He'll do it himself and a couple photos

Dillon wants to feed himself, here's how that goes:

He has so many new words lately:

bite (when he wants what you have, he also bites people so look out!)

nack (snack)

ball (anything round, this includes apples which he walks around the house with and eats or ballons, whatever)

eye (and he'll show you where yours is)

ear (he points to it)

wash wash (said in the bath)

Here is a picture of all the kids from our visit to Utah:

8 things I love about Noah

In honor of Noah's 8th birthday I thought I would share 8 of my favorite things about him:

1. Your laugh, when you start it lights up your entire face

2. That you will still give me kisses goodbye and tell me you love me, I know the days are numbered for that

3. That you are so forgiving and always remember the best in people

4. How you love vegetables, you would live on fruit and veggies if I let you

5. That your favorite shows are Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs, you love to learn about things in fun ways

6. You really want to be friends with everyone and you get so hurt when someone doesn't want to be friends with you

7. That you are learning how to tell jokes, even though I don't get most of them

8. You try to sneak up on me and scare me all the time, even after I hit you in the head one time when you really scared me...

Happy 8th birthday Noah, I can't wait to celebrate another 8 birthdays with you!

Dillon's words and Ashton's fish

Dillon has started talking a lot lately, his latest words are:
wa-wa (water)
walk-walk (can mean his shoes or he wants to walk)
no no no (he likes to say this to Dolan as he is the only person smaller than him)
tactor (tractor, this one is new, Troy taught him last night)
more (he says this instead of please)
mama (he has said this for a while, but now I hear it when he sees me)
Ashton (pronounce more like a-ton, but it's close and now Ashton is happy)
bud (this is what he calls a stuffed dog that Grandma Dunnett got for the boys, there are 3 and Ashton calls his Cubby, Noah calls his Buster and now Dillon calls his bud, not sure he whether thinks this is the name for all dogs, but it works.)


He also discovered the DVD's last night. For those of you that have been to our house, you know what a big mess that was. He had a big pile on the floor that he couldn't even step over, he kept slipping on them and falling when he tried to get out.

After I picked up Ashton and Noah yesterday we had to go to the pet store to get fish for the tank in Ashton's preschool class. Normally I am not big on buying things for a preschool that I give A LOT of money to every month, but Ashton was insistent. So, we went to the pet store and Ashton picked tetra's, you can't buy just one of those since they are schooling fish so Ashton asked for 4 (since he is almost 4, this is the answer you get for everything right now). Noah also insisted on picking a fish, even though it's not his class, and he picked a black and white molly. We get them in a bag, I pay the $15 for these fish (yes really that much for 4 silly fish, welcome to Truckee). When we get in the car and they are looking at the fish, Ashton counts them and realizes that she only gave him 3 tetras and he is upset about it. Well, I am not about to turn around and go back for one fish...so I convinced him that maybe she only gave his 3 because he is 3. That worked and we took them to school, where his teacher told us that at least one of the tetras doesn't look healthy. If it dies can I take it back and get a new one? For $15 they better live a while!

Utah

We took a very quick trip to Utah this weekend, we left Thursday after work(and tutoring and back to school night!) and drove all night. We made it to Tooele (pronounced two-ela, we gave everyone a good laugh at how we pronounced it!). We managed to get two rooms where we slept for a couple hours and then hit the road again and made it into Pleasant Grove...where we discovered that we don't like it that much. There are beautiful houses and fantastic neighborhoods, that you have to drive through what I can only describe as Rio Linda to get to them. (For those of you that don't know, Rio Linda is an area in Sacramento that is the nastiest, trashiest area and I say this from experience because we lived there. I'm sure there are still perfectly nice people living there, but we didn't meet many. The neighborhoods were run down, full of trash and old belongings thrown out in yards.) We saw one house that was new, beautiful and it looked across the street to a house that totally belonged in Rio Linda...
We drove down to Fairview that evening and spent the night at Uncle Dave and Aunt Janet's house. It was so nice to see them again, our boys were out of the car in a flash and on the trampoline! The next morning we got up and headed to Randy and Heather's in Provo. Heather, Janet and Haley watched the boys (thank you, even though you said it was no problem, I know what a handful my boys can be and I really appreciate it!). We headed back out with Randy and Uncle Dave to look around the area some more. Thank goodness for Randy! He showed us areas that were perfect! We found several places we liked including Highland, Cedar Hills, and Eagle Mountain. Uncle Dave and Randy were so patient and drove us all over showing us the area. We are so thankful!!!
That night we all went to dinner at Cafe Rio, the food was great and it was casual enough that the boys could be loud and play without bothering anyone. Noah and Gavin quickly became great friends and made very long straw swords at the restaurant. After dinner we headed back to Randy and Heather's house, but Uncle Dave and Aunt Janet went to a store and took Gavin and Noah with them. I guess while they were there Noah met the only grumpy person in Utah:
Noah runs to Aunt Janet and hands her his straw sword and says, "Here you keep this." When Aunt Janet asked him why he told her that he had hit a lady at the meat counter (BTW, she pushed Janet out of the way to get there...) with his straw sword. She told him to "Please stay away from me." Poor Noah!
All in all, it was a great trip. We had a really good time visiting with our family and it was so fun to see Heather and Randy's kids. Brennan is a funny little guy! And of course my boys wanted to take Adalynn home...they want a little sister so bad!

Ewww!

We went camping this weekend at Rye Patch Reservoir with my friend Jodi and her family and had a great time. I want to share this story really quick because I don't have much time right now:
We are sitting at the table on Saturday morning eating french toast when Noah suddenly spits his food out on his plate. I look at him and ask, "What was that?" He tells me, "I just lost a tooth." So I get up to look at his plate across the table and there is a big pile of bloody french toast on his plate...yuck. So, I dig through it to get the tooth out which now that I am thinking about it is also gross! I saved the tooth and took the yucky french toast off his plate and he went back to eating. Jodi gave me a bad time for not taking a picture to share with all of you...do you miss the photo?

Random happenings around here

Here's a little update on Dillon:
I talked to the doctor yesterday and she said that since he has had the fever for nearly a week and his lab values indicate that he is definitely fighting an infection somewhere, even though we can't identify it. So, he is now on antibiotics and I'm hoping he starts to feel better soon!

Ashton's latest obsession: jumping. Everywhere we go he is jumping and singing. It's too funny to see! He jumps over cracks, any line in the floor, pretty much anything he can find. And it's not just how far he can jump he also wants you to notice how high he is jumping...

Last night Noah and Ashton were playing the playstation and I made them stop so they could eat dinner. Since Dillon is on strike from food, he was walking around. He found the remote and picked it up. He managed to unpause the game and get Stuart Little to start walking around, he turned around and looked at Troy and I with wide eyes and let out a little squeal! He was so happy with himself. Ashton kept telling Noah, "You know, he is going to kill you." Noah thought it was so funny he didn't even care, which is saying a lot for an almost 8 year old boy and his video game!

Sick Baby

Dillon has been battling a fever since last Thursday...it got as high as 103 on Sunday. He is not really eating well, definitely not sleeping and generally cranky. So, I took him to the doctor last night. I waited for over an hour to get in, mostly because I refused to see the nurse practioner. I don't have anything against them really, I just know the kind of imaging studies that they order and have decided that my kids would be better off with someone who went to medical school. So she looked him over and said his left ear was a little red, but not bad and really couldn't find anything else wrong with him. He was being completely pathetic while we were there and she decided that since this had gone on for so long she wanted to get some lab work done. So, we went across the street to get Ashton from preschool and then went into the hospital. Where we waited again! We finally got in and they collected Dillon's blood and urine, where Ashton couldn't decide whether he was fascinated by the blood draw or scared of it. He definitely didn't like to see Dillon crying.
I checked his lab values this morning when I got to work and his urine was fine and his blood was ok, except for some low WBC counts on the differential. I don't really know what that indicates...I will have to wait for the doctor to call me back. I'm hoping whatever is going on is finished soon and we get our happy little boy back!

Update

I haven't posted lately but there's been a lot going on around here...
Noah:
Well, Noah is almost 8 and that is apparently a good time to test your parents in his world. He is pushing the limits daily, I suppose to find out if they have changed. So, he is getting to go to bed early and get lots of rest, or if it is early in the day he gets to weed. Good times...
He is doing fine in school, he is still in the english immersion class and I am struggling with whether I should demand that he be moved from the class or not. For those of you that don't know what this is...half of Noah's class speaks no english. They have a set number of years in the school to teach the kids english and then they have to put them in english speaking classes. I guess that this is the year that they have to get them in english classes. Soooo, Noah is in a class where the teacher speaks only english while teaching (she doesn't speak spanish at all, doesn't know the language), while half of the class cannot understand what is going on. Here are my issues with this:
1. Half of the class cannot understand what is being said, at the age of 8 if kids can't understand what is being said this normally results in them not paying attention, then they will start to talk amongst themselves.
2. Regardless of the fact that Noahs teacher does not speak spanish I have a hard time believing that she will not try to give these kids extra help.
3. While trying to give the spanish speaking kids extra help, what is the rest of the class doing?
4. Noah does not tolerate distractions well, if there is something else going on - his attention is there. This can be other kids talking while the teacher is teaching, or a bird flying by the window...we are working with him on this but I'm not sure that he is ready for such a big task right now.
5. I got Noah's state testing results from last year and he tested just below proficient is his language skills, due in large part to the fact that he has almost no reading comprehension skills. I had NO idea, not a single one of his two team teachers told me this last year! Did they not notice or not care???? This year's classroom assignment worries me for his language skills development, obviously.

Based on all of this, we are considering moving...the test scores in Truckee schools continue to fall every year despite the fact that they have been cited as a project improvment school (meaning their test scores are horrible, terrible, etc). Troy and I have known that we did NOT want our kids attending high school in this area, for a variety of reasons a lot of which have to do with the education (or lack of it) that we both received from the school. We were not expecting to have to make a decision so soon...
We have put the word out that the deli is for sale, if you know anyone that wants to own it! Once the deli sells, we will list our house and then move. Our plan is to take a trip to Utah in the next two weeks and check it out. We are looking at the Pleasant Grove area. It will be hard to leave, but we both agree that our kids cannot stay here, we want much more for them than they are getting from the schools here. And we both know that it will do nothing but get worse as they get older. So, please pray for us, we are trusting that God will provide a way to make this work...