Happy Thanksgiving!

Brigham (and the rest of us) had an awesome Thanksgiving! We hope you did too!

Backseat boys (All right!)

We drove from Austin to St. Louis to be with my sister's family for Thanksgiving. We love road trips! We listened to (almost all of) The Hunger Games on the way up. Intense.

Smart alec

Joseph got his daddy's smart alec tendencies.
He was typing his science report yesterday morning and I came to check up on him. Here's what I saw:

Egg Membrane Experiment

Purpose:
To see if the membrane of an egg is permeable to water.
Method:
1. We measured the whatever it was 67m. so now we can do the experiment so we put the blue mixture into water and it blew up the house and the house blowing up killed mom isn't that awesome? Well me Brigham and Mosey ran out of the house just in time and we jumped on are bikes and ran away.

Hmmm... I'm just a little offended that he thought it was awesome that I got killed by the exploding blue mixture!

Because our lives are not *quite* busy enough...

Yesterday right after Sacrament meeting, one of our high councilmen came and nabbed Ben, telling him he needed to talk with him for a few minutes, and then with me. We knew what that meant-- a new calling!
Ben's been the primary pianist for the past year, and was a primary teacher for 2 years before that. 3 years is pretty long to be in the primary!
He has been called to be the 2nd counselor in the Elders quorum, which makes our respective callings nicely symmetrical. It's funny because the R.S. 1st couselor's husband is also the Elders Quorum 1st counselor!
So we'll be juggling meeting schedules, that's for sure. At least our R.S. and E.Q. presidency meetings won't be double-booked, with 2 sets of spouses in each! But I do think it means that we'll pretty much never have Sunday evenings with both of us at home, and that probably 3 weeks out of the month we'll be taking separate cars.
Ben's already talking about buying a small trailer to help with all the moves that are inevitably in his future. :-)
I'm excited for him, though. It will be great for him to be able to interact with adults for a change. And I think he'll do a great job.

Weekend warrior

We're trying (not entirely successfully) to get ready for our trip to St. Louis this coming week. This involves laundry, straightening up the house, and cleaning up the back yard. Yesterday I put the boys to work attacking the back yard. It was pretty bad.
Anyway, Brigham needed to dress appropriately for the job, and this is what he came up with. Pretty good, huh?
I wonder if I would be a better housekeeper if I bought a maid's uniform to work in every once in a while? :-)

painting faces and throwing punches

I got another email today from a prospective HALT-MS trial candidate, also fighting insurance. It's really good to be able to be in contact with other people in this clinical trial. I wish that there was a way for all the past, current, and future patients to get in contact with each other. We need to start a stem cell transplant multiple sclerosis support group! It's funny, 16 months out, I'm starting to feel like a veteran!

I have to write about something that happened with Mosey a few weeks ago. It was during his 2nd to last soccer game, during the few minutes of practice that they do before the game. There was another boy on his team, "Miguel" who was quite a handful. Very energetic, shall we say. I was watching from the sideline and see Mosey and Miguel start getting into an argument.
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
Miguel: "Yes!"
Mosey: "No!"
At first I thought they were just playing, because it was so ridiculous. But then Miguel got right up into Mosey's face and yelled, "AAAAAAHHHH!!" And what did Mosey do? Exactly what he has been trained to do as the youngest of 3 brothers-- he punched him. He punched him in the chest, so it could have been worse (visions of black eyes, bloody noses, and split lips flashed before my eyes), but I was horrified. Miguel started crying and ran to his mom. I yelled at Mosey to get off the field. He came to me, almost in tears himself. He began, "Mom, he was yelling at me and--" but I cut him off and said, "I know, Mosey, I know, I saw him. But it doesn't matter that he was yelling, you NEVER hit another person, no matter what they say to you! It's never ok to hit like that!" We had a quick, extremely serious talk and I told him he had to go over and apologize to Miguel or he wouldn't be allowed to play. Mosey was good and walked over there with his head down and said, "I'm sorry for hitting you," and then ran back.
Afterward, I asked what they had been fighting about. I didn't ask him right away, because I didn't want him to get the idea that it *mattered* what they had been fighting about. Mosey said, "He said that after the game he was going to come and paint my face!!"
Ha! Can you believe it? I had to try not to laugh. I told Mosey that he needed to stop and think about things before getting into an argument. Was there any way that Miguel could paint his face? Would Miguel's mom let him? Would I let someone do that to Mosey? If not, then the best thing to do would have been to ignore him and walk away.
Mosey was pretty upset and defensive for the next few minutes, and almost got into another altercation. A few of the kids on his team were running around and "tagging" each other. Another little boy ran up behind Mosey and "tagged" him, and Mosey whirled around and I was very worried he was going to attack again! But he got control of himself and didn't do it. Good boy.
It's always interesting to me to see how differently my boys react in certain situations compared to how I would have acted. When I was 5, if another little girl had come up and started yelling at me like that, I would have started crying and run away, not hit her! Still, I don't want to entirely squash any instinct that Mosey has to protect himself. If Miguel had started hitting Mosey, I would have been ok with Mosey throwing a punch as well.

Duel of the Turner boys

This is what the boys did today on a gloomy drizzly gray November afternoon. Looks like fun, huh?
My boys really want it to be fall. And it has been a little cool the past few days, so the boys excitedly pulled out sweaters and jackets. But don't let that fool you-- look at Mosey's bare feet! This is one of the reasons I love Austin.
Sometimes I'm just amazed at how *boy like* my boys are! :-)

Favorite

My brilliant boy Brigham is a very... creative speller. He's been working on the word "favorite." He missed it a couple of days in a row, and so he tried hard to memorize the way it looks like it ought to be pronounced. So yesterday on his 3rd attempt with this spelling word, here's what he came up with:
faverright
That's just awesome, I say! Brigham is nothing if not creative.
He did get it right today, and I daresay he will never forget how to spell favorite again. :-)

Rope Swing

Mosey is a lot like Joseph. I think that he and Joseph may be more alike in personality (and certainly appearance) than Joseph and Brigham! (A fact that does not go unnoticed by Brigham, who tells me sometimes he feels left out. This is why I always thought that an ideal family size would be 4 or more children. 1 is lonely, 2 will fight, with 3 one will be left out, but with 4, everyone will probably have an ally.)
Anyway, one of the ways in which Mosey and Joseph are alike is their mutual obsession with the rope swing. I believe we are on swing #3 in that tree in the back yard. My boys swing on it until the plastic literally falls apart. If I can't find Joseph or Moses, 90% of the time I just need to look out the back door and there he is. Brigham likes it too, but if I can't find him, 90% of the time he'll be tucked away somewhere drawing.
I read somewhere that swinging is actually considered therapy for certain types of childhood behavioral disorders. I don't think my kids are particularly disordered (at least, no more than normal!), but the swing really calms them down. And our swing is in the perfect location-- just off the edge of the deck, so the boys can grab the swing and jump off the side of the deck and go swinging through the air. It looks fun, I wish I could try it!