Caught in the act

We've often said that Michelle should have named the dog currently living at my house Houdini instead of Kilo. Kilo likes to take herself for walks. Without us. Evidently she wants to make friends with the other dogs on the street and has some kind of fascination with the neighbors yard. She climbs fences and digs. We bought a chain link kennel but she climbed over that and jumped down, so then we tried perimeter training. She didn't really care for that. We bought a wireless fence which works very well, except for when the battery dies or the kids change the settings. I wanted the kids to be able to play in the yard and I'd like to be able to landscape at some point. We were watching a house flipping show and on the show, the owners had Rottweilers. They had a steel dog run and we thought, what a great idea. She can't climb it, we'll put concrete around it so she can't dig out. She's escaped several times. First, she found that she could get the panels to move just enough so she could get her shoulders through. So we screwed the panels in place with self-tapping screws. I should say Jeremy did. He's spent hours on this thing. Then, one of the panels still had a gap, so Jeremy closed that up with some lumber. Then we found that she was pushing out the bottom of the gate, so we added a latch to the bottom. Then we found her doing this: You wouldn't think that she would be able to fit through a gap that's maybe 4 inches wide but she did it. Jeremy's moved the gate lower so we'll see what she figures out next.

Sariah's performance

The second grade had a performance before the end of school. Some of the classes put on a play, but it didn't work very well because the microphone wouldn't work. Sariah's class had a musical performance on recorders. She was very excited, especially since she got to keep the recorder and discovered that she could use her piano books to pay songs on it.
I think Sariah was wondering if we were there since she was bugging me about coming for a week. Here is the video of one of the songs. You can tell at the end JD was pretty excited about his sister being up there.

I'm still here

Ok, so I've been ignoring my blog. Not intentionally, I've just been busy. Michelle came to visit and we had a nice time at my ward picnic and had ice cream and cake at home. Ben and Owen had a nice time playing in the sand. They've gotten big and the definitely have very different personalities. I think Becca had a nice birthday. In addition to ice cream and cake at home, we also went to Stockton and had a little family party on Sunday. She got a little puppet from Grammi that the kids have been having a lot of fun with and some clothes, earrings and a necklace. I was glad we could have a little party with family. If we tried to do a friend party, I don't know how well I would handle that. Maybe next year we'll go somewhere and let her bring a friend. JD had to help Becca open presents.

Becca is a happy birthday girl. She loves being the center of attention and she was very excited about her pink cake.Here she is having some fun with the puppet. The kids played with it all the way home.

Proud little girl

Becca had the best day ever on Monday, according to her. We celebrated her "unbirthday", as she called it since my mom came to visit. Sunday we had ice cream and cupcakes. The cupcakes didn't last for long since the dog got sneaky and ate about 14 of them, wrappers and all. Stupid dog. She didn't even get sick. We went to John's Incredible Pizza on Monday, where Becca got a whoopie cushion as a prize. The kids blew it up and stuck it on the seat, for Jeremy to sit on. He popped it. She was devastated. After John's, we ran some errands with her. The first errand was to get her ears pierced. That was the birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa. She was so excited, she was literally hopping up and down with anticipation. That's when she told me it was the best day ever. I was very proud of her because she didn't cry one bit. Her eyes got real big, she swallowed and then she was ok. Then my mom took her to See's candy, which probably helped. After that went to Sam's Club and took her to the dollar store to let her pick out a replacement for the whoopie cushion, where she picked up some flip flops. And of course she had to tell everyone within shouting distance that she got her ears pierced. All was well.

Finally!

Sariah has spent quite a bit of time feeling sorry for herself because the other kids in her class have lost lots of teeth and she'd only lost one. Now two more are gone and as you can see, she's got a lovely smile. The other front tooth is loose now too. She's really proud of herself. And impatient to grow up.

JDs photo session

Jeremy pinned a sheet up on the wall and took some pics of JD since he doesn't get school pictures like the girls do. I think they turned out cute. JD really doesn't cooperate when we try to take his picture so I am quite impressed with Jeremy.

My little ragamuffins

Since the weather has been nice and the kids school is close, we've been walking to pick them up in the afternoon. It's part of my effort not to spend the evening in a semi-comatose state after being up since 3:00 am. Most days it works pretty well. We were walking home from school on Tuesday we were walking home from school and I noticed that not only did Becca have holes in the knees of her pants but the soles of her shoes were flapping on the ground. I had two thoughts. One was that the said articles of clothing were going into the trash when we got home and the other was, did Jeremy look at her at all when she got dressed that morning? Maybe it happened at school. Anyway, Becca wasn't too happy about getting rid of her clothes. She sat down in the middle of the sidewalk after I told her they were going in the trash and started to cry. Becca never stays upset for long though.

Sunday I was cleaning out my nightstand and found a pair of Sariah's capri pants. I don' t know why I put them in there but I noticed green marker stains on the back pockets, so I threw them in my garbage can. Monday night, I went into my room and noticed that somehow they made it back onto my bed. I think Sariah found them when she was dumping pencil shavings and rescued them. So back in the trash they went. By the way, the trash in my room has basically scrapbook trash in it, nothing gross. Yesterday when we were picking them up from school her Sariah's capri pants looked oddly familiar. Somehow they'd made it out of the trash again. And they had a hole in the knee. She claims that she found them in her drawer. When I gave her a hard time about the hole in the knee and the stain on the rear she started to cry. Her teacher, bless her heart said "It's ok Sariah, I didn't notice the marker and people pay to have holes in their clothes." I'm beginning to wonder what their teachers must think, sending my children to school in clothes that are falling apart.

We've been potty-training JD the past couple weeks. We went with Jeremy's mom's advice and let him run around the house commando. We've only had a couple of stinky mishaps. Unfortunately they were in his carpeted bedroom. That was last week. This week he has been doing very well, he told me yesterday he's a big boy. I've only lost my temper at him twice, so I'm proud of myself. I remember screaming at Becca when we were trying to potty train her. He seems to be doing well so I'm hoping that by the time we run out of the current box of diapers that he'll be good to go. They ought to last a while since we are only using them at night and sometimes at naptime.