Birthday Fun and getting ready for Halloween

A couple of weeks ago we had a fun filled Sunday. Our neighbor Saif had his 3 year old birthday party in the park. Mickey Mouse was invited and brought a ton of fun filled activities with him. Here is Axel doing the Limbo. 

 And the Hockey Pokey.....

 And Phoenix climbing through a long tunnel.....

 And good old fashion fun, from when I was a kid.

 This party was over the top and also had the same huge slide that Rishaan had at his party last year. As you can see the kids had a blast.

 Last weekend was the pumpkin walk.

This is Axel's school's biggest fun raiser. They have tents, games, face painting and more. A true fun filled day. We headed over Axel's soccer game and Pheeny's nap for an afternoon of fun. Here is Axel and his friend Ezra.

 Axel has weekly homework. He is suppose to spread it out over the course of 4 days. He has math, reading, vocabulary practice and then something different each week, like working on maps. Here he is working on his vocabulary words. He has multiple ways he can practice them. Here he is practicing typing them on the computer.

 Phoenix wants to work on homework too. Here daddy is helping her with a fun sticker project in order to satisfy her need to do what Axel is doing.

Last Sunday Axel got to play on the Tee ball field again. One of the parents was nice enough to take a team photo and individual photos of the kids before the game started. Fall ball is very low key and doesn't offer pictures like in the Spring. I think it is nice that they will have a photo of their team so they can remember their teammates. 

 

Phoenix having a ball watching Axel play as usual. 

After the game Phoenix wanted to hit. I love this picture of Phoenix hitting off the tee and Axel fielding the ball for her. 

Last Sunday night Annika came over to say goodbye. She read them several books. She was home for a week for fall break. She spent Wednesday afternoon with the kiddos just because she wanted to. The kids loved spending time with her. They are looking forward to her return for Christmas break. 

Yesterday, Friday, Axel had his Halloween party at school. After school we prepared the pumpkins for carving. 

 Axel did all of the hard work preparing Pheeny's and his pumpkin.

 Here is the picture of the cat and happy face he chose.

 After baseball practice and when daddy was home we carved the pumpkins. I forgot to take a picture of the finished project so I have to make sure to capture that tonight before we head out trick or treating.

 This morning Axel had a birthday party before his soccer game. His classmate, Kabir, turned 7. He had his party at Jack Fischer Park. They had a blast playing several games in teams. One was a scavenger hunt type game. His team found 32 cards with Axel finding nearly 10 of the cards. The opposing team found 17. This is the first birthday party that has been low key without paid entertainment that was really well run and fun for the kids. It seems most families rather just pay for entertainment rather than try to entertain the kids with games like today. Hopefully we can do something similar this year for Axel's birthday.

Phoenix had a blast too, but she always does at Jack Fischer Park.

We are gearing up for a fun filled night so check back for another post of our Halloween Fun!

Pumpkin Patch, Louis turns 13, and Baby Brother

Last Sunday we had an impromptu party in the park. Axel invited a friend over, Kedar, and Daddy emailed the other Axel's parents and then some neighborhood grandchildren were visiting and before we knew it there were 8 children having fun in the park. Towards the end of the fun Daddy suggested a trail walk. Kedar, Axel S., Axel R., Phoenix and Rattler headed up the walk to the magic tree. The other kiddos and parents trailed behind. All of the families had a blast and said we should try to do this again.

It has been hot again the past week. Phoenix not only woke up with a mild cold on Monday, she came home with a heat rash from daycare on Tuesday. She was so overheated that she threw up on the way to Axel's soccer practice. We headed home and took a nice cold bath and before we knew it she was happily eating some dinner. 

I was able to get her to wear her hair up for almost 24 hours as I convinced her it would help the heat rash go away. By Thursday she was done with the pony tail, but luckily, the heat rash still managed to disappear by Friday. 

On Thursday Keith and I had our big ultrasound appointment. I have been very nervous about being pregnant over the past 4+ months as we found out on April 1st that our last little one had passed during that big ultrasound. With this one, at 12 weeks we received the news from the NIPT placental chromosome that we are having a healthy boy, but it was still hard for me to really believe. Now at 19 weeks I am feeling incredibly excited and blessed as if I just got back the positive pregnancy test on Thursday. Both Axel and Phoenix are extremely excited about their baby brother growing in mommy's belly. It is a good thing that I finally feel comfortable sharing the amazing news because I don't know how much longer I could hide my growing stomach.

On Friday I finally had the opportunity to volunteer at Axel's school. I was able to help out during computer lab and read the class a book during Project Cornerstone. Project Cornerstone is an anti-bullying campaign that runs monthly during the school year. The parents come in to the classroom to read a book and discuss tough topics like teasing and teach the kiddos different positive ways to respond.  Axel was very excited to have me there and I was very happy to be there.

Friday was also Louis' birthday. Our "little man" turned 13 years old! We celebrated by making sure he was able to enjoy some nice chicken liver. Today he got a nice bath and was able to enjoy some more chicken fat and meat.

This afternoon we took the kiddos to the pumpkin patch. We have been waiting for the weather to cool down a bit before going. Today's high was only 75 so it was finally cool enough to go.
We had so much fun as you can see from the pictures below.

 Pheeny checking out the baby chicks.

 Watching kids in life size air balls doing stunts on the water.

 Daddy's idea! Pumpkins to match everyone's outfit.

 Love this picture!

 Silly Daddy!

 Being Silly!

 Tough Axel!

 Watch out!

 Silly Axel laughing about the warts on this pumpkin.

In other big news, we have finally received all of Axel's results from all of the tests that we had done to figure out what is going on with his stomach. I believe I mentioned his throwing up over the past couple of months as well as his stomach pain and loose stools. Fortunately, but unfortunately, everything for the most part is good except that he is still suffering from outdoor and food allergies. The big news is that he is likely lactose intolerant. We are in the process of coming up with a plan on what foods to eliminate and if we want to put him back on daily antihistamine for his severe outdoor allergies. It is very hard to take away foods that he has been enjoying, but seeing his stomach get so bad where he hardly eats for days, has stomach pain, vomits and has diarrhea is just not worth it to me. So the food elimination starts again......

First Soccer Win!

Two weeks has flown by. Here is a cute picture of daddy and the kiddos skyping with Grandma Sonia and Grandpa Bruce. 

 We have been making it to Jack Fisher park every other Friday the past month. Here is a cute picture of Phoenix pushing Curious George in the swing.

 Easton was there and he brought his two "lovies", which are both curious George, in a little stroller. Both kiddos had fun taking care of and playing with George.

 The big excitement in our house was putting up the Halloween decorations. We started a bit on October 1st and finished by the 3rd. Here is a cute picture of my little vampires.

 Last Sunday Axel playing on the T-ball field per the request of the team they were playing. I had no idea the T-ball field was so small. The kids had a great time trying to hit it over the fence. One of the boys on the team was very close!

 The boys had a great game and got a ton of outs. One inning the boys had 4 outs (since they are not suppose to count we keep playing until the opposing team runs through their line up). Because they played so well they all got to pile up on Coach Keith.

 So much fun!

 The other coach not only wanted to play on the T-ball field, but he was also on a time crunch which meant the game was very short. Because it was a short we stayed and continued to play. Phoenix hit through an entire bucket of balls (about 30+). The two Axel's got a lot of fielding practice. Phoenix has an amazing natural swing. At practice a few days ago she also begged to join the practice and hit balls. I took her to the outfield so she could hit through a bucket before the boys needed the balls for their hitting practice.

 After the game last week I was able to capture a cute photo of Axel and Phoenix. Axel R. is also in the picture. I might see if I can crop him out and blow up this photo because both kids are smiling and look so good :)

 Earlier this week Phoenix found the costumes I got down from the attic. She went through and put them all on and looked at herself in the mirror. She decided the lion was for big kids.

 Woody fit her almost perfectly.

 But Spot the dog was by far the most fun to have on. It was really hard getting the costume off of her  in order to eat dinner and lots of tears were shed. I am not sure if Spot will win her vote for Halloween night, but this costume was hours of fun on this night.

 On Friday this week after dropping Axel off at school Phoenix and I had a leisure walk home and then read books while swinging. She is such a book lover like Axel is/was. When I finally convinced her to get off the swing we then took our weekly trip to the library to get more books!

We couldn't stay long because we were awaiting the arrival of the beautiful Amish table that I ordered this summer. It is absolutely beautiful. I still can't believe that I took the plunge, but Keith and I are super happy with the quality of it. This these table and chairs are sure to last a few generations. 

 The delivery men finished just in time for Phoenix and I to pick up Axel from school. Here Axel is with an awesome creation that he and his TK reading buddy build together earlier in the week. Him and Brody had the biggest three dimensional structure out of the entire 1st grade. He said it was because him and Brody used such great team work.

 After we picked up Axel we then headed to the dentist. Here is our growing Axel.

 Phoenix had her first check up. She was very hesitant but ended up doing really well.

 Yesterday the Orange Crush won their first soccer game. It was also the first game that they scored. Here is Axel running to Coach Keith to give him a big hug. You can see how excited Axel and the team were. Liam ended up scoring not only the first goal, but he scored a second goal to really help seal their first win.

 The boys really worked hard. Our Axel got an "A" for effort for really trying. Our big goal each game is that he tries and has fun. He did both yesterday!

This morning when I got home from my jog and found the kids doing this.....Axel was teaching Phoenix how to build one of his Lego sets. He would find the piece and show her where it goes and then she would put it in place. I was so extremely proud of both of them. Axel for being so loving and patient and Phoenix for being listening and following directions so well. 

I was excited to see that they successfully built the entire truck together, but as you can see from the picture Phoenix wanted nothing to do with being in the photo with Axel. She wanted to take a picture by herself. After an early lunch we headed to Axel's baseball game. Phoenix and I stayed for most of it but had to get home for nap time. Now we are just waiting for our sleeping beauty to awake in order to enjoy the rest of the day.