Losing serious privileges!

Today I was in the kitchen cooking and Joseph and Brigham were playing nearby. Brigham said to Joseph, "OK, Joseph, pretend that you're mom."
Joseph said, "OK, let me get in mom's wheelchair."
Once he was sitting in my wheelchair, Brigham said, "OK, mom, race me to the hall bathroom! I'll run and you use your wheelchair!"
Joseph was smart enough to see that that wasn't a fair fight, so he politely declined. Brigham said, "You HAVE to race me!"
"Don't you yell at your mom!" Joseph replied. "That is very disrespectful! If you yell at me again, you will have a very long time out! 10 minutes in the closet!"
Undaunted, Brigham said, "Well, I'll just run away and you won't be able to make me get in the closet!" (It's kind of funny that he said this, because of my 3 sons, Brigham is the only one who hasn't run away from me to get out of punishments.)
"If you run away from me, you will start losing some serious privileges! No more computer privileges! No more movie privileges!" (Joseph sounds very practiced in his doling out of punishments! Maybe because he's had a little experience?)
Without skipping a beat, Brigham said, "Well, I'll just run upstairs, then what will you do? You can't follow me!"
Joseph (as mom): "If you go upstairs, I'll call Dad and he'll come and put you in the closet and then you will be very sorry! You'll probably get a spanking!" (Very true, calling Dad is the ultimate threat.)

The threats started getting a little unreasonable from here on out-- involving Joseph tying Brigham up with ropes and Brigham using a knife to get free, etc. But I really got a kick out of listening to them role-play, and getting a glimpse through the window of their perception of me. I guess my threats don't fall entirely on deaf ears. :-)

shameful victory

The boys' Blue and Gold Banquet was tonight. They're not *quite* done with their Wolf requirements yet (almost!), but the lure of a daddy-son cake contest proved irresistible, so we went.
It is the 100 year birthday of the Boy Scouts, and the boys' first idea was to make a cake in the shape of a 100, but when our pan sizes didn't look promising, we turned to the internet for some ideas. One look at this kitty litter cake and the boys were hooked.
The boys made it almost entirely themselves, with only minimal direction from me in the cake-baking, and from Ben in the assembling and decorating. It was ridiculously easy to make (buy a NEW cat litter box and scooper, bake and crumble up a cake, mix with vanilla pudding, crush vanilla sandwich cookies to put on top, and decorate liberally with softened and strategically shaped tootsie rolls), and oh-so-disgusting to look at.
The cake won the popular vote for best cake, which I suppose was almost a foregone conclusion considering the voting demographic of 8-11 year old boys. I felt bad, honestly, because there were some very well-done cake designs that obviously took way more work and skill than this one (like the cake behind ours in the first picture). Ah, well, what can you do?

Isn't it just positively revolting to look at?


Joseph and Brigham showing off their masterpiece.


Joseph eating a tootsie-roll cat turd (sorry, I know, so gross).


I figure, there's really no other place a cake like that can be appreciated other than at a party for little boys, right? :-)

Squirrely love

This little dog gets more love per pound than perhaps any other creature I know.
She's really quite endearing when she isn't barking or peeing... :-)

snowcones

Yesterday morning none of the snow had yet begun to melt, so the boys were out bright and early getting more snow. They had snowcones for breakfast (snowcups?), and I've got a collection of sundry snowballs slowly sublimating in the freezer.

SNOW!

It snowed ALL DAY here in Austin! It was amazing!
Joseph woke up first, and immediately pulled on some jeans over his pj's, grabbed his jacket, and went out to investigate the snow accumulated on our deck over the wee hours of the morning.


Brigham wasn't far behind, although he did get fully dressed before he went outside. He was just about to throw a snowball at me here.


Mosey was asleep, and I told the boys, "Do NOT wake up your brother!" (Mosey is a serious night owl and needs every minute of sleep he can get). But soon enough, he was downstairs, too. The big boys were worried the snow would melt by the time he was up. Not a problem!
He was pretty excited to taste the snow. "It tastes like nothing, mom!" All the boys got cupfulls of snow from the deck and poured strawberry ice cream topping over it to make snow cones. I'm not sure how sanitary they were, but you know what? You're only a kid once.


The boys were in and out all morning long. Joseph soon realized what a hassle it is to get bundled and unbundled every time he went in and out of the house, so he just braved the cold in his pj's and cowboy boots. My boys use my old high school cross country and orchestra t-shirts as pajamas. He's wearing my Mt. Sac invitational shirt from 1993, I think.


Snowball fight!


Here they are going crazy in the snow:


Mosey was enthralled with the huge flakes of snow coming down.


He even made a snow angel!!


Joseph made a video of the making of the snow angel:



He also thought it was great fun to smash snowballs against our back french doors. I didn't find that quite as amusing.
The front yard was even more impressive since there is more space to see the snow flakes.


Joseph did eventually get dressed, and he and Mosey built a "snowman" out on the back patio. They wanted to make a big one, but we don't have any gloves, and this was as much as their hands could take.


Stomping the snowman!


Snowman murderers.


We didn't get much schoolwork done today, needless to say. But this kind of snow in Austin is very rare, so what the heck.
Ben came home from work early, to avoid the snowstorm traffic, and he and the boys had a giant snowball fight out in the front yard. The dogs were completely hyper over the snow. Mister I'm sure has no memory of Utah snow, and Squirrel of course, being a Southern California dog, has never seen it. Chrissy, on the other hand, was less than thrilled.
I hope our newly planted garden makes it! That's what is in all those containers on the deck. We'll see, I guess. I don't think it was ever below freezing. I'm not sure what our total snowfall was, but we had at least 3 inches that accumulated on our deck over the day. Fun stuff!

Fire ants

You know? I really, really hate these things. We were at the park a couple of days ago and some how Mosey got into a pile of fire ants. He came running to me crying that there was something in his sweater. I saw an ant on his neck and immediately pulled his sweater off of him. There were probably 20 or more of these nasty creatures inside his sweater! I made him take off his pants and undies, too (in the car), and found several inside his pants and one inside his undies. Poor boy! He got bit quite a few times. I spent 10 minutes picking ants out of his clothes, but then he was brave enough to put them back on and go out and play again.
He doesn't get quite as bad a reaction as he used to. Maybe he's built up some sort of tolerance? This kid has been bit by fire ants more than any of the rest of us.
Anyway, it doesn't seem fair that after this cooooold winter, there are still active fire ant piles! Come on, you guys? Hibernate!!

Gross-out

We've been doing a unit on plant life the last several weeks. This week we learned about fungi. So we bought 3 big portobello mushrooms for the boys to "dissect." Joseph got the bright idea to blend his up in the blender. I haven't the slightest idea why. But I'm always game for something weird, so we put two of them into our blender with some water and... voila! Mushroom smoothie!
The boys thought it looked like a chocolate shake (a slightly chunky chocolate shake) and wanted to save it for Ben when he got home from work to see if we could trick him (he wasn't fooled, needless to say). But first we had to take a picture of the three boys enjoying their mushroom smoothie.
Just kidding, they didn't actually drink it! Actually, just before this picture, Mosey accidentally got some of it in his mouth and about gagged. That explains the slightly nauseated look on his face.
I like mushrooms, I really do, and grilled portobello mushrooms are delicious. But there is something just so utterly disgusting about the idea of a mushroom smoothie. I could hardly pass it in the kitchen without feeling ill.
Yuck, double yuck, and triple yuck!!!

Grandparents!

My mom and dad and little sister came to visit over this last weekend. My boys had been looking forward to it for so long. They began counting down the days a week before they came. "How many more days until Grandma and Grandpa come, mom?"
It was great having them here. It sure is easier to keep up with my laundry when my mom is here to do it for me! :-)
We did lots of things-- went to see the Percy Jackson movie, ate at Rudy's, planted a vegetable garden in some backyard containers, went to the lake, made cookies, my mom and dad took the boys canoeing on Town Lake, took Ben and I to eat while my sister babysat, and played games and had great conversations. Ben and I did our best to tempt them to move to Texas.
Eva just turned 16, which freaks me out. She was born in January of my senior year in high school. She was only 3 years old when Ben and I got married. I think it's hard for her to be an only child. Funny how the grass is always greener on the other side... I think there were times when I was growing up that I thought a few less people around would be nice. :-) (Just kidding, I loved having a bunch of siblings, and I think I probably enjoyed the babies more than any of my other brothers or sisters).
One of my favorite things has been watching my younger sisters and brothers grow up and become peers of mine. Eva is almost there. She has 2 more years of high school, and I know it seems like a million years for her. Youth is wasted on the young, right? I wish the years would slow down a little for me.

Here are some pictures:


Mosey being a goof at the lake park. He gets in these silly moods, and can't stop giggling. If he were to be a villain in a Batman movie, he'd be called "The Giggler" for sure.


Here I am with my pretty baby sister. Picture courtesy of Mosey.


We made Valentine's cookies on Valentine's Day-- really the only celebration we did this year. I'm such a boring mom. I actually enjoy the Valentine's festivities, it is a fun holiday for kids before things get all messy and complicated with girlfriends and crushes and all of that stuff. I'll do better next year.

Anyway, Mosey did some of this:



But really, a lot more of this:



And this:



And this:



Everyone was just a bit hopped up on sugar by the end of the evening. And I've had a rather hard time disciplining myself from reaching into the box of cookies every time I passed them in the kitchen for the past few days. Thank goodness they're all gone now!



Joseph enjoying the fruits of his labors.

As usual, it is fun seeing the different styles my boys have. Here's Brigham very meticulously decorating his cookies:



And here's my beautiful Eva showing them how it's done. She didn't want me to take any pictures of her, but she's crazy because look how gorgeous she is!!



While my dad was here, he did some long-awaited tasks around the house, including cutting a new board to put in our bathroom under-sink cabinet where a slow leak rotted the old one away. The boys went out to "help" him cut it, and I peeked out to see them all standing in a row like this, plugging their ears and watching my dad. So funny!


I'm such a loser and didn't get ANY pictures of my boys with my parents. I meant to send my camera with them when they went canoeing on the lake, but forgot that, too. Oh well, they'll just have to come back really soon to make up the photo-op!

I have the best parents in the world, and I'm so lucky to be married to a guy who loves them as much as I do. For the last few days since they left, he's said to me at various random times, "I really like your parents." Awww... So do I!

Boxes of bittersweet

The last several weeks Ben and I have been on something of an organization kick. My motivation has been to get our food storage organized, and to clear out some unused clutter. Ben's motivation was to be able to park his car in the garage next to the van. In order to do so, he needed to put a whole bunch of boxes up in the attic. In order to do that, he had to bring a whole bunch of boxes down for me to organize. So the bulk of our reorganization has involved me culling through a lot of old stuff, sending some off to sisters, some to Goodwill, and some to the trash.
It hasn't been easy.
My first job was upstairs in the big TV room. When we first moved into the house, I thought I would set up my photography studio up there. So I set up shelves with all of my photography paraphernalia-- props, backdrops, lights, etc. Well, shortly after we moved into this house, my MS took a nosedive, and it's become abundantly clear I will not be operating a photography studio upstairs.
Our crib was also set up in that room, and was actually used a couple of times by cousins. We have carted it around from house to house with the hope we would be able to use it again with another baby or two. But in the meantime, it has also been used by the boys for any number of reasons-- a trampoline, a fort, a jail, and who knows what else. It did not survive the boys. :-)
So anyway, a few weeks ago I spent a Saturday upstairs dismantling the crib and boxing up all my photography stuff.
It wasn't a very fun Saturday.
I remembered clearly the first time I set up that crib. I was 7+ months pregnant with the twins. Ben was in California doing an internship, and I was stifling my way through that hot summer with no A/C. I remember trying to get that thing set up with my great big pregnant belly in the way, and how awkward and ungainly I was. And how proud I was that I actually did it! It had been purchased used, with all the hardware, but no instructions, so it took some doing figuring it all out.
It was striking how similarly difficult it was for me to dismantle the crib for the very last time, but this time with my awkward, ungainly MS legs in the way. I sure wish I could trade them in for a big pregnant belly, let me tell you.

This last weekend I tackled the 7 boxes of baby clothes and gear that Ben brought down from the attic. I've successfully passed on most of our baby toys to my sisters. If they just took them to their local Goodwill, that's fine. At least I didn't have to do it. I can stand giving my babies' precious things to my sisters, but not to strangers. However, tackling the baby clothes has been a chore I've been putting off for a long, long time.
Ben set all the boxes in the middle of the garage so I couldn't ignore them.
Finally on Saturday I figured it was never going to get easier, so I may as well grit my teeth and do it. I thought I would keep a select few outfits that were most precious to me, and then give the rest of them to Goodwill, or even put an ad on Craigslist for twin boy clothes. But as I sat down to the task, I just couldn't do it. I tried picking up each item, folding it, and then coldly putting it in the designated pile. But my throat got all choked and tears wouldn't stop welling up in my eyes. As I picked up each outfit, I remembered all 3 of my boys wearing each one. I just couldn't get rid of them.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I picked up the two little outfits I bought on the day I found out I was having 2 boys. Ben wasn't with me at that ultrasound (it was an unexpected surprise at one of my doctor's appointments), so on my way home I stopped at Target, bought two baby boy outfits, and wrapped each one separately. I gave them to Ben to open one at a time so that discovering the babies' genders could be as much of a surprise for him as it was for me. I had waited for so long to be able to buy any baby clothes at all. The day I found out I was pregnant, the day I found out I was having 2 boys, and the day I found out I was pregnant with Moses will probably always be in my top 5 happiest days of my life. So when I picked up those two outfits and thought about putting them in a box for Goodwill where maybe someone would buy them for their baby boy, or maybe they would end up being thrown away, I balked. I could not do it. I thought about telling Ben to just forget it. We'll just have to cart those 7 boxes around for the rest of my life. But I knew he wouldn't go for that.
Finally I remembered someone in my ward who told me how she cut up all her kids' baby blankets into squares and made a larger quilt using pieces from all of the old blankets. I decided I'd do something similar.
So I cut all those clothes into big squares. I had two of a lot of the outfits (twins, remember), so I felt ok about cutting one of them to keep, and giving the other away. There were still about 5 outfits that I couldn't cut, either, a least not yet. I'll keep those. But I ended up with 3 boxes to give to Goodwill, 2 boxes to throw away (clothes that were either cut up or stained beyond repair), 1 box to send to my sister, and 1 box of squares that I will one day make into a quilt. Or maybe just keep and once in a while open and take out the squares one by one, remembering with what joy I bought that particular outfit, or the memories I have of my boys as babies and toddlers wearing it.
To add to the bittersweet, I found an old Zipdisk on which I had saved some of the early pictures of Brigham and Joseph. I saved them onto my new computer and spent some time looking through them. I sure hope in the hereafter there will be some way of going back and re-living certain parts of our lives.
Here are two pictures of Joseph and Brigham when they were about 2 weeks old.

This is my Brigham. To me, the twins have had their essential "look" since the day they were born. Brigham held his legs up like this all the time-- I called them his froggy legs. He was a calm baby, patient and quiet. There is such a thing as muscle memory, and the muscles of my arms still remember holding him, I can almost feel it.



And baby Joseph. He was always wide-eyed and alert like this. He startled so easily. He would start, and throw his arms out to the side like this and wake himself up. He had the highest-pitched little cry. We called him "The Teapot." :-) We had to wrap him in blankets like a mummy so he couldn't get those darned arms out and wake himself up. :-)

New member of the family

Well, not exactly new. She's been with us almost 3 weeks. Her name is Squirrel and she is half Chihuahua and half American Eskimo. She's is 11 lbs and CUTE. She also BARKS. She has adopted us whole-heartedly and is bound and determined to protect all of us from the evilness that lurks just outside our front door. We're working on that.
She belongs to a friend of mine from high school (Brian Lottman to those who know him), who is going to be moving to Austin in a few months and needed a place for his dog while he's completing some coursework out of state.
We'll see if my boys will be willing to give her up in a couple of months when her true master returns!

Pinewood Derby!

Tonight was our first (of many) Pinewood Derbies. The boys have been hard at work on their cars for a few weeks. They researched aerodynamics and created their designs. Our home teacher has a super-duper saw and we went to his house to saw the blocks. Then it was sanding, sanding, and more sanding (unfortunately, my kitchen table is bearing some evidence of this...). This last weekend they painted them, and for Family Home Evening this week we got the wheels and axles all ready to go. Whew, it's a lot of work!
We read quite a bit online about pinewood derby cars, and I was amazed and amused at how seriously some people take this race. We tried to follow some of the pointers, but most of it required precision tools that we do not have. And I think it misses the point of the Pinewood Derby, in any case, since it certainly is not 8-10 year old boys doing all that stuff.
One of Ben's coworkers has been involved in Scouting for many years and had a large collection of Pinewood Derby cars and gave Ben some good pointers as well.
The boys made a good showing! Joseph came in first in the first set of 8 heats. Then they raced the final four and Brigham won!
The boys had a pact at the beginning of the race: They were a team. If one of them won, they both won. After all, they had worked together with their cars, and all of the important elements really were the same for both cars.
Well, it was a good thought, but Joseph is competitive, and was pretty disappointed in the results of the final 4 heats. His car ended up coming in 4th in all of those heats, even though he won outright 3 of the 4 previous races, and came in 2nd in the 4th. Ah, well. I think he's reconciled himself to it now. And I think his car was by far the most creative of them all.
Here are some pictures.



The two cars: Brigham's Christmas car (he didn't name it that, but that's what it looked like to me), and Joseph's Shark car. They're both smudged with graphite here, so imagine them cleaned up.


A closer look at Joseph's Shark. Isn't it creative? I just love it. There are even gills on the sides, behind the front wheels, although they're hard to see here.


The Christmas car. Brigham painted it green, and then taped it off to make the red stripes. He originally had gold glitter glue around the top, but it kept coming off so we just painted a gold stripe instead.



Proud Brigham with his car before the races.



Joseph with his car. This was the only picture out of many in which he has a halfway normal look on his face. Stinker! :-)



Joseph's car in lane 3, waiting to take off.


Brigham's car in lane 4 dominating one of the races.


Brigham with his certificate and blue ribbon. All the boys also got candy and certificates (Joseph got an award for the "Most Tropical" and a Fun Dip Tropical candy).


Joseph trying to race his car up the ramp after the races were over. I think he's beginning to feel a little better here. Sportsmanship is hard. It wasn't enough for him to outright WIN 3 of his races. He wanted to win the whole thing... I told him that I think the way the wheels are prepared is really significant to the final results, and we could just as easily have put Brigham's wheels on his car, since all the wheels and axles were prepared at the same time, and I just grabbed them out of the same container when attaching them last night. Oh well. Life is hard sometimes when your twin brother wins the Pinewood Derby and you don't... :-)

Pettiness

Ok, here's me being petty for a minute.
Before my MS got bad, I dreamed of being a photographer. I even did it professionally (although very part time) for a short while. Then, the whole not being able to walk thing sort of got in my way.
After that, I did some freelance Photoshop work for a couple of photographers I "met" on an online photography forum. They liked my work and I processed their photos. It drove me crazy to do it, actually, because I could see the flaws in the work (I know, like my photos were ever flawless...), and I really wanted to be the one shooting the pictures.
Anyway, I guess I've stayed in the email address book of one of these photograhers and today I got a mass email from her excitedly writing about how she was featured in a particular photography magazine. What?? So I went and read the article, and apparently she's now a very in-demand children's fashion photographer with some big clients in a very big city. Apparently she got really popular over the last 2 years since I last did PS work for her. I went to her website, and I'm sorry, but she hasn't improved all that much. I still see things that could be improved, and I KNOW I could (would) be better than her if my dumb legs worked.
That's fine, whatever. I never did have any desire to be a big-shot photographer, and I wouldn't choose that even if I could. But it stinks to see what some people have gone and done while I've sat here, my camera only coming out of my bag every few days for dumb shots of my boys' latest science project...
I'm not really jealous of her. I'm kind of amused at how capricious "success" is in photography. Greatest talent does not necessarily equal greatest success. I suppose that is true in any industry. But it does make me annoyed at my MS.
A woman in our ward has asked me to do family portraits (something I'm happy to do once in a while), and she showed me her friend's facebook page with family portraits they had recently done, because she loved the style. I loved the style, too, and instantly knew I could never take the pictures she wants. They were all wonderful candid shots, catching the children unawares, and spontaneous family interactions. Which all require being able to walk (or run!) and be able to follow kids around and be in the right place at the right time for the perfect shot. Nope, I'll never be able to do that again.
I don't like imposed limitations. Who does, right? I forget about my MS most of the time (well, I can't ever really forget it because it dictates pretty much every move I make, or don't make, every hour of the day. But I don't think about it too consciously very often). This disease has certainly altered almost everything about the way I live my daily life, but most of the important aspects of my life I've been able to adapt to accommodate my disability, so it's ok. But every now and then I'm faced with something that I really CAN'T do because of my MS. And it stinks.

Walkers and rollerblades

These pictures are from a few weeks ago, but I still wanted to share. Joseph and Brigham got a pair of roller blades from Goodwill a while back, and have been practicing in the backyard. It's a little tricky!


Brigham is wearing his horse-riding helmet since his bike helmet was MIA that day.


Yes, this is Joseph rollerblading in his pajamas at about 1:30 PM on a Saturday afternoon. Who needs to get dressed on the weekend?! :-)

Mosey really wanted to try, too, but he just couldn't get up and stay balanced (this was before his birthday when he got his roller skates which are a little easier for him). So I told him to go into the closet and pull out the walker I got at the hospital during one of my bad MS flares.
By the way, I hate walkers. H.A.T.E. walkers, and refuse to use one. Why anyone wants to use a walker over forearm crutches is beyond me... (Plus, walkers can't be doubled as machine guns into which my crutches instantly morph whenever the boys get their hands on them!) ANYWAY, I thought maybe it could be of some use in helping Mosey stay vertical on the rollerblades. It sort of worked! LOL!!

Hmm, it's still pretty tricky, even with the walker.
(wanna know what it feels like to walk with MS? This picture shows it pretty perfectly)


Getting a little better...


Yeah! Look at that! Well done, Mosey!

Think it'll catch on?

Need... More... Time!!!

It is 10:55 PM, 25 minutes after I should be in bed. I promise I haven't been wasting time! I sent two emails, worked on some Relief Society stuff, and here it is, so late already. I still have to clean up the kitchen. I have 4 loads of clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away. The floor needs to be swept. The mail from the last few days is piled up on my desk waiting to be sorted. And no extra time in the foreseeable future to be able to accomplish these things...
Why haven't humans evolved to survive on 4 hours of sleep? It would make my life so much easier!

conjunctivitis

Poor Brigham has conjunctivitis in both eyes. Started yesterday, and by this morning both eyes were swollen and red. So the morning was spent at the Urgent Care getting a prescription, and the rest of the day giving eye drops and reminding the boys to all Purell their hands every 10 minutes or so. I wonder what are the chances of the other two being spared?

Big project: accomplished!

I have been trying to accumulate our family's 3 month supply of every day food (AKA our own private grocery store, as the boys like to call it). Since we live in Austin and only need big coats about 2 days out of the year, we emptied our entry way coat closet (put the coats upstairs), and put some shelves in to hold cans and boxes and bags. Well, it wasn't working too well because there was a big overhead shelf across the top of the closet which meant we could only use shorter shelves underneath. We were storing our games on that big shelf.
So my goal was to get more and better shelving for the closet.
To do that, we had to get rid of that big overhead shelf.
To do that, I needed to get some shelves and put the games in my room.
To do that, I needed to organize and dispose of a couple of big boxes of outgrown clothes and other items that were currently occupying the only space in my room for a game shelf.
Then, I purchased and assembled shelves for my room, pulled down, sorted, and organized games and puzzles.



Then the boys pulled out all the accumulated food we had been storing in the closet so we could organize and inventory all of it. And then they used the boxes and cans to build an elaborate city on the floor of the playroom and entryway. Ben took out the inconvenient shelf, and removed a small door at the back of the closet. I purchased and assembled more shelves, including figuring out a rather ingenious way to safely connect and stack two smaller shelves. The boys worked as my grocery shelf stocker boys and put everything back the new shelves. I now have about twice as much shelving as I did before and we're ready to continue building our own private grocery store. Awesome!
So, what I thought would be a relatively simple project, ended up being about a month-long project since so many of those tasks needed consecutive hours to actually accomplish-- consecutive hours I only have (sometimes) on weekends.
But it finally got done tonight, after a month of trips to Walmart, trips to Target, trips to Lowes, several trips to Goodwill, and a couple of trips to the post office. Whew!