The Plothows

Sunday, October 29, 2017

F-I-V-E

And just like that, they are five. They are no longer little kids, they are BIG kids. We celebrated quite a few times this year. Their birthday was on a Thursday, so we let them open some gifts that morning. Then, we had a birthday party with their friends from school at a local bowling alley. Then, we had a cousins' birthday party with even more cake and gifts!

Thought I would keep the tradition going of doing the birthday questionnaire... it's fun to see how their answers change (or don't change) from the previous year.

Birthday Questionnaire
1. What is your favorite color?

A: purple, pink and white

M: blue and red

2. What is your favorite toy?

A: big rainbow bear (that she sleeps with - she seriously can't go anywhere without this thing!)

M: LOL dolls

3. What is your favorite fruit?

A: strawberries

M: cantaloupe

4. What is your favorite TV show?

A: Sofia the First

M: My Little Pony

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?

A: Peanut butter sandwich or Pizza or Mac-n-Cheese

M: Mac-n-Cheese

6. What is your favorite outfit?

A: Dresses!

M: Jeans - comfy and nice (those were her exact words - ha!)

7. What is your favorite game?

A: Hello Kitty Nail Salon (on her Kindle)

M: Hello Kitty Nail Salon (on her Kindle)

8. What is your favorite snack/treat?

A: Chocolate, fruit snacks, goldfish
M: Goldfish, Mix (mix of peanuts, cashews, m&m's, etc)

9. What is your favorite animal?

A: Flamingos

B: Horses (I am super surprised she didn't say dogs here - she is obsessed with dogs!)

10. What is your favorite song?

A: Can't Stop the Feeling (Trolls) - Justin Timberlake
M: Same (they LOVE this song!)

11. What is your favorite book?

A: Disney Characters (we have a book that has a page for almost every popular Disney character)
M: Spider Man 5 Minute Stories

12. What is your favorite thing to have for breakfast?

A: Donuts
M: Pumpkin Spice Cheerios (a girl after my own heart!)

13. What is your favorite thing to do outside?

A: Play on swing set
M: Tag

14. What is your favorite drink?

A: Cranberry juice
M: Apple juice

15. What is your favorite vegetable?

A: Carrots
M: Broccoli

16. What do you like to take to bed with you at night?

A: Big rainbow bear (yep, same one as before)
M: Twilight Sparkle stuffed animal

17. What do you want to be when you grow up?

A: Ballerina
M: Firefighter

18. What makes you happy?

A: Seeing rainbows
M: Sunshine

19. What makes you sad?

A: Rain

M: When people be a bully at me

20. What do you want for your birthday?

A: LOL dolls

M: Sugar and Spice LOL dolls

We had their 5 year old check-up and the girls keep getting bigger! ;) Avery is still a bit shorter and slightly heavier than Morgan. Avery is 43.75 inches and 41.3 lbs. Morgan is 45.25 inches and 40.9 lbs. For comparison, I was 45.25 inches and 42 lbs at 5 years old. So, Morgan is trending to be a giant like me - ha!

I was reading what I wrote about the girls on their 4th birthday and it pretty much all still applies.

Morgan and Avery are very much opposites, but they are still the best of friends and play really well together. We've gotten to a great stage where the girls will just go in the other room and play for hours together without much intervention from Matt or me. One of their favorite toys right now are LOL Surprise dolls. We have those dolls and their tiny accessories all over the house. And the girls love to switch the heads and bodies around, so we have tiny headless bodies lying around as well. The girls also love playing dress up and restaurant (Matt and I are frequent customers). Avery is still into arts and crafts, while Morgan loves all superheroes.

At school, they are in the PreK2 class, which is a smaller class of kids that turned 5 just after Sept 1st (aka the "Late for the Date" room). Their teacher is Miss Mikayla. We get pictures most days and sometimes little reports of what the kids are up to at school. We ask the girls who they play with at school and what sort of things they like to do. Avery and Morgan tend to play with different kids, which I think is great. I never wanted them to just play with each other at school and then at home. Avery's best friends at school are Hannah, Chloe and Maddie. Morgan's best friends at school are Grayson (her cousin) and Amalia. They both love playing in the kitchen area at school and with the building toys. Avery is more into coloring and brings home a stack of papers every night with her artwork. Morgan is more into active play, so we hardly ever see coloring pages from her. :)

As far as personality, Morgan is the extrovert and Avery is the introvert. Morgan knows everyone's name at school from the janitor to the bus driver to all the coaches and she says "hi" to all of them when she walks by. Morgan wears her heart on her sleeve and she gets her feelings hurt easily. One day on the way home from school, she cried the whole way telling us some story about how she is always so nice to everyone and someone at school was mean to her and she didn't understand why someone would be mean to her when she was nice to them. It really upset her and was surprising to Matt and me that it affected her so much.

Avery is much more reserved. She's also got a stubborn streak, which comes from her Dad. :) She thinks things and processes on a different level than Morgan. She's much more analytical (wonder where that comes from - ha!) We can tell Morgan something and she will take what we say at face value. Not Avery. She likes to know how things work and why things happen and asks a lot of questions. Avery is also a nervous child. She gets anxious before going new places and wants to know what's going to happen when we get there. She doesn't like surprises. She gets a lot of tummy aches, which I can totally relate to. I was that same nervous child and I remember getting stomach aches all the time as a kid, even at her age.

Happy Birthday, Avery and Morgan! We love you!

Sorry for the craziness, Ruth!

The second weekend in October, we got a visit from Grandma Ruth. She likes to visit around the girls' birthday every year. Unfortunately, during her visit we had a sick kiddo, a ton of storms, no electricity and a flooded basement. Talk about craziness!

On that Friday, Ruth and I grabbed lunch and went shopping in downtown Downers Grove. She needed a few gifts for people and we thought it would be fun to check out some of the different shops in the area. She found some unique and fun gifts and was able to check everything off her list! Matt took the express train to the main street station where we were shopping and caught a ride home with us. We spent the evening hanging out at home with the girls.

The next morning, Avery woke up sick. That poor kiddo was still fighting something off from the weekend before and now she came down with a stomach bug. She laid around most of the morning/afternoon. Matt and Ruth went with Morgan to swimming lessons and out to lunch at the Harvest while Avery rested.

That afternoon around 2:30, while we were all napping/watching football, the electricity went out. Matt had ran out to the grocery store really fast and when he came back, the garage door wouldn't open. Ugh. ComEd originally said the electricity would be back on around 5:00, but then they kept revising the schedule. As the day went on and turned dark, we decided to go to Erin's house for dinner. We were hoping the electricity would be back on around 11:00pm since that was what ComEd said was going to happen. Of course, at 11:10pm, ComEd revised that again and said 3:00AM. Not good. It was pouring down rain and our back-up sump pump battery is really only good for 8 or 9 hours at the most. Considering the sump pump was running pretty much non-stop, we were lucky it lasted as long as it did. We ended up running back to Erin's house around midnight to get their back-up battery, but it had already started flooding in our basement. So, it didn't help much. So, we just waited. Every time it started raining hard again, I just cringed. Eventually around 3:30AM, the power came back on. I was laying on the floor in the girls' room and Matt was in the family room, neither of us were sleeping. I think Ruth was asleep - she loved the quiet! :)

Nightime by candlelight in the girls' room

As soon as the power came on, I could hear the sump pumps kick on. Both of them were running non-stop. Matt and I went downstairs to assess the damage. We were lucky that the water was less than 2 inches deep. Any more than that, it would have hit the drywall and that would have been super bad. As it was, most of our stuff was in plastic bins and we only had really one big rug that got soaked. Surprisingly, the kids play mat area kind of floated above the water, so a lot of the toys sitting on top of that did not get wet. It could have been so much worse. It was a good excuse to get rid of stuff we don't want/need anymore.

The water drained out of the basement pretty quickly once the sump pumps started working. We went back to bed and got a couple hours sleep before the big clean up started.

On Sunday, we spent some time cleaning up the basement and moving stuff to the garage to dry. Ruth got a lot of time to play with the girls while Matt and I were busy. So, it really worked out well to have her at our house during that time.

That afternoon, the girls had a birthday party for a friend of theirs from school, Olivia. It was at Olivia's house and the girls had fun playing with someone else's toys for a few hours. I was so exhausted from not getting any sleep. I loaded up on beer and cake. Ha!

I think we are finally back to normal in the basement. It took a while to dry out the carpet and get the humidity level back down. We started out at like 80% and it was bad. Our dehumidifier has been running non-stop, along with a bunch of fans. I bleach mopped the floors and play mats and Lysol'ed everything. I just hope we don't find mold anywhere in the future.

And the first item on our shopping list... a generator.

Sammy Fund Weekend

As is our tradition, Matt and I headed back to Quincy for the annual Sammy Fund golf tournament. We dropped the kids off at my parents house in Rochester, so we had a kid-free weekend! Matt gets to play lots of golf and I get lots of shopping done. It's a win-win.

Matt makes a mean Bloody Mary and always makes a big batch for everyone before golfing. This year, I found some "bacon salt" for the rim of the glasses and it was a hit! I would never actually order a Bloody Mary out anywhere, but I have to say I love the ones that Matt makes.

We also have gone to the Oktoberfest in Quincy every year and it's a fun time. We listen to some polka music, drink some beer and maybe eat a brat or two. Chuck pulls out his standard Oktoberfest hat each year.

Silliness - we don't get out much - ha!

I have no pictures from the actual golf tournament. But, Matt's team won for their flight and got some shirts. Not bad!

While we were enjoying our time in Quincy, the girls were having a blast at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They went to see the My Little Pony Movie on Friday. Definitely a highlight for them, as they got to have movie theater popcorn. On Saturday, they went to a few places around Springfield - Morgan rode on a huge ferris wheel, the girls did some crafts at the museum and they got to eat McDonalds. Yum! On Sunday, they went to another fall festival and made some crafts, got their faces painted and met Smoky the Bear again. Then, poor Avery got sick and spent the rest of the day sleeping and laying around not feeling well. : ( Up until that point, she never wanted to leave G&G's house!

The girls showing off their new Baby Alive dolls

Feeding them - they actually poop - so much fun!

Letting her doggy go in the zipline

Morgan and Grandpa on the ferris wheel - Avery refused to do it

Working on Halloween crafts

Playing in a HUGE dollhouse - Morgan would love this for our house

Painting pumpkins

Face painting is always a favorite activity

Visiting the museum with Grandma and Grandpa

Girls weekend

Every year, I get together with a couple of friends from high school for a girls weekend. We take turns hosting and this year, our trip was in Chicago. We spent Friday night in Downers Grove. Matt made us an awesome dinner, we had a few drinks and sat by the fire pit catching up. It's like no time passes, we can just pick up where we last left off. It's so nice to have friends like that!

Saturday, we headed into the city. We met up with another high school friend of ours for lunch. Then, we went to the Cubs game. The Cubs won 9-0, so that was awesome! After the Cubs game, we hung around Wrigleyville. I have not been out in Wrigley forever... so many changes! Hany met up with us and we ended up singing karaoke at Trader Todd's. Oy! Such a fun night!

The view from our hotel room

Me, Crystal, JJ and Heidi

JJ, me and Crystal at Wrigley

Jello shots at Sluggers - YIKES!

Hany joined us at Trader Todd's

Hany and me

JJ, Crystal and me on the boat at Trader Todd's

Hany and me singing

On Sunday, we dropped JJ off at the el to head home. Crystal and I made a last minute decision to go to the top of the Willis Tower. I was surprised by how freaked out I was to walk out on the glass-bottom ledge. And actually, I didn't walk out there. I ended up sitting down and scooting the rest of the way. Ha!

And this is what happens when you wear a greenish shirt for a green-screen picture. Oh boy!

While I was having fun with the girls downtown, Matt was having a sleepover with Morgan and Avery back at home. They were so excited and had been talking about it all week! They set up their beds in the family room, popped some movie theater popcorn and watched Trolls. They eventually fell asleep. :) On Sunday, they got a visit from Grandma and Grandpa and had lunch at Steak-n-Shake.