Another week....

The weeks are just flying by, and it looks like once a week is as often as I'll be able to write in this journal for now.

We've had a pretty uneventful week, at least not much has happened out of the ordinary. Noah and Amaya have been battling a cold all week. It started last weekend with Noah, and just kept getting worse and worse. I kept him home from school on Tuesday, thinking it'd be good to give him a couple of extra days to bounce back. Wednesday, I called to get him in to see his pediatrician, only to find out that there was only one pediatrician in town for the entire week, and they were booked up until this week. So, I took him in to see a doctor in urgent care Wednesday afternoon. The chest x-ray didn't show any pneumonia, so they figured it was just a viral illness and gave him some stronger cough medicine so he could get some sleep at night. By the next day, Noah was feeling better, but Amaya started running a fever and coughing. We ended up using his cough medicine for Amaya, and are hoping she starts to feel better soon. It's just that "crud" we all seem to get in the fall and winter. Low grade fever, runny nose, nagging cough. I hate it when they are sick though, especially when they are too little to understand why they feel so bad, yet big enough to really put up a fight when you try to give them medicine!! I swear, it either takes Pavan AND me to hold Amaya down (or Noah for that matter...), or I have to literally pin them down with my legs while I pry their mouths open for the medicine. I try to buy the chewable tablets whenever possible, because those taste really good and they will take them with no argument.....but sometimes you have to go with the real deal, and when it tastes horrible (like this prescription cough medicine) I can't really blame them for putting up a fight!

The weather has been pretty chilly, and we've actually had frost a few mornings this week. We've had a lot of rain the past week, too, and the combination of the rain and the cooler weather have our trees changing colors quickly. It's absolutely beautiful, and they are saying we'll hit peak colors in 2 weeks. I'd like to get the kids out in the woods and get some pictures of them while the leaves are changing. On Friday, Amaya and Noah and I went for a walk in the woods to look for deer and check out the pretty trees. We did see one deer, who ran off as soon as she heard us (of course), and the little ones had a great time collecting the bright red leaves that had fallen off the maple trees. They were so cute though, walking down the trails and holding hands. When Amaya would trip over a branch and fall down, Noah would bend over and help her up. It was very sweet.

Pavan has been on call all weekend, and he's been super busy. He went into to work early yesterday morning, and didn't come home until 5. Then he had to go back into the hospital overnight. This morning he kept Amaya while we went to church, and he actually took her to the hospital with him while he rounded. His patients, and the nurses, love playing with Noah and Amaya when he takes them along. He brought her back home around 11, and his pager was going off nonstop. He was scheduled to do a case around 1230, and he had several patients coming into the ER that he has to see too, so no telling when he'll make it home. At least he's able to take next weekend off, we are so excited for our weekend in Minneapolis!

We had our first appointment with the therapist who is going to be helping us develop a parenting plan for Noah. She is wonderful!! Pavan and I met with her alone this time, but next time we will take Noah with us. He will be going once a week for now, starting a week from Wednesday. Everyone there was so nice, and the secretary is actually going to work late on the days we come to help look after Amaya and Anna while Kindra is at youth group. The only bad thing is that our insurance company refuses to pay for this particular therapist, even though she's the only one in the area who works with children this young. Bummer. Oh well, it's money well spent if it helps us understand Noah better.

Speaking of Noah, he's had a great week. No problems at school, and he went into his own Sunday school class with no problems this week. Yea! Anna has been working on her gymnastics routine a lot, they sent home papers with the balance beam and floor routines that she will be doing at competition, and she's been working on those. I couldn't believe how much better she's gotten now that she's going two nights aweek! Can you believe the end of her balance beam routine has her doing a cartwheel on the beam?? Wow. Kindra has been working much harder on her schoolwork, and having us double check her work ever since she got a shocking bad grade on a math assignment. The first month of school almost seems wasted, it seems to take them that long to get back into the hang of things! And Amaya is just her usual sweet self, she's such a joy! She had to miss her gym ventures class this week because of Noah being sick, but hopefully she'll be feeling better and get to go this week. I'll try to take a few pictures of her there to share with you all.

Better get going. I am attending a class at church from 330 until 5, Kindra has a friend over to help her babysit. They've been working on plans for the Halloween party, and are out on the trails looking for our missing kitty. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that subject. Our littlest kitty, Macy, is missing. She hasn't been home in three days, and we are very worried about her. Kindra is just sick about the whole thing, she can hardly eat and she's been bursting out in tears all weekend. It's been pretty sad. She seems better now that her friend is over, but it's hard to know what to say to anyone when they lose something so important to them.

More later-

Rebecca

Weekend

Back to Monday again, the weeks just fly by! We're getting excited for our trip to Minneapolis for Amaya's birthday, especially since we have family coming to spend the weekend with us at Mall of America. This might end up being an annual event, it's perfect timing to go shopping for fall/winter clothes for the kids, and a nice chance to get away before the snow flies! Although we're already thinking ahead to another trip to Minneapolis after the holidays. Once the first of the year rolls around, and we come down off that holiday high, winter seems to drag on and on. A few days away from it all will be a nice break at that point!

We had a busy, but fun, weekend. After school Friday, Kindra watched Amaya and Anna so I could go to Wal-Mart. Noah really isn't any trouble to take with me, as long as Amaya isn't along. She certainly brings out the worst in him, and the two of them take great pleasure in ganging up on me! Anyway...Kindra had plans to go to the high school football game Friday night, I was planning on dropping her off at the game and then picking her up when it was over. Well Pavan got home in time, and insisted that I go to the game too. Some of the women he works with were going to the game, and one of them has a daughter who is a friend of Anna's. He didn't have to tell me twice, I love highschool football games. So Kindra hung out with her friends during the game, Anna hung out with her friend, and I got to sit and socialize with other women. It was nice, even if we did lose the game!

Saturday morning Anna had her first flag football practice from 1030 until noon. It was drizzling, but that didn't stop them from practicing! The flag football teams are coached by the high school varsity coach, and some of the players, which is really neat. I stood there for the 30 minute parent meeting while Kindra Noah and Amaya watched a movie in the car. I was pretty wet by the time we headed out to do some shopping while Anna was at practice! We were planning to go to the farmer's market, but decided that would be a wash out so headed to The Pool People (we met Pavan there, he was rounding on his patients) to look at air hockey tables. We were pleasantly surprised when we got there, because the nicest air hockey table they had turned out tobe half the cost we were anticipating, and they had one in stock so we loaded it into Pavan's truck and headed back to pick up Anna.

Saturday afternoon Pavan and I put the air hockey table together (after calling a neighbor over to help carry it downstairs!), and the girls managed to invite several friends over to play. Kindra had three girls over, Anna had one girl over...so we had eight kids running around. Crazy, but at that point they were all entertaining each other so it wasn't bad. The thing is, Saturday night was teen night at the YMCA from 7-11PM. I had offered to drive a couple of Kindra's friends to teen night, and pick them up when it was over. No sense in all of us parents having to stay up late to go get the kids. So we ended up with two girls here who were going to go to teen night with Kindra and then stay the night at our house afterwards. Then Pavan asked Dave across the street to come over and help carry the air hockey table downstairs, so Haley came over to hang out too. She wasn't able to go to teen night, but stayed here until we left for the YMCA. We just dropped her off at home on our way into town.

Anna's friend went home around 6, but on our way into town we picked up another friends of hers, who came back to our house and played until we headed back into town at 11 to pick up the girls. Boy, by the time we got home around 1130, I was exhausted! I warned the girls against waking me up (bad idea!) and reminded them we had to be at church at 9AM, so they might want to reconsider staying up until 3AM!

Ok, so Sunday morning we dropped one of Kindra's friends off at home, then headed to church. Pavan and Amaya stayed at home for a little quality time together. Once again, Noah decided to go to church with me instead of going to his Sunday school class. Once again, about 15 minutes into it, he decided his class wasn't so bad after all! After church we came home to change and pick up Pavan and Amaya and headed downtown to the Taste of Northwoods event. It was a lot of fun! About 10 different restaurants from town had booths set up in the downtown area. You bought tickets for 50 cents each, and then went around to the booths and bought samples of their food for anything from 1 to 5 tickets. We ate so much food, it was all so delicious! The weather was beautiful for the event, although it stormed the night before and started raining again about an hour after it was over. After we'd eaten our fill, we headed to Shop Ko to buy some toddler beds we'd seen in their ad. We bought a Dora one for Amaya, and a race car one for Noah. Then we headed to WalMart to look at the Halloween decorations, to start stocking up one some for Kindra's big Halloween party. We had three carts....I went grocery shopping while the others looked through the Halloween items. I found a Dora sheet, pillow case, and blanket for Amaya. Noah already had a pillow case and a blanket at home with cars and trucks all over them, but I was able to find him a little fitted sheet too. So we loaded our three cart loads into the Suburban (which was sooo full by then) and headed home to get the beds together. Between the two of us, it didn't take too terribly long....but then we had to take the crib apart too! By the time Amaya woke up from her nap, we had both beds together and decorated. She was so excited!

Ok, well that's enough about our weekend. Busy busy busy. Fun too though. Needless to day, we're just hanging out in our PJs today!

Gymnastics tonight, gym ventures tomorrow morning, dance tomorrow night, youth group Wednesday, gymnastics Thursday. OH and school pictures for Noah and Anna Thursday. We've been practicing smiles with Noah, but no telling what sort of silly grin he'll actually end up flashing for the camera!

More later,

Rebecca

Dance Class

Noah had his first dance class last night, and it went great! The two pictures were taken in the studio where he has his classes (Anna also has her classes in this upstairs studio), and were taken after his class was over. The first one is him by the doors that lead out onto a big deck. In the background you can see the river, and railroad tracks, which Noah thinks is really cool. The second one is him by the ballet bars toward the back of the room.

As soon as the girls got home from school yesterday, they had to hurry and change so we could leave for dance. They get home at 3:45 and we had to leave by 4. Noah fell asleep on the way to dance, so I was worried he'd be in a terrible mood since I had to wake him up when we got there. Fortunately, he was fine. He went right into the main studio with all the other dancers, so we sat down in the waiting room. A few minutes later, his entire class came walking out of the main studio, holding onto one another like a choo choo train (which I'm sure he thought was pretty cool too) and walked upstairs to the studio where they have class. He was having so much fun he didn't even look at us! We waiting until we were sure they'd all made it up the stairs and into the studio, and then followed them up to wait upstairs. They have a great room upstairs with chairs and a TV with DVD player. We'd brought a movie for Amaya to watch. They also have a one way mirror so we can see into the dance room but the children can't see us, so we sat down and watched his entire class. He did such a good job, and had a great time. After class he kept talking about everything he learned, and was really excited about the whole experience.

I know a lot of people think it's strange that we signed our son up for dance class, but for Noah (and all kids really) any positive and sucessful social experience he has, gets him one step closer to the ultimate goal of him being able to handle himself in any social situation. We are so proud of him!

The girls also had their first dance classes of the year last night, they had a great time. Today Anna has her first choir practice after school, Kindra and Anna have dentist appointments this afternoon, and Kindrahas youth group tonight. Her first time in youth group, since it starts with 6th graders.

One more thing....my cousin, and closest friend, Cindy had an emergency appendectomy two nights ago. Lord knows she already has enough going on in her life without this added situation, so she can use all the prayers and help we can send her way!

More later,

Rebecca

Weekend

It's been a good weekend around our house. The weather has been a little on the cool side, with highs in the 50s on Saturday and in the 60s on Sunday. Saturday morning Pavan woke up early, so he made some coffee and went outside. It was only 34 degrees when he went out! And to think we were in the 100 degree temperatures in Fort Worth only a few weeks ago.

Saturday morning we all went to Merrill for the open house at Dorinda's Dance Studio. The girls had both outgrown all of their dance shoes from last year, so we labeled them to sell at the studio ( a really cool thing that Dorinda lets you do, you leave the shoes there with your contact info and the price you're asking, they mail you the money when the shoes sell) and went down to get fitted for new shoes. Of course Noah is taking tap this year, so he was fitted for little tap shoes too. They had a program where we got his first pair of dance shoes for free if we paid for the first 3 months of dance in advance, so we took advantage of that. He was really excited to see the dance studio where he will have his class. It's a brand new studio they just opened in the upstairs of the building, and it has a huge sliding glass door and windows that look out onto a lake and some railroad tracks, which Noah thought was really cool. He greeted Dorinda nicely, and was upset when we left without having a dance class!

This morning (Sunday) we got up and went to church. Pavan stayed home with Amaya, the two of them had some errands to run at Home Depot. This was Noah's first week in his new Sunday school class. Before now, he'd been in the toddler room of the nursery, but now he's in an actual class. He was pretty nervous at first, and decided to go into the church service with me instead of his class. Well, he quickly realized how boring the church service was for a three year old, so he decided to go into his class. When we got in there, they were having a snack, so he thought maybe Sunday school was ok after all!

This afternoon we had a cookout, one of our last of the year. Kindra's friend, Kirsten came over after church and spent the day with us. It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny, and cool enough that we neededjackets. Kindra and Kirsten went out on the kayaks, and Noah and Amaya had a great time getting absolutely filthy, and catching frogs. At one point Amaya was following a frog, trying to catch it, and she ended up following it out into the lake!! According to Pavan, she walked right out into the water and then sat down!! Anna just had a good time playing with everyone.

Tomorrow our busy week starts, with gymnastics tomorrow night for Anna. Tuesday we have Gym Ventures class in the morning and dance classes for all the children in the evening, Wednesday Kindra has youth group at the church, Thursday Anna has gymnastics again, and Friday we will just sit down and take a deep breath!

Have a great week!

Rebecca

Noah's first day of preschool

Well today was Noah's first day of preschool at Nativity. He was fine when I dropped him off, a huge improvement from his first day of summer school!! But that was the point of summer school, to get him used to the school environment so he would succeed at Nativity. All of the other children were sitting at a table using Play Doh but of course he didn't like that idea, so when I left he was across the room playing with a toy concrete mixer (truck). I hope he does ok, if he has a good day at school I told him we would go to the park and visit Sugar Loaf and Butterscotch (the trains at the museum in Pioneer Park).

Yesterday afternoon I was looking through Noah's paperwork from preschool, and suddenly realized that he would be attending Mass on Thursdays just like Anna. AND he would have to adhere to the Mass dress code on those days, which means no blue jeans and no shorts. (They can only wear shorts to school in August and September, May and June anyway) I had just been cleaning out Noah and Amaya's dressers to get rid of winter clothes they'd outgrown and sorting through their new clothes to see what I needed to buy each of them. So I knew right off that Noah didn't have any clothes that would be appropriate for Mass. Darn.

So we had an early supper, and then me and Noah set off to do some shopping. First we went to Shop Ko, but didn't find anything in his size there. So we headed to JC Penney, and hit jackpot. It took a lot of searching, but I found him lots of cute clothes that aren't too casual, and aren't too fancy. After all, I can't send him to school in a suit and have him ruin it on the playground! The difficult thing is that he's a strange in-between size right now. Some of the clothes came from the toddler department, size 5T. And some came from the big boy department, size 4. I had to try everything on him, which was rather difficult....especially since he was more interested in performing tricks for himself in the mirror instead of trying on clothes!! The good thing is that he now has several outfits for this fall/winter, so I won't have to spend so much time looking for clothes for him when we go to Mall of America.

Not much else going on around here. Anna absolutely loves her new school, and it turns out she knows a lot of kids in her class from the YMCA or from Newbold (the school she and Kindra attended the year we moved here, it closed after that year and the kids were all scattered to other schools....a lot of them chose to go to Nativity Catholic or the Lutheran school at that point.) Kindra is loving school too, she had her High Arts class for the first time yesterday and loves her teacher. She's made a new friend named Jo (a girl) and it turns out Jo is in her High Arts class too, which made it even better. Kindra loves Chorus too, and will have 4 concerts throughout the year. I'll let you know when those will be as soon as I know.

I told the girls I would take them to school three days/week, on the days I have to take Noah to school. That way they wouldn't have to get up so early to catch the bus at 640 (they moved it up another 10 minutes!). They both declined my offer!!! I was shocked, but apparently they have such a good time visiting with friends on the bus, that they don't want to miss out.

More later,

Rebecca

Catching up on pictures

I wanted to catch up on all the pictures I haven't put on here yet, from the last week and a half. First are pictures of our cook out on top of the scenic mountain in Big Spring. Pictures of Pavan's family, pictures of our time in Madison, and a few of Kindra and Anna's first days of school. I will take more tomorrow when Noah heads to school for his first day.

We are happy to be home after our vacation. It was very hectic getting back around 4PM on Monday, then trying to hurry and get everything put away and ready for school the next morning. I think we will all just crash this weekend and hopefully get caught up on some rest.

Kindra is enjoying middle school, and actually loves her hour long bus ride to and from school because several of her friends ride the bus with her. So, basically it's just social hour. I had offered to drive her to school on the days Noah has preschool so she wouldn't have to get up so early, but she said she'd rather ride the bus. Go figure.

Today is Anna's first day of school. We went in for orientation yesterday, and after she met her teacher and realized a good friend of hers sits right beside her, she wasn't nervous anymore. She also signed up for the Nativity Catholic School Choir, which consists of children from 2nd-8th grade. They practice every Wednesday after school, and lead the music for mass once each month. She's excited about it, but I have to say I was surprised when she jumped at the opportunity.

Our hectic school year schedule starts next week. Anna has gymnastics on Monday night, Amaya has a Gym Ventures class on Tuesday mornings at the YMCA, all the children (Kindra Anna and Noah) have dance in Merrill on Tuesday night, Anna has choir on Wednesday afternoon, Kindra has youth group on Wednesday nights,  Anna has gymnastics on Thursday night, Anna has football on Saturday mornings, and we have church/Sunday school on Sunday mornings. Kindra is still deciding whether she's going to sign up for the basketball traveling team, and she will be attending Girls Night Out every other Thursday evening (it's a program through the YMCA for girls in 6th grade and up), and monthly Teen Nights at the YMCA (7-11PM on a Saturday night, co-ed.....they can eat, watch movies, swim, play basketball, etc.).  I need to buy a planner so we can keep up with everything! It's crazy but it's not too bad really. I have all day to get things done around the house, and all but dance class is right here in Rhinelander.

Better go, Noah slept in his own bed for the past two nights so we are taking a trip to the park before nap time.

Rebecca