Random August post

Megan loves watermelon!

Sarah did a science experiment where she froze a post it note in a cup of water. Here's the post it note when it came out of the freezer.

After being removed from the ice.

Matthew and Megan enjoyed making a bunch of floam figures one morning. Matthew wanted it captured for posterity.

Must have a picture of this creation!

Everyone continues enjoying the magnetic blocks. Here we have a car, a garage and something else--maybe a plane.

Cute Matthew picture.

I was quite sick for a bit, even running a fever for a couple of days. When the Relief Society President called and heard my frog voice, she decided to bring over dinner for us, which was really nice. The chicken noodle soup was made with alphabet noodles and so, at U's suggestion, everyone spelled their name with noodles.

Megan included her age.

Matthew also included his age.

It's a bit tough to see, but Matthew also found everyone else's age and put them at various locations around his plate. See if you can find them all!

Nice story time reading about great white sharks. (Sarah has this magazine on the deadliest sharks that all the kids have been really into lately.)

All of Megan:)

Peanut Challenge

Matthew had a peanut challenge a week ago. It was a weird experience to say the least. First the good news: they had two massage chairs in the room so Matthew and I enjoyed getting massages :) That was actually really good because I was still recovering from being sick and was really tired. Being able to sit in such a comfortable chair and be massaged was nice!

The actual challenge was weird. Matthew started having some reactions after his third dose (a little lip swelling). Every dose after that, he had some sort of reaction--lip swelling, saying his tummy hurt, tongue tingled, throat was scratchy (complete with itching his neck a lot). Every time we brought the concerns up to the doctor or nurse, they checked his breathing and said it sounded good so we should continue. When he failed his milk challenge back in 2013, we stopped as soon as there was any reaction and that's what I was expecting this time as well. After another dose, he started sneezing a lot, his nose was runny and he kept rubbing his eyes. I really wasn't comfortable with continuing the challenge--even if he "passed" I wouldn't have wanted to give him peanut anyhow since I felt like he was having reactions. The doctor/nurse's opinion was that these symptoms were from the environment, not the peanut butter. However, we'd been in the room for a few hours at that point and the symptoms just started after a dose of peanut butter so I'm not convinced that's the case. Plus he'd had other symptoms before that. Anyhow, we stopped the challenge. Matthew didn't want to continue (he was all for stopping after the third dose when he had the first lip swelling) and I was not comfortable continuing. So we'll continue to avoid peanut for now.

Olympic Highlights

If you know much about our family, you probably know that we don't watch very much TV.  Every two years though, something strange happens.  We turn on the television almost every day for two weeks!  What is this?  The Olympics!

We all really enjoyed watching the Olympic coverage this year.  Megan and Matthew loved cheering for "Arizona" whenever they saw a US flag (They were told what it was but they thought it was funny).  The favorite sports were:

Swimming
When we first started watching swimming, Megan got really excited since she knew the names of the strokes.  We talked a lot about the swimmers' techniques and how fast they swim.

Track
The kids set up a race track that ran in front of the TV.  They would set new courses all the time and show us how fast they could go.  We did have to ask them to reroute a couple times.

Gymnastics
While we watched the women's floor exercises, Matthew and Megan were doing their own floor show.  Matthew even told us "You don't have to watch the screen.  Watch us, we're going to do the same things they do."

We were sad to say goodbye to the Olympics for another two years but we were glad that we could watch them!

Mom and Dad by Matthew

 Awhile ago, Matthew asked if he could take pictures of dad and mom. For some reason, we weren't able to do them at the time, but he never forgot. This was months ago. So when he asked to take our pictures this week, we figured we should do it. U helped him set up the tripod (that was an important part of the project) and then he took the pictures both inside and outside. Enjoy!

Primary Talk

Megan had a talk in Primary today.  She did a great job.  Here is her talk:

Our bodies are a temple. We should put good food in our bodies.

(Holds up picture of Daniel and friends refusing the king's food.)

This is a story about Daniel and his friends who were asked to eat unhealthy food.  The king's servant said to eat the food but the boys said "No." They said they would eat vegetables and drink water and the servant could check on them after ten days.  So he waited for the ten days and Daniel and his friends were healthier than the others. Then the king's servant gave good food to all of the boys.  Daniel and his friends became the king's servants and they were also strong followers of God.

Good food makes us healthy and strong like Heavenly Father.  I'm glad that we can have healthy food. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Musical Instrument Museum

We went to the Musical Instrument Museum. We enjoy going there and seeing all the exhibits of music and dancing from around the world. And we enjoy the hands on room where we can try out lots of instruments ourselves. 

At the photo booth.

Our photo strip.

Rocking the banjos.

The kids all got to make microphones. (It was Elvis weekend and this was one of the associated activities.)

Singing to the music. They loved using their microphones!

Megan strumming the harp.

Sarah actually enjoyed playing the drums. She also enjoyed looking annoyed in photos.

Megan playing the bells.

Me with the harp.

Drummer Matthew.

Us on top of the world.

Can I put a bug in your ear?

If someone says that to you, your answer should be an unequivocal "No!"

How do we know that?  Because it happened to Me! (Not me as in myself, Me as in my better half :) )

Me came up and said that it felt like she had a bug in her ear.  I went and got the ottoscope and sure enough, there was a little bug sitting on her eardrum.  we tried placing a blade of grass in her ear to encourage it to climb out but it was sitting in there happy as can be.

We aren't sure what type it was but I thought it looked like a little spider.  the pictures we tried to take didn't turn out.  Eventually, we just had her lie down and hope that the bug would find his way out.  Thankfully he did.

"Mom!  Why did you get a bug in your ear?"

At least she was smiling.