Things that Have Made Me Smile Lately

 Fresh cuts for both me and baby,

 putting his own binky in and going back to sleep on his own, (Love it upside down!)

 Being big enough to bath in the kitchen sink,

 a big brother who loves to feed the baby (and does a darn good job of it)

 big sister who rocks the baby to sleep while mom is cleaning and completely unaware that the baby was even fussing, (I found her in the nursery just like this)

Lastly, cute cold weather gear! Even if the spuds are still in the ground, it was fun to pull out a cute hat and sweater!

Recent Happenings

Kallie: Just started 1st grade and is loving it! She has made a lot of new friends already and is thrilled to eat lunch at school. The first time they served mashed potatoes with an ice cream scoop she was ecstatic that she was getting ice cream for lunch until they dumped a load of gravy on it. We have giggled about that story a bunch lately! She is just so darn funny! Kallie is "in the pink" books at school which apparently is really cool and means she is reading good. She couldn't be more excited about that! Kallie also just started piano lessons and clogging and loves both. We are thrilled to have her around!!



Cole: Cole is always bursting with energy and attitude! He has a stubborn streak that is unmatched by anyone. (I am positive he gets this from my mom) I am teaching preschool again this year and Cole definitely keeps it challenging for me. Cole's favorite toys of late are his stick horses and stick cows, they go everywhere he goes! Cole asks about every day if he can go to the farm. He spent a little time in the tractor packing corn with my dad and some time with Cowboy Ryan herding cows and chopping corn. He and Ryan are buddies and I think it is so cute. I am sometimes sad that Weston doesn't work on the farm so Cole can't go with him every day, but am so grateful for Ryan and others that will tote Cole along! We sure love this boy!

Hagen: Growing like a weed this one is! I can't believe he is already 7 months old! He is such a gem though, in the last month he has really taken off and hit lots of milestones. He spent about a week rolling from one end of the house to the other, this phase ended as ubruptly as it started as he realized that he could scoot much quicker and without getting so dizzy! He scoots on his back and digs his heels in. He is fast though and shockingly hasn't rubbed ALL the hair off the back of his head. Hagen is sitting up really good and loves to be left alone with a bucket of toys. He eats like a pig; his favorites being sweet potatoes and bananas! Hagen laughs and giggles like crazy but his all time favorite activity is the jumper. He sits in it every morning for over an hour while I exercise and happily squeals the whole time. Almost without fail he will fall asleep when he is fully exhausted and satisfied with his workout. I have decided he may become a fitness extraordinaire because he usually spends another 30 or so minutes in the jumper while I am getting dinner on. That is an hour and a half of extreme exercise per day my friends!!! :)

Hagen's Prognosis

We took Hagen to Primary Children's last weekend and came home feeling very blessed and humble. We actually didn't really learn anything that we didn't already know, they confirmed he has Ocular Albinism and that he doesn't and won't ever see perfectly. However they were so positive and upbeat with us. We did learn though that it is really not as bad as it seemed to us at first. One of the doctors we saw was a funny brilliant little man who gave us lots of comfort and hope. He has studied Albinism for over 30 years and has only seen about 200 cases of ocular albinism, so it is really quite rare. He actually developed the testing for the condition and has written many articles on it. He awnsered most every question we had and spent a lot of one on one time with us.

We also learned that the type of Ocular Albinism that Hagen has will continue to improve and get better as he grows. His vision now is about 20/95 which is actually still in the normal range for kids his age. He will probably be prescribed glasses by age 2-3 to help "sharpen things up" but they won't fix the problem. He did tell us that he will never see in 3D but no big deal there, hopefully his vision will just improve enough that he will be mainstream in school and be able to drive someday. They also told us his nystagmus (shaky eyes) will probably diminish to the point that it is unnoticeable by his teenage years!

He could possibly develop a head tilt or head turn where kids cock their head off to one side to help get the best angle for vision that they can. This can be fixed with a little surgery by age six or seven if it is bad enough. His skin and hair will always be a bit lighter than the rest of the family and he will always sunburn easily, but nothing that a little sunscreen and a hat can't fix.

We will see the doctors every three months for awhile just to make sure nothing else comes up with his eyes and to keep track of his progress. They were actually super impressed that our doctor, Dr. Fullmer right here in Rexburg was able to diagnose him so easily with it being so rare and all. We will actually just be following up with him and then if the need arises we can always head back to Salt Lake. We have been set up with the Idaho School for the Blind so if any developmental delays show up they can help with that. Right now he is doing great, maybe a little behind where my other kids were at his age but still in the normal category as far as charts go. He is rolling all over the place, and laughing and talking like crazy. He has two teeth and can sit up on his own for like 2 seconds but hey!! Hagen is eating lots of baby food now and is a little porker, he is still small for his age but I have a feeling with the way he eats solid food he will catch up in a hurry. He is growing out of his swing which is a sad day for me, but he does like the jumper and the walker so I can still trap him in those for a bit. He also sits in the high chair now!!

I have learned that we all want nothing more than for our children to be perfect and healthy, but we can't always have that. I am super grateful that his problems are as minor as they are at this point. In the four hours we spent at the Primary Childrens Opthamology Center we saw a lot of much worse things than we are dealing with. I think when life gets hard we can take comfort in the fact that there is always someone with much worse problems to deal with!

Cole turns 4!!

I remember when I was a kid birthdays were super exciting, we usually got to take a treat to school to share, mom would make us our favorite dinner followed by cake of choice (mine was always angel food cake with angel food cake frosting, super bad for you but if you would like the recipe I would be happy to oblige) and then one sometimes two gifts from mom and dad. The best part of the whole day though, was NO JOBS!!! I loved my birthday, I have tried to keep birthdays simple like that but it is a very hard thing to do.

Cole's ended up lasting 4 days this year! Ridiculous!

Day one: Grammy took Cole shopping to pick out a gift and go to lunch, he picked a stick cow from his favorite store in the whole world; CAL Ranch and then lunch at Dairy Queen where he got his very own blizzard! (Come on mom, what happend to one small blizzard with six extra spoons??) Cole was in heaven and loved every minute of it!

Day two: Cole's actual birthday landed on a Saturday so Weston got to have breakfast with us, Cole chose blue waffles and I surprised him by putting candles in it. (He later told me this was the best part of his birthday) We then gave Cole his gift from us which was a digger toy for their new sandpit. He could've cared less since he really just wanted to practice his bull riding on his new stick cow! Later the kids went to the fair with Weston and had lots of fun there, he however came home without them saying they wanted to go home with Gra Gra?? Whatever pleases them I guess. When we picked them up later we went to the neighbors house for pizza and when we got home Cole was too tired for his own cake.

Day three: After church we had cake and ice cream. Cole wanted a Cowboy Woody cake this year but my creativity wouldn't allow for it and he had to settle with a Woody's boot! And then the ONLY thing he wanted for his birthday was a pinata, but he wanted to whack it all by himself. Simple enough request, he and Kallie hit that thing 100 times and didn't put a dent into it, Weston finally had to give it a good whack with a golf club to bust it open!

Day four: Shopping with Grandma where he picked out basically the same gift he had with Grammy, but this time it was a stick horse (which he already had, but cowboys apparently need two horses) You can imagine the damage that kid is doing to my walls and trim, we may have to cut the ends of those off a bit. But now the birthday is over and we are all happy about it! Especially me, the spoiled little turd!

Kallie was gone to Girls Campout, I have no pictures of this because I wasn't invited. Grandma and Grandpa Crapo are troopers and take all the boys on a campout and then all the girls a different time. I would love to be a mouse in the corner for these, but they don't want me there, how rude! Anyway this is a tradition that they LOVE! Cole was finally old enough to go this year and was so excited. I am sure the older boys weren't too thrilled about having him along but Grandma says they took great care of him! Kallie is a seasoned pro and talked about it all summer. Well she was finally gone and I realized that I have a REAL problem on my hands without her and am not sure how we will manage once school starts. Cole was bored out of his mind without her there and I guess I didn't realize how much she takes care of Hagen too because I couldn't accomplish anything with just the boys at home. I finally gave up trying and called Chelsey to come swim in the little pool!

She graciously accepted the invite and we had a real good time getting some sun and watching Cole try to teach Tagg how to be big like him. So much fun!! This $20 swimming pool has been well used this summer. I bought it hoping it would keep my kids from wanting to go to the canal with the big neighbor kids all the time, since it is hard for me to help them and hold the baby. Well little did I know that the kiddie pool would be SUCH a big hit. I look out there and we had 7-8 big neighbor kids in the kiddie pool. They had made up a fun game and were honestly entertained in that thing for like 2 hours. (Including two 12 year olds and a 14 year old) I was one very happy mama!!

July 24, 2011

The tradition continued as usual on the 24th for us this year; rodeo, 5k, parade, bbq/redneck fest, rodeo, ended with pure exhaustion but lots of fun for all! I have been terrible about taking pictures this summer, I think it could be blamed one the fact that I have had only one hand this summer instead of two. With Mr. Hagen always in my arm and one of the other kids always needed something, photos have taken a back seat a bit. I am going to try and be better though!

Triplets!!

Yes the goats continue to reproduce, this time we got a set of triplets. They are really cute and the best part is they were born at Grandma's house:) However they are now back at our joint. Here is a funny for you though, so we have a couple older baby goats; one male and one female that really need to be separated from the other goats. Weston keeps telling me that we need to get the male out before one of the females gets "bred" so that we don't have babies in the middle of the winter. Well the other day we had just pulled in the driveway from the grocery store and Cole said, "Oh shoot mom we forget to buy some "bread" for the goats so they can have babies" so cute and funny. These kids don't miss a beat and are sure learning a lot about life on our little "farm"!