugh at him. Then he walks off in a huff. For the most part though he's pretty laid back and usually willing to help when asked. Jonathan is taking gymnastics right now. He's been asked to try out for the boys team. Tryouts are next month. I'm a little worried about him trying out, afraid he'll make it. If he's on the boys team that means more time needs to be devoted to practice and of course more money. However, I will keep my fingers crossed for him and wish him luck, he's quite a talented little gymnast.

The whole gymnastics thing started several years ago when we realized we couldn't keep Jonathan from jumping off things or trying to do tricks off the bed or couch. We figured we'd better get him some training so at least at home he wouldn't hurt himself. Jonathan has always been a little monkey. Climbing before he could fully crawl. He'd pull himself over to the baby gate, climb it, then land on his head on the other side. Despite the obvious pain he'd do it over and over. Gates couldn't keep him out of anything.

Jonathan is very proud of the fact that he is a third grader working in a 5th grade math book. So far all the kids really understand numbers and Jonathan has moved ahead a bit faster. His favorite subjects are science, social studies, geography, and math. He'd prefer to never have to write another paper again in his life :) Jonathan discovered earlier this year that reading is actually fun and it's been great to watch him sit down with a book on his own and enjoy it.

The Remodel Begins

Tom, our general contractor, came by today with Mark, his foreman. For anyone who hasn't heard we are adding a whole other story to the house. We tried selling last year but we timed it bad and really we never found a house we liked. So, this year the solution is to add on and get the room we need. That way it's exactly how we want it. So far it's been a lengthy process, I think we called them in February and after some delay the plans were finally submitted three weeks ago for the permits. Tom told me today that those should be done by end of this week. He walked into the garage and said something to the effect of "I thought this would be emptied by now." We have a room in there that a previous owner had built himself and for the project to continue it needs to be ripped out. He had told us, yes, to empty the garage. Nothing about having the room torn down. We were waiting for specific instructions. Then proceeds to tell me they should be here next week to start removing the roof. So, Rob will be tearing apart our computer room every night until it's done. I have decided I will take pictures of the whole project to document the "fun"! Phase one has started. The computer is now back in my living room, where I really don't like to have it.



Seth has found a new play place under the computer. And yes, that's a fake hotdog in his mouth.

Elizabeth

I've been wanting to do some highlights of each family member and today I feel I should start with Elizabeth. Probably because I've been in contact with someone from our local CF group about helping with this year's walk to raise money.

Elizabeth is a bright little girl with red hair that loves books and doing crafty little things. She adores her little brother, Seth. Elizabeth loves to play outside with her older brothers. Some days she very much enjoys aggravating her older brothers :) She has taught herself how to read and does a fantastic job at it and like her brothers has a way with numbers. Elizabeth loves to sing and attends a weekly singing group. This time around they are learning folk songs.

For anyone who doesn't know, Elizabeth also has Cystic Fibrosis. It's a genetic disease that's throws off the body's salt and water balance which causes the body's normal mucus production to go off kilter. This in turn causes a very thick sticky mucus that wrecks havoc on different parts of the body. The main concern is the mucus that develops in the lungs. Once it's in there it's in there AND it harbors bacteria. These bacteria cause flare ups which in turn cause more mucus which in turn damages the little air sacs in the lungs. It's not fun and there is no way to reverse the damage once done. CF exhibits itself in hundreds of different ways though and our daughter is extremely blessed in that she has NO lung problems. Instead she suffers from a blocked pancreas which means she can't produce the enzymes necessary to digest fats and protiens. This is easily fixed with enzymes she can take by mouth. Another recent complication manifested in her sinuses. Last year she had two sinus surgeris within months of each other. The doctor had to go in and clear out all the polyps that had completely clogged up her sinuses. I mean there were NO airpockets. The polyps had actually started causing the bridge of her nose to flatten out because there were so many trying to cram their way in there. The first surgery went really well and for the first time in a long time Elizabeth could breath through her nose. It was then that I realized she probably couldn't smell either. All those little stops by our roses for the past couple years where I told the kids to smell them and she probably couldn't. I just wanted to cry over that. She ate like nothing else after that surgery too. I realized also that she probably wasn't tasting the food right, no wonder we had spent so much time practically forcing her to eat. Sadly at her two week appointment the polyps were coming back. Had to start up a round of oral steriods and back on the nasal ones. Two months later it was if she hadn't had the surgery, the polyps were so bad. So we scheduled another. We had been warned, Elizabeth could be having sinus surgeris every 4-6 mos for the next couple of years but we were hoping. This last surgery took place in December and it's now almost May. The polyps started coming back but they weren't in her nose yet so we are just waiting but at least this time they have taken longer to form. We will be taking her in soon to check on them and see where they are at. The polyps form, of course, because of the mucus in her sinuses. It's so thick and sticky it aggravates the lining which causes the polyps to form.

Anyway, life for us is actually pretty normal. It could be a lot worse. Elizabeth is truly blessed. She is healthy and happy and some days full of more energy then I can handle :) Not to say I don't worry about her future. Most of the time I just won't let myself think about it. Her CF could take a turn for the worse and she could end up in the hospital for months. Looking farther ahead, she very likely will have a hard time having children if she can at all and that makes me very sad. So, I just don't think about it. Science has made so many advances in the last couple of years that we are very hopeful they find a "cure". In fact, they have just announced a new drug that has made it through phase one of its clinical trial I think and it's proving to actually reverse the affects of CF. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

The walk this year is on May 17th at Oaks Park. I didn't know in time to form a group to raise money but I will be going to help out with stuff like registration and helping along the trail. If anyone else is interested please contact Danielle Kilian dkilian@cff.org , they still need volunteers. Hopefully next year my life isn't so crazy (hahahahahhaha) and I can put a group together for the walk.

Got Nature?

We've finally had some decent weather and after a wonderful Stake Conference today we decided we should go for a walk through our local nature park. Tualatin Hills Nature Park is a wonderful place to go with the kids to teach them a love of nature. Right now is a great time to go, everything is growing and blooming and the mosquitos aren't out yet :) I was surprised to see how much fun the kids were having today. Usually we go and they don't pay much attention to the wonders around them unless we point them out. Nathaniel, Jonathan, and Elizabeth pointed out quite a bit to us and were asking questions. It was so neat to see them developing their own love of nature. They are old enough to learn the names of things now so after teaching them a few of the trees and flowers they would point them out to us as we walked. We got to count the rings on some of the downed trees. Seth got to eat a pinecone :) We even saw a gartner snake. It freaked the kids out for a sec but they got over it and followed it as far at they could. We were surprised at how warm it was in there, everyone was soon stripping off coats and chugging down their water. All in all a good hike. Not too much complaining about sore legs and feet this time around.

Tillium, one of my favorite flowers in the park.

Columbine

Not sure what this one is but it's a beautiful flower. Will have to look it up.

Future Pianist

Seth loves to sit and play the piano. This morning we caught him turning the pages of the music book ,then playing, then turning the pages again. The book is upside-down of course :) Seth loves music. Anytime he hears it on the radio or TV he stops what he is doing and starts dancing.

Enshin Karate

Last year Nathaniel started Enshin Karate. It's a little under one year later and he is up to a blue belt and will soon be testing for his high blue belt. He has gotten pretty strong and it's fun to watch him take down his instructors Senpai Lance and Senpai Devin. He loves passing on his knowledge to the new students who have just joined. I've been watching him for probably the last six months having signed up for a kickboxing/resistance band class right before his. I finally decided I would do it too. I thought if I could do the kickboxing the karate would be no problem! HA! Karate kicks my butt but I love it! Senpai Trish is great. She is another student there who will be testing for her brown belt here soon and she takes the time to work with me and gently teach me the ropes. Sensei Heather runs the whole show and she is awesome. She also teaches the kickboxing class that I still attend. Yes, you'd think I would be way skinnier by now, LOL! But I'm definitely in much better shape then I was a year ago (having just had a baby). Unfortunately last week I was attempting to learn a break fall that requires rolling, not quite like a sommersault, in my home. I was first trying on a mattress to get the technique and when I thought I got it I tried my carpet. STUPID! I misjudged the distance from my head to the floor not taking into account when I was using the mattress it was a good 5 inches off the ground. I rolled, kinda, but landed on my left shoulder and heard a lovely chorus of cracks and pops in my back and since then my shoulder has been almost useless for certain things. Though, amazingly, I could still punch a bag with it, weird! I did go to the chiropractor today to see what he could do. After some serious adjusting and a very deep massage into my shoulder I was able to do a push up again. So, thinking I was fine, I went to class and almost instantly hurt my shoulder again just doing the warm-ups. Sigh. It sucks being old :) So, will have to take it easy for the next couple of weeks. But if anyone in the area has thought of signing kids up or even signing yourself up I'd go with Heather. The kids class is great and the adult one is challenging and a great workout.

Being Silly

Just had to post some pictures of the kids being silly together. Elizabeth was chilling on the couch when Seth just made himself comfortable next her and she proceded to read to him. He had fun pointing at the pictures.





Later the boys started this game they play around the TV. They get Seth to follow them around the corner then sneak away from him and come up behind him and startle him. Seth just loves this and laughs and laughs. It's so nice when they are all getting along :)


It's hard to tell but Seth has no idea Nathaniel is behind him and no idea Jonathan is about to jump out from his hiding spot to scare him. He loves this game. Seth is getting faster on his two legs and actually managed to sneak up on Nathaniel and Jonathan at one point which just made everyone laugh :)



Jonathan poking his head around the corner to say "boo!" and Seth screaming with delight :)


Seth prefers to stand on his scooter rather then ride on it :)


Seth loves to play with Elizabeth's fake food. Here he was trying to carry two hot dogs plus their buns so he had to use his mouth.

An Animal Visitor

Mangaged to get photos of our visitor before he ran off. I guess there were two, the kids saw another one run around the corner of the house. We haven't seen a racoon around our house for a couple of years now.

Anxious to plant

This past weekend was almost summer-like and it gave the garden bug to the kids. They have been begging ever since to plant in the garden boxes we have out back. We decided we'd do it for FHE this week. We got out there and everyone started shivering!! We went from warm spring weather back to brrrrrr cold. Well, heaven forbid we wait another week or two to plant the seeds. Certain members of the family had gotten their hearts set on planting something so we suggested they plant the peas tonight and we'd wait for warmer weather to plant the rest, or at least wait til we have the plastic to cover the boxes. That was enough to please the little would-be gardners. I snapped a few photos before getting too cold myself.

Rob helping the boys get their beds ready.

Jonathan planting his peas.

Elizabeth happy that she gets to plant something!

We have three garden boxes so we decided to let each of the three older kids have their own this year to plant whatever they wanted.

Nathaniel plotting out where he's going to plant his different seeds.

Happy Birthday, Julie Hess!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JULIE!!!

To celebrate her birthday this year one of my dearest and closest friends, Julie Hess, held a medieval murder mystery dinner at her in-laws home. We all dressed in our medieval finest and had a blast trying to figure out who the murderer was. We were served a four course meal of the best food ever, thanks to her mil Joi Hess. During the dinner someone was "murdered" and then we went about gathering information through bribery, blackmail or whatever means it took. Julie and her husband, Zan, were the Lord and Lady of the manor. Rob was the sherrif and I was Sherilyn, wife of the sheriff. We both were supposed to act pompous and arrogant. That was the hardest part, I couldn't keep from laughing every time I tried. Rob did a pretty good job of getting people to give up some of their money towards taxes, which was really supplementing our income not the king's :)


Sherilyn (Christy) and the Lady Gwendolyn (Julie)




The Sheriff (Rob), Lord Taylor (Zan) and a serf (Zan's dad)-he won best dressed :)

The gang of medieval merrymakers

Sir Rufus (Mark Temperini) the unsuspecting murder victim


Lady Diana (Tonya Gold) the murderess-Who would suspect such a lovely lady? Only three of our group figured it out :)

A child's curiosity

Seth is our most curious child and won't stop trying to get at something until he can touch it or get it in his mouth. He has tried numerous times to get the speaker paraphernalia behind our entertainment center and today he managed to get all the way back there. I'm not sure how he did it as I couldn't get him back out without help. Jonathan and Nathaniel both had to pull foward on the entertainment center so I could slide Seth's head out between the wall and the shelves. He wasn't very happy to be pulled back out after all the work I'm sure it took to get back there :)

Finally! The Sun!

Today is gorgeous! The kids begged me to let them outside to have a picnic, how could I say no? Sadly, the yard is still swampy so they are having their picnic on the deck. So much for any more school work today. It's days like today that make it really hard to do school at home. They want to go out and I want them out :)

They just came in begging me to let them hook up the sprinkler! I think the grass is watered down enough.

Everyone else is doing it!

Well, time for me to start a blog. Why not everyone else is doing it :) I'm not even sure what to say. I'm not a writer, never liked writing. But, as a friend pointed out, time is slipping away too fast. I need to be better about recording what is happening in Beasleyville.

Of course, I just get started and my littlest one starts crying :) Nap time is over! Such is life. Hopefully I'll have pictures up soon and loved ones can then keep up with our children who are growing and developing at an alarming rate!

Ok, off to get my little Seth.