Easter celebrations

We went to our friends the Bradfords' house for a little Easter celebration Sunday. I'm happy they invited us, since I had literally nothing planned for my boys. I did buy some eggs and candy the day before, but I didn't even have ANYTHING for Easter dinner. I thought about it on Saturday, but I knew I wouldn't have the energy or leg-strength to cook anything by the time the afternoon rolled around, so why bother, right?

We ended up eating a box of Pasta-roni. And we only had one box so there wasn't enough for everyone. I didn't eat any (don't worry, I had eaten a bunch of chocolate at church) and Ben ate cold-cereal. Pathetic!

But we had a fun time at the Bradfords. They have an enormous backyard with lots of good egg-hiding places. Nikki is a much more conscientious mother than me, and her eggs were all filled with cute things like stickers and teddy-grahams and raisins and pecans and goldfish crackers. Mine were filled with cadbury mini eggs and jelly beans. Plus I brought two boxes of peeps and a bag of reeces peanut butter eggs. I'm afraid I completely sabotaged her efforts to keep Easter from spiraling down into sugar-frenzied madness.

I also brought some hard-boiled eggs to dye, and the kids had fun doing that. Although I'm also afraid we permanently stained Nikki's formica counter-top... Sorry, Nikki!!!!

So it was a pretty fun afternoon after all.



Ooh, pretty eggs.




Mosey dyeing his egg.



Brigham getting his just right.




Joseph with his mouth full of the good stuff after the Easter egg hunt.



I tried to get one good shot of all of my boys together. Well, I didn't get even one good shot. This was the funniest of the bunch, though.

Little things

Seems we've had a rash of bad luck with little things breaking around here. It's getting annoying. Here's a list of some of the things that have broken-- this is all in the past month.

1. Ben's MP3 player (this is the 2nd one since January)
2. The gear-shift sensor thingy (don't ask me, I know nothing about cars) to the Hyundai, $200-something repair, and 2 days at the shop
3. The battery cable connector thingy to the Hyundai. $130 repair plus the hassle of taking the car in and leaving it for a day. This happened the week after the sensor thing. I sometimes suspect car places of purposely breaking things just so you have to bring them back.
4. Right front tire to the Hyundai. These tires are just over a year old.
5. CD/DVD drive to my computer. Had to go back twice to the computer repair place and try 3 different drives. There's still some weird stuff going on with it, though, and I have the sinking feeling the issue wasn't the drive at all (there goes $80), but something weird with Windows. I'm pretty sure I'll have to re-install Windows which means wiping out all my files and programs which will be a MAJOR pain in the neck. Everything's backed up by Carbonite, but still...
6. Wireless keyboard to the computer. Keys started randomly typing out letters other than their own. $48 to get a new one.
7. Garage door opener. It's not the battery, I got a new one. It just won't open and close the door anymore. Don't know how to fix that.
8. Power cord connector to the other laptop (the one we got at Christmas). We got a new powercord, it wasn't that. Apparently this model laptop commonly has this problem. We sent it to get repaired ($120) and the people have had it almost 2 weeks now. Apparently the previous owner also had this problem, and "fixed" it by soddering this box thingy to the inside of the computer, making it now almost impossible to remove.

None of these things are huge, but together they are awfully annoying. There's a bunch of other random things that are not working right (telescope, door-locking mechanism in the van, a light bulb that broke off in the socket of the ceiling fan), but I'm not counting those.
On the bright side, my camera magically "fixed itself." I don't know how, but after not working for several weeks, it suddenly started working again. And I think that would have been a more expensive fix than any of those other items on my list, so I should consider myself lucky!

Two funny exchanges

On Saturday afternoon I took the boys to the school playground. They played together really well. Mosey was exhausted (up crazy late the night before), and after a while came back to the car and fell asleep. I ran him back home (less than 2 minutes away), and went back to the park. I sat there feeling warm, tender, motherly feelings about how lucky I was that my two boys loved each other so much and played together so well.
Naturally right about the time I was thinking this, Brigham came running up the car, crying, with Joseph coming right after him.
Finally I managed to get the story of what happened. Joseph wanted to play a game, but Brigham thought it was "a stupid game." I told Brigham that he didn't have to play Joseph's game if he didn't want to, but Brigham said that Joseph just kept telling him everything he was doing was wrong. Brigham does tend to get really uptight about stuff like this, but Joseph can also be pretty overbearing.
I asked Joseph what the game was, and he said, "Well, it's too hard to explain all at once." So I asked him how could Brigham know how to play the game if he couldn't explain the rules? Joseph answered, "Well, I just tell him whenever he's doing something wrong!"
LOL!! No wonder Brigham thought it was a "stupid game."
I told Joseph that no one wants to play a game when they don't know the rules and someone is always telling them what to do, or telling them they're doing it wrong.

But Brigham was still very upset. Brigham also has the tendency, when he is upset, to blame anything and everything on someone else. So this was the next exchange between the two of them:
Brigham (to Joseph): "You made me hurt myself!"
Joseph: "How did I make you hurt yourself?"
Brigham: "You made me get a sliver!"
Joseph (incredulous): "How did I make you get a sliver?"
Brigham: "You made me mad and when I get mad I rub my hands on things and when I rub my hands on things I get a sliver!"
Joseph (disgusted): "I didn't make you mad, you made yourself mad! You are in charge of if you get mad or not!" (Glad at least some things I say over and over to the boys sinks in!)

Ha ha ha!! Good lesson for mom not to let her head get too big...

Happy Easter!!

Approval!!

Ben got word today from the VP of HR that they are approving my transplant! This is such good news, so many prayers answered. I was getting so discouraged that it would take a really long time. TMI will send off all the paperwork to M.D. Anderson on Monday and after that I'm sure things will get busy. I tentatively anticipate going into the hospital at the beginning of May, since there is probably a month's worth of stuff that has to be done before hand (MRI's, more exams, stem cell harvest, etc.). We'll keep everyone updated.

What good news for a Good Friday!

Spring is here!

Spring has been here in Austin for a few weeks, but now it is official! I was going to take pictures of the pretty tulips Ben planted along our front walkway, but on Tuesday we had a big hailstorm, and it knocked all the petals off the stems. :-(

It's so nice to watch the sun come up behind the trees with all their new leaves, I just love the luminescent green of new leaves.

Joseph

Joseph had to fill his quota of silly pictures. The only way I can get him to be in ANY picture, is to promise that I'll take a bunch of silly pictures, too.



Scary, huh? That is his "scary" face. I'm shaking in my boots.



Playing dead. Do people die with their mouths wide open like that? :-)



Giving me the thumbs up.



And a wave for good measure.



He told me he had his arm around his "imaginary friend." This must be an imaginary imaginary friend, because he doesn't actually have one!


We ordered a whole bunch of books from the Scholastic book order form he brought home a few weeks ago. They finally came in a couple days ago, and he's been pretty happy. He read all of "A Magic Schoolbus: The Truth About Bats" last night, sitting next to the open door in his room, after he was supposed to have gone to bed. He's got a brother that told me all about it though. :-) I told him I used to do the same thing, only my sisters didn't like the door open so I had to read by flashlight under the covers.

Brigham

So the boys weren't too excited about taking St. Patrick's pictures. They just wanted to take silly pictures, so I obliged.


I have no idea what Brigham is doing here.



He is roaring at me here. Scary, huh?



He is playing dead. After I shot this, he had to come and look at it on my camera's LCD screen to make sure he really looked dead.



He said he was "Being an indian warrior."

Brigham has had a few great lines recently. I keep forgetting to write them down before I forget them. But this one I remember. We were in the car and he and Joseph were talking. He says to Joseph, "Joseph? I want to know what you think and what you feel." LOLOL!! What the heck?!

And one brag. Brigham is a math boy. He just intuitively gets how to figure things out. He was trying to figure out how many seconds were in 15 minutes. He thought about it for a minute and then said, "I know, I just need to do fifteen fifties and then add fifteen tens!" And he did it! I thought that was pretty clever of him.

Mosey

Mosey's preschool class had an Easter egg hunt on Monday. They have Good Friday off, so Monday was the day! He had a fun time.







Mosey is getting an attitude. His favorite thing to say recently is, "WHY??" He pronounces it, "Why-uh?!" He says this whenever I tell him to do something or stop doing something. Really, it's charming.



Mosey showing me this slime stuff he got in one of his Easter eggs. Fun.




Mosey is getting better and better in his reading. Here he is reading "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." He will now sometimes correct Brigham or Joseph. We were driving past a restaurant with a "Now Hiring" sign in the window. Joseph looked at it and said, "Now hirring," and Mosey immediately corrected him saying, "No Joseph, it says no HIRING!"

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I've always liked St. Patrick's Day for the sole purpose that it involves my favorite color, green! I think it is a fun holiday. No crazy sugar consumption, no crazy spending on presents, and since we're Mormon, no crazy consumption of alcohol. Just good, green fun.

We had green scrambled eggs for breakfast (ok, those really look disgusting, but taste good!), and for dinner I did a green motif. Irish cabbage, sliced pears and kiwi, green grapes, and mint and chip ice cream and lime sherbet for desert. Oh yeah, and leftover tacos for protein. But those weren't green.

The boys and I liked the Irish cabbage. It's easy to make. Bring 15 oz. of chicken broth and 2 tspns butter to a boil, then add a head of chopped up cabbage and stir around and cook for 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Ben saw that I was chopping up cabbage and looked very skeptical. Then when I was cooking it he came in and said, "I hope you're hungry," implying I'd be the only one who ate it. He was on the phone when we started dinner, but when he came in, the boys assured him it was good. I put the TINIEST amount on his plate, and he tried one teeny tiny bite, and then put the plate in the sink and got a new plate and left the cabbage alone. Hmmm, I think I may not have the most culinarily adventurous husband in the world. Let's just hope we don't go through some hard economic times and we have to eat things like cabbage. He'd starve.

He did manage to refrain from saying "Ew, this is DISGUSTING" in front of the boys, so I give him brownie points for that. :-)

Embarrassing

Cleaned out the van before leaving on our trip. This is all the stuff that was in there. Bin on the left is stuff I have to put away. Bin on the right is trash. Also a bag of Tae Kwon Do sparring gear and a tricycle. Yeah, my van is my dirty little secret.

Spring vacation

Brigham and Mosey playing in the sand on Port Aransas Beach

Great sand for drip-castles

Joseph making a castle

Silly Mosey

In the water

Running out of the water

Running back into the water

On the boat

Brigham and Mosey peeking out of the porthole

Hard to see, but that is a family of whooping cranes out there. Whooping cranes mate for life.

Brigham at Rockport beach

Joseph working on his tan

Mosey being silly again

Those birds are called Black Skimmers. The boys attracted a whole bunch of them, throwing pieces of bread up into the air.

More black skimmers

Eating out of Ben's hand

Got it!

Ben and the boys on the Fulton Pier. Joseph wasn't into having his picture taken.

But he did deign to pose next to me.

So last week was the boys' spring break. For the first few days we pretty much just hung out at home, slept in, watched DVD's and otherwise loafed about. Wednesday I took them to ride bikes up at the church parking lot.

Then on Thursday we decided to go down to Port Aransas. There is a line of barrier islands along the gulf coast, very much like the barrier islands in Florida. South Padre Island is the most famous one, but last week was also UT's spring break, and South Padre tends to get overrun by partying college spring breakers, so we decided not to go there. Port Aransas is closer anyway, about 3 hours. It is a GORGEOUS drive through the beautiful countryside, and it was exciting to get back to the ocean.

We stayed in Rockport Beach, just north of Port Aransas. On Friday we drove down to Aransas Pass, took the ferry out to the island, and spent the day at the beach. It started out beautiful, but then fog rolled in and it got just a little chilly. Ben still managed to get quite sunburned on the side of his face (he was lying on his side on the sand). The boys had a fabulous time, though, making sand castles, finding jellyfish, and playing in the water. Mosey ran into the water about 10 yards, then ran out again, ran in, ran out, ran in, ran out, for about three hours!! That boy is tireless. Port Aransas has the nicest sand I've ever seen at a beach, I think. Very fine and soft and perfect for making sand castles.

Late in the afternoon we drove down through Mustang Island and Padre Island, and then drove across the bridge over the intercoastal waterway into Corpus Christi. I was also totally impressed with Corpus. At least, driving up the coastal highway in Corpus is amazingly beautiful. We saw Horton Hears a Who (great movie, btw, Mosey LOVED it), and ate at Chili's before driving back to the motel.

Saturday we took a boat ride out of Rockport along Blackjack Peninsula, which is a wildlife refuge, and the winter home of the only wild flock of whooping cranes left in the world. It was a beautiful sunny day and we saw lots of whooping cranes and other birds. The water was perfectly calm, so no seasickness!

After the boat ride we spent the afternoon at Rockport Beach. This is also a very nice beach with calm, clear water, and NO trash. There were only families there, and everyone was well-behaved. The water stays shallow really far out, probably 200-400 yards at least, so it was really fun for the boys to play in, and I could just relax and not worry about them. At Port Aransas the day before, the water was rougher, and I freaked out a couple of times when Mosey left my sight.

I have to say, the beach is much more fun when you can walk, though. I managed to get across the sand (with Ben's help), and then waded a few feet into the water before just sitting down. Too hard to wade against the resistance of the water, and when I can't clearly see where my feet are going, it is impossible. But then I couldn't get back out! So I had to wait for Ben to get back (he got all our beach gear down on the beach, and then went to check on the dog at the motel) before I could get back up to my beach chair. But after that I relaxed on the sand and read my book and enjoyed the sun. It was very nice. When it was starting to get dark, we packed up our stuff and then drove around Rockport a bit, touring Key Allegro, which is exactly like the ritzy part of Ft. Lauderdale with enormous houses, waterways and posh boats winding around behind the houses (the waterways were winding, not the posh boats!). If someone had just dropped me there and I didn't know where I was, I would swear I was in Florida. Very nice. And expensive.

That night we ordered pizza and watched "I, Robot" on TV.

Sunday we tried to go to church, but after we finally found where the Rockport branch meets, there was a notice saying it was Stake Conference down in Corpus Christi. Oh well. So we checked out Fulton Beach, walked down the pier there, drove past the Fulton Mansion, and then headed home. We were home by about 4:30.

What a nice weekend!

Now we are back in school. The boys were ready to be back on a schedule, and even though it's hard to drag myself out of bed every morning at 6:15, it's also good for me to be back on schedule.