Billy Looses a tooth and then another one

Yes Bill has finally made the transition into the infamous 'I Lost a Tooth Club' and he went into it tugging with all his might.

I may have mentioned in an earlier post (around the time Jimmy lost his first tooth) but... I find it crazy that kids are so into having a hole in their mouth that drips blood and everyone sees this and say's " Way to go you lost a tooth!" I mean, the kid did not 'lose' a tooth, they know exactly where it is. It is firmly in the child's hand in what is commonly known as " the death grip" until Mom or Dad get a plastic sandwich size bag in which the tooth is then placed. Then the young child (who is usually not at the age where he or she can write) enlists the help of an older sibling (whom, out of nowhere, is on a first name basis with the tooth fairy) who helps write a note and (here's where the magic comes in...) knows exactly what to say to ensure the greatest payoff for the tooth. Lost tooth, not... ATM yes!
As an interesting aside, Billy is our 1st child that has shark teeth. Yep, he is experiencing the shark teeth phenominon, his new teeth grew in before he lost his old teeth, creating 2 rows of teeth on his bottom gum. Weird.

Billy spent a great deal of time whilst we were in route to Thanksgiving with one hand firmly on the tooth and the other clutching his blanket over his head so we could not see his method for removal. Several hours of pulling (and chatting, encouragement, advice and reliving horror stories of lost teeth by his siblings) left Bill tired so he had a small nap. He was back at it again the next day with this cousins and this time he was rewarded with a tooth!

The very next day he announced that he had yet another loose tooth and upon inspection by the tooth authorities (namely Jimmy and Kay) it was pronounced indeed true and the tugging began in earnest (again). Knowing that Thanksgiving may be impeded with a loose tooth, panic set in.

Now, neither Tracy nor I were around when the following incident was reported by a reliable jail house snitch. It is reported that brother Jimmy (whom insists he was trying to help), somehow, got is right elbow caught in Billy's mouth in the exact same spot as the previously mentioned loose tooth. This caused said tooth to let go of it's grip on Bill's gum and tumble out into Jimmy's hand to which he replied " here ya go Bill, good job!" I ask you, what are older brothers for if not assistance in losing teeth!?!

A video says a thousand words!

Happy Gotcha Day Kay!

The middle child laid claim to our hearts 7 years ago and we are blessed everyday to have Kay as our daughter. She is growing up way to fast and continues to find creative ways to express herself.



In the past year Kay has learned to read, addition and subtraction and has become obsessed with cooking shows, three of these are normal aspects of a 6-7 year old but cooking shows? She does not watch just any cooking show, not our Kay, she watches Southern cooking shows, lard, butter and cream, "now that is what I am talking about", Kay October 2010.

This year we began celebrating Kay's special day while en route to Tammy and Jeff's for Thanksgiving, more on that later. Now for those of you who know Kay know about her somewhat trying issue when making a decision and the decision between cake and cupcakes for the Gotcha Day party was no exception. The discussion began somewhere around Madison and continued into the evening. Kay awoke somewhere around Portage, Indiana with a decision no nearer in sight. Time was running out, Kay was getting nervous and finally around South Haven, Michigan she blurted out " Mommy, I want a cake !" and then "do they have a dairy queen?". Having settled on the cake issue we were able to reach Grand Haven and meet Grandma and Grandpa Hickey for lunch. We offered Kay the lunch choice and having exhausted her indecision making, right off the bat she proclaimed " I want Wendy's", really, well Wendy's it was.

That evening we had cake and raised a toast to our Kay. She is continuing to touch our hearts with her strong personality and determination. She is a joy and when she smiles she lights up the room. Kay we love you and we give thanks for you choosing us, and we are blessed that you are here! and...lets not forget all the people that made it possible for Kay to be in our family. Her birthday mommy & daddy, her foster parents (& foster grandma!) and all the social workers & doctors. We are so thankful to you and wish you all the peace and happiness that you can endure:)

hodge podge

We have been way too busy the last few weeks so this is going to be a bit of hodge podge blog update...

11/11 saw the 1st snow of the season and the most snow before Thanksgiving in MPLS in 19 years. I had an Indian coworker who was here for 6 months (since April) and he was getting really disappointed that he hadnt experienced snow as he had never seen it before in his life. He was scheduled to fly back to India 11/12. Well, he got his wish. 12-18" of it. The kids woke up and were thrilled! Immediately they donned their winter clothes and off they went to sled, make snow men, snow angels and help daddy shovel. The only down side of this venture - wet snow clothes. Especially since our dryer wasnt working...urhhh

We quickly recovered and headed into another busy week of work, school and activities. In fact, almost everything we are signed up for happened this week, here's run down...

Girl Scouts
Boy Scouts

Piano Jimmy

Piano Kay

Basketball Jimmy

Baasketball Billy

Gymnastics Kay

Gymnastics Billy
Art Billy

Art Kay

Lego class Jimmy
Work happy hour to celebrate the launch of my big project

Timberwolves game Tom and I

Timberwolves game Jimmy (went to the same game but separately with a friend. We spent the 1st half looking through the crowd for him. Then we saw him, an overly enthusiastic 9 year old with a wolf claw jumping up and down

School

Work

Tom had 2 charity meetings, 1 with United Way and 1 with Corner House (trying to figure out what type of non-profit work he wants to pursue)

Sue came to town!

Whew, I am exhausted just thinking about it!!!

Oh...and that was all in 4 days, Mon-Thurs... Friday Tom and I headed to Chicago for a long weekend with Angela, Wade and Rica (German foreign exchange student). It was AMAZING!

Friday night was a Brazilian meat fest

Saturday was 7+ hours of walking through ALL of Chicago with sunny skies and no clouds. We saw the Hancock tour and tower, the silver bean and Millenium park, the Art Institute, Navy Pier and walked up and down Rush, State and Michigan Ave. We also had Greek food (YUM!) and saw Billy Elliot the musical. If you havent seen it, GO! (and bring kleenex)

Sunday was a big breakfast, shopping and a ride home in drizzly gloomy November weather. We managed to get home in time to make Sue a big thank you dinner and dropped her off at the airport Monday morning (she's headed to Costa Rica to see Julie for an undetermined amount of time - oh...the life....)

So, now, what's up this week? 2 days of school & work and then off to my sisters in Michigan to meet up with my family for Thanksgiving.

We are SO blessed and thankful for all that we have; family, friends, love, health, energy, a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, good culinary skills:) and each other.

LOVE, PEACE and HAPPY THANKSGIVING to EVERYONE!!!

Game On !

Sunday mornings on Fox TV my friend has a talk show called Game On and it airs at 10:30 here in Minneapolis. This week Pat Williams, of the Vikings, is the featured guest and one of Jimmy and Ben's favorite players. I was able to get passes to watch the show as it was being taped and took Jimmy and Ben.

The boys got their picture with Pat and were able to talk football with him as well. Jimmy and Ben were in awe and could not believe their own eyes. The boys could not sit still and kept saying" this is the best day of my life", over and over again.

The vikings have a great player and person in Mr. Williams as he patiently signed one thing after another for the boys, Footballs, Vikings Jersey's, decals, magnets, foam finger, pendants and finally Jimmy's viking pillow case! Jimmy woke up the next morning and said "Hey Dad" last night I slept on Pat Williams signature isn't that cool! I calmly asked him if he wanted to watch the movie Rudy to which he gave me a weird look and turned on his PSP.

Thanks to Rod and the crew of Game on for making the day a high light for these two raising football stars.

The Deer Opener

This year the dear opener was a little different from past years as we had to pack bug spray and sun screen along with orange camo shorts. It is not normal to be in the deer stand with Coppertone #45 on, I mean this is Minnesota where we should have a couple of inches of snow on the ground and everyone complaining about how cold is to hunt. Never in my life have I had to go in because it was to hot to sit in the stand, global warming or the Herschel Walker trade? You decided.

The group included Mike and his son Jack, Wade, Jeff and Tom. We arrived in camp early Friday morning and were greeted with a mess inside the 606. The bus has not been used in over 5 years and after several hours cleaning and gallons of bleach it was back to is original form. We set up stands, chopped wood, although I do not know why, and got the deer camp back in order.That Friday night we had our traditional center cut pork chop dinner and I have to say the chops were out of this world.We hit the sack and all dreamed about aggressive mice chewing through our sleeping bags, or least the rest of them did I slept like a baby.

Opening day 5:00 am found us sitting at the dining tables watching the percolator and waiting for the morning cup of Joe. That done gear checked and appropriately put on it was off to seek our good fortune, or at least a deer. The woods were quite, the birds starting chirping. the squirrels rooting around and the deer staying as far away as deeringly possible.

We had one deer hit and tracked the animal of about a mile however it was just nicked and not doing to present us with success. The group had a late breakfast and it was back out to the woods, the old saying :never shot a deer in camp" seemed to motivate us. That afternoon/evening was the windiest hunt I have been on. Sitting or should I say swaying in the tree stand I was wondering if I get a chance to shot how am I going to take this damn wind swaying the tree into consideration when shooting? Unfortunately we did not have to worry about that.

Dinner on Saturday was semi smoked Salmon, a recipe that cannot be shared outside of deer camp, along with several great stories. The group had a blast and recapped the day and of course previous hunts were as in fishing the deer get bigger each year and the distance of the shot does so as well. Daylight savings was upon us so another early night.

Sunday we drove the property and kicked up one deer however now one had a shot. we packed up cam as we all had pressing obligations back in the real world and we vowed to reconvene in 365 days time to battle all over again.

Happy Ha Da Ween!!

As Jimmy used to say - Happy Ha Da Ween! We had a very busy holiday, besides the pre-Halloween events of ZooBoo in Green Bay, school parties, a trip to the MN Zoo with Caden and haunted house themed birthday parties, we had an excitement filled day.

















Kay and Billy woke up and immediately got dressed in their costumes. A cheerleader for Kay (new outfit of course because the current Green Bay Packer and U of M ones just wouldnt do). Bill was the black Iron Man (he was Bat Man last year and a Power Ranger the year before, notice a trend??) Kay spent the day making up cheers for everything, including going to Target and boo-ing Wal-Mart as we drove past. Billy was very proud of his muscles in his outfit and was pretty cute (gotta love those foam abs)






We barely made it to 5pm before the kids had to do a quick round of trick or treating on our street. Now, keep in mind, there are only 7 houses on our street, 1 is empty and ours is the only 1 with kids over the age of 2. so...what do our neighbors do??? They load up on full size candy bars just for our kids. Nice.






Next up, hooking up with our neighborhood friends to scour the subdivision. Anders, Bjorn, Ben, Anna, Cole and Ella - a bit of a goat rodeo but way too much fun. They got so much candy that Billy's treat bag actually ripped open. They even got a sticker/activity book from a former teacher. Yeah!







But...let's hear it from the horses mouth:
















Billy - "My favorite thing was all the candy!" "My muscles were awesome!"








Kay - "I loved seeing Ella and walking around with her" "My outfit was pretty - I even matched my make up"







Note: this IS Minnesota, gloves and a hat with your costume are mandatory, at least they didnt have to wear their snow suits under it

Jimmy is noticably absence in the days activities. He had a haunted house birthday party and sleep over Friday, a Grand Slam birthday party all day Saturday and an outing to Valley Scare on Saturday night. After the Vikings loss on Sunday afternoon, he just wasnt up for any social activity, no matter how much candy was involved.






We'll leave you with Kay's story about Halloween traditions in our family - written in class






Halloween Night - by Kay Murphy





On Halloween night are house has lites on it. I get drest up in my halloween costum. this year I'm a cerleter and last year I was a witch. this year we got kitkats for candy. last year we got snickers but last year we went to our conn ben's house and we went tricer treting. it was rilley rilley fun an dwe came home and did a litele ticer treating in our naberhood to and wine we came home are bags were fole of candy. my mom told me I get 2 peses of candy every day. on halloween night.





We saw a black cat well my mom was walking the dog. they fited for a litele bit and then they came friends. I got to pet the cat, the cat was very frendly. I huged it because my mom sed I could.

Billy - You have come a long way Baby

As the saying goes. With Jim into football and Kay into gymnastics our Bill has become quite the basketball player and gymnast.








Billy started fall basketball warm-up the past few weeks and has really got into it. So much so that he had a couple of time outs issued by Coach Ron. The lads enthusiasm got the best of him. Bill was in a group of 18 5-6 year old boys, Coach Ron and the crew need to be awarded medals for dealing with the energy. The kids were awarded a medal for completing the basketball camp, now off to regular season, YIKES! (its a bit like watching squirrel play basketball) fun but crazy!








Bill has also started to come into his own in school and recently we had a pumpkin carving event where Dad was invited into class to help out. Bill, Ally and Cole helped create a fine pumpkin. Billy counted the seeds and we had 181, good counting Bill.





Speaking of school, Billy has been doing great in counting, identifying letters & sounds and loves coloring and having stories read to him. He is making great progress and like basketball his enthusiasm for school and his classmates has lead Mrs. Houston to place Billy on a time out or two, no matter Bill is doing great. She said he's very bright and curious and not at all shy (did we mention he's a squirrel, a very loving, hugging, touching, squirrel - other kids? not so much)

Bill is still fascinated by cars, trucks and Lego's. He will spend hours making Lego 'celations' and his imagination know no limits! Billy's close second to cars are pets and he and his pal Nikki spend a great deal of time together. Oh... Billy's third (if he had to pick) is Apple Juice in a sippy cup. Billy has to make decisions about "having apple juice now and when I go to bed?" Given the choice when I go to bed usually wins out. I think the kid drinks 6-8 cups of the stuff a day.



Way to go Bill keep up the great work, we love you!!