Trick or Treat

Here's our three little girls all ready for trick or treat.  After I got looked at the photos I realized i hadn't gotten one of Emily's bears on her apron, so I took one later when we were at grandma's house visiting.  We went over to Granville since our neighborhood didn't trick or treat until the 31st, and Daddy was out of town that day.  We found a nice neighborhood we've gone to before near our church.  It's a quiet neighborhood with not a lot of kids.  Most of the kids we saw were boys and older (like 8 and up), so there were a lot of boyish type costumes so our three pretty little girls in their girly costumes were definitely noticed.  Everyone gushed over how sweet they all looked and how adorable our little bumblebee was.  I was really surprised at the number of teenage BOYS that would walk by and comment, "Aw.  That little bumblebee is so cute!"  :)  They got a lot of candy and then we went to Grandma's house a few days later and trick or treated there, as well, and ended up with even more candy.  Ashley, who had seen "The Great Pumpkin" this year liked to look in her pumpkin after someone gave her candy and exclaim, "I got a rock!"  :) 

Where's Ashley?

One evening I was busy packing for a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house and I had been upstairs about 20 minutes, getting a lot done, and realized I had not seen Ashley in that time.  Normally if I were to leave the room and head off somewhere for more than 10 minutes I hear a little voice wandering through the house saying, "Mommy, where are you?"  I thought maybe I better check since she had gone so long without checking in.  So I went downstairs and found her, accessorized as usual, and sound asleep in the chair.  Luckily her pajamas were already on so it was just a matter of slipping off all her "accessories" and tucking her into bed. 

Family Halloween Party 2011

In the words of our daughters, this year family Halloween Party was the "best ever!".  :)  First we put on some Halloween music and carved pumpkins.  Then we played all of our usual traditional games like broomstick races, find monster Daddy, ghost hunt, transfer Halloween shapes with a straw, eat a hanging donut, ghost hunt, dance to Halloween music, and feed the monster.  Ashley especially loved this game.  She giggled and giggled as Daddy made the monster shoebox we had made years ago come to life and eat the marbles they rolled at him.  We added a new game this year where we made little ghosts and tied a piece of yarn around them.  Then one person was the "goblin" and had a cup.  The goblin would choose two numbers and roll two dice and if either of those numbers popped up then he got to try and catch a ghost with the cup while the players try and pull their ghost away as quick as possible.  The two older girls loved it, although Ashley tired of it pretty quick.    After all the games were over we did our trick or treating in the house.  Daddy and I each went behind different doors and dressed up as different characters.  Daddy outdid himself, as usual.  The favorite one he did was dressing up in a blond wig and putting on my pajamas.  The girls thought that was SO hysterical and laughed and laughed and it was the first thing they talked about when they woke up the next morning.  After all the fun festivities we had witch hat desserts and watched  "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown."

Pigeon Roost Farm 2011

We had our annual family day at Pigeon roost Farm today.  It's probably our favorite autumn tradition.  It was a very nice day and we went around 10:30 in the morning.  Unfortunately we pulled up and saw about 8 school buses parked there.  So we immediately turned around and headed home, deciding we'd try later in the day.   So we went around 4:00, after Alexis' piano and violin lessons.  It was still much more crowded than we were used to, but much better.  We all had a great time playing together as a family.

Baby Bunny

Ashley was painting with Alexis and Emily as we were reading about leaves when she looked at the kitchen counter and exclaimed, "I have an idea!" Then she retrieved an empty paper towel roll off and told me, "Maybe it could be a tail!" She held it behind her and began hopping around. I used some elastic and hole punch to attach it to her. She was thrilled but then wanted bunny ears to go with it. She sadly told me there no bunny ears after looking in their dress up box. So I made her some quick ones with a headband and some card stock paper. She couldn't be happier and has been hopping around all day.

Ashley's First Time Flying a Kite

Ashley has loved kits for a long time now.  She's always asking to fly them and Daddy normally holds the kite and Ashley holds on, too.  Today was so windy we decided to let her try on her own.  She was beyond thrilled!  She had SO much fun and was so happy to be flying a kite all by herself just like her big sisters.

Two Front Teeth

Emily lost her two front teeth this month!  Her first tooth was actually loose for 2-3 months, but she never wiggled it so it finally came out last week.  Then the other one was quicker and came out this week after being loose for only about a week.  I just love these cute little toothless grins!

Curious Kids and Sarah's Visit

Don's Aunt Debbie passed away after a long battle with cancer last week.  His sister planned on going to Utah for the funeral and it was difficult to find someone to watch their 3 year old during the day when her husband and other kids were at work/school, so we kept her for a week.  I figured, being so young, she'd be homesick but she did great!  She blended right in with the other girls and Alexis and Emily found it great fun to have another "baby" around they could help care for and dote on, (although even though Ashley is happy to be the baby, Sarah was quick to tell them, "I'm not a baby!")  :)  They all had great fun together and spent many hours dressing up, playing house, store, and other fun stuff.  We did some apple themed projects this week they all had fun doing, played at the park, visited the library, played outside, had some movie parties, and visited the Works.  We did the Curious Kids activity there where they made their own tin foil boats and experimented with making them float or sink. The the 3 younger girls played in the new ice cream parlor area while Alexis experimented around with the microscope, (her new favorite thing there.)  We're glad Sarah got to visit us.

Ashley's Speech Evaluation

Around Ashley's 3rd birthday I made an appointment for her to get speech evaluated.  Even though we could tell she very intelligent we couldn't figure out why she just wasn't talking the way she should be.  She's known all her colors, basic shapes, numbers to 10, and alphabet since she was 18 months.  She knew all the sounds of the letters, numbers to 20, and more complex shapes by the time she was 2.  (And this was mostly just through absorbing through her environment. I didn't really directly teach her any of these things except just answering questions and labeling things as we came across them, just like I did with her sisters when they were toddlers.)  She's been navigating the computer since was 18 months, we've seen her figure out complex problems in daily situations, do puzzles with ease, and has an amazing memory, but for some reason not talking as she should be.  She can identify almost anything you put in front of her and she says 2-3 word phrases, but very few sentences.  There was a waiting list and she finally got to have an appointment in September.  By then she was doing much better, but still not where she should be.  I had done a lot of research and found this book called, "Teach Me to Talk".  It's actually a speech therapy manual and is absolutely wonderful!  I read it and had been going through the teaching methods and activities with her through playtime.  I had really seen improvement since starting it, but decided to keep the appointment anyways since she was still definitely struggling with normal conversations/sentences.  The appointment went wonderfully!  They gave her a very thorough evaluation. They tested her IQ by giving her a nonverbal IQ test and asked me a lot of questions and interacted with and observed her and had her do various things to see if she could understand.  The lady working with her was VERY good with her and she responded well to her.  In the end when we got all the results back, she was diagnosed with having an expressive language disorder.  Basically it's something she was born with, (there's no known cause), and it just means that she has trouble figuring out how to put her thoughts into words.  She understands completely, but simply can't put into words what she is thinking.  Luckily, it does seem to be on the mild end.  A lot of toddlers with this hardly talk at all, but she talks quite a bit.  It's just all in single words or short phrases instead of sentences and she has a hard time answering questions.  They also sent us the results of her IQ test and it confirmed what we already knew in that she is VERY intelligent.  She scored a 151 which puts her in the category of highly gifted..  Her lowest area was a 135 and her highest was a 167 - (an area that has to do with reasoning.)  They said if we ever tested our other girls we would probably find their scores to be quite high, as well, since IQ scores between siblings are usually within just a few points. This was a bit confusing to me that she could have an IQ so high, yet not be able to converse in full sentences.  However, IQ, apparently, has nothing to do with the ability to talk.  IQ is "the ability to learn or understand or to deal with situations and the skilled use of reason".  They said even things like reading, spelling ability, or even general knowledge have nothing to with IQ.  It's more of an ability to reason and figure things out.  As for treatment they said we had 3 options.  One option is we could go through the state and get free therapy for her.  However, this would mean putting her in preschool, which just isn't an option we would consider.  The next option would be getting her private therapy which our insurance may or may not cover and is very pricey.  The third option she told us, (and the one she felt would be best for our family), was to continue working with her at home!  I had brought the therapy book I was using with her to show them and she said this book was perfect and exactly what she'd be getting in therapy anyways.  She said I seemed highly invested in her and that with her high intelligence and a mommy willing to work with her every day, she thought she'd do fine and would eventually talk just fine.  She said she's seen kids like her before and actually recommended, unofficially, that I read a book called "The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Kids Who Talk Late" (which I had actually already come across in my research and it describes her perfectly).  She recommended we get her reevaluated in 6 months to evaluate her progress, but I really feel that, with time, she will talk perfectly normal and so we will continue to play with her and teach her and enjoy her sweet little spirit.  :)

General Conference Time!

This weekend was General Conference weekend.  We LOVE this weekend and so do the children!  It's such a cozy time as we gather together to listen to the words of our leaders.  We make it special for the kids by popping popcorn, baking breads and other treats, and getting out our special General Conference box.  Each session I fill it with fun quiet activities for the kids to do.  We print off special conference activity pages online, put puzzles, felt and magnet play sets, arts and crafts kits and supplies, quiet toys, and other fun things inside of it.  The conference was amazing, as usual, with wonderful talks.  We've been slowly watching them over again since then.