October is a busy month!

Earlier this month, we took our first, yes you heard that right, FIRST road trip. We rented an SUV and loaded up the kids and drove all the way to....Wichita! Casey's grandparents live there, and his grandpa just turned 90 this month, and had a shin dig. It was great to see Great Grama and Grampa "who live far away", as the boys call them.

And then Halloween....So, the king of the three Little Knights, succeeded in hand-making two amazing costumes! Tevan and Luna wanted to be Knights this year, and Casey's eyes lit up while thinking of all the different ways he could craft armour for them...and cardboard it was! A little tape, some staples, some spray paint and crafty hands was all that was needed to make these masterpieces come alive! And they did! Tevan and Luna seemed to love the shield the best out of the entire costume and decorated their own. Funny, how kids are...Casey said later, I could have just made them each a shield, and they'd been happy with only that! Tevan and Luna had a blast wearing their costumes to their schools for their Halloween Parties, and then of course trick or treating! Casey trucked along with the older boys along our block to fill their bags with candy and show off their armour that would never "really" battle. I stayed home with our littlest to hand out candy to all the other dressed up youngsters.

Ziah, bless his heart, had a bad infection in his eye. And thankfully expressing my breastmilk in his eye everyday, kept the white of the eye from getting pink and kept the infection at bay. We did need some local antibiotics to kick the infection, and within a few hours, he was all back to his beautiful self.

And now he's walking....!!!! Took his first steps a few weeks back and is now taking more and more steps on his own! What a guy. 10 months old, 6 teeth and just so proud of himself! In the leaves this morning, on our way home from walking Tevan to school today, we found a great HUGE leaf, from a sycamore tree or maybe a white birch tree..and the leaves are bigger than the boys' heads and we laughed that they would be a great hat! Well, we tried it on Ziah, and looked how cute he is...

Then we all decided to fall into the leaves, and take our annual Fall Picture. Casey and I had a giggle, that each year the picture is the same, and the only difference is...one more kid each time. HA HA! Well, for now, let's leave it at three princes...and a family of five.

Here is a video of Ziah walking...sorry for the sideways viewing....I'm still new to all this!

Soon to have another walker...

So Ziah seems to following suit with Luna in being an early walker. He'll be turning 9 mos old next week and just this week he has started standing on his own, without holding on to anything. Yesterday he stood for longer than a minute, with this great look of accomplishment in his (and my) eyes! It wont' be long before we are seeing his sweet walking feet! He has been enjoying eating some table foods, banana is his favorite and our special smoothies in the morning made of frozen fruit, banana and some flax seed oil. He gets giddy when he sees me making them! Its fun to see the funny faces he makes while eating food, and not so fun to smell the poops that come from table foods. I do so much rather the sweet bread smell of exclusively breastfed stools. At over 23lbs, he is bigger than most 9 month old kiddos....kuddos to me and my breastcream! Tee hee! We are doing some sign language with him, and have noticed him understanding what we are signing and saying while doing it. It won't be long before he is doing them back to us! What a doll, I so much enjoy this guy...such a lover...and a cuddler! Tevan and Luna were as well I thought, but Ziah is so much more layed back and will give love and receive love from ANYONE...really...a stranger at the grocery store or anyone. It doesn't take much, and he's a smiling, and reaching out and if you are holding him, he's cuddling! I just love it! Maybe he'll still be this way even when he's a teenager?.....only can be my hope!

Our little Tiger Cub

So here is our Tiger Cub. "Do your best", saluting and blowing boats down the gutter! Way to go Tevan! He looks just darling in his little uniform. Tho it isn't by any means little! Those things are expensive, and who wants to buy a new one every year, so we bought a shirt that goes way below his knees and is much too big for him, but he just tucks it in, and no one is the wiser! And look at his beautiful patches! 4 hours of hand stitching...yes'siree! Phew! Me and my bobbin on my sewing machine do not get along, so needle and thread and a few pokes of blood filled up my night before his big Regata!

Busy Fall for us...

Okay, okay, okay. So with a little nudge from "you know who", I've decided to update myself into this day and age of blogging and "facebooking". So here's my fist shot at blogging...

So its a busy time of year for us..Tevan is in 1st grade and Luna has just started Preschool. Both boys seem to be enjoying school. Just yesterday when picking Luna up from school, he said, "Mom...I love school!" So this makes me very happy that he is enjoying things. Tevan is working so hard at reading and learning basic math...mom and dad are proud. Every night he has homework that involves his sight words, his blending words and two books to read to me. Though he does get frustrated sometimes and has some difficulty managing his frustration, he has made HUGE strides in the last couple of weeks, and is reading so much faster and sounding out words on his own, and able to write words down after having them dictated to him.

Tevan is on the tail end of having to wear his brace for his broken arm from July. Boy was that a fiasco! One of the worst days in our life! It was a compound fracture, breaking both bones in his left forearm after a fall from the monkey bars at a nearby park. One bone was aligned well, but the other was completely misaligned and overlapping and needed to be re-set. We were super advocates for our lil man, and tho the hospital staff asked us to leave the room while they re-set his bone, I refused to leave. I knew my Tevan needed me in there, and though he was sedated, his spirit would need me close to him through this traumatic time. So I assured the staff that I would sit down, since they were afraid I would fall, that I would wear a radiation jacket - as they were concerned about the risk of radiation to me from the X-ray..which was a bogus line, since they didn't have me wear one...ARGH! And I didn't interfere with their care of Tevan. I just sat quietly, sent positive vibes to my son and my being in there helped me and him, I know. That was just the start of the fiasco little did we know.

They used the highly potent drug Ketamine to sedate Tevan. Which doens't put him to sleep, or "under". It essentially drugs him up, so that he is in some sort of trance, eyes open, but completely unresponsive. What a creepy thing to witness. For those of you that don't know, Ketamine is also a street drug used for date rape (special K), and is a hallucinogenic drug, much like LSD!!!!!! Yeah, and they used it on my 6 year old! Well, Tevan went on to have a bad reaction to Ketamine, and it is now listed as a known allergy for him. For the next night, for about 9 hours, Tevan had phsycotic hallucinations. He had brief periods of lucidity and calm, but the worst ones were at the start of the evening with thrashing, violent behavior, scared for his life, seeing things that weren't there and all that entails a "bad trip". It continued for many weeks, though they did get progressively less intense, lasted less time and became less frequent...thank goodness. Oh what drugs can do to our precious brains. This, of course, only further fueled my dislike of drugs and distrust of the medical field. But I digress, he is doing better, only experiencing some night terrors since then, and we can't wait for this arm to back in full swing again!

He has started Boy Scouts, and is a little Tiger Cub. He has his first "rainguter regata" with a boat that he and Casey made next week. He lost his first two teeth this summer, and already has his adult teeth coming in fast. The tooth fairy was quite generous with her payment of $1 per tooth. Much more than in my day of .25 per tooth! Luna was a little resistant to going to school in the beginning, but now can't wait til his next school day and play with all of his friends! He is at Old Mission Pres, not even 1 minute from our house and Tevan's Roesland Elementary..which is great..and saves us from helping the oil companies make even MORE money!

Speaking of buying gas...Casey is having fun driving his Mini, tho currently he is driving a replacement while his Mini gets updated with some racing stripes and some MORE horsepower! He is busy with InTouch and loves keeping himself current with his freelance business. He just traveled to San Francisco in August for the Flash Forward Conference and got very inspired while adding some more knowledge to his noggin.

Ziah is a mover at 8.5 mos, crawling super fast and pulling up to stand..he'll be walking before we know it. He has 4 teeth..but the upper two are hilarious with a little space in between! I am still teaching and working on my lactation clincial hours and enjoy all of that.

Casey and I just celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary and 15 years together! We went to Grog and Galley in Lees Summit on Lake Lotawana..what a gorgeous setting and fun night we had together. Both of us have been trying to stay fit. Casey with his frequenting the Powell Center gym and me with doing my Pilates and just taking up running. Getting outside and running is so much fun. Everyday I walk Tevan (with all the other boys in tow also) to school, and once we drop him off, the younger two go in the jogging stroller, and away I run. So that's been enjoyable for me.