The Drive to Colorado

We were anxious to get on the road for our family reunion in Colorado.  The kids were still in school, so as soon as they got out of school, we hit the road.  We knew we didn't have time to go the whole way without pulling into Colorado really late, so we stayed the night in Cheyenne.  We had some free hotel points, so we got to stay in a really nice room and swim in the pool.

This really doesn't deserve it's own post when I have so many more things to write about, but let me tell you why it gets its own post.  I didn't get in the pool that night with the kids.  I usually have to because Jason and Nate want me with them.  On this night, I just kept telling Jason that I couldn't get in.  I just didn't want to.  He never really left the side of the hot tub pool where it was "safe".  He wouldn't trust his life jacket.  The very next day, he was out in the middle of 6 foot deep water and he never looked back.  He learned to trust his life jacket and now he's all over the water.  He'll just jump out of the boat and swim in open water!  Nothing matters to him anymore.  I can't believe it.  That's worth a post, isn't it?

The Blanket

So, this happened way back in May.  I am really far behind in updating things here.

When we were at our family reunion in Colorado, my mom gave us each a blanket that she had been working on.  They are made from my dad's shirts and jeans.

 It was a really cool gift.  I loved that rather than just sew plain squares together, she added a Levi tag on each one of our blankets.

 And they all had a pocket or two.

We sat in a room in Warren's house and each of us picked out one that we liked best.  It was a small room, and I was annoyed that the brothers kept stinking me out.  Ugh.

 Warren gets two pictures because I am nice and won't make this one be the only picture of him...

...but if I don't leave that one in, then this one looks really weird.  You might wonder why he has such a cheesy smile, but now that you see them both together, it tells the story.  I hope he's embarrassed and just smiles normally the first time he's asked.  Who am I kidding?  He doesn't read my blog, so he won't be embarrassed...

Jenny's blanket had a some scraps of her own air-force shirt in it, so she loved it.

The blankets came with two pillows as well.  I chose the ones that I have not only because I remember my dad wearing them, but because they are bursting at the buttons.

I love that.  My dad was bursting at the buttons too :).

I can't say enough of what these gifts mean to me.  My mom put a lot of time and effort into them.  It was funny, before she left for one of her trips, she called and told me that there were quilts at the quilt shop that needed to get picked up if something were to happen and she couldn't pick them up.  She pieced them all together, but took them to a shop to be quilted.  She couldn't leave the country without someone knowing that there were quilts at the quilt shop.  Thankfully, she was able to pick them up when she got back and now we are each in the possession of a treasure.  I love my family.  I wish it were my dad filling up the puffiness of these shirts instead of a pillow form, but if I can't have him here, at least I have a little piece of him in these pillows and blankets.  I have a piece of my mom in them too.  I'm sure there are even samples of her DNA from being poked by pins.  My mom is amazing.  I have great parents!

11

Happy Birthday Allie!

Our sweet Allie girl is 11!  She said, "it's pretty cool that I got to go to McCall when I was 10 and come home when I was 11."
That is pretty cool.  McCall is a great place to be and even better when you are celebrating 11 years of life.  I think it was a great birthday for her.  We got up in the morning and she had her birthday cereal.  She chose Apple Jacks.  She is older than she can show with the fingers on her hands, so her cousin helped out.

We rented a boat for the day, so lucky Allie got to waterski on her birthday.  She was hoping it would be her lucky day and she'd get right up on one ski.

Call it luck, skill, magic, the fat ski, the rope that help holds the ski in place, whatever it was, she got right up...

...and wore the biggest smile ever...

 After being up for a minute, she decided she wanted to cross the wake...

...so she did!

 Between this, and all the other kids doing their thing, I was cheering and yelling so much that my voice was strained the rest of the day.

 The cousins had fun knee boarding together.

 We spent the whole day on the lake.  Allie requested stroganoff for dinner, but I didn't bring up the ingredients, so we had tacos instead.  Then, there was the cake...

It was a pinterest fail.   I wanted to make a hedgehog cake.  So, I got on pinterest and found this one...

Seemed easy enough.  You're just supposed to cook 2 round cakes and then cut them,

 and assemble them.

Seriously looks easy enough.  It didn't work out so well though.  I ran into trouble with the frosting.  The baking and cutting went well, but I didn't bring up enough powdered sugar, so when I went to assemble the pieces, the frosting wouldn't hold things together.  By that time, I knew it would be a disaster, so I just decided to color the frosting purple (her favorite color) and make it look as gross as I could.  I feel like I succeeded in that.

 Allie was a good sport.

 She got some school clothes and a dress for her gifts.

She also earned enough money this summer to buy an ipod.  She put her birthday money in from her grandma and aunt and was really excited to be able to open it up.  She doesn't get a whole lot of things brand new, so this was really exciting for her.

Allie is an amazing kid.  I am so grateful that she is in our family.  I rely on her all the time because she is such a wonderful help to me.  She's fun to talk to.  She's funny, and she's smart.  She is my only girl and we have a fun relationship.  It is hard for me to look back on the years and not miss that sweet little 2 or 3 year old Allie, and all the years in between.  It's obvious that the years are just flying by, but I sure have had fun along the way.  I am so happy for her accomplishments and I have loved to watch her learn and grow.  She is my daughter, but she is also a daughter of God and I know He loves her too and is proud of the person she is becoming.   

We love you Allie Sue! I hope 11 treats you well!

Set Apart

So, I got a new calling and needed to be set apart for it.  We all went in the Bishop's office and sat down.  The little boys were trying to be reverent, but there's a lot of energy trapped in their little bodies when they've already been sitting for three hours in church.  So it was hard for them to sit still and be good.  There were a lot of questions from both boys about what was going on, and why.  I tried to answer as best as I could, but I was still just trying to keep things quiet, so I kept shushing Nate when he was asking question after question.  When it was my turn, Nate asked again what was happening and I told him I was being set apart.  He said "why?" and I told him it was so that I could have the Lord's help in doing my calling better.
The blessing was nice and in it, I was reminded that my family comes first and my calling second.  Everyone laughed when the second we said "amen" there was a chorus of "Mom?!? Mom?!?" from Nate and Jason.  They rushed the chair I was sitting in and showered me with hugs and questions.  There was a lot going on, so I was still brushing Nate off as his question of why we were being set apart was being asked over and over.  He was starting to get really worried and sad, so I was holding his hand, but my attention was divided among all the other people in the room talking to me.  I remember that someone noticed that he was crying and asked why.  He said "I don't want my mom to go away."  They said that I wouldn't be going anywhere.  That I might be busier, but would always make time for him.  He just wasn't finding comfort in anyone's words.  Finally, I picked him up and snuggled him as the cries and tears shook his little body.  As we were walking out to the car, I asked him what was going on and finally asked, "what do you think 'set apart' means?"
Through his tears, he said "well, you know how Grandpa Joe and Grandma Bonnie got set apart?"
(They got divorced years and years ago.)
The poor kid thought I had confused the words "set apart" with "separated" or "divorced" and thought I had to get divorced to do this new calling.  No wonder he was so upset!  We cleared things up and had a good laugh.  He's been fine with everything since then.
We have a new bishopric and I know they'll give dozens of blessings to people in new callings, but I think this one will stand out in their memory.  It will in mine for sure.

This Year's Butterflies

I do this all the time.  I write a whole bunch of posts and set them to publish each day for a couple of weeks and then I walk away and let busy life take over instead of writing.  I have so many things that have happened since I walked away that I hardly know where to start!  I am dedicated to keeping it going though, so I'm going to start somewhere...it might as well be butterflies because that's easy.

One of our summer bucket list plans was to bring home caterpillars  and watch them turn into butterflies.  We found a few up the canyon and put them in our little enclosure.  We fed them lots and lots of milk weed and watched them grow.  It's always amazing to me that they can grow so big from just a tiny egg.

 We watch for them to turn black and then next thing you know, there's a beautiful butterfly in the cage!

They usually take some time to flex their wings and fly off, so we like to play with them before they do.  The kids are all very careful with them and we don't touch their wings.  They like to put them on their noses.  Jason is a bit creeped out, so he doesn't ever handle them, but Nate and Allie do.

This year, Allie learned that the males have two black spots on their backs, and smaller veins.  We had 3 males and 1 female this year.  I don't know why I didn't take any pictures of the one female...I guess we'll just have to do it again next year and hope to get one.

We sure love doing this each year!  It's still so amazing to me that a cute little caterpillar can turn into this beautiful butterfly.

More Jason Talk

My kids are getting old.  Their speech impediments are clearing up.  The only time they say something cute is when they mistake a meaning of a word, or mispronounce something.  It just doesn't happen much anymore.  So I cling to the cute things Jason says.  Here are a few of the latest...


Me: I love you sweet boy.

Jason: I love you too Momma.  I love you as much as the moon and the stars and the sun...(looking around the room) and the microwave.

Me: Wow...that is a lot.

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Jason: Mom?

Me: Yeah?

Jason: I love you....and also... (followed by a question)

ie: I love you...and also? Can I have a piece of gum?

Mike accuses him of trying to butter me up first, but I think he just doesn't know how to start something that starts with "Mom?" unless it is followed by a declaration of love because he says it to me so many times a day.

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I love how he pronounces "actually" as "akt chuwy"

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Jason: Mom?

Me: Yeah?

Jason: (animatedly) The car went down the hill, and then this happened...(pause)...it tipped over!

His stories have a whole lot of "and then this happened" thrown in there.

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Jason: Mom?

Me: Yeah?

Jason:  I need to talk to you...I love you.

("I need to talk to you" is always followed by some statement or request.  He can't just make the request.  He has to inform me that he needs to talk to me to command my attention.)

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When we were in Oregon...
"Mom, I got wet.  It's the ocean's fault!"

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"I like Kung Fu Panda.  I'm his biggest fan.  But I just don't want to watch it right now."

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After running, "I have to take a break.  My little heart is beating too fast!"

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Jason has a gift for remembering funny lines in movies and then repeating them all the time to make us laugh.  Since he is often running around as "underwear boy", we started calling him "Captain Underwear".  We also call him Nacho Libre and are hoping that he still wants to be Nacho for Halloween.  He tells me about "stretchy pants" in Nacho's accent.  He also quotes lines about "nutrients" and "eagle powers".  He still quotes Pigeon Tody and Kung Fu Panda all the time.
He thinks he's a ninja and cracks me up with his "inner peace" poses.  He likes to make people laugh and when he gets a reaction from one of his movie quotes, he says it over and over.  He's just a funny kid and I'll be sad when there aren't "funny things Jason says" posts anymore.

Master Builder

Mike had a sample lunch table that he needed to store for a while.  We had just gotten rid of the last of the baby stuff, so we put it in the room that used to have the changing table.  It was right around Christmas and the boys had gotten several Lego sets, so we started using it as a Lego table.  The whole room became the Lego room.  Jason has really started loving Legos.  He loves working on little things, so Legos fit right into that category.  He especially likes the mini-figures.  He swaps out heads and capes and weapons until I don't even know what goes with what anymore.  Grrr.  It really is okay though because he will spend hours in the "Lego" room and it is where he goes when he needs to re-set.

 I love watching his cute little fingers at work.

Allie is always asking him to get dressed, but this is his favorite...being underwear boy with his Legos.

He asks me to make "creations" for him.  Those creations become the favorite mode of transportation for his guys to "go to China to meet pandas".  Then, they break apart and he asks for another one.  He told me the other day that when he grows up, he'll be a master builder and make creations big enough for people to get married in.  I think that came from the idea that Allie put into his head that some day, he could be an engineer and design temples.
I don't know what he'll be when he grows up, but for now, it is amazing how much Legos can calm him down when he's angry.  I am pretty particular about Legos and it's hard for me to see them get all taken apart and mixed up, but it brings him so much joy that I've let it go.  If you've seen The Lego Movie, you'll understand what I mean when I say that I have to squelch the "Lord Business" that is in me.  There's a master builder at work.