Cupcakes, Anyone?

The other day while Dax and Arden were at school, Cora and I were cleaning up the playroom. Well, I was cleaning up the playroom, and Cora was playing. She wanted me to put the apron on her, so I knew she was going to cook something using the little red kitchen. She proceeded to take about 10 full minutes to make me some beautiful cupcakes. She stirred things, she poured things, she put things into the pretend microwave and pushed buttons while making beeping noises (maybe the oven would have been a better choice for cupcakes, but pretty close). At the end of all of this diligent preparation, we have:
CUPCAKES! She made me "eat" them over and over, giggling all the way. They were the most delicious fake cupcakes I have ever tasted, even if they were made in the microwave.

One Last Day of Summer

Was yesterday not theee most beautiful day? Even though next week is October and summer is officially over according to everyone's calendar, we decided to ignore the calendar and have ourselves one last day of summer. So, instead of staying home and mowing the lawn and cleaning up the yard like responsible people do in the fall, we took the wave runners out to Willard like fun summertime people! And oooooohhh it was so nice to feel that warm sunshine and those upper-80s temps. (Especially since I know that before long the snow will be a-flyin'!) It. Was. Heavenly. Here is me, soaking up as much sun as possible:

The water was nice and smooth and sparkly and beautiful (well, as beautiful as the water gets at Willard Bay) and the kids all had a ride or two on the wave runners. Cora and Arden were pretty brave and liked to go "fast," but Dax still gets a little nervous if the speedometer gets much higher than 20 mph. All the kids had tons of fun just playing on the "beach" and building sandcastles with one of their favorite people, my sister Val:

All of us adults got lots of turns on the wave runners and today my wave running muscles are pretty sore. We stayed all afternoon and the weather was pretty much as close to as perfect as it gets. It. Was. Heavenly. (Except for the part where Dax dropped a whole bag of crackers into the lake.) My solar batteries are fully charged.

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Ahhhh, summer....how I will miss you!!!!

Tiny Tots Soccer

Dax started Tiny Tots Soccer a couple of weeks ago.  Somehow the stars aligned and his team was assigned the color GREEN (his fAvOrItE color).  His team has only one girl, and so the team chose the name "Green Dinosaurs."  How excited was my boy about that? 

He has had two official games.  Here he is right before they started the very first game:

His coach (who is awesome by the way) told him to stand right there and wait for the ball to be kicked.  That is just what Dax did...even after the game started and most of the other kids (well, the ones that weren't crying), were all running down the field after the ball.  Dax dutifully stood in his spot.  Here are some of Dax's key statistics from his first two games:

• Number of times falling down:  about 27 (that is Dax's foot on the ball, and the rest of Daxton falling down)

• Number of times crying about falling down:  Only one (YAY!)
• Number of times knocking over the net:  Five
• Number of times getting tangled in the net after knocking it over:  One (see picture below)

• Number of orange slices eaten during halftime of his last game:  14

• Number of kids tackled:  7 or so (sorry everyone)

• Number of time roaring like a dinosaur at the other team (or at his own team):  149
• Number of goals scored:  1 (YAAAAY Dax!)
• Number of times that the ball got stuck in the middle of a clump of kids and Dax solved the problem by picking up the ball with his hands and throwing it down the field:  2
• Number of times he didn't stop kicking the ball just because he had left the field of play:  Three
• Number of smiles on Daxton's face and mine:  A zillion

If you are ever looking for some laughs on a Saturday morning, come and watch a Tiny Tots soccer game.  HILARIOUS.

Grandpa

Today was my Grandpa Haun's funeral. I heard some stories about Grandpa that I hadn't heard before, and it was nice to see how many people loved him. The chapel was full! Grandpa was such a social person, and could strike up a conversation with anyone. As part of the program, all of the great-grandkids sang "Families Can Be Together Forever." Arden and Dax did a GREAT job, I was so proud! (Cora stood up there and looked cute, but I am not sure if she actually sang or not. Proud anyway!) During the viewing that was held before the funeral, I noticed that there was a little book next to the guestbook that said, "Share a memory of Grandpa." Unfortunately I was too busy taking kids to the bathroom and making sure they weren't getting into trouble to actually write anything in the book, but it got me thinking about my favorite memories of him.

I think my favorite memory of Grandpa is also one of my earliest memories of him. When I was four years old, I broke my leg badly in a car accident. After I was finally released from the hospital, I was in a cast that covered the entire lower half of my body. Needless to say, I couldn't walk and had to be in a wheelchair for quite a while. Grandma and Grandpa Haun had come over to our house for a visit, and Grandpa took me for a walk outside. I had been stuck inside for such a long time, first in the hospital and then just in my house. I remember what a beautiful sunny day it was, and how wonderful it felt just to be outside with the sun on my hair and Grandpa pushing me down the sidewalk. A bird was singing nearby, the same few notes over and over. I don't know the name of the bird that sings this song, but Grandpa told me that the bird was singing, "Chrys-tie is bee-you-tee-ful." It made me feel special and happy that he thought I was beautiful when I had that ugly cast on my legs. To this day whenever I hear those few notes from whatever bird sings that little song, I smile and think of Grandpa.

He will be missed.

Daxton's First Day of Preschool

Sorry I am so slow posting this...my grandpa has been in the hospital for the last three weeks or so. He went in for an operation and was supposed to be out in 5-7 days, but he ran into a complication, and then another one, and then another one. Things just got worse and worse and very long story short, this weekend the decision was made at Grandpa's request to take him off of oxygen and remove his feeding tube. I got to take the kids in to say goodbye to him on Friday night before they took him off of the oxygen and everything, and although it was hard, it was a good experience. He was pretty out of it, but he smiled at all of us and said "Hi!" to Cora. He slept all day yesterday, but would still respond by moving or mumbling a little if I held his hand or spoke to him. Today when I went to visit him after church he was pretty unresponsive and just sleeping heavily. It shouldn't be too long now, I hope for his sake. He is ready to go, even if the rest of us aren't ready for him to leave.

Anyway....back to the fun stuff.

Can I tell you how proud I am of this little man?

He had his first day of preschool on Tuesday. Dax being Dax, I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. I took him to see the preschool a few days before it started, and there are soooo many fun toys there! I was worried that he wouldn't want to stop playing with them long enough to sit down and listen to anything the teacher said. I was worried that since he didn't know his teacher very well yet that he might be too afraid to tell her that he had to use the potty until it was too late. I was worried that he might tackle a kid or two or three. But (at least for the first week), Dax has been a preschool angel! Yay! His teacher said he was one of the best listeners in the class and he told me he went potty twice on Thursday. (Really? twice in two hours? I guess I should cut down on the juice at breakfast).

I got him his very first backpack a couple of weeks ago and he has been wearing it EVERYWHERE. He could not wait until that first day of preschool and asked about it all the time. Here he is, striking a supermodel pose to show you his backpack on his first official day (I just want squeeeeze him, he is so cute).

When I dropped Dax off on his first day he wasn't anxious or nervous at all. He was just excited to go to preschool and play with the dinosaurs and be a big boy. It probably helped that he watched Arden go to preschool for two years and saw her coming home with little treats and art projects and all sorts of fun stuff. The only problem he had that first morning is that he didn't really want to hang his backpack up on the little hangers outside the classroom. He wanted to just wear it the whole time. Preschool = backpack. Why should he take the backpack off when he was FINALLY actually at preschool?? After he saw a couple of the other kids hang theirs up, he was a little more willing. Here is my boy with his proud mommy, right before I drove him to school:

I was a little worried that Cora would feel bad that she was now the only one stuck at home with boring old me. Luckily on that first day, my sister Val came over and Cora was actually pretty happy to have 100% of Val's attention to herself, for probably the first time EVER. On Thursday I decided I would take advantage of this only-one-kid thing and do some grocery shopping. Cora, as usual, wanted to use a race car cart at the local supermarket. We usually use those race car carts (which are humongous and impossible to steer) since there are two steering wheels and two seats, one for Dax and one for Cora.

Cora got into the cart, and then looked at the empty seat next to her and said, "Where's Daxton?" I reminded her that we had just dropped him off at preschool. "Oh." she said, looking a little sad. She asked about him a couple more times while we were shopping. I think she missed him. It just isn't as fun to make car noises and turn your steering wheel back and forth if Dax isn't there to make noises with you and fight with you over whose steering wheel is whose. They have never really been away from each other for long, so it made me a little bit sad that they have to grow up and spend some time apart.

Here is Cora, giving her big brother a good-luck-at-preschool hug:

And here is my baby boy, opening the door to a big new world:

Soon, he will be the one in kindergarten.

But hopefully not too soon.