Ashton's 3rd birthday- Part 1

Whenever people have a child who has a birthday, they will make a list of all their qualities on facebook.  I always have trouble trying to do this.  My children are each so unique that's it hard to break down their personalities into a list of words.  Our Ashton is turning 3 this month.  He LOVES music and dancing.  He loves being outside.  He loves to be a helper to his dad and I which can be wonderful and frustrating at the same time.  We have been working on learning how to encourage that quality. 
   Recently we had his 3rd birthday party with the Sheen side of the family.  We grilled up some food and let the cousins play outside with water while we were finishing dinner.  Ashton then opened presents and we had cupcakes and ice cream.  It's so fun when kids are young and they get so excited about every little thing.  He loved the presents he received: a swimming pool, a new truck, some money, and a tool belt with tools.  In true Sheen fashion it will be the neverending birthday parties.  He had this party and will also have a celebration on his actual birthday and then a party with the DeJong side of the family.

Dressing Emma

We have been blessed with a baby girl in our family.  I never knew how much fun it would be to dress her everyday.  I am always pulling out my camera because I just have to remember her in her little outfits.  Her she is in her outfit for church last week:

Caleb's note to dad

Caleb wrote,"Dear Dad, I hope you are having a good day at work."  Travis told him,"Thanks for the note.  What's the picture at the bottom?"  Caleb,"It's me and you fighting zombies."

Funny things

Caleb is doing two things that are pretty funny. One is that some of the neighborhood kids have bb guns that shoot colored beads. Caleb started finding them in the grass one day and became obsessed with finding every single bead he could and putting them in the "trunk" of his bicycle. Anytime he goes outside he looks for more beads and then runs up and shouts "I found a bead!" The thing about it is that he finds beads everywhere! There are beads apparently at our city park, in parking lots, at the mall, and the kid has eagle eyes for spotting beads. We are thinking of getting him some kind of craft set with beads in it so he can start making stuff out of beads.

The other thing he has been doing is making up words to his favorite songs- pretty much the Cars soundtrack. Like he'll sing to "Find Yourself"- "That's when you find Chick Hicks. You go through Costco so sure of where you're headed and when you wind up lost it's the best thing that could of happened." He does it to lots of others songs as well and we get a big kick out of it.

We are also in the "one more minute" phase. Whether we're trying to get him to leave the park or trying to get him out of the bathtub he'll say, "just one more minute? I need just one more minute." It's so much fun having a 3 year old. ;)

April already

I can't believe it has been so long since I have posted. Right now Caleb's allergies are getting hit hard. It is really sad because his face is swollen, he has dark circles around his eyes, and his eczema is flaring up. The same thing happened last year around the time he turned 2 so there must be something environmental about this time of year. He has been tested for allergies and they said he is allergic to mold but not to cedar or ash, but mold is not really high right now, so who knows. It is bad enough where people comment like today a lady at the gym said, "Oh, does he have a rash or something?" and I was like, "No, it's allergies."
The other day we went to the mall to do some shopping and Caleb found a sticker that was from a pair of pants and he told Travis and I that it was his "housand" dollars [thousand dollars.] For days he wanted to carry his housand dollars around with him. It was super funny. Travis and I were like, how does he even know what a thousand dollars are?
Today he picked up the box that our keyboard had come in and was walking around looking through it. He told me it was his "noculars" and he was looking to see if anyone needed to be rescued.
Then he went in our bathroom and closed the door while I was cooking dinner and I was like Caleb what are you doing and he came out and he had picked off the little stickers that are inside the cabinets that keep them from slamming. He said, "Look mom, an octagon!" Who knows how he learned what an octagon is.
We also had an exciting thing happen a couple of weeks ago. He finally started peddling his bike! He has a tricycle and he has been doing the scoot thing with his feet, but he was going down our driveway and the next thing I knew he was peddling around the block. His legs still get tired at times and he refuses to peddle but he is doing pretty good with it. We were super excited because he would only use one leg and get to a spot and then start going backwards but now he has figured out the mechanics of peddling all the way around.
We have been working on learning the letters and sounds of the alphabet. We use the website starfall.com. They have a letter match game on it sometimes that he loves. He also enjoys reading books on his own...he has quite a few memorized. We are moving to stories with an actual plot now, rather than books about cars, backhoe loaders, diggers, etc. This moment could not have come soon enough for me. :)
We are in the process of potty training Caleb. It is definitely a process. He has trouble because he just wants to go and play and doesn't want to stay put.
Last weekend we took him to see the movie "Hop." We had read reviews that said the movie was pretty bad, but we have so few movies that we can take Caleb to and we figured this one was pretty safe. He loved it! The character in the story plays the drums and so there was a lot of music and so Caleb spent half of the movie just standing and dancing. We had to stay after the movie that he could continue to dance through the entire credits. The boy loves to dance. He gets so intense and just shakes his bum back and forth to the music. He has started to use his arms with his dancing also which is super funny.
We are excited that we will be able to take him to Utah for his 3rd birthday so he can celebrate with his cousins. We leave in 3 weeks!

Christmas and New Years

What a wonderful Christmas we had this year! Caleb and I were able to leave the night I got off work to go to Utah for 6 days. About a week before we were supposed to leave we got some bad news...Caleb had an ear infection, a staph infection, and a mild case of the chicken pox! I took him in because he was a little lethargic and had a fever and was shocked to hear he was such a mess. Luckily we got him started on his medicine and by the time we left for Utah he was pretty well cleared up. Caleb continues to do better with flying each time we travel. This time was a little different because Travis wasn't able to take us to the airport, so I was concerned about getting all our luggage checked in, getting our car in long term parking, and getting Caleb to the terminal by myself. Thankfully our sister-in-law allows us to use one of her car seats in Utah so at least I didn't have to worry about lugging that around. After all my stressing, things went off without a hitch, and I think we timed our trip perfectly to miss the majority of the holiday travelers.

We always have so much fun in Utah. Caleb absolutely adores his cousins and this year was so funny going up to different cousins and asking them to go play downstairs with him. There is quite an age difference between he and his cousins Savannah and Jackson, but they were wonderful with him, and played cars with him and had a lot of patience with him. He also loved playing with his cousins on the DeJong side, but especially loves to play with Brynlee. We were able to eat at a lot of my favorite restaurants like Cafe Rio and Magleby's Fresh for breakfast. We also saw snow which was very exciting for Caleb. We went to the BYU bookstore, saw our Grandpa Sheen, and Caleb went to see the lights at temple square which he still talks about. Caleb also got a two story garage and a toy with animals that helps him to learn the alphabet from his grandparents. He got a tow truck. He also got a Mac Truck (from Cars) which he had to carry with him everywhere after he opened it.

We were happy to get home to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with Travis. It was very quiet for us...the first time we've had Christmas at home. It was different, but it was nice for us. On Christmas Eve, we continued the Sheen tradition by having a Family Talent Show. My talent was baking sugar cookies, Travis read the Christmas story, and Caleb sang several songs. We aso put cookies out for Santa. This was the first year we've been able to do any of those things with Caleb so it was really fun for us. I also made a gingerbread house earlier in the month which Travis and I had decorated. It was supposed to make it to New Years but we ended up picking the candy off piece by piece until New Years Eve when all that was left was the house, some frosting, and some rock hard Mike and Ike's.

For Christmas Caleb got a bowling set, a Tball set, a Tow Truck, books, and other cars. We spent all day playing with his different toys. I was most surprised with how much he enjoyed his bowling set. Trav and I tried our hand at making Christmas dinner. We cooked our first turkey which turned out kind of weird. All of the meat looked cooked and there wasn't any pink but as Travis trimmed the meat off the inside was this liquidy meat...I don't know how to explain it. I'm not sure what happened there, but we ended up nuking some of the outside meat and throwing out the rest because it was just a little too dodgy for us. I also made rolls, mashed potatoes, jello salad, and we had a lemon meringue pie. I also made sure we had something else to eat for that evening because another Sheen tradition is having a big lunch and then not having anything to eat for dinner and driving around Christmas night trying to find any place that is open, which usually ended up being Sonic or a gas station to get dinner from.

We spent the rest of the break just hanging out together and then on New Years Day went hiking at a place here called Enchanted Rock. I love the outdoors but I am not a big hiker. We had kind of felt like that Caleb had been getting into quite a bit of mischief over the break and we wanted to take him somewhere that he could just run around and we could let him go and not have to constantly be telling him "no." The hike was short but it was almost vertical at places and so we stopped often to catch our breaths. The view was great but it was super cold on the top of the rock so we just spent a little time up there and then came back down. We decided to swing by Fredricksburg since we were only about 20 miles away and had never been there and get something to eat for dinner. They have a main street that looks a lot like Park City Main Street so I just had Travis park the car and we started to walk down the street looking for something. We couldn't find a single restaurant that looked like something we wanted to eat and we were all starting to reach our limit, so I told Travis Caleb and I would sit on a bench and that he should quickly look at a few other restaurants to see if one of them would work. He left and then an LDS senior missionary couple walked by. I called out to them and begged them to tell us where a pizza or mexican restaurant was so that we could eat. We chatted with them for a bit and they suggested a pizza place that was pretty famous in the town. The only problem was that it was on the complete opposite side of our car so we had to walk all the way back to it. All the way back, Travis was like "Let's just get there" and I was like "Are you mad at me?" because I was the one who suggested we got to Fredricksburg in the first place. When we got to the restaurant it was nice and warm inside, the servers were super quick with the food, and we all enjoyed our food so that was a relief. After that we loaded up for the 2 hour drive back to our house. It was something different and was fun for us, because we really haven't had much chance to see a lot of the outdoor things in the area.

Overall we had a great holiday season, tried some new things on our own, and loved having time to spend with family. Caleb still says to me from time to time that he "misses his fambily" and I tell him were right here, and he says "I miss my cousins." We are blessed to have such a wonderful extended family.

A Conversation with Caleb

Tonight I picked Caleb up from his bath and carried him like a baby into his room to put him into his pajamas. Here is the conversation we had.
Me, "Caleb. I'm not going to be able to carry you like this very much longer. You are not tiny anymore."
Caleb, "I'm not a tiny caterpillar." (A book we read is called The Very Tiny Caterpillar)
Caleb, "I'm Caleb. Caleb Travis DeJong."
It just struck me as so funny. Maybe you had to be there.