Trick-or-Treat

Once the birthday night festivities were over - it was time to move on to Halloween festivities!  For the 3rd year in a row we headed over to Lisa and Daniel's to trick-or-treat their neighborhood!  Natalie wasn't too excited at first about it - or maybe she just wasn't excited about having a one-eyed monster sit next to her for a picture!!

This was Landon's first time actually walking up to houses to trick-or-treat and apparently he didn't realize that when people opened the door for him, it wasn't an invitation to just walk right in.  The first house we went to - we didn't walk up with the boys, we watched from the sidewalk because Zane wanted to be independent and there were quite a few kids all going up at once.  I was busy trying to take a picture and all of a sudden I see Landon step up and right into their house!  I ran over as fast as I could to grab him.  I apologized profusely, but they were laughing so hard...said it was the best "Trick" of the night and that it was the most awesome thing they've had happen on Halloween, haha.  By the time I ran to the house to grab him, he had already walked halfway through their front room.  I am still laughing about it, may have been a "had to be there" moment, but trust me, it was pretty hilarious!

This was the house - right before he walked in.

Needless to say after that incident one of walked up to the houses with him!  Most of their neighbors just put the bowl down and let the kids grab their own candy - Zane was so polite and would just grab one piece, say thank you and walk away...Landon, took 2-3 at at time and kept grabbing for more until the people finally took the bowl away.  I wonder if the HOA will ban him from trick-or-treating in their neighborhood next year??

It was a late night for the boys, but thankfully they have the opportunity to sleep in tomorrow since Grandma and Papa will be here to watch them.  We had a great time, have enough candy to last us a year or more and are thankful to the Nilsson's for letting us crash their neighborhood!  I'm so glad Halloween is only once a year!

Spoiled at home too...

Don't think we leave it up to his school to spoil him on his birthday!  It pretty much looked like soccer threw up in our living room tonight - but he loved it and we love seeing him happy!!!

Happy Birthday sweetie - we love you more than you will ever know!!

Spoiled by school...

To say Zane is loved at his school/daycare is an understatement.  There are two women there that are pretty much in charge of managing his diabetes while he's at school and they do a great job with it.  One of them is Miss Bonnie and she is newer to the school (probably 4-6 mos or so) and she just LOVES Zane.  Zane and Miss Bonnie share a birthday, so she has had a countdown going with him for the last couple of weeks.  Everytime  she would ask Zane what he wanted for his birthday I guess he would always just answer "play soccer".   About a week ago Miss Bonnie called me at work and I assumed it was to discuss his current blood sugar and go over next steps...but when I answered the first thing she said was "I'm not calling about Zane's blood sugar!" - she went on to explain that she had made a call to the Sounders about 3 weeks prior and told them all about Zane and how he just loved the Sounders and all he wanted to do for his birthday was "play soccer".  She called to see if there was any way she could arrange for a player to come to school to surprise him for his birthday - I was in shock that someone would think about this for my boy.  Of course as you probably guessed it...that wasn't going to happen...they weren't going to send a player over to surprise him.  BUT the gal she spoke to said that Zane sounded like a really great kid and they wanted to do something special for him and asked Miss Bonnie who his favorite player(s) were - that is why she called me!  After letting her know Mauro Rosales and Steve Zakuani she let the Sounders know and last week they overnighted a care package to Zane's school for him for his birthday! 

Miss Bonnie brought Zane into the office today to give him his special presents (she didn't want to do it in front of his class, because its obvious this isn't something that happens for all of them).  I guess Zane was just looking at her with a confused look on his face (wish I could've seen it, haha).  Also, last Thursday (Zane doesn't go to school on Thursdays) she brought in a soccer ball and had all of the teachers and kids in his class sign it!!!

Of course once I picked Zane up, he couldn't stop talking about his day - the pajama/movie party, the treats he indulged in (with the astronomical blood sugars to prove it!!) and of course his Sounders gear - he couldn't wait to get home and show it to us!

In the bag - the most prized possession was an autographed mini ball from Steve Zakuani!!!  There was also a t-shirt, Drew Carey bobblehead, pencils, key chain, tattoos, stickers, pennant flag and other goodies!  Miss Bonnie also bought him a Sounders hat and threw it in there :)

I am still in shock over the birthday treatment he received today - one lucky kid!

Birthday Breakfast

If I'm remembering correctly (since I'm too lazy to look back in the blog), I believe this is the first year I did not take Zane's birthday off of work.  The reason I didn't is because they were having a pajama/movie party day at school and really wanted to go.  I guess 5 is the age they'd rather be at school celebrating their birthday than home with mom - oh well!  So instead of taking the day off I took a few hours off in the morning so we could surprise him with going out to breakfast.

He was pretty stoked when he learned of his surprise!  Thankfully daddy was able to join us...sometimes his new schedule isn't all that bad.  After everyone was up and ready to go, it was off to IHOP we went!

Love how he has his fork in one hand and is feeding himself with his other hand!

He's 5!!!

In 5 short years...

From this:

To this:

More later, I'm a little emotional right now.

Cuties in Costume

My work had their 3rd annual "Trick or Treat the Clinic" for employee's kids tonight!  These kids just keep getting cuter and cuter I swear!  All of our staff look forward to this as soon as I send the announcement out on when it will be.  These kids are beyond spoiled with candy and toys.  I told Zane we didn't need to go trick-or-treating tomorrow since his bucket was already full - but he informed me that we can just dump the candy into a bowl and the bucket would again be empty to take tomorrow night!  When did he get so smart?!

Landon was sure getting the hang of picking out candy tonight - he started grabbing it by the handfuls, cracked me up!  It made me laugh even more when I knew that he wouldn't even be eating any of it!  He enjoyed some fruit snacks on the way home and I tried to give him a bite of a candy bar, but he wanted nothing to do with it...that's ok, more for Josh and I :)

5 Year Well-Child

Zane doesn't actually turn 5 for a few more hours, but we were able to squeeze his well-child visit in before trick-or-treating at my work started tonight. 

After a vision test which he scored 20/20 on WITHOUT his glasses (yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out too) and a hearing test that he scored almost perfect on he received a clean bill of health!  Dr. Thuot said - "he's just perfect" and well...we couldn't agree more!

Landon was more than willing to help out with the vision test!

Zane has been anxious about whether or not he'd need shots for the past few days - I kept telling him I wasn't sure and that we'd have to ask the doctor.  Of course I did know he would need 2, but I've learned if I tell him that too far ahead of time it ruins the entire day and visit - so I chose to keep my mouth shut.  After the doctor was done with her exam she said she'd send the nurse in for his immunizations to which Zane quickly asked what immunizations were and the doctor explained that they were shots that helped him stay healthy...ut oh the 's' word - hello, meltdown...

Thankfully there were two nurses available so they tag teamed him and it was over in no time :)

Zane's 5 year stats:
47.6 lbs - 87%
3'9" tall - 88%

I just looked back to last year's stats and holy cow - I knew he had grown, but wow...he grew 4 inches and gained 7 lbs - crazy!!!

I cannot believe he will be FIVE tomorrow, sniff, sniff!!

Trunk or Treat

Our church had a Trunk or Treat last night - Zane was thrilled about going!  Once we got there and saw how decked out some of the cars were - his feeling of excitement turned into a little bit of apprehension!  There were a couple of cars that he refused to get candy out of and insisted that I did it for him!  One of those said cars gave me a little scare too - I reached into the bowl to grab a piece of candy and a skeleton hand out of nowhere grabbed my hand - I may or may not have let out a little scream that made the middle school kids behind us laugh a little!

Merry Go Round Inflation

With Josh working graveyard now - it means our weekends have to be a little more creative.  I try to keep the boys out of the house most of the day so he can sleep in some peace...but that means finding things to do with them that don't cost a lot of money.   Sometimes I succeed on that and other times I fail.

After church this past Sunday, the boys and I drove out to the North Bend Outlet Mall - there was a specific store out there I wanted to go to...I didn't even up going there - fail.  Instead I went to a few kids stores and bought Zane some new clothes...he was/is in desperate need of clothes that fit him - as much as I think capris or "man-pris" are cute in the summer...they aren't so cute in the fall and winter and I think half-shirts went out in the early 90's if I'm not mistaken!  Anyway, I found some great sales - success!  I really wanted to find Landon a new pair of shoes too, but couldn't find any within in my budget for kids-that-grow-out-of-their-shoes-in-a-few-weeks!

Ok...the point of this post (there really isn't one to be honest) - there are so many quarter riding toys around that mall and every time we walked past one Zane asked to go on it.  I told him that once we were done shopping he could pick the one he wanted to go on and we'd walk back to it.  These so-called quarter machines are $.50 now; times that by two kids and that's a whole dollar - fail!   Just kidding...the smiles on my kid's faces is worth at least a dollar!!!

Pumpkin Painting

We I decided to take the easy way out on carving pumpkins this year and suggested to Zane that we paint them instead!  He wasn't sure about it at first, but then I informed him that if he wanted to carve it, he would have to help clean out the guts (something he despises) - he was sold on the idea to paint it at that point!!!  Haha!  Not sure if that will work every year.

Anyway, thanks to Pinterest I decided to do Chevron stripes (I'm a little obsessed with them right now) on my pumpkin...stinkin' tape (even though I used painters tape) pealed off a lot of my paint after it dried :(  It took a long time to figure out how to do the stripes on a round subject.  Oh well, definitely a Pinterest fail!

Zane on the other hand got much more creative and went to town on his pumpkin.  After giving it a face, he decided to paint "jingle bells" all over the back - they look like a break out of measles to me, but hey, if he says they are jingle bells, than who am I to say different...sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder right?!!

Regardless, we had a great time!!

Notice the slab of yellow paint in his hair...I bet you thought it was mustard huh?!!!