bed time or blog time?

Hi everyone.
I'm still here! I made a goal this year to get serious about getting enough sleep. Well, I've not been perfect, but I am trying. Sadly, this goal means my computer time is limited. I have 16 minutes until my self-imposed bedtime, so we'll see how I do tonight.

We've been up to a few things around here, especially a House Organization Project.
I finally got around to organizing this house in a more usable way for me. All our books were upstairs, which really doesn't work for me, considering I can make, at best, one trip upstairs per day. More like one every week or 2 or 3. So we moved some furniture out and some bookshelves in, and at last I have most of the books I want downstairs. The arrangement is not quite as esthetically pleasing as it used to be, but lots more useful. It's taken quite a bit of time to get things arranged correctly, and my books organized.

I have 2 or 3 boxes of books to send to my sister (all the baby board books we've outgrown). Is that a nice thing to do or a mean thing? Sometimes getting other people's hand-me-downs is great, other times it just means that now YOU have to take them to Goodwill or trash them... I am not sending her all our baby books; some of them I couldn't bear to part with. I want to keep them so that my grandkids can look at the books that their daddies loved when they were little. Isn't that disgustingly sentimental? Oh well, I don't care.

I've also tackled the papers that have been mocking me for almost a year. I have all the boys put their drawings on a shelf, with the intention of going through them and choosing the best ones to keep. My boys are PROLIFIC artists, let me tell you. It took me a good 3 hours on Saturday (while listening to conference) to go through all the drawings. But now they're organized and the shelf is empty ready to be filled up with more drawings. It was actually sort of fascinating to go through all their drawings and compare the different styles the two boys have (Mosey isn't much of an artist yet, but he's getting there). I think there's a lot to learn about a child, just looking at drawings. Or patterns of drawings, I guess. I'll scan some of them to show some examples.

I also got all of Joseph's 1st grade papers sorted, and the ones worthy of keeping filed neatly in a three ring binder. I haven't done Brigham's yet, but his will be sorted this weekend. And then Mosey's preschool papers.

I just can't throw things away. I know my mom must have tossed nearly all of our school stuff out. With 9 kids going through elementary school, I cannot imagine the reams and reams of artwork, poems, stories, etc. that came home. But with only 3, I have the luxury of keeping some of them. I'm not sure my boys will ever look at them again, but I might. And their wives might. I love looking at some of the funny things Ben's mom kept from his school papers growing up. He has a picture he drew when he was 6 or 7 about what he wanted to be when he grew up. He drew a picture of a slide and wrote, "When I grow up, I want to be a slide." Yes, he was a smart-alec even as a little kid.

The boys have been doing well. School lessons are going swimmingly for the moment. Joseph is doing better with his attitude. He likes multiplication and division about 1000 times better than addition and subtraction, which helps his enthusiasm level considerably. I've also tried real hard to back off him a little. It's better for me to cultivate a good relationship between the two of us, and for him to develop a positive attitude toward school and learning, than for him to FINISH his math paper RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW. So I back off, everything stays calmer, and he's a LOT more cooperative. It's a big change from a few months ago. And I have a few tricks up my sleeve of things he really likes, and I think he knows that I mean it when I tell him that he simply can't ride the horse unless his schoolwork is done. Or get an icee at Burger King after Mosey's speech therapy (the boys' weekly treat).

We also started yet another chore/reward system. The nickel jars worked pretty well for a while, but nickels are pretty annoying to deal with when the boys want to spend their money, and it just took too much work on my part. I'm pretty lazy, you know. So now we have a "Bank Balance" poster on the wall in the hallway. Now when they do a chore that I'm paying them for, it is their responsibility to write down the amount that they get. They're under strict orders not to cheat. If they do, they will get the extra amount deducted plus $1 which is a lot for them. And, happily, they are pretty good policemen to each other. So this has been working great, since I don't have to do any work! I tell them what they earned, they go write it down. Then if they choose to buy something at the store, we simply deduct the cost from their bank balance, and we don't have to have a cash exchange at all.

I know it's working because I'm getting some VERY helpful boys, suddenly. They raked and bagged 8 big bags of leaves on Saturday, and Joseph and Brigham each earned a dollar by taking about 10 trips each up and down the stairs lugging books.

Joseph has been participating and interested in earning money, and that makes me very happy. I've given him chores, and if he doesn't seem to want to do them, I say, "Fine, I'll ask Brigham if he wants to earn 25 cents." Suddenly, Joseph wants to help! It's great.

I've been thinking a lot about how to teach my kids how to work, and how to avoid falling into the "entitlement" trap that so many Americans seem to be struggling with at the moment. It is hard.

I loved conference this weekend. I loved Elder Holland's talk. He and Elder Uchtdorf have the most compelling delivery styles, at least for me. I always look forward to reading the talks later, though, because sometimes there will be one that I sort of glossed over while listening, for one reason or another. But really, Elder Holland's talk was really powerful to me.

So basically, life is going pretty well at the moment. I will leave you with some pictures.

Bike riding at the church parking lot.





Here's my Mosey. I think it is so wonderful how children, no matter what they look like, are just THE cutest and the MOST adorable to their parents. At least so far. Maybe when mine are 14 and giving me attitude I won't think so? Anyway, I don't really know what my kids look like to other people, and I don't really care because to me, Mosey is the epitome of 5-year-old cuteness. He cannot be improved upon in any way.


I love his crinkled-nose smile. He still has a tiny bit of the baby-fat pudge, and I love, love, love it.



And this one, just because he's silly.



Joseph's been very camera-phobic recently, so for me to get a shot like this of him makes my day. Doesn't he look angelic? Ha! Don't be fooled. :-)
He recently learned to ride his bike without the training wheels. Yeah, I know, a little bit of a late-bloomer. He just didn't have the confidence before, and then one day a few weeks ago, he decided he was going to take them off, and then he just went! Just like that! No learning curve at all. Silly boy.



I have no idea what Joseph is finding so funny, but it must have been hilarious. He's wearing his cowboy boots, which he loves, and which I find totally endearing. Shorts with cowboy boots. Can't he just stay this age forever? Please?



It's so hard to get a natural picture of Brigham smiling. He is very serious when he's focused on an activity, and if I try to get him to talk about something to catch a smile, he's very animated and looks away a lot. I have a lot of great smiling shots where he's looking off to the side. Which is just fine, but sometimes I want a normal "look at me and smile" shot, you know? So I am pretty happy with this one. Brigham has such a gentle, good spirit, can you see it in his eyes? He actually stayed inside and LISTENED to all of the Sunday afternoon conference session, and then afterwards was reading his Book of Mormon and marking scriptures he liked. Why can't I be as naturally good as my son is??



He's also a good little bike-rider. And very focused and serious. I got a barely-half smile here. Look at how tall he's getting! We really need to raise the seat on his bike. Where do these tall kids of mine come from? How dare they grow up!!