First of all, happy belated birthday Elena! I hope your birthday was really great. Your cousins Brigham and Joseph can hardly wait to be 5 just like you! And soon you will be getting your best birthday present, a new little sister. Rosalynde, I hope you are doing well during these last few days. I can't wait to get "the call" that baby Mara is here.
Well, we have had a great few days! Ben's parents came on Wednesday night and left early yesterday morning. We did lots of things including going to Fairchild Gardens (a really beautiful tropical botanical gardens), Coral Castle, a tour of Ft. Lauderdale by boat, the beach (twice), Palm Beach, and lots of places in between!
The boys really, really loved having their grandparents here. Since they left, in all of the prayers (blessings on food included), thanks were given that grandma and grandpa could come.
Ben was scheduled to have Thursday and Friday off, but an emergency came up at work and he ended up really only getting Friday afternoon off. But we still managed to do just about everything we wanted. I hope we didn't completely wear out Kent, though!
I don't think I updated last week much at all, even before the Turners came, however. Mosey ended up with a double ear infection, so I'm still force-feeding him amoxicillin (only 2 more days of that torture, thank GOODNESS!-- No wonder so many bugs are becoming resistant to amoxicillin, 10 days of twice a day dosing in an uncooperative 2-year old is nigh-on impossible), I got strep throat AGAIN (and yes, I DID take my antibiotics as directed) and so ended up on another antibiotic, I painted the kitchen backsplash (wanted to do tile, but no time or money and I just got plain sick of the lavender sponge paint), rented a carpet cleaner and thoroughly cleaned carpets upstairs and down, touched up the paint in my bedroom and bathroom, and got the house pretty much clean by last Wednesday night. Whew! I still had several projects I really wanted to finish before Kent and Jackee got here, but oh well. What wasn't done was: weeding in front yard planters and new flowers put in big tree planters by driveway, garage cleaned out and organized (although this did mostly get done after they got here), cornice boxes in living room recovered, downstairs closet door repainted (the boys went at it with a knife more than a year ago and I still haven't repainted it), and new pictures printed out and hung in my newly painted stairway and hall. Oh well.
The outings we went on really were fun. At the Fairchild gardens, there was a huge art exhibit by an artist named Chihuly (can't remember his first name), who is a world-renowned glass blower. There were these fantastic glass pieces incorporated throughout the gardens, hanging from trees, "growing" from the ground, floating in the lakes. Really, really neat. Jackee and I went into a building where some of his smaller pieces for sale were on display. The pieces in that room were going for between $4000 and $40,000. No kidding! I stood their and watched while one lady looked around and decided to buy a $6,000 piece in the shape of a lily. It was pretty, but wow! $6,000 for a piece of glass.
At the Coral Castle, where we've been before, we were given a guided tour by this guy who must be the proprietor of the place or something, because he knew EVERYTHING and told us lots of really cool details that were not part of the regular tour script. And we saw a scarlett kingsnake (I think that's what it was-- it was either that or a coral snake, and a coral snake is extremely venomous, so I hope it wasn't that!!) slithering between 2 section of walls. Ben tried to catch it but it was too slithery. Seeing that snake was Joseph's favorite part of the day. We also caught a tree frog which we took home and kept until Sunday when we let it go. The boys thought it was very cool, how it would grab onto them and then make these enormous leaps onto walls or whatever.
At the second beach we went to, up in Palm Beach County (can't remember the name of that beach), we found so MANY shells! Also 2 beached jellyfish and a sea urchin. I thought the sea urchin was dead (it was washed up WAY up on the beach), so I took it home. I forgot to take it out of the car, though, and 2 days later it became horribly apparent that the poor thing had NOT been dead, but now obviously was. Yuck. Rotting sea creatures really smell horrible.
Kent and Jackee enjoyed being serenaded by the boys for nearly 2 hours on the way home from Palm Beach. Their song for the evening was the Scooby Doo theme song, which Ben had taught them. I doubt Kent or Jackee will be able to get that song out of their head for quite a while! Kent tried, to get them to start singing another song, but Scooby Doo prevailed.
Anyway, now we are trying to get back into the normal rhythm of life. Joseph is having a little bit of a hard time, mostly because when Grandma and Grandpa were here, he got to stay up late every night. Last night I tried to get him down at a decent hour, but he was still up till 10:00 PM pounding on my door crying to be let in. He finally fell asleep on the floor in the hall, poor guy. I'm trying very hard to get them out of the habit of sleeping in my bed. Anyway, today at school he was not at his best, and after school Miss Trudy wanted to talk to both of us. He has been rushing through some of his work, "scribble scrabbling," and she wanted to talk to him about doing his best. Joseph was embarassed and grumpy and did NOT behave well at all, at one point even trying to kick Miss Trudy! Oh no!! It wasn't really a real kick, I was holding him on my lap, and when Miss Trudy came and knelt in front of him, he sort of kicked out with his foot, I guess trying to push her away. But whatever, a kick is a kick. He got in big trouble and I made him stand in a corner until he apologized. He didn't ever apologize, but ended up instead accidentally bumping his head quite hard on a doorknob and was then crying really hard. I wasn't sure what to do and so I just picked him up and told him he would need to apologize tomorrow. I was pretty embarassed. Anyway, this evening Joseph made a very nice apology card for Miss Trudy and we had a good talk about taking his time and doing his best and never, ever, EVER kicking a teacher again. I think he got the picture.
The problem with him is that right now EVERYTHING is a race for him. A race to see who can get dressed first, who can open the car door first, who can get buckled first, who can finish eating first, etc., etc. I suppose this comes from always having a twin brother there to compete with. He told me today he was scribble scrabbling on his work because Eric was trying to beat him and he wanted to finish first. So I talked to him about how schoolwork is not a race, and it is better to do a good job than to be fast. We practiced what he would do if someone tried to race him (tell them it was not a race, and/or move to a different table). So I hope things will improve. I worked with him on his coloring today, something he has always lagged behind on compared to Brigham. Brigham loves coloring and is very good with his hands, and so I've never had to really "teach" him how to color, etc. But I think Joseph just needed some explanation as to how to color, and what it means to do a good job coloring (staying in the lines and filling in all the white spaces). I guess I never thought coloring had to be "taught!"
Ok, this has gone on way too long. At least now I feel like I am kind of up to date on my daily updates! I promise tomorrow's won't be nearly as long or boring.
I'm going to post a bunch of pictures on my blog, but they probably won't be up until tomorrow.