Ward Halloween Party

Tonight we had our ward Halloween party and it was REALLY fun. John was Tigger, I was "Queen Spatula", and Daniel was...The Devil. There were SO MANY cute costumes there. I think by far my favorite costume of the evening was Levi who was a garbage man. Complete with garbage can!! Although Carter took a close second with a homemade "Where the Wild things Are" costume. SO CUTE!!

They had soup and bread, a costume parade, and a mini spook alley with everyone's lit pumpkins (battery operated candles). A lot of time must have been spent on those because a lot of them were really detailed. There was even one that had Joseph Smith and one with I think it was either Mormon or Helaman. Anyway, the party was great and I'm really glad I was able to go this year.

The Pumpkin Patch

Daniel and I were finally able to squeeze in a trip to the famous pumpkin patch. We had a lot of fun and I had a blast taking pictures of our day...Hope you enjoy!

Parenting Class

Today Daniel and I went to an adult ed parenting class called "How to Respond to Tears, Fears, and Tantrums". I was very impressed with the class and really connected a lot with what was covered.

Here are some of the things I wrote down in my notes and information from the handouts from the class...

Sources of stress for children:

Hurts by commission-

Being hit, yelled at, criticized, punished

Sexual abuse

Hurts by omission-

Lack of food when hungry

Lack of physical contact or attention

Situational hurts-

Prenatal stress & birth trauma

Developmental fears & frustrations

Overstimulation

Illnesses, injuries, hospitalization

Parental stress, anxiety, or depression

Effects of Stress on Behavior:

Hyperarousal response-

Hyperactivity, impulsivity, distractibility, aggression, violence, sleep disturbances, fears, exaggerated startle response, frequent temper tantrums

Dissociation (numbing)-

Withdrawl, isolation, passivity, self-stimulation (ex. thumb sucking, self rocking), somatic complaints (ex. fatigue, headaches)

"80% of physical child abuse occurs when a child is crying"

"Crying is an important healing mechanism. Crying releases built up stress in the body."

"Healing consists of returning to the same level of arousal that occurred during the original trauma. Healing is accomplished when the child no longer shows emotional arousal to other symptoms when exposed to trauma reminders. A healed child is relaxed, alert, communicative, non-violent, and sleeps well. "

"Children need to feel secure and loved. Children need to be reminded of the trauma, and process the trauma by talking, laughing, playing, crying, raging, trembling, or engaging in therapeutic play." (*trauma can be anything really upsetting to the child)

How crying is Repressed:

Telling the child to stop crying

Punishing or threatening (ex. timeouts)

withdrawing love, isolating child

Distracting (with talk, music, movement)

Putting something in child's mouth (ex.pacifier, food)

Teasing, shaming

Denying or minimizing child's pain

Getting child to talk or laugh

Praising child for NOT crying

Giving drugs (tranquillizers, stimulants, antidepressants)

"When Children are hurt, anxious, frustrated, or stressed, they attempt to heal themselves by crying or raging."

If the crying is stopped:

Children will still feel sad, angry, frightened, resentful, or confused.

Children will be more prone to illness and sleep problems.

Children may become hyperactive, hurtful, violent, uncooperative, demanding, whiny, and have trouble thinking and learning.

If the crying is accepted:

Children will heal from emotional pain, and become more happy and relaxed.

Children will sleep better and be less prone to illness.

Children will become more calm, gentle, compassionate, cooperative, resourceful, and better thinkers and learners.

The "Broken Cookie" Phenomenon:

She told the class a situation of a little 4 yr old girl that went to preschool and everything started going bad for the little girl. She fell and skinned her knee, a toy was stolen from her, another kid pushed her, her mom was late picking her up etc. etc. When they got home her mom made lunch and asked how school went and she said “fine” then she asked her mom if she could have a cookie after lunch. Her mom said yes, took her into the kitchen, opened the cookie jar and there was one cookie left but it was broken. The mother gave her the broken cookie and the little girl threw herself on the floor and threw a huge kicking and screaming tantrum for 20 min. When she finished with her kicking and screaming fit the little girl stood up, ate the cookie, and was fine for the rest of the day. No problems, no acting out, nothing. Our instructor told us that this was a perfect illustration of how stress can build and build until it finally overflows and needs to be released. Children don’t know how to express feelings with words. Not even some adults know how to express what they are feeling with words and here is where the crying helps to get out all that built up stress.

It isn’t just crying that will make you feel better (although it is a wonderful way to) but also she talked a lot about how laughter is a great therapeutic way to release stress. She gave us a handout about some different recommendations for therapeutic play with children that was really informative. That one is a whole page worth of info so I won’t include it in this post…seeing how this is already a really long post…but if you are interested in hearing about what it has to say just leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail and I’ll e-mail it to you.

I was really happy that Daniel and I were able to experience this together. The last workshop I went to I had to go alone and it was an amazing class but when I tried to recount it to Daniel later he just didn’t get it the way I did when I was there. So I’m really glad we did this together so we can both be on the same page and we can grow and become better parents together.

P.S-If anyone around here (Santa Barbara) is interested Aletha is having another workshop on “Connecting With Your Teenager” on November 21, 2009 from 9am to 1pm. It is a free workshop but you do need to register for the class. If anyone is interested just let me know and I can give you more info.

P.P.S-I did buy 2 of her books while I was at the workshop so if anyone is interested in reading a really good parenting book let me know and you can borrow mine!

25 years of Birthdays!!

I looked through all the files I had on my computer and found some pictures of my last 25 birthdays!! Yes, yes....

TODAY IS MY 25TH BIRTHDAY!!

All of my scrapbooks and most of my pictures from my birth on are sitting in storage in my parents basement because we simply didn't have enough room to take everything. Each time we visit I plan to scan all of my old pictures but so far I have only been able to do a handful of them. So here are some pictures from the time I was a baby all the way to today...the commemoration of 25 amazing years living on this earth.



This year has already pretty much turned out like last year! But all the same it's already been a really great day. I woke up to a little boy crying in his crib wanting to sleep right next to me and only me. Then I took a nice long shower while Daniel fed the baby and got ready for school. I took Daniel to school then I checked my e-mail. Today I've already received over 60 birthday wishes (mostly via Facebook), 7 birthday phone messages, 8 texts, and one birthday package in the mail and it's only 4:30!!! I LOVE YOU ALL :) :) :)

Copyright free videos

YouTube didn't let us put the sound on because of copyright bla bla bla, so we uploaded it to the blogger directly. Enjoy!

The Birthday Party

The birthday party turned out really fun. We had lots of food, lots of paper airplanes and lots of yummy Costco cake with cheesecake filling! Mmmmm...heaven :)

Here are some pictures of the days adventures...




Daniel and I compiled a bunch of pictures and video footage from John's first year and put it together in a slide show video presentation thing. Set aside 17 min of your day and watch this video because it's super cute!

The Birthday Boy

John's 1st birthday was on the 2nd! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY BOY :)

I don't think he cared or even realized the significance of the day but I enjoyed his birthday immensely! When he woke up he had Reese's for breakfast...

(His daddy left some Reese's within reach and sure enough that kid found them and slobbered all over them all morning!)


Next we all took a trip to the magical land of the doctors office where John was visited by the immunization fairies. I didn't get a picture but it looked something like this...

(This is an old picture but you get the idea)

Then we went to Albertsons get some groceries and all of the workers (especially the ladies) thought he was the cutest thing in the world walking around the store like he owned the place. One lady, after finding out it was his actual Birthday, walked over to the Bakery and had them write "HB John" (Happy Birthday) on a cupcake for him. I thought that was such a nice gesture.

And since John is really into balloons and things that can float or fly we got him a birthday boy balloon....or rather a picture with a birthday boy balloon...


(The good thing about a 1 year old is he didn't care that he wasn't keeping it. Two seconds later he was distracted with something else anyway so we saved the money on buying him an actual balloon and instead took a picture with it. The picture will last longer than the balloon ever would!!)

Later on after his nap Daniel was giving a voice lesson to a girl in our ward so we went to the park to hang out with the Dorny kids while they waited for their sister to finish. John had SOOO much fun with them. He LOVES being around other kids. He's a very social kid who isn't afraid to make friends.
Fast forward to Saturday when we went to the park and our little neighbor girl was having a birthday party and John kept trying to steal one of her balloons that her little brother was playing with outside. John was following him around trying everything to get that balloon but the boy was a little bit faster and managed to keep it out of his reach the whole time. When the little boy went back into the party the little girl who had just turned 6 came out carrying one of her Tinker Bell balloons and said "I want him to have this". I tried to tell her it was ok she should keep her balloon but she said, "I still have 5 more" and clipped it to John's clothes...Isn't that just the cutest thing?! What a sweetie!!


He takes that balloon everywhere now. He has been more excited about this Tinker Bell birthday balloon than anything else so far! He even brought the balloon along to help me in my garden. :)



Backup again to the night of John's birthday... He wasn't a very happy kid that night because of his shots and even had a slight fever (which I totally expected). We had our dessert contest that night and I entered a dirt cake in a flower pot with chocolate suckers and gummy worms.
I thought it turned out really cute and all the kids LOVED it. But alas I lost by one vote! The dessert I was going against was really good and I'm really happy for her to get to move on to the next level. AND the best part about it is that I can go to the final rounds purely for the fun of enjoying amazing desserts without worrying about what I should make.

For a first birthday I think it went pretty well. The actual birthday party is this coming Saturday so I'll get plenty of pictures so let you all know how it goes!!

Our Romantic 2nd Anniversary

We had a really fun time celebrating our anniversary Tuutau style! Which mainly consisted of us dropping the baby off at a friends (Thank you Jacqui and Garrett!!), dinner at a fancy restaurant...well, fancy for us....this year we chose to eat at The Elephant Bar, then a walk around KMart where we checked out the Clearance racks and bought a bread knife for $2, and then we picked up the baby, chatted with Jacqui and Garrett for a while then came home and I fell asleep while Daniel finished his syllabus for his class the next day. Yeah....really romantic!
The sad thing is minus the bread knife and babysitter last years "Romantic 1st Anniversary" consisted of pretty much the same thing...except we ate at Chili's.


Daniel did surprise me with a beautiful pair of earings! Earings are my favorite accessory and my poor collection is slowly diminishing...I'm pretty sure I have an earing eating gremlin in my jewelry box because I somehow only manage to ever find one earing when I'm pretty sure both went in the night before.
Daniel really liked his food. I wasn't in love with my dinner. It had a weird sauce that tasted awful to me. Good thing they mostly put the sauce around the edges so I could eat the middle and semi-enjoy it. I was definitely in LOVE with the strawberry smoothie drink I ordered and the sweet potato fries with yummy spicy sauce we ate as appetizer.

All around it was good. I'm looking forward to next years exciting Romantic 3rd Anniversary. Who knows maybe we'll go all out and hit up the Costco instead of KMart...or is that asking too much?