Our Crazy Life!

We've been busy doing lots of exciting things including adding a new member to our family! Get ready for a picture overloaded post!

We attended a family craft night at Spencer's school.

Spencer had his last weekend of hockey and once again it was moms vs kids. Spencer was telling me before the game that he was going to check me into the boards and how they were going to win. I had a harder time keeping up with him. I was determined though to block him a few times.

Spencer likes to cheer when he scores.

I attempted a goal on a shoot out.

Busted checking my phone on the ice. Oooops! Hello my name is Heidi and I'm addicted to my phone.

After the game they handed out medals to all the players.

The white team and their moms.

We celebrated Grandpa's birthday with brunch. The kids kept themselves entertained with their electronics.

Easton is Grandpa's boy!

He was even excited to dress like Grandpa.

You always have lots of helpers when you want to open presents.

Spencer's friend from school got a pet pig. We got to stop by and visit her one day.

Then Reagan came with us for a play date.

They picked McDonald's for dinner...

Then headed to the rink for open skating. Reagan also plays hockey. No wonder why he likes her so much!

The littlest boys spent the night at Grandma's. While they were there they had a visitor. Timber who belongs to some cousins of mine was staying there.

Spencer had his Dr. appointment to follow up with some of the test results we had gotten from his eye exam. Since we had time to kill that morning we decided to stop and get a donut for breakfast.

Once a month it's Culver's night for Spencer's school. The teachers serve the food to the tables and money is raised for the school.

Our school mascot even showed up!

His tooth was soooo wiggly and driving me crazy. I finally asked him if I could pull it. So while we waited in the doctor's office I pulled it right out!

Spencer convinced me to allow him to take his tooth to school to show his teacher and friends. He's never actually lost a tooth on his own so I couldn't say no. He got a box for it from the nurse. His teacher even taped it shut for the bus ride home. But when I opened the door after school for Spencer he was in tears. He had lost his tooth on the bus. I told him not to worry the tooth fairy would find it on the bus. We printed the picture of him smiling with the missing tooth, he wrote a letter to the tooth fairy and we hung in on his window for her to see.

It worked cause there was money in his pocket when he woke up!

We got Spencer's test evaluations back and we also had his parent teacher conferences. Basically the testing we had done at the eye vision center showed that Spencer has trouble tracking from left to right and does a lot of reversals. They gave him the diagnosis of dyslexia. I feel like now I've had time to digest all of the info. At first I was really bummed. I kept hoping and thinking that some day it would just click for Spencer but now I'm dealing with the realization that it may always be a struggle for him. His teacher has been a great support and is going to help point us in the right direction for having him tested at school to make sure he qualifies and is getting all the help he needs while at school. We also followed up with his primary doctor and he is suggesting that we do some further testing with a physiologist who will look more at the neuro side of things to make sure we aren't dealing with something else and to confirm the diagnosis. We will make sure he is getting the help he needs we just want to make sure we know exactly what that is! He's supposed to start some vision therapy at the start of April to help strengthen his eyes for tracking. The rest of his report from parent teacher conferences were great. His teacher truly seems to care about him. He's doing well in math and socially is right where he needs to be. This is a picture of spencer and his teacher.

There's an addiction going on in this house and it's to the game Blokus. We even had a pizza and drinks night with our neighbors to play against them. The 3 that are addicted: Spencer, Ryan and myself!

I caught Ryan playing one night in the kitchen. He looks stressed!

I often wonder what Easton does in his room after we put the boys to bed. This night he dressed up in full baseball uniform, but the black straps around his feet are his soccer shinguards!

Poor Nolan! His face was looking rough there for awhile. He fell and cut his nose when he was home with me. Later I got a text from Ryan saying he fell again into the chair and then cut his lip.

He tends to fall asleep in crazy ways like Spencer! Here he is on the couch, legs crossed on the coffee table.

I love the things Nolan says sometimes. Today he pointed out this soap was garbage soap. Meaning it had the recycle triangles on it. When he was on a walk with Ryan tonight, they were holding hands and he told Ryan, "I love your wedding ring." What a sweetie!

I like to build legos with the boys. Today we were working on making the skyscrappers like the ones they see when we go visit Ryan at work.

Theirs had treasure boxes though on the top with people in them…. kind of creepy!

Nolan finds the towel in front of our shower very comfortable. You can find him laying there while Ryan or I get ready. He likes to pretend he's a baby and is snuggly and cute.

But he is cute! He also LOVES playing with his hockey guys everywhere!

Or sleeping with them...

Getting Nolan to take a good picture with a nice smile is becoming impossible! We're starting to get the sense that he's going to be the family clown!

Something I try to avoid! Taking the boys to Target when I know I need to wait for a prescription. I will admit my kids struggle behaving at times in public. You can stare at me all that you want…. I'm doing my best.

Nolan should nap from time to time but refuses. Then this happens at 4:00 pm when he should be napping!

I had stuff to do so Ryan took the boys bowling. The boys got sprite and Ryan said he had to double-dip the beers to deal with them trying to bowl this particular day!

They also helped him work the penalty box at the rink for volunteering. Which they ate donuts while he worked.

My cousin Tracy and her husband Matt (who is the manager at the store) welcomed their first baby. A boy named Parker.

I thought I would take the boys skiing. It was my first time taking the two older ones by myself. We had friends who were also going to be out on the hill and Patrick, Finley and my dad were also going to meet us there. It was one of those morning where you could tell Easton got up on the wrong side of the bed. He wanted nothing to do with listening to anyone. He was supposed to be following my dad but made a turn by himself for the chair lift. He didn't actually get on because Uncle Patrick spotted him while he was in line and stopped him. I'd hate to think what might have happened if he had. After that he was done skiing and we sat inside while the others finished up.

It must have been an off day because I even found Spencer doing this a few times.

I had a meeting in Eau Claire this week. Afterwards Grandma met me at the mall. We let the boys do some bowling while we did some shopping.

Later we rented Big Hero 6 and cuddle in Grandma and Grandpa's basement to watch it.

I was invited by some friends to tag along with them to the Dells. Ryan couldn't take off of work and Grandpa agreed to watch Nolan. So the two older boys and I were off. I was nervous how they would do/listen while we were gone. They were great in the car.

We had fun in the room. We also had a scary moment when the guy from below came ponding on our door to yell at us for apparently being too loud. It was 2:00 in the afternoon. Needless to say he scared the boys and we ended up switching rooms so he couldn't find us again.

The boys had a blast hanging out with their friends. Look at that evil eye from Easton.

I had fun spending time with the moms.

I just had to surrender to the craziness of the weekend.

If the boys wanted to do slides we did slides and we spent a lot of time swimming in the wave pool. They did great listening by the pool area.

Each night Spencer was asleep within minutes.

Not this one he could go all night!

They can be good helpers when they want to be.

They tried the rope course but it was a little to high and scary for them.

So they tried the laser maze. Here is Spencer in the laser room trying to get to the big lights on the wall. We also all played laser tag. I had fun chasing the boys around in the dark.

By the end of the couple of days I was tired and ready to head home.

We stopped for lunch at the boys favorite place in the Dells. Buffalo Phil's... where they deliver your food on a train. However, everything they do turns into a hockey game!

We wished Auntie Heather a Happy Birthday this week!

Grandma Nancy came up to visit for Ryan's birthday. We also had Spencer's birthday party on Saturday. I bet you can't tell the theme of Spencer's birthday party…

He won't turn 7 until the end of the month but we will be gone for his actual birthday. He decided he wanted a baseball birthday at the batting cage in Hudson.

Were able to allow the kids time to hit in two batting cages. All the kids took a turn hitting on the battng tee or the pitching machine.

Ryan and our neighbor Chris also pitched to the kids.

Nolan loved hitting the baseballs.

If they weren't hitting they were playing games. Even Grandma and Grandpa played some games.

What's a birthday party without cake and ice cream. People think boys are gross but actually it was the girls table that was doing all the burping!

Finally the part every birthday kid waits for. Present time!

For awhile now Spencer has wanted a pet or dog or something. He talks about Zoey a lot. He misses her. The other two talk about her but not as much. I will admit I was also missing having a pet. Ryan and I had talked a little bit about it back and forth and I finally told him to reach out to the breeder and see if hey had any litters that were on their way. We saw this in his journal one night, here's the best translation we can give you:
I love my mom and dad and my brothers. I love you Zoey. I wish she was alive. I love you Zoey. Keep Zoey safe. I had fun with you. I had fun playing fetch with you. I love when you slept in my room.

We found out he had a litter of puppies that would be ready to go in a week. That happened quicker then I was expecting. So with only a week to prepare we had to quickly go out and get dog stuff.

After Spencer's birthday party it was finally time to go pick up our puppy. We brought the boys with so they could see all of the puppies. They also got to help pick out which one we were going to bring home.

The puppies were so cute and so little! We had to choose between three girls.

John (the breeder) showed us how he had been working with the puppies some on fetching a pigeon. He used a real live pigeon! I could have done without that demonstration!

This is one of Josie's sisters. We almost picked her and then John told us she had a lot of spunk and I wasn't so sure I wanted a dog with a ton of spunk. I was looking for a more mellow puppy!