October

The rain is here.  Puddle stomping is now a daily activity.

Sierra's pumpkin patch field trip.  She was so proud to have Jaxon there.

Sierra received a compassion award this month during a school assembly.

Hoping he can pour out the seeds rather than use his hands to scrape them out.

Silly girl loves this part of the process

So much concentration.  She did almost the whole thing by herself this year.

 

Parade at school.  Sierra wanted Jaxon to join her.

Waiting to serve candy at GG's house

Love these moments soooooo much!

 The rain is here.  The good news: our new roof is working beautifully.  The bad news: the rain is here.  Despite my attitude towards the rain, the kids have been enjoying the puddles.  Jaxon begs to go jumping first thing in the morning, but I usually make him wait until after lunch.  We come back to the house and I pour water out of his boots.  My kids are true Oregonians.  I'm not sure who they got that from.  It definitely wasn't me.

Another busy month is in the books.  We managed to stay healthy which is hard to come by this time of year.  Sierra continues to love school and I have started volunteering for about 3 hours once a week again.  Jaxon loves it because he gets a "drop off day".  He gets to go stay at my parents house while I work at the school and hang out with my dad.  My mom has bible study or swimming on Tuesdays, but my dad makes sure to be there to hang out with his little buddy.  When I come to pick him up they are busy building Legos or Jaxon is jumping on the trampoline in time with dad's piano music.  It's pretty great.

This year I've been doing lots of prep work for Sierra's teacher such as stapling packets, getting different art projects ready, as well as copying papers.  But I also spend about 40 minutes helping with math.  There is such a huge difference in abilities in class and it's so hard to get all of the kids the help they need.  Some need extra help to meet core requirements, while others needs challenged.  So when I'm there the class is usually split into two groups and I help one group while the teacher takes the other.  Hats off to teachers.  It's so hard to make sure that all of the students get challenged.

We had a quick field trip to the pumpkin patch in late October.  The pumpkin patch is only a few miles from the school so Jaxon and I met up with Sierra's class at the patch.  It's always so sweet to see how excited she is to see us there and how proud she is to have Jaxon by her side.  She is such a wonderful big sister.  We also went to the school on Halloween to watch the whole Elementary school parade through the gym with their costumes on.  At one point Sierra decided to take Jaxon with her as they walked though a classroom.  I thought he would love it but apparently one of the kids they walked by had a scary costume and Jaxon lost it.  He realized he couldn't find me and panicked.  I felt so bad.  I have to admit I was kind of surprised at the creepiness of some of the Elementary level kids costumes.  Yikes.

This year without a nap to contend with, we got an early start to our Trick-or-Treating.  We walked around downtown Corvallis to get some candy and then visited my Grandma's neighborhood.  The kids both love getting candy but they are actually more excited about getting visitors and handing out candy at my Grandmas house.  We never get Trick-or-Treaters where we live, so they love to go to GG's house on Halloween.  Jaxon would get so excited when the doorbell would ring.  We sure love that my Grandma lives close and that we get to see her all the time.  It is such a special privilege.

September

Trying to keep this guy busy!  We walked to the the covered bridge.

Well, Jaxon ran.  I walked.

Jaxon saved up his own money for the first time to buy a new toy.

Sierra thought that if she wore glasses, she could trick Cloe into snuggling with her like she does with mommy :)

Love to see her nose in a book!

Finley Refuge exploration

September is here!  We are getting back into the swing of things with school.  Sierra is loving it and excelling.  It makes my mama heart proud.  She is reading above her grade level and loves math.  But above all else, I am just so happy to see her enjoy school.  I'm struggling with the realization that next year both of the kids will be in school.  I have to remind myself of how worried I was about Sierra starting school, and how well Kindergarten went for her.  But my worries about Jaxon starting school are so different.  Now it's a state mandate for full days of Kinder.  I still completely disagree that a full day of school is good for a 5 year old.  So we will see what tricks I can pull out of my sleeve.

Jaxon and I have stayed busy enjoying the weather.  We've went for walks, he's such a great grocery shopping buddy, likes to help me bake, and loves to dig up dirt clods in the garden while I'm pulling weeds.  He's grown up this summer too and has learned to say calmer when he gets frustrated about not getting his way, is a very helpful boy around the house, and is getting better at sounding out and reading words.  We continue to work on ways to calm down when he gets scared about a loud noise, but have realized that if we know that something is going to be loud, and we bring ear plugs he does great and we can usually end up taking them out.   But a surprise high pitch noise can still scare him to death.  We've talked a lot about thinking about happy or silly things when he gets scared like that, and I can see his little mind trying to do that, but he trembles and says that it really does hurt his ears.  After being to the regular Dr, an ENT, and an allergist about his ears I'm not really sure what other avenue to approach other than working with him on desensitization.

Jaxon ended up with a really bad virus to start the month off.  He had been acting off in the afternoons for quite some time and running a slight temperature at night for a week or so.  I wondered if giving up his naps was just hard on his body.  We worked all summer on going all day without a nap because Sierra's school gets out at 2:50 which is right in the middle of his normal nap time.  He definitely had days he struggled, and some days he still did nap for a bit.  Bedtime always went well because he was so exhausted he'd fall right to sleep.  But I was starting to worry it was missing his nap that was causing him to act unwell until all of a sudden he woke up with a high fever one moring.  He acted normal other than that.  So I took him to his primary care Dr and she ended up running some blood tests to make sure we weren't missing things since he was having random fevers.  He was a super hero for the blood draw!  The man explained what was going to happen, Jaxon didn't move a muscle, and watching the needle go in.  He whimpered slightly, but by then it was over. The phlebotomist breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I was so proud.

All of his blood results came back great and after checking him for strep (that test didn't go quite as well) we were sent home.  The likely culprit: a virus.  I'm so sick of that word.  Over the next few days he refused to eat, had extremely high temps, and complained of stomach pain.  At one point he did throw up, but this did not present itself at all like a stomach bug.  After 4 days of high temps and having to use tylonol and ib profin back to back to get them down, he ended up with a 105 fever on my birthday.  We went to the immediate care and they sent us directly to the ER.  By the time we got to our room the meds were working and his temp was down.  He felt a little better and was kind of being a goof.  The Dr's asked if we had mistaken his temp and ended up doing a culture again.  $1400 and 4 hours later we got a negative strep result and were sent home again with the v word.  He ended up with fevers up to 104 and 105 for 6 days total before he recovered.  It was awful.  But he did slowly get back to his old self.  Sierra ended up getting a mild cold after he was sick, but nothing like what he had.  Praise the LORD.  Nothing scares me more than having a sick child with a high temp for days on end.

Jesse took a week off at the beginning of the month to put a new metal roof on our house.  Even though our home is under 10 years old we've been having issues with the shingles.  Due to living under trees we get a lot of moss and we weren't sure if that was the problem or not, but decided to upgrade to metal before we started having mold or dry rot problems.  Both of our dad's helped a lot, but Jesse did a lot of work on his own too.  It also happened to be the week that Jaxon was so sick, so it was nice to have him home to check in on us every once in a while.  It took the fear of being alone out of the scenario.  He worked hard and the roof turned out beautifully.  It's so nice to have a husband can fix absolutely anything.

Now we are ready for the rain.  Wait.  Our house is ready for the rain.  I am never ready!

August

Jaxon adores rides.

Sierra like the carousel, and that's about it.

Corvallis Knights Game!

Dance camp

Happy birthday, Daddy!

So many plums this year!  The kids loves to help pick them.

Snack time!

Sierra spends all day every day making forts/messes

Two of a kind

Beautiful grape year!  They are so delicious.

Part of the garden

This is what 14 years looks like :)  It's our anniversary this month.

It's August!  It was a very busy month.  We always spend several days enjoying the fair.  Jaxon absolutely loves the rides, while Sierra prefers to stay close to the ground, not move too fast, or go around in circles....... so she likes the slide and some of the silly houses that you can walk through.  Jaxon loves to go up high, around fast, and whatever he is big enough to go on.  We tried a ride at one point that looked slow enough for Sierra.  It did go up in the air though, so it took her a while to talk herself into going with Jaxon and I.  Oops.  She panicked the second the ride started and I ended up singing Amazing Grace the whole ride to keep her calm.  After that she stuck to the slide and did go on the Carousel several times.  She's afraid of very few things but gets motion sick easily and does not like heights.  Jaxon is afraid of most things, but likes the crazy rides.  Seriously.  It's so hard to figure out what goes on in a kiddos mind.

After a long day of rides, we told the kids that they could do one more and we would head home.  They decided on a fun house and both headed in.  On the way out, we all watched as Jaxon lost his piece of gum on the floor of the house, bent over, picked it up, and put it BACK in his mouth.  I.Almost.Died.  Of all of the places to do that, he picks the floor of a fair ride.  This child doesn't like to very many regular foods but will pick a piece of gum up off of the floor and put it back in his mouth.  I stood there with my mouth wide open.  I don't even think I said a word.  I was going through scenarios in my mind of him coming down with Hepatitis, Ecoli, or testing positive for meth.  I honestly felt my hair turning gray, or at the very least my brain was short circuiting.  Good grief.  The next day both kids came down with colds and we didn't go back to the fair.  And he is never going to have another piece of gum in a public place ever again.  Yuck.

We also got free tickets to another Corvallis Knights game this month and were able to stay for fireworks.  It was a long game but the kids had fun and we brought Jaxon's earplugs for the fireworks.  They put on a great show and we all enjoyed it.

Sierra spent her second year at dance camp this month as well.  They spend a week (3 hours a day) learning dance techniques of all kinds and some cheerleading.  The girls learn a routine and usually perform at one of the high school football games.  She loves it. She likes me to stay and watch which can be a challenge when Jaxon is with me :)

School started the last week of August.  This year was absolutely a breeze.  Sierra has grown up so much this summer.  She has become more independent and is able to handle disappointment much better.  We have talked over and over about how important it is to do what you love even if it's different than what other people are doing.  I keep telling her that we were not made to be like everyone else, we were EACH made special and different.  She was excited to go to school this year and when we dropped her off on the first day she gave me a quick hug and sat down at her desk without a second glance.  I was amazed, proud, and relieved.  Hopefully school continues to go well for her and hopefully I can keep Jaxon busy without his favorite playmate.  Time will tell.