A bit of a rough start

 My girls absolutely love going to school.  They love their teachers, classmates (most of them...), recess, the whole thing.  Unfortunately this week has been a little rough for Ava.  On Tuesday around 2:15 I got a call from the school saying Ava had had an accident and wet her pants.  Not just a little bit, but had soaked her pants through.  She was very upset about it and when I went to pick her up she couldn't stop crying.  I tried to help her feel better and brought a change of clothes for her to wear.  Once she had changed her clothes she felt a little better.  Their school gets out at 3:05 so I just checked Asher and Mia out as well and we all went home.  Ava gets so interested in what she's doing that she forgets to go to the bathroom until her bladder gets so full that she explodes.  She was just fine going to school the next day and didn't seem embarrassed or afraid to go back to school.  This morning she told me her stomach hurt, but she still really wanted to go to school.  I let her, even though I thought I should've kept her home, and it turns out my intuition was correct because during lunch she threw up.  I made the second trip to the school this week to pick her up.  Everyone who works there is very nice but I still felt a little self-conscious.  The aid for Ava's class mentioned that sometimes kids get really nervous and that makes them throw up, but I told her that Ava loves school and I didn't think that was the issue.  I was thinking to myself that my kids just throw up all the time, but didn't think that was a helpful comment to make.  So it's about 1 month into school and I've already had my girls in the nurses office a total of 3 times.  It's been a bit of a rough start to the year.  I joked with the school nurse that maybe she won't have to call me at all next week, but she didn't seem to think that was too funny... 🤷  So here's to hoping that I can make it an entire week without having to take a trip to the school!

On a happier note, my kids have all really enjoyed playing with friends a lot more lately.  Yesterday my girls spent all afternoon playing in the neighbors backyard (they have girls ages 5 and 6 - perfect for us!) and Asher went to his friends house.  It was a very quiet afternoon for David and I!  

I'll leave this week off with some pictures I took of my kids last Sunday.  The pictures on my wall are from them 4 years ago, so I figured it was time for an update.  I just took my phone and we went to this little Japanese Garden in town.  Not to toot my own horn too much, but they turned out so cute!  It helps that all my kids have the cutest, squishiest faces around!

School has started once again!

 School has started and all of my kids are in class all day.  The school district started doing full-day Kindergarten this year.  I was a little skeptical at first, but they love it so I'm trying to get on board as well.  But I sure miss my little buddies!  The first week of school I shed many a tear at them being gone, but I'm slowly getting used to it.  There are a few things I enjoy about this new phase of life: going to stores without having to monitor what they are touching every 3 seconds, cleaning the house without a mess being made again right behind me, and my favorite is probably that I can take a nap if I want to and I know I won't be sat on or woken up because someone wants chocolate milk. 

Asher is not a huge fan of school, but he really likes his teacher and he likes that he gets to see his friends.  I also think he likes being able to see his sisters at school.  Their lunch times overlap so they get to say hi and wave at each other almost every day.  He really is a good brother and is always looking out for them!

I was a little worried about this year with Asher.  We had many behavioral problems last year and ended up getting some testing done with him and he'll start counseling soon.  He is so good 90% of the time, but the other 10% he loses his temper and can't control his emotions.  Hopefully this helps.  I was also worried because starting in July, he started waking up regularly at night.  At first it was just once or twice, but now it's 3-4 times a night.  I was worried it would make him really grumpy at school and I'd start getting calls from his teacher again, but I haven't gotten one bad report and he always comes home in a great mood!  I can tell he is tired a lot, though.  I am too.  Which is why I take naps so often.  At his yearly checkup I asked his doctor about it and he gave Asher a prescription to see if that would help.  Honestly, I haven't noticed any change.  He has no trouble falling asleep, but he has such a hard time staying asleep.  It didn't used to be a problem.  He was the only one I could count on to sleep through the night for the longest time!  So this new problem has been difficult to deal with and it's taking its toll on all of us. 

We also had another health scare when Mia had to get picked up from school.  She was at recess and went down a big slide.  She landed on her back at the end of the slide and I think it must've knocked the wind out of her because while she was walking to tell her teacher she got hurt, she passed out and hit her chin pretty hard on the pavement.  They took her to the school nurse who checked her out and they tried to call me.  I didn't have my phone on me, but luckily David had his prep hour so when they called him he was able to pick her up and bring her home.  I took her to the pediatrician (along with Asher who was home sick) and they checked her out as well.  They said she didn't look like she had a concussion (she was alert, could remember what happened, didn't throw up) and he jaw didn't look like it was broken either.  She had a gnarly bruise for about a week but was just fine.

So now we're just trying to get used to our new normal and enjoying this new phase of life!

1st day of school!

What a cute smile!

1st day of Kindergarten!  They don't usually dress alike, but they wanted to on this day!  They are in different classes and both love their teachers!

I rocked my first day of Kindergarten!

Mia and her gnarly scrape.

I have many pictures like this.  

And this.  

Sometimes the pictures are actually kind of nice.

Playing at the playground before going to my concert in the park!  David had a gig to play at, so my parents watched my 3 kids and my sisters 4 kids while we played in the concert.  It actually went pretty well!  I think it's only the 2nd concert my kids have seen me play in.

March and April

 We have had a pretty busy Spring so far!    I'll try to recap as best I can.

The kids had Spring Break in March and we really didn't plan much.  But one day I decided to take them all to see Raya and the Last Dragon at the theater!  They all had fun and it was a pretty cute movie.  

Mia loves makeup.  I think it won't be long before she's better at putting it on than I am.

I was making lunch for us and they wanted me to take their picture.

Look at that cute little face!

My family in the Idaho Falls/Rexburg area decided to start doing a science day once a month!  This experiment was to simulate clouds getting heavy with rain.  My kids loved it!  I hosted for the month of April and I set the bar a little lower.  We got dry-erase marker drawings to float on water and then made ice cream in ziploc bags!  Both super easy and fun.  It's pretty much just an excuse for everyone to get together and have fun!

My mom hatched some chicks!  These chicks were only about an hour old.  My kids love seeing all the stuff at her house!  She has chickens, bees, and a ginormous greenhouse that uses geothermal heating!

Asher is seriously an amazing brother.  Most of the time.  He loves to read to the girls and help put them to bed.  The other night for dinner I had salad on the table that had some spinach leaves in it.  Ava said it was gross and Asher took it upon himself to get her to eat a whole bunch of them!  All three of my kids probably ate 15 spinach leaves each (which if you know my kids, it's pretty amazing!)  Asher is a pretty good kid.

Brian, Brittany, Henry, and Eli came to visit!  We did lots of stuff and the kids all played a ton and it was lots of fun!  On Sunday, we went to church, dyed Easter eggs, and did an Easter egg hunt at the park near our house!  There was a lot of Hungry Hippos, Legos, and Transformers that got played with.

On Monday we went to a trampoline park and a kids art museum!  I did my best to stay out of the foam pits because they were SOOOO hard to get out of!

This is how all of the pictures of my kids turn out.  One of them will be looking at the camera and the other two get distracted or making a weird face.

The other Clay fam!

This place was made for Ava.  Lots of running and jumping and playing!

Spiderman pose!

At the Artitorium!  Mia loved the butterfly wings!

And so did Ava!

Henry and Asher playing with Legos.

This picture kind of cracks me up. ;)

You're obligated to take pictures with these when you see them, right?

When we were all Wal-Mart one day we saw this Tesla.  Asher was SUPER impressed!

The Friday after Brian and Brittany left and the day before General Conference weekend, Asher woke up puking.  My kids haven't been sick for about the last year (yay for masks and everyone washing their hands more!) so I thought maybe it was food poisoning.  He didn't have a fever or chills or anything else, just lots and lots of puking.  I kept him home from school and spent lots of time disinfecting everything and washing my hands to try to keep everyone else in the family from getting it.  The next day (Saturday) we watched General Conference!  Asher was feeling a lot better and the kids were all coloring and playing with Legos and doing General Conference Bingo.  After the second session Mia started throwing up.  And then Ava.  I tried to take care of them as best I could so David could watch the Priesthood session, but I started to feel a pain in my stomach and knew it wasn't long before it came for me.  Saturday night was full of so much puke from all three of us.  David and Asher tried to help us as well as they could, but I think only Asher got any kind of restful sleep that night.  Around 5am David started throwing up, but by then the rest of us had mostly got past it.  It was horrible and we all slept through both sessions of Conference on Sunday.  And we missed an Easter egg hunt/dinner with my family that day.  And it took about a week before any of us got our appetites back.  Not one of our better Easters.  

Asher was the only one feeling pretty good on Sunday!

On Sunday I eventually felt well enough to do a little Easter egg hunt in our yard.  Asher kept asking why the Easter Bunny didn't have our baskets out in the morning (um...because she spent all night throwing up...) so he basically figured out that the Easter Bunny isn't real.  So that made me feel guilty.  Also, all the kids were still recovering so they barely touched any Easter candy for the next few days.  But they did have fun looking for eggs!

Looking for eggs!  At 5pm!  In our PJ's!

All we had were Halloween baskets.

But I think they still enjoyed it!

Since we got a nice bit check from the government (Thanks Joe!), we decided to finally put in an egress window.  We didn't have any in the basement and will maybe eventually use this room as Asher's bedroom, so we wanted a window.  Also is raises our house value a ton.  When we took the wood paneling off the wall we found that there was a window there, but they had cemented over it.  No idea why.

Here's the window!  I don't have a picture of the finished product because the wall is still just studs and concrete.  It's too expensive to finish the room right now because the price of wood is so high.  But it's a big step in the right direction!  And it makes that room feel so much better.  

David wanted me to send him a picture of Millie one day (I'm assuming to show his students).  She has been a pretty good dog.  When I do Wal-Mart grocery pickup once a week, I always have 4 or 5 associates around my car because they all love petting her and giving her cookies.  She gets very excited when I say we're going to get groceries!

We decided that money was burning too big of a hole in our pockets so we also had people come and take down our big pine trees!  We had two 60 ft pine trees on our tiny lot, right next to ours and our neighbors houses, and the back one was right next to the power line.  This is the first tree!  They stopped for about 2 hours because it started snowing and blowing, but got it done the first day and then came back the second day to get the other tree!

                                            Our house the day we moved in!

This is after the first tree was cut!  I haven't taken a picture of what it look like now that the other tree is gone.  We hated those trees because it made it so hard for the grass to grow and they dropped sap everywhere and every time there was a big windstorm I was afraid they would fall on our house.  So now we have to research nice little trees to put in our yard instead!  They still have to come grind the stumps, but our yard already feels so much bigger.  We had them leave the cut up trunk so we could split them and use them for firewood.  They're too green to split right now so we moved them to the corners of the yard until the fall when they'll hopefully be ready.  I have really not loved having strange men and lots of really loud noise and all sorts of chaos with these house projects, but it feel much nicer to have them done!  Getting the window and taking out the trees have been on our list since we bought the place.  Now on to the next project! 

Things To Remember

 There are some things I just want to remember so I need to write them down!

Mia

• Loves makeup and princesses.  She always wants me to put makeup on her if she sees me putting it on.  She will also try to find my makeup and put it on herself.  She has a toy crown she always wears and would wear her Aurora dress every day if I let her.  But she HATES when I do her hair!  She will (usually) let me brush it but nothing else.  She doesn't even like it when I put her hair behind her ears.
• If she thinks I'm not paying enough attention to her she'll yell at the top of her lungs "MOM, SEE ME!!!"  I always feel very chastised after this and make sure I give her my full attention.  
• When she gets excited about something she'll throw her fist in the air and yell "YAY!"  Even if it's something like she got her shoes on first.  It makes me smile every time. 
• She has gotten so giggly.  She loves to tell me things that she thinks are silly and then giggles about it.  It is pretty adorable.
• Has picked up on a couple of phrases that I use a lot, including "Oh geez!" 
  

Ava

• This girl gives me the most laughs!  She is so hilarious and quirky.  She loves to wear her snow boots and Asher's bike helmet.  When she plays Mario Kart with Asher she likes to yell things like "I'm gonna get you!" and "Hey, get back here!"  If Asher crashes she'll say "Asher, are you ok?" and if she crashes she'll say "Eba (that's how she pronounces her name), are you ok?  Asher, say that!"  It makes me laugh so hard.
• She has become Asher's little buddy.  She wants to do everything he does, which you  think would annoy him but he loves it!  She loves to watch him play video games and wrestle with him and play his pretend games.  She also loves to copy whatever he says while they're playing their pretend games.
• Still giggles at just about everything.  I'm glad that hasn't changed! She also loves to have people chase her and that's how I get her in a good mood most of the time.
  

Asher

• He is such a good brother.  When Ava and he play Mario Kart, he'll let Mia pick his character and car so that she feels included.  That means he ends up playing as some kind of princess, but he never complains about it!  Mia is happy that she gets to watch her princess race, Ava loves playing the game, and Asher likes to keep his sisters happy.  He spends half his day doing everything to make the girls laugh and play with them, and the other half doing everything he can to drive them insane.  Pretty standard brother-ing, if you ask me. 
• Loves reading!  He is pretty good at it too.  He usually reads a few verses when we read scriptures and does well with them!  Some of the books we have read recently are Dog Man, Magic Treehouse, How To Train Your Dragon, and (of course) Captain Underpants.  I'm pretty sure Captain Underpants is standard reading for all 2nd grade boys.