A visit, walkathon, Jeff's home!

We are on the final stretch of Jeff's times gone, hooray! This week was also challenging for me, but Lisa had the idea for Nick to come help me on Thursday and it was so nice! We all went to the park and then I went on a 30 minute walk and listened to a great parenting podcast. Then he played with the kids while I showered and ran to the store. Just having that little break and another person around to help with the kids was so great for me. Being able to take a walk by myself and be uplifted and motivated was a game changer for me.

One thing I learned from the Child Whisperer Podcast was rather than being negative and often saying "no," reframe it to saying things the child can do. Tonight Ryan was trying to tie Lily up with a jump rope. Instead of saying, don't do that, I said, "you know what you can do? You can tie up the chair." He jumped at the chance. Then he was using a stick to fight a piece of furniture, and instead of saying stop that, I said, " you know what you can do? You can pretend that's a river and jump over it." He did that too. He threw some books down the stairs that we were supposed to read tougher and instead of yelling, I said, "why don't you hide the books from me, then I have to find it and I get to choose which book you'll read." He did it. So I learned that my energy doesn't get depleted so quickly when I'm trying to get him to stop doing all these things I don't want him to do. And then it's not so negative when I'm always saying, "don't do that, stop that, just come here." And just in general I'm trying to make the home a more positive place rather than give in to my fatigue and frustration. So I was very grateful for that break because so many good things came from it.

Ryan is doing great with his sight word books and creativity building things with magnets or blocks or legos. Lily loves doing her kindergarten book and just loves learning. And Max is really into puzzles right now, that's always what he wants to do. They are so fun and bright and sweet. I love when I'm feeling up and positive so I can enjoy their energy and nature rather than resisting the energy it takes to get through the day.

Ryan loves his towers. He made this tower the other day and was so proud. He told me, "I always wanted to make this in dreams." Today he put the characters up and loved it even more. He even accidentally knocked it down, but we had taken a picture and he put it back together based on the picture.

Ryan made this magnet creation and I told him it looks like something from Star Wars, but I couldn't think of what. Ryan realized it was a bunker from a library Star Wars book (with the ewoks). We couldn't find the book for him to show us, so we prayed and found it within a minute. I was impressed he remembered that word and knew exactly what I was talking about when I didn't even know. And he kept saying, "I can't believe I made a bunker!"

Max LOVES doing puzzles. And these two in the picture he is now a master at. He has about 7 he works through each time he sits down to do it, but some need varying degrees of help.  

Here is a talk lily wrote out to give us. She always insists on everyone being very quiet to listen to her. It's all about love and how hearts are a symbol of love and hearts mean love.

This is where I just found Ryan one night. He was sleeping on the couch but must have moved to the kitchen (since I turn a light on in the hallway there) to read his Lego magazine better.

Lily's walkathon on Friday. She did 9 laps in 25 min even though she hasn't been feeling great and didn't sleep well last night. It was rainy, but stopped enough for her class's run. I got to be a lap marker and put a tally on kid's shirts when they finished a lap.

Trying to stay warm with with rain (luckily we scooted them under the tent for the sound system)

Max found another 2 year old and they ate graham crackers together

Ryan loved giving high-fives to the kids running by. He said it helped them do better when he gave them the high-five. And he loved cheering on kids from the ward and of course Lily. Max talked a lot too later that day about how he got to give Lily a high-five. 

Another tower by Ryan. 

And a second one so he could hold some more people. 

And the best news of all was that Jeff came home! The kids were SO excited to see him and I was beside myself with excitement too. He got their gifts out right away and the boys loved their shorts and Lily her shirt. Jeff had gotten a Duke basketball for himself, but Max quickly took ownership of that souvenir and it's his favorite ball now.

Jeff won a selfie stick and the kids did a good job taking this photo!

Ryan and Max love that their shorts have pockets.  They both have worn these shorts several days in a row. They love having basketball shorts like their daddy. 

I watched the first session of general conference with the kids until Jeff came home. I had the kids color pictures of things they heard the speakers talk about, and at the end each picture colored would equal an m&m. Lily was the only one who did the first session, but after that Ryan was into it too. Lily missed some of the second session because she was out running some errands with Jeff, and she got VERY upset. I told her we could rewind it so we did. Jeff would sometimes tell them a song was about the temple for example, so they could color temple. Ryan was happy to color, but unless they said the actual word, Lily wouldn't color. And she had to actually hear them say it, so if I told her they just said Book of Mormon, but she missed it, she would not color. It worked great and we got so much more out of conference. They also drew pictures on the back to help them remember conference. 

During one of the choir numbers there were two organists. Ryan said, "look, there's two of them playing the organ and they're not even fighting!"

Working on their papers.  

Ryan lost interest in the first session and started climbing on boxes. 

Elder Andersen gave a talk that mentioned puzzles and showed some puzzle pieces. Since Max is obsessed with puzzles, he was very excited about this. Unfortunately, eventually the puzzle pieces went off the screen and he stopped talking about them, which made Max extremely upset. At the end of the talk puzzles came on the screen again and Max said excitedly, "he showed me the puzzles again!" Max was always interested when a picture was shown, especially Jesus. He also loved when the songs came on. He'd always come watch the choir.  

This is pretty much what Max did the whole time, play basketball. 

Some of the people have blue hair because Lily said they dyed it. 

Working hard on listening and coloring!

Lily drew a speaker at conference, then Jesus. Ryan drew a picture of our family, and then a Star Wars ship. Lily had another paper that she had combined from all of Saturday's sessions. I was so proud of them for listening!