Hello, Summer!

What a wonderful Memorial Day weekend we had! It was busy to say the least but a lot of fun. On Friday I had dinner out with my aunts, mom, & grandparents at a local italian place. It was delicious. Plus it was great to hang out with family sans kids! I actually was able to have whole conversations without being interrupted! We went to hear the live music which was exceptional. A friend of my dad's plays at the restaurant 3 nights a week. He played clarinet, flute, sax, bari sax, a wind instrument, steel drum, keyboard, and maybe even a soprano sax. He played them all well too! Saturday was our first pool day. We all had a blast. We were able to stay for about 3 hours. It is so nice to be in the first summer where I have no kids that need a nap! Amazing! The pool was easier this time around too. Wilson and Luke were fairly independent and Tyler stayed close by me the whole time. Cara & Jason were there with the kids so the cousins all swam together. On Sunday we had a picnic at church in the evening. We were having such a good time with our friends that we didn't drag the kids out of the sand/water/playground until about 9:15pm. It was fun! Monday my family came over around 5 for a get together. Andy worked a lot in the backyard and I worked a lot on the house. We had BBQ in the crockpot, I made chocolate cake, and everyone else brought sides. We mostly stayed in the house because it was so hot. I got to see Anna-Grace a lot this weekend and that was great! She is the cutest thing ever. She smiles so much and is such a happy baby. Today I finished up at school! Summer is officially here at our house!

More Psychiatry Stuff

We were back to the Psychiatrist this Saturday. Things have been at their worst this past week. We had moved into OCD tendencies over dying, poison, and fears. It was BAD. It is basically necessary to reassure him multiple times a day that he isn't dying. He even woke up in the middle of the night thinking he might die from the wild berries he touched. So hard to watch. We had already started to decrease meds a couple days before our appt. Now we are weaning off so we can try a new med. He has 3 more days of generic prozac. Then a week of no medicine to get a new baseline and see his behavior without medicine. Next we will slowly introduce generic zoloft. This drug is a sedating drug where as the prozac could  be more of an activating drug. So hopefully this won't made him comatose... I can't wait until the post that says we have found the right thing! Things are getting better! But this is not that post. He is constantly obsessed with his fear of poison/dying and it's just pitiful. To quote Andy, He is living in his own personal hell. So as we come off the medicine I am really hoping the poison/death thing subsides. We are supposed to get back in touch with the play therapist we saw a while back.. Combining new medicine, summer break, and Mrs. J. we will hopefully break this horrible place he is in right now.

Phone Pics

 Luke lost his front tooth at school this week! 

 All of my boys. LOVE. 

 Toy Story 3 on Ice! Mommy/Tyler date with Cara & Silas!

They loved the show and their popcorn!

Pinterest Project #2

One of my teammates turned 50 in April. I had seen a cute idea on Pinterest using a small kleenex box & $1 bills. Since she was turning 50 I needed 50 $1 bills! So I collected money from everybody at school. I taped all of the dollar bills together side by side and rolled them up. Fifty $1 bills makes for a big roll! Then you put the money roll in the tissue box with one sticking out the top like a tissue. The sign on the box I found on Pinterest said Don't "blow" it all in one place! (Blow = kleenex for blowing your nose). Cute! But I wanted to wrap the tissue box to make it cuter. She loved it and I was so glad everyone was willing to chip in to celebrate the big 5-0!! Making projects from Pinterest that aren't recipes is part of my 20 x 2012 so I updated the link!

Friday the 13th...

This post is kind of opposite of my last post seeing as how they are both Fridays - one good and one bad. In April we had a mishap which happened to fall on Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious at all but it adds interest to the story. Ha! Wilson was playing outside. He had a wagon that he was carting around Nerf guns and toys in that he and a friend had been playing with. He decided to drag the wagon up our front yard which has a bit of a hill. He lost his grip on the wagon handle so the wagon slid down the hill. Unfortunately one of our neighbors kids had left a car parked in front of our house while they were gone all weekend. So guess what the wagon hit. It left a small dent in the bottom part of the right passenger door. Great. He apologized to the neighbors and we said we would fix the dent.

But we recently got the estimate to repair the dent. It is almost $1,000. For a small dent. Our homeowner's insurance deductible is $1000 so it doesn't help us.  We just got our tax return and so guess where all of that money is going...so much for a new computer or laptop. It's a little frustrating how it is all our responsibility. I don't understand. It makes me want to put up No Parking signs in front of our house if the cars that other people park there can be our responsibility to protect...But I also want to be a good neighbor.

A Fun Friday Night

The boys and I had a great, low-key night. I came home to find a dozen roses as an early Mother's Day gift so I could enjoy them all weekend. So sweet and thoughtful of Andy! We had dinner on the deck  and then a neighborhood kickball game in the backyard. It was so fun to watch them playing together. There were 7 kiddos. We have new neighbors moving in with 3 kids. They have a boy Wilson's age and two daughters who are in 6th & 8th grade. So they were heading up the game (which was nice...). The most adorable thing was when one of them said "we need to make some rules. Everybody in the tree house!". So they all climbed up in the tree house and came up with their rules. Kickball turned into a freeze tag game and they played together so nicely. A GREAT start to the weekend!!

Tyler Speak

Tyler says so many cute things. I guess 3 year olds talk so cute so that the parents can survive the year of the three's. It's definitely a hard parenting year. Ty wants so badly to be independent yet still needs help!! Anyway a couple super cute things he says: Tipe= "too tipe"- he says this about shoes, seat belts, pants. Adorable. I mean my heart melts every time! Malt= Ty loves to go to the malt to play with the yellow duckie. The poor thing rarely ever gets to go to the malt (mall) but he thinks the bright lights and play area are amazing!! We went to the mall on Saturday for lunch at CFA after biking at the park. He was thrilled! Wilson, Andy,my mom, and I all biked 5 miles. Luke biked 2 1/2 miles with his gamma helping him up the hills & then rode in the trailer for the second half. Ty rode in the bike trailer on Andy's bike. Ty would tell Andy "too fast" while Andy was biking!

Updates & Recipes

Not sure where to start. It's been a while! Life has been busy.

* We are still adjusting meds for the anxiety...I'm beginning to get frustrated. We upped again 2 weeks ago but this week has been HARD. 3-4 times of intense anxiety coupled with him being waaay less inhibited...it's a little rough. His behavior choices and home and school are being impacted negatively. I'm calling the psychiatrist today to get her thoughts on this. He is being silly more often when it isn't appropriate, more careless on his work (handwriting/spelling), and not following all directions at school. At home he thinks he can do whatever he wants. Thinks he is Mr. Independent and is making bad choices. So. We've had behavior trouble at home all along it just seems to be worse. 

*I made my first call to poison control this week due to a super glue incident. He was convinced he was going to die. He panicked. The super glue was on top of the refrigerator...he decided to glue a toy together while I was putting his brothers to bed. But it all turned out fine. Poison Control said the amount ingested was no big deal (just licked some excess off a finger) and he was in no danger. He still asked last night if he was going to be ok. Hopefully that taught him a lesson!

* We've had a lot going on. Andy and I threw a baby shower last weekend for a couple of his youth volunteers who are expecting a baby, celebrated my mom's birthday and made her homemade cupcakes, helped with a wedding shower at school, worked a Legends game for my niece's marching band, and took Ty to Disney on Ice! We went with Cara and Silas. It was fun! The boys were in awe and loved the show. We bought them a tub of popcorn and they had a GREAT time!

* Tried a few new recipes over the past few weeks.White Cheddar Chicken Pasta - this was pretty good. I didn't have any wine so I just subbed chicken broth. The leftovers were pretty yummy though. BBQ Burgers- these were yummy. They have Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce and shredded monterey jack cheese mixed into the meat. (We used 90/10 not 85/15.) We all enjoyed them. I just used the hamburger recipe on this pin- not the special sauce or anything else. We just topped ours with ketchup/mustard. We will make these again! Though with the mix-ins if you are going to grill lay down some foil. Andy said they started falling apart on the grill. Slow Cooker Chicken & Rice - this was good. The boys didn't care for it but I think it is just because everything was mixed together (like a casserole). It was super easy. Chicken, corn, rice, cheese. Yum!