Kindergarten

Today was Kodi's first day of Kindergarten. She was so excited to go last night it took her nearly an hour to unwind enough to finally fall asleep. She is such a big girl. We are all so proud of her and hope that she knows how special she is. Her teacher is Mrs. Money, she and her Devin met her last week at the teacher open house. When we left the house I was thinking that I couldn't believe how big she was. Once we got to the school I couldn't believe how SMALL she was compared to the older kids. We love her so much!

Summer Time

Wow - Kodi is starting Kindergarten next week!


We have had a rough couple months, and are excited for some normality to come back into our lives. I am excited that Dev is done with school, and looking for work, but I am also sad that Kodi is now starting school. Time Fly's! We have been busy with swimming lessons, and looking for a home to buy, applying for jobs, getting a puppy, getting in a car accident, getting another puppy, and interviewing for other jobs.

The Case of the Wiggley Tooth

This morning was not much unlike most mornings where Devin leaves for work earlier then I...

For starters I overslept my usual 15 minutes. Flying out of bed, dressing and quickly recycling my hair from the previous day, I go back down stairs to wake Kodi up.

As a preface which adds importance to the rest of this story, I must provide some vital details about my child. Kodi was born with a sleep apnea which put her in the habit of not sleeping well, and waking several times a night. She did not sleep through the night until she was 2 and a 1/2 after she had surgery to help correct this problem. It did help her sleep in the physical sense, but that was only until she discovered a fear of "the darkness". She still struggles sleeping through the night, and since January has only slept all night in her bed 66 times. How do I know this? As an incentive to help her sleep in her own bed I made her a chart. Graphing off 100 separate spots. 66 stickers are on the chart. 66 out of nearly 200 days. wow, I just realized I am a sucker!

As I walk over to MY bed, and try to gently arrouse Kodi, she glares at me giving me the stinkeye stare, and tells me she doesn't want to get up and she's too tired to go see her friends, then she starts crying. It takes me 5 minutes to get her to stop sobbing and talk to me. She was upset about her "pajama's are itchy", she doesn't want to see her friends, her hair is now bothering her and keeps falling into her eyes, she won't change into her clothes for fear she may get cold in the process, and so on...

I finally pick her up, carry her over to the rocking chair and start crying myself. I explained how I didn't want to go to work either, and how I wish she didn't have to go to the sitter, and how I am late for work and still need to do my hair and get her breakfast. She quit crying till she saw the choice of outfit I had set out for her. In her words, "that dress is not good to wear mom, I will look crazy". And the tears start falling again...

After she spends 5 minutes rearranging her drawers to find an outfit more suitable for the events of the day, she settles on a daisy duck shirt with striped leggins. Luckily it matches, although at this point it truly doesn't matter if it matches or not - I would have sent her in her birthday suit if it wasn't for the fear of DCFS having problems with parents who do not dress their children.

So I finally have her dressed with shoes on and her hair in a ponytail that is not acceptable because it doesn't curl up in the back like ponytails do on Barbie dolls. I explained that the ponytail looked fabulous, I wasn't redoing it, and this was not negotiable. I gave her allergy medicine for her hayfever, and a drink of water to wash it all down. I finally talk her into breakfast and we agree upon a peanutbutter and honey sandwich. Shortly after I start making it, she starts crying all over again because I am "not doing it right, and Dad doesn't do it like that". How many ways are there to make a peanut butter and honey sandwich? Apparently there are two.

She explains to me that her tooth is wiggley and she needs the towel in case it starts to bleed, or even worse -in case the wiggley tooth falls out and she has to catch it. The crying doesn't stop until I get a hand towel for her to pack around and get her buckled into her carseat. Once we are in the car, I think she has decided this is a safe area and calms right down. I am so glad that we had the surface area of the towel to contain her tooth should it fall out. A tooth I was ordered to feel how wiggley it was, ended up not even being loose. She carried the towel into daycare and sat on the side of the playground refusing to play with the kids because her tooth might get bumped and then fall out. She agreed to trade in my bathroom hand towel for a large paper towel, then allowed me to kiss her cheek under her eye or on her forehead (as these areas were far enough away from her mouth I wouldn't knock her tooth out) and then leave to go to work.

I WANT MY BED BACK!!!

This is a picture of a time that I thought had passed.

Although Devin took this nearly a month ago, I am at work today with a kinked neck due to having a similar sleeping experience last night.

Good thing we love her!

WE LOVE BIKE DAY!

"My only regret is that I did not take a picture to commemorate the morning..."

Wow
Wow...is the only word I can use to sum up the events at the Strate home this morning.

Devin left for Cardwell (yes, Cardwell finally had work) at 6:00AM. I woke up 15 minutes late, 6:45 and showered. Kodi came upstairs as I was getting out of the shower and had to use the facilities, so I excused myself to get dressed and told her to come downstairs and change as soon as she finished in the bathroom. I was able to get dressed, gather her clothes and make it back upstairs without any sign of her.

*Side Note: As a parent, you just have a feeling when your kid has done, or is doing something that they shouldn't be doing - especially when they've been too quiet for too long.

I entered the bathroom to find Kodi still sitting on the toilet with her hair somewhat molded into something that any child of the 80's would have compared to a fantastically close version of a Cindy Lauper "up-do" (minus the hot pink color of course). It was lovely to say the least - completely *saturated* with what was left of my can of hair mouse.

Of course her hands were too sticky to wipe herself, so there she sat just waiting till I came back up to rescue her. Did I mention that I had already overslept by 15 minutes at this point?
After a significant clean-up, I had her follow me around and stand next to me as I finished getting ready. Repeat: Stand next to me, not touch, move, lean on anything, or speak.

Exiting the house with my hair barely blown dry, I swept Kodi up and packed her out to the car; with 10 minutes before I am supposed to be at work.

We make the drive to Springville, it takes till we pull up in front of the sitter before I finally unwind. Driving up to the drop-off zone in front of the sitter, I reach into the backseat to unbuckle Kodi's seat belt and realize something that most people are already aware of by 8:00AM: the day of the week.

It is Thursday. I don't have to be to work till 9 on Thursdays **sigh**, I'm going to make it! I am not late, infact, I am pretty darn early.

As I come to this realization, Kodi says, "MOM WE FORGOT MY BIKE, IT'S BIKE DAY AT PRESCHOOL!" So, leaving her seat belt buckled I climb back into the car and turn around; this time, heading in the direction of home.

The entire drive back home I was thinking to myself..."WE didn't forget, YOU neglected to tell me it was BIKE DAY", the sitter neglected to post a flyer or send a note home specifying that it was bike day. How did any of the other parents know to bring their kids bike?
(Forget the fact that the Preschool publishes a calendar at the beginning of each month and I may have forgotten to look at it...)

After the 10 minute drive back to the house, I open the garage, throw her bike in the trunk, run her in the house, and change her skirt and flipflops to jeans and Cowgirl boots because she has indicated to me that anything less then a cowgirl getup will simply not suffice.

We successfully made the drive BACK to sitter. The entire ride, Kodi repeats 9 times how she is "tired of driving and wants to get out of the car."

Well guess what kid?!? I am tired of being the mom today!
so we both get to be miserable!

I got the bike out of the trunk and carried it over to where her class was riding their bikes on a paved part of the parking lot. All the kids stopped and were in awe that Kodi had a two-wheeler. Kodi's Dad has been working with her and has taught her how to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels . There are only two other kids in her class of 15 which possess this ability.

The pride in Kodi's eyes, and smile on her face as she rode around and showed her friends her newly acquired skill was - PRICELESS. The admiration they showed toward her wiped all of the mornings frustration out of my mind, she had showed me in 3 seconds why bike day was so important.

I did make it to work, and got there by 9:00AM!

Graduation 2009

"Devin, you've graduated from college, what are you going to do now?"

"We're going to Disneyland!"

Devin graduated on May 1st 2009! We left the day of graduation and drove to Jean Nevada - the resting point (a little more then 1/2 way to Anaheim)

Kodi did not want to leave the next morning, (our hotel room had a direct view of the pool, and at the time she couldn't think of anything better) so our plan of not telling her where we were going and driving right up to the Disneyland gate didn't quite work out. We had to tell her so we could leave NV; even then, she didn't believe us! She has asked us if we could go back to Disneyland nearly every day since we went 2 years ago, and I think she got used to us telling her no.

We had a blast! It was such a good way to celebrate Dev's graduation and the road that lead us to graduation.

The world is our oyster at this point. Devin is going to work at flight instructing and look for a job that will work opposite of instructing. I'm still working at BidSync in American Fork, and we'll start looking for a place of our own as soon as Devin finds regular work.

Kodi's getting ready to start Kindergarten, and teaches her mom and dad things each and every day. She loves to pretend, and spent 5 hours yesterday taking turns being Tinkerbell and each one of Tinks friends from Pixie Hollow at Disneyland. I have mastered by southern accent, as I most frequently am assigned to play the role of Rosetta; the Garden Fairy and Southern Belle. Amber and Dan would be proud!
Every sentence that Kodi speaks starts with, "lets pretend" and she has a fantastic imagination, that leads to some pretty spectacular nightmares. I am affraid she gets that from her mother. I recently woke Devin up with a swift kick to the torso. Not sure how I did that, but I was defending myself from the "bad guys"

Until next time...

Is it Christmas YET???

Christmas is fast approaching and we have one excited little girl at our home. She is so excited and asks us several times a day if tomorrow is Christmas. The past few weeks have been very busy for all of us. But we've had a lot of fun too, we were able to take Kodi to ride the Polar Express! We started in Heber city and made it all the way to the North Pole and back in 2 hours, she met santa and told him what she wanted for Christmas.

Devin and McKade hung the Christmas lights, you can tell from one of the pictures I included that at one point, the pitch of the roof was so steep that Devin tied a rope around his waste and gave McKade the other end to hang on to incase Devin lost his footing - the funny thing is, if Devin would have fallen, he'd have pulled McKade down with him.

We had Thanksgiving in Garland with Dev's family where Kodi was bucked off a horse named Cocoa - ok, it was a pony but it was still a far fall to the ground and she did a complete flip in the air! She tells everyone she is a "real cowgirl" now.

We had an early Christmas party with the Stowe brothers and sisters last week,Uncle Rich went to Peru for a couple weeks to work at a hospital in the Amazon and Devin and I are both jealous of the "life experience" he is having - from the pictures it looks amazing!

Devin just finished his last paper for the semester and has one more final to take this next week. Then...we have one more semester till he graduates. (3 classes to be exact!) I am so proud of him and can't wait for him to be finished. We will be having one gianormous party when he's done!

Happy Holidays !!!