Photo Dump

It's time for a photo dump. If I tried to play catch up on my blog I would be blogging for days. And that's just not going to happen. Instead I'll dump a bunch of photos with a brief description. Also, they probably wont be in chronological order. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit! 

Last Sunday I had to meet with the Bishop after church real quick and so Patrick and the boys had a mini photo shoot. 

When I was in Utah Patrick took the boys on a walk. This pretty much shows their personalities: Preston reading, Jaxton being active, and Lucas just going with the flow. 

T-ball! We have really enjoyed the t-ball season. It started a little rough with Preston having pneumonia and Jaxton refusing to play, but now they love it, and so do we. Jaxton looks adorable in his little outfit! 

Fun times at Krazy Air. Every day that Jaxton doesn't have school he asks to go somewhere fun. Sometimes I can get away with going to the library, but sometimes I have to cave and go somewhere bigger, like Krazy Air. 

I found some roller skates at Savers a few weeks ago. I have so many memories of rollerblading when I was growing up and my boys like to "skate" by putting wooden blocks under their shoes and sliding on the tile. Real skates are a big step up! 

BYU Graduation!!! 

I spy Andrew and Janiece! 

And I got to snuggle lots with Bennett! 

Jimmy and I hiked the Y on my last morning there. Everyone else slept, lazy bums. A lot harder then I thought it would be. And it was freeeezing cold. Oh and just for reference I took a picture of the Y on our way to the airport. I climbed that high! Might as well have climbed Everest. 

Preston is trying to earn some money to buy a little kid friendly video camera so he can take videos of him exploring and hunting for lizards. He has a whole list of extra chores and every day he works on it. 

For my birthday we went to the zoo! It was a beautiful day out. In fact in the evening time it got cold and rained. It NEVER rains on my birthday!! It was a nice relaxing day spent with family. 

My mothers day gift from all my boys. So handsome :) 

Practicing our faces: This is Lucas's scary/angry face

Happy! 

 And Jaxton's happy face!
Makes me laugh every time! 

There we go! Starting fresh all caught up and will try to be better from this point on. 

The worlds longest sickness

Sickness has hit our house. More like crashed into our house, set up shop and refuses to leave. 

It all started Friday, the 5th with Preston.
The days leading up to Friday Preston wasn't looking so great. He had droopy eyes and just looked tired all the time. Friday morning I actually let him sleep in and was just going to take him late to school since he didnt' look well the night before. When he did get up he was SUPER emotional, as in he cried 3 times just while eating and getting dressed, which is unlike him. Then I felt him and he was quite warm. No school and we started tylenol/advil. His only real symptoms were fever, being tired and feeling like he needed to lay down. It lasted through the weekend.

That Sunday Jaxton started running a fever at church, so I figured it was some sort of fever virus and so we kept them cool and calm. Monday they were both feeling well enough to go to school.
Lucas on the other hand started running a fever. 

Before 11 I got a call from Prestons school that he was sick- no fever, but he was pale and said he needed to lay down. Brought him home, fed him and he lay on the couch the rest of the day. About 20 min after I got Preston I got a call from Jaxton's teacher that he was warm and crying and not feeling well. he only had 15 min left of school so she said she would just send him home on the bus like normal. 

He got home, had a fever and kept telling me he just didn't feel good.
By that afternoon his eyes started looking weepy. Ugh.
I took him to urgent care that night and he had double pink eye and a double ear infection. 

So sad when he just keeps crying asking me to take him back to the doctor so he can feel better :( 

He was taking augmentin for his infections, which he has had several times before with no problems but Wednesday he started having a reaction. I thought at first he was just getting bit by a mosquito b/c he attracts them and it's been warm out. But then they started swelling up big and I knew it was something else. Hives.
I called the pharmacy and asked if it could be a reaction to the prescription since nothing else was new. They said yes, to stop immediately and give him lots and lots of benedryl. 

We were giving him benedryl every 4 hours and by 3 1/2 hrs the hives would start coming back. They were everywhere...

We took him to his doctor on Thursday and he said the ear infection/pink eye had cleared up and he thought the hives were showing up not from the antibiotics but because Jaxton had a virus and it was reacting to the antibiotics. So we were to stop those, give him a steroid for the hives and keep with the benedryl. 

Liquid steroids are disgusting. Jaxton was such a trooper about trying it mixed with different things to try to mask the taste: sugar, jelly, chocolate syrup, caramel, grape juice, and every time it would make him throw up. He ended up only getting 1.5 doses out of the 4 down. Friday morning when he woke up I couldn't even see any skin color on his arms, they were just covered in hives and one side of his face/ear was so swollen. But luckily by Saturday morning they were gone.

By this time Preston was healed, Lucas no longer had a fever but has coughing fits that come and go.

Saturday I started feeling sick. I'd been tired and worn down feeling all week but I figured that was just b/c of the lack of sleep i'd been getting. But it hit me hard Saturday. Saturday night Patrick started feeling sick too, sore throat, general feeling of grossness.
Sunday Jaxton was back to having a fever so Monday morning him and I went to the doctor.
Double ear infection for him again and bronchitis and a sinus infection for me.
Miserable.
Oh and his eyes were weepy again. 

I'm lucky Patrick was able to have Monday and Tuesday off work so he could be the Mom. He went grocery shopping for me, and took care of the boys like a champ even though he wasn't at 100%. He woke up this morning (Wednesday) feeling even worse so now he's at the doctor trying to get that figured out. 

 So thats where/how we've been.
Home. 

Quarantined. 

So so sick. 

We're hoping to be on the mend. Everyone's got their antibiotics and we're sanitizing everything hoping to just get this out. It's been a long round of sickness and we just want to feel better! 

Preston's Birthday radius

My goodness it seems like we celebrated Preston's 6th birthday FOREVER.
The day before his birthday, Tuesday the 12th as we were walking home from the bus stop he asked me if I had decorated the house yet.
Uhhh...decorated it??
I told him no and he promptly told me that's ok, I could do it tonight while he was asleep.
yaaaaaaaay.
So I ran to the dollar store that night and got some supplies to hopefully make him happy. 

And he was. He came downstairs, after waking everyone us to tell them it was his birthday, and we could hear him react to seeing it all. He pretty much had his day all planned. He wanted both Patrick and I to get up with him in the morning to get him off to school. He gets up at 6:20 to get ready and usually I get up with him along with whatever other boy wakes up. He had his breakfast and then wanted to wear his birthday shirt that he's worn for the past few years. He wont be able to wear it next year, it was too small for even this year, but I couldn't tell him no on his birthday! 

His next order request was that he wanted to ride in the car, in the front seat to the bus stop. The bus stop isn't far, but he gets so happy every time I drive him there. 

There were 3 kids in his class who's birthday was on the 13th- what are the odds?!!- and so rather then having 3 sugary treats brought in we split it so that one person brought in donuts, another juice boxes and we brought in a fun toy (Glow sticks).
I surprised him at school with his favorite lunch, a happy meal from McDonalds with chicken nuggets, french fries, gogurt, and chocolate milk.
He kept getting birthday hugs from his girlfriends at lunch and then two of them got into a fight over who was going to marry Preston. Then one of them kept trying to kiss him and he just kept saying "no thank you" and pushing her away.
He's loved. 

We went out to play on the playground for a bit. He wanted to show me how he plays basketball now. Notice the left arm thats out behind him, he would do that every time he tried to dribble a ball.
Side note- the police officer is a kids dad, not a cop on the elementary school playground. 

He got to pick what we had for dinner that night and he picked almost the same thing we had last year for his birthday, steak. Only this year he wanted deviled eggs to go along with it. 

And also like last year he picked donuts for his birthday treat.
We sang happy birthday and jaxton was standing right next to preston and as soon as we finished the song i told preston to make a wish and he did. As soon as he opened his eyes jaxton blew out the candles. They both cried for that one.
So we sang again. And covered Jaxton's mouth. 

His birthday was on a Wednesday which is a scout day and kind of a bummer that we couldn't go do anything special on his birthday, but he LOVES scouts so he was pretty happy. Plus we had a great activity where we made mucus and my boys thought it was great. 

Birthday party #2- a birthday dinner with my side of the family.
We had eggrolls and rice and for this party he wanted me to make him a Yu-Gi-Oh cake. He's really into Yu-Gi-Oh right now (it's a anime/card game kind of similar to pokemon). He chose the character he wanted his cake made into. Next year I hope he's into something simpler, like shapes or something. 

No one blew out his candles at this party.

 And finally birthday party #3, 2 weeks after his birthday for the January birthdays on Patricks side of the family. We hosted it so I just left the decorations up and we had yummy lasagna, salad, bread and then cookies and ice cream for dessert. 

He got some fun things for his birthday. We got him a laser tag game, he got a pinewood derby car to make, wubble bubble, nerf gun, Ranger Rick magazine subscription, a hula hoop, clothes, a pillow book, an origami book, a magic 8 ball and money! I was so happy when that 3rd party was over and I could finally take down the decorations. It felt like they had been up longer then the Christmas decorations were up! 

A few other random pictures of Preston. They clebrated 100 days of school last week and as part of the celebration they were allowed to dress up. He didn't know what to wear so I told him he could wear a play shirt to school instead of a school shirt, so he wore his pokemon shirt and then added the hat and glasses to it to complete his look. Fun fact, everytime he puts sunglasses on he always crosses his arms and smiles like he's just so cool. 

He's doing AMAZING in school. His teacher says he's just brilliant and sweet. He's one of the best readers in the class which makes me so happy since I love to read. We made a deal that if he could read a whole chapter book by himself we would get him a Yugioh card deck he's been wanting. And he did! He read "Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus", all 64 pages of it. You should hear him read now, he's really good!! 

I asked him the following questions about what he likes at age 6

Favorite color- red
Favorite food- ramen and hamburger helper (i make a billion homemade healthy things and he picks those)
Favorite candy- chewy caramels
Favorite toy- Yugioh Cards
Favorite fruit- apples
Favorite tv show-Yugioh
Favorite movie- Home Alone 2
Favorite thing I pack in your lunch- apples with caramel sauce
Favorite game- magnetic thinking putty
Favorite animal- cheetah
Favorite song- "I'm trying to be like Jesus" or "Sugar"
Favorite subject at school- writing
Favorite sport- soccer
Favorite book- the book with no pictures
Favorite thing to have for breakfast- corn flakes with sugar on it.
Favorite thing to do outside- blow bubbles
Favorite drink- Hawaiian Punch
Favorite holiday- 4th of July
Favorite place to shop- Bashas
Favorite place to play- Pump it Up
What do you want to be when you grow up- Race car driver
Best friend- Coco (she's the one I agreed could marry him)

Christmas 2015

Our Christmas celebration started as it usually does on Christmas Eve morning with the Reynolds side of the family party. We have breakfast in our jammies and open presents and hang out. This year we hosted it, and it was fun! Except for the part where I had a migraine. What are the odds?! I've had less then 8 in my whole life and I get one on Christmas Eve?! I wanted to die. I stayed drugged up and managed to make it through the day.

After that party we hung out and chilled for awhile. We had our traditional white chicken chili dinner and watched Inside Out before bed. 

Jaxton was really into Christmas all month and was so excited to get out cookies for santa. Everytime I asked him how many cookies we should leave out he increased it by one, so I think he ended up with 8 cookies! I tried to talk them into leaving Santa Dr. Pepper but they said no, it had to be milk.
Preston wrote the note by himself, it says "Dear Santa We have ben gud. Thank you for the presits. mere christmas! Love Preston jaxton Lucas

I'm so glad that we keep things simple for Christmas. It's hard because we want to give them tons of things that we know they will like but we also don't want them to be ungrateful and entitled. So we stick to "Something you want something you need something to read something to wear" and then 1 big family gift. So this year they got pillows, remote control cars, books and hoodies and a few little things too. Then our big family gift, a new trampoline with a net! 

The boys weren't allowed to come out of their room till 6am, so naturally right at 6 they came to get us up. They had a fun time opening their gifts

After the gifts were opened Preston said "well, we didn't get a trampoline, but thats ok, we got lots of other great things". We gathered up the trash and told Preston to take it out to the recycle barrel outside and as soon as he opened up the back door we heard a huge gasp and he came running back in saying "He did bring it! It's outside!!" They were thrilled. 

It was a really long day, so long in fact that I got to take 2 naps! Merry Christmas to me!!!
Jaxton snuggled up and napped on my lap which was nice. 

Lots of snuggles happened all day. 

Later that night we had a family dinner with everyone over. 

And then this morning I took down all the Christmas decorations. It's nice having them up, but it feels so cluttered with stuff everywhere, so I always look forward to having it back to normal. I was sad to see the Christmas card collect go tho. I've enjoyed having those up and looking at them whenever I'm in the kitchen.