Oh mud, oh my!

Today I was in the middle of piano practicing with Brigham when our neighbor knocked on the door to let us know there was water leaking out of the side of our driveway and running down the road.  I sent Brigham out to investigate and he told me it looked like a hose was on somewhere.  Well, the leak was exactly where our water main is, so I was worried.  I called Ben and he came home to check it out.  Soon, he called his work and told them he wouldn't be coming back.  Yep, a water main leak.  At this point, I knew trying to reign the boys back inside to finish schoolwork was going to be nigh upon impossible, so I let them go on out to help.  Ben and the boys dug a DEEP hole and found where the problem was.  It is not easy digging a deep hole in dripping wet mud.  Everyone got totally filthy. We think this probably has been going on for some time, due to the plethora of really thick roots clustered around the pipes.  The nearest tree is probably 30 feet away.  No wonder our water bill has always seemed high to me.
After an afternoon of work, Ben got it fixed.  We had to go to piano lessons midway through, and all the boys were covered in mud and the water was off so no showers or baths.  So, it was back to the pool, hopefully for the last time this year.  :-)  At least it was pretty pleasant outside today.
Joseph found a family of toads while helping to dig the hole.  The boys named the toads and have them living in a big tupperware bin for the time being.  They are really a hoot to watch eating.  Long, sticky tongues flicking out to capture the poor unsuspecting crickets.  :-)

Meet Thud

And hello there, Slash!

Finally, here's Little Claw.  These sound like some serious toads.  :-)

 Yeah, these feet are NOT coming inside my house.

I'm pretty sure the piano teacher wouldn't let them into her house like this either.  :-)

In other good news, I think we've finally got our violin teacher!  Brigham had his first lesson with a woman who teaches out of a violin shop really close by.  It's on the 2nd floor in a building with no elevator, so I can't go in with him.  I think it will be good for him to have lessons independently, however.  When I asked Brigham how it went afterward, he was very excited.  "She's a really competent teacher, mom, I really like her!"  She seems to be totally on top of the ball and I think is going to be a very good change for Brigham.  And the timing works out great.  Brigham has his piano lesson first, then I drive him over to violin, about 5 minutes away, go back and wait out the rest of Joseph's and Mosey's piano lessons, and then go back to pick him up-- he'll be done right about the time we'll be pulling up to the building.  This will free up a whole afternoon for me, and I am really happy about that.
Yay for good violin teachers and convenient lesson schedules!  :-)
On the not-so-good-news, I've got myself the first cold of the season.  Ugh.  It's mainly attacked my throat (I thought I had strep at first, but then the congestion hit today), and by this afternoon I had lost my voice entirely.  How can I yell at the boys when I've lost my voice??  :-)  Anyway, I thought it was so funny how, when I started having to whisper because my voice was gone, the boys couldn't help but whisper back to me.  The power of suggestion, I suppose-- so interesting!  Anyway, I've found the key to a quiet house!  I whisper to them, and they all whisper back!

$40

I still haven't downloaded the pictures I took over Thanksgiving.  Probably won't happen until this weekend.  It's now 9:33, my boys are STILL up, and I have about 4 baskets of laundry waiting to be folded.  My favorite.  :-)
Mosey participated in a study this afternoon, looking at language and auditory development among children who stutter.  It was a long 2 1/2 hours for him (and that after his normal hour of speech therapy), but he did great.  I got to watch a lot of it through the mirrored glass, and it was really interesting.  I hope they get some good data from him.  The highlight, though, was the $40 (!!!!!) they gave him for participating in the study.  Wow, that's a big chunk of change for a 7 year old.  He had grand plans for how to spend that money (the Hexbug "elevation set" was foremost on his mind), but when he got home and talked to his brothers, they somehow wrangled him into putting that $40 into a separate fund now known as "the boys' treasury."  I guess they're all going to pitch in and buy something awesome together.  I like that kind of working together!  It's an especially good deal for Brigham and Joseph, to have Mosey jump-start the fund with a big $40 endowment.  :-)
More stuff happened today, but laundry calls.

blogging hiatus

Well, my almost-daily posting streak came to a screeching halt last week as Thanksgiving descended.  My sister and brother-in-law and their 4 kids came down from St. Louis for Thanksgiving and suddenly other things became more important than my computer time.  :-)  Words can't express how much I love being with my sister, and it was made even better seeing my kids and hers playing together so well.
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is also about 1,000 times more fun with a sister there to cook with you.  We made a pretty good team I think!  We cooked and baked and talked from about 8:30 AM until we ate at 4:00 PM.
The cousins had a great time together.  They made thorough use of our playroom in building block castles and K'nex roller coasters.  They had scooter-jumping contests off the deck in the backyard.  They even went SWIMMING on Friday.  Crazy kids.  We went on a hike Friday morning.  Ben carried me on his back so I got to eavesdrop on the kids talking and singing and showing off and catching lizards and exploring the rusted ruin of a car off of one part of the path.  We went up to Mt. Bonnel (Ben didn't carry me up there, although he offered to-- I decided I valued his functioning back more than the sunset view over the 360 bridge), drove through downtown to see the capitol building all lit up against the night sky.  On Saturday we went down to San Antonio to the Natural Bridge Caverns (Rosalynde and I stayed up top since it is not wheelchair accessible and talked the whole time which I think was better than seeing the caves anyway), and then down to the Alamo and the River Walk where it gradually got FREEZING!  I remember the first real cold front of the year came through right at Thanksgiving last year also.  Mosey left his jacket in the car and was a Mosey-sicle by the time we got on the boat for the River Walk tour.  I zipped him up inside my jacket and he kept us both warm.  Very soon all my boys will be too big for things like that.  :-(
We ate up most of the Thanksgiving food over those three days, which was pretty amazing given the quantity that we made.  I also took a vacation from my crazy diet and the food never tasted so good.  :-)  However, the eating fest seriously needs to STOP.  I do NOT want to participate in the average 8-lb weight gain for most Americans over the holidays.  :-)
The worst part was when Rosalynde and her family had to leave early yesterday morning.  Getting back to reality after a few days like that is a bit of a downer.
Underneath all the happiness of this last week, however, my heart has been hurting for my dear friend over this first anniversary of her husband's death.  I have so much to be thankful for and she reminds me never to take the most important things for granted.

2.5 hours folding laundry

2.5 hours.  That's what happens when you wait until you have seven baskets of laundry to fold.  Yes, seven.  I'm determined to get all caught up before Rosalynde comes on Wednesday.
Today felt very unproductive to me, despite the 7 baskets of laundry folded.  I slept in-- until 8:00.  I'm giving the boys the week off of school, although they all have just a little bit left to finish from last week.  I thought I'd get so much extra stuff done today.  Instead, I got the bare minimum done, and no extras at all.  Oh well.  We had breakfast and scripture study, then I got the boys started on chores while I drove through some rain showers down to Ben's work to drop off a white shirt and tie for a presentation he forgot about.  Then back home to help Joseph and Brigham with the flute/violin Christmas duets they're working on.  I've had to transcribe a couple of the pieces up a few notes, and then re-wrote the violin part on all three because the violin part was really dumb.  So I finished that up, and then worked with Joseph and Brigham on learning their parts.  I made lunch and read some of one of our school books to them, and then it was time to go to horseback riding-- a makeup lesson for the one we're missing this weekend.  Brigham had a great riding lesson-- especially good after feeling quite discouraged about riding earlier in the day.  Joseph and Mosey explored around the ranch and found a runaway fluffy white rabbit which they managed to catch and return to its cage.  Joseph caught it by the scruff of its neck, and Mosey helped carry it by supporting it's back end.  Cute to see them working together.  After horseback riding, we stopped at Target to pick up a prescription, and then drove straight to flute where Joseph and Brigham worked on their duets.  Mosey and I talked strategy for how to handle my new primary class.  :-)  Then back again through 5:30 rush-hour traffic and home.  I made dinner-- black beans and rice and carrots, and then FHE and delivering thank-you muffins to a few people who helped Ben and I out with our Temple trip this last weekend, and then time for BED for the boys when we got home at 9:15 PM.   Cleaning up dinner and folding laundry occupied the rest of the evening and now I'm just stalling getting ready for bed.
Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get done all those extra things I thought I'd have time for without school lessons?

Squirrely 8 year olds

Today was my first day of my new calling-- teaching the 7-turning-8 class.  Since it's the end of November, most of the kids are now 8.  But wow, get eight 8 year olds together, and you have some serious squirreliness going on!  I'm going to have to put my thinking cap on for how to keep the attention of these little kids for one hour in a small room, with the irresistible temptation of other kids to poke, laugh at, and talk to.  I'm of the opinion that it really is too much to ask these kids to sit down and hold still for 3 hours of church.  Especially little boys.  So, how to give them the opportunity to get out some of their energy so they can actually focus on the lesson?  I can't really lead them on a romp around the outside of the church, so that's out.  :-)  I'm thinking about legos.  I know that my boys can pay much better attention to me when I'm reading to them when they have something to do with their hands.  Could it ever possibly work to give each child a tupperware of legos to play with during the lesson, with the warning that the first time the legos become distracting to another child, they are gone?  Or maybe little notebooks and pencils so they can draw pictures?  When I was little, I could pay much better attention if I could be drawing.  Maybe I'll let each child have the choice of sitting on the chair or sitting on the floor.  But they have to be sitting.  Maybe all of this will be one giant fiasco.  But it will be fun to see if there is something that will work!

Another Saturday

Ben and I went to the Temple today-- a trip that almost didn't happen.  Ben scheduled the appointment 3 weeks ago (Saturday sessions go fast), but it didn't occur to me until Thursday night to look at my recommend.  It expired in October.  Oops.  Luckily we have the best Bishop and most accommodating 1st counselor to the Stake President ever, and both of them came over to our house to interview me.  Even that almost didn't happen-- I couldn't get a hold of anyone in the Stake Presidency all day.  Turns out that 2 were out of town, and the 3rd was at work, and then out to dinner with his wife.  But thanks to a Stake Executive Secretary who texted Brother Erickson for me, he came to my house at about 9:00, after his date with his wife.  I definitely owe him some cookies.  But meanwhile, I had called the Temple to see what their policy was (after all my recommend expired only 2 1/2 weeks ago), but that was a no-go, and before I knew what happened, the nice lady had canceled my appointment.  Just after that, Brother Erickson called so I knew I'd be able to get the recommend in time, so I called the Temple back, and my appointment had already been snatched up!  I was very upset.  But Ben kept calling the Temple back every few minutes to see if any spots had opened up, and a few minutes before closing, they called him (they figured out who he must be and then looked up his phone number-- how nice!) to let him know they had one cancellation.  So I got to go after all.  Take that, Satan.  :-)
Anyway, a couple of hours doesn't seem toooo far away to go to the Temple, but it took us ALL day!
We got up at 6:40, left the house by about 7: 25, and got to the Temple in San Antonio on time for a 9:30 session.  I'm really slow, so we didn't get out of the Temple until around 12:30, and then a visit to the distribution center (which was crowded!), and a leisurely lunch meant we weren't really on the road until 2:30.  And then Ben and I decided to stop and do some shopping, which meant sitting at a really AWFUL intersection for several minutes, and then on the way back we chose exactly the wrong exit to get off to get gas, which put us in the middle of a construction zone getting back on the freeway.  Long story (and long day) short, we didn't get home until 5:30!
Good thing the boys are resourceful and responsible.  They did just fine at home, although the house did sort of look like 2 ten year olds and one 7 year old had spent the day having free-reign in the house.  :-)  Not too bad, though.  They did artwork, played with blocks and lincoln logs and hexbugs, watched several episodes of "Man Versus Wild," ate half a bag of pretzels and an entire bag of Quaker rice snacks and who knows how many bowls of cereal.  It sure is nice to be able to leave the boys home and not worry about them!
Tonight we went and did our grocery shopping for Thanksgiving.  Wow, Thanksgiving has totally sneaked up on me this year.  HEB already has Christmas trees in front of the store!  Brigham and Mosey have both commented on how strange it is that the years go by so fast.  I don't know what to think about that.  I remember the years passing by slowly when I was their age, especially the weeks leading up to the holidays.  I'm not sure their perception is a reflection of the fast-pace of life we live in now, or a reflection of the fact that they're having fun!  Time flies when you're having fun, you know.
I cut Ben's hair tonight while the boys were supposed to be getting ready for bed.  Instead, they sat on the couch making up insults.  It was quite entertaining. 
"You are a rotten wiggy!"  (This has been a standard insult at our house for a few years.  I still don't know what it means.)
"Well you're a dead poon!"  (Another Turner-boy affront.)
"You're a worn-out toothbrush!"
"Well you're a peed-in-pool!"
"You're Barack Obama!"
"Oh, yeah?  You're George Bush!"  (Hey, my boys are fair and balanced.)
This went on for several minutes until I finally gave them one more insult each and then it was time for bed.
Silly boys, all three of them are rotten wiggies.  :-)

11/17/11

Not much of note today.  Lessons, practicing, and art.  Mosey's cello teacher didn't show up.  He hasn't replied to my emails or phone messages.  I'm worried and hope everything is OK.  Meanwhile, I've been talking to another teacher who might be able to teach him at our house.  I think I've found a good teacher for Brigham, but of course her only available hours are exactly when we can't make it.  I'm hoping to manage to work it out somehow.
I have no pictures from today, so here are some favorites from just about 6 years ago.

three things

1. I woke up the boys by blasting "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt Suite.  That's a pretty sure-fire way of getting anyone up and moving.  Try it.

2. When it rains here in Texas (which it did yesterday morning, at least for a little while), these tiny little snails in conical shells emerge from where ever it is that they hide themselves.  Yesterday while I was at speech with Mosey, Joseph and Brigham went out and collected about 25 of them and put them in a glass cup.  I came home, and started clearing things up getting ready for dinner.  When I picked up the cup to put it in the sink, it was a nice little surprise to look down and find it crawling with these slimy little creatures.  Ewww.  I never did stuff like that when I was a kid.  :-)

3. I bought a bag of mixed in-shell nuts at Walmart the other night.  I made the mistake of putting them out on the table during math.  Math and nut-cracking are not compatible activities.  The boys don't even like nuts very much, but cracking nuts is another story.  The hand-held nutcracker is pretty hard-- it takes some dexterity and muscle.  So the boys found a better way-- wedging the nut between the door and the door jam (on the hinged side), and then closing the door.  It cracks the nut with a very satisfying crunch, sending fragments of shell scattering in all directions.  Irresistible.  And very messy. 


 

Ramblings

May-May left today.  The boys sure enjoyed having her, and so did I. 
Joseph spent yesterday and today sitting next to her doing his schoolwork.  Just like old times.

I'm really enjoying the history we are studying this year-- American History.  The curriculum we are using is pretty good with history-- a few workbooks, a pretty good textbook-type-book, and lots of good historical fiction and non-fiction.  We're supplementing with Joy Hakim's "A History of US" which is fantastic.  Anyway, we have just finished with the Revolutionary War, and the ratification of the Constitution.  When I was at home over the summer going through my things, I found this old rolled-up copy of the Declaration of Independence that I must have gotten in 5th grade-- maybe on our class trip to Valley Forge?  Anyway, at the bottom of course it has the list of signatures (I never really thought about how cool it is to look and see what these men's actual signatures looked like!), and right next to it is my name-- signed with my cute little 10-year-old signature.  I thought it would be fun for my boys, exactly the same age I was (well, Mosey's pretty close!), to sign it too.  They took it very seriously and now I'm really wishing I had a homeschool room so I could frame it and put it up on the wall.

This week started out pretty iffy, but it's going well now.  Yesterday was a busy day.  Well, every day is busy, but yesterday was busier than our normal Mondays because Brigham had his London College of Music exam in the afternoon, before Joseph's flute lesson.  So we all had to leave the house at 3:15, which meant that all of our schoolwork and practicing needed to be done by then.  And we had Tae Kwon Do at noon, so there went another hour.  So I was very stressed out and managed to have Brigham in tears twice before noon.  Awesome.  Anyway, I had a good talk with myself during Tae Kwon Do, and when I got home I apologized to the boys and told them that I don't have any school planned for next week at all.  So they can get all their schoolwork for this week done by Friday, and have all of next week off, or they can take it easy and do schoolwork for a couple of days next week.  Well, of course they want all of next week off, so now they are motivated to get their schoolwork done and I don't have to nag them.  I don't know why it took me all morning to figure that out.  I have to remind myself frequently to relax.  It's not the end of the world if every single one of their assignments doesn't get done every single day.  One day of less-than-stellar practicing will not appreciably impact their future.  :-)
So, the rest of the day yesterday went much better.  Brigham did well on his exam.  We won't know any results for a couple of days.  Honestly, I don't even know how the scoring works.  We did this purely on a whim.  I think Brigham was nervous until I reassured him that this was entirely for fun, and that his score doesn't count for anything, and it was really nothing but an opportunity to learn some things and get a taste of the audition process.  Then I think he was fine. 
After flute lessons, we stopped at Target to pick up the new Harry Potter movie on DVD, which we then watched for FHE.  I've listened to the soundtrack for that movie about 100 times since it came out, and it was fun to watch the movie again, being so familiar with the soundtrack.

Today was a good day as well.  I think I was pretty successful in remaining relaxed.  In fact, maybe a bit too much so.  I didn't sleep too well the last couple of nights, and I was dragging by around 1:00.  It's that whole right-after-lunch-time that I start feeling drowsy.  Anyway, I was reading aloud to the boys, and finding myself losing my place on the page, and saying the wrong words.  Finally I finished the chapter and the boys commented on something in the book.  I started to reply in a coherent manner, but suddenly heard the boys ask, "What did you just say mom?"  And I couldn't remember what I had just said!  "Did you say something about Cake Wrecks?"  It came back to me then.  My sentence started out just fine, and then something slipped in my brain and I finished the sentence, entirely logically from my perspective, by saying, "But you never know if it might end up like a cake on Cake Wrecks."  Make sense?  No, not to me, either.  (By the way, Cake Wrecks is a blog the boys and I think is hilarious-- take a look at it sometime!)  The boys and I had a good laugh over that, and they've been teasing me the rest of the day.
Mosey had speech in the afternoon, and then Brigham and Joseph had Scouts.  Every-other-Tuesday is pretty busy for me-- I leave at 3:50 to go to speech, come home and pick up Joseph and Brigham and leave immediately for Scouts.  It's not worth it to go all the way back home, so I've been going to Walmart for groceries while they're at Scouts, and then picking them up before getting back home by around 7:45.  Brigham and Joseph are really liking Scouts.  Tonight they learned how to change a tire and check the oil.  Pretty soon I will be able to cancel my AAA membership!
OK, time to go to bed before I start spouting nonsense again.

A couple of videos

Here's a video I made of the boys at the park a couple of weeks ago.  They buried each other in gravel and got incredibly dirty.  I love these boys.


And here's a video from tonight.  Mosey learned "How Firm a Foundation," and accompanied us for our FHE opening song.  I love that their teacher is having them learn how to accompany right off the bat. 
Excuse the messy, messy playroom.  I claim no responsibility.  :-)

Brigham's violin recital

Brigham's first violin recital was yesterday.  He did a good job.  He played 3 short pieces that he will be playing on Monday for the London College of Music exam, and then a piano piece he just finished up.  He didn't look nervous at all, and played well.  He got the biggest smile when he was done, though.  I remember that feeling of euphoria when you know you're done, and you can relax and listen to everyone else play.
I'm so proud of you, buddy!

Mrs. May--May

We are dog-sitting a friend's dog for a few days. Her name is May-May, and she looks like Mister's twin sister. The resemblance is really eerie. Yesterday, when Laurie and John came to the house and May-May met them at the door, they said for a minute they thought Mister had come back from the dead. They called her "Missus" the rest of the time they were here. :-)

The boys have loved having her at our house. It feels natural to have a dog following me around and waiting to greet us at the door. May-May is fun and energetic and loves to PLAY! And she plays fetch. It's a good thing Mister isn't here-- he might start to feel insecure. :-)

I don't know who was having more fun-- the dog or the boys!


Joseph asked me last night, "Mom, do you think we'll ever get another dog?"

Seeing the boys with this dog makes me think the answer is probably yes.

11:11, 11/11/11

 11-11-11

Fun!

Mosey meets the baby!

The newest addition to our art group came today!  Baby William is all of 16 days old, and slept nearly the whole time he was here, despite being poked and prodded by various curious kids.  Mosey was excited to see him.  "He's so little!"  It's so easy to forget how tiny and squishy they are at first!
I asked Mosey what he thought about the baby after everyone went home, and he got a big smile on his face and said, "That baby was weird!"  Which, in Mosey-speak means, "That baby was cute!"  He's a little bit too manly to say that a baby is cute.  :-)  Then he said, "Did you see his feet mom?  His biggest toe was smaller than the end of my little finger!" 
I sure do love little babies. 
After art, when the kids were all running around playing, Mosey dragged out his music stand, cello, and cello bench.  He wanted to play for his friends!  How cute is that?  I'm so glad he's feeling some pride in his playing. He's told me he wants to build a cello "repertoire," so he has a few songs he can always play for people.  So every now and then when he's learning a new little song from his book he'll tell me, "I want to add this one to my repertoire, mom!"  So far he's got "Ode to Joy," "Frere Jacque," and "The Can-Can."  He's doing well on the cello, I think.  He still complains about practicing from time to time, but he gets a kick out of me trying to play his songs for him on his cello.  He is better than I am.  :-)  Maybe I should start taking lessons!
Which leads me to another weird (not cute) thing from today.  Mosey's cello teacher didn't show up for the 2nd week in a row.  What is going on?!  I've emailed him and called him (left a message), but have had no response.  I even googled his name (it's pretty unique) to see if there have been any news reports of an accident or something horrible, but nothing.  I'm glad about that, but very puzzled over the whole situation.  He's been a good teacher-- he did miss one other week with no notice, but emailed me a few days later to tell me his wife had a miscarriage and he left his home without his phone on his way to the hospital in Houston where she was.  That's seemed like a good excuse.  Every other time he's come he's been prompt and professional and has been a good teacher for Mosey.  It's very odd.  The last time he was here, a couple of weeks ago, I paid him for the month of November, and that was the last we've seen of him.  But he hardly seems like the kind of person to carry off, nor is this the kind of situation that seems likely to be a scam.  I guess I'll keep trying to get hold of him.  So my music teacher woes continue.  I still haven't figured out what to do about Brigham's teacher.  I found another place very close by-- a violin shop actually, out of which 3 teachers are taking students.  The teachers look really good-- one of them is exactly what I'm looking for.  However, it's on the 2nd floor of a small office building that has no elevator.  I'd like to sit in on lessons, and I'm not sure I feel comfortable sending my son into a strange building with no parental accompaniment.
Why is my life so hard??  :-)
Well, tomorrow is 11/11/11.  I've set my alarm to go off at 11:00 AM so I can make sure we take proper note of 11:11 on 11/11/11.  It's the little things in life, I tell you.  :-)

A Room Made of Windows

Several days ago I was ordering a book online when I happened to look down at the "customers who bought this item also bought" section. There, in front of my eyes, was the very book I've spent at least the past 3 years trying to find. It was my very favorite book when I was about 14. I remember putting it away in my book shelf alongside several other books that I was definitely going to keep my whole life. Well, sometime over the past 20 years that book disappeared. And I couldn't remember the name of it. Or the author. I knew it was some award-winner, and I scoured all the Newberry medal books for about 50 years trying to find that book. I knew I'd recognize the title or author if I ever saw it again. But no luck. So when I saw that book right there, I was so excited! I bought it right on the spot and it came in the mail today. Now that it's here, I'm a little hesitant to read it. Will it be as great as I remember it being? Probably not. But, it's a piece of my past and I'm happy to have it.
Oh yeah, it's "A Room Made of Windows" by Eleanor Cameron. It won the Horn Book Award in 1971.

7:45 PM

A peek into our lives at 7:45 PM, 11/08/11:

Brigham was building blocks again, as usual. 

Earlier in the evening, he was doing this (video courtesy of Mosey):

Joseph was practicing the flute.

I caught him in a cute candid.

When he realized I was taking pictures, he quickly reverted to the whole "If I can't see the camera, it can't see me" thing.

I was warning Mosey that he had to finish his cello practicing as soon as Joseph was done with his flute.  This is the reaction I got.  :-)

But, being the giggler in our family, he couldn't stay upset for long.

I was procrastinating cleaning up dinner. 

Mosey took a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture of me of me taking a picture of...  :-)

And here I am, actually taking a picture of my own reflection in the mirror.

I did eventually get the dishes done (Ben helped when he got home from EQ stuff).  And now I'm going to bed.

monday

I guess it is a little easier to drag myself out of bed at 6:30 in the morning when there is a little bit of light outside.  That's the only good thing about the time change, though.  I hate how dark it gets so early.
Today was a pretty average Monday.  School lessons, practicing, Tae Kwon Do, flute lessons.  On the way home from flute lessons Joseph's teacher called to tell me that Joseph left his lesson book at his house.  Ugh!  I had driven halfway home already.  I had to turn around, drive back down, pick up the book, and then get back on the freeway, all of this smack-dab in the middle of rush hour.  That little detour cost us 45 minutes extra in the car.  The boys didn't mind too much since we were listening to Darke (Septimus Heap book 6), but we still hadn't done piano practicing for Joseph, violin for Brigham, or cello for Mosey, and I had to get dinner ready and Monday night means family home evening.  Oh, well.  As it was, Joseph did about half his piano, Brigham about half his violin, and Mosey skipped cello entirely.  Really, it's the end of the world.  :-)

tonight

After dinner tonight, Joseph and Brigham both teamed up against Dad in an intense game of chess.  I think Ben still won.  :-)

Saturday summary

Ben took the boys fishing this morning, out to Inks Lake (one of the few that actually has some water in it anymore), as part of an Elders Quorum activity.  I had been worried yesterday that Joseph wouldn't get to go, since he woke up sick and throwing up.  What is it with my boys and the stomach bug?!  Since the time they were babies they are so susceptible!  I feel so bad for them when they're sick like that-- there's nothing I can do for them.  Yesterday, Joseph asked in such a pitiful voice if I had some medicine he could take to make him stop throwing up.  I know just how he feels, having spent many, many weeks of my life feeling just as miserable.  There's nothing I could do but tuck him into my bed and put on The Lord of the Rings to try and distract him.  Thankfully, by yesterday afternoon he was feeling better and this morning he was totally fine for the fishing trip.  That meant I had the morning free!  I really went wild and crazy and got some laundry done.  :-)  I also met with Erica, the new 2nd counselor, handing off material she will need, and trying to train her in the calling as best I could.  She'll do a good job. I spent a couple of hours last night summarizing my calling and everything I felt like I had learned about it.  I also went back and summarized all the activities that I was in charge of over the past 2 1/2 years.  Twenty-one different activities!  Wow.  I got a little bit tired just remembering them all.  :-)
While Erica was here, she also offered the boys their 2nd dog-sitting gig, over Thanksgiving weekend.  (Their first starts on Monday, for a dog of another couple in our ward, and the boys are very excited.)  $10/day is a deal for dog-sitting, and a fortune for little boys.  Joseph in particular can't wait. 
When I told the boys about it, Mosey said, "Maybe we can just dog sit a whole bunch of dogs instead of getting a dog."
This has crossed my mind, although for Joseph I'm not sure dog sitting will really be an adequate replacement.  But maybe I'll be surprised.  He has spent several hours researching different dog breeds online, and got a couple of books on Golden Retrievers at the library the last time we were there.  That's the breed he has gravitated toward after all his reading.  My grandpa always had a Golden Retriever when I was growing up, and they are sure good, good dogs.  Also very, very hairy dogs.  Why am I so obsessed with having clean floors?  Is that obsession really worth denying my boy the companionship of a dog that I know he will love so much?  Having a dog is so much responsibility, though.  You have to figure out arrangements for it whenever you leave, you have to clean up dog poop from the back yard (it's been really nice not having dog poop back there), you have to train them and feed them and clean up after them and accept the responsibility for the next 12-14 years!  It's a lot!  I'm not ready to make any decision yet, but if we do get a dog, we'll have it for at least as long as the boys are in the house, and probably a few years longer than that.  It's a big, long-term responsibility that's a scary proposition to take on when you don't know what the future will bring.
Anyway, the rest of the day went well.  In the afternoon a woman from our ward came over to talk about homeschooling, as she is thinking of pulling her kids out of school after Christmas.  It was fun talking to her and getting excited about it all over again, and remembering all the reasons I'm doing this crazy thing.  While I was talking to her about something-- I think about possibly doing an intensive foreign language unit over the summer, Mosey was listening and said, "Mom, we hardly ever study our Greek and Latin roots anymore, it's annoying!  Can't we study them again?"  Talk about a well-timed commercial for homeschooling!  I looked at Andrea and said, "I doubt you hear things like that from many public-schooled kids."  :-)  (Of course, Mosey is a pretty unusual kid-- you may not hear that from many homeschooled kids either!)
We're 9 weeks into our school year-- 1/4 of the way done already!  That's amazing.  I'm still really happy with how things are going.  We've been able to keep up with everything, instead of slowly sliding into a less and less rigorous schedule as the semester progresses.  I still always think I should be doing more, but I think I will always feel that way, no matter what.  We haven't fallen behind in anything, and I consider that a big plus for the year so far.  This has also been, by far, the most cooperative year we've had, in terms of the boys not resisting getting their lessons done.  (To be fair, they've always been mostly cooperative in getting almost all of their lessons done, but there have been a couple of lessons for a couple of my children that have been the battleground for many a battle over the past 3 years.)  There are still some complaints, of course, but nothing like what we've experienced in years past.  It's so good to see progress being made.
In the evening I had delightful practicing sessions with Joseph on his flute, and Mosey on his cello.  Really, delightful!  (An adjective I don't always use for practicing sessions... :-))  And then it was off to get crickets for the lizards with Joseph, and to the grocery store.  It was the 3rd time in as many days that I've been to HEB, and sure enough, a couple of the employees there commented on me coming in yet again.  What can I say, HEB is just the happening place to be around here!
Then back home, groceries put away, kids put to bed, and the floors swept and mopped before the Sabbath tomorrow. (How is it that my floors can get so dirty in less than 24 hours-- during 17 of which my boys are either sleeping or not even at home??!!), and now I'm off to bed myself.

Like mother like son

Just like his mom, Mosey does his chores better with something to listen to.  :-)
Here he is listening to one of our history books for school. 
MP3 players = the modern equivalent of a spoonful of sugar.  :-)

(I'm a little dubious about the value of washing the kitchen table while crawling on it with your dirty bare feet, but, whatever.  :-))

Cold!

A cold front blew into Central Texas last night.  I heard the wind howling all night long-- a sure sign of the changing weather.  I don't think it got out of the 60's all day.  I never thought I'd feel cold again!  What a nice change.
Mosey went out in the backyard to do his math this morning-- all bundled up in his coat and mittens.  I laughed, remembering the first cold front of the year back in Florida in 2006.  The boys rode their big wheels to school and I rode my bike with Mosey in the baby seat in the back.  That morning (probably in December), I got a kick out of all the kids walking to school bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves and big winter coats.  I think it was maybe 65 degrees that morning (downright frigid for South Florida).
We get a bit more of a winter here than we did in Florida, so I thought my boys would be growing up a bit tougher.  But I guess after the summer we've had, anything cooler than 80 degrees is going to raise goosebumps.  :-)  Today may well have been the first day since last April that our A/C hasn't kicked in at least once.
OK, now for a total non-sequitur.  :-) I went to a baby shower tonight-- the second one I've been in about as many weeks.  Our ward is having a veritable baby boom.  I know of 9 babies that have been/will be born within a 9 month period or so, 3 in November alone!  For not being in a student ward, that is a lot of babies!  Baby showers are such happy parties, but still I leave with a twinge of melancholy.  I wonder if that little sting of yearning will ever really go away.  I remember before the twins were born, thinking that if I could just have one baby, I'd be so happy,  I'd never complain again.  And I'm not really complaining, but I can't help wishing I could have another one.  I know it's impossible (thank you years of infertility topped by high-dose chemo drugs), but I get this weird feeling every so often-- almost like deja vu-- when I look around at my kids, and get this distinct feeling like someone is missing.  Then I see they're all 3 there and nobody's missing.  It's strange.  It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, the feeling comes on without warning.  I remember being at Target once and looking around to make sure the boys were with me.  I saw all three of them there, but still, for a fleeting moment, found myself scanning the aisle, looking for another child who wasn't there.  It felt so real-- like I could almost "see" that child who wasn't there, just for a moment before I came to my senses.
I'm so thankful for my 3 boys.  Being a mother has been all I hoped it would be, and more.  Time is passing far too quickly.
If I could, I'd order up another 2 or 3 faster than you can say "dirty diapers!"  I mean, look at these pictures!   Yes, please.  :-)