It's a BOY!!!

We'd like to introduce you to

Scout!

Derek finally convinced me to let him bring home a dog. His boss had paid more money than we could afford for him. He was supposed to be a great hunting dog, but he ended up being gun shy. So instead of searching for whatever you just shot, he cowers behind you. That's okay, he makes for a great family dog. He is already trained a little bit which makes me feel a lot less nervous about taking him in. He isn't hyper which is fabulous for the girls. The girls already love him. They are still a little worried about going up to him, but I am sure they will adjust. They love to watch him, even watching him out the window. Our neighbor dog doesn't care for him and he makes it known, by barking for 45 minutes straight at a time. Scout, however does care in the slightest that there is a dog over the fence. He seems really content and has a great personality. I can feel the love growing already!

Holiday Weekend

Brooke had her parent teacher conference last Wednesday. She did so awesome, her teacher gave her extra homework. Seriously, Brooke wanted more to do. Her teacher has her and a few other classmates competing to see who can write to 1,000 first. Brooke just started over the weekend, and is already almost to 200. As soon as we walk in the door from school everyday, she imediately asks if we can do homework. As long as she wants to do it, I'll take it. I know it will be short lived and in a few years, I will be fighting tooth and nail to get her to do it, let alone WANT to do it.
Brooke gets a lot of homework in my opinion. I am sure a lot of kids don't finish the work. But, it's been okay with me because I don't have to come up with extras for her. It usually keeps her pretty busy. She loves learning to read. She is on a 'C' reading level which is the highest level anyone is on in her class. I think there are 3 or 4 others who are on a 'C' as well. Probably the same ones who are competing to write to 1,000.
Brooke got the highest marks on every subject. The teacher had no suggestions on anything she really needs to work on. The class is taking a journey where they have to bring along cars. We are help her make her car out of a giant box. Thank goodness we have tons of empty moving boxes lying around! Derek is going to help her finish it this weekend. I will have to take some pictures of her with it.

On Saturday, we went to Derek's Mom's house to celebrate Carter's first birthday. Carter is Jesse's fiance's(Amanda)  littlest boy (out of 4 boys!). He is such a cute, happy little thing!

I didn't get very many good pictures. This was the best of them. But you can tell how happy he is digging in!
Amanda's sisters came and boy did they entertain DaKoda. They had fun playing ring around the rosies and doing jumping jacks. They were both really great with her.

After the party, Tiffany asked if she could spend the night at our house. They had all decided to sleep on the floor, but DaKoda bailed at the last minute. Brooke and Tiffany made it though. The next day (Sunday) we went to church. We are teaching the Sunbeams right now and we love it. DaKoda is in our class. There are actually 2 Sunbeam classes because there are so many. Somehow we lucked out and there are only 5 on our list, the other class has 8. And most of the other class are active! Thankfully, the other teacher came along with these kids from Nursery, so she knows them all really well and doesn't mind the big class. We haven't met one of the kids in our class yet. So it's been DaKoda and Brielle (who lives around the corner from us, since we are the only house on our block, I say they are our next door neighbors). The first week both boys Kelton and Daxdan were there, but since then only one or the other has come. So the last 2 weeks, we've only had 3 kids in our class! It's so laid back. DaKoda is the only one who acts up. Seriously. We had one boy fall asleep! We really are loving being the teachers in this class. It's been really fun so far.

After church, I was exhausted from cleaning up from Tiffany and mostly Brooke. DaKoda did a little, but she seemed a little clingy, and wasn't with the girls as much. They made such a mess! And neither one would help me clean. I was so upset, I told Derek no more sleepovers for a little while. Not unless they help clean up.

Yesterday (Monday), was a holiday, so again Brooke didn't have school. A 5 day weekend! I've been wanting to badly to take the girls to see Tangled. I asked Derek if he cared not seeing it with us, and he said it was fine, it wasn't his kind of movie. He doesn't mind watching kids movies, or even Disney ones, but he knew this was more of a girls movie. I surprised the girls and told them to go get ready to leave. They were already a little shocked seeing that it was basically DaKoda's naptime. (Well, 'quiet time' anyway. Who are we kidding, she really only falls asleep in there like every 2-3 days. But, I still need some quiet time! She usually just lays down and looks at books for about an hour or so.) We got in the car and headed off. We were only on the freeway for a mile when it came to a dead stop. What should have been a 15 minute drive, took us 45!! I had planned it so that we could be early, get our treats, find good seats, etc. But instead, we literally ran through the parking lot, through the mall, bought tickets right at the time the show should be starting, got frustrated when it seemed to take forever to buy popcorn, and ended up sitting in the front section. Which I totally dislike. But I decided to make the best of it. The girls didn't complain about it, but I think if we didn't have to crane our necks, DaKoda would have made it the entire movie without getting up. The first hour, yep, the entire first hour, both the girls sat there without moving. Really DaKoda made it up till the last 20 minutes. I had to keep telling her to whisper, but other than that, she really did fantatic! I told both of them thank you for behaving so wonderfully when Mommy was so stressed out about getting there on time. Tangled was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. The girls both said they loved it too. Definetly buying that one when it comes out on DVD. After the movie, we drove over to Sam's Club to buy some more chicken nuggets for the girls. DaKoda begged for bottled water. This girl could drink water and milk forever and be content. I love it! We go through so much milk it's unreal. I think there are families of 7-8 people who drink less milk than we do. Brooke is the only one who doesn't care all that much for it, but she still takes it at breakfast. We bought a few other things and then grabbed some chinese takeout for dinner. It was a really great day, and weekend.

Sledding with Grandpa

Today we went sledding with Grandpa Wentz. The girls had a lot of fun being all bundled up. We had them in pants, then snow pants, long sleve shirts, jackets, and coats. Then mittens that Grandpa bought them last year, hats and the hats on their coats over that. Yeah, DaKoda was 'sveating'. (Sweating in her words.)

 I know it's a little hard to tell in these pictures, but I thought they were fun to share. Here's Derek with DaKoda.

 This is Denise riding on the tube. Tiffany is trying to help DaKoda walk back up the hill. DaKoda kept going up and down the hill. She scooted on her bum, she walked, she ran, she even rolled down that hill. And she still had more energy!!

 Here's DaKoda sledding down the hill all by herself.

Brooke also went down all by herself. Brave girls!

 Derek and Brooke going down the hill. DaKoda was crawling back up the hill this time.

 Both girls wanted to be carried back up the hill. At this point, they were both getting sort of tired. I loved how Derek was the awesome Dad who carried both of them. Until Alex came to rescue him and took the tubes the rest of the way. Derek still carried both the girls the rest of the way up!

 

Afterwards, we went back to Grandpa's house where Debbie made us yummy hot cocoa, and an awesome spaghetti dinner. We watched an episode of Clean House: the messiest home in the country. It was a lot of fun sitting around chatting and warming up. The kids all played down stairs.

When we left, I asked Derek if we could run to Target to see if their toys clearance had hit 75% off yet. It hadn't, but there wasn't anything I would have bought even at 90% off. Sad selection this year. The horrible part was while I walking down one of the aisles, all of a sudden I couldn't see very well. I got a migraine right there in the middle of Target. It was the fastest hitting migraine I've ever had. But probably the most short lived too. It only lasted just over an hour. Although I still feel a little dizzy and not quite right, at least the migraine is gone. Now, I am off to finalize my lesson for tomorrow. We are teaching the Sunbeams! Yes- the class that DaKoda is in. Last week, there were only 4 kids, and one of them fell asleep. I'm not sure yet if class being during the most of their naptimes is a good thing or a bad thing yet. But last week, it was definetly a good thing. Hopefully tomorrow will be the same!

Children's Art Festival

On Friday we went to the Springville Art Museum's Children's Art Festival. It was pretty fun. It rained on us for about 20 minutes out of the almost 2 hours that we were there, so it wasn't too bad. The rain did make it a little hard to complete some of the projects, but what can you do? The project in the picture below was supposed to end up looking like a stained glass thing. I didn't think it looked like stained glass, but it was a pretty cool idea. They took coffee filters, cut them like snowflakes, then colored on them with washable markers. Then glued them to the black paper, and then spray them a lot with water. Wish I'd taken a picture of the final product because some of the other projects leaked glue onto this one, making it not so pretty anymore.

The girls also got to have their faces painted. Forgive Brooke's hair. It had just finished raining and she'd had her hood up. What a mess! Brooke had to be convinced to have a heart on her cheek instead of the spider she wanted. Crazy girl hates spiders, but that's always what she chooses to have painted on her face. The girl that was doing the face painting, was like, don't you want a heart instead? It would be so cute. Brooke went for it.

DaKoda chose a 'yellow butterfly'. She was very specific. It had to be yellow. She goes through phases with her favorite color. One week pink, one week purple, one week yellow. She's funny.

Then they also got to get an airbrushed tattoo. They were pretty excited about that. Brooke chose a flower, DaKoda chose a ladybug. Those tattoo's stayed on longer than the face painting. I was really impressed.

We also made paper airplanes, kites, Father's Day cards, paper mache on balloons, and other fun art projects. After they finished a few projects, they were able to go pick a prize. They each picked a Crayola white board crayon. I'd never seen such a thing. It was really cool. We came home and played with them right away. The girls had a blast showing Daddy all the things they made that day. They also got to show Grandpa and Grandma on Skype that night. I guess maybe I should do more art projects with them. They completely enjoyed the entire day.

Summer Movie #2

This weeks movie was Charlotte's Web. The live one with Dakota Fanning. I'd seen it before, but the girls hadn't. We had so much fun with this movie. The Crowshaw's came, which meant that Brooke got to sit near her friend. I think that may have made a difference with her. We still had one potty break which was okay with me. DaKoda had about 5 minutes in the middle where she wanted to stand up and she was trying to poke her head through the seats of the row in front of us. I don't think they were bothered by it, but I was. So I fought to make her sit down. After that, it wasn't bad at all. Charlotte's Web, the movie and the book have both always been one I quite enjoy. I would be happy if the rest of the summer movies went as well as this weeks did.